New Geography

Author: Richard Morrill

  • New Urbanist Cities, Class and Children

    The United States has experienced a revolutionary change in social structure over the last 25 years, and this in turn has led to a significant change in settlement, especially the geography of many metropolitan areas.

    At the risk of over-generalization, our society has shifted from a structure based on economic class to one based more on education and social values. The major parties confusedly reflect these changes. One astounding feature of our society is that wealth inequality has returned, not just to the levels of 1928, but even to 1913, and yet there is almost no sense of outrage as a basis for the mobilization of the relative have-nots (this helps explain the peculiarity of the 2008 elections).

    Over this period, or somewhat longer, there has also been a deepening division of the population on what I’ll call the nature of educational outcomes. I used the word astounding above, and I’ll use it again to denote the scary inequality in factual knowledge and reasoning capacity of people, despite rising official levels of attainment. So there really is (as Rove et. al argued) an “intelligentsia” or intellectual elite. The hallmarks of this new “class” is higher education, environmentalism, liberalism or tolerance on social and cultural difference (religion, race, sexual preferences, etc) but also surprising affluence – almost what the word “liberal” meant in 19th and early 20th century Britain.

    In my sphere of urban geography and planning, these characteristics have led to a surprising consensus on a “New Urbanist” vision (very popular word) – a return to a lost golden age, pre-suburb and pre-automobile, and in fact ghastly for most people. The movement began back in the 1960s (anti-sprawl, anti-suburb, anti-car, pro urban village) and came to dominate intellectual thought on city form and planning practice by the 1980s, and has certainly been given extra impetus by the “peak oil” crisis following 2001.

    The urban geographic manifestation of this social and intellectual change has taken place through a revitalization and transformation of selected central cities, especially those with major universities.

    This has taken three main forms: first, gentrification (displacement of poor and minority families by more educated and affluent professionals), but including idealist students and empty-nesters (returning from the suburbs); second, redevelopment or “densification” through large-scale rezoning from single-family home and low-rise arterial businesses, to multi-story apartments (from row houses to high towers); especially in designated major urban centers, which, third, will be linked to the downtown by rail transit.

    While this movement has not, in fact, slowed the pace of suburban and exurban growth, even in cities where New Urbanist planning prevails, it has significantly altered several core urban cityscapes and concurrently, the social and economic structure of these cities. Typically lower and middle class families and minorities have been displaced out of the core, often to older suburbs, and been replaced by larger numbers of singles, or childless couples and empty nesters, many educated professionals. The shift of housing stock from single-family homes to apartments (rental or condo) is unattractive to many families, and often unaffordable, as higher density and parking constraints raise land and housing prices. The New Urbanist city is not childless of course, but relatively so, as many families are displaced or flee from the overpriced city.

    We next look at how New Urbanist visions have played out in a small sample of cities, by first comparing a few core cities which have pursued such planning with a few that have not, then compare the more New Urbanist cities with their suburbs, and finally look at how the New Urbanist cities have changed since 1990. I’ll conclude with some thoughts on what this means to the nature of people and place. Is the New Urbanist city the ideal future in a post-oil world, or a failed social experiment?

    Table 1 shows selected 2006 characteristics of four cities which are more affected by New Urbanist planning—Seattle, Portland, San Francisco and Boston and of three cities which have been less transformed: Dallas, Houston and Phoenix (but which have otherwise grown rapidly).

    Portland and Seattle more recently pursued New Urbanist goals, and San Francisco and Boston more indirectly and long-term, while Dallas, Houston and Phoenix are more market-driven. It’s pretty amazing that Seattle matches or even exceeds San Francisco as the least familial, with traditional families constituting less than one-fifth of households, and children under 15 making up less than 13 percent of the population. In contrast Dallas, and Phoenix have almost twice as high a share of families with children under the age of 15.

    Much higher shares of households are non-family (singles, or childless couples or unmarried partners) in the New Urbanist cities. Social, economic and housing characteristics differ markedly as well. Levels of educational attainment and of professional and managerial occupations are much higher, median house values are much higher and levels of commuting by single-occupant vehicles much lower.

    Portland is less “advanced” on New Urbanist measures, even commuting by SOV?, although it has strong planning, rail transit, and started much earlier than Seattle. The main difference seems to be the much higher share of single-family homes (60 percent) in Portland than in Seattle (48), and a less constraining urban growth boundary.

