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Payton Chung

@westnorth.com
3K followers 1.5K following 1.8K posts

Card-carrying urbanist since 1998; housing developer, author, museum docent, board member, #climate voter. Opine solely for myself. Ex-CHI, BOS, RDU 🚄🚋🚴‍♂️🌇🏗️🏳️‍🌈 Words @ggwash.org @citybuilder.bsky.social

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Payton Chung @westnorth.com · 26/09/2026
Spotted a "NATIVE" license plate on a Benz, behind a cover obscuring the plate from law enforcement. 1. Anyone who cares about where they live should welcome the consequences of your actions. 2. Plus my usual complaints about people who think their birthplace gives them mystical seniority rights
black Mercedes C-class sedan with license plate NATIVE, behind smoked frame
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Payton Chung @westnorth.com · 25/09/2026
My bit is celebrating Metro line extensions with pub crawls, and doing up old-timey flyers for them.
First ever pub crawl through Tysons attempted by TRAIN.
2014. July 26th. 2014.
Attention urban elitists, railfans, others!
GREAT EVENT.
GRAND OPENING.
The long awaited RAIL-ROAD linking the NATION'S CAPITAL to the Province of FAIRFAX to its West has at long last been completed!
The "SILVER ROUTE" will see passenger trains leave LARGO through WASHINGTON to RESTON.
To celebrate this Most Momentous Occasion, a PUB CRAWL shall call upon the Most Esteemed Saloons located along the new "SILVER ROUTE."
Gathering within the Prosperous Village of EAST FALLS CHURCH at 4 P.M. at Chasin' Tails, 2200 Westmoreland St., overflowing next door into One More Page Books. Then, in a scant 12 Minutes, avoiding the Dangers of the Road, arriving at 6 P.M. at Clyde's, 8332 Leesburg Pike, near GREENSBORO. After a Short Stroll through the "Walkable, Sustainable, Urban Center" of Fairfax, the Crawl will conclude at 8 P.M. at Wasabi Sushi, at the heart of the dazzling TYSONS CORNER Center.
Come One, Come All!First ever silver line pub roll attempted by TRAIN.
Saturday, December 3, 2023.
Attention urban elitists, rail-fans, others!
The long awaited “Silver Route” RAIL-ROAD linking the NATION’S CAPITAL to the 
Mountainous Province of LOUDOUN in the Distant West has at long last been completed! 
[Line drawing of 1800s crowd celebrating departure of steam train]
Go WEST for SILVER!
——————————————————————————
To celebrate this Most Momentous Occasion, a PUB roll mounted upon “velocipede” steeds shall commence upon the new “SILVER ROUTE” to the Most Esteemed Saloons along the “Old Dominion route”
——————————————————————————
Gathering at 10 A.M. for a Bike Corral at Metro Center before Embarking on the New Rail-Road. Arriving at 11:15 A.M. at the esteemed Old Ox Brewery for a Taste of the West. Thence arriving at 1 P.M. at a Longtime Friend of the Saddle-Weary, Green Lizard Cycling in Olde Towne Herndon. Third, visiting the Bike Lane Brewing Watering Hole at 3 P.M. Concluding with a stop at Caboose Tavern at 4:30 P.M.
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Payton Chung @westnorth.com · 21/09/2026
This is actually one of the state DOT's ideas to "improve" this very intersection, in a drawing dated 12/2025 www.ncdot.gov/projects/i-4...
map of proposed highway intersection where two lanes exit to the right and then fly over the intersection on a bridge to make a U-turn
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Payton Chung @westnorth.com · 21/09/2026
oh my, they have new and even wilder ideas since I last made this joke. what is even happening here???
