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Rik Adamski @rikadamski.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

Yep. The idea that “affordable housing” is a different type of housing is silly - especially if by “affordable” we mean subsidized.

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Rik Adamski @rikadamski.bsky.social · 12/09/2026

There are definitely other timelines where everything got much, much worse than they did long before 2026. Those were scary times.

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Reposted by Rik Adamski

Jake Berman @lostsubways.com · 06/09/2026

As I wrote in my own book, CEQA is used mostly as a weapon against environmentally friendly things like new transit, housing and bike lanes. Most CEQA litigation is meant to drive up the cost of construction, in the hope that legal delays will make things too expensive to build. It often works.

The centerpiece of the post– Freeway Revolt re-
forms was a state law called the California Envi-
ronmental Quality Act (CEQA, pronounced seek-
wha). Signed by future president Ronald Reagan in
1970, CEQA requires state and local governments
to study and mitigate potential environmental im-
pacts of government decisions. In theory, CEQA
is a look- before- you- leap law. In practice, it allows
anybody with enough free time to bring billion-
dollar public works projects and multimillion-
dollar apartment buildings to a halt, by claiming
that the government hasn’t studied a particular
issue enough. Anyone can bring a CEQA law-
suit and there are no consequences for bringing
frivolous CEQA suits. Unsurprisingly, abuse of
the process is rife. In 2020, nearly half of all new
housing in the state of California was the target of
CEQA litigation. As my old professor Troy McK-
enzie used to say, “procedure is the last refuge of
the scoundrel.”

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Rik Adamski @rikadamski.bsky.social · 30/08/2026

The risks of overspecialization. The issue is not they considered that it would increase costs, but made a case that it was worth the tradeoffs. It’s that they ignored costs, as if those are a non-factor during an urgent and growing housing crisis.

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California YIMBY @cayimby.bsky.social · 23/08/2026

California's ADU boom—101,458 built since 2018—is training small builders who could scale up to meet the demand for missing middle housing. Luca Gattoni-Celli calls this a path for mom-and-pop entrepreneurs to enter multifamily development. lucagattonicelli.substack.com/p/california...

lucagattonicelli.substack.com

California's ADU Boom is Good News for Small Multifamily Housing

Missing middle housing as a platform for opportunity abundance

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Rik Adamski @rikadamski.bsky.social · 13/08/2026

College students are not, in fact, children. Despite the fact that universities increasingly treat them as such.

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ira @ira.bsky.social · 08/08/2026

My view, which this basically comports with, is that most Americans prefer suburban life, but they’re oversupplied with that, and the significant minority of us who prefer urban life are drastically undersupplied, and that’s why housing in cities is expensive.

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Jeffrey Tumlin 🏳️‍🌈 🌁 @jeffreytumlin.bsky.social · 02/08/2026

The rich are not goldfish. They do not grow nor multiply if you give them a bigger bowl. They just have first dibs. If you're not promoting housing at all levels, the richer just take space from those a rung lower

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Rik Adamski @rikadamski.bsky.social · 28/07/2026

And most of the world doesn’t live in desert cities that were built and retrofitted for the automobile, at a time and place of enormous prosperity. They literally cannot function without extensive alternatives to cars.

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Rik Adamski @rikadamski.bsky.social · 28/07/2026

I didn’t think any corporation could top using Janis Joplin’s “Mercedes Benz” in a Mercedes-Benz commercial, but here we are. Does literally nobody actually listen to the lyrics? Or do they not care? techcrunch.com/2026/07/23/m...

techcrunch.com

Meta launched a new AI optimism ad set to a song about human extinction | TechCrunch

David Bowie's song "Five Years," which Meta used in a supposedly inspiring advertisement, is about humans learning that they have five years left to live before the apocalypse.

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Rik Adamski @rikadamski.bsky.social · 25/07/2026

The thing we keep forgetting about tax revenue is that we need it to pay the bills.

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Rik Adamski @rikadamski.bsky.social · 19/07/2026

All of these conversations are talking past each other, in the form of “Isn’t it ridiculous that we’ve planned everything so a car is mandatory?” “But I can’t live without a car, it’s mandatory for me” “Yes, but it shouldn’t be” “You don’t understand, I couldn’t live without my car.”

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Rik Adamski @rikadamski.bsky.social · 13/07/2026

What do you mean you can’t afford a house? What are you, a latte addict?

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Rik Adamski @rikadamski.bsky.social · 08/07/2026

To be fair, we’re not talking about an Ivy League University here or anything.

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Rik Adamski @rikadamski.bsky.social · 08/07/2026

In. Physics. Classes. At. Berkeley.

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Rik Adamski @rikadamski.bsky.social · 22/06/2026

Wait til he finds out about the Big Ten.

