New Geography

Category: Policy

  • Personal Rapid Transit: Twenty-First Century Transport?

    Recently I had the chance to visit Taxi 2000. This Personal Rapid Transit (PRT) company is based just minutes from my office in Minneapolis. I’m no expert on rail systems, but I’ve always believed that an elevated system that can run freely over existing right-of-ways makes more sense than an antiquated system based on nearly 200 hundred year old technology.

    Since we plan new neighborhoods and cities, I saw a great opportunity to design a new town with an elevated PRT system as a major design influence, not as an afterthought. A perfect combination: a new age city based upon the latest methods, with a convenient way to access most of the region, based on a 21st century design, not an 18th century one.

    I typically investigate the products and companies that I’m about to meet. I’d heard about PRT solutions for well over a decade and assumed there were many examples of installations. After searching the internet I found not a single installed PRT system serving a city.

    I’ve never been a fan of light rail for a variety of reasons. Human beings are smart enough to explore space, extend life spans for decades, and remodel genetics. Yet all we can come up with is a slow (and often unsightly) train that runs on tracks conceived in the 1800s that now cost billions of dollars to implement? We are told that building a light rail line spurs economic growth. Even if true, typically only a minor portion of a town benefits because the system is linear. Most are designed to be functional, not beautiful, and most light rail trains are not inspiring.

    I used to drive in Minneapolis, but now train tracks intermix with the driving lanes in some areas of town. I avoid those sections, and now do my spending in the suburbs. I’m sure I’m not the only one. This brings me to my final opposition to light rail: Because it’s typically ground-based, it’s obstructive to implement, and often requires the demolition of buildings and the acquisition of right-of-ways. All of this costs plenty.

    On top of this, many businesses suffer during the construction of light rail, while it interferes with their access. Sure, they might ultimately get additional business, but first they must survive a period with reduced access.

    Mike Lester, CEO of Taxi 2000 demonstrated the prototype of SkyWeb Express along with its technologies to us. Over a period of three hours, Mike proudly showed us what they have accomplished.

    First, this is an on-call system. This means that you do not have to wait for the next train. Cars located only a minute or so away await your command. No more missed connections while waiting an hour for the next ride.

    It is elevated far above ground — 5 meters — using existing right-of-way on posts spread far apart. In an urban area such as Minneapolis which already has a skyway system, this could coincide with existing access points on the second or third floors. It’s non-linear, and able to easily turn corners and access much of a city, not just points along a single route.

    It maintains a constant rate of speed; no stops needed until you reach the destination. About 30+ miles per hour might not seem fast, but a mile every two minutes in an urban environment is indeed impressive. It’s limited to 3 persons per vehicle with plenty of extra space for luggage, boxes, or even a bicycle. No more crowding. It goes where you want, not only on a preset route. In theory it’s safer because you can access it alone, not with strangers. And one car needing maintenance does not shut down the system.

    The big issue that all transit needs to address is the cost. The light rail transit in Minneapolis costs somewhere around a billion dollars. PRT cost studies show a savings of 60 to 70 percent could have been realized along the same line. Even if the estimates are wrong by double, that’s over $200 million that could have been spent elsewhere, or to make a quite comprehensive PRT system for the same dollars.

    I’m not easily convinced when someone tries to “sell” me on new technologies, but that common sense meter in my brain was at 100% as I learned about the PRT possibilities. I was not sold that this will get everyone out of their cars, but it’s a solution that would be more effective than a rail system.

    So why no installations?

    PRT companies have been around for a while, continually upgrading and perfecting their systems. While I’m not sure how they get funded, I can tell you that cities have a hard time spending hundreds of million dollars on systems developed by small firms. As a software developer of Geographic Information Systems in the 1990’s we constantly lost sales to larger companies, even though our product was superior. It appeared that cities were more comfortable buying from companies with hundreds of employees working in tall impressive buildings than from smaller firms. It was natural to think a firm that appeared quite large had staying power compared to small companies with a handful of employees. But in the dot-com bust we learned that size does not guarantee longevity.

    I’ve written this before, but it bears repeating: On August 1st, 2009 President Obama addressed the nation with: “Future economic prosperity depends on building a new, stronger foundation and recapturing the spirit of innovation …. Innovation has been essential to our prosperity in the past, and it will be essential to our prosperity in the future”.

    Small PRT firms have risked everything, adhering to a belief that it is a viable solution for urban transportation problems today and in the future. How have we rewarded these innovators who certainly have the spirit? We continually invest in the most non-innovative, obtrusive, and expensive solution: Light Rail. We reward large corporations who take no risk… What happened to us? Let’s see if this new Administration can stand by the President’s words and invest in the pioneers who can create that strong American foundation.

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

  • NFL Rules: Game Plan for America?

    In 1905, after he had taken on the trusts, President Theodore Roosevelt turned his attention to more serious matters and convened a White House summit on the vital of issue of…well yes…um…football.

    That season had seen the death of eighteen players, and Teddy knew that it was time to act decisively.

    He and his peace council, which included a number of college presidents, decided that America could not face the political future unless a first down was ten, not five yards and the forward pass was given a presidential blessing. Until that time, most of the game was on the ground.

    In the years after the football summit, women were given the vote, prosperity reigned for much of the century, and neither fascists, communists, nor even radical Muslims have ever challenged the inalienable American right to the forward pass.

    In trade terms, this is known as a competitive advantage, one of the few we have over the Chinese, so now might be the time to take another look at the winter game. (Hey, Hu Jintao, you want the NFL? Go to the NFL.)

    In the wake of renewed violence in Iraq, escalation in Afghanistan, potential failure in Copenhagen, and the costs of health care reform, I did what I always do in moments of national crisis, and watched another football game, although to be clear it was with the idea that with a few Rooseveltian rule changes America might yet move up in world standings.

    I probably spend a little more time than I should thinking about and watching professional football, but it’s only because my devotion to the New York Jets is in the national interest. (What’s your excuse on Sunday afternoons?)

    Leaving aside that the Jets are in the fortieth year of their rebuilding program, I can’t escape the feeling that making professional football more freewheeling would make America a little more confident and spontaneous.

    Take the decision on Afghanistan. If the Afghan policy had been made by Marshall, Randy, Brent, Coach Cowher, Deion, John, Steve, Dan, Shannon, Herm, Phil, or Jaws, at least we would have some good diagrams, lots of reruns, and maybe even a booth review. Instead we ended up with a game plan that feels like a Hail Mary dreamed up by the offensive coordinator of the Detroit Lions.

    As an adjunct to the advertising industry, professional football is a wonderful product. It can build excitement for just about any game. (“Stay tuned. Can Kansas City turn its season around with a win in Tampa Bay?”) It has figured out how to stretch the last two minutes of each half into a long weekend, and it has elevated instant replay to an instrument worthy of the Supreme Court.

    But as a sport, let’s face it, and as much as I love it, football is more and more coming to resemble professional wrestling. The sack dance after a simple tackle? Those burlesque 400-pounders taking it to the house? The obsession with brooding dandies like T.O and Ochocinco? Is it any wonder that the Muslim world talks a lot of trash?

    Are politics much better? We have trillion dollar deficits, undeclared wars, a Congress that more and more resembles the Raider Nation, and no proof that our children is learning. (And don’t get me started on why the Jets drafted Vernon Gholston.)

    Much as I am willing to cede national affairs to the National Football League, I still think that the sport needs a few presidential reforms. As my friend Charles Harris likes to say, there are too many “dead spots” in the average football game, which is played in fits and starts between the Viagra ads and the trailers for yet another prime time autopsy.

