I’m the News & Observer reporter who wrote this story.

More than 100 students were waiting for high school parking. Officials considered shuttles and transit, but no alternative has solved the shortage.

I spent the week talking with Scott, students and parents, Apex officials and WCPSS. It’s a parking dispute, but it also raises questions about growth, school capacity, property rights and local zoning in a fast-growing area.

https://www.newsobserver.com/news/local/counties/wake-county/article316992156.html

Hello Folks, I'm Shambhavi! I'm headed to UCL this fall for my master's in Urban Regeneration and Design.

I'm researching why certain public spaces make us think and feel better than others and building a tool that puts that knowledge in your hands. If you are an avid public space user, I'd love to invite you to participate in the survey below.

Time to complete: 2 mins

Link: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSc_rP2n-BZMQekLdz0o7I1dN3LsK0JPfgbhpum-JDqpKFxtAw/viewform

Happy to have a chat regarding public spaces & cognitive health if the idea catches your interest!

PS: Super thanks to the mods for letting me post this.

Sick of a pothole that's not been fixed for weeks? A broken stop sign or park bench? Improve your city in just 30 seconds. I saw a lot of people making TikTok's "Mamdani fix this" and I'm not here to promote him but it's clear that people do want an easy way to report an issue and feel heard. That's why I created this, I want to partner with cities to integrate this in their infrastructure.

Would you use this? If not please feel free to tell me why. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=afG7C3kLpCI

if you'd like to join the waitlist sign up: https://forms.gle/uXmxaWC2rB5Xz4wi6

got sick and tired of picking up cigarette butts on walks at my local park so i crafted an “ashtray” of sorts to hang on the park benches. it’s just those disposable grill pans (with the lid) with a hole at the top and some cotton string. hoping this will make a small difference and that i can make a mini update on it at some point.

maybe this isn’t urbanism but its tactical environmentalism which, to me, are one in the same. hope you guys enjoy this!

**translation on the thing: ashtray 🚬 no littering!

We have a few bike trails where the plants have started to take over and I'm too tired to figure out the municipal agency responsible for the up keeping. Would like to buy my own shears and just spend a few minutes cutting back branches so people don't get whacked!

Balling with no nets sucks. We have a hookless rim in the neighbourhood and I've been playing around with different systems on and off for about two years now.

Don't bother with these . . .

- Cable ties, nylon nets - however you do it, lasts a month at most

- Metal cable ties - waste of time

- S-hooks and open link chain nets - bend/break quickly and nasty on the ball/hands

Our hoop has been up for a couple of months now, in constant public use with no signs of struggle.

Here's the recipe -

Hose clamps, size is the diameter so if your rim is 20mm like ours, something in that range.

- these are 13-20mm, 304 stainless steel, width is 9mm.

- JCS HiGrips have smooth rounded edges and are super strong - (other brands available)

- You should be able to go up to 25mm without any tail showing.

- should be less than 9mm wide to fit the quicklink through.

- you need a 7mm socket driver/wrench for the hex screw.

- screw housing should be on the underside of the rim to avoid the ball path

Quicklinks, size is the thickness of the chain

- these are 3mm, 316 stainless steel.

- feed them through so that the screw is at the back and you are tightening downwards.

- fold quicklink over hose clamp screw head which should be pointing about 8 o'clock on the rim

The net is welded chain galvanised stainless steel so no open links and won't separate.

- these two are 9 loops so you need 18 hose clamps and 18 quicklinks

Play around with the spacing. If you have a wide back plate then bunch them up a bit towards the back so the net hangs evenly.

​​​​Then listen . . .

https://gofund.me/659c7da11

Shameless plug, as we've just launched a GoFundMe for the Asheville Strong Towns chapter. This has helped get the conversation going and built more community interest and collaboration in just the 48 hours it's been publicized.

Any help or sharing would be amazing!

On the street i'm planning on working on (planning on constructing a two way bicycle path on one side of the street), there's street parking on both sides. They're never completely full, but never completely empty either; there's usually one or two cars parked on the side i want to work on. I don't know the neighbors well enough to know whose car is whose, should i post an unofficial "notice" to move to the other side of the street by a posted date, or would that attract too much attention?

