William Burg
@oldcityguardian
Sacramento history & historic preservation enthusiast. I don't have a podcast, but would be happy to be a guest on yours. @sacramentohistorian on Youtube & Instagram.
OTOH, measures to control "out of control youth" aren't exactly brand new either--they were already a media cliche by the time I was a teen.
The image shown in the article is the back of the building, facing 30th Street; the primary facade is on the other side of the block on Alhambra Boulevard and incorporates the historic facade of a 100 year old brick building on the site. I posted a rendering of that side elsewhere on this thread.
That's the back of the building. I think they keep using it in articles about this project because the front looks like this--its aesthetic is about 100 years late because it's the facade of a 1920s sausage factory. The rest is 2010 Minecraft Moderne because "articulated facade" is code required.
My main quibble is that the renderings for this apartment complex as posted in articles always show the back of the building & parking structure, when this is what it's supposed to look like from the front, incorporating the facade of the 100 year old brick building along Alhambra Boulevard:
Finishing a long weekend in LA where I spent quiet days flaneuring around visiting museums & cultural sites, loud nights at an all weekend noise festival at Coaxial LA, and lots of transit riding on Amtrak, LA Metro trains & buses to, from & in between. And happy Pride month to all.
Eastern cities got big before electric streetcars, but from the Midwest west, the model was buy farmland, start an electric company, subdivide the farm & build a car line, sell lots to new suburbanites & sell electricity to residents and the car line. A profitable development trifecta that we broke.
This reminds me of the sketches done in the 1950s-60s for Sacramento's West End redevelopment that displaced 30,000 people, more than half the central city's population. They also planned that urban helicopters would eventually replace highways, but didn't include any heliports.
I definitely love small town Wisconsin, filled with wacky little roadside markets that cater to tourists from Illinois (AK "Fine Illinois Brethren"), and some truly disturbing antique stores.
The part that always made me laugh is that it's such a temple to all things Wisconsin--cheese, meat, beer, preserves, Packers--🧀🥩🏈🧀-- but there's a prominent Blue Diamond almond display, canned in Sacramento, and they cost 3 times as much as the cans at the Blue Diamond outlet store (or at Safeway)!
Spot the missing middle housing, and the secret kitty! Always count the electric/gas meters, and the pocket panthers. (It's a sixplex and a fine cat.)
Last seen by me on Tuesday, when I was planning my upcoming "Not-So-Missing Middle Housing" walking tour for our local @strongtowns "Strong Sactown" & Preservation Sacramento: Sunday May 24, 11 AM, Zoe Coffee & Tacos, 1829 22nd Street, Sacramento CA! #MissingMiddle #UrbanTruth #AdaptiveReuse #Infill
Saturday May 9, 2026, at Art Glass Sacramento, 204 23rd Street Sacramento, 6-9 PM, an evening of experimental audio featuring Tarantula Princess, SMITE!, Mozzy & Voltage, Major Tinnitus, and Tech Diff. FREE and all ages.
A kissing canopy! These are super important in hot climates--they cool the air, the houses, and people walking on the sidewalk! Plus they look awful purty.
Alkali Flat, Sacramento CA: Historic #missingmiddlehousing (count the meters/multiple addresses!), a MCM hotel that was turned into offices & back into a hotel, and new affordable/supportive housing being built next to a 1980s hotel, also turned into affordable housing. #adaptivereuse #preservation
#cargobike shopping day! Got to use my new cargo web for a giant TP load. In the saddlebags & basket are bakery treats from the farmers market, hardware, way too many comic books, and a 10 pound ham on clearance for 98 cents/pound while on the final TP run. #thisvehiclerunsonHAM
This 2 story office building on the edge between Midtown and East Sacramento was converted to apartments in a few months and rebranded "The Nelly." A 30 unit, 5 story apartment building is planned for the parking lot in front (1-2 br, mixed low/mod income & market rate.) #adaptivereuse #infill
The danger is, you start out with those books, and within a few years you end up with a bookshelf like this (note: this is not all of my urban planning books)
I deal with a lot of historic properties, and have seen a lot of them converted to affordable housing, not demolished/redeveloped but adaptively reused into housing (sometimes with adjacent new construction) and it gets done all the time. Generally they rehab the windows instead of replacing them.
Ordinarily I disapprove of urban parking lots, but in the case of renegade punk shows, I'll make an exception. The cops showed up halfway through the show, just before the generator died. Midtown Sacramento, CA #tacticalurbanism #punkshows #Sacramento #drunkenclown #missingmiddlehousing #parkinglot
I get my Duc Huong fix at Calvin's Market, 24th & I Street. Will pay a bit more for a walkable banh mi.