    To save football, if not America, from turning into a televised side show, here are a few modest proposals, suitable for the next White House beer summit:

    • Get rid of the fair catch on punts and, as in Canada, mandate a safe zone around the return man, who is otherwise obligated to make a run for it;
    • Reward kicking teams by getting rid of the touchback and require that all kicks (except those that roll out of the end zone) be returned;
    • Think about weight limits for players (who now look like animated cattle) to restore to the game its fast pace and the improvisation of scat backs. Why should size largely determine who can play the game?
    • Reform the extra point, one of the deadest moments in any game. It’s just there to stop the clock for more ads. Bring back the drop kick, spot the ball on the 30 yard line, or make teams line it up where they crossed the end zone, as is the case with rugby. But try anything to give the moment the excitement of a soccer penalty kick;
    • Eliminate the need for six down offensive linemen (a bad Roosevelt reform), and let teams spread the field with offensive players, as happens now in some college programs. Who would not love seeing eight men out for a pass?
    • Award four points for a field goal over fifty yards. My friend Charles thinks this is a stunt, like basketball’s three-point play, but I am for anything that allows a losing team to make the game close in the fourth quarter;
    • End the artificial distinction by which running backs just have to “cross the plane” of the end zone, but then in order to score receivers have to have “two feet in bounds.” In the interest of higher scoring games, let any touch of the end zone, by a receiver or ball carrier, count for a touchdown.
    • Don’t stop the clock when the ball is carried out of bounds, except in the last two minutes of each half. European soccer doesn’t ever stop its clock, and that game has a delightful flow. It’s one thing America can safely import from Europe.

    Will it take a constitutional convention to get my ideas approved? It might, given that most Americans would rather change the Constitution than mess with the rules of football. But returning speed and spontaneity to the game might also have the same effect on the country’s politics, which in the age of Roosevelt were not subject to “further review” or endless “challenges.” And it was an era of sustained peace.

    Consider this: When Roosevelt was president, more Americans died on the gridiron than fell on foreign fields. And he found even those deaths unacceptable. When Teddy went to West Point, it was to strut around in a raccoon coat, not to send college seniors into dubious battle.

    Matthew Stevenson is author of An April Across America and the soon to be published Remembering the Twentieth Century Limited. In a subsequent article he will write about how the game of professional football became hostage to monopoly money.

  • The Urbanophile Plan for Detroit

    If Brookings’ plan for Detroit isn’t enough to get the job done, what is?

    Turning around Detroit means facing head on the core problems that hobble the region, notably:

    • America’s worst big city race relations
    • A population that is too big for current economic reality
    • A management and labor culture rooted in an era that no longer exists and is unsuited to the modern economy
    • A tax, regulatory, and political system toxic to business

    A robust plan for renewal in Detroit will tackle these problems, recognizing that matters like improving race relations and cultural change need indigenous solutions from courageous local leaders. Then mix this with best practices from elsewhere and innovative, unique to Detroit solutions. And be patient, knowing the turnaround won’t be a short journey.

    1. Repair race relations. The city-suburb divide in Detroit, to an extent far greater than elsewhere, is a matter of black and white. Bringing racial rapprochement won’t be easy, but it is an absolute imperative for future regional success. Perhaps a newly shared sense of economic pain can foster this, along with grass roots connections such as white urban gardeners making common cause with black ones seeking better access to fresh foods.

    2. Active shrinkage. Many recognize the need for Detroit to “right size” to its reduced population and for federal help doing so. But beyond adjusting to the city’s decline, the region remains too big. Detroit no longer needs large armies of unskilled and even skilled laborers in its factories. There is simply no economic raison d’etre for a region the size of Detroit in that location today. A lot more people need to leave Detroit. Many already would like to but can’t because they can’t sell their house or afford to move. Serious consideration should be given to a federally assisted voluntary relocation program when the national economy recovers to help Detroiters move to Texas or other places with strong jobs growth if they want to. Detroit should also engage with those who did move away to create an urban alumni network. In a globalized economy, those Michigan expatriates can serve as a sort of field sales force for the city.

    3. Improve the Business Climate. Michigan’s government needs to be downsized to match a downsized state. Dubious programs of all types, from film industry subsidies to “cool cities” initiatives need to be scaled back or eliminated. The criminal justice system should be reformed to stop over-incarcerating non-violent offenders. Streamline or eliminate regulation wherever possible, and make those that remain operate swiftly and predictably. Eliminate or merge overlapping jurisdictions, and especially non-general purpose entities that are too often patronage dumps operating out of the public eye. Reduce taxes on business, especially small business.

    4. Change the culture. Michigan’s social and business approach, its labor and management culture and business practices were designed for a stable industrial age dominated by a limited number of large and vertically integrated corporations. Today’s economy is based around smaller, more innovative, nimble firms, virtual networks of people and collaborative business relationships, rapid change, and a competitive global environment. This sort of change has to come from the inside. No one can just tell Detroit how to do it.

    5. Renew Brand Detroit. How does Detroit want to be known in the world and how can it make itself known? Within a framework of shrinkage, Detroit needs to become attractive to the right new talent and new businesses. It needs an aspirational narrative that is authentically Detroit in a way “cool cities” will never be. Cool, No – but edgy? Definitely. Think of Detroit as the new American frontier, a blank canvas where anything is possible, and the ultimate arena in which to pursue alternative visions of urban life. A place where you can pursue a personal urban vision without getting tortured by a Byzantine blizzard of bureaucracy. This should be nourished – and preserved – by maintaining a “light touch” approach to regulation in the city proper. The region is well positioned to attract new urban pioneers and homesteaders, and to leverage its reputation as both a black city and large Arab population center. Detroit should stand proud as “Detroit”. It shouldn’t hide behind euphemisms like “Southeastern Michigan” or “The Big D” – as if that fools anybody. Detroit is a name with international recognition and resonance. Wear it with pride.

    6. Pursue Targeted Industry Clusters. The auto industry will remain a mainstay in Detroit, particularly management and R&D, though a lot smaller after a federally assisted restructuring. But the city should be wary of overly pursuing “me-too” industries like life sciences without distinctive advantages. Instead, Detroit should look to get its “fair share” of those, then look for where it is positioned to uniquely excel and try to create the environment favorable for investment. Potential targets include:

    • A lead role in international trade with Canada.
    • Dominating and expanding non-energy/non-financial trade and relations with the Middle East and Muslim world. With America’s largest Arab population, Detroit is positioned to be the American gateway to that ever more important part of the globe the way Miami is to Latin America.
    • Music. Detroit has one of America’s richest and most innovative musical legacies, from Motown to electronica to hip hop. But it hasn’t profited from it. Detroit needs to take a page from Nashville and figure out how.
    • Realize the Detroit Aerotropolis plan.
    • Alternative urban visions. The recipe for grass roots neighborhood renewal in the city, and a potential innovation cluster for any new Detroit ideas that gain widespread adoption.

    7. Rationalize Regional Governance and Infrastructure Investment. Detroit should seriously question any expansion of infrastructure when shrinking in regional population. All subsidized infrastructure expansion outside of currently fully urbanized areas should be terminated. It makes no sense to be widening streets on the fringes when you are ripping them out in the city. In this context, the kind of fixed rail investments advocated by Brookings and other “me too” urban boosters should be avoided in this highly decentralized region. Rather, the central city should start with a quality bus network, with rail added later if and only if existing ridership justifies it.

    8. Secure Irreplaceable Assets. Detroit built amazing treasures during its golden age, many of them lost or threatened. Detroit has one of the largest collection of pre-War high rises in America. Yet many of them stand vacant. Another gem, the Lafayette Building, is about to be demolished because it is so badly deteriorated, with trees growing on the roof. Some funds need to be earmarked for securing and and supporting basic maintenance such as roof integrity. While there may not be demand to reuse these structures now, they are irreplaceable and should be saved for future generations. On the cultural side, Detroit needs to ask itself tough questions about institutions like the Detroit Institute of the Arts and the Detroit Symphony Orchestra that are bleeding red ink.

    The road back for Detroit won’t be short or easy. It will certainly not be back as the colossus of its past. But Detroit can grasp a more successful future if it finds the courage and the leadership to change, and to find a unique path forward for a city that is simply not like anyplace else in the world. Conventional wisdom solutions are just not enough. It will take radical change, new attitudes and an ability to think independently about what’s best for the region.

     

    The Brookings Plan

    The Urbanophile Plan

    Race Relations

    Segregation is acknowledged

    Improving race relations is a top imperative

    Regional Governance

    Strong Regionalism Featuring:
    – Council of Mayors
    – Regional transportation and land use management
    – Potential tax sharing
    – Receivership for failed government entities

    Adopt Brookings Plan

    Brand Positioning

    N/A

    – “The New American Frontier”, the land of possibility, a blank canvas, and the ultimate arena in which to realize alternative and new visions of urban life.
    – “Detroit”, NOT “Southeast Michigan”, “The D”, etc.

