New Geography

Category: planning

  • Downtown Central-Cities as Hubs of Civic Connection

    There’s been a torrent of spirited banter lately about the reemergence of downtown central-cities. Much of this raucous debate is between advocates of urban revitalization, who offer an assortment of anti-sprawl messages as justification for this movement, and those who see suburban growth options as essential to quality of life in America. Adding to the fray are environmentalists who see housing density and alternative forms of transportation as the panacea for confronting our carbon-choked world. Downtown central-cities, they say, will incentivize citizens to relinquish their cars in favor of bikes and walking paths.

    These discussions largely ignore a greater significance to the reemergence of central-cities; namely, the recognition of downtowns as the epicenter of civic and cultural activity. This represents a shift away from the traditional concept – barely a century old and now antiquated – of downtown as predominately an economic and job center hub.

    This primary role for downtowns has been declining since the 1950s. According to Robert Fogelson, professor of urban studies and history at MIT and author of Downtown: Its Rise and Fall, 1880-1950, after World War II, downtowns lost their prominence as places where people “work, shop, do business, and amuse themselves.” As he states in the book, “Downtowns were once thought to be as vital to the well-being of a city as a strong heart was to the well-being of a person.”

    Increasingly the word “downtown” has become associated exclusively with large urban centers, fostering images of traffic, crime, homelessness and other forms of unsavoriness. A closer look, however, reveals a wide range of downtown genres – small and large, central-city and suburban, safe and sketchy, chaotic and peaceful, established and emergent. Some downtowns are situated in major urban regions while others are nestled in small-town communities. The senior demographic is prominent in some, college crowd in others.

    This new assessment of downtown as primarily a center for civic opportunities makes sense and revives the ancient role of the plaza “forum” or “agora” concept–places that H.G. Wells affectionately referred to as ideal for “concourse and rendezvous.” This redefinition may bother some who wish to return to the downtown apex of the 1950s, yet the idea is both viable and sustainable.

    With the traditional town-center model serving as the hub of civic activities, residents and visitors alike are frequenting dining establishments, arts and music venues, and coffeehouses in the spirit of civic connection and community. No longer a phenomenon exclusively associated with young artists, bohemians, and intellectuals, the downtown experience is also drawing unprecedented numbers of older folks who appreciate the history, cultural significance, ambiance and architecture of the old core.

    Downtown planning efforts in many locales are responding to this surge of interest by creating a brand identity for their cities – Austin, Texas, has developed a vibrant music scene, with a number of entertainment venues tucked along its 6th street corridor; Indianapolis promotes itself as a spectator-sports mecca, with its downtown activity infused by a robust fan base frequenting college basketball tournaments, pro and minor league baseball games, and the nation’s largest sporting event: the Indianapolis 500; Chicago touts itself as a tourist destination replete with world-class museums, city and architectural tours, and fine dining in its vast downtown core. Smaller downtowns in cities like Davis, California, Evanston, Illinois, and Iowa City, Iowa, tap into a bustling college crowd from area universities.

    Traverse City, Michigan, with a population of over 15,000 (142,075 in the surrounding metro area) offers another model: the quintessential small-city downtown. Quaintly situated along the Grand Traverse Bay on Lake Michigan, the area is primarily known for boating, kayaking, and sailing, except in July, when the city hosts its annual, week-long Cherry Festival that attracts swarms of people to its historic downtown area.

    According to Rob Bacigalupi, Acting Executive Director of the Traverse City Downtown Development Association, downtown traffic is driven by the office population and events. “Downtown Traverse City has somewhere in the neighborhood of 3,500 office workers. Certainly that’s a small number by any measure, but for a town of 15,000, these workers provide a good base for retailers who otherwise have to rely exclusively on seasonal visitor traffic,” he says.

    In terms of a niche identity for downtown Traverse City, tourism seems to be front and center. The calendar is jammed with events, many of which are designed specifically to attract locals downtown. Other cultural activities, such as the Cherry Festival, Traverse City Film Festival and Horses by the Bay, draw visitors by the tens of thousands. Bacigalupi cites a recent convention and visitor’s bureau survey indicating downtown shopping as one of the main regional attractions. “There’s no doubt,” he says, “that regional tourist traffic is perhaps the largest driver of foot traffic downtown. This says a lot for a region that has a number of other attractions and activities to offer.”

    For many city leaders the potential impact of downtown on regional economics and culture is what’s creating the most buzz. Kansas City (Missouri), Roanoke (Virginia), and Asheville (North Carolina) are among a growing number of cities seeking to capitalize on their unique brand of cultural connection to generate badly needed tax revenues for their downtown areas. Some experts say this is a sound move amid tepid economic times as city and local governments look to draw customers from closer to home.

    This message rings true for economically ravaged Rust Belt cities like Cleveland, Ohio. For years, downtown Cleveland has struggled to survive – beginning in 1960 when manufacturing and heavy industries began their decline and the flight to the suburbs gained momentum. In 1978, Cleveland had the dubious distinction of becoming the first American city to enter into default since the Great Depression. Despite small glimmers of promise, downtown Cleveland has been stuck in neutral, unable to build a cohesive identity and direction.

    There are some successes though: Redevelopment efforts have transformed a downtown corridor along E. Fourth Street into a bustling fine dining and nightlife mecca, demonstrating the appeal that well-constituted areas have on the local populaces and tourists. And the area’s rich ethnic and cultural heritage shows promise as a catalyst for change in the central core. While all of this points to some progress for downtown Cleveland, it still must overcome a heavy stigma associated with crime, poverty, and a declining population base to truly achieve civic vibrancy.

    Many of our nation’s suburban communities are setting the pace for downtown civic connection. Naperville, a Chicago suburb and the fifth largest city in Illinois, has established itself as a model for suburban downtowns. This city of 142,000 residents features a cornucopia of sophisticated shops, restaurants and entertainment venues that attract foot traffic to the town center-oriented central district. Open space has been integrated into the cityscape through well-maintained walking paths along the DuPage River, which flows through downtown. Thoughtful planning for the provision of abundant, free parking, train accessibility, and bike lockups enables convenient accessibility to the area both day and night.

    Folsom, California, is indicative of a suburban community that fosters civic ties and activities through its historic downtown district. With a population of 70,000 this city located in the eastern portion of rapidly growing Sacramento County draws an eclectic crowd to its old town boardwalk setting replete with saloons, outdoor restaurants, and antique stores. The downtown core also serves as a gathering post for legions of bicyclists who have helped shape Folsom into one of the top bicycling communities in the nation.

    During summer, downtown Folsom hums with activity generated by two weekly events: Thursday Night Market, featuring live music, food and shopping, and the Sunday Farmers Market, where frequenters can purchase fresh, locally grown food from area farmers. Plans are afoot for a street-scape improvement and a storefront restoration – projects that are designed to preserve historic elements while enhancing the city’s tourism desirability. Also in the works are mixed-use housing units and a restaurant that incorporates a railroad roundabout. All of this comes on the heels of a new parking structure and ice-skating rink, which debuted last year.

    In the end, downtown central-cities seem poised to reclaim some of their prominence as magnets of culture and social connection. We may not be witnessing the rebirth of the great economic centers of the 1950s, but a revival of our central space represents a positive development for communities both large and small.

    Michael Scott is a researcher and writer focusing on the growth and sustainability of downtown central-cities. He can be reached at michael@vdowntownamerica.com.

  • ULI Moving Cooler Report: Greenhouse Gases, Exaggerations and Misdirections

    Yesterday a group of environmental advocacy groups, foundations and other organizations released a report, Moving Cooler, amid much fanfare, seeking to have us believe that it is a serious study of GHG reduction options in the transportation sector. It is immensely disappointing. The world could use a dispassionate, objective and broad-based assessment of petroleum reduction options as well as their positive and negative consequences. This is not it.

