New Geography

Category: Suburbs

  • Form Follows Zoning

    When Louis Sullivan, purveyor of modern American high-rise architecture, said more than 100 years ago that ‘Form Follows Function’, he perhaps didn’t realize the extent to which building form would not be determined only by building type and the laws of physics, but by zoning laws, building safety codes, real estate developer balance sheets and even vocal neighborhood groups.

    For every new building project, an architect’s role is to balance these opposing forces, while also delivering a scheme that is aesthetically pleasing and appropriate for its surroundings. This can be a challenge, but also an opportunity for designers to find creative solutions working within constraints.

    Following are just a few of the many parameters an architect must work with when designing this type of project:

    Form Follows Zoning

    Zoning is a term with broad implications, used to describe the set of regulations put forth by local governments that dictate what type of building can be built where. For each land plot, zoning laws also indicate floor area ratio (FAR, or how much area of building can be constructed), allowable building height, bulk limits, site density, setbacks, and parking requirements, among other constraints.

    The FAR number is of paramount importance: it is the magic number used as a multiplier of a site’s area, resulting in the allowable gross floor area. The higher the FAR number, the more area is allowed to be built on a given plot. In most U.S. cities FAR numbers are difficult to amend except through cumbersome political and legal processes. On the other hand, in developing countries such as China, FAR numbers change on an almost daily basis as zoning regulations remain malleable in order to meet of the moment economic growth needs.

    For high-density commercial and multi-family residential buildings, real estate developers typically seek to maximize FAR to get the highest return on investment. For tall buildings, that means building to the height limit, and then asking for a variance to exceed the height limit if it does not max out the FAR.

    Bulk limits deal with the ascending bulk of skyscrapers, mandating setbacks in the building form as the tower rises up to mitigate shadow impact. That is how you end up with ‘wedding cake’ buildings like the Chrysler Building and the GE Building at Rockefeller Center, both of which were a result of setback mandates in New York City’s 1916 Zoning Resolution. These Art Deco masterpieces are prime examples of how architects cleverly worked within zoning laws to design handsome buildings.

    Form Follows Parking Requirements

    While parking requirements are indicated in zoning laws, this constraint warrants its own category. It is remarkable how much influence the personal automobile has in shaping the modern city, not only in terms of road infrastructure but also in the space required for parking when cars are stopped. Parking requirements are responsible for urban design situations like the ubiquitous linear strip mall setback a great distant from the street, separated by a sea of parking spaces.

    Even in dense urban environments, parking is usually a requirement for new buildings. This means that when designing a multi-story building, the parking layout is what sets the structural column grid that stacks vertically throughout the entire height of the building. A typical 30 ft. column bay (measured from center to center) will accommodate 3 parking spaces, which then results in the building’s entire structure being based on the 30’ column grid.

    Parking garages are either below grade or above grade (above lobby level), and usually do not count towards FAR. There are various reasons (including geological/topographical) for placing a parking garage either below or above grade, but in either case, structure is ultimately designed to accommodate the needs of automobiles.

    Form Follows Rentable/Saleable Area

    In addition to zoning requirements, architects must also meet the needs of their developer clients. This entails realizing in form what real estate bean counters calculate to be the appropriate mix of area for what is to be built.

    If it is commercial office space, developers follow the Building Owners and Managers Association (BOMA) standards of measurement to calculate how much ‘rentable area’ can be squeezed out of a building’s floor given a building’s envelope. Of utmost importance in this calculation is the ‘load factor’ or ratio of rentable area to usable area, determining how much building owners can charge their tenants.

    Also important is the ‘lease span’, with a 45 ft. clear span from service core to exterior wall being the ideal. This allows flexibility in office layout and also ensures enough natural light penetrates deep enough into the office space.

    In residential buildings, saleable are is what developers are after and that determines the mix of unit types (studios, 1 bedrooms, 2 bedrooms, etc…) in a given market. This can frequently change during the design process based on changing market conditions

    For towers with a mix of uses, designing a functional building places tremendous onus on the architect to balance competing forces of different building types consolidated into one vertical structure. With financial rewards ultimately more important than aesthetic outcome, architects have to struggle to create a beautiful building within these constraints.

    Form Follows NIMBY Demands

    In the U.S., and other democratic countries with strong property rights, new building projects are subject to the scrutiny of local neighborhood and vocal environmental groups. Often derided as NIMBYs (Not-In-My-Back-Yard) by those on the pro-development side of a new project, these groups usually have predictable objections, the most common being    increases in traffic. Yet if these NIMBYs, especially in urban settings, have objections to traffic, rather than protest individual projects, they should write their local city councilman suggesting a change in zoning to modify parking requirements.

    Even after the approval of extensive traffic and environmental studies, NIMBYs may criticize a building’s appearance in a last ditch effort to prevent construction. Objections include obscure criticisms such as a design does not fit in with ‘neighborhood character’. This criticism reflects a fundamental misunderstanding that even in historic neighborhoods, a well designed counterpoint or contrast can be a suitable proposal. After all, cities are not static museums frozen in time but dynamic and evolving organisms.

    Unfortunately, the NIMBY victory can often be a final blow to what would’ve otherwise been a successful, beautiful design.

    Conclusion

    For architects, designing a building is more like solving a puzzle rather than an exercise in unrestrained creativity. Surprisingly, there is little discussion of the real world constraints in architecture schools. This is perhaps due in part to the fact that regulations vary greatly from place to place, but the fundamental importance of planning and zoning should be emphasized more often.

    For all stakeholders involved in new building projects (developers, local officials and planning departments, the design team, concerned neighbors) what is written in the local zoning code provides the basis for every decision made. For those interested in making better, more informed planning decisions, individuals and governments should focus less on singular building projects and more on easing the process of making changes to local zoning codes.

    Adam Nathaniel Mayer is an architectural design professional from California. In addition to his job designing buildings he writes the China Urban Development Blog.

    Follow him on Twitter: AdamNMayer

    Chicago skyline photo by Bigstockphoto.com.

  • America’s Future Is Taking Shape In The Suburbs

    For nearly a generation, pundits, academics and journalists have written off suburbia. They predict that the future lies in the cities, with more Americans living in smaller spaces such as the micro-apartments of 300 square feet or less that New York and San Francisco are considering changing their building laws to allow. Even traditionally spread out cities, such as Los Angeles, are laying out plans to create greater population density, threatening the continued existence of some neighborhoods of single-family homes.

    Yet wishing something dead does not make it so. Indeed, the suburbanization of America is likely to continue over the next decade. The 2010 Census — by far the most accurate recent accounting — showed that over 90% of all metropolitan growth over the past decade took place in the suburbs.

    Some central cities, notably New York, enjoyed decent population growth, but their increases were still below the national average. The Joint Center for Housing at Harvard notes that, only five metro areas —Boston, San Diego, San Jose, Calif., and the Florida cities of Cape Coral and Palm Bay — saw an increase in the share of households living in core cities relative to their suburbs and exurbs.

    To be sure, the Great Recession slowed the growth of suburbs, as many Americans lost the ability to achieve their dream of owning a single-family house. “Back to the city” advocates have seized on Census estimates for the past year that suggested that urban core growth has actually been a tad faster than that of suburbs.

    However, the Census Bureau numbers may be less accurate, and certainly less predictive, than many suggest. University of Pittsburgh urban analyst Chris Briem points out that in the last decade, some Census Bureau city estimates turned out to be vastly exaggerated compared to the actual 2010 Census. This was particularly true in Chicago and New York, where constant lobbying by city officials — after all, federal aid is distributed based on population estimates — meant that optimistic urban estimates turned out to be hundreds of thousands of people off.

    More amazing still, the Census Bureau essentially assumed that growth was even in all municipalities in a county. This bizarre practice projects that growth, say, in the city of Los Angeles, is equal to that of newer communities like Santa Clarita, or that suburbs of Alleghany County grew at the same rate as the city of Pittsburgh. This surely can’t be the case.

    Reporters concentrated in Manhattan and the District of Columbia didn’t look seriously at these numbers. They repeated the assumption that this was the result of mass migration, particularly among the young, out of suburbs and into cities.

    Yet in reality, there was no evidence of that trend. In fact, the Census Bureau’s core county estimates (which are demonstrably more accurate than the municipal estimates) showed a slight core county loss in domestic migration over the past year. The real story of the estimates has to do with the recession, which has led to record-low levels of mobility. Inter-county migration has fallen almost half from its 2006 level. Essentially, a historically weak economy has boosted the city share of population growth.

    So what can we expect in the future? Some cities will grow, but the vast majority of metropolitan growth will continue to take place in what are still car-dominated suburbs like areas areas. This can occur only the economy again get on a full-fledged growth cycle. Here some basic reasons not to write off suburbia.