    Economic Development Paradigm

    Government industrial policy

    Improve the business climate

    Fiscal Policy

    N/A

    – Downsize all level of government to match a downsized Michigan and Detroit
    – Eliminate dubious programs (e.g., film industry subsidies and “cool cities” initiatives)
    – Merge or eliminate overlapping obsolete jurisdictions
    – Cut taxes on business, especially small businesses

    Regulatory Reform

    N/A

    – Seek out and eliminate rules without a clear rationale and net benefits, esp. ones that negatively affect the business climate
    – Make remaining regulations operate swiftly and predictably
    – Reform a criminal justice system that over-incarcerates for non-violent offenses
    – Maintain “Light Touch” Regulation in the City of Detroit to Sustain Frontier Appeal

    Target Economic Sectors

    – Advanced Manufacturing / Auto-Related R&D
    – Green Industry
    – Life Sciences
    – University Spin-Offs

    – Advanced Manufacturing / Auto-Related R&D
    – International Trade with Canada
    – Non-Energy/Non-Financial Trade with the Arab and Muslim World.
    – Music-Related Development
    – Aerotropolis Industry
    – Alternative Urban Visions (e.g., urban agriculture, urban decay tourism)
    – “Fair Share” of Green Industry, Life Sciences, and University Spin-Offs

    Auto Industry Future

    Federally assisted restructuring

    Adopt Brookings Plan

    Management & Labor Culture; Regional Business Practices

    N/A

    Urgent change is prerequisite to success

    Human Capital Targets

    N/A

    – New Urban Pioneers
    – African Americans
    – People of Middle Eastern or Muslim Origin
    – Musicians and Musical Acts

    Adjusting to Population Loss

    – Government sponsored footprint shrinkage
    – Brownfield remediation

    Adopt Brookings Plan and Supplement With
    – A federally-assisted voluntary relocation program
    – Creation of a “Detroit Alumni Network”

    Transportation

    Rail transit

    – Terminate highway and other infrastructure expansion outside of fully developed areas
    – Build privately funded Woodward light rail, then avoid further rail investments
    – Improve the urban bus network
    – Build new bridge crossings to Canada
    – Support improvements to entire 401/I-75 corridor for freight growth

    Historic Preservation

    N/A

    – Inventory and invest to secure and “mothball” key historic structures, esp. pre-War downtown high rises

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

  • Detroit Needs a Bolder Plan

    The Brookings Institution recently unveiled “The Detroit Project”, a plan to revive Detroit, in the New Republic. Brookings’ plan has good elements and recognizes some important realities, but also has key gaps. It relies excessively on industrial policy and conventional approaches that are unlikely to drive a real turnaround in America’s most troubled big city.

    On the plus side, Brookings does a great job stating why Detroit’s fortunes will take a long time to reverse, possibly a generation or more. As they note, “Detroit’s leaders must manage expectations. It took half a century for the city to get this low. It won’t turn around in a four-year political cycle.” Authors as prescient as Jane Jacobs and as conventional as Time were talking about Detroit’s decline as far back as the early 60s. Turnaround won’t happen in six months or even six years. Given the political preference for election-cycle results, this means strong and courageous leadership will be needed, a point they also stress. Sadly, that’s a commodity that has long been in short supply in Detroit.

    Brookings is known for their promotion of regionalism, and this plan predictably follows that prescription. Clearly, rationalization of investment policy on a regional basis is needed. The Detroit region is losing population, yet the long range transportation plan calls for huge amounts of spending to widen roads on the fringes. That makes no sense. People and businesses in Detroit keep moving out as the cities and suburbs they once inhabited fall into ruin under a regime of failed stewardship and the endless search for new greenfields to exploit. It’s like prospectors skipping from one clapped out mining town to the next. If they want to do that, they shouldn’t expect the rest of us to pay for it via federal funds – either to build the new or to clean up the mess in the ghost towns they leave behind.

    They also recognize the need for improved governance, including potentially state receivership for failed institutions. (They did not, however, give due credit to new Mayor Bing for the change and new leadership attitude he has already brought to the table). Suggestions like a focus on brownfield remediation and managed shrinkage were on point, as was the recognition that significant federal assistance will be required. Given the depths of the problems in Detroit and Michigan, the city and state are not going to be able to do it alone.

    The plan also rightly notes that “Detroit will have to become a different kind of city, one that challenges our idea of what a city is supposed to look like, and what happens within its boundaries.” Very true. Unfortunately, much of the rest of the Brookings prescription failed to meet that challenge.

    Brookings’ plan relies heavily on analogy to other post-industrial cities, especially in Europe, which makes it difficult to be sure exactly what they are recommending at times. Even to casual observers, these cities are far different from Detroit. For one thing, Detroit is huge. The region, if one includes Ann Arbor and Windsor, Canada, is over five million in population – more than double the size of Brookings comparison areas.

    Places like Turin and Bilbao also have radically different built forms, history, culture, and are virtually racially and ethnically homogeneous compared to Detroit. Even the measurements of European success need to be redone. Neither Italy nor Spain represent role models since both have fared worse than America in the current downturn. These countries (and cities) are aging rapidly, with some of the world’s lowest birthrates.

    Their US examples of Toledo and Akron (i.e., greater Cleveland) are hardly bright and shining lights of economic or demographic success. Since 2000, Akron has lost nearly 10,000 people and Toledo over 20,000. Toledo’s 11.4% unemployment rate exceeds the nation’s. These aren’t even Ohio’s biggest cities, much less dominating the state’s economy the way Detroit does Michigan.

    Brookings also all but ignores a lot of the root issues of Detroit’s problem. Firstly, they fail to make a point about healing America’s most poisoned race relations, arguably the signature issue of Detroit. Racial tensions and inequity have perpetually bedeviled America. Making progress in Detroit won’t be easy, but is an absolute prerequisite to progress. Perhaps shared economic struggles will finally provide a common interest around which to build some form of racial rapprochement.

    Most glaringly, Brookings has nothing at all to say about Detroit and Michigan’s tax and regulatory regime, its failed management and labor cultures, or its dysfunctional state politics. Brookings’ desire to stay on good terms with the establishment might inhibit their ability to speak freely, but these problems must be confronted.

    It is impossible to ignore this witch’s brew of policies and attitudes that is totally toxic to economic development. It’s a classic case of ignoring the elephant in the room. Until these blocking and tackling matters are addressed, Detroit is going to remain kryptonite to business expansion. In Forbes 2009 list of the best states for business, Michigan ranked 49th.

    Instead of improving the terrible business climate, Brookings proposes a top-down industrial policy, explicitly stating “local government (or NGOs, even) can play the role of industrial planner. That is, they can look across the map and find instances where research institutions and manufacturers should collaborate on new ventures.” And they say “public money” is needed to retool old industries and advance new ones. The government in Detroit can’t even manage the delivery of basic city services. None of the region’s levels of government have performed well on their core competency, so why would we believe these entities would be effective venture capitalists or industrial planners? This is a recipe for epic rent seeking and an economic Waterloo on a grand scale.

    Their suggested industries for Detroit are a tired looking roster of the same ones everyplace else is chasing: green industry, life sciences, advanced manufacturing, and university technology spin-offs. With such a crowded playing field – 49 out of 50 states are chasing life sciences, for example – it is hard to discern the Detroit region’s distinctive capabilities in any of these areas apart from automotive related R&D and manufacturing. Sure, they’ll get some slice of the pie in these growing markets, but unlikely enough to turn the ship around or create a true innovation cluster.

    Public-private partnerships do have a strong role to play in Detroit’s economic development. This includes looking for sectors where it can realistically compete and win, and looking to create the infrastructure and conditions necessary for them to flourish in terms of facilities, talent attraction, legal and regulatory frameworks, regional business culture and practices, and more. It’s about creating fertile soil, not picking winners.

    However, assistance to the restructuring auto industry was clearly required. Without federal aid, GM and Chrysler would have been liquidated. They still might, but given the importance of that industry to our economy, it is probably worth doing what we have to do for now. But we should recognize that getting in was a lot easier than getting out will be, and that the end result might still be failure or Soviet style zombie companies that survive only as wards of the state.

