New Geography

Author: Rick Cole

  • Urban Development: Playing Twister With The California Environmental Quality Act

    When it comes to environmental issues, emotions often trump reasoned argument or sensible reform, especially in California. In Sacramento at our state capitol, real world impacts are abstracted into barbed soundbites. It’s the dialogue of the deaf as environmental advocates rally around our landmark California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) — and economic interests decry it as “a job killer.” Perhaps the polarization can be put aside to ask about a specific example in the real world. Why does an old K-Mart sit vacant on Ventura’s busiest boulevard despite initial City approval for a Walmart store? All the thunder and lightning surrounding whether a Walmart belongs in Ventura is behind us. A vigorous and contentious debate (and a failed citizen initiative) have rendered the verdict that filling an empty discount retail space with a different discount retailer is a function of the market, not government regulation.

    Nor can we directly blame the stalemate directly on the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA). What keeps the store empty is not the controversial law itself, but the way it has been twisted like a pretzel into a tool to stop urban developments opposed by well-funded interests. Recently, the Los Angeles Times exposed the ironic way it has even been adapted by developers and big corporations to fend off their competition.

    The California Environmental Quality Act is the toughest state environmental protection statute in the nation. Passed more than 40 years ago in the wake of the first Earth Day (and signed by Governor Ronald Reagan), CEQA has spawned an industry of specialist consultants, attorneys and planners. Its original laudable goals for managing natural resources have been obscured by the hard ball tactics of litigators in our state.

    The vast majority of Californians support sensible environmental protections and are suspicious when business interests lobby to weaken them. They remember oil spills and toxic dumps and slash and burn hillside developments. Yet the case law that has grown up around CEQA is so burdensome that virtually any public or private project can be slowed or killed on bogus grounds that really have nothing whatever to do with protecting our natural environment.

    Yes, the law has protected stands of redwood trees from clear-cutting and sensitive habitat from suburban sprawl. And there are David and Goliath stories: a little band of neighbors stop a mega-developer from flooding their neighborhood with traffic (although this is a long stretch from protecting “natural resources”.) But it is now routine for special interests to hire high-powered law firms to exploit the law for their own economic interests.

    Here in Ventura, lawyers for construction unions combed over the Environmental Impact Report done for the new Community Memorial Hospital project with the goal of seizing on any technical errors or ambiguities. They fired off a thirty page “comment letter” which lays the groundwork for a lawsuit. The goal was certainly not “protecting the environment” — it was to pressure the hospital to use union labor for the construction. They were successful.

    The proposed Walmart at the old K-Mart site is stalled after initial city approval because the company knows that even something as simple as changing the facade on the building could trigger a lawsuit alleging inadequate “environmental review.” So the project sits in limbo while Walmart analyzes its legal options. What Walmart fears is exactly what happened to WinnCo grocery, which did see its proposed new signage and facade challenged by a CEQA lawsuit.

    There are lots of things not to like about development in a city. But that’s why we have planning commissions, public hearings and appeals to elected City Councils, along with detailed rules that must meet stringent legal guidelines for adoption and enforcement. But why have an elaborate land use entitlement and permit review process if it can be superseded by anyone with the resources to file a CEQA lawsuit? Democratic due process goes out the window, replaced by months or years of costly legal maneuvering.

    No sensible person advocates repealing CEQA. But after forty years, it is past time to return to its original, laudable purpose and intent: to protect our natural environment and sustainably manage our natural resources.

    Understandably, environmental advocates are skittish about tinkering with the law. There is precedent, however, for consensus reform. When the League of Conservation Voters pushed a bill to curb greenhouse gas emissions and promote sustainable regional planning, they won the support of both the League of California Cities and the Building Industry Association by incorporating a modest relaxation of onerous CEQA burdens on “infill development.” There’s lots more room for common sense consensus to separate environmental protection from a racket for special interest litigation.

    One of the worst ways to proceed is to pick out individual projects for favorable CEQA treatment. That’s what’s happened on a couple of controversial stadium projects that won legislative relief from the typical CEQA procedural hurdles. Having to lobby Sacramento to pass a special law is a brutally stark example of special interest litigation. Football stadiums are not the only or even the most important projects held hostage by CEQA abuse. Comprehensive reform is long overdue.

    In these economic times, the jobs lost to CEQA abuse aren’t offset by the ones created for CEQA experts and CEQA attorneys. California led the nation in protecting our state’s environment. If we can look past the symbolism that CEQA has assumed to both advocates and detractors, we’ll see that it’s urgent to restore the law’s original purpose and keep it from being hijacked for other agendas. That may be unlikely in today’s polarized political climate. That’s why it is crucial to bypass the soundbites and the symbolic posturing, and remember the real world fallout of failing to reform the way CEQA is administered in the Golden State.

    Rick Cole is city manager of Ventura, California, and recipient of the Municipal Management Association of Southern California’s Excellence in Government Award. He can be reached at RCole@ci.ventura.ca.us

    Photo: The vacant K-Mart in Ventura, California

  • Public Pensions: Reform, Repair, Reboot

    Ill-informed chatter continues to dominate the airwaves when it comes to California public pensions. It’s a big, complex and critical issue for government at all levels in the Golden State. What makes debate so distorted is that public pensions actually differ from agency to agency — and advocates on the issue often talk past each other. Pension critics often point to outrageous abuses as if they were typical. On the other hand, pension defenders often cite current averages that understate long-term costs. All this fuels the typical partisan gridlock that Californians lament yet seem powerless to change in our state.

    Credit Governor Jerry Brown for trying to overcome the polarization. That’s what most California voters want him to do, according to a new Field Poll, one of the leading opinion research firms in California. His 12-point pension package (unveiled in October) is successfully framing the debate — and enjoys encouraging support from voters. I agree with them. While Brown’s plan is far from perfect (as he acknowledged in presenting it as a way to build consensus) it sensibly tackles some of the most challenging areas where reform is needed. Among the key reforms he’s proposed:

    • Increasing the retirement age from 55 to 67 (with a lower age to be spelled out for public safety workers).
    • Replacing the current “defined benefit” pensions with a hybrid program that includes a defined benefit component, but also a 401(k)-like defined contribution component
    • Prohibiting retroactive pension increases.
    • Requiring all employees to contribute at least 50 percent of the cost of their pensions

    These generally follow the surprisingly strong stand taken by the League of California Cities, which was based on recommendations from a committee of City Managers that I served on. Our work was grounded in four core principles:

    1. Public retirement systems are useful in attracting and retaining high-performing public employees to design and deliver vital public services to local communities;
    2. Sustainable and dependable employer-provided defined benefits plans for career employees, supplemented with other retirement options including personal savings, have proven successful over many decades in California;
    3. Public pension costs should be shared by employees and employers (taxpayers) alike; and
    4. Such programs should be portable across all public agencies to sustain a competent cadre of California public servants.

