Charlottesville, Virginia, spent most of a decade revising its zoning code.
It held endless community meetings.
It gave opponents ample opportunity to make their case.
They lost.
But a handful of rich homeowners sued and have gotten the new Charlottesville zoning code overturned on a technicality
https://communityengagement.substack.com/p/june-30-2025-judge-worrell-voids?r=blgf
9 millionaire homeowners, who couldn’t persuade Charlottesville residents and couldn’t win at the ballot box, decided they would throw everything they had to nullify their defeat.
And it worked
Its so blatantly obvious who actually holds power in this country. Its a wonder most people don’t see it so clearly
The city should just put forth a new plan that involves taking those specific homeowners’ land via eminent domain, and using it to install new parking lots or roadways or whatever will fit to accommodate the new requirements.
I was thinking the city should put forward a plan that specifically cuts off the homeowners homes from any roads, but I like this better
Parking lots to leave your car and roll into town on rail or bus via the attached depot.
We are kind of dealing with this too, our city has been expanding a lot and now our little street where we normally walk to the grocery store or to downtown for events is being used as a way for people to get around the traffic from the main road so it sucks to walk.
They haven’t installed speed bumps or stop signs so its hard to cross most streets, even worse they are removing some cement islands that diverted traffic from taking some of the small streets to let traffic flow through. Now traffic is going more through our lower income area and avoiding the wider roads of the higher income neighborhoods that it used to
What is the scope of the zoning plan densification?
If they’re taking single family homes and putting up high rise towers; if the city did not expand transportation or public services(water and sewage) in any way (bigger sidewalks, buses, trams, bike lanes) the assholes are right.
I thought maybe I wasn’t understanding something, since millionaires are supposed to = bad, but the assholes are indeed right. Another example of wealth and influence changing outcomes that the rest of us can’t compete with - yes. Silver lining is they actually did a good thing.
I think the homeowners are right regardless. You don’t need to be a genius to figure out that even a moderately higher population density increases transportation demand. Even doubling the density could affect traffic considerably.
Now before the haters come out: I’m not saying that the transportation demand must be addressed by more or bigger roads.
Could be that the road isn’t utilized to the full capacity yet. I’ve been involved in zoning projects where that was the case, the existing road and other infrastructure was adequate to fit the bigger population without modification.
well even if you subscribe to carbrainism it doesn’t make sense to just add lanes to roads, lanes are almost never the bottleneck. What you want is higher-capacity junctions.
now i’m hungry
NES controller cord flashbacks.
Not how roads work, dumbfuck.
Ultrawide roads do not help congestion and never have, that’s a fact.
You can disagree with a fact, but that will just make you a dumb fuck, you god damn stupid-ass dumbfuck.
I invite these 9 dumbfucks to eat all of my shit and hair.
You may be conflating this with adding lanes to the freeway which doesn’t reduce freeway congestion since it’s all rush hour based traffic, but I fail to see how adding more lanes in a city wouldn’t reduce congestion for people who live there. If you have 1000 cars they’ll fit more densely in 3 lanes than they would in a single lane since they can drive in parallel to the other vehicles.
Yeah, no that’s not how this shit works and I’m tired of debating carbrains on their carbrained horseshit so you go ahead and believe whatever the fuck you like I guess. 3+ lanes for traffic inside the city is fucking gross and insane.
Eh it helps create thoroughfare. Our city features nothing but 2lane roads each way in/out of the downtown area, and the rest of the 120sqmi city is comprised of 1-2 lanes each way. Construction on any road dropping it a lane makes the next traffic light 6-8 blocks long.
Maybe Charlottesville is different and already has a major thoroughfare, but not having at least one “superwide road” is murder on all the small side streets that are not built to handle the traffic flooding around a blocked 2lane. Without public transit to support the population, making the city bigger without widening a few key roads into important parts is begging to have your neighborhood roads obliterated by heavy traffic.
1 or 2 lanes of traffic is not what I am referring to. 2 is plenty, the solution isn’t MoAr RoADs, it’s LESS GOD DAMN CARS! People don’t need their car to travel all the time but you try to tell them that and they lose their fucking minds. It’s goddamn infuriating and if you don’t believe me go read through the responses.
Even your response is tainted by that logic, it’s not true: We as a society do not need nor should we have to rely upon cars for everything we do. If we don’t change this, we are consigning ourselves and our children to a horrible future. Very few people seem to actually give a fuck though. This shit needs to change, but it won’t because of entitled people unwilling to change.
sigh
I’m cool with walking, biking, or busses, or whatever. But if you are increasing the size of a city, and there is no easy way to funnel people from their homes to jobs in a timely fashion, your city will experience gridlock. The issue at hand is Charlottesville expanding- meaning a population increase to feed their financial center. So yes, they need to increase the ability to cross it. Be that via bus or car, to the new suburbs and other residential zones.