    As one reads one can’t help but feel that you are being hit with a sales pitch, or a legal brief from advocacy groups and those who would benefit financially from the derived policy options. The main point, amidst all the array of statistics, confirms the dogma of the already convinced that the only solution to greenhouse gases is major re-structuring of society.

    These notions, critically, were already on the front burner of these same groups long before the climate change issue came to prominence. “Progressive” foundations, new urbanists, planners and urban landowners long have advocated the re-assembly of urban living into high density transit-oriented bikeable/walkable communities. Even though their numbers as reported in the text don’t bear it out, the rhetoric is all focused towards that end and the pricing out of existence the automobile and all the evils it represents: suburban living and long trips.

    This is a report meant to be waved rather than read as the Congress goes about its fulminations in the coming months. It understates the prospect of gaining the full potential of greater energy efficiency from the vehicle fleet – the only way to justify the wholesale reorganization of society. In fact, if the vehicle/fuel assumptions had been as comparably optimistic as the land use assumptions, with a robust and honest assessment of fuel and vehicle technological development opportunities, one wonders whether this report would be worth doing at all.

    We have been here before. In the struggle to improve air quality, it turned out that the solution was not so much changing people’s behavior as it was technological – largely the improvement of fuel and vehicle technology. In the 1970s we were told we could not have cleaner air and automobiles; yet in fact that’s exactly what happened, without having to heed a sermon about our need to repent and change our suburban, car-driving ways. Some people just have a penchant for telling others how to live.

    Maybe the saddest part of it all, the authors appear not to take global warming or energy security very seriously at all. Rather these public concerns are just a convenient hook, the cause du jour, on which to hang their favorite solutions. If global warming matters – and it does; if energy security matters – and it does; then early action is clearly called for, particularly given the cumulative nature of GHG gases. But somehow the things easily done and carrying with them little in the way of disruption or public costs – carpooling, telecommuting, dispersed work – are largely written off. Such immediate, low-cost actions as highway operations strategies including better traffic signalization, improved traveler information and accident response systems receive little emphasis.

    Overall, the treatment of costs and benefits will leave readers gasping:

    • Travel times don’t get counted – so shifting from a 15 minute car trip to an hour on transit or walking has no penalty.
    • Transit subsidies don’t get counted – so doubling subsidies to increase ridership has only benefits.
    • Every possible pricing strategy is invoked – congestion pricing, cordon pricing, on-street parking fees, extreme fuel prices – in order to get people out of cars, and then the loss of their cars is counted as a benefit.

    At the same time the benefits and the costs involved are so corrupted to be meaningless. It will take weeks for analysts to tease out what really was done in the way of assumptions to create winners and losers. And there is no effort to tally all the costs exacted on the average household, or the typical business or even governments for that matter. The costs would add up to a permanent recession.

    I am sure the millions affected by these policies, particularly the middle and working class people who can now just barely afford a car, who would be priced out of the system by these policies, will say thank you for this “benefit”.

    As we work our way through the recession, workers will be willing to travel farther and farther to find the right job – or any job. With continuing increased specialization in our society larger and larger market sheds for jobs and for workers, quality transportation will be critical to our national productivity. This is the work that transportation does and it is totally dismissed by this report. It can not be addressed adequately by rail or transit even with a complete radical reorganization of work and society.

    In order to further bolster their ineffective case the proponents use a tool called “bundles” in which packages of actions are assembled for their “synergistic” qualities and either given a boost or cut based on the assertion that some things work well together. How this was done is not explained. So land use plans, which will take 30 years to come to fruition, are coupled with carbon pricing policies in a sort of horse and rabbit stew, that help make density solutions seem effective.

    Those who see the solution of so many of our present ills by cramming people into ever higher densities miss the point. Residential density is one of the most fundamental choices households make. Changing residential densities to make transit work better is the smallest tail wagging the biggest dog I can think of. It puts planning dogma ahead of the most basic human needs and rights.

    It is clear that most people, excepting a small but often very loud minority, opt for lower density living when income permits. As the society changes and choice patterns evolve, the marketplace must be ready to respond with development that is both responsive to household choices and to the demands of environmental needs. Any public policies that inhibit a market trend toward higher densities must be addressed. But the market place must be the final arbiter in a free society. People do not live “efficiently” in order to optimize some imposed societal goal, certainly not commuting.

    The serious work that needs to be done in this area still awaits an independent and credible group to undertake this work. It can’t come soon enough.

    For almost 40 years Alan E. Pisarski has been involved in the national transportation policy scene, from vantage points at the original Tri-State Transportation Commission in New York, the Metropolitan Washington COG, the Office of the Secretary, U.S. DOT, or in a personal consulting capacity. In his work he has measured the transportation activities of our nation from the metropolitan, state, national and international levels. In the U.S. DOT he organized the major travel surveys of the nation and designed and managed the U.S. transportation statistical system under the Assistant Secretary for Policy, establishing programs that are still the basis of much of the U.S. transportation statistical system today.

  • Globalization Leads to Civic Leadership Culture Dominated by Real Estate Interests

    “Cleveland’s leadership has no apparent theory of change. Overwhelmingly, the strategy is now driven by individual projects. These projects, pushed by the real estate interests that dominate the board of the Greater Cleveland Partnership, confuse real estate development with economic development. This leads to the ‘Big Thing Theory’ of economic development: Prosperity results from building one more big thing.“

    Ed Morrison wrote the above about Cleveland, but he could have been describing any number of other cities. Why is it that so many cities have turned to large real estate projects to attempt to restart growth, turning away from strategies that previously made them successful?

    The answer possibly lies in structural economic changes resulting from the nationalization and globalization of industry. Up until the 1990s, many businesses – including retail, utilities, some manufacturing, and especially banking – operated on a regional or local basis. This meant that the civic leadership of a community was heavily dominated by businessmen, again, especially bankers, whose success was dependent on the overall macroeconomic health of the particular city or region they were located in.

    But with banking deregulation, we saw large numbers of hometown banks merged out of existence. Industry after industry was subjected to national or international level roll-ups as changes in the economy and regulatory environment gave increasing returns to scale.

    Why is it that “real estate interests” dominate in a local economy like Cleveland? Because, to a great extent, they are among the only ones left. Consider the local industries that were not as subject to roll-ups. Principal among these are real estate development, construction, and law. This means the local leadership of a community is now made up of executives in those industries, and they bring a very different world view versus the previous generation.

    Consider the difference between a banker and a lawyer. Banks make money on the spread between what they pay for deposits or wholesale funding, and what they charge for loans. This means the CEO of a bank is making money while he plays golf at 3. He’s got a cash register back at the office that never stops ringing.

    By contrast, lawyers get paid by the hour for work on specific matters and transactions. The law partner is only making money on the golf course if he is closing a deal. It’s similar between many other “operational” businesses that were previously prominent in communities, and the “transactional” businesses that are now often dominant.

    Additionally, even where the hometown bank or company did not get bought out, it likely escaped that fate by getting big itself and making large numbers of acquisitions or otherwise expanding. This means those institutions are less dependent on the health of the particular local market they happen to be headquartered in than they are overall macroeconomic conditions. While no doubt they want the headquarters town to be successful, not least of which so they can effectively recruit talent, they can afford to take a portfolio view of local markets.

    Not only has the drying up of local and regional operating businesses led to a business leadership community unbalanced in favor of transactionally oriented firms, the loss of those local and regional operating businesses robbed many of the transactional companies such as law and architecture firms of their principal local client base. Large national businesses employ national firms for advertising, law, architecture, etc. If they use local firms, it is in a subsidiary role. (Or, if a smaller firm is fortunate enough to land a contract, it is servicing a client on a national, not local basis).

