The Act of Praying is Simply Bizarre.

So it goes kind of like this. You close your eyes, sway your head around, and it seems like the more emotion you flesh out in your verbiage the more likely "god" will answer your appeal. But to me, it just looks like utter insanity. I haven't said a prayer once in the past four years, and yet my life maintains itself in the same way as it did when I prayed to "god" incessantly. Actually, I may argue that in fact it's gotten better. Instead of waiting on some invisible man in the sky to fix my problems, I realize that I am in control of my life, my actions and my destiny, and thus it is up to me to get shit done, not some invisible deity who feels like playing his interactive version of The Sims.

Anyway, all this to say, here is our American Government hard at work...praying. They've forgone actual debate and thrown their hands up to the heavens begging "Father God" to annihilate health care reform. Because, of course, Jesus wouldn't want the poor and disadvantaged to receive treatment and care for their illnesses. Nope, that's just not Christian.

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Inauguration Plans.

Barack Obama's Inauguration Address is going to be one of the largest events to ever hit Washington D.C.. They're expecting at least 4 Million people to arrive. And, since I have a car of my own and place to stay, you know I'm already planning my road trip!

The question arises: Can the city handle it? Can millions of people fit downtown?

Or, could there be another Meltdown of '76?

That year, a million spectators were expected on the Mall to celebrate the Bicentennial. Transit officials urged people to take public transportation and promised special service. But there was nothing special about the Fourth of July traffic jam, which stranded cars and buses for hours.

District and federal officials blamed a flawed and smaller mass transit system for the 1976 embarrassment. They expressed confidence that they can handle this January's events. At the same time, they know that Inauguration Day 2009 will be one of a kind.

Now, as a huge Logistics dork, I'm curious how this is going to pan out. Washington D.C. as it is has horrible traffic congestion. But with 4 million more people in the city? This is like nothing they have ever seen before. For the annual July 4th celebration about 1 Million people come out and it's usually chaos. But 4 million? Expect hell.

The End of Sprawl?

Atlanta has a sprawl problem. People just seem to love to move farther and farther away from the city. In fact, sprawl is so bad that Atlanta is renowned as having some of the worst highway traffic in the nation. (Father away=more driving).

However, according to author Christopher B. Leinberger, Atlanta is seeing a change in the suburban sprawl. He believes that walkable communities will continue to spring up and inevitably bring people back to the city.

We are witnessing the beginning of the end of sprawl. Like much of the rest of the country, the overproduction of automobile-driven suburban development at the fringe of the Atlanta metropolitan area has reached its limits. The combination of outrageous commutes, environmental degradation and the increasing number of consumers preferring a “walkable urban” way of life have combined to start the end of the geometric increase in land consumption of the past half century.

The subprime crisis and the energy price spike of the past 18 months have just accelerated an underlying market trend.

Evidence of this structural change comes from many sources:

> The city of Atlanta had been losing population since 1960 in spite of rapid metropolitan growth. That changed in the 1990s and has phenomenally accelerated this decade. The city is now among the top 10 fastest-growing cities in the country.

> The city of Atlanta’s share of office market demand had been falling for at least a half century; it stabilized a couple of years ago. If you follow trends from other metro areas that are ahead of Atlanta, the office market share and the employment that comes with it should start gaining on the suburbs during the next upturn.

> While the national housing depression has not affected metro Atlanta quite as badly as many other regions, it has followed national trends in one important respect: Homes in the center of the region and close to job centers have not suffered much, if any, price declines. Prices on the fringe are down twice the regional average, losing on average at least 14 percent of value. The highest-price housing on a per-square-foot basis is now in the city and close-in suburban job centers, a fundamental change from 20 years ago.

Metro Atlanta is following a national trend in creating and growing high-density, walkable urban places. The two-week party that was the Olympics in 1996 first showed you how exciting a temporary walkable urban place could be, and you set out to make it permanent over the subsequent decade.

But it definitely is not confined to downtown.

Midtown, Atlantic Station, Virginia-Highland, Buckhead, Vinings and Decatur have also emerged as walkable urban places. There will be many more.

The metro area that has the most walkable urban places, per capita, is the region surrounding Washington. It has 20 such urban communities today and 10 more are emerging; 20 years ago there were just two. Given that metro Atlanta has exactly the same population as metro Washington, if you follow the Washington model, you will be growing 15 to 25 more walkable urban places in the next decade. This represents tens of billions of dollars in investment over the next decade and will be home to thousands of jobs and housing.

Props to the shout out to my hometown, Washington D.C.! I can say that Washington D.C. is entirely walkable, and most my friends who live in the city live car-free. While I grew up just outside of the city and had a car, if I ever moved back I'd most likely forgo owning a car. It's just not worth the hassle considering the efficiency of The Metro.

I hope he's right for Atlanta. I've been three times, and I was never in love with it--too spread out, inefficient transit, terrible traffic congestion and the downtown area was lacking. However, if in the next 10-20 years it becomes anything like Washington, it'd be a city that I'd easily fall in love with.

Washington D.C. Does Well!

(Via Grapefeed)

The Skyline of Washington.

One of the many distinct features of Washington D.C. is its limit on the heights of buildings. The purpose of this 100-year old law is to keep the national monuments from being shrouded by skyscrapers and towering residential buildings. However, it has grown to be a particular outstanding aspect of the city, and thus Washington is analogous to many European cities, a rarity among so many of our American cities.

As Washington has grown, planners are running out of area and currently the law hangs in the balance.

As vacant land disappears in Washington, concerns about high real-estate prices are fueling debate over whether developers should be allowed to build taller, which is prevented under a century-old law.

Land scarcity and attempts to curb suburban sprawl have spawned talk of bringing office towers to a city long known for its picturesque views, sunlit streets and compact buildings. Within 15 years, according to one analysis, no more space will be available in a 3.5-mile stretch from Georgetown to Capitol Hill.

Christopher Leinberger, a land-use strategist and visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution think tank, warns that unless more room is found, the artificial cap on space will inflate already soaring downtown real-estate prices, which rank second behind Manhattan.

Contrary to popular lore, the low-lying skyline has nothing to do with preserving the prominence of the Washington Monument's 555-foot stone obelisk.

Congress — which has oversight over the capital — passed the Height Act of 1910 in response to residents' outrage over the 14-story Cairo apartment building erected in 1894 near Dupont Circle, towering over nearby row houses. Besides concerns about aesthetics, there was a desire to prevent buildings from becoming too tall for fire-engine ladders.

The law limits building heights to the width of the adjacent street plus 20 feet. There have been several exceptions to allow for construction of the National Cathedral and Georgetown University Hospital. Otherwise, the law has capped most buildings at 130 feet, though heights of 160 feet are permitted on certain areas of Pennsylvania Avenue.

For many influential Washington planners, the idea of altering the city's skyline borders on blasphemy.

I'm with the planners. Washington just booms prestige. Sure, their education system sucks and it once was dubbed "murder capital of the world". But, still, the city is a pearl among planning, especially considering travesties such as Tyson's Corner. To remove its iconic character to reduce the price of housing seems like an unequal sacrifice of costs/benefits. Plus, it's not like there isn't plenty of room in the surrounding area.