    Our goal was to ensure the public pension system is reformed, instead of destroyed. Our reform package mirrors Brown’s calls for a hybrid system, raising retirement ages and increasing the portion of pension costs borne by employees. We also backed his bid to base retirements on the top three highest years of pay, curbing the abuses that often artificially raise final year salaries to “spike” pension pay-outs.

    Typical of California’s other challenges, the issue faces long odds in the Legislature and uncertain fate at the ballot box. Partisan Democrats are leery of crossing unions by embracing Brown’s package. Partisan Republicans are demanding more far-reaching changes. Brown hopes to bridge the differences to win majority support by drawing on moderates in both parties. “He hasn’t riled up one side or the other,” noted Field Poll director Mark DiCamillo. “He’s managed to strike the middle ground on a very polarizing issue.” Unfortunately, moderates are hard to find in Sacramento.

    That leaves the roll of the dice that comes with ballot initiatives. Since it takes millions to bankroll a successful ballot measure, few sensible measures get far without support from well-heeled interests.

    In the eternal game of chicken that goes on in Sacramento, the Legislature keeps one eye on those special interests. About the only hope for reform is if a majority is worried that failure to act might spur an expensive ballot box war and an even worse outcome.

    This issue might be the exception, however. Public outrage is real. So is the need for reform. In Ventura, we took an early lead on this issue, first with our Compensation Policies Task Force, then union contracts that established a lower benefit and later retirement age for new hires and increased contributions from all employees of at least 4.5% of their pay. But real reform to level the playing field can only come at the State level.

    Before this issue devolves into another ballot box catastrophe that radically oversimplifies the issues to a “yes” or “no” choice on an initiative bankrolled by special interests, legislators in both parties need to come together on sensible reform. The Governor has put such a program on their desks. Reasonable people can differ on the details. But only unreasonable people want all-or-nothing victories. This is an issue that both sides should be willing to compromise on. The only way that will happen is if voters push both parties toward sensible compromise in the year ahead!

    Photo by Randy Bayne

    Rick Cole is city manager of Ventura, California, and recipient of the Municipal Management Association of Southern California’s Excellence in Government Award. He can be reached at RCole@ci.ventura.ca.us

  • Looking Down Under for a California Turnaround

    At a time when government in California faces an existential crisis, it’s telling to observe a starkly different picture in Australia. Forty years ago, local officials in fast-growing suburban communities in Queensland, Australia looked to their colleagues in fast-growing suburban communities in California as kindred spirits. They began a tradition of trading annual exchange visits to compare notes. Last month I had the opportunity to participate in that exchange. This year’s gathering took place on the “Sunshine Coast” north of Brisbane. While California government seems paralyzed by the strains of the economic crisis, local government Down Under is leading constructive change.

    Fiscal crisis is so pervasive in California that some have questioned whether the nation’s largest state and the world’s eighth largest economy remains “governable.” Every year our state budget is held hostage to interminable partisan bickering. This year, a patently bogus deal was cut that left an estimated $25 billion gap over the next 19 months.

    Until recently, non-partisan local government maintained greater credibility. But with the City of Vallejo declaring bankruptcy, Maywood firing its entire workforce and Bell embroiled in a grotesque corruption scandal, most Californians fear the eclipse of the “California Dream.” Widespread unemployment, home foreclosures, budget meltdowns and severe cuts in government services are the most obvious symptoms. But there’s a growing disconnect between angry voters and their government.

    Yet in Australia, the unofficial national motto is “no worries, mate.” It’s not an excuse for complacency. Australians seem to recognize that innovation is key to continued success. Where California politics has become gridlocked, local government in Queensland plows forward with reorganization and strategic visioning.

    At the annual conference of the Local Government Managers Association in Queensland, the most glaring distinction I viewed was the Australian embrace of “amalgamation.” Beginning a decade ago, state governments in Australia have pushed consolidation of smaller towns into larger and more efficient regional groupings. In Queensland, that process has reduced the number of local governments from 157 to 72. While local officials may have questioned the mandate, they approached the challenge with brisk efficiency. Three years on, Queensland local government officials look forward confidently instead of backward nostalgically.

    After the conference I spent five days with the Central Highlands Regional Council, gaining direct experience with current Australian local government. I was particularly impressed by the Central Highlands motto of “one region, one council”, to underscore their commitment to regional unity and equity.

    In contrast, local officials in California have an almost pathological hostility to State government (not without justification.) California’s 488 cities are part of a confusing jumble of 5,000 overlapping government entities in our state. Californians elect separate boards for schools, colleges, and innumerable water, library, sanitation, transportation and other “special district” agencies. It’s been forty years since the state has done anything to rationalize this fragmented and multilayered governance, despite the glaring meltdown of dysfunctional cities like Bell, Vernon and Maywood.

    Queensland’s appetite for challenges is by no means confined to amalgamation. The conference was dominated by talk of innovation in everything from library services to “reinventing government.”

    Before the housing meltdown, many California cities built new library buildings without rethinking the role of public libraries in the digital age. In contrast, I was captivated by vision I heard from Ross Duncan, Director of Learning Communities on the Sunshine Coast. Infusing their 10 branch library system with a focus on “changing the world,” he’s created a family university offering more than 4500 activities, workshops and events that bring together their 120,000 members in a shared journey toward a “learning community.”

    The vision of the City Council and community in the Sunshine Coast is to create “Australia’s most sustainable region, one that is vibrant, green and diverse.” The library’s role is to promote that through learning. That means that every library is a wireless hotspot which offers a kaleidoscope of classes and seminars on everything from worm farming to support groups for parents of autistic children. The libraries offer a “book a brain” service that allows you to reserve time with a retired business executive or professor to offer advice for your business or community group. Duncan is constantly pushing to “think outside the square,” seeking partners to underwrite new efforts to make learning accessible and attractive, and to make libraries “the key community hub to bring the community together, breaking down barriers of age, income and geography.”

    That pioneering spirit is evident on the larger challenge of “reinventing government.” Professor Ken Wiltshire, head of public administration at the University of Queensland Business School, posed two key questions as challenges for each manager:
    • “If your organization were to be abolished, would it be missed?”
    • “If your organization was privatized, would anyone invest in it?”
    Despite California’s dire crisis, few public organizations are facing those challenges. We are mainly engaged in trimming or chopping existing functions and services, instead of re-organizing for success in the “new normal.”

    At a time of deep distrust and discontent with public institutions, I return to the Golden State buoyed by the professional pride I saw in Queensland local government. Professor Wiltshire illustrated the value of local leaders in shaping and leading change. “Today . . . our work focuses on the ‘transformational’ aspect of leadership, the role of empowering, challenging, inspiring, celebrating and encouraging others to make powerful and enduring changes.”

