New Geography

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  • Public Transport’s Biggest Problem: The Public (That’s Us)

    When’s the last time you heard some futurist or management guru suggest that in the future more of us will be working at the same desk doing routine tasks on a predictable working week schedule? No? That’s just one of many problems that advocates of limitless spending on public transport need to keep in mind in dealing with the issue of urban congestion.

    Increasing urban congestion is said to cost the economy dearly and if Infrastructure Australia is to be believed, it will cost even more in the future unless something is done now. They warn the current estimate of a $13.7 billion annual cost will balloon to $53 billion by 2031.

    Congestion is without dispute a handbrake on economic productivity but the range of solutions for reducing congestion range from the outright zany (see Elizabeth Farrelly’s suggestions  for Prime Minister Turnbull as one example) to milder versions of zany. They all tend to be very expensive and many impose unacceptable compromises on our basic freedoms (such as proposals to ban cars from cities).

    Increased investment in public transport is a feature of many proposed solutions for alleviating congestion. It is true that we have under-invested in public transport systems in past decades and it’s equally true that we’ve under-invested in private transport. Basically, we’ve cheered a rising population while passing the buck for funding and delivering the infrastructure needed to support that growth to future generations. Rising congestion levels are making it feel like crunch time now.

    But there are valid questions about the capacity of public transport to alleviate congestion which are rarely getting asked. Rather than a magical silver bullet, there are a few things to keep in mind before you climb aboard the merry bandwagon of limitless investment in public transport…

    The nature of work is changing. Public transport systems work best on a hub and spoke model of employment and commuting, built on predictable schedules designed around predictable commuter needs. Central business districts of very high employment concentrations, where people work in the same workplace from day to day and for the same hours each day, are ideal candidates for public transport.  But increasingly this is looking like a 20th century model of work. Technology has been the primary driver of change, allowing more workplace flexibility and providing for increased location diversity. ‘Standard hours’ of work are being diluted and at the same time companies increasingly realise the high costs of ‘paper factories’ for administrative staff in costly CBD locations makes little sense. With this, the centralised nature of work is also being diluted and this is working against the centralised economic model that makes fixed public transport systems (especially rail) effective.

    Society is changing. There was a time when commuting trips to work in central locations were mainly a case of getting there and getting home.  Much has changed. A rising proportion of women in the workforce and how this has changed family responsibilities means that commutes to and from work are also often tied in with other objectives: dropping off or picking up school kids or children in child care is only a part of this (but one which is said to contribute to 20% of private vehicle traffic on the roads in peak periods during school terms).  Add in to this the increasing propensity to shop less but more frequently (who owns a chest freezer anymore?) and to mix in pre and post work social or recreational appointments, and you have a very different pattern of commuting which public transport will struggle to service.

    The suburban economy. A telling reality for proponents of increased public transport investment is that employment remains – and in some cases is increasingly – suburban by nature. Between 8 and 9 out of 10 of all jobs in metropolitan regions are suburban by location, and when you consider that the same proportion of residents in any metropolitan location are also suburban by residence, the problem of servicing this reality through public transport is apparent. In the last inter censal period, the proportion of metropolitan wide jobs located in the CBD actually fell in Brisbane (to 12.5%), while in Melbourne it remain unchanged (at 10%) and Sydney recorded a small rise (to 13.5%). The raw numbers of jobs in suburban locations are growing faster, as a rule, than those in CBDs.  The cost of creating a public transport system designed around suburban home to suburban workplace commutes is beyond calculation. In Australia, we will be in flying cars like the Jetsons long before this happens.

    The new and emerging economy. The way cities were designed – with concentrations of white collar workers in CBDs and with discrete areas set aside for industrial, retail or other specified activities – is no longer as important for new or emerging economies. Technology in particular means that physical place is less essential for connectivity to markets. Communication is less dependent on physical proximity. This doesn’t mean CBDs will lose their higher order function but it does mean that disruptive or emerging businesses, for which new technologies are more than just a novelty but a foundation, will have less need for the types of places offered by centralised business districts. They can locate in lower cost areas of the metropolitan area, and make use of the central business districts on occasion, rather than routine. Attracting and retaining these emerging types of businesses will also put the onus on suburban business centres to lift their game, but in many cases this isn’t difficult. Just think of any number of start ups or tech based companies you’ve read of recently and think about how many of these have been in non-traditional locations. Even when these businesses mature, their lack of interest in a CBD style presence doesn’t seem to change. Witness the many technologically innovative businesses in the USA or Europe, by way of example.

    Where does this leave us with solutions for congestion? Ironically, increasing public transport investment designed to ferry people into and out of central business areas is unlikely to make much difference to metropolitan wide congestion. It can’t – simply because only a minority of jobs (between 10% and 15% in the case of Australia’s major cities) are in these locations. People with jobs in these locations may currently have relatively high rates of public transport usage already (often 40% plus) but imagine the cost of increasing this to 80%? The cost of getting there is incalculable for cities of our size, and in any way, it would only benefit 10% to 15% of the urban workforce. Ironically, the people most likely to benefit from this type of public transport prescription tend be much higher wage earners, living close to the inner city in highly valued real estate. (Have a look at this analysis from The Pulse a couple of years ago). Yet their higher capacity to pay is not reflected in most policy debate.

    The reality is that public transport can only go so far in alleviating congestion. Social and economic change to the nature of work is changing the shape of employment decisions and has forever changed the nature of the commute. Public policy officials, urbanists and politicians who pretend that all that’s needed to ‘solve congestion’ is massively increased investment in heavy rail, light rail or dedicated busway networks are deluded: this thinking is rooted in nostalgic notions of work, unrelated to the future of work.

    And as if to demonstrate the fact we should not expect better from our various governments, when a technological innovation comes along that promises to realize the long held dream of ride sharing and increased persons per vehicle – which if widely embracedwould go a long way to solving congestion at no cost to taxpayers –  governments stand in the way. It’s called Uber. Go figure.

    Ross Elliott has more than 20 years experience in property and public policy. His past roles have included stints in urban economics, national and state roles with the Property Council, and in destination marketing. He has written extensively on a range of public policy issues centering around urban issues, and continues to maintain his recreational interest in public policy through ongoing contributions such as this or via his monthly blog The Pulse.

  • Eco-Modernism, Meet Opportunity Urbanism

    California has always been friendly ground for new ideas and bold proposals. That was a good thing when California’s economic and social policies encouraged middle-class opportunity, entrepreneurship, and social mobility, way back in the 1960s. But the contemporary California political elite tends to pioneer policies that endanger the spirit of opportunity that once made California great.

