Before we go too far down this road discussing why high speed rail hasn’t been implemented yet, let’s not call it dead or flawed please. See for instance How Flaws Undid Obama’s Hope for High-Speed Rail in Florida and this quote from Rep. John Mica, Republican Congressman from Florida: “With Ohio, Wisconsin and Florida rejecting funds, and the California project also looking troubled, I don’t think the Administration’s so-called high-speed and expanded passenger rail program could have had a worse launch.”
Let’s recap our new governors in each of these states:

• Ohio: Tea Party Republican John Kasich
• Wisconsin: Tea Party Republican Scott Walker
• Florida: Republican Rick Scott

Let’s recap our current political situation: Republicans don’t want to give Democrats – and President Obama – any positive victory.
I find it asinine that the three places Rep. Mica uses to illustrate the supposed failure of high speed rail, the plans were scrapped due to pure politics. All three projects were fully funded by the Federal government but the new governors needed to prove their worth to both the Tea Party and to deny the President a victory.
So it would behoove us to not forget the context, before we talk about failure.

Here’s a snippet from Warren Buffet 2010 shareholder letter discussing their manufactured housing subsidiary:

Home-financing policies of our government, expressed through the loans found acceptable by FHA, Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, favor site-built homes and work to negate the price advantage that manufactured homes offer.
We finance more manufactured-home buyers than any other company. Our experience, therefore, should be instructive to those parties preparing to overhaul our country’s home-loan practices. Let’s take a look.
Clayton owns 200,804 mortgages that it originated. (It also has some mortgage portfolios that it purchased.) At the origination of these contracts, the average FICO score of our borrowers was 648, and 47% were 640 or below. Your banker will tell you that people with such scores are generally regarded as questionable credits.
Nevertheless, our portfolio has performed well during conditions of stress. Here’s our loss experience during the last five years for originated loans:
Net Losses as a Percentage
of Average Loans
2006 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.53%
2007 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.27%
2008 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.17%
2009 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.86%
2010 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.72%
Our borrowers get in trouble when they lose their jobs, have health problems, get divorced, etc. The recession has hit them hard. But they want to stay in their homes, and generally they borrowed sensible amounts in relation to their income. In addition, we were keeping the originated mortgages for our own account, which means we were not securitizing or otherwise reselling them. If we were stupid in our lending, we were going to pay the price. That concentrates the mind.
If home buyers throughout the country had behaved like our buyers, America would not have had the crisis that it did. Our approach was simply to get a meaningful down-payment and gear fixed monthly payments to a sensible percentage of income. This policy kept Clayton solvent and also kept buyers in their homes.
Home ownership makes sense for most Americans, particularly at today’s lower prices and bargain interest rates. All things considered, the third best investment I ever made was the purchase of my home, though I would have made far more money had I instead rented and used the purchase money to buy stocks. (The two best investments were wedding rings.) For the $31,500 I paid for our house, my family and I gained 52 years of terrific memories with more to come.
But a house can be a nightmare if the buyer’s eyes are bigger than his wallet and if a lender – often protected by a government guarantee – facilitates his fantasy. Our country’s social goal should not be to put families into the house of their dreams, but rather to put them into a house they can afford.

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1111 Lincoln Road, originally uploaded by h ssan

A Miami Beach Event Space. Parking Space, Too:

Parking garages, the grim afterthought of American design, call to mind many words. (Rats. Beer cans. Unidentifiable smells.) Breathtaking is not usually among them.
Yet here in Miami Beach, whose aesthetic is equal parts bulging biceps and fluorescent pink, bridal couples, bar mitzvah boys and charity-event hosts are flocking to what seems like the unimaginable marriage of high-end architecture and car storage: a $65 million parking garage in the center of the city.

Blue building from the Rivington Hotel, originally uploaded by chelseafb
Both:

• hold the street wall
• have towers on a base
• rely on context in order to be recognized as special

Are they really different?
Discuss.

If I said I believe that urbanity should follow the following precepts, what would you say:

• Neighborhoods should be diverse in use and population
• Communities should be designed for the pedestrian and transit as well as the car
• Cities and towns should be shaped by physically defined and universally accessible public spaces and community institutions
• Urban places should be framed by architecture and landscape design that celebrate local history, climate, ecology, and building practice.

Now, what if I told you these precepts were the foundation of New Urbanism?
Yeah, I don’t know what to think of that either.