    Inter-Regional Growth Patterns

    All 15 of the fastest-growing metropolitan areas of the past decade — led by places like Las Vegas, Raleigh, Phoenix, Houston and Dallas-Fort Worth — are sprawling and have low-density cores. Metropolitan areas with far denser cores, such as New York, Boston, Chicago, and San Francisco, tended to display below-average growth.

    These fast-growing cities tend to be suburban in form, dominated by single-family homes, automobile commuters and with dispersed economic centers. The growing central cities of Phoenix or Houston look more like places such as Long Island or Santa Clara than Manhattan or Chicago.

    Economic Shifts

    Many urban boosters cite a Santa Fe Institute study claiming that density creates productivity and economic growth. However, the study clearly dissociated itself from this argument, claiming that it did not matter if a region was shaped like Los Angeles, Atlanta or Houston, or New York or Boston. The source of productivity lay simply in a growing metropolitan population, the authors claimed.

    Overall, it’s questionable whether city economies perform better over time than the suburbs. Indeed, over the last decade, 81 percent of the population growth of core cities was among the poor, compared to 32 percent in suburbs. Poverty anywhere is a bad thing, but the claim, made repeatedly by some pundits that it is worsening more in suburbs turns out to be, well, just another urban legend. Overall poverty accounts for nearly one in four urban residents, twice the rate for suburbs.

    Energy Costs

    Ever since the energy crisis of the 1970s, pundits have predicted suburbanites would be forced to give up their cars. But higher energy prices have not slowed the suburban trend. With the current growth in new energy finds both here and abroad, the much heralded dawn of “peak oil” appears to be about as imminent as a balanced federal budget.

    Some terrified urbanists, like Bruce Fisher, director of the Center for Economic and Policy Studies at Buffalo State College, fear the new oil rush means “suburban real estate development will once again enjoy a comparative advantage over center city development.” In what some see as a catastrophe for both planet and urbanity, the car will remain dominant for the foreseeable future, despite three decades of massive spending on new transit systems across the country.

    Demographic Trends

    The advocates of a dense urban future usually point to demographics. Yet the formerly fashionable theory that retiring boomers would head en masse to cities turned out to be largely false. The last census showed the vast majority of aging boomers remained in the suburbs or moved further out into the periphery. “Back to the country” actually far outweighed “back to the city” in terms of boomer migration.

    Then there’s the other large generation of Americans, millennials, who are said to prefer an urban lifestyle. Yet surveys of millennials show a strong, often even more marked, preference for homeownership and suburban living than their parents.

    This will prove critical as many now urban millennials begin to enter their 30s and 40s over the next decade. Once they marry and start to have families, they will emerge, as the Harvard housing study notes as “the primary driver of new household formations over the next two decades.” Along with the other powerful force, immigrants, most seem likely to end up in suburban locales, if they can.

    Preferences Matter

    This does not counteract the fact that many young people will chose to settle in dense urban areas for their 20s and early 30s. Some urban cores, notably New York, Boston and San Francisco, will likely grow and get denser. But most others will see only modest, often fitful growth; despite massive public investment, for example, downtown Los Angeles, according to Zillow.com, has foreclosure rates worse than virtually anywhere else in the region.

    Preferences are the key here, particularly paying attention to what people want as they age. The 2011 Community Preference Survey, commissioned jointly by the National Association of Realtors and Smart Growth America, found that only a small minority — less than 10 percent — favored a dense urban location. Some 80 percent expressed preference for a single-family home.

    Over time, in a market-based economy, consumer preferences matter far more than those of pundits, professors or, for that matter, rent-seeking real estate developers. The only things that can kill off future suburban development would be forced densification by government edict or a continued miserable economy that entraps millions of the unwilling in dense urban areas.

    Joel Kotkin is executive editor of NewGeography.com and is a distinguished presidential fellow in urban futures at Chapman University, and contributing editor to the City Journal in New York. He is author of The City: A Global History. His newest book is The Next Hundred Million: America in 2050, released in February, 2010.

    This piece originally appeared in Forbes.

    Suburbs photo courtesy of BigStockPhoto.com.

  • Density is Not the Issue: The Urban Scaling Research

    The "urban scaling" research of Geoffrey West, Luis Bettencourt, Jose Lobo, Deborah Strumsky, Dirk Helbing and Christian Kuhnert on cities has attracted considerable attention (references below). They have provided strong quantitative evidence, based upon voluminous econometric analysis that cities tend to become more efficient as they grow in population.

    Specifically, West, a theoretical physicist, and his team show that measures such as gross domestic product per capita and income per capita rise, on average, 15 percent with each doubling of city population. They draw parallels with the animal kingdom, noting that larger animals tend to be more efficient than smaller ones, and comparing elephants, efficient because of their size, to cities.

    This is all very attractive, especially the elephant analogy, which appropriately suggests that cities are organisms.

    The Urban Organism

    Yet the research has been widely reported to suggest that density as opposed to size is the key to urban productivity. West et al look at cities as "integrated economic and social units," at the "level of metropolitan statistical areas (MSAs); in the European Union, larger urban zones (LUZs); and in China, urban administrative units." This is the economic, or functional manifestation of the urban organism (the urban area, the area of continuous urbanization, is the physical manifestation). In so doing, West, et al demonstrate a familiarity with urban geography that is all too rare, even among analysts who have studied cities for far longer.

    The key issue here is what constitutes a “city”.  New York is a good, example, as headquarters to the national media, a world class city and as urban as it gets in the United States. But the New York metropolitan area, the "integrated economic and social unit" is not Manhattan or even five boroughs. It stretches from a bit west of Blooming Grove Township, in Pike County 25 miles west of Port Jervis, a city 90 miles from Manhattan located in western Orange County, NY, to Montauk Point in Suffolk County and from north of West Point, in Putnam County to Egg Harbor Township, in Ocean County, New Jersey (that’s nearly 30 miles south of Toms River). Suffice it to say most of this vast region is not dense at all.

    Divining Density

    Yet, some analysts have characterized the West, et al research as being about higher densities, Richard Florida wrote in The Wall Street Journal:

    Researchers at the Santa Fe Institute have been able to demonstrate that bigger, denser cities literally speed up the metabolism of daily life.

    That’s only half right. The research was about city size, not density, as the authors indicate (below).

    All too typical of the way that suburbanized America is disparaged by the media, Jonah Lehrer, of The New York Times sputtered that:

    In recent decades, though, many of the fastest-growing cities in America, like Phoenix and Riverside, Calif., have given us a very different urban model. These places have traded away public spaces for affordable single-family homes, attracting working-class families who want their own white picket fences.

    In reality, the kind of suburbs found in Phoenix and Riverside-San Bernardino will be found surrounding every one of the nation’s core cities, including New York, an urban area that covers  more land area than any urban area in the world at 3,450 square miles (8,935 square kilometers), according to the Census Bureau. That’s twice the expanse of the Los Angeles urban area. Granted, New York’s Hudson Valley suburbs are greener and more affluent than most in Phoenix, but their population density is nearly the same. Moreover, neither Phoenix nor New York (think Staten Island or much of Long Island) should be ashamed of attracting "working class families who want their own white picket fences." Why demean aspiration?

    Urban blogger James Withow refers to their "remarkable findings" that "raise interesting policy issues on density." Another analyst wrote "West offers data that shows cities create economies of scale that suburbs and small towns cannot match." This is patently absurd since, as noted above, West did not study any part of the urban organism below the metropolitan area. There was no attempt to make a distinction between the productivity of say, Manhattan or Brooklyn, to White Plains or even Blooming Spring Township. No core city or suburb is an "integrated economic and social unit."

    West et al on Density

    Indeed, West et al make it very clear that their findings have nothing to do with urban population density. They tested for correlations population growth and income, patents and violent crimes, and found "no significant trend exists between residuals for income, patents and violent crime and population growth or density." They further note their equations showed an "R2 consistent with zero" (in every day English, that means they found no relationship between density and the other variables).

    This conclusion was correct, though comparing metropolitan area densities is less than ideal. Just to check, we reran the equations with urban density data and found that this approach too produced an "R2 consistent with zero," not only for income, patents and violent crimes, but also gross metropolitan product.

    West et al pointed out that:

    The shape of the city in space, including for example its residential density, matter much less than (and are mostly accounted for by) population size in predicting indicators of urban performance. Said more explicitly, whether a city looks more like New York or Boston or instead like Los Angeles or Atlanta has a vanishing effect in predicting its socio-economic performance. (emphasis by author)

    In other words, the same improvement in urban performance would be predicted from doubling the population of Atlanta, with an urban density of 1,700 per square mile (700 per square kilometer) as in New York, with more than three times Atlanta’s density or Los Angeles’ with more than four (Los Angeles is highest density large urban area in the United States).

     It turns out – counter the misunderstandings of some urbanists – that higher or lower density simply does not matter according to the West, et al research.