    That audacious spirit is sorely needed – and missing – in the Golden State. At a time when our crisis calls out for making powerful and enduring changes, we lack the transformational leadership to shape and lead those changes. We might look Down Under for both the hope and example we need to turn California around.

    Photo by mi..chael: Wheel along the Brisbane river in South Bank, Brisbane, Queensland, Australia.

    Rick Cole is city manager of Ventura, California, and 2009 recipient of the Municipal Management Association of Southern California’s Excellence in Government Award. He can be reached at RCole@ci.ventura.ca.us

  • The War For Jobs, Part II: Teamwork On The Frontlines

    So if we are in a new war — this one for business and job growth — what role does local government play?

    It would be a mistake to over-emphasize the role of government, especially at the local level. Despite the claims of politicians from both parties about how many jobs their policies “created,” governments don’t create jobs, at least not in the private sector. Ventura, for example, is estimated to generate about seven to eight billion dollars in annual economic activity. The sales and profitability of thousands of individual businesses are only marginally impacted by what goes on at City Hall, no matter what cheerleaders or critics might claim.

    Still, local government can obviously contribute to a healthier economic climate — and it can certainly get in the way of one.

    There are four broad areas where our impact (good and bad) is greatest: services and infrastructure; taxation; regulation; and encouragement.

    When local Chambers of Commerce advocate for “business-friendly” policies, they usually underplay the most important function of local government: providing vital services (from policing to clean water) and key infrastructure (from roads to sewer pipes). That’s the core function of government, and the more cost-effectively local government does that, the better it is for local business.

    Yet it’s taxation, regulation and “encouragement” that advocates and critics focus on, and argue over endlessly. Important questions. But there is a catalytic spark when encouraging business starts with two simple words: teamwork and focus.

    That’s where we in Ventura are putting our energy to grow business and high value, high wage jobs.

    We’ve put together a team to focus on the business sectors that will drive economic recovery. Alex Schneider directs our successful Ventura Ventures Technology Center. With thirteen start-up high tech businesses, it’s the tangible outcome of our intense focus on new economy business development. On the first of May, Joey Briglio returns to work on green business development. We are transferring Eric Wallner from the Community Services Department to capitalize on his expertise in growing our visitor and creative business sector.

    These new assignments complete the team that also includes Economic Development Manager Sid White and Ventura Business Ombudsman Alex Herrera. White concentrates on Downtown Redevelopment, real estate, Auto Center redevelopment, general business assistance/loan programs, and ongoing work with County Economic Development organizations. Herrera provides personal access and follow-through for local businesses of all sizes. All are assigned to the Community Development Department under Director Jeff Lambert. As City Manager, I’m taking a hands-on approach to working directly with all of them on our new business strategy.

    This is our team. This is our focus.

    Past battles over land use gave Ventura a reputation for being “anti-business.” We can argue ‘til the cows come home whether this was fair or not. But why re-fight those battles? We’re in a new war and our goal is to change our reputation by winning the battles ahead.

    Almost nobody in Ventura wants to pave the city with oversized real estate overdevelopment. Almost everybody wants robust business growth to generate local jobs, enhance the range of private goods and services available to local residents, and to augment revenue to support public services. When 200 Ventura business and community leaders assembled last May for our Economic Summit, what emerged was a community consensus that is as wide as it is deep: focus on growing our own businesses, especially green ones — and increasingly, every business is turning greener.

    In all the buzz about ‘green jobs’ in the energy sector, it’s important to focus on ‘clean tech’ innovation in every field. Our own Patagonia is a blue-chip model for the green future. In recent years, top executives from Walmart, GE and other global giants have visited Patagonia’s downtown Ventura headquarters to study their rigorous focus on reducing waste and shifting to more sustainable supply chains. Is Patagonia a pioneer in renewable forms of energy? No, they make outdoor clothes. Their local workforce exemplifies the opportunity America – and even high-cost coastal California – still has to lead the world in producing globally-competitive quality products and services.

    It was a theme hammered home by Mayor Bill Fulton in his State of the City speech this year:

    “We are fortunate to be located close to two major economic engines… that constantly spin off startup businesses in the high-tech and biotech centers: UC Santa Barbara to our north and Amgen to our south.

    In the past two years, Ventura has made a major effort — unlike any other city in this region — to connect with these institutions, with startup entrepreneurs, and with venture capitalists, to encourage spin-off businesses to locate and grow here in Ventura. And it’s working. Today — for the first time — we are part of the high-tech/biotech business ecosystem.

    “This is a time of great change and uncertainty in our society. Old ways of doing things are falling by the wayside quickly, and new ways are emerging rapidly. Such times can be frightening, but they are also pregnant with great possibilities. We in Ventura are very determined and well positioned to take advantage of those opportunities in order to reinforce Ventura as a great place to live and work.”

    For a city committed to living within our means, we are focusing our team on earning a reputation that Ventura is serious about winning the new war for jobs. We hope to be a pioneer in forging strategy and tactics that will set the standard for other cities in California tackling the urgent task of reinventing the California dream. Reinvigorating the seventh largest economy on the planet will be based on victory in the war on jobs.

    This article is part two of a two-part series by Rick Cole on the war for jobs.

    Flckr photo of Ventura at night by Wink

    Rick Cole is city manager of Ventura, California, and 2009 recipient of the Municipal Management Association of Southern California’s Excellence in Government Award. He can be reached at RCole@ci.ventura.ca.us

  • The War For Jobs Trumps The War For Sales Tax Dollars: Part I

    At the beginning of every war, generals always try to fight the last one. Experienced professionals are often the last to realize the times and terrain have changed.

    Since the passage of Proposition 13 — the 1978 ‘taxpayer revolt’ against California property taxes — most California cities have focused on generating sales tax. Property tax, which had been the traditional backbone of local revenue, was slashed by 60%, sparking an intense Darwinian struggle between cities for sales tax market share. During the nineties, the cities along the 101 Corridor in Ventura County competed intensely in the “mall wars” over which cities would get auto dealers and major retailers. The City of Ventura won some and lost some, but during the last consumer boom we were still number two in the County in sales tax per capita, after Thousand Oaks.

    This intercity competition spawned redevelopment megadeals, tax sharing agreements and fawning over chain stores and “big boxes.” “Public-private partnerships” was the name given to deals cut with favored developers and retailers. Some cities won the lottery (Camarillo declared its strawberry fields next to the freeway “blighted” in order to grab redevelopment funding to build its successful outlet center), and some lost (Oxnard’s planned 600,000 square foot “Riverpark Collection” sits vacant and forlorn, and the city’s downtown theater and restaurant development scrapes along with continuing city subsidies).

    With the steep drop in sales tax revenue across California, cities are tempted to try that much harder to grab a bigger slice of a shrinking pie. That’s why a major retailer that pays low wages to mainly part-time employees stills gets more attention and help from cities than a similar size manufacturer or company headquarters paying top salaries. That’s why cities review detailed reports on their top 100 retailers every quarter and don’t even keep lists of their top 100 employers.

