ann arbor is overrated.

Looks like Lower Town is the “older residential area” considering some creative zoning approaches. Their “vision”:

We are dedicated to the protection and improvement of the life of our distinctive area of the city.

We believe that the best qualities of our Northside neighborhood can be sustained through effective consultation and planning, in a spirit of tolerance and cooperation.

We hold that the distinctive boundaries of our present neighborhood are the Huron River to the west and south, Barton Drive to the north, and Plymouth Road to the east.

Now those are some strong convictions. Or they’re stealing a page from Stephen Colbert (”I believe in America. I believe it exists. My gut tells me I live there. I feel that it extends from the Atlantic to the Pacific, and I strongly believe it has 50 states.”)

The latest A2 NIMBY tactic: “microzoning.” Writes a poster to the Cyburbia forums:

I live in an older residential area of Ann Arbor, Michigan, which contains a mix of single-family homes, duplexes, and multi-unit buildings. The entire area is currently zoned for duplex or multi-unit, but in order to preserve the current, diverse character of the neighborhood, we would like to protect against pressures to replace single-family homes with multi-unit dwellings or to subdivide single-family homes into multiple units.

Our neighborhood association has proposed allowing small clusters of properties — as small as a few lots — to be changed to single-family zoning, at the property owners’ request. Needless to say, this wouldn’t change anything immediately or stop all redevelopment, but it might provide some stability in the long term, as properties get bought and sold.

The city has said that they are not aware of this being done in other places. Has anyone heard of this sort of zoning?

We are calling this “micro-zoning,” though clearly that isn’t a generally used term for this.

Naturally, though, our concerned resident doesn’t “want to stop all change, but rather make sure that happens in a way that allows input from the community.”

The oddly dull, fingerpaint-reminiscent rainbow tiles covering the new McKinley Towne [sic] Centre [sic] are bad enough, but did they have to take down the time and temperature (or would that be tyme and tempreature?) display? It always seemed to feel your pain as you walked down Division. “Yes, it really is 2 degrees. At 3:42 in the afternoon!”

Steve Martin commits the most egregious mangling we’ve ever seen of our eastern neighbor’s name — “Ipsilante” — failing to recognize that most of Ypsi’s comic potential lies in the initial “Y”. But it’s probably good that he didn’t go with A2; the nexus of Martin’s New Yorker “satire” pieces and Tree Town could have created an irresistible singularity of overratedness.

UPDATE: Seems like someone miscopied Martin’s impeccably spelled essay, rendering our connection between these two overrated things gossamer-web ethereal rather than merely fishing-line tenuous.

Explosive allegations at the Artisans’ Market threaten to pit knitter against crocheter, dollmaker against varietal honey producer, in a battle for the soul of Tree Town. When an upstart knitter attempted a hostile takeover of the craft bazaar, “Veteran artisans … raised questions about [her] ability to produce so many sweaters,” writes Judy McGovern. “The result? Sweatergate,” a scandal the likes of which hasn’t been seen in A2 since Birdlistgate.

An adorably naive incoming grad student asks about housing options. “I am starting to look into housing now to beat some of the rush … I would really like to find a nice apartment in a close but quiet neighborhood.” Ha. Ha. Ha. Has it really been just six years since that April when we eagerly perused the U’s housing page with the same fairytale visions of lots of available nice apartments close to campus with prices that obey some kind of rational market forces?

“But no one actually compares Ann Arbor to New York,” A2 apologists like to argue. Some fans of Tree Town do seem to find such a prosaic comparison inadequate. Says the lead in the new production of “Camelot” coming to Detroit, “My boyfriend went to the University of Michigan and has been talking about Ann Arbor. They talk about it like it’s a modern-day Camelot.” Le Morte d’Arbor? Well, as long as the spires of what Tennyson called “tower’d Camelot” don’t exceed three or four stories and there’s some kind of Castle Community Conversations group to raise awareness about binge mead drinking.