Why I am here
Long(er) form thoughts on transportation, housing, cities, etc. etc.
Twitter is fun, but…
After becoming a niche internet microcelebrity in the transit twitterverse, I saw the same exact conversations, debates, and discourse popping up again and again and things started to feel repetitive. While twitter is great for drive-by takes, it’s not as good when it comes to nuance and explaining more complicated ideas.
Why am I here?
Over the winter holiday, I took a month-long hiatus from actively tweeting, by going private and spending less time online as I traveled and spent time with my family. As I seek to be more intentional about my transit and housing advocacy, I think that focusing on medium-form blogs will prove more effective than the dopamine hit that comes with a viral tweet. That’s not to say that I will not be on twitter, I will simply be using it less, particularly when it comes to participating in the discourse du jour.
More broadly, I think that housing, transportation, and urban issues are systemically undercovered by the political media, and that actively trying to raise awareness about many of these issues is of critical importance if we want our leaders to make better choices. As politicians on both sides of the aisle pursue deeply flawed policies like highway widenings and housing bans, we need more attention to hold these leaders accountable and push them to instead make more sustainable, inclusive policy choices.
What to expect?
My goal is to post 1/2 short-form pieces every week. Most of the time I plan on writing about topics that I’ve wanted to cover for a while but felt that twitter was not a good outlet for. Expect a range of policy analyses, hot takes, and fun pieces (I am planning on doing many power rankings because everyone likes power rankings). Furthermore, this is a side project for me while I am in grad school, so please feel free to comment, ask questions, or reach out in any way with any feedback, article ideas, corrections, or anything else that you think I should know.
Looking forward to it
Love to see you start this Sam! Can't wait to read more of your work.