    But that is fighting the last war. In the debt-fueled boom that crashed in 2007, 70% of every dollar was going to consumer spending, as consumers tapped their credit cards and home equity loans. To cash in on that spending spree, developers could continue to build new shopping centers and auto malls.

    Now all that has changed. Consumers not only have less income and credit, they are saddled with more debt. Even a recovery in consumer buying power might not translate into needing more stores, as the Internet changes the way people live, shop and entertain themselves. Retail square footage will be slashed as inventory is digitized (think e-books) or as consumers take advantage of an electronic market that offers infinitely more variety than any store (think Zappos Shoes and More.)

    Today’s sharp drop in sales tax is an economic Pearl Harbor. The next war has already begun. Cities will need to fight, not for more stores, but for high wage private sector jobs that can directly compete in the brutal global economy. There are two basic ways to do that: provide value through local advantage, or provide world-class quality.

    Local advantage is not easy. Local retailers and service businesses still compete with corporate giants by adapting to serve a local clientele. Our downtown is primarily made up of these niche companies, serving local customers and clients. But economies of scale continue to favor bigger players.

    World-class quality is even harder. “Buy American” is a nice slogan, but most Americans pay no attention to labels on their underwear or their autos. To sustain high wage jobs, companies located here must overcome the cost disadvantage of operating in coastal California by providing products or services that are worth the premium.

    Patagonia, the outdoor specialty clothing powerhouse, is a high profile success story for competing in the world economy. Although they do nearly $400 million in annual sales, most of the company’s actual work (manufacturing, shipping, back office functions and retailing) takes place elsewhere. But its highest-value headquarters function remains in Ventura, providing 200 high quality, high wage jobs. Their unique passion for a green supply chain landed them on the cover of Fortune as “The Coolest Company on the Planet.”

    Can cities be as effective at growing these kinds of companies as they have been at luring Walmarts and Lexus dealers?

    Ventura is a test case. Our Ventura Ventures Technology Center and quest for Google Fiber are innovative experiments. We are “incubating” thirteen tiny start-ups – and fostering what Lottay CEO Harry Lin, an experienced high tech entrepreneur, calls a “technology ecosystem” of connected players in the new company game.

    If we succeed in our efforts to promote new and expanded “world class quality” companies and the high wage, high value jobs they produce, will that help pay the bills for city services? Isn’t a new Walmart still a better bet?

    The answer is not clear-cut. A new Walmart will provide some tangible real revenue, particularly if it diverts Ventura residents from driving to Oxnard to shop at their Walmart. But if Walmart primarily takes customers away from our two Targets and our other retail outlets, there’s little actual gain in revenue. And the point is, in a shrinking retail market (lower incomes, lower spending, more diversion to the Internet), there isn’t much opportunity to keep adding new stores, especially in a competitive market where Oxnard is trying to fill up the brand new center they have sitting vacant. To refill our recent sales tax declines, we’d need the net sales tax of about ten new Walmarts, or their equivalent. For obvious reasons, that can’t happen and won’t. It still makes sense to “buy local” where a penny on every dollar stays home to fund city services. But we can’t build enough stores to restore a prosperous economy or the community services we’ve had to slash.

    So while Ventura’s entrepreneurial emphasis on high wage jobs may be experimental, at least we are fighting the right war. It will be a while before we know whether we are winning. But fighting the last war is a sure loser. Even if the economy “recovers,” it will be years before the region’s retail space is filled — if ever. The best thing we can do to create a healthy retail environment is to generate new wealth in our region through robust business and job growth.

    In the early years following Proposition 13, some cities led the way toward retail development in the war for sales tax dollars. Today, Ventura is adopting new tactics and weapons in the war for jobs. That may seem like a new and untested strategy. It is. Yet in a changing world, there is great opportunity to rebuild local prosperity on a new and stronger foundation.

    This article is part one of a two-part series by Rick Cole on the new war for jobs.

    Flckr photo of Ventura by ah zut

    Rick Cole is city manager of Ventura, California, and 2009 recipient of the Municipal Management Association of Southern California’s Excellence in Government Award. He can be reached at RCole@ci.ventura.ca.us

  • Las Vegas: The Boom – Bust Bender

    It’s delightfully easy to blast Las Vegas… or simply to make fun of it. It is the world capital of shamelessness, so it is more or less beside the point to criticize. Yet with the debut of the colossal $8.5 billion CityCenter, Vegas makes pretension to “sustainable urbanism.” Even by Vegas standards of hype, this is mendacity at a colossal scale.

    CityCenter describes itself as “a collection of spectacular hotels and residences, sensational spas, astonishing dining and extraordinary shopping.” But MGM Mirage CEO Jim Murren asserts higher aspirations for the largest private development in U.S. history, saying he aimed to create “something with expert urban planners” that would “put world-class architects into the mix” in order to “stretch the boundaries of our knowledge and create something that would be a gift, a resource to the community that we could make a lot of money on.” CityCenter’s developers claim that it is “one of the largest sustainable developments in the world, with six Gold LEED certifications from the U.S. Green Building Council.”

    The distinction says more about the shallowness of LEED scoring than about the depth of CityCenter’s commitment to sustainability. Although the buildings employ state-of-the-art energy saving (hence money saving) technology, the gold ratings are based in part on pure gimmickry, like “the world’s first fleet of stretch limos powered by clean-burning compressed natural gas.” A mecca for gambling, shopping and recreation built in a desert climate is, by definition, unsustainable.

    And not just environmentally. The project only averted bankruptcy this spring when MGM paid $100 million in debt service owed by its partner, Dubai World. Dubai World, of course, is the company that recently rocked markets across the globe by asking to postpone its gazillions in debt.

    L.A. Times architecture writer Christopher Hawthorne calls City Center “a final bender for Wall Street’s decade of unreason.” Is it too much to hope that this glitzy fiasco will permanently discredit the blend of leveraged debt, “starchitecture,” and headlong consumerism that has spread around the world with ever taller and more fanciful towers and ever more grandiose claims to represent a glorious future?

    Megaprojects are the product of meglomania, whether in Las Vegas, Shanghai, Dubai, Universal Studios or downtown Los Angeles. No amount of solar-paneled green cladding can disguise their fundamental flaw: Bigness dwarfs and often destroys the human scale that great places have in common.

    It is hard not to admire the audacity, the “make no little plans” grandeur of big visions. The Greeks, however, had a name for such delusions: hubris. When Icarus climbed too close to the sun his wings melted and he plunged into the sea.

    In the case of giant real estate “projects,” it is not only the promoters who get taken down.

    We Americans have our own parable of urban hubris in the saga of Robert Moses. Yet no matter how often the story is told (including the latest book on his nemesis, Jane Jacobs, Wrestling with Moses), public officials continue to be particularly prone to the siren song of megadevelopments. Grand Avenue in Los Angeles; Ground Zero in Manhattan; Atlantic Yards in Brooklyn; Hunters Point in San Francisco… the list of recent “public-private partnerships” to remake cities on a grandiose scale could fill a page.

    The invariable promises of investment returns commensurate with the project’s size invariably disappoint. No one is that smart, it turns out. Sustainable urbanism comes in small doses, crafted to the climate and history of real places. It comes from new building that respects human scale and the fabric of organic towns and cities. It emerges from the efforts of property owners, investors, designers and craftspeople understanding and applying timeless principles to the needs of our time.

    Sustainable urbanism doesn’t have to carry the weight of the overhead and egos of mega developers, starchitects, and all the myriad fixers — lobbyists, lawyers, flacks, event planners, consultants etc — that live off their wake . It doesn’t put the public purse at risk on speculative real estate ventures. The public isn’t jolted with yet another over-the-top effort to shock and awe them with ever-larger and more lavish excess. Instead, sustainable urbanism thrives off both the synergy and the competition that comes from appropriately sized and scaled additions to the cityscape.

    That is not to say that urban interventions must be tiny – only that they not be bloated and autonomous. When the 104 acre Villa Italia Mall in Lakewood, Colorado was taken down, its redevelopment into the mixed-use downtown of Belmar was certainly a big project. Moreover, it shares many of the downsides of megaprojects, including public sector financial subsidies and risk as well as relatively bland, homogenous design and development, particularly in the tilt toward corporate retail tenants. Yet obviously there was no “organic” way to transform a dead mall.

    Similarly, the redevelopment of the thirty-four acre Burlington Northern Railyard on the northern edge of the Pearl District in Portland, Oregon is the product of a single developer. The construction of more than 2500 midrise housing units, 90,000 square feet of retail space, and two major urban parks is a big development by any standards. Yet it differs sharply from the megaprojects in its faithful extension of the famous Portland block pattern over the grayfield site. It may be large, but it is the antithesis of the self-contained and almost invariably anti-urban design of megaprojects. It is simply several more well-executed blocks of the Pearl District, rather than a place unto itself.

    These comparably large projects stretch the limit of scale on place-making, financial risk and social and economic diversity. One of the best designed and intentioned megaprojects of our time, the redevelopment of Denver’s Stapleton Airport, demonstrates that once projects cross the threshold of counting square feet in the millions it becomes essentially impossible to be successful, if success is defined as creating prosperous, human-scale urban fabric. Certainly, Forest City’s Stapleton is an exemplary model for trying to faithfully execute urbanism on a mega-scale (as distinguished from the botch made of Playa Vista in Los Angeles). But even there, the power centers, office park and suburban subdivision elements undercut their claims to authentic sustainability of real urbanism.

    Nor is real urbanism simply an academic conceit or an elitist niche. On the contrary, it is the only proven model for successful civilizations, prosperous regions, environmental staying power and decent living standards for working people. The modern real estate industry’s products, of which megaprojects are simply the reductio ad absurdum examples, have yet to pass the test of surviving in geographies and economic eras not characterized by cheap oil and cheap money. The current economic reckoning is a warning that, like the dinosaurs, megaprojects are highly vulnerable to any change in the climate.

    The counter argument is, of course, that no one knows if they will stand the test of time and “if you build it they will come.” Megaprojects may be forlorn or unloved by urbanists now, but when we have four billion more people on the planet, at least some of these projects will be cherished cornerstone investments in the cities of the future. The optimistic proponents of this view predict “this too shall pass” and, just as Rockefeller Center emerged triumphant from the Depression, CityCenter and its cousins will be vindicated as a form of visionary city building that was simply ahead of its time.

    This view certainly has a well-funded lobby and fawning fans in the media, ever impressed by record-breaking spectacle. But common sense ought to prevail. Megaprojects are bad bets, even in Las Vegas. In almost every regard, giant projects crush the essential elements of diversity, flexibility and intimacy necessary to making – and sustaining – great places.

    Instead of CityCenter, imagine something on its scale broken up into 1500 more modest projects across America; each significant enough to make a mark, yet restrained enough to strengthen the city instead of overwhelm it. Not only would the investment have made a far better contribution to the goal of sustainable urbanism, it would have been far less recklessly risky. As Jane Jacobs warned nearly 50 years ago, “the forms in which money is used must be converted to instruments of regeneration — from instruments buying violent cataclysms to instruments buying continual, gradual, complex and gentler change.”

    Rick Cole is city manager of Ventura, California, and recipient of the Municipal Management Association of Southern California’s Excellence in Government Award. He can be reached at RCole@ci.ventura.ca.us

  • Wikigovernment: Crowd Sourcing Comes To City Hall

    Understanding the potential role of social media such as blogs, twitter, Facebook, You Tube, and all the rest in local government begins with better understanding the democratic source of our mission of community service. The council-manager form of local government arose a century ago in response to the “shame of the cities” — the crisis of local government corruption and gross inefficiency.

    Understanding what business we are in today is vital. It drives the choices we make and the tools we use. Railroads squandered their dominance in transportation because they defined their business as railroading. They shunned expansion into trucking, airlines, and airfreight. While they were loyal to one mode of transportation, their customers were not. Similarly, newspapers are in crisis because they defined their trade as the newspaper industry. Today’s readers don’t wait for timely news to arrive in their driveways. They have digital access on their computers and hand-held phones. Guess where advertisers are going?

    Most local governments suffer similar myopia. Many managers define our core mission as delivering services. But that overlooks the history of why local governments deliver those services. We deliver police services in the way that we do because Sir Robert Peel invented that model in response to the public safety challenges of industrializing London.

    We deliver library services because Ben Franklin invented that model in response to the need for working people in Philadelphia to pursue education and self-improvement. Governments didn’t arise to provide services; services arose from “government of the people, by the people, and for the people.”

    Our core mission is not to provide traditional services, but to meet today’s community needs. To do this, we can learn more from the entrepreneurial risk-taking of Peel and Franklin than from public management textbooks.

    We face these new dangers and opportunities:
    • Transitioning from unsustainable consumption to living in sustainable balance with planetary resources.
    • Overcoming an economic crisis that is slashing our capacity to maintain traditional services and meet growing community needs.
    • Embracing growing diversity while dealing with increasing fragmentation marked by divergent expectations about the role of local government.

    During a similar period of historic upheaval, the young Karl Marx wrote that “all that is solid melts into air.”

    Of course, it’s possible to underestimate the emerging crisis from the perspective of local government in many American towns and suburbs. The local voting population seems stable, though declining in numbers. The “usual suspects” still populate the sparse audiences at council and commission meetings. The budget is horrendous, but we’ve seen these cycles before.

    In reality, this overhang is typical of the lag between action and reaction, the inertia Thomas Jefferson identified when he wrote, “Mankind are more inclined to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.”

    In California, we’re confounded by the seemingly endless crisis in political leadership that is squandering our state’s credit rating and capacity to deliver vital services. Members of our political class resemble cartoon characters who dash off a cliff, then momentarily hang in the air before abruptly plunging. As the economist Herb Stein wryly observed, “If something cannot go on forever, it will stop.”

    Global Communication Tools
    In the current tough times, we all pay lip service to civic engagement and we all pursue it, with varying degrees of enthusiasm and success. But if we want to avoid plunging into the vortex like the state of California (and Vallejo, California, its bankrupt local counterpart), we will need to reassert and reinvent government of the people, by the people, and for the people in our communities.

    The textbook model puts the elected governing board squarely between us and the public. Elected officials interpret the will of the people. They’re accountable to the public. We report to those who have been elected. But in the modern world, professional staff cannot hide behind that insulation. We cling to the old paradigm because we lack a better one.

    That’s where the real significance of social media comes into focus. These aren’t just toys, gizmos, or youthful fads. Social media are powerful global communication tools we can deploy to help rejuvenate civic engagement.

    The Obama presidential campaign lifted the curtain on this potential. “Nothing can stand in the way of millions of people calling for change,” he asserted at a time when conventional political wisdom doubted his path to the White House. MyBarackObama.com wasn’t his only advantage, but he deployed it with stunning effectiveness to raise colossal sums from small donors, pinpoint volunteer efforts in 50 states to the exact places of maximum leverage, and carry his campaign through storms that would have capsized a conventional campaign.

    It remains to be seen how this translates into governance at the federal level. But it has direct application to local democracy. Crowd sourcing is a new buzzword spawned by social media. It recognizes that useful ideas aren’t confined to positional leaders or experts. Wikipedia is a powerful success story, showing how millions of contributors can build a world-class institution, crushing every hierarchical rival. “Wikigovernment” is not going to suddenly usher in rankless democratic nirvana, but it’s closer to the ideal of government of the people, by the people, and for the people than a typical local government organization chart.

    “To govern is to choose,” John Kennedy famously said. Choices must be made, and citizens will increasingly insist on participating in those decisions. As citizens everywhere balk at the cost of government, we can’t hunker down and wait for a recovery to rescue us. Like carmakers suddenly confronted by acres of unsold cars, we are arriving at the limits of the “we design ‘em, you buy ‘em” mentality.

    A crowd-sourcing approach to local government resembles a barn raising more than a vending machine as a model for serving the community. Instead of elected leaders exclusively deciding the services to be offered and setting the (tax) price of the government vending machine, a barn raising tackles shared challenges through what former Indianapolis mayor Stephen Goldsmith calls “government by network.”

    Citizen groups, individual volunteers, activists, nonprofits, other public agencies, businesses, and ad hoc coalitions contribute to the designing, delivering, and funding of public services. The media compatible with this model are not the newspapers such as — for example — the local newspaper that reports yesterday’s council meeting. The new media are the instant Facebook postings, tweets, and YouTube clips that keep our shifting body politic in touch.

    The Dark Side
    It’s not hard to conjure up the dark side of all this. Web presence is often cloaked in anonymity. This isn’t new in political discourse; the Founders engaged in anonymous pamphleteering. But the Web can harbor vitriol that wasn’t tolerated in the traditional press (at least until recently).

    The Web also tends to segregate people. One study concluded that 96 percent of cyber readers follow only the blogs they agree with. This self-selection of information bypasses editors trained in assessing the credibility of information. Opinion is routinely passed off as fact.

    But it isn’t surprising that the cutting edge of digital communication is full of both danger and promise, nor should it keep us from using these new media in our 2,500-year quest for self-government. The atomization generated by a zillion websites also breeds a hunger for the community of shared experience. Both the election of Barack Obama and the death of Michael Jackson tapped into that yearning.

    We can foster that yearning by deploying these exciting new tools in the service of building community. Yes, it’s risky to be a pioneer, but in a rapidly changing world, it’s even riskier to be left behind.

    This is part two of a two-part series. A slightly different version of this article appeared in Public Management, the magazine of the International City/County Management Association; icma.org/pm.

    Rick Cole is city manager of Ventura, California, and this year’s recipient of the Municipal Management Association of Southern California’s Excellence in Government Award. He can be reached at RCole@ci.ventura.ca.us

  • E-Government: City Management Faces Facebook

    Does a City Manager belong on Facebook?

    Erasmus, the Dutch theologian and scholar, in 1500 wrote, “In the country of the blind the one-eyed man is king.” I feel this way in the land of social media — at least among city and county managers. Inspired by the first city manager blog in the nation, started by Wally Bobkiewicz in Santa Paula, California, I began posting back in 2006. Although most bloggers strive for frequent, short blurbs, I’ve employed blogging to provide a place to get beyond the sound bites (and out of context quotes) in the local press. I seek to provide background, explanation, and context for the stories in the news, along with the trends that don’t make the news.

    I tried MySpace and Facebook initially out of curiosity. For my first six months, I had only six friends on Facebook. Now I have more than 400, and few days go by when I don’t review requests for more. I post at least once a day, usually links to intriguing articles on public policy and photos of my three kids.

    While I was finding my way as a boomer in cyberspace, I resisted Twitter…until an invitation arrived from a friend 30 years older than I. If someone in his 80s was interested in tweets from me, I figured the time had come to join the crowd. And although I’ve never made a YouTube video, several videos of me are floating in cyberspace.

    For local managers, all of these social media offer new tools to work on one of democracy’s oldest challenges: promoting the common good. What local governments can’t do is fall hopelessly behind. The fate of railroads, automakers, and newspapers shows what happens to the complacent. It’s time to get online — and reach far beyond the initial step of a city website with links — to lead the effort to build stronger communities and a healthier democracy for the 21st century.

    Civic Engagement and Social Media: The Ventura Case Study

    Ventura has a civic engagement manager position, but civic engagement is considered a citywide core competency, like tech savvy and customer service. It’s not something we do periodically; it’s how we strive to do everything.

    One of our key citywide performance measures is the level of volunteerism in the community. We look not just at the 40,000 volunteer hours logged by city government last year, but at the percentage of the population that volunteer for any cause or organization: 50 percent versus 26 percent nationally. We strive to raise awareness, commitment, and participation by citizens in local government and their community.

    Reports by Council staff not only list fiscal impacts and alternatives, but document citizen outreach and involvement in each recommendation. There are obviously different levels; they recently ranged from a stakeholder committee that held four facilitated sessions to produce rules governing vacation rentals, to a citywide economic summit cosponsored with the chamber of commerce that drew 300 businesspeople and residents to develop 54 action steps unanimously endorsed by the city council at the conclusion.