    Lastly, the praise of rail transit by Brookings – the cook book solution du jour for cities – is puzzling. Again, Detroit is shrinking and needs to shrink more. Trains work best when people are commuting to a central point, but jobs have been disappearing from the core of Detroit for generations. Today barely 4.5 percent of area employment takes place in the urban core, among the lowest percentages among the nation’s top 50 cities.

    As with fringe highway expansion, the last thing Detroit needs is even more infrastructure. It has too much already that it can’t afford to maintain. Taking on a costly new rail transit system with both high capital expenditures and significant ongoing operations and maintenance costs is a dubious proposition – particularly when the existing bus network is on the verge of a near shutdown. The biggest game changer from an infrastructure perspective – new highway crossings to Canada to strengthen Detroit as the premier gateway to Canadian international trade – is not mentioned.

    So while Brookings gets a few key pieces of the puzzle right, ultimately their solution is too standard issue and lacks the boldness and innovative thinking needed to tackle the core problems and create a realistic prospect for renewal.

    In the next installment tomorrow: a better plan for Detroit.

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

  • What Happens When California Defaults?

    The California Legislative Analyst’s Office recently reported that the State faces a $21 billion shortfall in the current as well as the next fiscal year. That’s a problem, a really big problem. My young son would say it was a ginormous problem. In fact, it may be an insurmountable problem.

    Our governor and legislature used every trick in their books when they created the most recent budget. They even resorted to mandatory interest-free loans from the taxpayers. Now, they have no idea where to go. The Democrats have declared that they will not allow budget cuts. The Republicans will not allow tax increases. They have probably run out of smoke and mirrors, although their ability to engage in budget gimmickry is enough to make an Enron accountant blush. No one is considering raising revenues by increasing economic activity.

    In my opinion, California is now more likely to default than it is to not default. It is not a certainty, but it is a possibility that is increasingly likely.

    Then what?

    Ideally, we’d see a court-supervised, orderly bankruptcy similar to what we see when a company defaults. All creditors, including direct lenders, vendors, employees, pensioners, and more would share in the losses based on established precedent and law. Perhaps salaries would be reduced. Some programs could see significant changes. This is distressing, but it is better than other options.

    Unfortunately, a formal bankruptcy is not the likely scenario. There is no provision for it in the law. Consequently, absent framework and rules of bankruptcy, the eventual default is likely to be very messy, contentious and political.

    Other states have defaulted. Nine states defaulted on credit obligations in the 1840s. Most of those states eventually repaid all of their creditors (see William E. English “Understanding the Costs of Sovereign Default: U.S. State Debts in the 1840s,” American Economic Review, vol. 86 (March 1996), pp. 259-75.) Unfortunately, the examples in the 1840s are not much help in anticipating the impacts of a modern default. Circumstances are different, and things have changed, a lot.

    We’re left with the question: what happens when California defaults?

    The worst case would be the mother of all financial crises. According to the California State Treasurer’s office, California has over $68 billion in public debt, but the Sacramento Bee’s Dan Walters has tried to count total California public debt, including that of local municipalities, and his total reaches $500 billion. Whatever the amount, the impact of default could be larger than the debt amount would imply. Other states – New York, Illinois, New Jersey, for example – are in almost as bad shape as California, and they could follow California’s example. The realization that a state could default would shock markets every bit as much as when Lehman Brothers failed. Given the precarious state of our economy and the financial sector, another fiscal crisis would be disastrous, with impacts far beyond California’s borders.

    What would a California default look like? In a sense, we’ve already seen California default, when that state issued vouchers. If any company tried that, they would be in bankruptcy court in days. Issuing vouchers didn’t trigger a California crisis because banks were willing to honor the vouchers. If banks refuse to honor the vouchers next time, employees and vendors won’t be paid, and state operations will come to a halt. This could happen if our legislature locks up and is unable to act on the current $21 billion problem.

    Another possible California scenario is that the State will try to sell or roll over some debt, and no one buys it. Already, we’ve seen California officials surprised with the interest rates they have had to pay. What happens if no one buys California’s debt? We saw last September what happens when lenders refuse to lend to large creditors.

    If we continue on the current path, the worst case is also the more likely case. Bad news keeps dribbling out. One day we find we are paying 30-percent-higher-than-anticipated interest on a bond issue. A few days later, we find the budget shortfall is billions of dollars higher than projected just a short time ago. Every month brings new bad news. The risk that one of those news events triggers a crisis grows with every news event.

    Given California’s recent history, it is difficult to believe that the people with the authority and responsibility for California’s finances can act responsibly, but that is what we need. Responsible action would be creating a gimmick-free budget that places California finances on a sustainable path, and provides an environment that allows for opportunity and job creation. But, sadly, Sacramento probably cannot draft an honest balanced budget, and will thus need to plan for California’s eventual default. They need to work with Federal Government and Federal Reserve Bank officials to insure a coordinated plan to limit damage to financial markets. That plan needs to be ready to release when markets go crazy, which is exactly what could happen when participants realize that default is possible. It could be needed sooner than they think.

    Bill Watkins is a professor at California Lutheran University and runs the Center for Economic Research and Forecasting, which can be found at clucerf.org.

  • Nurturing Employment Recovery

    President Obama’s quick exit from Oslo and late arrival in Copenhagen suggest he’s finally ready to shift focus from Nordic adulation and fighting climate change and diplomacy to fixing the American economy. About time. As former Clinton adviser Bill Galston observed recently, the president needs “to pivot and make 2010 the year of jobs.”

    White House operatives, as well as the Democrats in Congress, know high unemployment could bring big political trouble next year. But in their rush to create new jobs, policy makers would do well to focus on the quality of jobs created over the next year and beyond.

    On this score, the slight improvements in the job picture are far from sufficient. The most recent analysis of employment over the past year by the Web site JobBait shows that almost all the growth has occurred in three fields–government, education and health care.

    The problem: All these fields are financed by taxpayers or through transfer payments. They do little to expand our exports, and they employ few of the blue- collar male workers who have been hardest hit by the “hecession.”

    Unemployment for men is over 2.5% higher than for women, the largest gap in history. In all but a handful of states, male-dominated fields such as transportation, mining and logging, manufacturing and warehousing have declined rapidly over the past year. The only states to experience gains were North Dakota, Montana and West Virginia.

    This reflects the critical weakness in the stimulus package. The stimulus focused on government bailouts and transfers of research funds to universities, while less than 5% went to basic infrastructure. But a greater emphasis on infrastructure would not only have created large numbers of construction jobs, it would have boosted our industrial competitiveness by eliminating bottlenecks in our transportation system.

    The only big regional beneficiary of expanding government employment has been, unsurprisingly, the Washington Beltway. Indeed, the number of federal bureaucrats making $100,000 or more jumped from 14% to 19% since the recession–and that’s $100,000 before overtime and bonuses.

    Elsewhere, the surge of government employment is petering out, particularly on the state and municipal levels. These jurisdictions are running out of money, since they are unable to print their own. Over the past year government jobs contracted in financially strapped states like California, Oregon, Michigan and Florida, as well as throughout the Northeast and New England. There’s little hope for much improvement in 2010.

    The other two sectors to enjoy significant growth have been education and health. Yet these fields do not seem to generate the broad-based economic growth needed to boost the overall economy. The region most often favorably linked with the “eds and meds” economy, Pittsburgh, has produced only modest, below-average job growth over the past generation. In fact, Pittsburgh has looked successful largely because the region has continued to hemorrhage its population to other regions, and it attracts few foreign immigrants.

    Yet the fiscal damage from dependence on public and nonprofit employment has been enormous. The city suffers a billion-dollar unfunded pension liability, among the highest in the nation on a per-capita basis. Due to the heavy local presence of institutions of higher education, nonprofits and hospitals, who keep about 40% of Pittsburgh’s property remains tax-exempt. In a sign of desperation Mayor Luke Ravenstahl recently proposed taxing tuition at local colleges and universities, eliciting outrage from the academic world.

    More important, the Pittsburgh “eds and meds” model can’t really be applied to a country whose workforce will expand by roughly 1 million annually over the next decade. The country now has fewer jobs than it had in March 2000, even though the labor force has grown by 12.1 million workers. There is no way we can produce enough growth depending on sectors that feed off taxpayers and private enterprise.