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Payton Chung @westnorth.com · 21/09/2026
NCDOT: we heard your concerns about Glenwood Ave loud and clear, and we're prepared to offer you a thrilling new tangle of zig-zag off-ramps, oh but wait because we somehow ran out of money because we spent it all on off-ramps somewhere else www.ncdot.gov/projects/i-4...
map of tangled roads
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Payton Chung @westnorth.com · 18/09/2026
Sunset view from Harp patio #mbtpubroll
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Payton Chung @westnorth.com · 17/09/2026
Whew, it's sticky and drizzly out. Inside lower bar has two Festbier choices
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Payton Chung @westnorth.com · 11/09/2026
Amused that I spent so long reprogramming my IG algorithm to show me cute animals (rather than half-naked men) to avoid unrealistic body images... only for the thirst-trap guys to show up on my *LinkedIn* feed instead.
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Payton Chung @westnorth.com · 27/08/2026
Noticed lots of new construction ongoing in Philly this weekend; they are now permitting more units than DC, despite lower prices. Big apt towers don't pencil in either city. Rowhouses still pencil in both, but only Philly zones abundantly for them. fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=1XWmF
four rowhouses being framed in Philadelphia, with two more with completed exteriors
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Payton Chung @westnorth.com · 03/08/2026
This 1899 political cartoon is an example of how urban Americans (in this case, New Yorkers) viewed the transit companies at the time.
George B. Luks, "The Menace of the hour," illustration in "The Verdict" of 30 Jan 1899
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Payton Chung @westnorth.com · 26/07/2026
Different shot, different day. Also, hello to Chicago's magic road! @ericallixrogers.com
View down rail platform with some high rises
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Payton Chung @westnorth.com · 24/07/2026
I'd noticed that Canadian cities have a lot of slabby apartment blocks, but still surprised that Canada built more multifamily than single-family from 1963-1973 www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/11-63...
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Payton Chung @westnorth.com · 22/07/2026
Even the worst-transit-served block in DC has better transit and lower VMT than this corner of Loudoun County. Following the logic of TOD, DC should allow this RF-1-style density everywhere. Yet it doesn't - because it's applying TOD logic to exclude, not include.
Live/work townhouses and multifamily housing in Lansdowne, Loudoun County, which has an AllTransit score of 5.3. Image by the author.
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Payton Chung @westnorth.com · 22/07/2026
"By suppressing less-costly “middle housing,” the grand bargain of TOD restricts middle-class families to either sprawling suburbs or older, less safe homes, and burdens lower-income residents with high rents and overcrowding — or pushes them out of the region entirely."
Want a home for your family in Arlington or Montgomery’s transit-oriented centers, like Bethesda? The minimum price is now multiple millions of dollars, because local laws require that homes here are either encased in elaborate steel-and-concrete high-rise construction (background), or sit within a large and incredibly costly lawn (foreground).
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Payton Chung @westnorth.com · 22/07/2026
I get why this is a thing, but it's truly annoying that Substack by default allows other people to opt you into emails support.substack.com/hc/en-us/art...
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Payton Chung @westnorth.com · 22/07/2026
Which is fine, but long-term land values don't grow spectacularly. Again from Hoyt, a land speculator in the frontier village of Chicago who watched the city balloon to 3M+ residents… might as well have bought a 6% bond. So, uh, hooray for avoiding a 0.6% annual rent increase?
Rate of increase of Chicago land values, 1830-1933 compared with the rate the total land values of each peak period would have increased at 5% and 6% compound interest. The land value line is spiky but increases, the compound interest lines are steady and increase similarly
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Payton Chung @westnorth.com · 21/07/2026
Analogy: this block at Canal Park has DC-"zoned capacity" for 5 food trucks. That in no way guarantees a food truck will be there. "It is legal to sell here" & "enough people will buy here to make business worthwhile" are entirely different things that OP has confused.
looking down on an outdoor ice skating rink in foreground, five parked cars on a street beyond, and an office building behind
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Payton Chung @westnorth.com · 16/07/2026
I jokingly call vintage Chicago courtyards "1.5-stair PABs" ultralocal.blogspot.com/2011/03/typo...