    Fortunately, some alternative ways of thinking are emerging. An environmental policy think-tank in Oakland called The Breakthrough Institute has been pioneering a new, pro-growth environmentalism called Eco-Modernism, premised on the idea of technological decoupling. That is, it is based on the principle that by intensifying the use of resources, human needs could be met with far less material. If technologies that do more with less were to be developed, more of the environment would be allowed to flourish independent of human exploitation.

    The Eco-Modernist’s answer to a problem as vast as climate change would not be to reduce emissions through cap-and-trade schemes or to put limits on the use of fossil fuels. Instead, Eco-Modernists would encourage investments in next-generation technologies capable of replacing fossil fuels. Hydroelectric and nuclear facilities have been providing such clean, carbon-free energy for decades. Eco-Modernists support government-funded construction of nuclear plants and hydroelectric systems to reduce carbon emissions and fight climate change while providing affordable energy. Technological advancement and government investment can both promote prosperity and save the environment, if used properly.

    Meanwhile, a Houston-based think-tank, the Center for Opportunity Urbanism, (directed by New Geography’s Southern California-based Executive Editor, Joel Kotkin, where I am a research associate) has been suggesting that urban planning and macroeconomic policy ought to be conducted with the goal of expanding opportunities for social mobility and a middle-class lifestyle. The center favors policies that maximize the availability of work and minimize the cost of living. In practice, this means promoting business and development-friendly tax, regulatory, and zoning codes, and investments in effective public infrastructure and education. The goals include removing unreasonable land and energy regulations that drive up the cost of housing and utilities, and investment in quality public education and in infrastructure.

    These two philosophies offer compelling, positive alternatives to the reigning green-and-blue consensus. Their shared goal: a wealthy, high-tech society, replete with opportunities for upward mobility, leaving little environmental impact. A meld of Eco-Modernism and Opportunity Urbanism could provide a thoughtful, compelling alternative to the California’s current orthodoxy; a path that would neither stifle economic growth, nor be uncaring towards the environment or the working class.
    There are at least two policy areas where the philosophies conflict, however, and if such a synthesis were to become viable, these differences would need to be addressed.

    Eco-Modernism doesn’t particularly support suburban sprawl, because it takes up more land than dense urban cores, while Opportunity Urbanism strongly encourages suburb formation. And Opportunity Urbanists support fossil fuel use for the indefinite future to provide cheap energy, while Eco-Modernists seek a gradual phasing-out of fossil fuels, and their replacement with nuclear energy.

    There’s a fairly straightforward policy compromise evident here. Eco-Modernists ought to accept suburban sprawl as important to economic growth and opportunity, and recognize that human housing needs take up comparatively little land. Opportunity Urbanists, for their part, should accept that nuclear energy can provide more sustainable and lasting energy than fossil fuels, and that a more nuclearized power system would be healthier, provide cheaper energy, and would generally provide a better quality of life for more people than fossil fuels ever could.

    If Eco-Modernists gave up their hostility to suburbia they would gain a zero-carbon nuclear platform, while Opportunity Urbanists that gave up on fossil fuels would retain an opportunity society with more advanced energy technology.

    Aside from this great compromise, Eco-Modernism and Opportunity Urbanism could complement each other very well. Intensive government investments in infrastructure, technology, and education drive the economy; market principles and expanded economic opportunity distribute its fruits. This strong-government/ market-based synthesis begins to resemble the economic philosophy of Henry Clay and Abraham Lincoln, that old Whig tradition that has unfortunately left us for the time being. Perhaps these new ideas will resurrect it.

    What better state to articulate new philosophies and a new synthesis based on innovation and opportunity, and put it into practice? California has always been about creating something new, and giving individuals the chance to create themselves anew. The state’s policy should reflect the state’s character. But two recent stories illustrate the lunacy that our political class substitutes for good policy.

    In September, a whole raft of Governor Jerry Brown’s anti-climate change legislation was soundly defeated. The boldest of these proposals called for a 50 percent cut in petroleum usage statewide by 2030 (amended later to 2050). The agenda was clear: bring California’s carbon emissions down to lead the fight against climate change through the force of example. An earlier drama occurred in June, when the Los Angeles City Council passed, nearly unanimously, a resolution to raise L.A.’s minimum wage to $15 an hour by the year 2020. Almost immediately, the move was condemned by business leaders and policy wonks across the state and nation on the grounds that it would raise the cost of doing business and drive industries out.

    This heavy-handed regulatory mode of problem-solving — a crucial component of what commentator Walter Russell Mead calls the “Blue Model” — dominates areas of California policy from water quality to food prices to pensions.

    The Republican alternative isn’t much better. Out of power and lost in the wilderness since the follies of the Pete Wilson administration, California Republicans typically unload pseudo-Reaganite market-based ideas when asked significant policy questions. In the above two cases, their solutions would be don’t put restrictions on carbon emissions, and don’t raise the minimum wage. But the problems still would not be fixed.

    New ideas need to be out there in response. Perhaps it’s time for Eco-Modernists and Opportunity Urbanists to enter into a dialogue and establish a common policy agenda for the Golden State. The dominant Democratic Party and the floundering Republicans don’t have these ideas. Someone needs to show them the way.

    Luke Phillips is a student studying International Relations at the University of Southern California. He has written for the magazine The American Interest and is a research associate at the Center for Opportunity Urbanism.

    Flickr photo by Jim Bowen: Sacramento, the California Statehouse.

  • Who Should Pay for the Transportation Infrastructure?

    Urban regions are significantly more important than any one city located within them. Housing, transportation, economy, and politics help produce uneven local geographies that shape the individual identities of places and create the social landscapes we inherit and experience. As such, decisions made within one city can ripple through the entire urban region. When affordable housing is systematically ignored by one city, neighboring cities become destinations for those who cannot afford higher housing costs. Even when the minimum wage is adjusted in one city, others cannot ignore it.

    In fact, a differential wage structure can produce diverse economic and labor geographies. Affordable housing and uneven economic development, in their turn, impact the regional transportation and infrastructure: if the cost of living and wages in one city in a particular region are high (as in San Francisco and Seattle), then low and middle-income workers will move to a more affordable neighboring city and pay a higher price, particularly in time spent, for transportation. They also pay more in fuel, and hence taxes that fund infrastructure maintenance and expansion.

