New Geography

Category: Urban Issues

  • Live by the Specialty, Die by the Specialty

    By Richard Reep

    Regions have a bad habit of getting into ruts. This is true of any place that focuses exclusively on one industry – with the possible exception of the federal government, which keeps expanding no matter what. This reality is most evident in places like Detroit, but it also applies to one like Orlando, whose tourist-based economy has been held up as a post-industrial model.

    This has not been helped by recent diktats from DC Central Control. As reported in the Wall Street Journal, the Ephemeral City, among others, has now been branded a Sybaris. Private interests continue to book conferences in Central Florida due to its good value, but the closed circle of federal government has prudishly proscribed the family leisure capital of the world in favor of destinations like Chicago. Central Florida’s chagrined congressional delegation, caught in reaction mode, will fight to remove this ban, but the damage has been done. A cold new era has firmly settled into the Sunshine State’s former playground.

    Since welcoming Walt Disney with open arms in 1964, Orlando proudly built its reputation as a family leisure destination. With over 116,000 hotel rooms, Orlando competes with Las Vegas in both the national and global tourism market. Indeed, Europeans, Middle Easterners, Asians, and Latin Americans make Orlando their playground, and if physical evidence is needed, the exquisitely messy honky-tonk of North International Drive testifies to this reality.

    Many couldn’t fault this strategy – at least until until now. Orlando’s mania for tourism, supported by local, regional and state policies, yielded growth beyond the wildest dreams of this once-sleepy agricultural town at a railroad crossing among orange groves and cattle ranches.

    But in the current economy, leisure can be seen as a waste of time and money. “I think Orlando got put on the list of not to go because of the perception that it is a resort and vacation area,” read a July email from a Department of Agriculture employee to an Orlando conference planner. Business in Central Florida has slowed to a trickle, anxiety is increasing and doors are closing. It seems that Orlando’s tourism bubble has popped with visitorship dropping from a high of nearly 50 million in 2005, to a projected high barely above 43 million in 2009, and while civic leaders are huffing and puffing to blow it back up again, Central Florida’s leisure industry is a shadow of its former boisterous self.

    Corporate trainers, state and local government conferences, not-for-profits, trade associations, and incentive groups still find Central Florida a decent place to hold meetings. Airfare is cheap, the vast quantity of hotel rooms makes for competitive rates. The renewed emphasis on bringing the family along makes Orlando a natural fit for many groups seeking a destination, especially in the winter. They may book rooms in more affordable Osceola County rather than pricey Orange County, but are still a few minutes’ drive from Disney’s front door, the beach, and dozens and dozens of food and shopping outlets. Some hotel owners are even contemplating new meeting rooms to keep up with shifting demand.

    The new mood in Washington, however, does not favor Orlando as a destination. Central Florida may be a good value, but this is irrelevant to the equation, for it is the overriding perception of Orlando that seems to worry our national government’s travel planners. And this perception tells us quite a bit about the real thinking that is happening at the federal level.

    If the new policy were to plan trips only to destinations under the median cost, it would send a message that government does not want to waste money. It might also send federal conferences to destinations in overlooked parts of America that could open beltway eyes to the bleak turmoil enveloping so much of the country, despite the steady drumbeat of recovery news.

    Meanwhile, sellers already know that Washington is really the only game in town, as businesses turn towards grant programs, rebates, and other incentives to backfill lost private sector revenue in goods and services. But if one looks closely at the actual investment pattern, Washington seems to favor the financial market, green energy, and possibly its own future health care program – none of which plays to Orlando’s strengths. This extremely narrow set of interests belies a harsh ideology, as harsh as the ideology it replaced, and as bad for the average citizens of America.

    Yet for all this, Central Florida should share some of the blame. Orlando cursed itself by growing around a single specialty, rather than a diverse set of interests. Favoring theme parks over agriculture was certainly an opportunistic decision, but reinforcing tourism and ignoring all other investment has proved a vast miscalculation. The Sunshine State could have been #1 in solar energy research by now, making it Obama’s darling. So Central Florida, without any other true industry, now grovels at the government’s feet to restore itself into good graces and allow a National Park Service meeting to take place at the Ramada Inn again. It is likely that Orlando will be shut out of this closed circle for some time to come.

    Central Florida’s best hope lies in a recovery of the private sector economy, a regained sense of profitability by corporations, and a renewed faith in the future by individuals. Lacking these now, Central Florida hibernates, its giant engines of escapism in low gear, mothballed, or abandoned.

