One thing that I’m kind of surprised hasn’t happened is some kind of annual independent music festival like a SXSW. All that would need to happen is for everyone who books bands to coordinate on a single weekend or 2-4 day stretch where they book a lot of bands.

The reason this matters is that this is exactly the sort of thing that helps cities get independent cred with artists and musicians and creative types. Artsquest is great, but its programming is too targeted at families to be able to signal quality to the kind of people a bottom-up independent music festival would reach.

People have been making a valiant effort with the Anti-Musikfest concerts, to highlight genres not covered at Musikfest, but I don’t see that accomplishing what I’m talking about. Whether the organizers realize it or not, that’s functionally a part of Musikfest. In practice, it just functions as another Platz. As such, it is unable to cut through the noise.

I think that for the signal to reach the people you’d want it to reach, this would need to start out as its own festival, completely separate from Musikfest and Artsquest.

Here is a cool story from Michael Seman about how the small city of Denton, TX has succeeded in leveraging its independent music scene to help its economy:

Denton, Texas, is a small city home to two universities in the Dallas-Ft. Worth metropolitan region. Several years ago, Chris Flemmons, a long-time resident and singer/songwriter for the Sub Pop band The Baptist Generals, decided he wanted to stem the annual exodus of his friends who went looking for jobs in cities outside of Denton. He thought the best way to do this was to leverage what he saw as the city’s “best export” – its music scene.

Considering that Denton has well over 100 active bands in a city of just over 110,000 residents, it wasn’t a stretch of reasoning. The city serves as home or launching pad to bands as diverse as Midlake, Bowling for Soup, Eli Young Band, Neon Indian, and Sarah Jaffe. Even the local polka band, Brave Combo, has appeared on The Simpsons and won two Grammy Awards. Musical genres represented on any given night in the rehearsal spaces, house parties, and venues that fill Denton range from hip hop and doom metal to experimental folk and noise rock.

The result of Flemmons’ efforts is 35 Denton, a “walkable 4-day music festival programmed in the heart of downtown.”

“I was hoping the festival would be an anchor that could spur a better economy here, maybe better jobs would show up and people would decide to start businesses here,” he says.

Flemmons launched the idea as a day-party during the 2005 SXSW music festival in Austin (four hours south of Denton) while slowly establishing relationships with City of Denton employees and representatives. In 2009, he enlisted a group of volunteers and situated the festival in the venues surrounding Denton’s historic square to highlight the walkability of the town with hopes of “people getting out of their cars and staying out of them.” The inaugural Denton edition was a modest success, with approximately 2,000 attendees taking in shows by mainly local and regional bands.

In 2010, an opportunity to secure the Flaming Lips as headliners transformed the festival into an event with a national profile. The all-volunteer “core staff” (which included Flemmons) enlisted an army of additional volunteers to help and attendance increased by ten-fold, resulting in a substantial economic and fiscal impact on the city (Full disclosure: I volunteered at 35 Denton while working on my Ph.D. and organized all of the daytime programming for 2010 and 2011. I received no compensation, but learned a lot about stress management).

Researchers from North Carolina State University (NC State) have developed a new way to fine-tune wireless power transfer (WPT) receivers, making the systems more efficient and functional. WPT systems hold promise for charging electric vehicles, electronic devices, and other technologies.

Researchers have previously shown that it is possible to transmit power wirelessly by using magnetic resonance, but even minor changes in how the transmitter or receiver is tuned can result in faulty power transmission when the resonant frequencies don’t match.

A new prototype developed at NC State addresses the problem by automatically and precisely re-tuning the receivers in WPT systems. The researchers focused on receivers because methods already exist that allow researchers to use electronics to precisely tune the transmitters.

“We’re optimistic that this technology moves us one step closer to realizing functional WPT systems that can be used in real-world circumstances,” says Dr. Srdjan Lukic, an assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering at NC State and co-author of a paper on the research.

Lukic)

Hur hur hur nobody wants to build anything in Hanover, so let’s kill off Allentown’s chances of getting anything either muahahahaha

Amid an anemic agenda that had no items under the “Developments” heading, board member Mark Tanczos made a joke: “There are no developments in Hanover Township, only elsewhere.” Laughter ensued.

Then colleague John Nagle one-upped him: “Look on the bright side — at least we don’t have a hole in the ground.” That’s a reference to the hockey arena construction site at 7th and Hamilton streets in Allentown, where construction has been stymied by a lawsuit filed by Hanover and other townships over the redevelopment project’s financing.

John Nagle sounds like a bully in print, but just wait til you hear the audio. They sound like the villains in a bad movie:

(Thanks: Andrew McGill)

Although voting on the issue mainly followed party lines, Rep. Patrick Meehan (R-Delaware) and Rep. Todd Platts (R-York) joined 23 other Republicans nationally to vote down the issue. Meehan said his point of contention with the House’s proposal resided in its inability to address domestic violence on college campuses.

The Senate proposal required that colleges issue reports on incidents of date rape, domestic violence and stalking, and then put policy in place to prevent these crimes. The House removed these provisions from their final proposal.

Meehan said his time in law enforcement exposed him to the issue of violence against women on college campuses, influencing his vote.

“From my years as a district attorney who prosecuted abusers, I know firsthand how important it is to reauthorize the Violence Against Women Act,” Meehan said. “But this bill missed a critical opportunity to strengthen protections for women on campus.”

Got that? The Senate bill has stronger date rape, domestic violence and stalking protections for college students. The House GOP stripped those protections out. Pat Meehan voted against the bill for this reason. Charlie Dent didn’t. Meehan’s break with the party gave him a nice wide opening to cross over too, and he didn’t take it.