    Richard Florida described this in his Atlantic Monthly article on the financial crash. “As the manufacturing industry has shrunk, the local high-end services—finance, law, consulting—that it once supported have diminished as well, absorbed by bigger regional hubs and globally connected cities. In Chicago, for instance, the country’s 50 biggest law firms grew by 2,130 lawyers from 1984 to 2006, according to William Henderson and Arthur Alderson of Indiana University. Throughout the rest of the Midwest, these firms added a total of just 169 attorneys. Jones Day, founded in 1893 and today one of the country’s largest law firms, no longer considers its Cleveland office ‘headquarters’—that’s in Washington, D.C.—but rather its ‘founding office.’”

    Where then is the source of transactions these firms can turn to in order to sustain their business? The public sector, of course.

    I would hypothesize that many local transactionally oriented services companies have seen the public sector take on a greater share of billings than in the past. With the old school bankers and industrialists mostly out of the picture, the leadership in our communities consists increasingly of the political class and a business community dominated by transactional interests.

    When you look at the composition of this group, it should come as no surprise that the publicly subsidized real estate development is the preferred civic strategy. Politicians get to cut ribbons. Cranes always look good on the skyline. Local architects, engineers, developers, and construction companies love it. And there is plenty of legal work to go around.

    This is not to say these people are acting nefariously. And nor were old school bankers and industrialists always acting purely altruistically. Rather, the difference comes from the world view and “theory of change” that people steeped in transactionally oriented businesses bring with them.

    With the current financial crisis, bigness, as a strategy, is out of favor for the moment. Also, the gimmicky financial transactions that underlie much of the crisis are calling the entire transactional model into question. There’s an increasing alarm at the precipitous decline of manufacturing, particularly the auto sector. And people are questioning whether we as a country can survive simply through services, or whether we need to revitalize the concept of the operational business and actually making things. Plus, real estate deals are tougher to get done because of tight credit, and it seems unlikely that the go-go days of recent years are coming back soon.

    We’ll see where this leads. But if we see more local and regional scale operating businesses start to emerge again, then perhaps the urban development pendulum will start swinging the other direction again. In the meantime, large scale real estate development will likely continue to be preferred.

    Aaron M. Renn is an independent writer on urban affairs based in the Midwest. His writings appear at The Urbanophile.

  • The Rich Home on the Range

    Have your home on the range, access to a few thousand acres …without paying for it all!

    By Candace Evans

    Mark Lowham was raised on a ranch in Casper, Wyoming. He got away from roping steers and repairing fences to study at Stanford Business School. Lowham thought he might return to ranching one day, but he never dreamed that instead of roping steers, he’d be marketing ways to rope adults into a herd of conservation-minded land-owners.

    Lowham is senior vice president of WEST*GROUP, where he works with Gerald T. Halpin, a former rocket scientist renowned for having the perfect nose for real estate deals. Halpin’s best to date, according to Lowham, was his 1962 acquisition of two dairy farms, Storm and Ulfelder, in the Washington suburbs. They became a significant part of Tyson’s Corner, now the 12th largest commercial business district in the United States. Tyson’s Corner, says Lowham, is larger than downtown Atlanta or Denver. WEST*GROUP, the company Halpin started in 1962 with partners Thomas F. Nicholson, Col. Rudolph G. Seeley and Charles B. Ewing, Jr. is the largest landowner in Tyson’s with more than thirty three city blocks still under Halpin’s sharp eye.

    Though he launched in the greater Washington area, Halpin had seen the west in his extensive travels, and focused on the natural beauty of the Grand Tetons near Jackson Hole, Wyoming.

    In 1989, WEST*GROUP formed a partnership called Meridian, whose mission was to develop a 1400 acre ranch in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, just minutes from the most perfect snow midway between the town of Jackson Hole and the Jackson Hole ski area.

    The spread was initially zoned and approved for 1160 home sites but Halpin decided to turn what he called Indian Springs Ranch into a hybrid of private land ownership and common space sharing. Owners would hold title to a specific portion of the overall ranch – their homestead – and have access to the rest, much like a country club.

    Those 1400 acres would only house 46 home sites of approximately seven acres each, enough really to be anyone’s Ponderosa. But you’d still get all the perks of ranch ownership: acres of protected ranch land, grazing cattle, horses to ride, barns, pool, tennis courts and a gathering lodge for community. The seven acre parcels of land on the ranch would be separated by several acres between homesteads, on which owners could build in their “envelope”.

    This trend has been growing for a decade. Movies like the 1991 film “City Slickers” projected the romance of ranching into every movie theatre in America. Ted Turner and other significantly high net worth individuals began buying up huge land parcels in the west – Wyoming, Montana, and Colorado, “glamorizing” recreational ranch ownership. Halpin’s first vision for Indian Springs, circa 1989, was to have a small exclusive guest ranch on the order of Lost Creek Ranch & Spa, the exclusive Jackson Hole guest ranch run by Halpin’s son and daughter in law. Lost Creek is one of those places where city slickers can temporarily escape the city and play cowboy outdoors while dining indoors on lobster claw salad, Venison Rosini, and halibut stuffed with crab. Then they get to dunk boot-weary toes in the Jacuzzi after a hard day riding herd and fall asleep beneath the stars on Frette sheets.

    Prominent people bought early sites: Connie Stevens, the actress; Carol and Robin Farkus, he the N.Y.C. Chairman of Alexanders Department Stores, Tom Bolger, chairman of Bell Atlantic. Buyers came from California, New York, the Midwest, the Minneapolis region. They attracted other well-heeled people, which helped sell out the homesites.

    Meridian’s first venture was so profitable, Lowham led the company to develop a Texas Hill Country ranch in 1998; a new ranch in Mesquite, Nevada is currently in the works.

    Though vacation home sales are now slower than they once were, they are not dead. The shared ownership ranch offers owners a shot at full home ownership while splitting the costs of the ranching operation as well as amenities. Some operations even eek out a small profit, but what these buyers are really looking for is a way to pay a fraction of the operating costs while enjoying the whole property. There’s a strong conservationist edge: most shared ownership ranches, like Indian Springs, its Texas Hill Country sibling, The Preserve at Walnut Springs (Ken Starr is an owner, as is yours truly), and Cross Pines Ranch Preserve in East Texas near Mineola, scatter a handful of homes across the vast acreage to create a true sense of isolation, leaving the majority of land to breathe.

    “Ranchers are looking for a way to preserve land and conserve it while not going bankrupt,” says Dallas Addison, developer of Cross Pines, based on a conservation easement where each owner has a one-fortieth interest in the entire property. The conservation concept will soon be crossing the Pacific. Addison has partnered with fellow Texan Alan Friedman, owner of Trisept Inc., to develop Bosque Canyon Ranch at Lake Whitney in the Texas Hill Country, and a 7,000-acre project on Hawaii’s Big Island.

    Other ranches cluster homesteads in one area to preserve as much raw open space as possible; the forever-open range becomes a prime selling point.

    “Clustering is a much better land use process,” says Larry Corson, senior vice president with Dallas-based Hunt Realty Investments. Hunt is the developer of Cornerstone, a 6,000 acre ranch near Telluride, CO. “Our owners actually prefer it, knowing what they have preserved in perpetuity for the environment and wildlife.”

    Cornerstone was once a plain Jane hunting ranch owned by Texans. It was foreclosed and sold at auction to a local investor. Corson literally spotted the site for his employer, Dallas oilman Ray Hunt, off a dirt road. After two years of working with local officials on the development plan, construction began in 2004. The property opened in 2006. Homesteads range from one to one hundred acres, starting prices at $175,000 to seven figures plus an $80,000 club initiation fee and $6,000 a year dues, which are fairly typical.

    Perhaps helped by the relatively vibrant Texas economy, in 2008 the company reported $8 million in sales. The land Corson saw had full potential for a five-star plus ranch: horseback riding, an extensive trail system for hiking, riding or jeeping, fly fishing onsite and private access to the nearby Uncompahgre River, snow mobiles, cross-country skiing, snow shoeing, ice skating, toboggans, and downhill skiing at nearby Telluride in the winter months. But the best selling point of all was the art in every window – breathtaking views of the San Juan Mountain range from every angle.

    It’s City Slickers roughing it on Gulfstreams.

    Corson immediately saw potential for the one thing Telluride was sorely lacking: a high quality, private golf course. The spread held a natural plateau for what has become a world-class, Greg Norman-designed golf course. So there you have it – take a hike, go fish, study the migration patterns of deer and elk, saddle up for a Kamikaze ride, or golf.

    The owners come from all over, but most are from Texas, like investment banker Richard Moses, who was in Telluride for all of 24 hours when he bought not one but two lots. In a tough market, says Corson, if people are going to make a real estate purchase it’s going to be a lifestyle decision: is this the place I really want to be? And of course, are there enough toys to keep me entertained for weeks?

    “At Cornerstone, we once had a little bear cub one morning sitting on our outside barbecue licking the grease off the grill,” he says.

    Just because it’s a ranch, doesn’t mean there must be cattle. At Cornerstone, management discovered that as soon as they stopped running cattle on the property, the songbirds returned – not a bad trade. The grazing killed off the shallow grassland savannah that the bison had once protected.

    Sometimes the city slickers are more conservation conscious than the country folk, and more self-conscious and contentious. Owners at one shared-ownership ranch recently disagreed, albeit briefly, over the herd. Some owners thought keeping methane-producing Longhorns was not worth the massive carbon footprint, or hoof print, for 2,500 lbs of western eye candy. Of course, they were not as concerned over the carbon footprint etched by their private jet flights to the local FBO.

    Shared ownership of course has its downside: you actually have to share – opinions, design, tastes and common areas. You may not have quite everything the way you would if the whole place was yours alone. Strong management, which can sometimes double as a counseling service, is essential.

    “In this market,” says Corson, “buyers are really doing their homework to make sure the developer can deliver on all the promises.”

    Or just keep peace at the ranch.

    Candace Evans is the Editor of DallasDirt, a Dallas-based real estate blog for D Magazine Media Partners.

  • Urban Backfill vs. Urban Infill

    By Richard Reep

    Wendell Cox recently reported on the state of so-called “urban infill” efforts, and analyzed which cities are experiencing an increase in their density. This report shows some surprising trends. Cities such as Pittsburgh, which claim to be successful at “infilling”, are actually dropping in density, in part because of low birth rates and lack of in-migration.

    What may be the next trend might be called urban agriculturalization or “urban backfill”. In the past, urban infill used to make sense. Where a concentration of people already existed, and where infrastructure was in place, development between existing structures seemed inevitable. With the accessibility allowed by the car, urban infill became a choice among others, including the suburban frontier. Urban infill became, for most cities, a rarity.

    Current attempts to encourage infill over fringe development may be too little too late, as the cost and regulatory environment favors fringe development. Expenditures on public safety rose as building codes dictated an increasing level of safety in urban cores, not just for the occupants of the building, but for the building itself. Driven higher because of the perceived desirability of a downtown, costs soared out of control as elaborate, complex zoning processes meant high fees to a team of consultants necessary to steer projects through multiple public hearings. These generated some pricey computer graphics, but often no guaranteed outcome.

    Aesthetics also have become highly regulated as well, with design boards composed of interested citizens, reducing the design process to design-by-committee. By the early part of this century, urban infill became an Olympian sport, leaving most of an urban area’s empty lots and dilapidated buildings vacant.

    To further burden the urban infill developer, right now a new form of regulation is entering the scene, that of the so-called smartcode which regulates the last untouched part of the exterior of a structure: its overall form. With rigid codes and design staffs, cities can now create for themselves a vision, supplemented with pretty pictures, of the imagined future, where building patterns need to be just-so. An urban infill developer must now adhere to someone else’s opinion of where his front door is, and whether he has a front porch.

    So, in reality, these urban parcels sit abandoned and income-free, with the biggest real estate growth market being in “for sale” signs, as owners try to unload these properties on a greater fool ready to do battle for the cause of urban infill. It is a no-win scenario for cities.

    Back fill provides an alternative below the line. Overlooked spaces are being discovered by many people as ideal for temporary use, and with only a small cost for a license or permit, new marketplaces, street performances, and other people-intensive activities are rushing in to fill the void. Again, a city with any savvy will try to apply a regulatory and fee drag on this activity; fortunately for the citizens, this usually takes a long time, and in the meantime, many cities are acquiring the look of a genteel form of Blade Runner, with person-to-person commerce taking place among the currently decaying and abandoned edifices and infrastructure.

    Still other parts of the city are trying to beautify their abandoned spaces by planting them, sometimes with gardens, figuring lush landscapes can hide the fact that their core is not as desirable as it once was. And still others fence them off, creating a new canvas for graffiti artists and advertising, and returning the abandoned spaces into wilderness.

    All of this belongs to the study of old field succession, which traditionally has been an agricultural science. For urban cores, this approach suggests a new way to reuse abandoned space. Increasingly, agriculture may not belong exclusively to the rural condition, but can be adapted to the city itself.

    In some areas such as Orlando, entrepreneurs have discovered this reverse-flow effect, which has been useful in so many other endeavors. By applying the standards of agriculture to the urban core, interesting and useful businesses are springing up. Near Orlando’s downtown area, for example, Dandelion’s Café is licensed not as a restaurant but as an agricultural kitchen, allowing it to operate under the Florida Department of Agriculture rather than the Florida Department of Health. This freedom does not compromise public safety – people still get sick from food in Department of Health regulated restaurants – but cleverly avoids the intensive state oversight, permits and fees associated with most restaurants.

    In College Park, the City’s empty land has been converted into a community garden, offering small plots of land for rental to surrounding property owners to cultivate produce. This is not a new idea; urban community gardens exist in cities worldwide. But as the current economic conditions squeeze incomes, creative use of outdoor space to reduce the grocery bill has engendered a new microfarming movement, and may have staying power as people rediscover a sense of shared purpose.

    All this creates a new form of development, which might be characterized as urban backfill. Urban backfill projects include any temporary uses of space for food, commerce, or entertainment. These even include temporary sacred places – the streetcorner preacher, for example, and his congregation. Still other abandoned spaces seemed destined for decay: overgrown weeds, saplings, and mice are turning urban vacant lots into true pastoral scenes that provide surrounding buildings with glimpses of unregulated nature.

    Cities can hold off this backfill for only so long. If Twitter can enable a revolution, ad hocracy can certainly enable free commerce and discourse in a democracy. Temporary uses suggest a vitality that cannot be denied or regulated to death, and suggest that cities consider a new way of looking at these spaces. Urban backfill provides an opportunity to reinvent the American city and create economic and social value where now none exists. It can also help establish both a renewed sense of place that can also nurture new ways for a city to evolve organically and naturally.

    Richard Reep is an Architect and artist living in Winter Park, Florida. His practice has centered around hospitality-driven mixed use, and has contributed in various capacities to urban mixed-use projects, both nationally and internationally, for the last 25 years.

  • Forcing Density in Australia’s Suburbs

    Australia is a continent sized country with total urbanized area of only 0.3%.  As is the case with the USA, the population is increasing as a result of natural growth and immigration. The country is blessed with a sunny climate and enough space to enable its inhabitants to enjoy a relaxed, free lifestyle.