    One almost hopes The Recovery will be delayed long enough to suffer some sense into the politicians and business leaders who can diversify the economy of the region. After all many of things that attract tourists – low costs, good infrastructure, warm weather – should also lure entrepreneurs, skilled workers and capital, foreign and domestic. You wonder why our leaders have not yet thought of this, or put a plan to diversify into action.

    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.

    Photo by Carlos Cruz.

  • Playing with the Big Boys: The Costs of Fruitless Passenger Rail Tours

    In these hard times the New Zealand public is somewhat excited about the travel costs incurred by our Government Ministers and MPs. Overseas travel attracts particular rage and fury.

    A particularly galling example is a proposal by Christchurch City Mayor Bob Parker, his CEO Tony Marryat, and an urban planner, to visit the US to investigate the performance of light rail in Los Angeles, San Francisco Bay Area, Seattle and Vancouver.

    These cities seem unlikely to provide any relevant information, if only because their populations are many times those of Christchurch, a metropolis of roughly 370,000 and a downtown population of a mere 8000. In comparison:

    • Los Angeles – 13.8 million
    • San Francisco/San Jose – 5.3 million
    • Seattle – 3.3 million
    • Vancouver – 2.1 million

    The reason the Christchurch team cannot investigate a rail system in the US serving a metropolitan area of only some 350,000 people, and with a CBD of only 8,000 people, may be that because so far, at least, even the most enthusiastic Smart Growth planners in the US are not that silly.

    Randal O’Toole, who has made many studies of urban rail systems, points out in “Unlivable Strategies” that spending money on expensive forms of rail transit is fundamentally inefficient because other transportation systems cost far less to build.

    Light rail, he argues, has become popular in the United States precisely because it is expensive. Congress gives transit grants to cities on a first-come, first-served basis. So the cities that build the most expensive transit systems get the largest share of federal transit funding.

    Naturally, dozens of cities are in line to get their share of the pork.

    But that does not prove that light rail is worthwhile. Too many cities have built expensive rail lines and then found that, due to overruns, high operations and maintenance costs, or heavy mortgages, they have to cut back bus service. The result is that rail construction has actually led to reduced transit ridership in many, if not most, cases.

    The Grand Tour: My Version

    Los Angeles and San Francisco Bay

    Here is what the Christchurch Mayor and his team should learn from their visits to the Los Angeles and San Francisco Bay.

    • Los Angeles reinforces the Portland experience (a much smaller city) where cost overruns forced Portland to raise bus fares and cut bus service during construction of its first light-rail line in the 1980s. As a result, a smaller proportion of Portlanders ride transit to work and other places today than did so in 1980. A similar situation in Los Angeles led to a 17 percent decline in transit ridership between 1985 and 1995. The NAACP sued the transit agency for cutting bus service in low-income neighborhoods while building rail to middle-class neighborhoods. The suit forced the agency to scale back its rail plans and restore bus service, which led to a recovery of ridership.
    • In the San Francisco Bay Area, due to heavy rail debt, San Jose was forced to drastically cut bus and rail service in 2001 and lost 35 percent of its riders. The transit system had to make further cuts in 2007.

      Furthermore, despite (or because of) several extensions of the BART line, transit ridership in the San Francisco Bay Area has fallen by more than 10 percent since 1982. Several transit advocacy groups, including the Sierra Club (Piper, 2004), the Bay Area Transportation and Land Use Coalition (BATLUC, 2003), and the Bay Rail Alliance (Carpenter, 2007), actively oppose a proposed extension of BART to San Jose because they know investments in other forms of transit are much more cost effective.

    Overall, US urban areas with rail transit have not fared as well as areas with bus transit. Between 1990 and 2000, the number of people in regions with rail transit who commute to work by transit actually declined, while the number in regions with bus-only transit systems increased.

    The saddest part of these stories is that the people who lose tend to be those most dependent on transit due to low incomes or an inability to drive, while the people who end up riding rail lines tend to have higher incomes and plenty of auto-mobility. (Winston and Shirley, 1998, p. 9).

    Rail transit actually represents a transfer of resource from the poor to the well-off – Robin Hood at work in reverse gear.

    Seattle

    After getting voter approval for rail transit in 1996, Sound Transit began operating 31 miles of commuter rail service between Tacoma and Seattle in 1999. It also built a 1.6-mile streetcar line in downtown Tacoma at a cost of $50 million a mile, a third more than planned. As of December, 2003, Sound Transit also operates a 35-mile commuter rail line from Everett to Seattle.