    It’s About Density Thresholds and Efficient Labor Markets

    Cities (integrated economic and social units) are created by reaching urban density thresholds. They tend to become more productive as they grow, so long as they are not too large to function as a labor market. Density doesn’t matter particularly. Indeed, the general tendency is for cities to become more dispersed (less dense) as they grow, as indicated by longer term data in the US, Canada and around the world.

    For example, the Seattle and Houston urban areas have population densities much lower than those of Paris, London, Hong Kong and even Los Angeles – yet they still rank higher among the most productive metropolitan areas in the world, according to the Brookings Institution Global Metropolitan Monitor 2011. Brookings rates Hartford as the most productive metropolitan area in the world, yet its urban population density is nearly as low as Atlanta’s.

    Finally, the Brookings list excludes the world’s most dense major city, Dhaka. That’s because the economic output of its 15 million people is insufficient to make a list that includes cities one-tenth its size. Dhaka combines the highest population density in the world with perhaps the lowest per capita economic output of any megacity in the world.

    Allowing Organisms to Grow

    As West et al suggests, cities, like elephants, are organisms. Both expand (dare we say "sprawl") as they grow. This should be cause for concern, given planning dictates that would restrain urban organism, such as urban growth boundaries. These restraints are akin to depriving a large mammal of sufficient space to roam and feed. That’s no way to treat a productive organism, or a great city.

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    Reference Materials:
    Growth, innovation, scaling, and the pace of life in cities
    Urban Scaling and Its Deviations: Revealing the Structure of Wealth, Innovation and Crime across Cities
    2010 US Urban Area Data

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    African Bush Elephant photo by flickr user nickandmel2006.

    Wendell Cox is a Visiting Professor, Conservatoire National des Arts et Metiers, Paris and the author of “War on the Dream: How Anti-Sprawl Policy Threatens the Quality of Life.”

  • Predictable Punditry Down Under

    The New South Wales Government has been following an extreme version of currently fashionable planning doctrines based on higher population densities. These policies have resulted in exorbitant housing costs and increasing traffic congestion.  A Liberal/National Coalition Government has come into power in New South Wales, replacing the previous Labor Government. In its election platform it promised to change planning policies for the better. These include fewer additional dwellings to be forced into Sydney suburbs, more fringe land release, decentralisation and giving planning powers back to the community.

    The New South Wales Department of Planning bureaucracy is consequently ostensibly devising a new housing strategy.  As the main feature in a community discussion on this new strategy, the Department organised a presentation by Harvard Professor Edward Glaeser in Sydney entitled “Triumph of the City”, The promotional description read

    “recognised as the world’s leading urban economist, Harvard University’s Professor Edward Glaeser, along with four of NSW Government’s planning and infrastructure experts, will discuss fresh approaches to meeting Sydney’s biggest challenge now and into the future — planning for a population that is expected to increase from 4.2 million to more than 5.6 million by 2031”.

    Previous consultation exercises for planning strategies had proved to be tokenistic and mere public relations exercises.  Unfortunately this event proved to be no exception. It promoted the current high-density policies with no discussion of alternatives or fresh approaches.

    Professor Glaeser spoke about how cities evolved as engines of development and wealth creation. He portrayed cities facilitating people getting together, sharing ideas and building on previous innovations. He described how the advent of popular means of transport — from horse drawn transport to cars — allowed cities to spread and maintained that low density areas are associated with longer car journeys and larger homes that consume more energy. To facilitate the person to person contact he considers necessary to sustain innovation and to reduce energy consumption he advocated ever higher-densities closer to the city core.   

    He implied this is especially important so as to set an example to highly populated China and India in order to limit the otherwise huge escalation in energy usage in those countries.

    Throughout the proceedings the conference facilitator promoted the concept of high densities by such statements as “We need to re-examine the suburban model, living more like urban model” and “Go up, not out.  Can we do that? How do we do that?”
    The overwhelming impression given by the consultation proceedings was that high-density is the only possible strategy worth considering and that Glaeser’s USA perspective can be applied to New South Wales.

    Yet the argument that high density means more innovation seems flawed. In the United States of America the greatest innovative activity takes place not in crowded Manhattan but in regions of densities similar to that of Sydney, the urban area of which has 2100 persons per square kilometre (5,500 per square mile).  The San Jose urban area in Silicon Valley, with a similar population density, has a booming world-changing local technology industry including Cisco Systems and IBM. It also is almost totally dependent on automobiles, with only a small share of people taking transit.

    Companies operating in Hillsboro in the Portland urban area (population density of 1400 per square kilometre or 3600 per square mile) include Yahoo!, Credence Systems, Synopsys, Epson and Sun Microsystems.  Seattle, the home of Microsoft and the initiation of Boeing, has a population density of 1,200 per square kilometre, or 3,000 per square mile. The densities in these dynamic areas are equal to or less than that of Sydney and a far cry from the Manhattan or even Hong Kong type of density of 25,000 (67,000 per square mile) or more that Glaeser seems to prefer.

    Although high-density living may not be for everyone, apparently, particularly those with kids. Glaeser, like another prominent advocate of rapid densification, David Owen “copes” with living in suburbia.  I guess dense housing is for other families.

    The claim by Glaeser that high-density is superior environmentally also is not borne out in Australian studies.  A publication of his finds emissions in low-density suburbs in several United States cities to be higher than in high-density suburbs.  Australian data does not show this.

    A study of energy-related emissions at the final point of consumption finds per capita energy usage in a group of low density Sydney suburbs (96 GJ per annum) to be lower than in high-density suburbs (169 GJ).  One of several factors accounting for these differences is there are more people per household in the lower density areas. Glaeser models emissions on a “standard household” of 2.2 people; many, if not most suburban households, have more than that number, although city households frequently don’t.  One wonders whether possible differences in the number of people per dwelling in high-density and low-density areas can be adequately catered for in such models.

    For another thing, the Australian climate is very different and that is probably a significant reason for higher densities to be more energy intensive. If dwellings are too close they are more difficult to cool whereas it is easier to heat them.  Also, cooling technically needs more energy than heating as a much larger volume of air needs to be circulated (NOTE 1).

    Glaeser’s advocacy of high-density to reduce transport emissions needs special consideration.  In Australia such reduction, if any, is trivial.  Transport greenhouse gas emissions account for only a small proportion of household emissions and higher-densities reduce these to a minimal extent. (NOTE 2) 

    It is not only in Australia where evidence for significant environmental benefits from high-density planning is lacking.  As a result of studies testing the relative performance of spatial options in England, Echenique et al conclude: “The current planning policy strategies for land use and transport have virtually no impact on the major long-term increases in resource and energy consumption. They generally tend to increase costs and reduce economic competitiveness. The relatively small differences between options are over-whelmed by the impacts of socioeconomic change and population growth”.

    The Department of Planning-sponsored Glaeser presentation was not a genuine consultation. It promoted existing government policies with no attempt to consider their downside or to discuss alternatives.  It is extraordinary and downright arrogant to expect Sydney communities to change their preferred mode of life to live in tiny apartments perched in towers (see picture) in the unproven expectation that this will significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions. It is yet even more extraordinary to presume that such a transformation would influence policies in China and India in any significant way. The days when these great countries looked to the West for models has already passed; and look where many people from these countries settle when they get to the United States or to Australia: the suburbs. Classic cases include the San Gabriel Valley East of Los Angeles, the Santa Clara Valley communities of Silicon Valley, large swaths of northern New Jersey and to Sydney’s North Shore in Australia.

    The proceedings proved to be an attempt to promote a particular point of view, so perpetuating previous approaches of trying to manipulate opinion in the guise of consultation.

    It appears clear that in spite of a change of government there will be no change in planning policies.  The new government looks like having been captured by the bureaucracy and its cult of densification that has no more chance of changing its views than the College of Cardinals is likely to eschew the Papacy. 

    (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.

    Photo: Kowloon, Hong Kong

  • Public School Parent Trigger Laws: Something’s Gotta Give

    In the mid-1950s, the McGuire Sisters’ version of Johnny Mercer’s song about what happens when an irresistible force meets an immovable object made it to number five on the record charts. Their prediction, that “Something’s Gotta Give,” provides an apt description of the outcome of today’s battle between the parents of Millennials who want more say in their children’s education and the teacher unions and school district administrators who refuse to give up a smidgeon of control over the public schools they run.

    One of the hottest battle fronts in the war between these two forces has been debates over whether to adopt “Parent Trigger” laws, similar to those passed in California in 2010. Such legislation empowers the majority of parents in any school district deemed to be “failing,” according to the federal No Child Left Behind standards, to essentially reconstitute the school according to parents’ desires either by turning it into a charter school or removing and replacing all current teachers and administrators.