    In other words, while companies and the more affluent population benefit from the agglomeration economies of alpha cities, it is the lower-wage workers and the population at large that pay for these uneven development. Therefore, a company deciding to locate in Seattle or San Francisco, or any location, does not have to bear the cost their decision imposes on urban transportation and the infrastructure needed to support their operation. Instead it’s their employees, particularly those with lower earning power, who do.

    How many LEED certified buildings and downtown redevelopment projects does it take to make up for this inequity?  Should a city be considered green, if a significant portion of its low earners has to commute to neighboring cities to afford a home? Can a city be seen as sustainable, if in a style akin to medieval cities, serfs have to leave every evening and return in the morning to make sure that the ‘creative class’ is adequately served?

    As states such as Washington engage with the old “pay as you go” policy of increasing fuel taxes to pay for the infrastructure, the question of what forces created the emergent commuting patterns remains unanswered. Was it just the commuters, acting as informed participants in the market economy, who sought to optimize their housing and transportation trade offs? Or did the locational choices of employers contribute to the growing commuting problems in the region? If commuters are subjected to “pay as you go” policies, shouldn’t employers who locate in expensive housing markets, irrespective of their employees’ income profile, be subjected to “pay as you locate” policies?

    Perhaps no metro region will make a better case study for this inequity than the area that ‘serves’ Seattle. The Puget Sound Region consists of four counties; however, to make sure that no one county that might have an economic connection with Seattle is left behind, we can look at six counties: Snohomish, King (where Seattle is located), Pierce, Kitsap, Thurston, and Mason.

    The entire urban region is served by a small number of highways, including Interstate 5. According to 2013 economic data, these six counties housed nearly 62% of all firms in the state. Furthermore, a quarter of all businesses in these counties were located within half a mile of a freeway. In terms of total employees, the six counties contained 69% of the state employment, and workplaces within half a mile of a freeway employed 37% of all employees in the counties. The inequity in the regional economic distribution is further exacerbated by the fact that the small area in West King county bounded by I-405 houses 30% of workplaces and 47% of employment, and generates a significant portion of the sales/revenue in the six counties. This area relies on I-5, I-405 and I-90 for the delivery of its employees from near and far.   

    The economic calculus of the early days of Interstate construction may have suggested that the trucking industry would benefit from this transportation infrastructure, but 1960s economists might be surprised by the type of companies now located within half a mile of freeways. In the six counties in Western Washington, the economic sectors over-represented in these geographies are: services and finance, real estate, and insurance (FIRE). Anyone driving on I-5 and I-405 (where Microsoft and other corporations are visible) can see this.  None of these workplaces require trucking. While their well-paid employees can afford to live in well-to-do places, including Bellevue and Seattle, many others reside in less expensive places such as Auburn, Tukwila, Tacoma, and Federal Way.

    A map of the region clearly suggests that neighboring counties and cities are housing those who work in West King County. Mobility has been the answer to unaffordability in this and other similar urban regions. If a city is unaffordable, is it fair to ask those who search for affordability in ‘other’ geographies pay for their so-called choices? Is this truly a choice? Are employers, current and future, asked to pay for their locational ‘choices?’ 

    Surely, we can do better than asking employees to bear the burden of a regional economic imbalance. Freeways should not be freer to some than others.  If this nation is about people paying for choices they make, then everyone should do so: employers and employees alike.

    Ali Modarres is the Director of Urban Studies at University of Washington Tacoma.  He is a geographer and landscape architect, specializing in urban planning and policy. He has written extensively about social geography, transportation planning, and urban development issues in American cities.

    Seattle photo courtesy of BigStockPhoto.com.

  • Gas Tax Still a Tax

    Governor Jerry Brown recently released a plan to find funds to fix California’s roads. Infrastructure funding is one of the essential roles of government, so it’s refreshing to hear that our otherwise dysfunctional state government is taking action on this front. But who will be paying for it? Those who use the roads most, that is, California’s drivers, who disproportionately tend to be members of the middle and working classes.

    The Brown plan has two main components: a $65 highway user fee, and a lifting of the gas tax by 6 cents per gallon. The rise of the California state gas tax from 66 cents to 72 cents and the imposition of an additional registration fee are the products of a fairly standard view on infrastructure funding. The underlying thought is that the people who use infrastructure should contribute to its maintenance. After all, this is how private enterprises and public utilities from the Washington State Ferries system to the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power stay afloat. Tolls and fees for road use are nothing new, so why should anybody be concerned with small increases in California’s fees, especially when the funds go to so crucial a cause as infrastructure repair?

    Because although these new costs may seem to be a pittance, for middle and working-class families every rise in the cost of living eats away at social mobility by reducing the amount of cash individuals can invest in homeownership, education, and other middle-class privileges

    The service-fee model of infrastructure maintenance is theoretically sound. But every policy comes with unintended consequences. In California, the cost of living is driving middle and working-class families to cheaper climes like Texas and Florida in droves every year.

    The blue regulate-and-tax model does have its uses. It’s important that there are reasonable regulations addressing every area of economic activity, and for certain public goods like vehicle and firearm registration, slight fees are sensible. But regulations have a way of cropping up frequently and never going away, even once they’ve become irrelevant. One regulation turns to four, four to twelve, and taxes and fees proliferate as well. What was once a fair and reasonable system devolves into a tangled web of incomprehensible rules and restrictions, veritably stifling growth, innovation, and freedom.

    That’s where the regulate-and-tax model of Governor Brown’s infrastructure funding plan is leading us. California drivers already face a plethora of rules and fees, and adding a gas tax and registration fee only complicates the system more. Whatever the benefits are for the state’s coffers, the results are disastrous for those who will be most affected.

    And it’s not as if the proposed new fees revolutionize California’s infrastructure in any way. The funding plan won’t reduce congestion or improve the flow of people, goods or ideas around the state. The American Interest reports on some important trends in transportation which the money-grubbing Brown plan largely ignores, including smarter cars and busses and ultimately autonomous vehicles.

    This funding plan is a short-term fix to repair crumbling infrastructure that was built decades ago. Were it something more visionary and transformative, like a series of test courses for driverless electric vehicles, perhaps the added weight on the middle class could be justified. But, like all blue policies, it is merely an attempt to repair a system that was built in another time, for another world. There’s nothing imaginative in it at all.

    There must be a better way.

    Most sensible political observers would agree that investment in infrastructure funding is one of the state’s most important responsibilities. It pays for itself in time, and the upfront cost is too high for the private sector to take on. The government is the only actor that can adequately plan for and fund infrastructure on a mass scale, and it should do it well.

