NIMBY = Public Eminent Domain?

Soooo, here’s the story about my little old township. Over the past decade, many things have changed; population growth, infrastructure, residential developments, everything relating to a booming area. With this growth, the Township administration appears to have been a bit overwhelmed in this period. Bygones…

Picture of land under scrutiny. What’s missing is all the development happening outside the frame of the picture.

The problem now is that people are angry that a landowner/developer has decided to “destroy” this western edge of the valley. And it seems that they won’t be happy until said owner abandons all hope of building anything on his own property.  So these NIMBY folks seem to be employing a form of Neighbor Eminent Domain.  Is this any more appropriate than local governments using said instrument to “improve” certain districts?

Year End 2011 News

 

So this isn’t brand new news. My company, KlingStubbins has been acquired by Jacobs Engineering Group (as of November 1, 2011) and will be aligned with their Global Buildings North America division.  I’m not sure what impact the merger will have on my content, but I will continue to write as much as I can.  It’s been tough to get anything posted. So I’m simply jotting this down while I can.

Here’s the press release
You can call us “KlingStubbins Inc. a Jacobs Company”

Here’s to a happy and healthy 2012.

Kevin

Get your voice heard!

Now is your chance. Autodesk has created a new vehicle to get input from you, the users of all things Autodesk. It’s called the Infrastructure Participatory Design Council.

What is it?

Midsummer Classic 2011

I usually don’t write about life stories, but I thought that should change today. This week, my family is away from home. So that leaves me “free” to work late, eat whatever I want, watch sports for as long as I want. Generally getting my own peace of mind back.  Last night was the 2012 MLB all-star game. For those that don’t follow baseball, Wikipedia has a great breakdown on the game and how the managers and players are chosen. In all, 34 players make up each team for a total of 68 all-stars.  This year however, there were 84 total all-stars due to 2 factors; pitchers who were selected to the team but pitched on the Sunday prior cannot pitch in the game, and players who take the all-star “break (3 days in total)” to heal from injuries. The story is not about those whose injuries are documented by being on the disabled list, but those who are banged up by simply playing the game we all love.

The pinnacle of that “injury” backout plan came from Derek Jeter, whom many consider the current “Ambassador of Baseball”, Cal Ripken being the previous ambassador.  Jeter hit his 3,000 hit on Saturday. That’s something only 27 other players have done in the history of the sport. He was then supposed to attend his 12th classic but decided to take the time off because of mental and physical exhaustion dealing with the media attention around his 3,000th hit.  OK.

Can Civil Engineering affect Social Change?

I’ve been on vacation recently and had time to ponder things in a peaceful manner.  My family went to a cabin in the Poconos of Pennsylvania.  Thankfully it had a pool for the kids or they may have gone nuts. Oh wait, we did have 30″ lcd tvs but it was NOT hi-def. But i digress….  I had a couple of incidents that made me think about how much we do to GREEN a project, but how much do we do to encourage common sense, maybe even politeness?

One day was spent at a local water park called Camelbeach, located at Camelback Mountain.  The water park was a blast. And with anything that is outdoors in the summer, tempers can be short and people can loose their mind.  But what got me started pondering was this:  The park had been open for about an hour – so plenty of people but no real lines for any of the rides.

One particular ride, the tube slides, makes you grab a tube and literally walk up the side of the mountain about 200 feet.  There are 4 tubes and on the ground are painted lines indicating where to stand in line for each.

We get to the start of these painted lines and there is no wait so we have to walk another 150 feet or so to get to the platform. Along the way, 3 young peoples run past us. Not 30 seconds later, we’re standing behind them in the short line. What do you think happened next?

Why is american leadership missing?

Among many periodicals that frequent my inbox, one of which is the daily ZDNET Tech Update.  It includes many interesting articles; one such ”column” is titled SmartPlanet.  Todays topic was “The new arms race: China planning high-speed rail network to Russia, India, Europe“.  I can only sit in true awe at this concept.  We live in a country that can’t seem to get out of the way of its own ego at times, National Transportation not withstanding. So why is it that as our country continues to grow, that our infrastructure lags behind in development and maintenance?  I wish I knew. Here’s the rail plan for Asia: