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Peet's pastries were better than Starbucks for a very long time. La Boulange saved Starbucks food. I don't think Peet's counts as hyper local anymore as they are nation wide, but their HQ is still in the Bay Area.
Yeah, and there's some huge number of La Boulange bakeries now. I agree with you that Peet's has better pastries, but it doesn't really have anything to do with localism. Both Starbucks and Peet's source their bakery good locally. The key word is prepping for a national roll out. They've got to open a lot more bakeries than they already have (which is a lot) since they are prepared locally.
60% of the Central Valley is developed?! It sure doesn't look like that from a map. Got a source?
That'd be 13,500 square miles consumed by sprawl, almost three times the NYC urban area.
You don't understand urban sprawl. I didn't say the Central Valley was developed, I said it was out of agricultural production due to urban sprawl. Most of the damage has been done by 5 acre mini ranches.
This has been reported in the agricultural news outlets, which may as well not exist as far as urban consumers are concerned.
Perhaps something closer to home will be more relevant, like the fact that the last farm in Orange County was sold for development last year. Well, not exactly the last farm, since the county maintains a 640 acre farm museum showing what the county used to be like. Or the fact that Los Angeles County used to produce a higher value of agricultural crops than any other county in the USA, and that was only 80 years ago.
Urban people will just shrug and say, "Food comes from the grocery store. As long as the stores are full, there isn't a problem."
I will chime in and say no, we have not. Cities/metro areas grow as population expands, and growth for the most part has to go "out". Who exactly is subsidizing this supposed sprawl? People in the city core certainly are not paying for water mains or roads in the suburbs, they are not paying for the land stores use as parking lots. That is paid by those local residents and those municipalities- people in Seattle don't pay anything for what I use up here in the suburb of Lynnwood.
Residents of Michigan pay taxes to subsidize various programs in the city of Detroit.
Another perspective on how zoning discourages development. Apparently cities like Seattle and Austin are mostly zoned for single family residential....making it impossibly to build anything else other than in a few areas.
Another perspective on how zoning discourages development. Apparently cities like Seattle and Austin are mostly zoned for single family residential....making it impossibly to build anything else other than in a few areas.
If the map is correct, I'm a bit shocked at how much of Stamford is zoned for 1+ acre residential.
One thing the article doesn't mention is Connecticut has kinda screwy city incorporation rules, although in practice they seldom matter today.
Essentially, cities incorporate within towns. So a city begins as a subsection of a town, having a separate government but also subordinate to town government. In all cases but Groton towns and cities have been consolidated.
Stamford had a very late consolidation, however. The northern portion was still the "Town of Stamford" until 1949. So it basically missed out on urban-style development entirely, and instead became full of estates for millionaires. North Stamford is actually wealthier than Greenwich on the whole. There's not a snowball's chance in hell it will get redeveloped.
You don't understand urban sprawl. I didn't say the Central Valley was developed, I said it was out of agricultural production due to urban sprawl. Most of the damage has been done by 5 acre mini ranches.
This has been reported in the agricultural news outlets, which may as well not exist as far as urban consumers are concerned.
Perhaps something closer to home will be more relevant, like the fact that the last farm in Orange County was sold for development last year. Well, not exactly the last farm, since the county maintains a 640 acre farm museum showing what the county used to be like. Or the fact that Los Angeles County used to produce a higher value of agricultural crops than any other county in the USA, and that was only 80 years ago.
Urban people will just shrug and say, "Food comes from the grocery store. As long as the stores are full, there isn't a problem."
The 5-acre mini ranches are productive here, usually vineyards or orchards. The other area that has a lot of them is east of Sacramento in EDH, Loomis, etc. Grazing land.
Bemoaning what Los Angeles used to produce is rather amusing. Los Angeles is severely water constrained. It only exists as it does due to massive water projects to deliver water to it from several states. If you look at the value of urban to ag use of water, it's not even a question. We're absolutely better off now that there is no agriculture done in Los Angeles. Almost four times as much water is used for agricultural purposes in this state as urban purposes. Los Angeles County alone has a GDP of $500 billion. Agriculture? Less than one tenth of that in the entire state. It's a drop in the bucket. Ag represents 2-3% of the total GDP of California and uses 80% of the water that is used for human consumption. That's something you'll never see in "ag news outlets" because they aren't news outlets. They're trade journals that are singularly focused on themselves.
They ignore the fact that if we just got rid of all the pesky people in California and all the pesky environmental regulations, all they'd be able to do is about double their output. That's all the water there is. Now, you're a policy maker. Are you going to do that for a measly $50 billion in economic activity? Or are you going to look at the urban sector which is producing over $1 trillion in economic output and tell the farmers to take a hike? As long as the stores are full indeed. It's not like we don't produce an excessive of food in the country.
The 5-acre mini ranches are productive here, usually vineyards or orchards. The other area that has a lot of them is east of Sacramento in EDH, Loomis, etc. Grazing land.
Bemoaning what Los Angeles used to produce is rather amusing. Los Angeles is severely water constrained. It only exists as it does due to massive water projects to deliver water to it from several states. If you look at the value of urban to ag use of water, it's not even a question. We're absolutely better off now that there is no agriculture done in Los Angeles. Almost four times as much water is used for agricultural purposes in this state as urban purposes. Los Angeles County alone has a GDP of $500 billion. Agriculture? Less than one tenth of that in the entire state. It's a drop in the bucket. Ag represents 2-3% of the total GDP of California and uses 80% of the water that is used for human consumption. That's something you'll never see in "ag news outlets" because they aren't news outlets. They're trade journals that are singularly focused on themselves.
They ignore the fact that if we just got rid of all the pesky people in California and all the pesky environmental regulations, all they'd be able to do is about double their output. That's all the water there is. Now, you're a policy maker. Are you going to do that for a measly $50 billion in economic activity? Or are you going to look at the urban sector which is producing over $1 trillion in economic output and tell the farmers to take a hike? As long as the stores are full indeed. It's not like we don't produce an excessive of food in the country.
I'm sure you live in The Best Of All Possible Worlds. Right there is the justification for urban sprawl. "We don't need no pesky farms."
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Got a source? 