    But to pay for the repair of infrastructure, we shouldn’t soak the very people whom that repair is meant to help — the masses of middle-class and working-class California drivers. While service fees are justifiable at times, there are some things, like convenient transportation and quality education, that the government should strive to provide as a workable starting point for upward mobility.

    The money has to come from somewhere. In the $168 million 2015 California state budget, only $12 million went to transportation and infrastructure development. And of the funds that went to other areas, especially the $50 million apiece going to K-12 Education and Health and Human Services, not all of the money the state spends is going into teaching children or healing illnesses. Public employee pensions make up an estimated 19% of the state’s budget, and while pensions are important for government workers, they don’t particularly benefit the broader economy or the masses of California’s population. They also tend to drive polities into bankruptcy, as the fates of Stockton, Mammoth Lakes, and San Bernardino demonstrate.

    California’s misaligned spending priorities are as titanic as those of the federal government. Funds ought to be redistributed to investments in infrastructure. More importantly, funding to other areas should be more efficient, with more money going directly to services the government is pledged to provide, so that existing taxation could be better dedicated to crucial public investments without soaking the middle and working classes.

    Budget reform is the most pressing issue California faces today. That’s why the issue of Governor Brown’s gas tax proposal is so important this year. Only under a reformed budget system can the state make investments in infrastructure, education, and innovation, and run them properly, to promote broad-based economic growth and social mobility. Slapping taxes on the lower classes is a cheap, easy way out of making the uncomfortable steps necessary to realign the state budget.

    Flickr photo by Pranav Bhatt of drivers in Los Angeles

    Luke Phillips is a student studying International Relations at the University of Southern California. He has written for the magazine The American Interest and is a research associate at the Center for Opportunity Urbanism.

  • Better Suburbs = Better Cities: Employment and the Importance of the Suburban Economy

    Australia’s inner city areas and CBDs are a focus of media and public policy attention, with good reason. But it’s also true that the real engines of employment are outside the inner city areas and that the dominant role of our suburban economy as an economic engine is grossly understated, even ignored. This is not good public policy. It’s not even common sense. 

    I have a view that the focus on urban renewal and inner urban economic development has become a policy obsession of late. It’s the trendy thing to quote Richard Florida’s ‘creative class’ theories which become the excuse to increasingly spoil inner city workers with transport, cultural and other forms of taxpayer funded infrastructure. There was a time when inner city areas, if not recapitalised, risked pockets of blight. But those days have passed. Today, it is the suburban landscape – much derided in fashionable inner city policy circles – that risks pockets of blight if not brought back to the attention of policy makers and strategically recapitalised.

    The imperative is simple: the suburban economy is so much larger than inner city areas. As a rule of thumb, between 8 and 9 out of ten jobs in our major metro regions of Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne are suburban. Only one in ten or at most two in ten, are found in the inner city areas. Achieving a 10% improvement in the suburban economic engine is hypothetically equivalent to achieving an 80% improvement in the economic performance of the inner cities. 

    So why this preoccupation with the inner cities to the detriment of the suburbs?

    First, a quick review of the evidence as provided in the Census. 

    In Brisbane, the CBD itself accounts for 12.5% of the Brisbane region’s employment numbers – one in eight. The combined CBD and inner city areas – including the CBD – account for around 170,000 jobs.  That’s not a very big number.  As a proportion of state-wide jobs, it’s less than 9%. As a proportion of the 925,000 jobs across the metro region of Brisbane, it’s less than one in five – and that’s with including the near city areas like South Brisbane, Fortitude Valley and Spring Hill. 

    In Sydney in 2011, the CBD accounted for only 8.3% of all jobs in New South Wales, and for only 13.4% of all jobs in wider metropolitan Sydney. Including the surrounding areas of Pyrmont, Ultimo, Potts Point, and Woolloomooloo raises this share to just 9.7% of all jobs in the state and 15.6% of jobs in metropolitan Sydney. So one in ten state-wide jobs and one in every six or seven metro wide jobs. 

    In Melbourne, the CBD is home to just 7.6% of the state’s total employment, and to just 10.6% of all jobs in greater Melbourne. Including the ‘fringe’ locations of Docklands and Southbank sees this share rise to only 10.3% of the state and 14.3% of greater Melbourne, which is one in ten of all jobs in the state and one in seven metro wide jobs.

    In none of these centres is the concentration of inner city jobs close to one in four metro wide jobs. Yet if you asked a room full of people – industry and planning experts included –a significant proportion will think the figures are much higher. I’ve done this several times at workshops and presentations and there are a worrying proportion of people who seem to think the figure is more than 50%. A wider survey of the general public might even put the figure higher – it would be an interesting exercise to find out.

    Suburban employment centres are by nature much more widely dispersed. Teachers, doctors, dentists, tradies, factory workers, shop workers and so on do not rely on close proximity to each other to perform their work, as do CBD employment markets. In the suburban business districts of our metro regions, workforce concentrations typically fall into a band somewhere between 3,000 and 5,000 jobs per square kilometre. Places with super-regional shopping centres will tend to be at the upper end of that scale while industrial areas at the lower end. CBDs, by contrast, can easily have pockets where the employment density sails past 10,000 or 20,000 jobs per square kilometre.

    But however dispersed these suburban jobs may be, it doesn’t make them any less important to the economy – particularly given their dominant role as employment and economic engines.

    So why then the preoccupation with the inner cities and why the dearth of policy interest in the suburbs? 

    Perhaps the inner cities are seen as more glamorous? There are more higher paying jobs and more CEOs to the square mile than anywhere else. It’s where cultural facilities and seats of government are found. It’s where the most expensive real estate is. Basically, any concentration of money plus power is always going to grab attention. It’s an age when celebrity tweets capture more media and public attention than important issues of economic policy. The CBDs and inner city areas are widely seen as ‘where it’s at’ and where the cool people are. ‘Nuff said?

    Sadly, even policy makers seem to have fallen for the inner city bling over suburban substance. The importance of transport workers, freight workers, teachers, doctors, tradies or suburban white collar employment to the economy receives next to no policy comment. The performance of suburban transport systems, the need to promote higher employment density in key centres, the pathways by which property owners could be encouraged to partner with public sector agencies for suburban centre improvement – none of these seem to appear as workshop or forum topics promoted by any of the leading industry groups. 

    I suspect there’s also a strong element of cultural cringe as it applies to our suburban heritage. Frequently mocked as a cultural wasteland or ‘home of the bogan’, there’s an almost desperate desire to prove we’re an advanced society by focussing on the lifestyles and achievements of our inner city areas and the people who live and work there, to the exclusion of all else. ‘Urbanists’ grab headlines and appear as keynotes at any number of planning conferences. Sub urbanists (and there are plenty of them) are evidently persona non grata.