    Given this, one would expect there would be little support for the higher density housing ideology of the Smart Growth advocates. Yet since the early 1990s the Australian Federal Department of Housing has been pushing exactly this approach.

    Sydney, located in the state of New South Wales, has been the forefront for this densification policy. Sydney (population 4.34 million) is subdivided into local municipalities, each run by a popularly elected council. Traditionally these councils have had the responsibility of planning their own areas. Over the years council zoning plans have complied with the expressed preference of over 80% of Australians to live in free-standing homes. In an effort to alter this long-standing pattern the New South Wales Government has resorted to the use of authoritarian processes to force densification, whether areas like it or not.

    High-density regulations from the Planning Minister come about by ministerial fiat without discussion in the State Parliament. These regulations require municipal councils to submit planning strategies to the Planning Minister that increase density, to his/her satisfaction, under threat of removal of a council’s planning powers. In a blatant conflict of interest, half of the members of the minister’s assessment panel are developers who stand to gain from the implementation strategies being assessed and the other half are bureaucrats. There is no community representation.

    Most councils have meekly complied with the coercive demand to submit high-density planning strategies.  As a result previously attractive suburbs with their flowers and foliage are being overcome by the relentless march of grey concrete and bitumen. Bewildered long-time residents find themselves isolated amongst the drab shadows of upward-rising, smothering unit blocks.

    One leafy, mainly single-residential council area in the northern part of Sydney (Ku-ring-gai) insisted that the submission of their residential strategy be delayed until studies could be conducted of the effects of the resulting higher density on infrastructure, traffic, the environment and heritage. This cheekiness was dealt with savagely. Its traditional planning powers have been taken away and given to a planning panel appointed by the Planning Minister.

    This planning panel organised a plan that will increase the population density of the municipality by some 50%. The plan proposes that the traditional village centres and numerous surrounding homes in the area be replaced by massive high-rise tower developments, many spreading deep into surrounding residential streets.

    In a token show of democracy the panel arranged for a public consultation meeting on the draft plan. During the meeting, resident after resident excoriated the high-density plan as grossly excessive, defiant of independent studies and contemptuous of environmental and heritage constraints. Speaker after speaker denounced the panel’s processes – as “failures of transparency and due process”, “patronising and condescending of community concerns”, “pandering to developer interests”, being “part of a process to impose a policy that was not in the greater public interest” and a “sham”. The panel ended the meeting when only half of those who registered to speak had done so. Despite tumultuous scenes of uproar, the planning panel resolved to adopt the high-density plan.

    One would think that such dictatorial impositions on a community could be warranted only by indisputably being in the wider public interest. The Planning Department has attempted to justify its stance by alleging benefits for the greater public good. Chief among these are claims that high density is better for the environment and that the policy saves on infrastructure cost.

    In Australia the evidence points to the contrary. On the question of greenhouse gas emissions, a recent study which allocates greenhouse gas emissions to final consumption at the household level1 shows that on average per person emissions in the high-density inner city areas are nearly twice that in the outer low density areas. Another study shows that there are more greenhouse emissions from domestic energy use in high-density living (5.4t/person/year) than in detached dwellings (2.9t/peson/year)2. This results from lifts, clothes dryers, air-conditioners and common lighted areas such as parking garages and foyers. What is more, the energy required to construct high-rise is nearly five times the energy needed to build single-residential, per resident. 

    In Australia high density hardly reduces travel intensity at all. Research on Melbourne areas shows that the people squeezed into newly converted dense areas did not use public transport to any greater extent than before and there was little or no change in their percentage of car use3.

    There is not nearly enough difference in the greenhouse gas emissions of public versus private transport to counter the increased emissions of high-density dwelling. Greenhouse gas emission per passenger km on the Sydney rail network is 105 gm. The figure for the average car is 155 gm – but for  modern fuel efficient vehicles is as low as 70 gm.

    Adding more people to existing infrastructure results in overload. After 15 years of high-density policies, the quality of Sydney suburban roads, rail service, water supply and electricity has noticeably deteriorated. High-density retrofit is hugely more expensive than laying out new infrastructure on greenfield sites. Infrastructure costs quoted by the authorities almost always omit the cost of restoring the standard of infrastructure back to the level of service people enjoyed before high-density was imposed. One example of these “forgotten” costs – the augmentation of electricity supplies in downtown Sydney, necessitated by 4900 additional apartments, will eventually cost $A429 million ($US340 million) – or $A80,000 per new apartment.4

    The effect of high density policies on the cost of housing has been devastating to the younger generation. In attempting to force people into higher density on existing land, the authorities have drastically cut down the supply of new land for housing. This has resulted in the cost of land now comprising 70% of the cost of a place to stay, instead of the traditional 30%. A new dwelling on Sydney’s outskirts should cost about $A210,000 ($U168,000) but is actually more than $A500,000.

    The cost of commercial land in Sydney has also rocketed out of control. Employers take their business elsewhere. Back in 2000, the New South Wales proportion of the national economy was 35%. This has now plunged to barely 30%.5  The proportion of bankruptcies has increased from 25% to 38%.6

    Besides ostensible “green” ideology, perhaps the powerful driver for high-density policies lies with the resulting opportunities for infill developers to make huge profits. Over the last five years, the ruling New South Wales Labor Party received donations from the development industry of $A9 million while the opposition party netted $A5 million. These donations exceeded the total contributions for all political parties over the same period from the gambling, tobacco, alcohol, hotel, pharmaceutical and armaments industries combined7.

    The political donations gain donors favoured access to government.  This inevitably results in policies sympathetic to them, which in turn result in more profits and more donations.  

    Other Australian states also have implemented high-density policies but not to the degree of New South Wales. Recently in Victoria8 and in Western Australia9 carefully couched announcements have revealed that policies are moving away from excessive high-density.

    Mistaken ideology and financial rewards to a minority have made high-density an enduring feature of New South Wales planning policy. The results are not pretty: more greenhouse gases, high traffic densities, worse health outcomes, a creaking and overloaded infrastructure, a whole generation locked out of owning their own home and business fleeing the state for the greener, less congested pastures elsewhere.

    (Dr) Tony Recsei has a background in chemistry and is an environmental consultant. Since retiring he has taken an interest in community affairs and is president of the Save Our Suburbs community group which opposes over-development forced onto communities by the New South Wales State Government.

    1 Australian Conservation Foundation Consumption Atlas, ,http://www.online.org.au/consumptionatlas/

    2 Myors, P. O’Leary, R. and Helstroom, R.,2005, Multi-Unit Residential Building Energy and Peak Demand Study, Sydney, New South Wales Department of Infrastructure, Planning and Natural Resources

    3 Christopher Hodgetts, 2008,Thesis: Urban Consolidation And Transport, University of Melbourne

    4 EnergyAustralia website accessed October 2008

    5 Sydney Morning Herald 15 November 2008

    6 Sydney Morning Herald 29 March 2009

    7 Sylvia Hale, Member of NSW Legislative Council, 29 April 2009, Speech to the National Trust Breakfast

    8 http://www.theage.com.au/opinion/opposition-to-a-bigger-melbourne-smacks-of-cultural-snobbery-20090624-cwpv.html?page=-1

  • Subsidies, Starbucks and Highways: A Primer

    At a recent Senate Banking Committee hearing, Senator Robert Menendez of New Jersey, responding to comments about large transit subsidies, remarked that the last federal highway bill included $200 billion in subsidies for highways.

    The Senator should know better. The federal highway bill builds highways with fees paid by highway users, not by subsidies. Perhaps the Senator was frustrated at having just heard an effective fact-based dismantling of transit lore in testimony by the Cato Institute’s Randal O’Toole and felt it necessary to strike out at the mode by which nearly all travel occurs in the United States.