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Rik Adamski @rikadamski.bsky.social · 18/06/2026

Using a car as a deadly weapon is the same thing as using a firearm as a deadly weapon.

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Rik Adamski @rikadamski.bsky.social · 01/06/2026

That’s seriously how I spent my discretionary money in Chicago, before I had to drive.

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Rik Adamski @rikadamski.bsky.social · 29/05/2026

Or more broadly, design so that people who tend to me more vulnerable in public space feel safe and comfortable.

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Rik Adamski @rikadamski.bsky.social · 22/05/2026

Nearly 40% of people with disabilities do not drive. In many cases, planning for automobile dependency—i.e. reinforcing a system in which driving is the only viable option—disproportionately harms this people.

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Rik Adamski @rikadamski.bsky.social · 22/05/2026

There are very few places in this country where a car is a luxury.

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Rik Adamski @rikadamski.bsky.social · 12/05/2026

But if they spend $33,000 to put bike lanes on their Main Street there would be 3 months of public debate.

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Rik Adamski @rikadamski.bsky.social · 09/05/2026

Like when Los Angeles realized that ED 1 (fast tracking affordable housing projects) was actually working, and of course quickly killed it.

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Rik Adamski @rikadamski.bsky.social · 28/04/2026

Any B+ level *generalist* city planner would have brought this up in the first 10 minutes. Or a C- professional who works on these types of projects for a living.

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Rik Adamski @rikadamski.bsky.social · 26/04/2026

Had we been planning for them for the last 15 years, working through logistics, thinking through unintended consequences, creating relevant regulations, reinforcing non-car alternatives, etc., maybe they could have been leveraged to decenter auto-centrism. As it is, I don’t see it.

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Rik Adamski @rikadamski.bsky.social · 23/04/2026

Expecting me not to rob a bank is too high a bar, because I’m accustomed to a certain lifestyle.

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Rik Adamski @rikadamski.bsky.social · 19/04/2026

Imagine the headline: Woman arrested after bullets fired into passersby in Central London

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Rik Adamski @rikadamski.bsky.social · 03/04/2026

Why do we still have The Onion?

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Rik Adamski @rikadamski.bsky.social · 24/03/2026

Just like the Cubs’ ongoing efforts to prevent rooftop viewers. Killing the goose who lays the golden eggs.

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Rik Adamski @rikadamski.bsky.social · 03/02/2026

Honestly, we’re doing an extremely poor job of that nowadays.

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Ryan Packer @typewriteralley.bsky.social · 30/01/2026

We DO deserve libraries. Palaces for the people.

The Park Branch of the San Francisco public library

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Reposted by Rik Adamski

Alon (they/them) @alonlevy.bsky.social · 30/12/2025

Prompt: the year is 2050. What viral post tells Generation Beta about how great the year 2025 was and how things were stolen from them?

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Rik Adamski @rikadamski.bsky.social · 22/12/2025

So like Tuskegee, only in Africa.

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Rik Adamski @rikadamski.bsky.social · 12/12/2025

What if you had a single payer for healthcare? Has anyone thought of that?

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Rik Adamski @rikadamski.bsky.social · 05/12/2025

Or living in one of the tiny oases of walkability in DFW and wanting to compromise it to create more parking. Why not just move…a mile away? Or 5 miles? 10 miles? 20 miles? Have you seen this region?

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Rik Adamski @rikadamski.bsky.social · 05/12/2025

West Virginia has low rates of homelessness. Why? They have high rates of addiction, but also low housing costs. Someone on the margins can at least find a room or a couch to crash on. Someone on the margins in Boston or the Bay Area? Not so much.

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Rik Adamski @rikadamski.bsky.social · 25/11/2025

Worth adding: Billie Eilish actively works to cut driving at her shows through transit coordination and mode-shift messaging. This bottleneck happened anyway, at the infancy of AV technology. We should’ve spent 15 years planning for this. Instead, we’re about to slam headfirst into reality.

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Rik Adamski @rikadamski.bsky.social · 25/11/2025

The fact that our cities haven’t been working through the logistics of self-driving cars for many years is inexcusable. As is the fact that the planning profession has almost completely ignored the issue (I’ll admit that I’m mostly guilty of that myself).

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Rik Adamski @rikadamski.bsky.social · 24/11/2025

This is actually a brilliant idea that someone should figure out how to implement

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Rik Adamski @rikadamski.bsky.social · 23/11/2025

Well put. Even “ask for a transportation study before making recommendations” would show more confidence than this. If professional planners don’t have expertise and judgement that we’re willing to stand behind, why should we even exist?

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Rik Adamski @rikadamski.bsky.social · 19/11/2025

Cycling infrastructure is *so much* like this.

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