400K is not much of a reach.

The City of San Francisco is half the size and twice as populous.

I could see aiming for 400K in 15 years. An aspiration would be 2M in 50 years. Still half as dense as Paris, but that would be a legit “new city” that would change the conversation in North America.

Street cars are great, but require a different level of investment for marginal initial gain over dedicated bus lanes. This step at least makes the place more enjoyable to be in (fewer vehicles, less noise, more space for people), which should also grow ridership…hopefully for a future street car.

Shenzhen (while definitely not perfect) is exactly what Palo Alto should be and the Bay Area should rival NYC’s metro population. California would have an extra ~10M+ people, 15+ congressional seats/EC votes. The landowners would be many times more wealthy and the rents lower.

Total own goal.

I hear you - what I’m trying to suggest is that the tree-as-barrier safety value outweighs (an assumption, but for some reason I’m fairly confident about it) the tree-blocking-sightlines safety hindrance.

I imagine the game-changer is the side friction effect slowing drivers down.

Even when it comes to daylighting intersections, street trees help because they act as bollards

You might’ve thought about other aspects of cities that were functionally destroyed by Urban Renewal through practices that were intended to save those places, like high-volume roads and parking lots to buoy downtown job/shopping districts. Greenwood was definitely “purposefully destroyed”, though.

Depends on how wide you take it…this part of Tulsa is showing Greenwood, the former “Black Wall Street” that was firebombed in the 1920s and rebuilt by its community rapidly thereafter.

Urban Renewal did to Greenwood (and similar neighborhoods nationwide) what the firebombing couldn’t.

Heads up - The photo is of current Governor Shapiro, but the caption says it’s former Governor Wolf.

It would be so easy to enforce curbside parking standards. Like…I grew up being told that I had to parallel park within 6 inches of the curb or I would *definitely* get a ticket. Why did that stop?

Threads is attached to FB/Insta, which are platforms mostly for communicating with people you know.

Twitter’s format, which Bluesky effectively reproduces, is mostly about connecting with people you don’t know.

Threads can’t do that while glued to IRL relationships.

*nominating*

He can’t appoint without Congress opting to recess and the senate doesn’t seem interested in doing that, thankfully.