    This shortfall will be particularly tough on millenials as they enter their 20s and 30s. Already those 18 to 24 now have an unemployment rate over 18%. Not surprisingly, as Morley Winograd and Mike Hais observe, lack of jobs now stands as the No. 1 concern for those under 30.

    Another problem: We are now producing many more educated workers than we can gainfully employ. Information jobs may not be disappearing at the rate of industrial ones, but they have lost nearly 3 million positions since 1999. One likely result has been that returns to education–hyped by academics and “progressive” economists–have been dropping, particularly for younger workers. The unemployment rate for recent college grads is currently 10.6%, a record high.

    So, how to create opportunities that pay well? Some place their hopes in either the “green” or “creative” economies. But the green sector has been notably ineffective in sparking growth across other parts of the economy. A much-hyped report issued by California green-boosters bragged “green jobs”–which included everything from public relations representatives to marketing managers, accountants and brick-layers–account for something like 1% of employment. Even with heavy subsidies by taxpayers, the “green” sector seems unlikely to rescue an economy with 12.5% unemployment.

    Many politicians, particularly California’s increasingly delusional governor, also fail to recognize the cost that the “green agenda” exacts on a struggling economy. A draft report by a state advisory committee estimates California’s new draconian greenhouse gas laws could cost the state economy over $143 billion over the next decade. Efforts to spread this kind of regulation–either through federal legislation or EPA directives–would inflict similar pain to economies beyond the Sierra Nevada.

    As for the much ballyhooed “creative” sector, video producers, financial analysts, architects and other workers in the non-tangible economy are less susceptible to green pressures than factory workers, truckers or farmers. Yet as the JobBait report shows, information, business and professional services haven’t fared well over the past year. So far the only winners in professional and business services are in small states: New Mexico, Utah, South Carolina and, once again, West Virginia.

    Perhaps it’s time to abandon the notion that the U.S. can rely on preferred sectors–“green”, creative or “eds or meds”–to turn around our vast economy. Theorists often forget the essential ties that exist between tangible and intangible sectors. The strongest growth in high-end services are usually propelled by growth in tangible industries, such as energy, agriculture or manufacturing. When those industries tank, as in much of the upper Midwest, high-end services decline with them.

    Green jobs, too, require a strong economy. It is not by mistake that the big cities with the largest numbers of new “green” construction projects are not in Portland, San Francisco or other eco-capitals, but in more robust, if less organically obsessed places like Dallas and Houston. To create green jobs, you need to have growth, particularly in “hard” industries like construction and manufacturing.

    Instead of favoring certain sectors, the administration’s job “pivot” needs to focus across all economic sectors. This can be done in a pragmatic non-ideological manner. It could combine the increase in infrastructure and scientific research spending favored by many on the left with more market-friendly approaches–industrial tax credits and streamlining some regulatory standards–associated with conservatives.

    In the end the goal of policy should not be just to create more jobs, but to nurture employment that will make our economy stronger and more competitive over time. Until that happens, the recovery will create an economy fundamentally unable to sustain itself in an ever more competitive global environment.

    This article originally appeared at Forbes.com.

    Joel Kotkin is executive editor of NewGeography.com and is a distinguished presidential fellow in urban futures at Chapman University. He is author of The City: A Global History. His next book, The Next Hundred Million: America in 2050, will be published by Penguin Press early next year.

  • What To Look For In Healthcare Reform: Location, Location, Location

    A Reuters article that was widely picked up around the globe recently raised the question, Are Doctors What Ails US Healthcare? Comparing the New York suburb of White Plains to Bakersfield, California, the article uses the evergreen two-Americas paradigm to discuss disparities in health care. Drawing heavily on the Dartmouth Atlas of Healthcare, it highlights a sad but inescapable fact: doctors want to live in some places and not in others, giving the “have” populations more intensive medical care which they might or might not need, while have-nots, who tend to be older, sicker and poorer, get health care to match. The article asserts that there’s nothing in current health care reform legislation that will do anything to address the disparities.

    I agree. But then, what should we expect? The legislation, which I find marginally more desirable than doing nothing at all, is largely about insurance, not about health care. This is what happens when we emphasize how we pay for something, rather than what we are paying for. Are doctors what ails U.S. health care? Only in the sense that they are operating on the same basis as everyone else in the health care market: every man for himself.

    You don’t have to make bi-coastal comparisons to find the disparities highlighted in the Reuters article. My own Hudson Valley not-for-profit insurance company faces them every day. We cover the Medicaid populations from the aforementioned White Plains, NY, to the South, to the blighted economies of the Catskills to the North and West. The distance involved is only about 150 miles, but day in, day out it might as well be 1500. And socially, it might as well be 150 years. Sullivan County is still organized geographically the way it developed in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries — farms, woods, and mills, only without the mill jobs.

    There was a brief shining moment (well, half a century) when urban Jews and other vacationers formed the basis of a thriving tourist trade in the “Borscht Belt” resorts of Monticello, Sullivan County’s hot spot. When they closed, they provided ideal settings for residential drug and alcohol rehab for poor people from New York City, but those aren’t exactly the foundation for high-quality community health care. When we initially started offering state-sponsored insurance to the poor of Sullivan County, the historical dearth of specialists made it a laboratory for what a free market looks like when there’s no competition. (Do I hear the words “strong public option”?) Because New York State requires us to have a decent network of contracted doctors for our enrollees, the sole cosmetic surgeon – for example – could extract pretty much any fee he wanted from us in exchange for seeing a patient who needed emergency reconstructive surgery.

    Your tax dollars meet supply and demand and a mandate to pay within a private market.

    I don’t blame the specialists. They are highly trained and skilled, and have paid their dues. If I blame anyone, it’s the system that sets the dues so high, in the form of college and medical school loans and years of fellowships that leave well-meaning doctors feeling that they deserve all that money, just like corporate farmers and hedge fund managers.

    It’s also not the doctors’ fault that they want good schools and cultural amenities. I haven’t seen much of Bakersfield, but I know that schools in and around White Plains have good reputations and are just twenty miles from Broadway and the Metropolitan Museum (and ten miles from my Tarrytown office). Maybe we can fix schools and reinvigorate the National Endowment for the Arts to make every remote locale more like Westchester, but that would be socialism.

    Dartmouth Atlas data is easily available online, and well worth spending some time with. You can use it to create all kinds of two-America scenarios that provide instant object lessons in our health care inequities. My personal favorite is that health care spending in Miami, Florida for Medicare patients in the last two years of life (highest in the nation) is exactly twice that in Portland, Oregon (lowest of the regions studied), with commensurate volumes of appointments, referrals, tests and hospitalizations, and no better outcomes. Here we see the same dynamics that make pawnshops spring up around gambling casinos and candy stores near public schools. Doctors go where the customers are, and once they arrive they maximize their revenues and measure success by volume, not outcomes.

    Why should we expect anything different, when reform legislation is captive to the same kind of have/have not dichotomy that shapes health care delivery itself? Senators Max Baucus of Montana and Kent Conrad of North Dakota are two of the pillars of the anti-public option caucus. They come from states with small populations, and both take barrels of money from the health insurance industry because they can’t raise it locally. If they play their cards right, who knows? They could leave Congress and become haves themselves, like Billy Tauzin, who is now Big Pharma’s man in Washington, having engineered the passage of Medicare Part D, or Tom Daschle, once a champion of single payer, who now plays both sides of the street with special interest money.

    Are Doctors What Ails US Healthcare? quotes David Goodman, Director of Health Policy Research at the Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice, who says there’s an “irrational distribution” of the most valuable and expensive U.S. health care resources. I would say that the distribution is entirely rational given the insanity of the larger situation.

    If we’re ever going to find our way out of this mess, we’re going to have to do for these health care backwaters, both rural and urban, what we used to do when private capital wouldn’t do the job. Set goals and build the infrastructure to serve them, because the market won’t do it. Want to electrify Appalachia? You need the TVA. Want to make the desert bloom? Build dams and aqueducts. Want to open up the interior of the country? Build an Interstate Highway system. Want doctors to practice in unattractive markets? Create an MD Bill for doctors like the old GI Bill for veterans, so that doctors emerge from training feeling more like public servants and less like indentured servants.