    Effective engagement requires aggressive, fine-tuned, and immediate communication. We address traditional media with a weekly interdepartmental round table that reviews what stories are likely to surface and identifies other stories we’d like to see covered. We encourage city staff to quickly post comments to online newspaper postings to set the record straight, respond to legitimate queries, and direct citizens to additional information on our website.

    We have two public access channels — one for government, one for the community — and actively provide both with programming. Our most direct access comes from a biweekly e-newsletter that goes out to 5,000 addresses, linking directly to website resources, including the city manager’s latest blog post.

    Slow at first to embrace Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube, we’re closing the gap. One councilmember is a prolific blogger, and another uses Facebook for interactive community dialogue. We make judicious use of reverse 911 to get public safety information out quickly to residents. We’ve also pioneered “My Ventura Access”, a one-stop portal for all citizen questions, complaints, compliments, and opinions, whether they come by phone, Internet, mail, or in person.

    Not Your Grandfather’s Democracy

    Twitter, which allows just 140 characters – including spaces and punctuation – per “tweet”, gets a disproportionate share of the social media chatter. After a Republican member of Congress was ridiculed for tweeting during the State of the Union address this past February, Twitter usage exploded 3,700 percent in less than a year. By the time you read this, U.S. Twitter users will outnumber the population of Texas, or possibly California. In just five years, techcrunch.com reports, Facebook users have zoomed past 250 million. A Nielsen study estimates that usage has increased by seven times in the past year alone.

    Yet as blogs, tweets, Facebook, YouTube, and text blasts reshape how America communicates, few local governments — and even fewer city and county managers — are keeping pace. E-government remains largely focused on websites and online services. This communication gap leaves local government vulnerable in a changing world. “Business as usual” is not a comforting crutch; it’s foolish complacency. Just look at the sudden implosion of General Motors, the Boston Globe, and the state of California.

    It would be equally shortsighted to thoughtlessly embrace these new communication media as virtual substitutes for thoroughgoing civic engagement. We’re part of a 2,500-year-old experiment in local democracy, launched in Athens long before Twitter and YouTube. Local democracy operated long before the newspapers, broadcast media, public hearings, and community workshops familiar to today’s local government managers.

    We may live in a hi-tech world, but the basis of what we do remains “high touch,” involving what some of the most thoughtful International City/County Management practitioners call “building community.” Social media offer new tools to build community, although they aren’t a magic shortcut.

    This is part one of a two-part series. A slightly different version of this article appeared in Public Management, the magazine of the International City/County Management Association; icma.org/pm.

    Rick Cole is city manager of Ventura, California, and this year’s recipient of the Municipal Management Association of Southern California’s Excellence in Government Award. He can be reached at RCole@ci.ventura.ca.us

  • Throwing Rocks At History

    My wife and I spent last Saturday afternoon with our three children exploring the famous and exotic art works on display at the LA County Museum of Art. Yet what caught the attention of our twin 10-year-old girls was a grainy oversized poster of two youths on a Berlin street heaving rocks at Russian tanks.

    Why, Lucia and Antonia wanted to know, were they throwing stones? Wouldn’t the tanks fire on them? What happened to the young men in the photo?

    Their questions forced my wife and I into a quick retelling of postwar German history, as we toured the exhibit of “The Art of Two Germanys / Cold War Culture.” Starting with graphic photos of the firebombing of Dresden, our explanations of how Germany came to be divided and how the two nations took such different courses raised many more questions than we could adequately answer.

    The attention span of 10 year-olds being what it is, we eventually moved on to other topics. But later that evening, on a visit to Vroman’s bookstore in Pasadena, the day’s collision with art and politics triggered a difficult conversation with my 12-year-old son.

    Diego is a voracious consumer of fantasy novels, particularly those that feature dragons. It has seemed like a harmless phase; the spellbinding stories and gorgeously rendered natural histories of mythical creatures have enriched both his imagination and vocabulary.

    Having forgotten to bring his own allowance money, Diego turned to me to buy for him A Practical Guide to Dragon Riding. I refused. Thinking of the young men and the tanks, I urged him to look beyond the seductive world of fantasy to the shelves of books on other topics. You’ll be needing a practical guide to the real world, I advised.

    Diego, of course, was looking for a cash advance, not advice. But for me, our filial drama raised the curtain on the global drama coming soon to the theater of our lives. Everyone now knows that our children are going to be adjusting to tough economic times. But few are anticipating the global geopolitical upheaval that the financial crisis will inevitably unleash on their sheltered lives. The Four Horsemen follow in the wake of economic disaster, bringing conquest, war, famine and death.

    I grew up with my parent’s stories of the Depression and World War II. It was impossible to escape the indelible imprint of those global catastrophes. History was not something that happened in books or to other countries – it was a dominant feature in their personal stories.

    Today, only the governments of Iceland and Latvia have collapsed so far, but titanic forces are unmistakably stirring. The sickening roller coaster ride of volatile global markets, the accelerating shrinkage in world trade, and the rising demands of nations to protect their own will inevitably topple political structures with the same shock and severity that is now sweeping through our economic institutions.

    In reality and in metaphor, young people are gathering the stones that will soon be hurled at tanks around the world. To pretend otherwise is to ignore the lessons of history. Parents obviously hope their children will live in a world of stability and prosperity. But our curse is to live in interesting times.

    Neither children nor their parents are prepared for this. Neither my father’s father, nor the father of Anne Frank, nor the fathers of those anonymous Berlin youths could adequately explain to their children what was happening, nor provide them sure-footed guidance in the shadow of forces beyond anyone’s control. Still, parents today have an urgent responsibility to try.

    Character and resilience are the only lasting legacies we can leave our children, and they will need both in the times ahead. As difficult as it will be, we can take heart from the words of Victor Frankl, the renowned thinker and concentration camp survivor. “The world is in a bad state,” he wrote, “but everything will become still worse unless each of us does his best.”

    Rick Cole is the City Manager of Ventura, California, where he has championed smart growth strategies and revitalization of the historic downtown. He previously served as the City Manager of Azusa, and earlier, as mayor of Pasadena. He has been called “one of Southern California’s most visionary planning thinkers” by the LA Times.

  • Scrap Zoning; Legalize Great Places

    Crisis offers opportunity. With real estate in a freefall, there is an opportunity to lay the foundation for a more prosperous and sustainable American landscape.

    If only there is the vision and political will.

    What is the single most significant change that can be made in every town and city in America? One that would aid economic development, reduce greenhouse gas emissions, foster healthier lifestyles, reduce dependence on foreign oil, protect open space and wildlife habitats, and reduce wasteful government spending?

    Scrapping zoning codes.

    Take any great place that people love to visit. You know, those lively tourist haunts from Nantucket to San Francisco. Those red hot neighborhoods from Seattle’s Capital Hill to Miami Beach’s Art Deco district. Those healthy downtowns from Portland, Oregon to Chicago, Illinois to Charleston, South Carolina. What do they all have in common?

