Today I look at the proposed structures and other features proposed for Symphony Woods as part of the Inner Arbor plan presented at the pre-submission meeting last Tuesday. For more background see part 1 and part 2 of this series. For a good summary of the proposed features see Andrew Metcalf’s story “Breaking Down the Plan to Develop Symphony Woods” at the Columbia Patch. My goal in this and subsequent posts is to critique each feature, measuring it against the following questions: ...

After reviewing concerns expressed about the Inner Arbor plan, it’s now time to take a closer look at the proposed design. Andrew Metcalf has done a great breakdown of the proposed design for Columbia Patch. I’ll try not to duplicate his work, but rather provide some color commentary to complement his play-by-play. First, I think it’s important to properly set expectations. Many people, including Ken Ulman in his recent comments, have been comparing the Inner Arbor plan to iconic parks like Millenium Park in Chicago (part of Grant Park and home to Anish Kapoor’s famous Cloud Gate sculpture), New York’s Central Park, and Tivoli Gardens in Copenhagen. ...

Last Tuesday night the Inner Arbor Trust revealed a clearer picture of what’s they’re proposing for downtown Columbia. I attended the pre-submission meeting, including the Q&A afterward. See Luke Lavoie’s before and after articles in the Baltimore Sun and a similar article in the Washington Post for straightforward overviews of the design proposal and reactions to it; read on for my more opinionated take. ...

This is part 2a of a (hopefully) four-part series; see also part 1, part 3, and part 4. This part grew so long I’m spreading it across two posts, with the second post to follow when I finish writing it. This post continues my thoughts on the concept of “market democracy” as described in John Tomasi’s book Free Market Fairness. In this post and the next I explore the second core idea of market democracy, that of society as a “spontaneous order”:1 ...

In my previous post I discussed the very high median household income in Howard County in 2012, and noted that median household income is only part of the story: It shows how a “middle income” household is doing, but doesn’t say anything about how income is distributed among the various households. How do we measure the relative distribution of income across households, and what does this measure say about Howard County? ...

When I started blogging about Howard County issues just over five years ago it was in response to a post by Dennis Lane quoting Alan Klein on the “wealthy few” in Howard County. I followed that up with a two-part series on income inequality in Howard County (part 1, part 2), using US Census data. It’s therefore appropriate that I post today on the latest Census data on Howard County income figures for 2012, which were released last Thursday. ...

Continuing my intermittent series of recommendation posts, today we’ll put aside more intellectual topics and focus on entertainment, albeit with a bit of a serious side. A few weeks ago I had the pleasure of taking a young fan to Otakon at the Baltimore Convention Center. Like Comic-Con in San Diego, Otakon features lots of people dressing up in unusual costumes (the technical term is “cosplay”); however unlike Comic-Con, which at this point is dominated by the promotion of high-profile Hollywood blockbusters, Otakon and its sister conventions (including CHS Otaku Fest, right here at Centennial High School in Ellicott City) focus on the less well-known parallel world of anime (Japanese animated movies and TV series) and manga (Japanese comics).1 ...

This week brings another in my series on people whose blogs and other writings are worth reading. (The first post was on the libertarian economist Arnold Kling.) I try to highlight people who aren’t household names but have something worth saying, enough so that I keep track of what they’re up to ib regular. This week’s person, the Russian ecologist turned American historian Peter Turchin, was name-checked in a Paul Krugman column recently, and he’s attracting more attention. However there’s still time to get in on the ground floor (as it were) by following his blogging at the Social Evolution Forum (a group blog, but Turchin does most of the posts). ...

I subscribe to almost two hundred blogs, covering a wide range of topics. I thought it would be fun to highlight some of the more interesting ones, in case anyone else finds any of them interesting and also to provide some insight into the particular things I tend to blog about. First up is Arnold Kling and his “Askblog,” the tagline of which is “taking the most charitable view of those who disagree.”1 ...

To get back in the blogging habit, a quick note on what’s going on food-wise in my part of Howard County, namely Route 40 in Ellicott City and the historic downtown: The exit: Cooks N’ Cakes closed its shop next to Starbucks on Route 40 just over a month ago. The web site has an “open letter” noting that the owner “has been presented with some opportunities she feels she can NOT pass up.” (The web site also still lists hours as if the shop is open, which I think is odd.) Their Facebook page goes on to note that they’re “talking with a local yogurt shop interested in carrying Cooks N Cakes cupcakes.” I didn’t go that often (eating cupcakes is not something I should make a daily or even weekly habit), but it was nice to have a shop nearby (even if I agreed with many reviewers that their cupcake batter was a tad dry). I’ll have to try one of the other cupcake shops in Howard County. ...