    Since 2010, Texas, Mississippi, and Louisiana have passed similar legislation and it is up for debate in major industrial states such as Michigan, Pennsylvania and New York. In Florida, the idea came within one vote of passage in the State Senate thanks to the enthusiastic support of former Florida Republican Governor, Jeb Bush. At the same time, such Democratic stalwarts as Barack Obama’s Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan, and liberal Congressman George Miller (D-CA) have expressed their strong support for the concept. Most recently, the bi-partisan U.S. Conference of Mayors unanimously passed a resolution in support of Parent Trigger laws.  Los Angeles Mayor, Antonio Villaraigosa, chairman of both the Mayor’s Conference and the upcoming Democratic National Convention, led the charge for the resolution’s passage, aided by strong support from Democratic Mayors such as Michael Nutter of Philadelphia and Kevin Johnson of Sacramento.

    None of this has softened the resistance from teacher unions, historically a bulkwark of Democratic support. Often led by unreconstructed Boomer liberals from the 1960s, they see the law’s emphasis on parental prerogatives as the ultimate threat to their control of the classroom and educational budgets. In the most recent battle, unions were able to pressure Change.org, a for profit, grass roots website “staffed by some of the most talented progressive organizers in the country,”  to bar StudentsFirst, an advocacy group run by Democrat Michelle Rhee, the former Washington D.C. School Superintendent, that supports giving parents more control over the schools their children attend, from using its website.

    And when the chief press person for Parent Revolution, the non-profit that is the primary driver behind the adoption of Parent Trigger laws, was announced as the new education media spokesperson by Obama’s re-election campaign, teachers’ unions threatened to withhold their support of the president.

    In the long run, the implacable objections of the unions to parents having more say over the type of education their own children will fail. They will prove no match for the irresistible force of generational change that is already sweeping away existing institutional power structures in schools across the country.

    One of the distinguishing characteristics of Millennials, born 1982-2003, is the intense interest their parents take in every aspect of their children’s lives. This desire to constantly hover over their offspring earned parents of older Millennials (those now in their twenties) the sobriquet, “helicopter parents.” The younger half of the Millennial Generation, which  accounts for most elementary and all secondary school students today is primarily parented by members of the more entrepreneurial Generation X (born 1965-1981). These parents replaced their Boomer predecessors’ tendency to hover and talk with a desire to take action and change bottom-line results.

    Millennials are the largest, most diverse generation in American history, and many of them are now starting to have children of their own. When those children begin arriving in the nation’s schools, Millennial Generation parents will bring the same dedication that their own parents exhibited to making sure each school serves their child’s interests first.  As a result, it won’t be long before the same rights California, Mississippi, Texas, and Louisiana parents now have are given to every parent in the country. As Ben Austin, the founder of the Parent Revolution points out, “the old coalitions don’t apply here; it’s a cause that unites parents from upper-middle-class and working-class backgrounds—white, black, and Latino alike.”            

    The type of generational change America will experience over the next few decades   will drive the transformation of America’s educational institutions and overwhelm those who attempt to keep parents from deciding what kind of school their kids go to. When push comes to shove, something’s gotta give. And, in the end, that means that those who stand for the status quo in our nation’s schools will have to give up their traditional prerogatives and let parents choose the educational experience they think is best for their own children.  

    Morley Winograd and Michael D. Hais are co-authors of the newly published Millennial Momentum: How a New Generation is Remaking America and Millennial Makeover: MySpace, YouTube, and the Future of American Politics and fellows of NDN and the New Policy Institute.

    School bus photo by BigStockPhoto.com.

  • The Evolving Urban Form: London

    The 2011 census results show that London (the Greater London Authority, which is Inner and Outer London) experienced its greatest percentage population growth in more than 100 years (1891 to 1901). London added nearly 1,000,000 new residents since 2001. That growth, however, is not an indication that "people are moving back to the city." On the contrary, National Statistics data indicates that London lost 740,000 domestic migrants between 2001 and 2011. The continuing core net domestic migration losses have been replicated in other major European metropolitan core areas, such as Milan, Vienna, Stockholm and Helsinki.

    Instead as typical in major European core municipalities, the vast majority of the growth in London has come from net international migration. London added 690,000 residents between 2001 and 2010. This pattern has become more prevalent since European Union enlargement, when Eastern Europeans began moving in much larger numbers to the United Kingdom and other richer areas of the old EU-15.
    London first became the world’s largest urban area in the first quarter of the 19th century, displacing Beijing. At that time, London was approaching 1.4 million residents, living in an urban area of approximately 15 square miles. Today, Inner London, the Outer London suburbs and two rings of exurbs spread 10,500 square miles (27,000 square miles), with a population of 20.3 million. Beijing, meanwhile, has grown so fast that it may once again surpass London in the next decade. However, other metropolitan regions are much larger, such as Tokyo and Jakarta.

    Meanwhile, the urban area (the continuous built up area), circumscribed for more than one-half century by the Greenbelt, appears to have a population of 9.5 million, which would place it 27th in population in the world.

    Over the past century, London has experienced substantial ups and downs in its population and still remains below its 1939 population, even with the large gain over the past decade. Over the same period, Inner London lost millions of its residents and only recently has begun to gain some back, largely due to net international migration gains. Outer London gained in the first half of the 20th century, plateaued and then also gained strongly in the last decade. The exurban areas virtually monopolized growth for most of the post-World War II period (Table) until recently.

    London Region: Population 1891-2011
    Year London Region London (Greater London Authority) Inner London (Historical Core) Outer London (Suburbs) Exurbs (Outside Greenbelt) 1st Exurban Ring (Historical Counties Adjacent to Green Belt) 2nd Exurban Ring
    1891 7,752,000 5,574,000 4,432,000 1,142,000 2,178,000 595,000 1,583,000
    1901 8,931,000 6,507,000 4,898,000 1,609,000 2,424,000 691,000 1,733,000
    1911 11,526,000 7,162,000 5,002,000 2,160,000 4,366,000 2,365,000 2,001,000
    1921 12,071,000 7,386,000 4,978,000 2,408,000 4,684,000 2,553,000 2,131,000
    1931 13,229,000 8,111,000 4,898,000 3,213,000 5,119,000 2,805,000 2,314,000
    1939 8,617,000 4,441,000 4,176,000
    1951 14,832,000 8,193,000 3,680,000 4,513,000 6,635,000 3,891,000 2,744,000
    1961 15,911,000 7,997,094 3,492,881 4,504,213 7,918,000 4,720,000 3,198,000
    1971 17,028,000 7,453,000 3,031,000 4,422,000 9,659,000 5,894,000 3,765,000
    1981 16,644,000 6,713,000 2,498,000 4,215,000 10,035,000 6,127,000 3,908,000
    1991 17,139,000 6,393,000 2,343,000 4,050,000 10,746,000 6,497,000 4,249,000
    2001 18,313,000 7,172,000 2,766,000 4,406,000 11,141,000 6,773,000 4,368,000
    2011 20,256,700 8,164,000 3,222,000 4,942,000 12,092,700 7,318,700 4,774,000
    Sources
    Census except 1939
    Greater London Authority, 1939

     

    The London Region

    The London region is composed of the Greater London Authority (GLA), which includes Inner London, the historical core municipality, covering approximately the same geographical area as the old London County Council from the 1890s to the 1960s and Outer London, the great suburban expanse consisting of detached and semi-detached housing.

    GLA is surrounded by the Greenbelt, established to contain the expansion of the urban area after World War II, and, at least at first, to decentralize London’s unhealthy and overcrowded conditions. Beyond the Greenbelt are the East of England and the Southeast, which are composed of a first exurban ring of historical county areas, adjacent to the Greenbelt, and a second ring of historical county areas in the East and Southeast, beyond the first ring. Virtually all new urban expansion in the London region was forced into the exurbs by the Greenbelt. As a result, all of the London region’s growth (6 million) since World War II has been outside the Greenbelt (Figure 1).

    Inner London

    Inner London has been a population growth miracle over the past two decades. The 2011 population was 3.2 million, up more than 450,000 from 2001 and nearly 900,000 since 1991. However, the 1991 figure of 2.3 million was more than one-half below the 5,000,000 peak reached in 1911. Even though historical core city losses are typical (where geography is held constant), Inner London’s loss was huge, at more double those sustained in Chicago (since 1950) and Paris (since 1921). The core of Inner London was developed as a walking city and expanded substantially with the coming of transit.  At approximately 26,000 residents per square mile (10,000 per square kilometer), Inner London is less than one-half the density of the ville de Paris and far less dense not only than Manhattan but even less dense than the New York City boroughs of Brooklyn and the Bronx.

    Yet despite the recent increases, inner London’s 2011 population is lower than counted in the 1861 census (yes, 1861) Even  with the population increase Inner London lost 390,000 domestic migrants (Figure 2) to other parts of Great Britain between 2001 and 2010 (the detailed 2011 data is not yet available at this level).

