ann arbor is overrated.

A “tiered” structure for anything doesn’t usually bode well, unless it’s a wedding cake. A2’s new water rates are no exception. Under the new plan, consumers who use more water will be charged a higher rate - a “consumer” being anything from a retired couple in one of those lovely old homes on Washtenaw to a family of four to five students sharing a house. Five students living in separate apartments, where they will likely use more resources, will collectively pay less under the new plan.

Interesting post on Metafilter about the Farnsworth house, a historic house in Illinois that was recently bought by local preservationists: “One of the arguments deployed in favor of protecting the house was the concern that a buyer would move the house from its current location. If the buyer moved the house, the argument goes, it would be divorced from the setting and surroundings for which it was designed, damaging its integrity as it were. However, the preservationists want to strip the house, not of its location, but its function, i.e., being a house.” Perhaps an argument that A2 architecture authorities should keep in mind, not just about individual houses, but about the function of the town as a whole.

We are not alone in advocating that the university build more student housing. J. Bradley Moore, in today’s News letters page, is, if anything, equally insistent. He decries the “deteriorating, poorly maintained” houses that are “some of the most expensive housing units in the city.” “This cancer,” he writes, referring to the student areas, “will continue to erode the urban fabric of our city.” (He uses the word “urban” three times, so it’s pretty clear that he does mean to imply that A2 was urban at some unspecified time in the past.)

It’s nice of him to be concerned for the students’ welfare and all, but couldn’t he have picked a less lethal disease to equate us with? Maybe a benign colon polyp?

Have we got a story to pitch to the AP - how colleges are attracting presidents by building lavish housing, including million-dollar solariums. Why, back in my day, college presidents were content with a marble foyer or two. What is it with college presidents these days? They must not have any siblings and are used to having a lot of space.

Journalism cliche watch: the AP has another story about those effete, pampered college students who demand nothing but the best in housing and food,
Penn State’s new all-single dorm making a better story than U of M’s decades-long housing-construction hiatus. State schools are allegedly the most extravagant spenders, springing for frills like “high-speed Internet connections,” gyms with swimming pools and parking lots. But that’s nothing. We hear some of these universities have cafeterias at their engineering schools that stay open later than 2 p.m., rec buildings that are air conditioned in the summer - the works.

Our last entry, which contained the sort of ill-informed generalization we’ve been doing far too little of lately, seems to have generated a bit of discussion on whether A2 has a disproportionate amount of crime for a comparable city (and what a comparable city would be.) It may not, but we wonder if underreporting of crime by college students both masks and contributes to the problem.

Where do we get this idea? The Ann Arbor News police log recently contained an item about a man walking around alarmingly close to our neighborhood, looking in female residents’ windows. He watched a student get ready for school in the morning. She saw him in the mirror, watched as he left and walked down another driveway in the neighborhood (presumably not to read the meters) and called the police - hours later.

Anecdotal evidence backs this up. (Well, the News thing was anecdotal evidence, but we mean less credible anecdotal evidence.) We heard recently about a student who caught a thief in the act of stealing a CD player from his apartment. The student decided that the thief probably needed the CD player and sent him on his way.

And then there’s our roommate, who watched through the window as a naked man on our porch tried on some of her clothes at 7 a.m. She politely waited to leave the house until he decided that none of them were quite right.

“Here’s the thing about
Ann Arbor, ” writes a reader. “There is not a single surprise to be found
here. It is exactly the kind of city you would
predict it to be given its size, location, and
demographic. There are even good things about
it - exactly those good things you would predict it to
have - no more, no less. Some good bars, a few good
music stores, nice breakfast joints. It is the only
city I have ever lived in with nothing up its sleeve.”

We still find violent crime at all hours of the day surprising, but maybe we’re just sheltered.

There’s a new no-left-turn sign at Main and Summit, Talk About Town takes five paragraphs to explain. The “colorful” sign, lit up only when the turn is illegal, replaces a standard, non-lit sign that TAT describes as “1950’s style.” We had always thought of the crossed-out arrow as more Art Deco, or maybe de Stijl, but we’ll defer to their traffic sign expertise here. This is only one of two such signs in A2, the other one being at First and Liberty.

Reminder: the Ann Arbor is Overrated meetup is today! 10 p.m., Leopold Brothers.

Northfield Township officials are none too happy about the greenbelt. And already, development just outside the greenbelt area is being proposed, as predicted.

And more great science writing from the Daily. “Students’ diets include too much fat,” runs the headline of an article that’s actually about trans fats - not unlike saying “water” to mean acid rain.

The first ever Ann Arbor is Overrated meeting will tentatively be at Leopold Brothers on Wednesday, December 10, at 10:00 p.m. We hope to see everyone there - posters, non-posters, and Old Fourth Ward covert operatives alike. (Actually, we could also make it Friday - what works better?)

UPDATE: Wednesday it is. Try to let us know if you’re going to be there.