    It’s as if a prosperous, successful and highly efficient suburban economy simply doesn’t cut it in the global race for attention and status amongst cities, which seems almost exclusively focussed on the how much like downtown New York or downtown Paris every other city can pretend to be. 

    The reality is that the inner city economy is reliant on – not divorced from – the performance of the suburban economy. In the same way that there can be no public sector without a profitable private sector, I suggest that a strong and prosperous inner city economy relies heavily on a strong and prosperous suburban economy. And in the same way that strategic infrastructure and policy decisions are needed for the inner city to operate at optimum efficiency, the exact same applies to suburban economies.  

    The question is whether this balance is being achieved.

    Ross Elliott has more than 20 years experience in property and public policy. His past roles have included stints in urban economics, national and state roles with the Property Council, and in destination marketing. He has written extensively on a range of public policy issues centering around urban issues, and continues to maintain his recreational interest in public policy through ongoing contributions such as this or via his monthly blog The Pulse.

  • Building a New California

    The Golden State has historically led the United States and the world in technology, quality of life, social innovation, entertainment, and public policy. But in recent decades its lead has ebbed. The reasons for this are various. But there is one area of decay whose story is a parable for California’s other plights—that area is infrastructure.

    California’s infrastructure, like California, has had a golden past full of larger-than-life personalities and heroic deeds. But in recent decades the state has lost its innovative edge, resting on the laurels of its past successes without adequately preparing for any such bold endeavors in the future. California’s infrastructure imperative, then, is this: to accomplish bold, ambitious projects that promise a transformed and vibrant future for California, yet are still practical and sensible, and have proven viability.

    Should California manage to get its act together and embark upon a course of infrastructure renewal, it will be taking one of several steps necessary to transform itself into an opportunity society again. Systemic reforms beyond infrastructure will be necessary to renew Californian society and lower the cost of living, raise the quality of life, and create opportunities for entrepreneurs and middle-class families. But infrastructure is a fantastic place to start.

    Aside from basic infrastructure renewal like fixing up roads and bridges, expanding our water storage capacity, and reforming public policy and internet regulation to provide a world-class infostructure, there are three main physical infrastructure projects California should be focusing on to bring the state forward into the 21st Century. These are driverless car networks, a new nuclear energy grid, and an archipelago of desalination plants.

    The current strategy for the future of California’s transportation system is wildly unrealistic. Passenger rail is simply too ineffective to justify building an expensive new High Speed Rail system that wouldn’t even be able to pay for itself. Commuter rail usage rates have been on the decline. A better way forward would be to embrace the power of computerization in the transport sector, and put our population on a path towards using self-driving cars.

    The benefits of a driverless car network are numerous. They include greater safety, optimized traffic flow, reduced congestion, higher productivity, and cheaper, more effective travel for those unable to afford a car. The possibilities are endless. Already a test range at the University of Michigan is exploring what a driverless car system would look like. One could expect such a system to seriously reduce traffic congestion, improve transport speeds, conserve energy, nearly eliminate accidents, increase worker productivity, and generally revolutionize driving.

    So how could California go about transitioning to a driverless car system? In the short run, there wouldn’t be much in the way of new construction to worry about. It’s mostly a question of technological investment and regulatory reform.

    First, the state of California should partner with major universities and tech firms currently working on driverless car systems, and fund research and innovation projects geared towards enhancing the vehicles.

    Once driverless cars are tested, California should work to lower the barriers to their deployment. This might include reforming insurance and licensing laws, to make it easier for people to purchase one. It would also help to offer incentives for middle-class individuals to purchase these new vehicles, too, such as tax deductions.

    As with all public goods and services, government policy towards transportation ought to be designed with providing the widest array of convenient options for consumers, rather than forcing people into a single system or expecting them to use costly, uneconomical, heavily subsidized services. The call for a driverless car system is not to rid the roads of traditional vehicles. Nor is this a call to abandon rail or buses or cease investing in bike paths and walkways. This plan, rather, would seek to make one particularly middle-class-convenient option more available.

    The next area California should focus on is its energy generation system, through a new nuclear generator fleet. Currently California generates energy with a combination of coal, oil, natural gas, and renewable power. Governor Brown has launched ambitious initiatives to have as much as 50% of the state’s electricity generated by renewables within a few decades (which doesn’t do anything to make energy cheaper for working and middle-class citizens and families, much less businesses.) Meanwhile the state’s use of fossil fuels for energy generation for backup continues to grow as unstable renewable energy sources go online.

    We need an ambitious energy infrastructure plan if we are to both provide cheap, readily-available energy to the masses of California’s citizens (and thus provide them with a lower cost of living and higher quality of life) and to continue the state’s commitment to combatting climate change. Incidentally, there is a way to achieve both of these goals, while growing the state’s economy at the same time. California should open its fossil fuel fields to exploitation, levy a carbon tax on the profits, and use that revenue from the carbon tax to fund an ambitious nuclear program that could generate a majority of the state’s electricity within a few decades.

    California’s antipathy toward fossil fuels has led it to impose onerous regulations that hurt growth and provide little environmental reward; the deposits of oil and gas off the coast and in the interior have been made even more accessible by the fracking revolution, and if it wanted to, California could become an energy giant. So California could open its fields for drilling, fighting off regulations and lawsuits by various anti-oil interest groups, and begin reaping huge revenues through the imposition of a light carbon tax.

    This light carbon tax would go towards funding research in advanced nuclear energy, and towards a fund for establishing a fleet of a dozen or so advanced nuclear plants across the state. This would signify California’s continued commitment to reducing carbon emissions and adopting advanced energy.

    These new nuclear reactors are not the hulking behemoths of Three Mile Island. Some new reactors have been designed to be as small as a car and power a small city. They are extremely safe. And, far more importantly, nuclear energy is the gift that keeps on giving. In civilizational terms, nuclear energy can power our society forever. And it provides far more bang for the buck than solar or wind, the current green fetish power sources.

    Finally, California seriously needs to confront the water scarcity challenge that has perennially afflicted it throughout its history, and seek a permanent solution for providing cheap and plentiful water to the residents of this parched coastal strip. Desalination is the best way to secure that.

    We are currently in the midst of what appears to be the worst drought California has faced in its entire history as a state, and this does not bode well for the future growth of California. Adequate water is one of those resources that every civilization has depended on. Although California is not literally “down to one year of water” as a recent LA Times article misleadingly claims, we are in a shortage that is economically catastrophic, environmentally devastating, and entirely unnecessary- for it is man-made. Better water policy in past years, allowing Californians to use more of their river water, could have staved it off, as could better storage infrastructure construction. But these projects and policies were never put in place to the degree necessary to stop this drought from happening.