    Tower Hamlets, one of London’s 32 boroughs, is an example of this population roller-coaster. Tower Hamlets is located just to the east of the Tower Bridge in Inner London on the north bank of the Thames. It is home to substantial new development spurred by the rapid growth of the financial services industry both in the "square mile" ("city of London) and Canary Wharf. Tower Hamlets grew to 254,000 in 2011, a nearly 80 percent increase from the 142,000 registered in 1981, less than its 1801 population (Note: London Boroughs). But like Inner London, Tower Hamlets used to be much more populous, reaching a record for a London borough at 597,000 residents in 1901. It then lost more than 75 percent of its population over the next 80 years.  

    Outer London

    Outer London, which was combined into the Greater London Council in 1965 (and the Greater London Authority in 2000) also grew strongly, from 4.4 million to 4.9 million and is now at its peak population. Outer London’s population density is 10,000 per square mile (4,000 per square kilometer), approximately the same as the District of Columbia. Like Inner London, Outer London also lost domestic migrants, with a net 310,000 residents leaving for other parts of the United Kingdom (Figure 2).

    The Greenbelt

    Since World War II, the London urban area (principally composed of Inner and Outer London) has been surrounded by the Greenbelt on which development is not permitted. The Greenbelt ranges from 10 to 20 miles wide (25 to 50 kilometers) and covers more than three times the size of the Greater London Authority. The Greenbelt has been cited, along with related policies, with substantially raising house prices and contributing to London’s longer commutes than Paris, where there is no greenbelt.

    Exurban London

    Despite their more modest growth in the last decade, the exurbs have been effective in attracting net domestic migration. From 2001 to 2011, three was a net inflow of domestic migrants of 320,000 (Figure 2). Much of this appears to be people leaving London. During the last year, more than 50,000 residents of London moved to the exurbs. Net international migration to the exurbs had been fairly small earlier in the decade, but increased substantially in the later years. By 2009-2010, two thirds of the London region’s net international migration was to the exurbs, and only one-third to London.

    First Exurban Ring

    The first exurban ring includes the historical counties that border on the outside of the Greenbelt. These areas added approximately 550,000 residents between 2001 and 2011 and reached a new population peak, at 7.3 million.

    Second Exurban Ring

    The second exurban ring includes the counties of the East of England and the Southeast that are outside the first ring. These areas added more than 400,000 new residents, and reached a new peak population of 4.8 million.

    London and England

    In contrast to the 1991-2001 decade, the 2001-2011 decade indicated a significant slowdown in the share of England’s population growth in the London region. In the previous decade, all of England’s growth occurred in the greater London region. In the last decade, 50 percent of England’s growth took place around the capital. Overall, the core of London (Inner London) population has steadily fallen relative to the rest of England England’s while the suburbs and exurbs have grown to include one-third of England’s residents (Figure 3). So as Japan is moving to Tokyo, England is still moving to London, but not nearly so fast.

    Wendell Cox is a Visiting Professor, Conservatoire National des Arts et Metiers, Paris and the author of “War on the Dream: How Anti-Sprawl Policy Threatens the Quality of Life.”

    —-

    Note: London Boroughs: The 32 boroughs of London were defined after the creation of the Greater London Council in 1965 (which was abolished in 1986). The Greater London Authority provides data to show the historical population figures for the boroughs, going back to the initial census (1801). The new Greater London Authority was established in 2000, with less power than the previous Greater London Council. The 32 boroughs continue to operate, providing local public services.

    Photograph: London Suburbs (Outer London) by author

  • Housing Affordability Protests Occurring in “Livable” Hong Kong, Not “Sprawling” Atlanta

    The Economist has published another in its city rating series, under the headline "The Best city in the World." This one was the result of a contest examining ways to elaborate on its rating system. The winner, Filippo Lovato, added a spatial dimension to the ratings, which included a 5 point rating of "sprawl," a pejorative term for the natural expansion of cities (which in this article means urban areas, areas of continuous urban development). Much of the urban planning literature is pre-occupied with combating urban sprawl, though urban expansion continues virtually everywhere around the world, as cities add population and become more affluent.

    Livability for Whom?

    As Jon Copestake, the Editor of the Economist Intelligence Unit’s Cost of Living and Livability surveys and I discussed in front of a Property Institute of Western Australia meeting, The Economist livability ratings are not aimed at average resident households, but rather at an international audience, such as corporate executives and corporate relocation services. This distinction can be important.

    Hong Kong was top ranked for livability in the new Economist list. Doubtless this is accurate for well paid executives posted temporarily, who are granted substantial housing allowances by their employers and who can live in luxury condominiums within a short walk or taxi ride to their jobs in Central (the core of the Hong Kong central business district).

    For local residents, livability is measured differently than for jet-setters or corporate executives.

    Hong Kong: Smart Growth Model

    With the developed world’s highest urban area density and lowest automobile market share, Hong Kong beguiles anti-sprawl "smart growth" crusaders, for whom these two characteristics are the "two great commandments."

    The entire  Hong Kong urban form (urban area) is as dense as Manhattan at 67,000 per square mile (25,900 per square kilometer), but is more than twelve times the density of the New York urban area: the city and its “sprawling” surrounding suburbs (5,300 per square or 2,100 per square kilometer). Similarly, Hong Kong is somewhat more dense than the ville de Paris, but seven times the density of the Paris urban area (9,800 per square mile or 3,800 per square kilometer). This hyper-density combined with one of the world’s strongest central business districts give Hong Kong a nearly 80% mass transit share of motorized travel, nearly 10 times that of the New York urban area and more than three times that of the Paris urban area (Figure 1).

    "Livable" Hong Kong?

    To its permanent and unsubsidized residents, though, Hong Kong’s spatial Nirvana does not provide much in terms of livability.

    Excessively Long Commutes Hong Kong’s high density indicates that jobs and houses are relatively close to one another, which should indicate that commute times would be short. Not so. Commutes are among the longest in the developed world – only Tokyo residents take more time to get to work. (Figure 2)

    The average one way commute is 46 minutes in Hong Kong, well above the developed world average of 33 minutes for urban areas over 5,000,000 population. By comparison, commuters in similarly sized Dallas-Fort Worth (26 minutes) and "gridlocked" Los Angeles (27 minutes) get to work much faster. Commuting also takes longer in Hong Kong than in Paris (34 minutes) and London (37 minutes).  Lengthy commutes impose an economic price and make Hong Kong less livable.

    Exorbitant House Prices: Hong Kong’s housing, the largest household budget item, is profoundly unaffordable. The 8th Annual Demographia International Housing Affordability Survey rates Hong Kong as the most costly out of 325 metropolitan areas. The median house price in Hong Kong’s is 12.6 times the median annual gross household income (the "median multiple"), which leaves little more than a pittance in discretionary income for many households. Perhaps this is why Hong Kong’s fertility rate has fallen to rock bottom levels near the lowest on the planet – people cannot afford kids.

    Even during the housing bubble, coastal California never became so unaffordable. Hong Kong housing is nearly twice as costly as San Francisco (6.7 median multiple) and more than four times as costly as Dallas-Fort Worth (2.9), Houston (2.9) or Atlanta (Figure 3).

    Concern about housing affordability has become so intense that it is an issue in public protests, which The Economist reports to have drawn up to 400,000 people earlier this month (link to photo). Exorbitant house prices make Hong Kong less livable.

    "Sprawling" Atlanta

    Things are much different in "sprawling" Atlanta, which The Economist’s spatial list ranks as the worst among the US entries. Atlanta is at the opposite end of the density spectrum from Hong Kong, with the lowest urban population density of any major developed world urban area.

    Short Commutes: Atlanta’s low density would suggest that jobs and houses must be so far apart that commute times are very long. Again, not so. Atlanta commuters have among the shortest travel times (29 minutes) in the world among urban areas of similar size (see Note: Jobs-Housing Balance). Shorter travel times make Atlanta more livable (Figure 4).

    Other similarly sized US urban areas do even better, such as Dallas-Fort Worth (26 minutes) and Atlanta’s leaders know that traffic congestion need to be eased to improve Atlanta’s competitiveness. But the political process politics has offered a dysfunctional plan that would spend more than half of a new tax on mass transit, which is used by only the one percent. Less than one half of the money would be spent on the roads that the 99 percent use (Figure 5). Any strong growth will overwhelm the stingy highway improvements, and if the voters approve the July 31 referendum, Atlanta’s travel time advantage over Hong Kong could narrow.

    Affordable House Prices: Despite being the bane of planning orthodoxy, Atlanta’s has far better housing affordability than Hong Kong. The median multiple is 1.9, compared to Hong Kong’s 12.6. Hong Kongers pay six times as much of their income for their houses (which are also two-thirds smaller than in Atlanta). So far, there have been no protests against Atlanta’s low house prices. Better housing affordability makes Atlanta area more livable.  

    The Hong Kong Model

    Hong Kong’s high density (more than double that of any other large developed world urban area) is an accident of history, the result of geo-politics, not urban planning. Further, China’s impressive new cities are being built at a small fraction of Hong Kong densities. Yet, Hong Kong has given much to the world. Not least is the fact that its market oriented economy served as the model for economic reform which has radically improved livability for hundreds of millions of people in China.

    Further, Hong Kong is attractive as one of the world’s premier tourist destinations. For aficionados of cities, like me, Hong Kong is intensely interesting. It is the ultimate in urbanization. It is a wonderful place to visit and to live – if someone else is paying the bills.

    However, the interplay between Hong Kong’s hyper-dense urban form and its transportation system burdens Hong Kong residents dearly, both in time and money. For them, Hong Kong is hardly a model of livability.

    ——————-

    Note: Commuting in Dallas-Fort Worth: Larger Dallas-Fort Worth has faster average work trip travel times than Atlanta, at 26 minutes, which are principally are aided by its much superior freeway (motorway) systems and arterial street (non-freeway boulevard) systems. Transit carries about one-half the share (0.6%) of travel in Dallas-Fort Worth as in Atlanta.

    Note: Jobs-Housing Balance: One of urban planning’s principal goals is to achieve a jobs-housing balance, wherein jobs and housing are so close that people can walk to work or use transit, minimizing travel times and distances. Hong Kong is best in this, with its small urban footprint. Yet, despite having achieved the ultimate, it takes Hong Kongers much longer to get to work than Atlantans. The comparison of Hong Kong and Atlanta shows this theoretical measure to be of little importance. A better indicator of the jobs-housing balance is practical – how long it takes to get to work.

    Note: Travel Times by Car and Transit: Mass transit has substantially longer average work trip travel times than cars in nearly all of the world metropolitan areas for which data is available. In Atlanta, the average work trip by car (single-occupancy) was 29 minutes in 2007, compared to 54 minutes for mass transit.

    ———-

    Wendell Cox is a Visiting Professor, Conservatoire National des Arts et Metiers, Paris and the author of “War on the Dream: How Anti-Sprawl Policy Threatens the Quality of Life.”

    Photograph: Kowloon, Hong Kong (by author)

  • Core City Growth Mainly Below Poverty Line

    Over the toughest economic decade since Great Depression, the nation’s core cities continued to gain more than their share the below poverty line population in the 51 metropolitan areas with more than 1,000,000 population. Between 2000 and 2010, core cities (Note 1) attracted approximately 10 percent of the increase in population (Note 2) while adding 25 percent of the increase in people under the poverty line (Figure 1).

    Most New Core City Residents in Poverty: The core city poverty trend was overwhelming. In the core cities of the 51 metropolitan areas with more than 1,000,000 population (2010), 81 percent of the aggregate population increase was under the poverty line. This compares to the 32 percent of the suburban population increase that was below the poverty line. This may be a much lower figure than the concentration in the core cities, but even that also is far too high (Figure 2).

    The trend in core city poverty concentration was also pervasive. In 39 of the 51 metropolitan areas, core cities accounted for a greater share of poverty level population growth than overall population growth. One of the exceptions was Louisville, where the core city expanded to nearly six times its 2000 land area and more than doubled its population (Note 3). The result was to convert Louisville into a largely suburban city, which masks the high poverty rate in genuine urban core of the former city.

    Poverty in the Suburbs: At the same time, as core city population growth has stalled, much of the numeric increase in the below poverty line population has been in the suburbs. In 2010, the Brookings Institution reported that a majority of the metropolitan population below poverty was in the suburbs (Note 3). This is to be expected, since suburban areas account for nearly 75 percent of major metropolitan area population.

    Partially in response to the Brookings Institution finding, there has been some misinterpretation as to the relative economic fortunes of the core cities and the suburbs. This is consistent with the continuing "drumbeat" of the "return to the cities," which results of the last definitive ten year census only briefly quieted. The "great inversion" cited by Aaron Ehrenhalt and others, wherein the affluent "flock" (the recurring term) to the cities, as the suburbs are ghettoized, remains far from an actual reality.  

    Overall the average major metropolitan area poverty rate rose from 10.9 percent in 2000 to 14.1 percent in 2010. Rather than gentrify, the core city rate rose from 19.2 percent to 23.3 percent, while the suburban rate rose from 8.2 percent to 11.3 percent (Figure 3).

    Core City Poverty Rates Double the Suburbs: In 2010, core city poverty rates were higher in every major metropolitan area than in the suburbs. Overall, average core city poverty rates were more than double that of the suburbs in most metropolitan areas (27 of 51). Among the 10 largest metropolitan areas, the core cities of New York, Chicago, Houston, Philadelphia, Miami, Washington and Boston (Figure 4) suffered poverty rates more than double  those of their suburbs. The cities of Milwaukee and Hartford had the highest poverty rates relative to their suburbs, at four or more times.

    Shares of Poverty Level Population in the Core Cities: On average, 41 percent of metropolitan area populations living below the poverty rate resided in the core cities. The city of San Antonio had the highest share of its metropolitan below poverty population, at 73 percent, followed closely by the city of Milwaukee, at 72 percent. New York City accounted for 63 percent of its metropolitan below poverty line population and the city of San Jose 61 percent. Even after incorporating suburbs, the city of Louisville contained 57 percent of its metropolitan below poverty level population (Figure 5).

    Highlights of the 2010 Data: The 2010 poverty rates for metropolitan areas, core cities and suburbs are shown in the table below. Highlights of the data are described below:

    Metropolitan Areas: The highest metropolitan area poverty rates were in Memphis (19.1 percent), New Orleans (17.4 percent) and Riverside-San Bernardino (17.1 percent). The lowest metropolitan area poverty rates were in Washington (8.4 percent), Hartford (10.1 percent) and Boston (10.3 percent).

    Core Cities: The city of Detroit had the highest poverty rate, at 37.6 percent, The city of San Bernardino, whose city council voted to file for bankrupcty on July 10, had the second highest poverty rate at 34.6 percent, and Cleveland ranked third highest, at 34.0 percent.  The lowest core city poverty rates were in high-tech centers, the city of San Jose (12.6 percent), the city of Seattle (14.7 percent and in the two core cities of San Francisco-Oakland (15.7 percent). Despite the strong metropolitan area showing (#1) and high suburban ranking (#3), the city of Washington had only the 15th lowest poverty rate among core cities.

    Suburbs: The highest suburban poverty rates were in Riverside-San Bernardino (16.2 percent), Miami (15.9 percent) and Oklahoma City (15.2 percent). The lowest suburban poverty rates were in Baltimore (6.7 percent), Milwaukee (6.9 percent) and Washington (7.1 percent), with Baltimore and Washington profiting from strong federal government employment and contracting.

    The data reflects the continuation of longer term trends as wealth losses continue to afflict many core cities and as domestic migrants continue to move away (As was previously reported core counties, the lowest level at which there is migration data, have predominantly lost domestic migrants, both between 2000 and 2009 and in the latest estimates, between 2010 and 2011.) The problem, however is much larger. Both the core cities and the suburbs are are challenged by heightened poverty rates. The entire urban form, from the exurbs and the suburbs to the core cities   need  a substantial reduction in poverty, although  present economic trends are working against this   result.

    2010 Poverty Rates: Major Metropolitan Areas, Core Cities & Suburbs
    Poverty Rates
    Metropolitan Area (MSA) Historical Core City (HCM) MSA City Suburbs City/  Suburbs
    Atlanta, GA Atlanta 14.8% 26.1% 13.9% 1.88
    Austin, TX Austin 15.9% 20.8% 11.7% 1.78
    Baltimore, MD Baltimore 11.0% 25.6% 6.7% 3.80
    Birmingham, AL Birmingham 17.0% 29.5% 14.2% 2.08
    Boston, MA-NH Boston 10.3% 23.3% 8.3% 2.80
    Buffalo, NY Buffalo 14.4% 30.2% 9.7% 3.13
    Charlotte, NC-SC Charlotte 14.5% 17.2% 12.6% 1.36
    Chicago, IL-IN-WI Chicago 13.6% 22.5% 10.0% 2.24
    Cincinnati, OH-KY-IN Cincinnati 14.0% 30.6% 11.4% 2.69
    Cleveland, OH Cleveland 15.1% 34.0% 10.7% 3.19
    Columbus, OH Columbus 15.7% 22.6% 10.5% 2.16
    Dallas-Fort Worth, TX Dallas 14.6% 23.6% 12.5% 1.88
    Denver, CO Denver 12.5% 21.6% 9.7% 2.21
    Detroit,  MI Detroit 16.6% 37.6% 12.4% 3.02
    Hartford, CT Hartford 10.1% 31.2% 7.8% 3.99
    Houston, TX Houston 16.5% 22.8% 13.1% 1.74
    Indianapolis. IN Indianapolis 14.8% 21.1% 9.1% 2.31
    Jacksonville, FL Jacksonville 15.3% 16.7% 13.1% 1.28
    Kansas City, MO-KS Kansas City 12.4% 20.4% 10.0% 2.05
    Las Vegas, NV Las Vegas 15.1% 16.0% 14.7% 1.09
    Los Angeles, CA Los Angeles 16.3% 21.6% 14.0% 1.54
    Louisville, KY-IN Louisville 15.3% 18.9% 12.2% 1.55
    Memphis, TN-MS-AR Memphis 19.1% 26.5% 12.0% 2.20
    Miami, FL Miami 17.1% 32.4% 15.9% 2.04
    Milwaukee,WI Milwaukee 15.5% 29.5% 6.9% 4.30
    Minneapolis-St. Paul, MN-WI Minneapolis & St. Paul 10.9% 23.7% 7.6% 3.10
    Nashville, TN Nashville 15.4% 20.8% 12.2% 1.71
    New Orleans. LA New Orleans 17.4% 27.2% 13.4% 2.02
    New York, NY-NJ-PA New York 13.8% 20.1% 9.0% 2.24
    Oklahoma City, OK Oklahoma City 15.9% 16.8% 15.2% 1.11
    Orlando, FL Orlando 14.7% 18.5% 14.2% 1.30
    Philadelphia, PA-NJ-DE-MD Philadelphia 12.7% 26.7% 7.9% 3.36
    Phoenix, AZ Phoenix 16.3% 22.5% 13.0% 1.73
    Pittsburgh, PA Pittsburgh 12.2% 22.3% 10.7% 2.08
    Portland, OR-WA Portland 13.4% 18.5% 11.7% 1.59
    Providence, RI-MA Providence 13.7% 30.5% 11.7% 2.60
    Raleigh, NC Raleigh 12.9% 18.4% 10.0% 1.84
    Richmond, VA Richmond 11.6% 25.8% 8.9% 2.91
    Riverside-San Bernardino, CA San Bernardino 17.1% 34.6% 16.2% 2.13
    Rochester, NY Rochester 14.2% 33.8% 9.3% 3.62
    Sacramento, CA Sacramento 15.1% 21.5% 13.3% 1.62
    St. Louis,, MO-IL St. Louis 13.3% 27.8% 11.5% 2.42
    Salt Lake City, UT Salt Lake City 13.1% 22.3% 11.3% 1.98
    San Antonio, TX San Antonio 16.3% 19.1% 11.7% 1.64
    San Diego, CA San Diego 14.8% 17.4% 13.0% 1.34
    San Francisco-Oakland, CA San Francisco & Oakland 10.9% 15.7% 9.0% 1.74
    San Jose, CA San Jose 10.6% 12.6% 8.4% 1.49
    Seattle, WA Seattle 11.7% 14.7% 11.1% 1.33
    Tampa-St. Petersburg, FL Tampa 15.4% 21.3% 14.6% 1.46
    Virginia Beach-Norfolk, VA-NC Norfolk 10.6% 16.4% 9.7% 1.69
    Washington, DC-VA-MD-WV Washington 8.4% 19.2% 7.1% 2.69
    Average (Unweighted) 14.1% 23.3% 11.3% 2.18
    Data from American Community Survey, 2010

     

    Wendell Cox is a Visiting Professor, Conservatoire National des Arts et Metiers, Paris and the author of “War on the Dream: How Anti-Sprawl Policy Threatens the Quality of Life.”

    Photograph: Downtown Detroit (by author)

    ———————-

    Note 1: "Historical core municipalities," which are defined here. One such city is designated in each metropolitan area, except in Minneapolis-St. Paul and San Francisco-Oakland. In each of the metropolitan areas, these are the core cities of the metropolitan area at the beginning of the great automobile-oriented suburban expansion. These cities represent at least the urban core. However, in most cases, these cities  include considerable post-war suburban development is not genuinely urban core, largely due to post-1950 annexations.

    Note 2: The data in this analysis is extracted from the American Community Survey for 2010 and the United States Census of 2000. The metropolitan areas for both years are as geographically defined in 2010. The total population figures are the population for which poverty status has was determined by the Bureau of the Census (in each year this was approximately 98 percent of the total population).

    Note 3: The city of Louisville reached its population peak of 390,000 in 1960. Its highest density was nearly 9,300 per square mile (3,600 per square kilometer) in 1950, when it had a population of 370,000 in 40 square miles (100 square kilometers). The suburban incorporating consolidation of 2000 left the city with under 600,000 population in 340 square miles and a population density of 1,700 per square mile (700 per square kilometer), one of the lowest core city population densities in the nation.

    Note 4: The Brookings Institution report compared its "primary cities" to suburbs for 95 metropolitan areas. The primary cities included some that were little more than small towns at the beginning of the great automobile oriented suburban expansion, such as Aurora (Denver), Mesa (Phoenix), Santa Ana (Los Angeles), Fremont (San Francisco-Oakland) and Arlington (Dallas-Fort Worth), which is not served by mass transit. Each of these municipalities is classified as suburban in this analysis.

  • Core Cities Growing: Available Data Indicates Domestic Migration Losses

     

    Redaction Notice: September 17, 2012

    Part of this article from June 28, 2012 has been redacted because of difficulties with the US Census Bureau’s 2011 sub-county population estimates. In fact, these were not genuine population estimates at all, but were largely "fair share" allocations of county population change rates based upon the share of population in each jurisdiction. This issue is further described at was revealed on newgeography.com by Chris Briem and our new URL.

    However, the fact remains that domestic migration trends continue to be from historical core cities to the suburbs, as the unredacted data below indicates.

     

    Just released United States Bureau of the Census estimates indicate that the urban cores of major metropolitan areas (over 1,000,000) grew slightly faster than their suburbs between July 2010 and July 2011. Overall, the historical core municipalities grew 1.03 percent, compared to the suburban growth of 0.93 percent. Among the 51 metropolitan areas, 26 urban cores grew at a faster percentage rate than their suburbs (Note 1). However, suburban areas continued to add many more people. Over suburban areas grew 1,150,000, compared to 462,000 for the urban cores, indicating that approximately 75 percent of new residents were in the suburbs. Suburban areas had greater population growth in 43 of the 51 metropolitan areas (Table 1).

    Table 1
    DELETED

     

    As was noted in Still Moving to the Suburbs and Exurbs, the core counties of US metropolitan areas, which contain the greatest portion of the historical core municipalities (Note 2) also grew faster than suburban counties between 2010 and 2011. However, that is not an indication of an exodus from the suburbs to urban cores.
    Migration Continues from Cores (County Data)
    There was net domestic migration (people moving between counties of the United States) of minus 67,000 in the core counties, while a net 121,000 domestic migrants moved into suburban areas between 2010 and 2011. The stronger core growth was driven by stronger international migration and a larger natural growth rate (births minus deaths).
    Limited City Data Confirms the Trend
    Migration data is not reported below the county level. As a result, historical core municipality migration data is not available, except where cities and counties are combined. A review of such cases confirms the finding from Still Moving to the Suburbs and Exurbs(Table 2). Among the 12 combined city/counties, there was a net domestic migration loss of 49,000 in the historical core municipalities, while there was a much smaller net domestic migration loss of 1,000 in the corresponding suburban areas.

    Note: Table 2 is retained since the Census Bureau produced genuine population estimates for counties. Table 2 includes only municipalities that are coterminous with counties, and thus were not subject to the "fair share" population growth allocation method inappropriately applied at the sub-county level.

