The Three Whisky Happy Hour: Zoned Out on Protests?

For those of us who watched "South Park" - Gore will always be tied to "Man Bear Pig" and "Super Cereal".

Al Gore is Super Cereal about ManBearPig - SOUTH PARK

I found interesting Mr. Hayward's experience with "artificial intelligence" generated interaction between Mr. Yoo and Alexander Hamilton that apparently incorporated a substantial influence from the musical "Hamilton" instead of actual historical content.

Perhaps some confirmation bias on my skepticism about "artificial intelligence," especially in educational settings.

I have seen plenty of mistakes and hallucinations in "AI" generated content. Much depends on the source material used to train the AI model.

Mr. Hayward's experience illustrates that popular cultural material that finds its way into educational material can significantly impact what students "learn" about history.

Whenever I've heard discussions of zoning in the United States, there's comparisons between how different parts of the U.S. do it. Houston was brought up, and Houston is a success story that other parts of the country should emulate but don't. Steve made mention that minorities move to Houston because of the lack of zoning, while not going into any depth as to why. Houston doesn't have the same ethnic neighborhoods that you see in other big cities. There is no equivalent to Watts or Harlem in Houston, or even a Hispanic barrio, despite there being a larger Hispanic presence in Texas. Zoning seems to encourage that sort of thing, and Robert Moses, a famous urban planner in New York City has been accused of using zoning and eminent domain against black people during his time in power.

HOA’s seem to be based on property covenants. Once a property owner consents to a covenant, it seems to last forever, even when the property is sold to someone else. Covenants used to include restrictions on who you could sell your property to, and that included racial minorities. Those covenant restrictions were declared illegal by federal civil rights legislation or court rulings, but covenant restrictions not based on racial discrimination still exist. My problem is that once an HOA gets established, it's the forever aspect of covenants that bothers me. Covenants are a useful tool for neighbors to get along, and restrict that odd person who would manage his residential property badly to the detriment of the neighborhood. But I think that covenants should last no more than 50-100 years. After that time, neighborhood HOA's would need to renegotiate another covenant. It would be a mitigation on the petty tyranny that many HOA's indulge in.

But I'd like to focus a little on Japan, especially Tokyo, and how they do zoning. If you go to Tokyo, you find that it's a progressive's dream from a public transportation perspective, as well as a 15 minute neighborhood perspective that’s been proposed for Oxford, England (they want to encourage walking by fining anyone who drives their car to another neighborhood to, perhaps go to the store; I'm sure there's more to it but that's the gist). While there are major arteries for automobile traffic, once you get off of those, you have narrow streets with low speed limits. It's a very pedestrian friendly town, not only at the expense of automobiles, but even bicycles. The pedestrian is king in Tokyo.

Yet, the Japanese have a very light touch when it comes to zoning. Nationwide, there is one zoning framework all prefectures follow, with 12 zoning gradations. And if a business is located in a particular land use zone the people affected could move to a less restrictive zone, and still be able to use their property the way they did in the more restrictive zone. That makes the zoning regulations simple to understand. And they emphasize mixed use. Walking around Tokyo, you can go through a run of, usually small restaurants, but then find yourself in a quiet residential neighborhood with a small park nearby. Typically a resident can get all his shopping needs done within a 15 minute walk.

I don't think an American or Western European city could ever replicate what Japan has done, not only with Tokyo but other larger cities like Osaka. And while I've grown to love Japan, even though I've visited only once (that will change soon), I'm American through and through, and I seriously doubt that I'd thrive in a rules based society that Japan is.

Nevertheless, American urban planners should take a very close look at Tokyo and see what they can emulate, especially since the Japanese do what they do without onerous zoning regulations.

On zoning, I was struck by a case in the place in which I lived from 2000 until 2018.

Late in my time living there, a person who owned a large tract of land adjacent a bay was told (by the state) that he could not develop most of his property because a pair of bald eagles were found to have set up a nest on a part of the property.

I could understand the state's desire to protect a nesting area for bald eagles.

But since that desire to protect nesting areas for bald eagles was for the benefit of the people of the state as a whole, it seemed reasonable that the state (its taxpayers) should pay the landowner to implement that desire. The person who happened to own the land at the time the eagles decided to set up nesting household should not have to bear the entire cost of the state's desire to protect nesting bald eagles.

I understand in Innsmouth they use Non-Euclidian zoning. And the HOA agreements will drive an ordinary mortal mad.

Also,

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