    Rationing and conservation may indeed be the short-term solution, but we need to look to a longer-term solution- and buying more water from other states doesn’t solve the problem.

    Many arid coastal countries – including Australia, Israel, and some of the Persian Gulf states – use desalination plants to water their burgeoning populations, and it is something of a miracle that Southern California has gotten by without such systems. We have a long coastline on which we could build numerous desalination plants, powered by the aforementioned fleet of nuclear reactors. This system could more than satisfy the needs of California residents, farmers, and industries, while simultaneously reducing the pressure on our streams, rivers, and reservoirs.  It would be incredibly capital-intensive and costly, and would perhaps lead to some unforeseen environmental consequences. But it is a better water policy than what we are doing now.

    This infrastructure program would likely require budget, tax and regulatory reform, as well as the broad support of the majority of Californians. It would represent a reasonable response to the now excessive power of the environmental lobby.

    But more than fiscal reform and public support, it would require a newfound political moxie in both the private sector and the public sector. We need a new generation of visionary William Mullhollands, Henry Huntingtons,  and Pat Browns to pursue these and other reforms to turn our Golden State golden again.

    Can it be done? With some political maneuvering and engineering ingenuity, sure. Will it be done? That’s a choice that our next generation of political leaders will have to make for themselves.

    Luke Phillips is a student studying International Relations at the University of Southern California. He is an editorial intern for the magazine The American Interest and a research associate at the Center for Opportunity Urbanism.

  • Short Film: Emigrate

    Emigrate tells the story of Jacob, a South-Asian teenager who has just graduated high school in the United States. His parents are immigrants and thus far he has kept his family life and his personal life clearly delineated. However, when his worlds collide he is forced to confront his own dishonesty or lose the relationships that matter most to him. 

    The film was independently produced in the fall of 2014 by a collaboration of filmmakers from Chapman University. 

    EMIGRATE from Ijaaz Noohu on Vimeo.

    Born in Sri Lanka and raised in Los Angeles, Ijaaz Noohu has spent the last four years studying Economics, English, and Television at Chapman University in Orange County. As an aspiring filmmaker, he hopes to use his unique perspective to tell stories of humanity, identity and hope. More of his work can be found at: ijaaznoohu.com.

  • Where We Live: The Case for Suburban Renewal

    The advent of Australian ‘urban renewal’ in the 1990s has been such a blistering policy success that it’s now arguably well out of proportion to the realities of need based on where people actually live. It’s as if the magic “5 kilometre ring” around our city centres has become a policy preoccupation and an industry obsession. One look at the evidence though suggests perhaps it’s time we turned attention to the suburbs, where the vast majority of us live, to restore some balance.

    The middle and outer suburbs may not capture the interest of intellectual elites or (with some exceptions) provide the homes of the wealthiest in our society, but they do continue to house the vast majority of Australians. All the hype and excitement about “inner city café lifestyles” belies the statistics which show in stark reality that Australia is not only a nation of city dwellers, but within those cities we are overwhelmingly a nation of sub-urban, as opposed to urban, dwellers. 

    Gushing media reports about inner city real estate markets and frantic development activity, public transport projects, parkland projects, bikeways, cultural facilities and the like fail to mention that only 10% of us, at most, live within the 5 kilometre ring. A thumping majority of 90% to 95% of Australians, in the major cities of Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane, live outside the 5 kilometre ring of privilege. As a rule, 70% to 80% of us live further than 10 kilometres from the city centre, in outer-middle and outer suburban areas. It’s also true that the majority of us not only live beyond the inner city, but we also work outside it. Our pattern of living is not only overwhelmingly suburban, but so is our economy. (More on this next month).  

    So how do our three largest cities shape up on the evidence?

    Sydney


    There are just over 330,000 Sydney residents living within 5 kilometres of the city centre. There are a total of 4.34 million people living within 50 kilometres of the city centre, so that’s a fairly small 8% of the total who call the inner city home.   Twice as many people – 675,000 – live from 5 to 10 klms out and the numbers and percentages continue to rise the further out you go. They may live at lower densities in the outer suburbs but numerically they outnumber inner city residents ten to one. If we think of suburbs from 10 to 20 klms out as ‘outer middle’ areas and those over 20 klms out as ‘outer’, then 80% of the Sydney population lives further than 10 klms from the city centre. 

    Melbourne



    There are fewer people living within 5 klms of the Melbourne City Centre than even Brisbane. Of the total 4.154 million people who live within 50 klms of the city centre, this is just 5% of the total. There are a further 13% of Melburnians who call the 5 to 10 klm band home, while a very substantial 82% of Melburnians call the outer-middle and outer bands home.  Even if the number of people living within the 5 klm ring of Mebourne’s CBD doubled, it would have next to no impact on the overwhelmingly suburban distribution of the population across the Melbourne metro area.

    Brisbane



    In Brisbane, there are around a quarter of a million people within 5 klms of the city centre. That represents 11% of the total 2.15 million people who live within 50 klms of the centre. A further 17% or 356,500 live from 5 to 10 klms out, which actually makes Brisbane the more centrally populated of the three cities studied. 72% of Brisbane residents live further than 10 klms out in middle-outer and outer suburbs which is still a very large majority but not quite the 80% of Sydneysiders nor the 82% of Melburnians. 

    Observations

    One observation worth making is that our governance systems aren’t well designed to deal with large metro regions. Sydney has an astonishing 38 local governments across its metro area, and Melbourne has 12. Brisbane is the exception, with one large local authority providing local government services to 1.13 million people. But even in Brisbane’s case that leaves a further 1 million people living within 50 klms of the city centre governed by a number of different local authorities.

    I am not suggesting we should have single local governments for our entire metro areas. In fact there are some good reasons for the ‘local’ in local government to focus on smaller areas. However, if we want metro wide solutions to apply policy attention and taxpayer funds equitably to suburban and urban areas, local governments may not be best vehicle. You could hardly expect, for example, the highly exclusive Sydney City Council – which at 25 square kilometres covers an area not much larger than its CBD and nothing more – to put up their hand and say “we don’t really need NSW taxpayers to subsidise our outrageously expensive light rail extension because we understand there are higher priorities for people in Bankstown or Hornsby.” 