    Table 2 compares central city and suburban characteristics for five cities: Seattle, Portland, San Francisco, Dallas and Phoenix. The story is very simple. Suburban numbers for the New Urbanist cities are remarkably “normal” by U.S. metropolitan standards and are essentially like the central city and suburban values for Dallas or Phoenix. An intriguing feature of Dallas and Phoenix, compared to the New Urbanist metropolises, is that the suburbs still have higher status than the central cities (income, professional share, educational attainment). Seattle stands out, even more than San Francisco, as the only city with a higher city mean income than its suburbs. In other words, the distinctive feature of New Urbanist cities is the class shift, from gentrification and higher class redevelopment.

    Table 3 compares the 1990 and 2006 values for four cities: Seattle, Portland, San Francisco and Boston. It is not really a surprise that what this tells us is that these “New Urbanist” cities were already in 1990 very unlike such cities as Phoenix, Dallas or Houston. Even before the arrival of stronger New Urbanist planning tools, Seattle, Portland, San Francisco and Boston were rather non-familial, fairly highly educated and moderately high in transit use.

    It is true that each became a little less familial. Seattle and Portland were more affected by planning, with reduced single-family housing shares, and increased transit use. Portland grew more in population, reflecting a longer period than Seattle of planning denser urban settlement. Portland was also significantly less gentrified, in the sense of maintaining a higher share of less affluent households, although it had by far the highest housing price inflation — three times the change in the CPI (Consumer Price Index). According to critics of Portland’s planning, this is a consequence of a longer period of stronger growth controls. But Seattle, San Francisco and Boston house prices were also twice the rate of change in the CPI. Median incomes increased well above the CPI rate (U.S. 55 percent) in Seattle (100), San Francisco (95) and Boston (119), but much less in Portland (71), indicating less gentrification in the latter.

    What does all this mean? Does it matter if the New Urbanist cities are relatively childless/family unfriendly? Probably not, as there are nearby suburban jurisdictions more welcoming to families, more affordable and as rich in jobs. It is even likely that the New Urbanist planning was as much a reflection of the already “elitist” character of the cities, rather than being a cause of fundamental change. Even stranger, the New Urbanist planning seems to have responded to and pursued market preferences, although perhaps overzealously. That is, young professionals and empty nesters really wanted to live in the core and were willing to pay extra for the privilege.

    The main social cost of the transformation — in stark contrast to the stated goal of New Urbanist planning to recreate urban village communities of intense local interaction — is that real world neighborhoods with single family homes, city or suburban, with children in local schools, have a stronger sense of community in large part because of the relative permanence of home ownership.

    High density, New Urbanist core cities do encourage greater transit use, and use land more efficiently. Even if the majority of the population prefers suburban living or less dense central cities, will the end of the “age of oil” and concerns of global warming force the widespread adoption of new urbanism? I don’t think so, but that’s another story.

  • Emerald City Emergence: Seattle and the New Deal

    Seattle voters, if not the city’s newspapers, were strong supporters of Franklin Roosevelt and the New Deal in the 1930s and 1940s. As in many parts of the country, New Deal programs had a profound effect on Seattle and Washington state.

    Seattle was a city dependent on industry and trade, and was hard hit by the Great Depression. The most famous and highly visible manifestation was the creation of a large shantytown worker settlement called Hooverville, spurred by the Unemployed Citizen’s League located on city land just south of downtown (where giant football and baseball stadiums are now!). The city burned it down after a week, the workers rebuilt it, the city burned it down again, and it was again rebuilt, this time with tin roofs. It was occupied until the end of the Depression. Its first mayor was a Jesse Jackson, who served as liaison to City Hall. A special census of 1934 counted 632 residents in 490 dwellings.

    Even before then, Seattle and the state of Washington were already infamous for their radicalism, having spawned the only general strike in the nation’s history (1919), and the Centralia and Everett massacres, (1916, 1919) in which company goons fought with IWW (International Workers of the World) workers. Seattle also had an early history of public ownership, notably municipal power starting in 1902.

    Not surprisingly, then, the prospect of federal-sponsored programs, jobs and some constraints placed against the perceived excesses of Big Capital was highly appealing and resulted in huge victories for Roosevelt and the Democrats in 1932, 1936 and 1940. In 1916, Anna Louise Strong, a communist, was elected to the Seattle School Board. Indeed, James Farley famously referred to “the 47 states and the soviet of Washington.” Seattle and Washington’s most successful and powerful political leader, Warren Magnuson, began his congressional career in 1936 from Seattle’s first district, and remained an unreconstructed New Dealer until his retirement from the Senate in 1981.

