Urban Grand Rapids

UPDATE 2023-09-29: The conversation was interesting. 👉The meeting can be viewed on Youtube.👈. Text corresponding to these proposals are expected to come back to the Planning Commission in November. If the Planning Commissions supports that edition of the change text then the texts will go to the City Commission. The City Commission will hear them ... in December? ... then schedule a public hearing in ~30 days after hearing them.

A little known local transit detail is that the Rapid operates a set of route extensions during the GRPS school year. This includes routes #1 (Division/Madison), #4 (Eastern), #7 (West Leonard), #10 (Clyde Park), and #12 (West Fulton). These route extensions operate on weekdays in the ~7am and ~2pm hours.

The concept of the Senate, at least as implemented by the United States Constitution, is anti-democratic. In the state of Montana each senator represents ~500,000 people, in Michigan ~5,000,000 people, and in California ~19,500,000 people. A citizen of Montana has 39 times the representation of a citizen of California, and 10 times the representation of a citizen of Michigan.

The Citizens Research Council of Michigan has issued a new series of reports named - the irony must be intentional - the "Prosperous Future". The picture painted by the findings is bleak. All things obvious to anyone who has been paying attention, and about which our elected leaders have done little or nothing since this conversation began circa ~2003 [20 years ago].

This is a look at commuting related data from the ACS (American Community Survey) for the most recent available year (2021):

Commute Mode

Time to check the data again.

Rents

ZORI (Observed Rents)

A 12 month increase (July 2022 - 2023), for Grand Rapids, of $91/mo (+6.24%). The observed rent for Grand Rapids in July 2023 was $1460/mo.