    The mix of uses that gives them life are outlawed by zoning in virtually every city and town in all 50 states.

    Widespread adoption of zoning is a legacy of Herbert Hoover. As Commerce Secretary, he pushed zoning regulations to cure “the enormous losses in human happiness and in money, which have resulted from lack of city plans which take into account the conditions of modern life.” He championed the “Standard Zoning Enabling Act” to address “the moral and social issues that can only be solved by a new conception of city building.” After the Supreme Court upheld zoning in 1926, zoning — and sprawl — spread from sea to shining sea.

    The high court based its decision on the need to protect health and safety by “excluding from residential areas the confusion and danger of fire, contagion and disorder which in greater or less degree attach to the location of store, shops and factories.” The quite sensible idea that people shouldn’t live next to steel mills was used to justify a system of “zones” to isolate uses that had lived in harmony for centuries. Suddenly, new neighborhoods were segregated by income, and commerce was torn asunder from both customers and workers. Timeless ways of creating great places were ruthlessly outlawed.

    This coincided neatly with the rise of the car industry, and the systematic dismantling of America’s electric streetcar network. Today, we look back nostalgically on the “streetcar suburbs” and the booming cities of turn-of-the-century America when we sing:

    City sidewalks, busy sidewalks
    Dressed in holiday style
    In the air there’s a feeling of Christmas.
    Children laughing, people passing,
    Meeting smile after smile
    And on every street corner you’ll hear. . .
    Silver bells, silver bells
    It’s Christmas time in the city.

    But zoning, cars, and suburban development put an end to such “contagion and disorder,” replacing busy “city sidewalks” with enclosed malls, parking lots, and traffic congestion.

    Today, almost everyone admits the environmental and social devastation caused by sprawl, though some still defend it as a response to the consumer market. But “The American Dream” of single-family tracts, shopping centers and business parks owes more to zoning mandates than to market economics. Zoning was imposed on the American landscape by an unholy alliance between Utopians preaching a “modern” way of life and hard-headed businessmen who profited from supplying that new model, including an auto industry steeped in the ideology that “What’s good for General Motors is good for America.”

    Politicians at every level bought into sprawl, playing both sides of the zoning game to harvest votes and campaign cash. It’s no coincidence that the rocket-fueled career of Vice President Spiro Agnew began at a suburban zoning board. He would have succeeded Richard Nixon as president if criminal charges for taking bribes from developers hadn’t caught up to him and forced his resignation first.

    For a long time, support for zoning was impregnable. In the only country on earth to organize its urban form around Crayola colors on a map, those who questioned zoning were treated like the lunatics who denounce paper money.

    Until now, perhaps. Younger Americans are turned off by the devotion of Baby Boomers to the landscape of “Leave it to Beaver.” Environmentalists are slowly realizing that, in protection of the environment, cities aren’t the problem, they are actually the solution. A movement of post-modern planners, architects, developers, transit advocates and historic preservationists has emerged under the banners of “smart growth,” “new urbanism” and “green building.” And at the local level, citizen activists (and even elected officials) are finally pushing to reverse suburban sprawl. A new vision has emerged around building compact and energy-efficient communities for the future.

    What’s been lacking is the tool for producing that outcome, and for supplanting zoning at the local level. If “zoning” is the DNA of sprawl – the coding that endlessly replicates the bleak landscape of autotopia – then what is the DNA of livable communities?

    It is found in timeless ways of building, updated for the 21st Century, including the need to accommodate cars. It regulates incompatible uses without the absurdities of conventional zoning. It is calibrated for new buildings to contribute to their context and to the larger goal of making a great place. It does so primarily by regulating the form of buildings, since that is what determines the long-neglected public realm of streets and sidewalks. It does that by regulating setbacks, heights and the physical character of buildings.

    It exists, and it’s quietly spreading.

    Where it’s been tried, it’s been a success. Seaside, Florida, the poster town for “new urbanism,” was “coded” rather than zoned, and ended up on the cover of Time magazine. In 2003, Petaluma, California scrapped its zoning regulations and adopted a new code for 400 underdeveloped acres in their Downtown, producing more than a quarter billion dollars in new investment. Miami, Florida is the first major city in America to embark on replacing zoning citywide.

    Unfortunately, this promising alternative is currently saddled with two competing names, both of them unsatisfactory if the movement is truly to catch fire.

    “Form-based codes” is the cumbersome term popular amongst planners. It is a literal tag that captures the emphasis on regulating the “form” of buildings, rather than the obsession with their “use” that is common to all zoning codes. But Americans suffer collective amnesia about why the form of cities determines their character; so while it addresses the “how” of coding, it fails to convey the “why.”

    It clearly lacks the appeal of “No Child Left Behind” or “Homeland Security” as a marketing tool for reform.

    Recognizing this, Seaside’s designer, Andres Duany, coined the term “smart codes.” The advantages of replacing a “zoning code” with something called a “smart code” are pretty obvious: “smart” is much better than “dumb,” which is why “smart growth” has caught on as a slogan. The obvious tool for promoting “smart growth” would be “smart codes.”

    But the problem with the term “smart codes” is the same as the problem with the slogan “smart growth.” Pretty soon, everybody starts calling their codes “smart,” even if they aren’t. This has actually happened with lots of really atrocious developer schemes that have masqueraded as “smart.”

    The magnitude of the problem may trump the limitations of the current names for the solution. While some still claim that the real estate meltdown is only a nasty cyclical slump, that’s just whistling past the graveyard. The model is broken. Building and financing generic products (class A office; suburban housing tract; grocery-anchored strip center; business park, etc.) through globally marketable securities has become radioactive. By the time supply and demand right themselves, the un-sustainability of the whole underlying system will be laid bare.

    Of course, one can never underestimate what historian Barbara Tuchman called “the march of folly.” Perhaps in the interest of “stimulus” to the moribund economy, we will be willing to spend trillions more to subsidize sprawl. But in the end, as economist Herbert Stein pointed out, “That which cannot go on forever, won’t.”

    Before that day comes, we can save untold environmental, economic and social damage by the widespread adoption of coding that respects human scale, restores the proximity of complimentary uses, and repairs the damage done to the American landscape and our rich (but abandoned) tradition of creating fine neighborhoods, towns and cities.

    Scrap zoning. Adopt coding. Legalize the art of making great places that people cherish, that produce economic value, and that leave a lighter environmental footprint on the land.

    Rick Cole is the City Manager in Ventura, California, where he has championed smart growth strategies and revitalization of the historic downtown. He previously spent six years as the City Manager of Azusa, where he was credited by the San Gabriel Valley Tribune with helping make it “the most improved city in the San Gabriel Valley.” He earlier served as mayor of Pasadena and has been called “one of Southern California’s most visionary planning thinkers by the LA Times.” He was honored by Governing Magazine as one of their “2006 Public Officials of the Year.”