    Another powerful figure was Dave Beck, who took over the local Teamster’s Union in 1936. Beck played a critical role in forging a less confrontational relation to capital than the more radical Harry Bridges of the Longshoremen.

    Within the City of Seattle and suburbs, the WPA left an enduring legacy: bridges and retaining walls and drainage systems, parks and playgrounds, roads and trails, sewers, recreational facilities and programs, sewing for the needy, airports, streetcars, low income housing, and programs for musicians, artists and writers. For example the Federal Artist Project employed the well-known artists Kenneth Callahan and Morris Graves.

    New Deal activities across the rest of the state were even wider and larger in scope. The greatest New Deal project by far was the Bonneville Power Administration, the Bureau of Reclamation’s construction of dams along the Columbia, culminating in the giant Grand Coulee Dam that drove the development of the Columbia Basin irrigation project, the nation’s largest. Seattle City Light’s J.D. Ross became the first director of Bonneville Power.

    The WPA and the CCC (Civilian Conservation Corps – also known as the “forest army”) also completed hundreds of less spectacular but amazingly successful and lasting projects in the national forests and parks, and communities across the state. Perhaps most amazing was the government’s direct sponsorship of several rural utopian communities.

    Today, although the real liberal voices of the New Deal era are now gone, the Seattle region remains somewhat “left” by national standards. But its radical, egalitarian soul has been largely lost. In 1975 Seattle was one of the nation’s most egalitarian cities, a legacy of the New Deal and its powerful, well-paid blue collar economy. Today it is now one of the most unequal!

    Of course, this does not stop the local establishment and media from viewing itself as “progressive.” In 2008, there are no Republicans on the Seattle City Council, and no Republican from any Seattle district and few that hail from suburban districts in the Washington state legislature.

    But the meaning of “progressive” today is utterly foreign to what it connoted in New Deal days. The metropolis is very highly planned, under the Growth Management Act, but the goals and policies are entirely by and for the affluent professional class: subsidies of opera houses, stadiums, replacement of public housing by “integrated developments” with high shares of market rate units. There’s an unfortunate concentration of transportation investment in astoundingly expensive rail transit, which would mainly serve affluent commuters to downtown Seattle and a density-oriented strategy to replace single family homes, many smaller homes from the ‘20s and ‘30s, with miles of family-unfriendly apartment towers. It all boils down to encouragement of drastic gentrification, with wide displacement of the poor and minorities to suburbs south of the city, and tight urban growth boundaries, resulting in severe housing price inflation, while preserving “open space” for 20 acre suburban estates! And, I believe, the most regressive tax structure of all 50 states.

    One has to wonder what the New Dealers back in the 1930s and 1940s would think of our proudly “progressive” Seattle politics today. Likely not much.

    Richard Morrill is Professor Emeritus of Geography and Environmental Studies, University of Washington. His research interests include: political geography (voting behavior, redistricting, local governance), population/demography/settlement/migration, urban geography and planning, urban transportation (i.e., old fashioned generalist).

    The photo is of a retaining wall built by the WPA at the Cascade School in Seattle. Courtesy of the Seattle Municipal Archives Photograph Collection.

  • Thoughts on the Future of Seattle: A Vision of 2040 for Pugetopolis

    I have been attacked as a defender of ‘sprawl’ although I consider myself a man of the left, with a political-economy philosophy that is ‘social democratic – far to the left of the contemporary Democratic party. I view global warming as very serious, but consider continuing global warfare over resources, land and religion, and increasing national and global economic and political inequality as even more critical.

    As a realist/naturalist/skeptic, rather than idealist, I believe a scientist’s goal is to understand and explain the rich variety of actual needs, motivations and behavior of individuals, groups and institutions. I chose geography instead of planning, because I am uncomfortable with a normative approach of telling people how they ought to behave (in the absence of adequate theory and evidence).

    In my long career in planning I have become skeptical about many things that are widely considered “progressive.” This includes disbelief in two icons of a normative New Urbanist planning: urban growth boundaries and rail transit. In my original testimony to the Growth Strategies Commission 20 years ago, I warned that use of a crude geographic tool (growth boundaries) would lead to land and housing price inflation, leapfrog development and would benefit the rich at the expense of the poor. Sadly, this proved to be the case. Rather than use zoning to create open space, I believe fairness dictates it be acquired through public purchase for public use.