I do so love my heavy v8 sports car, but I’m not so short sighted to slight the idea of public busses and bicycles - just that if we want them in cities then we need to build for them. Bus curbs and bike trails. My city builds for neither except symbolically, so yes, I notice the issues with traversing it on the individual level, when my personal commute is over 8 miles poorly timed and poorly lined Stroads. Areas with very wide lanes and clear sides but silly low artificial speed limits. Areas with narrower old streets and trees closing in on you, but are 40. Zero consideration for road dressing and all according to zoned speeds. Results in speeding and unsafe neighborhoods.
Ehhhh, zoning is super important. Vilifying someone by calling them “rich homeowners” is pretty weak.
But they are rich homeowners. This isn’t vilification. It’s just a description.
And it looks like five families to me. So five families vs. everyone else.
you know, back in the day if this happened someone’s house would burn down and nobody would help.
if these wealthy conservatives are so desperate for the “good old days” and want to make America great again I think this is the perfect opportunity to make that wish come true.
Having an expensive home doesn’t mean you’re rich.
You could have a mortgage on it, could have bought it when it was cheaper, which itself can be a problem with taxes and rates, or inherited it.
People can find themselves locked into an expensive property, or are in a position where it would be stupid to sell.
Yet again people on Lemmy demonstrate that they don’t comprehend wealth in the slightest.
None of these homes are outrageous for a skilled tradesmen to own. If you track wages and inflation this is what middle class looked like in the 70’s.
The rich occupy a completely different economic strata to these home owners. You have zero clue.
They are not Bezos-rich, but for Charlottesville, Virginia, they are rich.
I would put good money on them being rural properties with historically low value, given this is all over an expansion project.
But what’s still clear is that you have zero understanding of wealth.
Why would rural homeowners be filing a suit about a 10 square mile town they don’t live in?
The population density for Charlottesville is over 4500/sq mile. Nobody there is living rurally.
It’s an expansion project. I guess that’s one way to tell me you can’t read.
You are writing fanfiction. First you made up that these home owners live rurally, then you made up that Charlottesville is somehow expanding beyond the borders of the town?? Being able to read doesn’t help you if you have no reading comprehension.
I wholeheartedly agree. These are not the class of people to be vilifying.
We already organize out society around social security recipients needs and, desires and dreams.
Why shouldn’t they have the ability to enjoy their town as they wish?
This is how class war looks in practice.
Get fucked slaves, get back to work.
That seems reasonable to me. Adding a lot of people without addressing how they will get around will only lead to diaster.
It’s an odd oversight though.
You don’t need to widen roads for that. In fact, it might be the worst option due to induced demand. For the curious, see:
More Lanes are (Still) a Bad Thing
https://yewtu.be/watch?v=CHZwOAIect4
https://youtu.be/CHZwOAIect4The quote specifically mentions “widen any roads”. I haven’t read Charlottesville plans, but it could have included other options like public transport and bike infrastructure.
Induced demand is also known as latent demand. If your roads are so shit people just stay home, that’s not a good thing.
Here’s a short paper from Texas A&M university on the subject. More lanes reduces congestion. Follow the citations if you’re interested.
I think you’re misrepresenting that a little. It’s not peer reviewed, doesn’t appear to have any researchers names attached at all, doesn’t mention latent demand, and doesn’t at any point consider that there could be other modes of transport. It reads to me like someone trying to sell their road building project.
have a look at their post history, they’re clearly not here in good faith.
I literally have citations. The only reason you think I’m in bad faith is you disagree with me.
cite my balls
A white paper from a civil engineering arm of a university closely associated with TX DOT citing MDOT?
“It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.” - Upton Sinclair
The City of Charlottesville has a master plan which includes infrastructure upgrades and expanding their business network.
https://www.charlottesville.gov/1666/Transit-Strategic-Plan-TSP
It sounds like the people suing don’t want to ride the bus.
I don’t know, I read it more like “I won’t be able to drive my Ranchero XL in these tiny roads!”, considering where it comes from.
I can see why you might think so, but counterintuitively, it’s simply not true. It doesn’t help and it makes the areas where they’re built shittier to exist in. The continual widening of roads is a bad idea. A lane or two is sufficient. The rest of the expansion should be for footpaths, bike paths, and rail, period. This has been proven repeatedly to be the most effective setup for getting people around and maintaining a good quality of life.
Just to forewarn you: The above is an established proven fact that’s played out repeatedly for better and worse depending on which way the city went. Ignoring that reality will open you up to ridicule so I’d encourage you to actually take time to consider the above fact. On top if not helping at all and making everything worse, it also takes up a fuckton of space and costs a crazy amount of resources to maintain.
If you’re skeptical that’s fine, go learn about it, but don’t give a knee-jerk carbrain reaction because that just makes you look like a fool. Check out Paris, France if you want to look for a recent example of changing to a more effective transportation infrastructure. Check out Hyperbad, India if you want some urban hell nightmare fuel.
They didn’t have any rail plans either. Or buses from the looks of it, but that might be a different department.