    In fact, virtually all of Senator Menendez’s $200 billion for federal highway spending come from user fees, which are paid by people and companies that use the highways, not subsidies. The Menendez comment might simply result from ignorance. But often the error appears to be the purposeful muddying of an issue that has become so common in public affairs.

    The “subsidy” litany is accepted by many in the public, who have better things to do than to check the veracity of statements by public “servants”. As a result, we offer this primer on the subject, not only for casual observers of public policy, but also for any members of Congress who might have an interest in veracity.

    What is A Subsidy?

    A government subsidy occurs when taxpayers are forced to pay for a government service, whether or not they use it. Subsidies are legitimate. Subsidies are needed to fund government services demanded by the electorate, such as welfare services and education. On the other hand, payments made by users of a government service (or private goods and services) in proportion to their use are not subsidies. They are user fees, including taxes on the use of gasoline and other fuels.

    This point can be illustrated by looking at the electricity industry. No one would suggest that Potomac Power, Pacific Gas and Electric or other privately owned utilities that are supported by payments from consumers are subsidized. Similarly, government owned utilities like the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, Austin Energy and the Tennessee Valley Authority are not subsidized, since they receive their funds from users. It would have been no more absurd to characterize user payments to electricity companies as subsidies than to characterize the federal highway program as subsidized (Note 1).

    There is a simple way to tell the difference between subsidies and user payments. With subsidies you pay whether or not you use the service. In contrast, with user fees, you don’t pay if you don’t use. People who don’t use electricity from the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power don’t pay and people who don’t use the highways don’t pay either.

    Transit Subsidies

    Everyone agrees that transit is subsidized. Approximately one-quarter of transit’s operating and capital funding comes from passenger fares. Nearly all of the rest is subsidies. Moreover, an “open and shut” case can be made for subsidies to transit as a welfare service in core cities where it provides the only mobility for some lower-income residents who do not have access to cars. The case is, however, less than “open and shut” with respect to the substantial subsidies for upper-middle income commuters such as those from Connecticut, the Hudson Valley and New Jersey to Manhattan, or from tony East Bay suburbs to San Francisco, or for well-paid Maryland and Virginia commuters into the District of Columbia.

    A 2004 United States Department of Transportation (USDOT) report indicated that federal subsidies to transit amounted to $0.16 per passenger mile in 2002. Our update of this report estimated that the federal subsidy had risen to $0.17 per passenger mile by 2006. Overall, federal subsidies to transit were $7.7 billion in 2002, which increased to $8.6 billion in 2006 (Figure 1).

    Subsidies to Highways

    Virtually all federal highway spending was financed by fees paid by users in proportion to their use of the highways. There was no taxpayer subsidy.

    Indeed, the USDOT report indicates that in 2002, the federal government made a profit on automobile use of highways of $0.001 and had made a profit in every year since 1990, the first year reported upon. Overall, automobile use of the highways earned the federal government a profit of $4.5 billion in 2002 and $5.5 billion in 2006 (Figure 1).

    The profits made by the federal government on highways indicate that highways are, in fact, subsidizing other government services. Senator Menendez neglected to mention, of course, that last highway bill (called “SAFETEA-LU,” its predecessor was called “ISTEA,” pronounced by insiders as “ice tea”) included $34 billion in subsidies by highway users for transit. For more than 25 years, federal law has required an add-on to highway user fees to support transit. Today nearly 15 percent of highway user fees are used to subsidize transit. In fact, road users pay 15 times as much in gas taxes per passenger mile on transit as they paid for highway expenditures (Figure 2).

    The profits do not stop at the federal level. Federal Highway Administration data indicates that user fees exceed the federal and state share of money spent on state highways, these being intercity highways, urban freeways and some other urban roadways. Only at the local government level are expenditures more than highway user fees, indicating subsidy.

    A real world parallel: Most of us have had Starbucks coffee. Our Starbucks coffee is not subsidized; rather we pay for it, 100% of it (Note 2). We can call this a price or we can use the public policy synonym, a user fee. As in the case of highways, those who do not drink Starbucks coffee do not pay for it. However, if Starbucks were financed like the federal highway program, 15 percent of the price of the coffee would be taken to subsidize tea drinkers (the authorizing legislation might be called ICECAFE).

    Airports

    While Senator Menendez did not refer to airports, those afflicted with a love affair with trains frequently claim that airports are subsidized in order to argue for massive expenditures on high speed rail, intercity rail and Amtrak. They are nearly as wrong as Senator Menendez. The air transportation system is overwhelmingly paid for by users, through taxes on tickets and airport fees. As in the case of highways, only those who use airports and the commercial air system pay for them.

    There are relatively small subsidies to commercial air transportation. The USDOT report found subsidies per passenger mile of approximately one-half penny.

    By comparison, the nation’s intercity passenger rail system (Amtrak) was subsidized to the extent of $0.21 per passenger mile in 2002, according to the USDOT report. Our report found that the figure had edged up to $0.24 in 2006, more than 50 times the subsidy to the commercial air system (Figure 1).

    These commercial air subsidies, however small, should be eliminated. Failing that, train proponents have grounds to ask for up to a half-penny per passenger mile of subsidy for high speed rail and intercity rail. Beyond that, equity requires that high speed rail and intercity rail be financed the same way as the commercial air system: with passenger fares, taxes on rail tickets and fees for the use of railroad stations.

    The Bottom Line

    The bottom line is that you pay for your coffee from Starbucks, you pay for your electricity from the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power and you pay for your federal highways with your own money, not with subsidies by people who do not use them.

    Note 1: Of course, if general taxpayer funding is provided to electric utilities, such payments would be subsidies, whether the utility is privately owned or owned by government.

    Note 2: All of this assumes that the local Starbucks is not the recipient of special tax incentives or abatements that might have been used by local government as enticement to locate in the community.

    Wendell Cox is a Visiting Professor, Conservatoire National des Arts et Metiers, Paris. He was born in Los Angeles and was appointed to three terms on the Los Angeles County Transportation Commission by Mayor Tom Bradley. He is the author of “War on the Dream: How Anti-Sprawl Policy Threatens the Quality of Life.”

  • Solar Gains On The Green Competition

    The living room of my electrician friend Harry Gres was filled with solar panels which were destined for his roof to demonstrate the advantages of his new eco-business venture. In the spirit of Herbert Hoover’s campaign pledge of a car in every garage, Harry envisions solar panels on every roof (including garages).

    I know very little about solar electric generation, but I was once a very satisfied owner of a 10kW wind energy system back in the (failed) green era in the early 1980s. Wind generation is very visible. When the blades spin on a wind system one can imagine a generator producing power. The whop-whop noise means the electric meter is turning backwards, a beautiful noise indeed. Harry Gres will have a silent 5kW system on top of his roof; the only visual excitement will be to see the electric meter spinning backwards during sunlit hours. Fortunately, here in Minnesota we have an abundance of both wind and sun.

    Harry’s excitement about a self-sufficient future was apparent. He explained how in his latest- generation solar system, each panel powers its own inverter, so shade in one area does not shut down production. I did not know that in earlier, typical solar systems the entire grid shut down if one panel was in the shade.

    I asked the million dollar question: What’s the cost? Harry explained that you could buy a $50,000 SUV that in 5 years would have little value, or purchase a solar array that would produce electricity for 25 years. I was able to figure out that the system cost 50 big ones. He then went on about how it was not the price, but rather the stewardship of the earth that was important. He also went on about the 30% tax credits which I’m not a fan of for a variety of reasons that are too lengthy to get into here.

    I was skeptical about a 5kW, $50,000 solar system, even though I’ve been deeply rooted in the green industry for 25 years. As a customer, I recently built my own green certified home, and back in 1983 I built a net-zero home (it produced more energy than it used) that used wind generation.

