Every place is a little different. Finding and celebrating those differences is such a treat. For that reason, Scouting NY was one of my favorite resources when it was active. I still love to check it before taking a group out in the City.
The newest entry that field is Howard Veregin's Oddsconsin, which is a blog about the interesting spots across the landscapes of Wisconsin. It will be exciting to see what they have in store.
Prepping for a lecture that includes a few minutes on Phil Lewis and found this nice memorial note from a few years back as well as an older appearance he made in the NY Times. Incredible contributions.
"The village bought hundreds of pieces of property, holding out the possibility of enforcing eminent domain. It worked out deals with Racine County, the water authority and the power company to bring services to the site. The state legislature agreed to bypass some permitting processes, letting Foxconn fill wetlands without getting an environmental-impact statement. The state received a $160 million federal grant to help expand Interstate 94 a decade ahead of schedule."One of the other issues is where the water for the project will come from. Urban Milwaukee asks whether the plant merits permission for a water diversion, as it straddles the line between the Mississippi and Great Lakes Basins.
"The secrecy and vagueness are frustrating to critics. How do you prove that Foxconn won’t build an enormous LCD factory during an industry glut or create a research campus larger than MIT in rural Wisconsin other than by pointing out that experts — and even, occasionally, Foxconn executives — say it makes no sense?"But to really understand the sales pitch, you have to see the designs that were proposed for the Wisconn Valley properties. Racine County has shared this video which captures the vision. And it raises the frequent concerns about the difference between the sci-fi representations and buildable realities.
“It’s an all-out war on urbanism,” says John Norquist, who spent 16 years fighting freeways as Milwaukee’s mayor and then a decade running the Congress for the New Urbanism. “Cities are seen as obstacles to getting cars and trucks to move faster. Transit is seen as the ultimate expression of Marxism. And you know, road builders give a lot of money to politicians.”