We (Friends LMT) are very careful never to lump in sewer with infrastructure costs because John you are correct about LCA funding.

However… sewer expansion IS key to all this. Sewer expansion is the lifeblood of sprawl. It leads to outlying growth further and further from the core. I look at the Jaindl tract in LMT as a domino. Should it fall, sewer lines head westward further into agriculture lands to Mertztown and beyond.

Jaindl has no interest in building sustainable projects. His greenfield philosophy is at the very core of sprawl.

Jon is not totally incorrect to say the sewer lines tie into unfunded infrastructure maintenance mandates. I can cite specifics to this case…The Rt. 100 widening to 4-5 lanes (not paid for by developer), The Mertztown Rd. ‘Improvements’ ect. and downstream storm water management. ect. ect.

The Sewer lines are the key to the whole thing.

And:

I only have a couple minutes but here is my short list of items taxpayers will be paying for…. Basically it isn’t entirely wrong to say the sewer lines lead to unfunded infrastructure mandates. This whole project needs to be looked at (as all sprawl projects do) from the basis of lifespan accounting.

Rt. 100 widening – state rd.

SaurKraut Lane extension – listed as “others”

Rt. 100 and Saurkraut intersection – “according to development plans – “other”

“Improvements” of Willow Ln + Rt. 100 – unknown

“improvements” of 4 entrance rd’s to Ancient Oaks and Rt. 100 – unknown

Backup of traffic over railroad tracks in Alburtis – Unknown

Improvements on Mertztown Rd. (State Rd) – Unknown
ect. ect.

Strain of tractor trailer traffic on local road maintenance. (1 18 wheeler = X amount of cars… I forget the exact figure)

Police and Fire – This will require 3rd station with ladder capability. (acquisition of land, building, ect. act)

Schools – EPSD is at threshold for new HS

Stormwater – Subdivision plan doesn’t address Basins on township land who maintains these? Basins in this project are setup in the greenway which is township owned.

Will the private market provide mail service to rural, unprofitable areas though? Probably not at a reasonable cost. If you want everyone to have mail service, the best way to do that is the government, but then you also have to realize that it won’t be a profitable venture all the time for that government. That’s the trade-off.

This is a clear-cut case of a subsidy for low density housing choices. If the federal government charged rural residents what it actually costs to provide mail service, it would be much more expensive. Think of how much we have to spend on gas to deliver the mail every day. It costs way more than delivering the mail to people who live in denser places.

Not that many people would choose where to live solely based on how expensive it is to send and receive mail, but this is one of the things in the large basket of subsidies that makes low density housing choices less expensive than they would be in a freer land market.

It should be the other way around. The basket of government subsidies should reward people for choosing housing that is cheapest to provide public services to.

Agglomeration economies benefit from a cluster of industries in a similar sector or supply chain. I don’t think you’re going to see a bunch of utility firms cluster in Allentown’s new office buildings, but maybe there is an opportunity for a cluster of firms in the cleantech supply chain. Cleantech is a fast growing sector, and the LV is already home to a notable green jobs cluster, which includes solar firms like CEWA.

The city could be used as a massive demonstration project for the viability of clean electric energy and a smart grid system. Some goals the city could partner with PP&L on might include an electrified trolley rapid transit system, universal smart meter installation for households, businesses and government buildings, and a long-term goal for a majority of city buildings to be retrofitted for net-zero energy usage.

I think a strong commitment between a prominent utility and a city government would put Allentown in a pretty good position to attract other businesses in the cleantech supply chain: electric battery manufacturers, labor-intensive solar installation companies, etc.

John Micek:

Lehigh Valley business leaders called on the Corbett administration Wednesday to come up with a long-term solution to the state’s transportation funding woes – even if that means they’ll have to pay more at the DMV and at the pump to do it.

State government needs to “own up to the responsibility for taking care of our transportation infrastructure,” said Chad Heimbecker, of Swift Water Solutions in Allentown, and one of more than 100 local businesspeople who attended the lunchtime forum put on by the Greater Lehigh Valley Chamber of Commerce.

Heimbecker and others had a sympathetic ear in House Transportation Chairman Rick Geist, R-Blair, and Transportation Secretary Barry Schoch, who keynoted the session at the Northampton Country Club.

The Republican administration is more than aware of the problem, said Schoch, who’s been meeting with legislative leaders to try to reach an agreement on the timeline for acting on legislation that would help pay for $2.5 billion in road and bridge repairs and improvements to mass-transit and other public infrastructure.

Corbett has been sharply criticized for failing to act on the recommendations of his own Transportation Funding Advisory Commission, which returned a report last August, recommending, among other things, boosting motor vehicle registration and license renewal fees.

The panel also recommended uncapping the state’s wholesale gasoline tax, which would raise about $1.4 billion, though it’s likely that some or all of that increase could be passed along at the pump. Bills that would implement the report’s recommendations are pending in the state House and Senate.

Corbett has been publicly reluctant about raising fees and uncapping the tax during a slow economy. But that hasn’t kept business leaders from arguing that the state’s economic competitiveness depends on a well-maintained network of roads and bridges to get goods to market. Pennsylvania owns about 25,000 bridges with an average of about 50 years old.

Whether or not a Congressman enjoys voting for a bill that is bad on balance matters not at all. All that matters is Yes or No.

Charlie Dent decided that this bill was more good than bad. 23 other Republicans disagreed, and 6 Democrats voted for it. If he liked the Senate bill better, then he should have voted with the Democrats against the House bill.

Whether or not he likes doing it, Charlie Dent has been voting with the House GOP on every single one of their bills against women’s health and privacy. It makes zero practical difference.

If you don’t like this bullshit, then you need to put the other Party in charge. It’s as simple as that.