    As a professional, my business is designing sustainable neighborhoods for my developer customers. When I built my green home there were about a dozen other “green” homes that had recently been built and were on tours or home parades. All of them had elaborate — and expensive — geothermal heating/ventilating/air conditioning systems as part of their green packaging. I decided that spending a few thousand dollars on a highly efficient conventional HVAC system was a better investment than spending upwards of $50,000 on a geothermal design. My $200 natural gas bill for my 3,600 sq. ft. house during one of the coldest Januarys on record proved that I had made the right choice.

    Geothermal systems get a lot of buzz. The green certified homes I visited sold quickly at the asking price in a terrible housing market. Most sold for over a million dollars. But a new green home has a low energy bill not because of its geothermal design, but because its emulation of “thermos bottle” construction means that it requires little heating or cooling.

    While Harry was giving me the sales pitch on the $50,000 panels I began to ponder: What if those green homes on parade had been designed with solar arrays instead of geothermal systems? Had they used highly efficient HVAC systems instead of geothermal ones, the homes could have come to the market at the same selling price, and then had free electricity.

    Wind generation may be cheaper to install, but the chances that you’ll get a wind system approved in your dense neighborhood is pretty much a fantasy, whereas the solar array is likely acceptable anywhere. A wind generator is really cool: Directions are not necessary and guests always have something to converse about. The owner of a wind generator does not have to worry about shadows or cloudy days, only about those times when the wind is calm. Wind can happen 24 hours a day. On the other hand, the solar array does not produce the loud whop-whop-whop sound similar to a helicopter hovering a few feet over your and your neighbor’s homes.

    The $26,000 I spent in 1983 for the wind generator would be equivalent, after inflation, to spending $54,000 today. So— those who purchase solar systems like Harry’s today will spend about the same post-inflation dollars that I spent in 1983, and they will have the prospect of free electricity.

    Given the mindset of the new green home buyer, and the apparent success of those who sell homes with geothermal systems, maybe $50,000 for the prospect of solar electricity is not so farfetched. The more I began thinking about this the more excited I became for my friend’s new venture.

    Unlike wind power, which can never hope to achieve high volume distribution, solar panels have the potential for high production numbers. Relatively high sales numbers foster competition, which drives research and development for product evolution.

    As an example, back in the 1980s I sold $10,000 desktop Hewlett Packard Workstations along with a $5,000 Civil Engineering Software package we developed. For today’s market, we developed a $995.00 sustainable neighborhood design software package that works great on a $300 notebook. Comparing the systems we sold in the 1980s to those we sell today at 1/10 the cost is like comparing the Model T Ford to a ZR1 Corvette. Profits from the early adopters of those expensive computer systems financed the research and development that eventually led to the price/performance ratio we take for granted today.

    So is Harry onto something?

    I hope Harry, his family, and all those who jump in during a deep recession profit greatly from this risk he’s taken on. I hope the day comes when we look up at the low cost energy producing tiles on our roofs and think back to the entrepreneurs like Harry Gres that risked all on a venture to make it possible. That’s the American spirit that we need to get back to.

    Rick Harrison is President of Rick Harrison Site Design Studio and author of Prefurbia: Reinventing The Suburbs From Disdainable To Sustainable. His websites are rhsdplanning and prefurbia.

  • Enviro-wimps: L.A.’s Big Green Groups Get Comfy, Leaving the Street Fighting to the Little Guys

    So far, 2009 has not been a banner year for greens in Los Angeles. As the area’s mainstream enviros buddy up with self-described green politicians and deep-pocketed land speculators and unions who have seemingly joined the “sustainability” cause, an odd thing is happening: Environmentalists are turning into servants for more powerful, politically-connected masters.

    On March 3, voters shot down Measure B, a controversial solar energy initiative pushed by Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and endorsed heartily by many prominent environmentalists. The stunning defeat in this liberal city came after critics accused the mayor and his friends of secret deals that rushed the measure onto the ballot as a favor to a city union whose workers be guaranteed almost all of the resulting solar jobs.

    Then, on April 29, U.S. District Judge Christina Snyder placed a temporary injunction on part of the “clean trucks” program at the Port of Los Angeles, whose air pollution is so foul that the EPA warns its emissions cause cancer in suburbs like Cerritos, miles upwind of the port. Judge Snyder rejected efforts by Villaraigosa and the Teamsters to force port truckers to give up their independence and work for companies – spun as a green rule, but ridiculed as a move to pressure the truckers to become Teamsters.

    Today, labor unions, big businesses, and politicians are embracing a green economy to solve their own political and financial woes. And the green agenda – repairing a damaged planet and protecting the local environment in which we live – is at risk of ending up an after-thought.

    “I don’t think the traditional environmental organizations are up to speed,” says Miguel Luna of Urban Semillas, a grassroots environmental group. Alberto B. Mendoza, president of the Coalition for Clean Air, concurs: “If we don’t become more modern in our approach, we’ll become obsolete.”

    In Los Angeles, developers now market, or “green wash,” big new buildings as “sustainable” – meaning healthy for the planet over the long term. The city of Los Angeles requires large buildings to follow “LEED” rules – low flush toilets, on-site renewable energy and the like. But do these projects cause more congested streets filled with idling cars, for example, than the energy they claim to save? In truth, nobody knows. “If you have a project that would normally be four stories high and now it has 20 stories,” says Hollywood activist Bob Blue, there’s a “net increase in power, water, sewer, traffic, pollution – and impact.”

    Yet among many greens, LEED is a closed debate – and represents a profound shift. In the 1990s, greens like Marcia Hanscom, Rex Frankel, Bruce Robertson, Cathy Knight, Sabrina Venskus, and Patricia McPherson took on Los Angeles City Hall, preventing it from wiping out the Ballona Wetlands to erect a vast housing development, Playa Vista. Those greens publicly trounced the pols and their speculator friends over absurd “sustainability” claims — including an effort to count the grassy median strips as “open space.”

    Nowadays, though, Los Angeles enviros are sliding toward the argument that big development is good for the air, land and water – and small bits of green are enough. Environmentalists rarely engage in the city’s intense development hearings. “Maybe one time an environmentalist showed up,” Blue says, “but it was on the behalf of the developer.”

    Within the green movement, Andy Lipkis, the founder of Tree People, and Mark Gold, executive director of Heal the Bay, have reputations as heavyweights with access to Villaraigosa and other politicians. Neither of them, though, wants to jump into rough-and-tumble politics. Lipkis, a likeable and dedicated activist, proudly says he is politically “naive.” Gold, a smart and equally dedicated environmentalist, says he is not “even a little” worried that politicians, labor unions or speculators are hijacking the greens’ issues.

    But today, developers regularly peddle their proposed apartments near L.A. freeways as “sustainable” – claiming they bring workers closer to jobs. The developments are backed by Villaraigosa and the L.A. City Council – to the horror of health experts. Researchers now know, for certain, that children living in these projects are burdened with often lifelong lung disease. “They are putting individuals at risk,” says USC professor Jim Gauderman, whose 2007 study confirmed it.

    Heavily focused on lowering emissions region-wide to fight global warming, greens now praise freeway-adjacent housing projects, utterly forgetting about the young humans involved. Incredibly, city Planning Commissioner Michael Woo, a Villaraigosa-appointee, hasn’t heard a word of opposition from them. Two years after USC’s study, he says, “I’m not sure there’s a political will to stop housing projects at these locations.”

    Grassroots activist Marcia Hanscom, who has never gotten anything by staying quiet, worked for years with other environmentalists to save the Ballona Wetlands. In 2003, that relentless effort paid off – the state bought more than 600 acres to protect and restore. But now, she says, the environmental movement in L.A. has lost its way. It’s time to talk openly about a “mid-course correction.”

