Vince Graham

America needs more accessory commercial units.

United Railways and Electric Company (Baltimore), 1926 Street capacity is a public resource to be allocated in the public interest.

Here's an incomplete list of federal intervention that has promoted, mandated, and subsidized the destruction of our cities’ and towns’ historic urban fabric, the destruction of our rural landscape, auto-dependency, and the uglification of America. - Federal Aid Road Act (1916) (Indirect, Major) - Federal Aid Highway Act (1921) (Indirect, Major) - Home Owners' Loan Act (1933) (Indirect, Major) - National Housing Act (1934) (Indirect, Major) - Hayden-Cartwright Act (1934) (Indirect, Major) - Federal Housing Administration (FHA) Underwriting Manual (1934) (Indirect, Major) - Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices (MUTCD) (1935) (Indirect, Major) - Federal Aid Highway Act (1938) (Indirect, Major) - Servicemen's Readjustment Act (1944; also known as the GI Bill) (Indirect, Major) - Federal-Aid Highway Act (1944) (Indirect, Major) - Veterans Administration (VA) Loan Guaranty Program Standards (1944) (Indirect, Major) - Housing Act of 1949 (Direct, Major) - Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Urban Renewal Program Guidelines (1949) (Direct, Major) - Internal Revenue Code of 1954 (Indirect, Major) - Housing Act of 1954 (Direct, Major) - Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) Adoption of AASHTO's A Policy on Geometric Design of Highways and Streets (Green Book) (1954) (Indirect, Major) - Federal-Aid Highway Act (1956; also known as the National Interstate and Defense Highways Act) (Direct, Major) - Federal-Aid Highway Act (1958) (Indirect, Major) - Federal-Aid Highway Act (1959) (Indirect, Major) - Housing and Urban Development Act (1968) (Indirect, Major) - Federal-Aid Highway Act (1968) (Indirect, Major) - Clean Air Act (1970) (Indirect, Minor) - Uniform Relocation Assistance and Real Property Acquisition Policies Act (1970) (Direct, Minor) - Housing and Community Development Act (1974) (Indirect, Minor) - Energy Tax Act (1978) (Indirect, Minor) - Chrysler Corporation Loan Guarantee Act (1979) (Indirect, Major) - Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act (1991) (Indirect, Major) - Taxpayer Relief Act (1997) (Indirect, Minor) - Transportation Equity Act for the 21st Century (1998) (Indirect, Major) - Energy Policy Act (2005) (Indirect, Minor) - Safe, Accountable, Flexible, Efficient Transportation Equity Act: A Legacy for Users (2005) (Indirect, Major) - Energy Independence and Security Act (2007) (Indirect, Minor) - Emergency Economic Stabilization Act (2008) (Indirect, Major) - American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (2009) (vehicle sales tax deduction provision) (Indirect, Minor) - Consumer Assistance to Recycle and Save Act (2009; also known as Cash for Clunkers) (Indirect, Major) - Moving Ahead for Progress in the 21st Century Act (2012) (Indirect, Major) - Fixing America's Surface Transportation Act (2015) (Indirect, Major) - Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (2021; also known as the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law) (Indirect, Major) - Inflation Reduction Act (2022) (vehicle tax credits and manufacturing provisions) (Indirect, Minor) - One Big Beautiful Bill Act (2025) (Indirect, Major) One might reasonably include the Federal Reserve Act (1913), as it provides the means to federally finance the drastic remaking of American settlement patterns.

"Most modern towns and cities devote somewhere between 25-60% to parking lots and access roads to these parking lots. Mandatory parking and even more so, mandatory driving and mandatory commuting, makes every new building or home built a new headache for the people who already live there. In a human scaled town, a two story apartment building getting three more floors means more neighbors, more life in the street, new faces in the local taverna, more customers in your barber shop, more potential team mates for your kid’s soccer team. It could also mean more tax income to fund your local library, more people to join your Veteran’s Association or Bird Watching Club or Volunteer Ambulance Crews. And on the other side… In an un-human scaled town, a new apartment buildings means swathes of new parking, worse air, more toxic run-off, worse floods, worse summer heat, more use of air conditioning, more cars on the streets, more crashes, more congestion, more driving to get anywhere, less places to play, less places where you can let your children roam un-supervised, less places where you can escape to nature. And what is worst: the people who live there will mostly only return home to sleep. They do their shopping somewhere else, they work somewhere else, they go to church somewhere else, they might even pay their taxes somewhere else. They are not and never will be, part of your community. Who in their right mind wants to see new buildings go up in a town where cars rule, and streets and buses are full as it is?" — Defining the Human Scale as it relates to town and cities: Part I (photos by Rale P.)

By some estimates 9-11% of the population of Europe will suffer from some form of age related cognitive impairment by 2050, including dementia. Europe should take steps now to build cities that reduce the risk of dementia and other lifestyle related diseases by building cities, towns and neighborhoods that are human scaled, where most daily necessities are easily reached on foot and whose design and density maximizes opportunities for activities that maximizes cognitive impairment risk reduction: access to nature, access to other peopl, and a full range of low risk hurdles that will literally keep us on our toes longer, to minimize the gap between healthy long life and final years of dependency. As a bonus these cities are also cheaper, far more sustainable and better for the environment.

You say cheap, I say subsidized. One thing is for certain: Nationwide chains offering low-priced, globally-sourced products are dependent upon the largest public works project in the history of humanity to get their goods from China to Dickson. Unlike the locally owned and operated businesses they drove out of business, these PE-owned competitors did not exist before the interstate highway system and they can't exist without it.

The US is the world leader in construction productivity decline.