    Which means that state governments, working with local and federal agencies, are the ones needed to adopt a broader governance approach to metro regions, with a focus on sustaining and developing the suburban economy along with the inner urban.

    The other, more glaring observation is that democracy seems to be failing the suburbs. Nine out of ten city dwellers may live in the suburbs and more eight in ten also work there, but increasingly it’s hard to shake the suspicion that it’s the people who live and work within a 5 klm ring of our city centres that are making the decisions and spending the money. 

    From politicians to heads of government departments, media organisations and industry leaders: the well off and the influential are overwhelmingly from the inner city. They live there, they work there, and primarily socialise and circulate within this hot house of privilege and influence. It may also explain why in some urban planning circles, there is an increasing sense of anti-suburban elitism creeping in. The suburbs and their ‘McMansions’ are topics of disdain for some, which is a pity. 

    The people who live in the middle-outer and outer suburbs of our cities in the main don’t live there because they have to: they live there because they want to. They don’t deserve derision, nor are they looking for sympathy. It may surprise inner city elites, but many have little interest in battling congested inner city traffic or paying excessive real estate prices or living in crowded inner urban arrangements or paying exorbitant parking fees for the privilege of working or living in or simply visiting in the inner city and what it has to offer.

    Yet while numerically superior in every way, the suburban existence remains largely shunned in policy circles. The more that the intelligentsia become isolated from the suburban heartland of our economy and way of life, the weaker we become as a nation. 

    Ross Elliott has more than 20 years experience in property and public policy. His past roles have included stints in urban economics, national and state roles with the Property Council, and in destination marketing. He has written extensively on a range of public policy issues centering around urban issues, and continues to maintain his recreational interest in public policy through ongoing contributions such as this or via his monthly blog The Pulse.

  • High Density Housing’s Biggest Myth

    Advocates of higher density housing development in Australia’s major cities – inner city areas in particular – are fond of pointing to a range of statistics as evidence of rising demand. Dwelling approvals, dwelling commencements, tower crane counts and various other sources, both reputable and dodgy, are referenced and then highly leveraged to support claims that our housing preferences have fundamentally changed in favour of high density apartments. But what’s the one inescapable fact that these advocates are missing?

    “Higher density living on the rise” is typical of the light weight PR puffery that passes for market analysis these days.  This piece is typical of the boosterism: 

    “Since 2008/09 multi-unit housings’ share of dwelling approvals in Queensland has jumped from 31% to 46%. Much of the increase can be attributed to an increase in approvals for high-rise apartments, with the sector’s share of dwelling approvals doubling between 2008/09 and 2013/14, from about 12% to approximately 24%.” So far, correct.

    But it goes on to draw this unjustified but widely supported conclusion: “the popularity of apartment living in the larger capital cities had been driven by a number of factors including decreasing housing affordability and the changing lifestyle of baby boomers and young professionals.”

    Or how about this piece of PR chasing nonsense pumped out by a bank no less: “Australians are favouring smaller, more affordable homes, with approvals for the construction of flats, townhouses and semi-detached houses nearing their highest level in 20 years.”

    What’s wrong with these conclusions? Simply this: rising dwelling starts for apartments in inner city areas do not necessarily reflect ‘changing lifestyles’ or any ‘popularity’ for this product by home buyers. What it does reflect is a (so far) ravenous investor appetite for the product. This is entirely different to an owner occupier appetite. If owner occupiers were buying these apartments in large numbers, you could then conclude that inner city apartment living was becoming more and more popular. But speculative investors have no intention of living in the product they’re buying.

    Owner occupiers in the main aren’t looking for tiny one or two bedroom units. Some developers have targeted the owner occupier unit market, and their designs feature more three and even four bedroom units, spacious in design and with features designed for living in as adults or families. The price points are vastly different. This is so far a niche market which is performing strongly, but it’s completely different to the cookie-cutter apartment stock which is driving the stats.

    What is happening in Australia now, and which is being reflected in the dwelling stats for apartment construction, is a nation-wide frenzy of speculative investment in inner city apartments, fuelled by negative gearing, SMSFs, foreign buyers and the search for returns in a very low yielding market. For many apartment projects, more than 80% or 90% of the stock is sold to investors, not to people with the intention of living there. This includes a significant proportion of first home buyers as investors, as Michael Pascoe recently pointed out. 

    To meet the investor market, apartments are getting smaller and smaller – to meet the price points demanded by investors. Typically, most projects offer a mix of one and two bedroom units only – and these are designed to squeeze every square inch of efficiency out of them. Construction economics and pricing is all about size, features and finishes and every dynamic is put under the microscope and cut from the project if it means the unit offering can be sold for less without sacrificing margin. Many continue to be offered through project selling agencies or “investment channels” in order to achieve a certain level of pre-sales. ‘Rental guarantees’ from developers provide investors with some certainty that their investment will perform predictably for the first year or two. A successful project is one that is sold out, preferably pre-sold. Actually being occupied is another thing altogether.

    What this is doing is creating a large pool of rental units of similar size and design and in similar locations. And contrary to the sort of froth and bubble many commentators attach to the ‘rising popularity’ of apartments, many are vacant: simply locked up and not used by their owners (often overseas buyers). Others are looking for tenants, but can’t rent for what investors need to get. Inner city apartment vacancy rates are rising, and rents are starting to fall: a sure sign of market where supply is beginning to exceed demand. 

    ‘Official’ vacancy stats produced by Real Estate Institutes only count the properties actively being marketed for rent. The ones that are simply unoccupied and not available for rent don’t form part of the figures. A recent study in Melbourne reviewed water consumption in a number of Docklands Towers and concluded that those apartments with next to no water consumption were effectively empty. They put the vacancy at nearly one in four. Or you can simply look at these towers at night, and count the lights that are on, and draw your own conclusion. Or maybe ask some restaurant or shop owners who took leases in new projects on the promise of “a bustling inner city café society” what the trade is really like.

    Increasingly, smart developers are selling sites with approvals in place but before a sod has been turned. In some cases they’re selling even before the approval has been obtained. Why go through the grief of developing something when someone else is happy to pay you a premium many times what the site cost you? 

    I don’t actually see anything wrong with any of this. Property markets going through booms and busts are not a new thing. Just ask industry people on the Gold Coast. Or have a look at CBD office markets. Plus, if it weren’t for the frenzy of activity we’re seeing in the apartment market now, there’d be precious little else going on. So it’s keeping an industry alive, and all those whose jobs depend on it. Investors are entitled to take risks and they are just as entitled to lose money as make it. There are no guarantees. 

