My post expressing skepticism at the 26-story, 1,700 resident University Village proposal for Ann Arbor's South University corridor has gotten a decent number of hits from this thread in the UrbanPlanet.org forums. One pseudonymous commenter completely misses my point:

So the person's objections about this project has to do with the large number of housing units it will provide in a soft housing market? From what I know even in a housing market like this there is still high demand for units near college campuses. If the developers didn't believe they could fill these buildings they wouldn't propose something at such a scale.

First of all, my objection to the project is not particularly an objection, nor is it specific to this project. What I'm concerned about is the general trend of a large quantity of campus-oriented housing being built all at once - along with a large quantity of general housing being built downtown at the same time . . . all in the worst housing market in 25 years. This particular project is 50% bigger than Bursley, UMich's largest on-campus dorm, and this is on top of the 3 other student-oriented projects underway. Even setting aside the large number of rental units already sitting vacant around town.

In 2006, Ann Arbor loosened the zoning on the South University area, in the name of promoting some good, solid, mixed-use development. I'm fully in favor of this - South U's existing form, of strip malls at the sidewalk, has always seemed to me an underwhelming use of land, though I wasn't too happy about the first project that took advantage - the Zaragon Place replacement of the Anberay Apartments - what had been one of the best existing examples of compact urban housing in that area.

I apologize for the silence in this venue. My idle interneting time has been otherwise occupied lately with digesting various sources from the Bentley and elsewhere into Arborwiki pages on (mostly Ypsilanti) past local industries.

Check out the Arborwiki Industrial History Project for a fledgling entry point, or pages like Ferrier Machine Works (now the Ypsi food co-op), Louis Z. Foerster (prominent German-Canadian Ypsilanti brewer), or Federal Screw Works (vacant and likely doomed plant in Chelsea) as example pages.

*swoon*. (warning: local geekery.)

I've been pleased in the past that UMich's library has a scanned, publicly-accessible version of Charles Chapman's History of Washtenaw County, Michigan : together with sketches of its cities, villages and townships...and biographies of representative citizens. This is a 1,500 page book published in 1881 covering the area's history to that date - a pretty impressive length, when you consider that the white man's history of Washtenaw County, aside from a Jesuit or two, only extended as far back as 1823,

In one of the previous iterations of this blog - which Google can't seem to find - I laid out a 3 item wishlist for Ann Arbor area transit.

1. Arrange for free rides on all AATA routes for UMich students.
2. Transit service from some point in A2 to Metro Airport (my target price point: $10 one-way.)
3. Tragically, I can't remember. Sigh. But I think it was a regional express service linking A2, Ypsi, and Detroit?

At any rate, #1 was implemented about 4 years back (showing how long I've been at this). And now, #2 was announced the day before I left for Montana! For, yep, $10 one-way. Check the Michigan Flyer website for details, and ArborUpdate for discussion.

Ann Arbor's City Council has been accused in the past of holding secret deliberations, with decisions made the day before the meeting or in smoke-filled bars after the meetings. Well, now we've got proof - we know what goes on in these secret backroom discussions.

I've just received evidence from an anonymous source, smuggled out of Ann Arbor and across the Carpenter DMZ no doubt at great personal risk. The attached note gives the sense that the source was perhaps tortured to the point of madness in recovering this footage:

on this disk is what you need to post because you are the very good blogger and the world whole of it must see...for everyone who are read the blog of common monk flower so it is important you complete the mission as you are the choice out of many others like mark mayfred and arbor dates did not receive it, so you must do it the only one.

About 18 months back, Ann Arbor's Mayor Hieftje held a session of his public policy class entitled "Is Ann Arbor overrated?", with various blogger guest discussants. He commented that the cities of Michigan are lined up and running towards a cliff of fiscal crisis. Yes, all of them - Ann Arbor's more or less bringing up the rear, but it's running the same direction as all the rest. Some cities have already gone over - Flint, Highland Park, Hamtramck - and have survived the fall with various degrees of injury. Detroit's just a matter of time, and not much of it. But many people are hoping that Ypsilanti will serve as a bellwhether of Michigan's fiscal problems and a catalyst to change, as Ypsi is recognized across the state as being much more well-run than its predecessor's into crisis. When well-run cities start going over the brink, this theory states, people will finally realize that something's broken, and that it's not just Flint. I've since heard basically this same view echoed by a number of other regional and State leaders - when Ypsi goes, that's when our State can be expected to decide there might be a problem with our municipal structure. Thanks, guys. We love you too.

There have been two stories about food this week that have raised my ire.

First, at a community garden workshop held by Growing Hope, I learned that the local "Plant a Row for the Hungry" campaign raised 10,000 pounds of fresh produce from local gardeners. That's a lot of food! Now, the largest part of that actually comes from the State's Huron Valley Women's Correctional Facility, where gardeners donated their entire harvest, of over 7,000 pounds of produce. Why the entire harvest? Because the prison's contract with their food supplier wouldn't let them use the food grown on site in the prison's kitchens. Of course, the food wasn't wasted, because Food Gatherers was there to take it, but I had read this weekend that the State of Michigan spends 1/5 of its general fund on the correctional system - about as much as it spends on higher education. It is ridiculous that the State was so incapable of being flexible that it couldn't use the food onsite.

A few weeks ago, I was interviewed by Dan DuChene of the Ypsilanti Courier, who is apparently working on a story on the Ypsi blogoverse. I expect to merit about half a sentence as an also-ran, after the laundry list of much more worthy Ypsi luminaries. I am, after all, fairly new to the scene, and I could probably be considered "in retirement", relative to my ArborUpdate level.

At any rate, Dan asked some questions that got me to considering recent changes in Ypsi/Arbor blogland. This really ought to be a year-in-review sort of post, but it's not the end of the year, and I won't remember that long. So.

Over on Mark Maynard's page, a discussion of the proposed pedestrian malling of College Place seems to have veered into a critique of on-campus businesses, with the complaint that they don't pay property taxes. The larger issue that I see with housing bookstores and restaurants on-campus - and this holds true across most super-block campuses I've spent time on - is that providing these services on-site helps to emphasize the town/gown dividing line.