     

    Table 2
    Historical Core Municipality Domestic Migration 2010-2011
    (Where Cities and Counties are Combined)
      Central City/County Suburban Counties
    PRE-1950 CITY/COUNTIES (55,441) (21,306)
    Baltmore (3,638) 2,297
    Denver 8,281 11,284
    New York (56,982) (41,993)
    Philadelphia (5,466) (7,667)
    San Francisco 416 5,464
    St. Louis (4,959) (5,301)
    Washington 6,907 14,610
     
    POST-1950 CITY/COUNTIES (4,119) 20,179
    Indianapolis (3,401) 5,341
    Jacksonville (1,485) 4,396
    Louisville 18 1,868
    Nashville 749 8,574
     
    NOT CLASSIFIED (Due to Hurricane Katrina)
    New Orleans 10,243 (90)
     
    TOTAL (49,317) (1,217)

     

    • Among the seven combined city/counties formed before 1950 (excluding New Orleans), the historical core municipalities had a net domestic migration loss of 55,000, while the suburban areas had a smaller net domestic loss of 21,000. In four cases, the historical core municipalities had domestic migration losses. In the three cases in which cities had domestic migration gains, there were also domestic migration gains in the suburbs. In this group, New York had a domestic migration loss of 57,000 despite having an overall population gain of 55,000 (the gain resulting from international migration and natural growth)
    • Among the four combined city/counties formed after 1950, the historical core municipalities had a net domestic migration loss of 4,000, while the suburban areas had a net domestic migration gain of 20,000. In two cases, the historical core municipalities had domestic migration losses. In the two cases in which cities had domestic migration gains, there were also domestic migration gains in the suburbs.
    • New Orleans is a special case, by virtue of the fact that it is "still rebounding from the effects of Hurricane Katrina," according to the Bureau of the Census and remains 20 percent below its 2005 population. New Orleans is the only case that meets the requirement of historical core net domestic migration gain and suburban net domestic migration loss to demonstrate the likelihood of movement from the suburbs to the city. The historical core municipality had a net gain of 10,000 domestic migrants, while the suburbs lost 90, which could indicate that a very small number of people moved to the city from the suburbs (Note 3).

    Moreover, the county data indicates that in 25 of the 49 metropolitan areas with suburban counties, core counties lost domestic migrants between 2010 and 2011.

    The Effect of "Staying Put"

    As with the previously released county population estimates, the city data that is available indicates that Americans are staying put in the difficult economy. Domestic migration has fallen substantially. Over the past year, 590,000 people moved between the nation’s counties. This domestic migration compares to an annual average of 1,080,000 between the 2000 and 2009 (Figure 1). This reduction in domestic migration has made international migration and natural growth more prevalent, and as a result, core growth has been stronger.

     

    Note 1: An article in this morning’s Wall Street Journal contains information different from this article. The Wall Street Journal article classifies some cities as urban core that this article defines as suburbs (such as Fort Lauderdale [Miami], Aurora [Denver] and Arden-Arcade [Sacramento]). This article defines urban cores as historical core municipalities.

    Note 2: All historical core municipalities are principally in one county, except for New York (city), which is five counties.

    Note 3: The Bureau of the Census domestic migration data is limited to a net number for each county, so it is not possible to determine where people are moving to or moving from.

  • Questioning the Messianic Conception of Smart Growth

    A new analysis from the United Kingdom concludes that smart growth (compact city) policies are not inherently preferable to other urban land use policy regimes, despite the claims of proponents."The current planning policy strategies for land use and transport have virtually no impact on the major long-term increases in resource and energy consumption. They generally tend to increase costs and reduce economic competitiveness." The article goes on: "Claims that compaction will make cities more sustainable have been debated for some time, but they lack conclusive supporting evidence as to the environmental and, particularly, economic and social effects."

    These would not be surprising findings to Newgeography.com readers, who are accustomed to similar analyses rooted in economic, demographic, and environmental data. However, this article appeared in the Spring 2012 issue of the Journal of the American Planning Association, under the title, "Growing Cities Sustainably: Does Urban Form Really Matter?"

    Moreover, the authors are urban planning insiders, including Marcial H. Echenique, a land use and transport professor at Cambridge University, Anthony J. Hargreaves from the Martin Centre for Architectural Studies at Cambridge, Gordon Mitchell from the Faculty of the Environment at the University of Leeds and Anil Namdea of the School of Engineering at the University of Newcastle.

    Smart Growth Criticisms

    Many of the British critiques parallel those made by critics of smart growth for years. They focus particularly on the concern that smart growth generally has neglected economic and social costs. For example, smart growth policies lead to higher house prices by rationing land (such as with urban growth boundaries). Higher house prices lead to less discretionary income for households, so that there is less money for other goods and services, lowering employment levels. The resulting densification leads to more intense traffic congestion, with resulting economic losses and more intense air pollution, which is less healthful.

    The Research

    The authors modeled land use and travel behavior in three areas of England, subjecting them to three land use alternatives: compact development (smart growth), planned development (which I would label "smart growth light") and dispersal, the generally liberal approach common in United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand for decades after World War II (and still in many US and some Canadian markets).

    Echenique et al analyzed the London metropolitan region (Greater London Authority, Southeast England and East England), which has a population of 20 million and the Newcastle (Tyne and Wear) metropolitan region, which has a population of 1,000,000. They also analyzed a sub-region within London metropolitan region, Cambridge, with a population of 500,000.

    Their model projected little difference in outcomes between the three land use regulatory regimes to 2031. Predictably, land consumption was less under the compact development, but the variation in land consumed varied no more than plus or minus one percent from the trend (base case) in the London area, where only 11 percent of the land is in urban or transport use. Other factors, such as the change in transport energy use, greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from transport and residences and air pollution varied little between the three regulatory regimes.

    Economic costs in 2031 were projected to be the lowest (best) for the dispersed option and the highest for the compact development option, both in the London and Newcastle metropolitan regions. Planned development ranked second.

    The compact development option scored best in the Cambridge sub-region, while the planned development option was the highest cost. The dispersed option ranked second. The researchers attributed the better result for compact development in the Cambridge area to its uniqueness as a low-density, centrally oriented, high-tech, university community and further noted that densification could "reduce its attractiveness over the longer term."

    Smart Growth Claims: Setting the Record Straight

    Based upon their research and review of the literature, the authors proceed to undermine some of smart growth’s most sacred foundations.

    Smart Growth Claim: Smart growth has little or no impact on house prices:

    Echenique et al: "…restrictions on the supply of development land have led to property price increases, penalizing city dwellers by leading to less dwelling space…”

    Smart Growth Claim: Smart growth increases housing choice:

    Echenique et al: "One downside of this policy is a substantial reduction in choice of dwelling types, with new dwellings being mainly apartments."

    Smart Growth Claim: Smart growth does not increase traffic congestion:

    Echenique et al: The authors cite research indicating that high average density is the main cause of highway congestion in Los Angeles. They also cite Reid Ewing (University of Utah) and Robert Cervero (University of California) who reviewed studies of household travel behavior finding that a doubling of density would lead to only a 5 percent reduction per person, or an increase of 90 percent in travel (Note 1). The authors add: "The obvious conclusion is that an increase in density will increase traffic congestion."

    Smart Growth Claim: Smart growth reduces air pollution:

    Echenique et al: "It can also increase the overall respiratory disease burden as exposure to traffic emissions is increased.

    Smart Growth Claim: "Empty nesters" (aging households with no offspring at home) will seek smaller houses in the urban core: 

    Echenique et al: "There is, however, no substantial evidence that older couples leave their spacious houses and gardens…"

    Smart Growth Claim: Smart growth improves the jobs-housing balance.

    Echenique et al: "One of the main arguments for the dispersed city is that there is no longer a single center where most jobs and services occur. Urban areas, rather, exhibit a dispersed and often polycentric structure, bringing jobs and services closer to residents with a more complex movement pattern not readily served by public transport.

    The authors suggest the following "takeaway:"

    "Urban form policies can have important impacts on local environmental quality, economy, crowding, and social equity, but their influence on energy consumption and land use is very modest; compact development should not automatically be associated with the preferred spatial growth strategy."

    Thus, the Echenique et research contradicts the thesis that compact development or smart growth should replace (make illegal) other regulatory regimes, including the more liberal dispersed pattern.

    "Smart growth principles should not unquestioningly promote increasing levels of compaction on the basis of reducing energy consumption without also considering its potential negative consequences. In many cases, the potential socioeconomic consequences of less housing choice, crowding, and congestion may outweigh its very modest CO2 reduction benefits."

    The British research is an important step toward focusing urban policies on objectives, rather than means. Cities are economic organisms. They have increased their share of the population 10 fold in just two centuries and been pivotal to unprecedented economic growth and affluence. People moved to the cities for economic opportunity, not to sample particular urban forms. Cities best serve their principal purpose and their residents best when they encourage economic growth. The fundamental objective is to maximize the discretionary income of residents, and this can be done while reasonable environmental standards are maintained. Yet, as Echenique et al and others have shown, smart growth tends to retard economic growth. In an age of teetering national economies, failing pension funds and the most uncertain fiscal environment in at least 80 years, the world needs cities to be unleashed for the economic growth. Urban policies that ignore economics need to be replaced with wholistic approaches strongly focused on the key reason that cities exist: to enrich their citizens.

    Wendell Cox is a Visiting Professor, Conservatoire National des Arts et Metiers, Paris and the author of “War on the Dream: How Anti-Sprawl Policy Threatens the Quality of Life.”

    ——

    Photo: Letchworth Garden City, London metropolitan region (by author).

    Note 1: Calculation: According to the research, doubling the density of an area reduces vehicle travel per capita by 5 percent. With 200 percent of the previous population (double the density), vehicle travel would be increased 90 percent (200% [x] 95% [=] 190%).