    Sound Transit’s Seattle-Tacoma commuter-rail line is one of the least productive in the nation, carrying less than one seventh as many passenger miles per route mile as the average commuter-rail line. As a result it has one of the highest operating costs per trip or per passenger mile of any commuter rail line. Despite starting out with free service, the Everett line has been running more than 70 percent empty.

    Transit’s growth in travel and market share is almost entirely due to bus transit, not rail transit. But the growth in the region’s congestion is due to decisions made early in the decade to concentrate on rail transit rather than highway construction. Those decisions have harmed Seattle area residents in many ways, including cost overruns, congestion, transit’s cost ineffectiveness, and housing prices.

    Future plans: The Sound Transit agency originally projected that the cost of building a 24-mile light-rail line from the Seattle-Tacoma airport to the University of Washington and Northgate would be $2.4 billion. Shortly after receiving voter approval, the agency increased this estimate to $3.6 billion.

    After many stops and starts, last year voters endorsed an $18 billion Sound Transit plan for a 53 mile network which they hope will attract 25,000 daily riders by 2030.

    Our Christchurch team should learn from the Seattle story that, once embarked upon, these rail plans tend to eat ever increasing amounts of money.

    Vancouver

    We can only wish them luck on getting useful information out of Vancouver. There seem to be no collections of the statistics on the performance of the transit systems as are available to US researchers here and here (Excel files).

    However, we do note that in 2008 the operating cost of the Translink Sky Trains was C$773,737,000 and this was ‘covered’ by C$359,911,000 of fares and advertising, $262,298,000 motor fuel taxes,$255,741,000 property tax, parking site taxes $8,758,000 and others of $33,313,000.

    So the transfers from motorists and property owners are greater than the fare revenues.

    In 2008 the Long-term debt was C$1,822.7 million.

    Grand Plans

    Christchurch Mayor and his team are presumably looking at these rail systems as a means of supporting their Smart Growth plans for the Greater Christchurch area.
    If the Mayor and his team ask the right questions, and collect the right data, it will be evident to Blind Freddy’s dog that if these boondoggle systems have failed in these major cities, with their major concentrations of employment, then there is no way that light rail can provide a cost effective and efficient service to Christchurch and its environs.

    Sorry about that. Enjoy the trip.

    Owen McShane is Director of the Centre for Resource Management Studies, New Zealand.

  • Online Neighborhood: The Front Porch Forum

    Last summer, Sharon Owens had a problem. The Burlington, VT mother of three was trying to satisfy the wishes of her soon-to-be 14-year old daughter who wanted to celebrate her birthday with a canoe outing with friends. The problem was that renting the necessary canoes would have cost hundreds of dollars. Interestingly, it seemed that nearly ever other house in Sharon’s neighborhood had a canoe in the backyard, or parked under a tarp next to a garage. But Sharon, like many of us, did not know her neighbors, and felt uncomfortable asking them.

    The solution to this dilemma came in the form of a website called Front Porch Forum (FPF), a micro-community site geographically focused on a neighborhood within Burlington encompassing a couple hundred households. Within days of posting her situation to the site there were over a half-dozen canoes on her front yard. Problem solved. But more than that, a community built. As Sharon says, “not only did my daughter have a great birthday and I saved a couple hundred dollars, but now I have a genuine connection to a half-dozen neighbors. Why didn’t I know these good people years ago?”

    Front Porch Forum is the brainchild of Michael Wood-Lewis and his wife Valerie who faced a similar challenge back in 2000. Newly moved in to the Five Sisters Neighborhood in Burlington, they too had trouble connecting. When they missed word of the annual block party, a neighbor later told them: “Oh, well, I guess you gotta live here 10 years before you’re really on the grapevine.” Michael and Valerie weren’t about to wait around for a decade; they had an idea. They set up a simple neighborhood email list and stuck a flier in each of the nearby 400 front doors. As Michael tells it, attention grew slowly, but surely: “We live in a neighborhood full of active people with something to say. So people saw it as an easy way of being in touch.” Nine years after the “grapevine” conversation, more than 90% of Five Sisters subscribe with a recent survey indicating that more than half of them had posted an item to the service recently.

    But the Wood-Lewis’ did not stop there. Actually, they had little choice. When surrounding neighborhoods heard about Front Porch Forum, they wanted in. Wood-Lewis said no, since he had a better idea: he’d build one for them. Today more than 14,000 households (all in Vermont’s Chittenden County) subscribe to FPF – each in subgroups of 200-400 households – small enough to “feel like a neighborhood/local community”, says Wood-Lewis. All told, Front Porch Forum hosts a network of 130 online neighborhood forums covering its pilot region. More than 40% of Burlington, the state’s largest city, subscribes.