    But please, stop suggesting that what we’re seeing is anything but a case of investor-fueled activity. Investors are buying a financial product, not a lifestyle choice. To suggest it means Australian society is surrendering a three or four bedroom home in favour of a one bedroom apartment is stretching the conclusions that can be drawn from the stats way way way too far.

    Ross Elliott has more than 20 years experience in property and public policy. His past roles have included stints in urban economics, national and state roles with the Property Council, and in destination marketing. He has written extensively on a range of public policy issues centering around urban issues, and continues to maintain his recreational interest in public policy through ongoing contributions such as this or via his monthly blog The Pulse.

  • Corrupt Illinois: Not A Few Bad Apples

    Despite a huge advantage in name recognition, massively more money, and a lift from President Obama, Rahm Emanuel failed to avoid a run-off Tuesday. It seems many Chicago residents are beginning to realize that our present system – and leaders – are leading us off a precipice.

    In the adopted home of a President and the most fabled political machine in the country, the issue here is the factors that drive political decisions. It is increasingly clear that the old political science sense that politicians are less self-interested than regular people – suckers, taxpayers – is dead wrong.  Many American political scientists will claim with enormous conviction that those engaged in the marketplace are more self-interested than those involved in the political process. Liberal scholars and the mainstream media constantly complain about market failure; much less attention is paid to political failure.

    Not all academics studying politics have been so naïve about the political process. Over 100 year ago FDR’s influential progressive advisor Frederic C. Howe, in his long forgotten book, Confessions of a Monopolist explained the essence of politics:

    This is the story of something for nothing—of making the other fellow pay. This making the other fellow pay, of getting something for nothing, explains the lust for franchises, mining rights, tariff privileges, railway control, tax evasions. All these things mean monopoly, and all monopoly is bottomed on legislation.

    Seeking special privileges, Howe reasoned, leads to corruption. By the 1960s this notion was explored by economists Gordon Tullock and Anne Krueger, who developed the concept of “rent-seeking.” They saw how politics represents often merely an investment towards plundering the taxpayers for private gain.

    Now we have a modern day examination of this phenomena, particularly in the crony capital of the world, Illinois. Political scholars Thomas Gradel and Dick Simpson have written a path breaking  book  from The University of Illinois Press on corruption in the state of Illinois. This book is the most comprehensive survey of corruption in the state of Illinois ever published. The lessons here are useful well beyond Illinois. You’ll never understand, for example, Barack Obama’s political career unless you read this book. Gradel and Simpson also remind us that Chicago isn’t the only corrupt place in Illinois.  The corrupt politicians, judges, police, and government bureaucrats are catalogued here and backed by empirical evidence.

    Illinois’ biggest town was corrupt from the start. Even the incorporation vote to start Chicago was fraudulently conducted. Chicago’s City Council is the epitome of the place’s corruption. Gradel and Simpson present the evidence:

    Thirty-three Chicago aldermen and former aldermen have been convicted and gone to jail since 1973. Two others died before they could be tried. Since 1928 there have been only fifty aldermen serving in the council at any one time. Fewer than two hundred men and women have served in the Chicago city council since the 1970’s, so the federal crime rate in the council chamber is higher than in the most dangerous ghetto in the city.

    Those Chicago Aldermen who went on to commit crimes represent all elements of society. White, black, college graduates, rich, poor, felonies on the job, felonies off the job, and more. But, Chicago’s city council isn’t the only corrupt place. Chicago’s police department has faced its’ share of negative publicity:

    Since 1960, more than three hundred Chicago police officers have been convicted of serious crimes, such as drug dealing, beating civilians, destroying evidence, protecting mobsters, theft, and murder. However, this doesn’t include all the illegal and unethical activities that have gone undetected or were covered up internally by the police department.

    The Emanuel administration still has to deal with police behavior from decades ago. Commander Jon Burge, Chicago’s most infamous police torturer, has already cost the city $120 million in settlements and legal fees with the meter still running.  William Hanhardt, who was elevated to Chief of Detectives after joining the police force in 1953, rose through the ranks to be the Chicago Mob’s most important asset on the force.  He was eventually indicted for running a nationwide jewelry theft ring. This was not any ordinary theft ring. As U.S. Attorney Scott Lassar clearly stated: "Hanhardt’s organization surpasses in duration and sophistication -just about any other jewelry theft ring we’ve seen in federal law enforcement."  Chicago’s City Council never held hearings on who Hanhardt promoted in his long career and the long racketeering enterprise he ran.

    This isn’t the fantasy land Barack Obama of  apologist David Maraness, or Jonathan Alter (whose mother was the first woman to be slated for Cook County office by Mayor Richard J. Daley)  concocts.  

    The big question: Was Barack Obama separate from the ethical swamp of Illinois politics? Obama was a foot soldier of the Daley machine when Congressman Bobby Rush had the nerve to run against Mayor Richard M. Daley in 1999, Daley needed to send Congressman Rush a message.  The Daley operation “encouraged” Illinois State Senator Barack Obama to challenge Congressman Bobby Rush. Obama lost, but won the loyalty of Mayor Daley.  The Chicago machine pushed Obama for the Illinois State Senate, the U.S. Senate, and then the Presidency.  Barack Obama was there when the chips were down.  As one Obama observer explained, he endorsed Daley last time in 2007 despite the corruption and the many civil rights violations. Daley, for his part, backed Obama in his successful run for the white House.

    President Obama previously taught constitutional law classes at one the country’s most prestigious law schools, the University of Chicago. Given President Obama’s civil rights knowledge as a law school professor,  President Obama’s 2007 endorsement of Daley for mayor remains even more perplexing. Recent revelations about a Chicago police “black site” – much along the lines of CIA interrogation centers — seem to have done little to change his embrace of the machine.

    Clearly the cord to the machine has hardly been cut. Just look at who President Obama hired as top staff members. Daley fundraiser Rahm Emanuel served as Chief of Staff. Mayor Daley’s brother William followed him as Chief of Staff.  Another powerful figure is Mayor Daley’s deputy Chief of Staff, Valerie Jarret. The head of the less than successful Chicago Public School system, Arne Duncan, got promoted Secretary of Education. Chicago machine donor and housing fraudster Penny Pritzker got appointed to Secretary of Commerce.  

    But don’t rely just on me. Read Thomas Gradel and Dick Simpson— you may realize the price we all, not just in Chicago or Illinois pay, for not confronting the culture of corruption.

    Steve Bartin is a resident of Cook County and native who blogs regularly about urban affairs. He works in Internet sales.

    Official White House Photo by Pete Souza.