    On rail, my skepticism grew out of considerations of class fairness, since it squanders limited public resources for limited results, and again benefits the rich at the expense of the poor. The real transit problem is not capacity but accessibility to people and jobs. I like trains and have been on dozens of rail or subway systems around the world, many successful, others relative failures. Unfortunately, the geography of Seattle militates against rail’s success here.

    Before we try to guess what greater Seattle might or could (not “should” or “will”) look like in 2040, we must be clear about the nature of the geographic setting, and needs and preferences of its people. For example, there are distinct populations who prefer denser urban living (structures and neighborhoods), and those who prefer less dense living (single-family homes and neighborhoods). Some economic activities require dense agglomerative settings; others need greater horizontal space or external connections.

    In the immediate Seattle region currently about 40 percent of people and jobs are at the denser more agglomerative and 60 percent at the less dense, more dispersed end. Unfortunately for New Urbanist idealism, far more than half of people do not live within walking or biking distance to work or school. By 2040 the share of people preferring or accepting denser urban living in the close in areas could rise to 50 percent (for demographic and land cost reasons) but that will still leave 50 percent or 2.5 of 5 million people preferring a lower density environment. Planners should have learned that many people need private space (yards) as well as public (parks and playgrounds). And it is truly difficult to envision a higher share of more agglomerative jobs; costs of transportation will likely bring residences and workplaces closer to the peripheral communities.

    Another inescapable reality is that trucks will remain the dominant mode for goods transport and that the car, personal transport, will still, yes, be the dominant mode of person movement. Transit (and walking and bicycling) could rise to 25 percent and carpooling could become a lot higher, but cars, far more efficient and greener, will still be the rule. It is absurd to imagine otherwise – this is precisely the kind of innovation that at which American technology excels.

    Most political leaders and senior planners know these “realities” perfectly well but seem to have trouble reining in the their often overly idealistic staff. Yet an intelligent view of what will be in 2040 rests on facts and people’s demonstrated preferences, not on New Urbanist theorizing.

    So what does 2040 look like? The population will likely grow but the forecast of a 50 percent increase is far from sure. The odds are better than even that growth will be moderately less, because of demography (aging population, lowering fertility of past immigrants), and the high cost of Seattle for residence and for business. Instead we likely will see growth spill over to less costly and restrictive cities like Spokane, Bellingham, Yakima and the Tri-Cities.

    We don’t know the likely degree of housing affordability and of the relative severity of constraints on the land supply. Again based on history and demography/education, I’d say the odds are in favor of continuing constraints, over-regulation and housing unaffordability.

    Personal transport will still prevail in 2040, but much of transport technology and policy is uncertain. There will probably be new trains, because people seem to want them, although their contribution to mobility will be modest.

    Smaller communities around Seattle would be well-advised not to allow themselves to be pulled too closely into a downtown-centric transit network since, as Nobel economist Paul Samuelson showed in 1956, this almost guarantees that the outlying centers will lose high level functions and income to the central node. Tacoma, Everett and Bellevue would each be better off developing themselves than subordinating their destiny to downtown Seattle. Bellevue’s success as a competitive edge city is because of the barrier effect of Lake Washington!

    So given these considerations, what will Seattle and its region look like in 2040? Look around you because the future city will look and feel amazingly like the present city, just as the city today is much like the city of 1975. It will be somewhat denser, especially in the core region but overall the urban footprint will grow only slightly and begrudgingly. Instead, most substantial growth in Pugetopolis will occur in satellite towns and adjacent counties and beyond, which is not necessarily a bad thing but may offend many planners.

    In this new configuration, the central city of Seattle will do fine – due to its popularity, site and situation benefits (and the high land prices). There will be continued gentrification, dominated by the childless affluent, and displacement of the less well off to some of the older, less amenity rich suburbs. Inequality will remain high and segregation by class will probably increase. Transportation congestion and substantial long distance commuting will not have lessened, despite trains or the implementation of demand management, because of likely over-investment in large glamour projects, and the continued separation of residences and jobs.

    Experience suggests to me that the future Pugetopolis will continue to be the uneasy compromise between the idealist visionaries of the golden city and the dictates of the human condition and the economy. This is not a pessimistic forecast, rather a realistic one. The metropolis of 2040 may well be a somewhat better place than it is now, but just not very!

    Richard Morrill came to Seattle 53 years ago for graduate school, and after stints in Illinois and Sweden, returned to the University of Washington Geography department in 1961, where he has taught for 44 years.