    L.A. politicians “sometimes call me as if I’m one of their staff members,” she notes, “and I’m supposed to do what they say. They have their roles mixed up. I’m here to advocate for the environment, not to advocate for them.”

    Pro-green politicians control the office of mayor, almost every Los Angeles City Council seat, every Los Angeles Unified School Board seat, and, for years, have controlled the legislature. Yet the greens seem oddly incapable of asserting power. Mark Gold of Heal the Bay, for example, went out of his way to endorse solar power Measure B, even though Villaraigosa clearly dissed him by dreaming it up utterly without Gold’s input. What L.A. union boss would stand for that?

    Stefanie Taylor, interim managing director interim of the Green L.A. Coalition, a group of over 100 organizations, says, “We have to make sure we’re at the table when these decisions are made about the new green economy.” But right now, says enviro-lobbyist John White, environmentalists are “more like the menu.”

    The stark difference between the daily work of Hanscom, the grassroots environmentalist, and Jonathan Parfrey, the political insider and mainstream environmentalist, is instructive. When the Weekly talked with Hanscom, she was in the middle of an almost surreal battle to keep glaring, Vegas-style digital billboards, made up of 480,000 piercingly bright LED light bulbs, from being allowed adjacent to the blue herons and wildflowers of the Ballona Wetlands.

    Says Hanscom, “The city has the Ballona Wetlands as a part of a billboard ‘sign district?’ It’s outrageous! I even had [developer] lobbyists and lawyers ask me what they were thinking.”

    As Hanscom aimed her firepower at City Hall, environmentalist Parfrey, one of Antonio Villaraigosa’s newest political appointees, was getting ready to visit a Department of Water and Power wind farm way out of town, with the idea of creating “educational tours” for environmentalists. Nothing wrong with that, but it sounded like a public relations campaign for the big utility.

    It’s hard to escape the fact that Los Angeles power brokers regard the environmental movement not as a passionate force they can tap to improve the quality of life and to clean the air, water, and open spaces, but, increasingly, as just another jobs program. And some of the greenest greens have begun to wonder if their own leaders are taking part in the movement’s demise.

    Patrick Range McDonald is a staff writer at L.A. Weekly, and this piece appears in full at www.laweekly.com. Contact Patrick Range McDonald at pmcdonald@laweekly.com.

  • Telecommuting And The Broadband Superhighway

    The internet has become part of our nation’s mass transit system: It is a vehicle many people can use, all at once, to get to work, medical appointments, schools, libraries and elsewhere.

    Telecommuting is one means of travel the country can no longer afford to sideline. The nation’s next transportation funding legislation must promote the telecommuting option…aggressively.

    The current funding legislation, called SAFETEA-LU, is set to expire on September 30. On June 24, a House subcommittee approved a discussion draft of the new funding bill: the Surface Transportation Authorization Act of 2009. U.S. Representatives James L. Oberstar (D-MN) and John L. Mica (R-FL), Chair and Ranking Member, respectively, of the Transportation Committee are now sparring with the Obama Administration about just when Congress should focus on reauthorizing SAFETEA-LU; the lawmakers say now; the Administration says 18 months from now. Regardless of the timetable adopted, the measure the House and Senate ultimately pass must maximize the powerful benefits of internet-based travel.

    Whereas the infrastructure for cars, buses and trains consists of roads and rails, the infrastructure required for telecommuting is broadband. Fortunately for the framers of the new transportation package, the stimulus legislation already provides significant funding – over $7 billion – to expand access to broadband. The transportation legislation should provide more. It should also expressly encourage the use of that broadband to telecommute.

    Some Congressional leaders have called on their colleagues to recognize telecommuting as a full-fledged transportation mode. On May 14th, twelve members of the House wrote to both the House Transportation Committee and the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, requesting that they consider including some pro-commuter reforms as they design the nation’s new transportation and energy laws. Among their requests were initiatives to incentivize telecommuting.

    One strategy these lawmakers proposed for encouraging telework was to condition federal grants to states and localities for transportation infrastructure on their creation of bold incentives for telework. Why impose this condition? Telework limits the wear and tear on new roads and rails, as well as the demand for further construction. Thus, it protects the federal investment in such infrastructure and mitigates future costs.

    There is precedent for insisting that the recipients of federal funding for infrastructure focus on telework’s potential to reduce the need for that infrastructure. Federal law provides that executive agencies, when deciding whether to acquire buildings or other space for employee use, must consider whether needs can be met using alternative workplace arrangements such as telecommuting. Requiring state and local governments that seek federal aid for new roads to include telecommuting in their transportation plans would demonstrate the same kind of fiscal responsibility.

    Other lawmakers have introduced legislation specifically linking broadband and more conventional kinds of transportation infrastructure. Representative Anna G. Eshoo, a Democrat from California, together with Democratic Representatives Henry A. Waxman from California, Rick Boucher from Virginia and Edward J. Markey from Massachusetts, has sponsored the Broadband Conduit Deployment Act, a bill that would require new federal highway projects to include broadband conduits. Democratic Senators Amy Klobuchar from Minnesota, Blanche L. Lincoln from Arkansas and Mark R. Warner from Virginia have introduced companion legislation in the Senate.

    The proposal set forth in the two bills makes economic sense. It would be an unconscionable waste of taxpayer dollars to dig up roadways, expand and repave them and then dig them up again to lay the broadband pipes the stimulus bill made possible. If the pipes are installed while the roadways are under construction, they will be available when broadband providers are ready to get communities online.

    If passed, the Broadband Conduit Deployment Act would only strengthen the case that funding for infrastructure projects should be conditioned on state and local government efforts to facilitate telework. If, as they finance highway projects, American taxpayers also fund broadband, they should not then have to struggle to telecommute. They should be able to help contain transportation costs and, at the same time, easily make the greatest possible use of the broadband access they financed.

    What kind of steps to promote telework should states and localities be required to take if they want to qualify for federal transportation funding?

    Congress should insist that they provide telework tax incentives for both employees and employers; eliminate tax, zoning and other laws that are hostile to telework; and offer both public and private sector employers technical help in developing and implementing robust telework programs. The government grantees should be required to create such programs for their own employees. They should also be required to designate certain high traffic and high pollution days as telework days — days when employees are specifically urged to take the web to work — and to conduct public awareness campaigns about the benefits of telework.

    These benefits go beyond transportation infrastructure savings, emissions reductions, and congestion management. Telework can help businesses and government agencies reduce real estate, energy and other overhead costs and use the savings to avoid job cuts or to hire new staff. It can increase employers’ productivity by 20% or more, and enable them to sustain operations if an emergency, such as the recent swine flu outbreak, compels significant absenteeism.

    Telework enables Americans who cannot find work in their own communities – and cannot sell their homes – to look for more distant positions. It can help those still employed to lower their commuting costs and juggle competing work and family obligations. It can help older Americans who cannot afford to retire to continue working even when they no longer have the stamina for daily commuting. And it can help disabled Americans with limited mobility join or re-enter the workforce.

    When Congress finalizes its new transportation policy, it must exploit the tremendous mileage it can get from encouraging web-based travel. Conditioning funding to state and local governments on investment by those governments in pro-telework measures – and offering meaningful federal funding to promote telecommuting – is a dual strategy that would yield a greener and leaner transportation system.

    In the process, this strategy would advance crucial energy, economic, quality of life and contingency planning goals. A clear emphasis on the need for telework in the new transportation bill is essential to help the nation get to where it needs to go.

    Nicole Belson Goluboff is a lawyer in New York who writes extensively on the legal consequences of telework. She is the author of The Law of Telecommuting (ALI-ABA 2001 with 2004 Supplement), Telecommuting for Lawyers (ABA 1998) and numerous articles on telework. She is also an Advisory Board member of the Telework Coalition.