    I attended a discussion of health care reform not long ago at the Yale School of Public Health. The representative of the private health insurance industry put the issues in a compelling perspective, although not, perhaps, for the reasons he cited.

    His arguments were three: First, we require automobile owners to carry insurance, so requiring everyone to carry health insurance shouldn’t be a problem (I know that President Obama made this point, too, and I hated him for it). Second, do you want a health care system that runs like the Post Office, or one that runs like Federal Express? And third, the health insurance industry is really a jobs program, and do we really want to put all those people out of work?

    These are shallow arguments. Car insurance? There’s no law that says you have to own a car, but everyone needs health care. A health insurance mandate is more like forcing every American to buy a new car and giving them a choice between Ford or GM. Post Office and FedEx? A company that can’t send a package overnight from suburban Tarrytown into New York City without round-trip flights to Memphis and back is no model for health care delivery, and besides, I’d like to see what FedEx can do for the price of first class postage. Jobs? A dynamic economy finds ways of redeploying redundant workers in more significant jobs. Wouldn’t those actuaries make good math teachers?

    The arguments were so hollow that no one bothered to argue, and the insurance rep was undoubtedly relieved. A fellow panelist who practices medicine in Cambridge, Dr. David Himmelstein of Harvard, said simply, “My practice would have no trouble making money on Medicare, single-payer reimbursement rates if we didn’t have to pay so many people to argue with insurance companies.”

    Unfortunately, the larger discussion is still stuck on insurance, and as long as it is, the two health care Americas will never become one.

    Georganne Chapin is President and CEO of Hudson Health Plan, a not-for-profit Medicaid managed care organization, and the Hudson Center for Health Equity & Quality, an independent not-for-profit that promotes universal access and quality in health care through streamlining. Both organizations are based in Tarrytown, New York.

  • There is no “Free Market” Housing Solution

    The common line used by advocates of housing affordability has been that the solution lies in “free markets”. Yet this “free market” solution does not address the fundamental problem which is really a political one.

    This true fundamental problem is particularly evident here in Britain, the leader in house price inflation and housing financial bubbles since the 1970s. In their recent report Global capital markets, the McKinsey Global Institute has confirmed what has been shown in recent Demographia surveys.

    The root of this problem lies with an elite agenda that is highly ideological. The ideology at work is environmentalism, making a moral virtue of the retreat of political and commercial elites from the industrial production of housing.

    The preference is for interest payments on a fund of mortgage debt rather than the effort of turning a profit from development, let alone construction. Professionals like estate agents, planners, architects, and bankers are certainly in collusion with that elite ideology.

    That is not to say there is a conspiracy to plan a housing bubble. That is too crude. There is clearly regulation and legislation. On 24 November 2009 the Housing Minister John Healey confirmed that Britain will be the first country in the world to require zero carbon homes as a matter of law from 2016. Britain is the world leader in green ideology.

    John Healey
    All of the newly built British housing will have much better insulated walls, windows, roofs and floors. The clear aim of the government is to keep reducing the energy consumption of all new homes to be measured in kilowatt-hours per square metre of floor area per year. New Labour hope to make it law that total energy consumption is no more than 46 kWh/m2/year for semi-detached and detached homes, and then no more than 39 kWh/m2/year for all other homes. The energy efficiency standards will be applied from 2016, subject to yet another consultation on the Code for Sustainable Homes, announced at the end of 2006, and technically published for use on a voluntary basis in 2007. The building regulations get revised in 2010, 2013, and 2016 leading to this legal requirement for maximum energy consumption in all new homes.

    Healey says that “zero carbon” is a concept that will apply to a new home at the “point of build”. ‘We are not going to regulate through this policy how occupants live in them,’ he says. However the Code for Sustainable Homes assumes patterns of behaviour. Environmentalists within and without government will argue that behaviour needs to change. They will be suggesting all sorts of intrusions into daily life.

    British environmentalism couldn’t be more ideological, and more of a barrier to the production of affordable housing. The planning system has been “greened”. The mood is against development, and planning approvals for new land for new housing are hard to obtain. The zero carbon requirement will only apply to around the 100,000 new homes that will be built annually, while the existing stock is around 26 million homes. Healey is also going to regulate existing housing, and is not just looking at the residential sector.

    I am sure politicians like Healey don’t want their pursuit of “zero carbon” buildings to mean that fewer buildings are built. I am sure there are some environmentalists who will be pleased that building activity is in decline. The logic of green thinking entails that the most energy efficient thing to do is not to build more buildings at all.

    It is green not to build new homes to meet demographic demand. Let people modify their behaviour, say the environmentalists, and live together in as much of the existing stock as can be refurbished. It also happens that the existing stock is highly mortgaged, and the vast majority doesn’t want their homes to fall in value. An indefinite policy of green refurbishment of the homes that already exist and a future of house price inflation are highly compatible. That suits the mortgage lenders and the government. The commitment to “zero carbon” allows government to appear virtuous in its legislation for the new build sector.

    This suits the financial markets as well, since it guarantees house price inflation by making it difficult to meet the demographic demand for homes. Environmentalism offers more and more reasons not to build. Green thinking ensures that house price inflation can be sustained through a bubble, and projected beyond the bursting of that period of financialisation into the next.

    As capitalism ”greens” itself, capitalists continue to profit, while not meeting the fundamental demands of the people for housing. But simply restoring “the free market” will not solve the problem. In an old industrial country like Britain, there are ever more people who don’t earn enough to buy a home even at the “affordable” price of two and a half times their gross annual household income, which is the Demographia measure of affordability.

    This reality has a great appeal to what Robert Bruegmann refers to as “the incumbents club” – established homeowners, increasingly older, and those with inherited money. That majority want homes to be an appreciating asset, not a depreciating utility, like a pair of trousers, or a car. They want their home to appreciate in value, and they want to be green. Most people want to be greener and better off.

    Being anti-development for green reasons allows the incumbents to preserve their wealth, while making mundane opposition to new house building, or the attempt to constrain “sprawl”, seem virtuous. People don’t wake up thinking that they will inflate the value of their home by resisting sprawl in principle. Instead they oppose new development in the mistaken belief that Climate Change is caused by sprawling development. It is common for people to think that sprawl is bad for the planet, even while living, mostly with a mistaken sense of guilt, in the sprawl.

    By hoping for a “free market” solution to the problem of unaffordability, Hugh Pavletich of Demographia assumes that it is politicians, businessmen, and professionals who have distorted the market for reasons of narrow and immediate self-interest. Yet that is not how people think: they believe their environmentalism is morally above self-interest. They are saving the planet in their minds by blocking new building, and by their opposition to sprawl. The incumbents’ club members can feel virtuous at little cost to themselves and don’t worry too much about house price inflation. Of course there is no actual Club. There is no conspiracy. Homeowners simply share a self-interest in raising the value of their home, and tend to also want to show how selflessly green they are.

    This all has had the effect of making the lending of mortgages on inflated land values a much larger business than the construction of homes. No-one planned to cause a sequence of bubbles, but Britain’s desperate social dependence on sustained house price inflation can’t be brought to an end easily.

    The only way to stop national or regional housing bubbles recurring is the establishment of the freedom for everyone to build a home on cheap agricultural land without any government or professional hindrance except in matters of technical building regulations. Fire should not spread, and buildings should not fall down. But even building regulations can become ideological rather than technical. The British building regulations, as Healey has made clear, will also push energy efficiency standards to illogical extremes of peak performance in an attempt to address Climate Change. Even while the supply of new homes reduces

    The political freedom to build wouldn’t be a “free market” because not everyone is able to raise the finance to buy cheap land and pay for construction. The idea of a “free market” is a long running ideological myth. But the universal freedom to build would mean people are free to attempt to raise the finance to buy land and build.

    More importantly, the freedom to build would undermine the financialisation of the housing market. If everyone was free to build on cheap land the incumbents’ club would have to compare the value of their existing home to the cost of building a new one. Mortgage lenders would not be able to lend over the cost of construction unless they felt secure in doing so. The security of the 1947 Town and Country Planning Act would be removed for financiers. Government, the finance system, planners, or the incumbents’ club will be ideologically opposed to that for a host of environmental reasons. Britains mostly want to be greener but with renewed house price inflation, while no-one wants to make an argument explicitly for un-affordability. This may be confused and deluded, but it is an ideology promoted by the British government.