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Payton Chung @westnorth.com · 12/07/2026
Your experience belongs on the YIMBYtown stage! The pro-housing movement's best ideas come from organizers, planners, architects, elected officials, developers, researchers, tenants, advocates, communicators, and neighbors who are on the ground making policy change. Full details at yimby.town
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Payton Chung @westnorth.com · 01/07/2026
pausa de hidratación
a 21-year-old tuxedo cat lying on the polished-concrete bar of Mobtown Brewing in east Baltimore, receiving back scritches. a glass of foamy golden ale is behind him.
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Payton Chung @westnorth.com · 25/06/2026
Thank you, outhouse expert: cowboystatedaily.com/2026/06/24/w... “Those vaults and tanks will develop a bit of a crust on top, or the toilet paper will act as a lily pad,” [Adam] Fink said. “You might see something you dropped sitting right at the surface, but that doesn’t mean that’s the bottom.”
Cowboy State Daily headline: "Wyoming Outhouse Expert Says Retrieving Sunglasses From Vault Toilets Is Bad Idea"
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Payton Chung @westnorth.com · 24/06/2026
Their theory vs. every single property crash in history (and original Chicago School sociology, attempting to impose empiricism upon social phenomena when theory is much tidier) extension.harvard.edu/blog/how-to-...
table of peaks in land value, construction, and business cycles back to 1818
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Payton Chung @westnorth.com · 15/06/2026
How did the pool survive without filtration until the 2000s? Because Canada geese weren't spreading tons of fertilizer into stagnant ponds and pools across the eastern US until the 2000s. www.allaboutbirds.org/news/canada-...
Explosive Growth of (US) Canada Goose Populations, 1966-2011, showing geometric growth with a big boom in the 2000s
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Payton Chung @westnorth.com · 11/06/2026
She timed the market correctly, but many others didn't. Another comparison: these two 1960s Levittowns have the same houses the same distance from DC, yet very different outcomes westnorth.com/2015/07/06/h...
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Payton Chung @westnorth.com · 27/05/2026
Though notably, the HDB touts actually substantially increased construction labor productivity?! www.hdb.gov.sg/hdb-pulse/ne...
Figure 1: HDB’s construction productivity improvements from 2010 to 2021. Graph go up
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Payton Chung @westnorth.com · 24/05/2026
Also, this is an unhinged way to divide New Jersey into three parts. NOAA: Yes, Central Jersey exists, it's from Perth Amboy to Millville
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Payton Chung @westnorth.com · 19/05/2026
Dominion is having an unusual day. Power in NoVa (Ft. Belvoir highlighted) selling >$3000/kWh, while at Surry nuclear plant in SE VA it's -$60. If only there was some way to move those electrons...
map of Virginia with dots indicating power prices, ranging from dark blue to dark red. usually it's not this extreme
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Payton Chung @westnorth.com · 07/05/2026
Wind energy in the US is highly concentrated on the Great Plains, in states that largely elect Republicans.
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Payton Chung @westnorth.com · 06/05/2026
This also matters with today's infrastructure. Data centers cluster in the mid-Atlantic because it has the best fiber and electrical connections to the northeast, midwest, and southeast (plus good access to trans-Atlantic cables, and superior reliability)
NREL map of data center infrastructure in the US, 2025
from https://www.datacenterdynamics.com/en/news/nrel-launches-us-data-center-infrastructure-map/
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Payton Chung @westnorth.com · 06/05/2026
We're conditioned to think of the Northeast Corridor as stacked north-south, but it's closer to west-east. Boston, New York, and Philadelphia are all further east than north of Washington DC; e.g., NYC's bearing relative to DC is 50.75°. 45° would be true NE, 45-90 is ENE.
