iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Matt Edens @scruffycities.bsky.social · 10/10/2026

The seminal moment in the group's formation was a developer replacing a row of cinderblock garages on the alley behind the founder's house with the dreaded "luxury condos."

120 0

Matt Edens @scruffycities.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

Up here in Frederick, we hate downtown hotels and the cranes that build them:

Commenter says the crane "looks like a death ray pointed into town."

020 0

Matt Edens @scruffycities.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

Well, that'll certainly make it easier to cross...

011 0

Matt Edens @scruffycities.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

And he "won" the Seven Days at the cost of twice McClellan's losses in killed and wounded:

020 0

Matt Edens @scruffycities.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

And Lee "won" the Seven Days at the cost of twice McClellan's losses in killed and wounded:

020 0

Matt Edens @scruffycities.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

The southern Pyrrhus - his "greatest victory" resulted in roughly the same number of killed and wounded as his opponent's army - which was twice his size:

220 0

Matt Edens @scruffycities.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

Wonder how many data center opponents would be fine with "dense housing" in their back yard?

McMansions and data centers in Loudon County, Va.

010 0

Matt Edens @scruffycities.bsky.social · 05/09/2026

Nice, simple detailing, good fenestration.

000 0

Matt Edens @scruffycities.bsky.social · 05/09/2026

Can architects and design review boards please recognize that clean-lined, well-proportioned boxes are better than a box pretending to be a bunch of smaller boxes.

100 0

Matt Edens @scruffycities.bsky.social · 02/09/2026

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%A9...

020 0

Matt Edens @scruffycities.bsky.social · 31/08/2026

I'm sorry, but that last part is just bullshit. Loudon County, VA (home to the highest single concentration of data centers in the country) is literally the wealthiest county in the entire United States. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of...

100 0

Matt Edens @scruffycities.bsky.social · 24/08/2026

Time to embrace cutting edge technologies like...operable shutters.

051 0

Matt Edens @scruffycities.bsky.social · 24/08/2026

Back before he lost his mind, Kunstler had a good observation on the city/country dynamic:

110 0

Matt Edens @scruffycities.bsky.social · 23/08/2026

bethosbornesga.substack.com/p/yes-in-my-...

010 0

Matt Edens @scruffycities.bsky.social · 23/08/2026

Christian Nationalist discovers walkable urbanism:

020 0

Matt Edens @scruffycities.bsky.social · 19/08/2026

An yet, most of the data centers are in cul-de-sac country. Horse Country's mostly west of Leesburg these days (or down in Fauquier County).

130 0

Matt Edens @scruffycities.bsky.social · 19/08/2026

Yeah, and the activists - kind of like Jeremiah Moss in Vanishing New York - are chasing an "authentic" past that's large part fantasy.

What counts as a heyday and for whom is never quite clear, but Moss’s idea of what is “disappearing” in New York is derived from what he cheerfully admits is nostalgia. “My city,” he writes, “is the city of dark moods, scrap yards, and jazz. Of poets, painters, and anarchists. Of dirty bookstores, dirty movies, and dirty streets. It’s also a working-class city peopled by men and women who love with a tough love, in thick accents and no time for bullshit. Of Gershwin’s ‘Rhapsody in Blue’ trumpeting over black-and-white Manhattan, and Travis Bickle’s taxi roving through the steamy rain, that grimy yellow splash. It’s the city of Edward Hopper’s melancholy rooms and Frank O’Hara’s ‘I do this, I do that.’”

1221 0

Matt Edens @scruffycities.bsky.social · 19/08/2026

These hyper-scaled developments consume massive amounts of energy and water while destroying farmland. Oh, and there's a data center, too.

010 0

Matt Edens @scruffycities.bsky.social · 17/08/2026

If Yogi Berra lived in Frederick:

010 0

Matt Edens @scruffycities.bsky.social · 14/08/2026

The NIMBY/"Natural Immunity" crossover:

000 0

Matt Edens @scruffycities.bsky.social · 08/08/2026

From her description of the massive retaining walls that would be required I was expecting it to be, I dunno...hilly?

120 0

Matt Edens @scruffycities.bsky.social · 25/07/2026

And the people living in the bottom half of the picture are very concerned about data centers destroying farmland...

000 0

Matt Edens @scruffycities.bsky.social · 23/07/2026

Still wish Sam Neill'd gotten a turn, though:

1220 0

Matt Edens @scruffycities.bsky.social · 13/07/2026

Chuck Marohn wrote a piece decrying slopulism without even realizing it: www.strongtowns.org/journal/2026...

000 0

Matt Edens @scruffycities.bsky.social · 02/07/2026

One of the more fascinating things about a place like downtown Frederick is that the more you dig into the history of our "timeless" historic district, the more you realize it experienced an intense amount of evolution and change from 1880-1930 - and earlier.

111 0

Matt Edens @scruffycities.bsky.social · 29/06/2026

Although looking at "The Villages of Urbana" just over the county line, I sometimes wonder what role MoCo development policies like the ag preserve played in pushing development further out into Frederick County:

110 0

Matt Edens @scruffycities.bsky.social · 27/06/2026

Since it's the poor replacing the poor, tenant churn in low-income neighborhoods is largely invisible to outside observers. At least until the landlord finishes liquidating the fixed asset by extracting rent and deferring maintenance...and then walks away.