    However, ideas can be challenged and changed. One step is to understand that there is no “free market” housing solution. Getting rid of the 1947 denial of the freedom to build doesn’t mean an end to planning. Homes will still need to be planned, just as they were before 1947. But planners will not have the power to stop people from building. There is a need to politically end the environmentalist denial of the freedom to build in an industrial democracy. With a population free to build the finance system would be more interested in cheapening new construction on lower cost land, and not preoccupied with securing the financialisation of periodic but persistent house price inflation. A freedom to build is very much not a right to a home. It is a freedom from the obstructions of planners, with the weight of government legislation behind them. A freedom that is denied to protect the environment, a denial that sustains house price inflation.

    The market is not capable of being a “free market”. Capitalism is a system of control by political and commercial elites, and their professional employees. British capitalists tend to be less interested in industry, which is held to have caused Climate Change, and more interested in finance these days. What is precisely missing in the face of the morally selfless capitalist ideology of environmentalism is an ideology in favour of raising the productive capacity of the construction industry based on a universal sense of immediate and material self-interest. Getting rid of the 1947 planning legislation is a limited attempt to reconnect house building with the cost of construction and household incomes by removing the means by which house price inflation is sustained. Homes would be more of a utility than an investment in Britain, and we would cease to be world leaders in housing based financial bubbles.

    To do that requires us to oppose those who would be world leaders in the environmental ideology that industrial production is a problem for the planet. In Britain we need to set people free to build housing to the best of their abilities within a capitalist planning system stripped of the legal powers it gained in 1947. Innovative in their day, British planning now only sustains housing bubbles and restricts people’s opportunity for decent housing.

    Ian Abley, Project Manager for audacity, an experienced site Architect, and a Research Engineer at the Centre for Innovative and Collaborative Engineering, Loughborough University. He is co-author of Why is construction so backward? (2004) and co-editor of Manmade Modular Megastructures. (2006) He is planning 250 new British towns.

  • Will New Urbanists Deliver A Home-Win With Miami 21?

    By Richard Reep

    “A walkable city, more like… Manhattan, Chicago, or San Francisco,” is how The Miami Herald characterizes the future of Miami under Miami 21, the new form-based code adopted on October 22nd by the Miami City Commission. This seems to be the hot new dream not just of Miami, but of all cities struggling under corruption and greed, codes and regulations, with an imagined underground urbanity, yearning to breathe free. Citizens may now expect to see Miami remodeled after cities that grew before the car came, but the lyrics to The Who’s “Won’t Get Fooled Again” echo in the minds of some: “Meet the new boss…same as the old boss.”

    Miami 21, controversial for nearly four years and over 500 public meetings, met a critical need for citizens who were tired of the corruption and greed that seemed to result in an increasingly ugly, congested quasi-urban nightmare. Planning and zoning regulations, which were originally designed to protect property values, could be reinvented when enough power and money was at stake, and the code enforcers allowed more and more bizarre juxtapositions of high rises among low-scale residential neighborhoods. During the recent condo boom, variances became business as usual for the Miami City Commission and the Mayor. Now that the condo boom is over, it appears that both are rushing in to make amends to voters by passing this new form-based code.

    The code places height limits on neighborhoods similar to the old, Euclidean code, ominously named 11000. But this time around, uses are not segregated; instead, a mix of retail and other uses is intended to encourage increased pedestrian activity and a taking back of some of the city from the car. For citizens, there has been much to like about the arguments in favor of this code. As a result of the change, the pleasant weather that drew so many to the city will now perhaps be enjoyed on the boulevard; fear of shadows from looming high-rises will, according to the plan, now recede a bit. And a more organized, easy-to-understand building pattern should replace the Rube Goldberg-like zoning code full of special exceptions, arcane “bonus” rules, and a process all too easily subverted by tax-hungry politicians.

    With private development comatose, it is a perfect time for many jurisdictions to perform a much-needed overhaul of their development regulations. In the boom-bust atmosphere of Florida, most of the development industry sees this cease-fire as simply a pause to reload, and the Department of Community Affairs – Tallahassee’s growth management gatekeeper – is busy helping developers get ready for the next boom by making the Rural Land Stewardship Areas, a regulation designed to protect rural areas from development, officially optional.

    The American Institute of Architects chapter in Miami proposed to reform the old code, rather than start from scratch, arguing that the new code is complicated, fussy, and inhibiting. Reform of the existing 11000 code never seemed to be an option, and instead the Miami 21 code, written by New Urbanist gurus Andres Duany and Elizabeth Plater-Zyberg of DPZ, replaces the old code. Citizens of Miami, when presented with this new code, seemed ready for a change.

    This was an important home-win for DPZ and for New Urbanism in general. Increasingly associated with greenfield prettyboys like Celebration and Seaside, New Urbanism seemed to be losing ground and losing relevance at solving real-city problems. With the support of a massive public relations campaign, New Urbanism has now been given a chance to deliver on its promises of a “a clear vision for the City that will be supported by specific guidelines and regulations so that future generations will reap the benefits of well-balanced neighborhoods and rich quality of life.”

    Arcane spreadsheets, full of formulae and footnotes, have been replaced by transects. These silhouettes of buildings and streets – a sort of cross-section through the city – begin with the way a natural, un-built environment might look, progress to how a rural road looks, and go all the way up to how high-rise canyons might look. Patterning a city on a consensual, pre-approved notion of order is what New Urbanism is all about. There are no surprises – no high-rises in your backyard – but, as some local architects worry, there’s no spontaneity either.

    Walkability is another promise of the new code. Ideas such as transforming blank walls, promoting urban infill development, and lining parking garages with retailers, are all illustrated with magical dissolve images that change ugly parking garages into charming shopping districts. If it were only that easy.

    Transit-oriented development is a strategic goal of the code, creating density clusters that get people out of their cars and into alternative forms of transportation. Buses, bicycles, vanpools, and Miami’s Metrorail are closely interlinked with Miami 21.

    The marketing website for Miami 21 makes it impossible to be against the code. Opposing Miami 21 would be like opposing lifesaving drugs or opposing the blue sky. New Urbanism won this victory because there weren’t any compelling counter-arguments to their basic argument for urban hygiene. And Miami 21 comes at a time when the city has been egregiously abused at the hands of the free market; its citizens disenfranchised and suffering from an environment of ugliness, traffic and congestion.

    As noble as Miami 21’s goals are, however, they are only as good as the politicians in whose hands they will be used. Making new laws, rather than enforcing the old laws, is a favorite activity of politicians who, backed against the wall by irate voters, seek a grand solution. Much harder work will come when developers try to seek waivers against Miami 21, and if the history of Florida is any guide, it is not likely things will change much. For Miami 21 has some inherent costs that will split the haves and the have-nots of Miami-Dade County even further apart than they are now.

    For the haves, the higher cost of development under Miami 21 is already a concerning factor. The code promises increased regulation, and the density transects favor already high-value districts. At the last minute, for example, City Commissioner Marc Sarnoff switched his support to be in favor of a 35-foot height limit in Miami’s MiMo historic district, to the chagrin of property owners seeking higher buildings. Whether he stays on one side of the fence, or switches back at the behest of a developer, remains to be seen.

    In Miami, the validity of New Urbanism’s principles of how cities are regulated will finally be put to the test. By spelling out the city’s form in detail, through technical images, watercolor perspectives, and mock-historical drawings, Miami 21 is illustrating a preordained vision of itself. The public’s trust in its elected officials has been so broken by the recent capitalistic building frenzy that, by consensus, an agreed-upon “ideal city” has been created on paper. Now it is up to the building officials to deliver this vision when the next building boom hits.

    Instead of exploring how to improve the planning process, as AIA Miami suggested, Miami 21 seems to have avoided confronting the planning and process issues that no one seems to know how to solve. Have our cities become so complex that we are unable to manage their growth through the traditional public planning process? An even bigger question is whether the village-planning model at the core of New Urbanism is a valid model? Will it achieve the lofty goals that have been promised?