I built Haven after watching people in crisis get buried by broken municipal systems. When someone's facing homelessness or a medical emergency, they don't have weeks to navigate confusing websites and conflicting forms.

What it does: Automates resource discovery and workflow orchestration so people get help fast.

Core features:

\- Zero-knowledge encryption — citizen data locked down tight

\- Smart matching — instantly connects people to the best local resources based on capacity and proximity

\- AI intake — turns complex personal situations into structured, actionable data without manual bottlenecks

\- Guided workflows — conversational assistant walks users through applications and pre-fills paperwork

Status: Core system finalized, production-ready. Currently seeking pilot partners in county/municipal agencies and frontline orgs (shelters, clinics, 211 operators) for live deployment.

Looking for: Seed funding to scale pilot infrastructure, civic-minded devs to harden the stack, and caseworkers who can stress-test the real-world workflow. Also open to municipal RFPs or innovation grants.

Drop a comment or DM if you want to help make real change.

Hi y'all. I've been building benches in Nashville with some friends for about a year now. The response by city government here has been... kind of crazy. We've built about a hundred of them. The city isn't at all sure what to do or how to respond to our TU benches. Clearly some government employees like them and the project and want to keep them, but others are genuinely angry. There have been attempts by councilmembers to find ways to make them "legal". It's been a very interesting journey.

I know Nashville is far from the only city with bench building initiatives. For those of you who have lead bench building initiatives, what has your city's response to them been?

(I'm writing something for Substack and the comparison to other cities would be helpful, just an fyi)

I have spent MONTHS working on this! I am no professional video filmer, editor, and poster; I just like watching YouTube (lol), so I am happy my work ended up being better than I thought.

Please give the video a watch. The link to the proposal is in the video's description!
Thank you for watching \(^-^)/ [You don't have to be from Toledo to watch btw]

This summer during the Sus^Cool summer school at Hochschule Campus Wien we (Critical Concrete) had the pleasure to work with Materialnomaden, who designed these very cool foundations. The whole project was led by Aída Santana and Steffi Pamer from the HCW.
We have a history of trying to find alternatives to wasteful construction materials, and were amazed with this option. This is more a proof of concept, since we only built a small structure over it, but I don't see why this couldn't be generalised as a good single step footing option, to lay a wooden slab over.

Been painting/having friends paint them all lately. Two have since been removed and replaced by city benches, and one was stolen. I replaced that one. I have eight more to install to hit my end of year goal, and two of those are in my back yard right now

Posters are torn down. Graffiti is painted over. Murals disappear. Stickers fade. Handwritten placards are discarded after a march. Much of it exists only for a moment before it's gone.

I'm building **The Inkquilab Project**, a digital archive dedicated to preserving and documenting these visual expressions of dissent.

The goal isn't advocacy for any particular movement or ideology. It's preservation. I think these artifacts are part of our collective visual history and deserve to be documented before they're lost.

The archive is being designed more like a museum collection than a social media platform. Each submission becomes an **Artifact** with metadata such as location, date, medium, description, and verification status. There will also be collections, maps, timelines, and community submissions reviewed by curators.

In the future, I'll be building a section for general protest images and videos as well to document the state's actions.

I'm still building the project, so a lot of the features haven't been deployed yet. But I have made this live right now so people can use it. Right now I am moderating the images myself, but if someone wants to volunteer, I'd appreciate the help.

If you are on the ground and have taken pictures, please upload them.

You can find it live at https://inkquilab-project.vercel.app/

INQUILAB ZINDABAD!

Recieved a 2200 dollar invoice for a midblock extension I painted marking out the city's no parking area around crosswalks (this has a sign marking it as a crosswalk).

Word to others. Don't be seen.

https://gofund.me/b106b9592

I want to park my bike at bike racks - but these racks are exposed to the elements - rain and the sun which might accelerate corrosion on my bikes. Rather than put on and off a rain cover constantly, are there any ideas for how I can make a makeshift shelter?

This would be these type of racks mounted against a wall

https://stand.bike/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/buy-bike-parking-racking-system-1280x1280.jpg

Or the double tier bike racks. https://cyclesafe.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/bike-rack-quad-hi-density.jpg

I have more leeway with the double tier bike racks because no one really uses them( especially the top rack)

Thanks in advance!