"Bearing" (direction) calculator for NYC to DC, showing 232.67 deg (SW) initial bearing and 50.75 deg (NE) return
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Payton Chung @westnorth.com · 04/05/2026
Venn diagram of portmanteau names updated to add two
Venn diagram with overlapping bubbles for Alexandria, Virginia, Edsall, Arlington, Shirley, Fairfax, and Park
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Payton Chung @westnorth.com · 04/05/2026
Alexandria began annexing outside the DC diamond not long after it was ceded, but most of its area outside DC (i.e., most of the Fairfax annexes, vs. Arlington co.) was added in 1952 tropicsofmeta.com/2013/03/14/t... Virginia began restricting annexations shortly thereafter
map, Growth of (Alexandria) City by Annexation by Date
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Payton Chung @westnorth.com · 04/05/2026
This calls for a Venn diagram
Venn diagram with bubbles showing place names portmanteau-ing Alexandria and Arlington
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Payton Chung @westnorth.com · 27/04/2026
Goldman Sachs: 3/4 of today's data centers are *NOT* AI, and 53% of data centers built in 2025-26 are *NOT* AI www.goldmansachs.com/insights/art...
AI is projected to comprise 28% of the data center market (graph from Goldman Sachs)
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Payton Chung @westnorth.com · 16/04/2026
DC's strict solar-rights laws have predictably been weaponized to prevent taller housing, e.g. the 9-story bldg proposed for this vacant lot. I'm developing a surface parking lot right now; it won't get a solar canopy b/c future ADUs above it would have a much greater carbon impact.
row of houses behind a vacant lot in foreground. one in the middle of the row is taller and has solar panels on it
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Payton Chung @westnorth.com · 16/04/2026
These are *not* small structures; they have welded steel bracing and concrete footings. Cost is 40% more, energy and carbon footprint is 2-4X larger (concrete = lotsa CO2). link.springer.com/article/10.1... Ground/roof-mount systems can just drill prefab studs in.
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Payton Chung @westnorth.com · 13/04/2026
US "traction" (streetcar) companies were local conglomerates, often controlling electric power; they were the first to run power lines into new suburbs. Anti-monopoly advocates of the day pushed to break up these businesses, triumphing in 1935. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_...
"The Menace of the Hour," a 1899 George B. Luka cartoon showing a nightmarish "The Traction Monster" octopus enveloping a city. Various monstrous appendages are labeled Monopoly, Wire Trust, Gas Monopolies, Life Insurance, Suburban Franchises, Electric Trust, Coal Trust, Banking Trust, Subway Franchise, Steel Trust, Political Pull, Standard Oil Trust
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Payton Chung @westnorth.com · 13/04/2026
Japan's land readjustment policy allows private RRs to leverage their existing land holdings w/ neighbors' land, lead urban redevelopment, and share returns. RRs want to maximize long-term ridership growth & their consistent cash flow reduces borrowing costs for the higher risk/return dev't biz.
East Japan Railway assets, operating revenues, and income (profit) in 2025, by business line (transportation, real estate / hotels, retail / services, other)
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Payton Chung @westnorth.com · 07/04/2026
Screen cap from a local PBS doc on Marshall Fields highlighting 11 foreign "buying offices... scores of buyers... go abroad to seek merchandise" www.pbs.org/video/the-cu...
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Payton Chung @westnorth.com · 06/04/2026
sO MuCh WiNNiNg!!!!!!! No wonder Donald has an ironic online nickname in China: "Trump the Nation Builder," for his monumental efforts at advancing China's global interests at America's expense. www.washingtonpost.com/world/2026/0...
Washington Post headline: China stands to benefit most from the war-driven energy crisis. Sales of Chinese electric vehicles and solar panels have surged since the start of the Iran war, companies say. Today at 5AM
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Payton Chung @westnorth.com · 05/04/2026
When a 1-unit house is replaced with ONE larger house, the new house is ~3X pricier. When replaced by 5+ houses, each new house will be (on avg) cheaper than the original house. www.aei.org/research-pro... Change is part of the deal. Will we choose greater physical change, or greater price change?