    Miami 21 will be a fascinating experiment to watch during the coming years. Miami is already known for taking risks: it built an elevated rail system in a suburban, multipolar city and encouraged an international development binge that resulted in a dozen or two empty skyscrapers. Now it has added formal prototyping to its use regulations. As Miami 21 is implemented and tested, other cities like St. Petersburg, Denver, and Philadelphia are following suit, hoping that the increased regulations will be the quick fix needed to assure the public that the civic realm is being cared for.

    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.

  • Capping Emissions, Trading On The Future

    Whatever the results of the Copenhagen conference on climate change, one thing is for sure: Draconian reductions on carbon emissions will be tacitly accepted by the most developed economies and sloughed off by many developing ones. In essence, emerging economies get to cut their “carbon” intensity–a natural product of their economic evolution–while we get to cut our throats.

    The logic behind this prediction goes something like this. Since the West created the industrial revolution and the greenhouse gases that supposedly caused this “crisis,” it’s our obligation to take much of the burden for cleaning them up.

    Plagued by self-doubt and even self-loathing, many in the West will no doubt consider this an appropriate mea culpa. Our leaders will dutifully accept cuts in our carbon emissions–up to 80% by 2050–while developing countries increase theirs, albeit at a lower rate. Oh, we also pledge to send billions in aid to help them achieve this goal.

    The media shills, scientists, bureaucrats and corporate rent-seekers gathered at Copenhagen won’t give much thought to what this means to the industrialized world’s middle and working class. For many of them the new carbon regime means a gradual decline in living standards. Huge increases in energy costs, taxes and a spate of regulatory mandates will restrict their access to everything from single-family housing and personal mobility to employment in carbon-intensive industries like construction, manufacturing, warehousing and agriculture.

    You can get a glimpse of this future in high-unemployment California. Here a burgeoning regulatory regime tied to global warming threatens to turn the state into a total “no go” economic development zone. Not only do companies have to deal with high taxes, cascading energy prices and regulations, they now face audits of their impact on global warming. Far easier to move your project to Texas–or if necessary, China.

    The notion that the hoi polloi must be sacrificed to save the earth is not a new one. Paul Ehrlich, who was the mentor of President Obama’s science advisor, John Holdren, laid out the defining logic in his 1968 best-seller, The Population Bomb. In this influential work, Ehrlich predicted mass starvation by the 1970s and “an age of scarcity” in key metals by the mid-1980s. Similar views were echoed by a 1972 “Limits to Growth” report issued by the Club of Rome, a global confab that enjoyed a cache similar to that of the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

    To deal with this looming crisis, Holdren in the 1977 book Ecoscience (co-authored with Anne and Paul Ehrlich) developed the notion of “de-development.” According to Holdren, poorer countries like India and China could not be expected to work their way out of poverty since they were “foredoomed by enormous if not insurmountable economic and environmental obstacles.” The only way to close “the prosperity gap” was to lower the living standards of what he labeled “over-developed” nations.

    These predictions were less than accurate. World-wide systemic mass starvation did not take place as population escalated. Rather those many millions wallowing in poverty in the developing world, particularly in Asia, lifted themselves into the global middle class. Far more efficient ways to use energy have been developed, and unexpected caches of new resources continue to be discovered all over the planet.

    Yet however wrong-headed, Holdren’s world view now has jumped from the dustbin of history into the craniums of presidents and prime ministers. President Obama’s pledge to “restore science to its rightful place” has morphed into state-sponsored scientific ideology.

    The blind acceptance of this agenda threatens the credibility of Obama and other Western leaders. For one, if the crisis is by its nature global why should we allow massive increases in carbon emissions in developing countries–China will soon surpass us in greenhouse gas emissions, if it hasn’t already–while we draconically cut ours? Does the planet really care if it’s turned to toast by American- vs. Chinese-made gas?

    Then there’s the specious historical narrative that insists we pay for creating the industrial revolution since it brought on global warming. Should the West pay for the sins of the British who brought electricity and railroads to India? Does America owe carbon penance for making the technology transfers critical to East Asia’s remarkable rise? Maybe we should start by making Wal-Mart cancel its China orders. That might help de-carbonize the planet a bit.

    There’s also growing skepticism about the whole warmist narrative. Climate change now ranks last among 20 top issues in a recent Pew report. There’s been a similar rise in skepticism in the U.K., once a hot bed of warmist sentiment.

    The reasons for the shift may vary. First, there’s a controversy over the temperatures of the past decade, with even some concerned about climate change admitting that there has not been the expected warming. Or perhaps a deep recession has made many “rich” countries feel a trifle less “overdeveloped.”

    And now we have Climate-gate–where leading warmist pedagogues are trying to suppress unsuitably conformist scientists and perhaps even cook the numbers a bit. Although you won’t see too much tough coverage in the mainstream press, the tawdry details have poured out over the Internet and diminished the aura of scientific objectivity of some leading global warming researchers. One recent poll shows that a large majority of Americans believe scientists may have indeed falsified their research data. By well over 4 to 1, they also believe stimulating the economy is a bigger priority than stopping global warming.

    Clearly the political risks of giving first priority to the carbon agenda are on the rise. Australia’s Senate just voted down that country’s proposed cap and trade scheme. The Western center-right, once intimidated by the well-financed greens and their media claque, has become bolder in challenging climate change alarmism.

    There’s also something of a rebellion brewing, at least toward emissions trading schemes, among some liberals from the South and Midwest, notably Wisconsin’s Russ Feingold and North Dakota’s Byron Dorgan. As analyst Aaron Renn has pointed out, these areas are most likely to be negatively affected by the current climate change legislation. Feingold recently stated that he was “not signing onto any bill that rips off Wisconsin.”

    So why do leaders like Barack Obama and British Prime Minister Gordon Brown continue identifying themselves with the climate change agenda and policies like cap and trade? Perhaps it’s best to see this as a clash of classes. Today’s environmental movement reflects the values of a large portion of the post-industrial upper class. The big money behind the warming industry includes many powerful corporate interests that would benefit from a super-regulated environment that would all but eliminate potential upstarts.

    These people generally also do not fear the loss of millions of factory, truck, construction and agriculture-related jobs slated to be “de-developed.” These tasks can shift to China, India or Vietnam–where the net emissions would no doubt be higher–at little immediate cost to tenured professors, nonprofit executives or investment bankers. The endowments and the investment funds can just as happily mint their profits in Chongqing as in Chicago.

    Global warming-driven land-use legislation possesses a similarly pro-gentry slant. Suburban single family homes need to be sacrificed in the name of climate change, but this will not threaten the large Park Avenue apartments and private retreats of media superstars, financial tycoons and the scions of former carbon-spewing fortunes. After all, you can always pay for your pleasure with “carbon offsets.”

    So who benefits from this collective ritual seppuku? Hegemony-seeking communist capitalists in China might fancy seeing America and the West decline to the point that they can no longer compete or fund their militaries. A weakened European Union or U.S. also won’t be able provide a model of a more democratic version of capitalism to counter China’s ultra-authoritarian version.

    The Chinese may win a victory in Copenhagen greater than anything accomplished so far in the marketplace–and our leaders will likely thank them for it. Forget bowing to the emperor in Tokyo; like vassal states at the height of the old Middle Kingdom, the new requisite diplomatic skill for Westerners will be kow-towing to Beijing.

    Yet most people in the developing world will not benefit from the suicide of the West. The warmists’ vision is not one of growing prosperity, but of capping wealth at a comparatively low level. De-industrialization means the West falls back while emerging economies grow a bit. The “prosperity gap” may close, but ultimately everyone is left with less prosperity.

    In the long run developing countries gain less from harvesting guilt than enjoying a bounty of customers, capital and expertise. The West’s experience and technology can assist developing nations in improving their far more greatly threatened environment. Turning the West into a spent force will leave the world poorer, dirtier and ultimately less hopeful.

    This article originally appeared at Forbes.com.

    Joel Kotkin is executive editor of NewGeography.com and is a distinguished presidential fellow in urban futures at Chapman University. He is author of The City: A Global History. His next book, The Next Hundred Million: America in 2050, will be published by Penguin Press early next year.