Bar graph.
TITLE: Conversion Properties: Median Price Change  between the Unit Replaced and the Median of the New Units Built: by Total # of Units After. 
NOTE: A conversion is defined as the act of tearing down a an existing single-family detached structure and replacing it with a new structure of varying unit totals. Data pertain to over 3,000 conversions identified in Seattle, which resulted in about 12,000 new units from the mid-1990s onward.
Source: AEI Housing Center, www.AEI.org/housing
The price change for 1 unit replacing 1 unit is 200%, for 2 units is ~50%, for 3 units ~15%, for 4 units nil. For 5+ units the price change is negative.
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Payton Chung @westnorth.com · 04/04/2026
Narrator: it did not, in fact, happen
two photos of the same railroad level crossing, a century apart. little has changed.
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Payton Chung @westnorth.com · 04/04/2026
"Incremental growth" sounds like a nice theory to change-averse planners, but doesn't bear much resemblance to redevelopment reality. vrollet.github.io/files/city_s... "New buildings in NYC are 3.4 times larger than the building they replaced," far above Strong Towns' 1.5X suggested limit.
[See page 10 of linked PDF]
Figure 2 from Vincent Rollet’s job market paper. FAR stands for Floor Area Ratio. Most redevelopments in the sample period had an existing built FAR below 2 and very few net-negative redevelopments occurred (see below the 45 degree line on 2(a), and left of zero in 2(b)). Above zero on the x axis, figure 2(b) shows lots with permission to add 1-1.5FAR had a ~7% chance of redevelopment over ~20 years; 1.5-2FAR was closer to 10%, and 2+FAR raised the odds above 15%.
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Payton Chung @westnorth.com · 30/03/2026
The bus is basically free if you also buy a connecting flight. Same day as your search: PHL-MSP is $618, ILG-PHL-MSP is $617. But instead of advertising this as "complimentary shuttle bus for our customers," they list it as a flight because the airline's ticketing system lists things as flights.
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Payton Chung @westnorth.com · 27/03/2026
Fat cat Friday (this was Sox, a resident at Catty Corner in Leesburg, VA)
A chubby grey and white cat with a solemn expression wears a black and white striped tie, lying on a patterned blanket.
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Payton Chung @westnorth.com · 27/03/2026
Almost all of them. I can count two in the very far back that are primarily office. Here's a map of current listings roughly within view of this photo... for under $400K (~median US house price)
Map of Chicago's Gold Coast and Streeterville neighborhoods, with many units $200K-$400K
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Payton Chung @westnorth.com · 24/03/2026
Just saw this 2024 poll result from Fannie Mae. Sure, Americans prefer SFHs, but - the % of Americans who *would* buy condos is ~3X current market share! "Clearly, consumer demand for this particular housing type appears to far outstrip supply" www.fanniemae.com/research-and...
"Consumers' homebuying preferences don't match available housing stock" graph
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Payton Chung @westnorth.com · 23/03/2026
NPS just dropped a social video touting "!! SaFeTY !!!!!" at this year's festival (read: it'll be crawling with troops and rifles) while removing PROVEN safety measures
Image of several police officers facing away with caption "of other visitors can enjoy the park and the rest of the city safely"
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Payton Chung @westnorth.com · 19/03/2026
Graph of NYC new housing production by decade below. The 1960s were the most recent decade when NYC built ~1% of its housing stock annually - an int'l benchmark that assumes (a) every housing unit will last 100 years and (b) no net growth in households
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Payton Chung @westnorth.com · 13/03/2026
The median DC housing unit has pretty much never been a SFH; it's always been a rowhouse city. The median home price is >$1M in only 0.5% of the nation's counties. Manhattan's is <$1.2M, four Bay Area counties ~$1.5M. $600K is filthy rich EVERYWHERE. www.nar.realtor/research-and...
Map of US County Median Home Prices in Q3 2025
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