    Some readers at this point are no doubt saying to themselves, “Well isn’t that a nice little story, but I already use Craigslist/Facebook/MySpace”. With the birth and persistent growth of Front Porch Forum, Wood-Lewis is demonstrating something quite different from those sites: the incredible power of the internet to build physical “community”, while at the same time showing the web’s effective limits. At its root, Wood-Lewis is proving two, vital axioms pertinent to all community building, online or off: size and proximity matter.

    This isn’t a mini-Craigslist, as Wood-Lewis himself says (in words that might make Craig Newmark cringe): “Craigslist is wonderful and huge. But FPF is different. We’re all about helping clearly identified nearby neighbors connect, while Craigslist helps somewhat distant strangers have a single and often anonymous transaction.” Even as local as Craiglist tries to get it doesn’t begin to approach FPF’s micro-communities. For example, I live in the Los Angeles area, and even though that Craigslist page is broken down into six geographic sub-regions, the one where I live, westside-south bay is still home to well over a million people, spanning dozens of square miles. And, unlike FPF, I can venture into other geographic areas in search of, well, anything. It is not without reason that Craigslist’s two most popular “product” areas are “erotic services” and “casual encounters”. The latter phrase must seem oxymoronic to Wood-Lewis: a “casual encounter” in your neighborhood?

    That’s not to say that you can’t find a good used car on your local Front Porch Forum. In fact, Wolfgang Hokenmaier recently sold his minivan to a neighbor in his FPF, noting, “We had more people… showing up to look at the van who found out through the Forum than the interest generated by the Burlington Free Press, Cars.com and Craigslist combined.” Along with cars sold, there are also cats found, block parties organized, and local council meetings advertised. Community is built not just by searching for a futon, but by checking their FPF for what is happening around them. While it is not a mini-Craigslist, it isn’t a mini-newspaper either. Requests for canoes and lost cats do not an exciting newspaper make, but as a recent survey showed, over 95% of Forum members tune in to their local edition almost daily.

    FPF members are illustrating the simple truth that we’re interested in what happens around us. In part, this is de Tocqueville’s oft-quoted “self-interest rightly understood”: we want to be aware of proximate things that might help (a cheap desk) or hurt (a council meeting about a big apartment complex moving in) us. But the success of the Forums also demonstrates the power of geographic closeness in creating that “glue”, which builds communities: trust. The Forums have proven to be a great place to find baby-sitters. Of course, this is because people tend to trust those within a certain geographic area; in very real ways, we are bound to them and they to us. They are our “neighbors” (our “bors” or “dwellers” who live “nigh”). We see them and they us, whether it’s in the driveway of our neighbor’s ranch house or in the elevator of our 50-story apartment building. At the same time, FPF’s methodology builds a virtual “hedge” around that neighborhood, making sure that only neighbors can participate.

    This increase in social capital paired with a small daily dose of neighborhood news often results in people getting more involved in their local community. An independent survey found that 93% of respondents reported heightened civic engagement due to Front Porch Forum. Put another way, how much more likely is canoe-borrowing Sharon to help rebuild the local playground or volunteer with a local nonprofit after her experience around her daughter’s birthday?

    So how come we’re not seeing millions of FPF’s springing up around America? Well, it demands the two things that are often difficult to find: unremunerated time, and love for where you live. At the base of each Forum are one or two “Neighborhood Volunteers” who act as important local boosters for the site, promoting its existence and encouraging civil participation. They have no admin/editing privileges, but, interestingly, experience has shown that keeping dialogues civil is self-enforcing when neighbors know they’ll actually see each other at some point after they post. The Volunteers’ only compensation is a hearty “Thanks” from neighbors who almost unanimously appreciate the service and, of course, the benefits of living in a more connected neighborhood. As Wood-Lewis tells it, “getting folks to sign up is hard and slow work. People do NOT want to sign up for one more thing, and they procrastinate, and they hit technology hurdles, and they forget.” Still, he concludes, “FPF is incredibly successful at generating word-of-mouth neighbor-telling-neighbor buzz… this gets people to actually sign up.”

    FPF is a for-profit company that, after some initial foundation funding is only beginning to see some revenues from local advertising and fees paid by municipal departments for access to the neighborhoods. With four employees and steady growth in its pilot area, Front Porch Forum is eager to expand to other regions and is open to finding other financial partners as it helps build communities one neighborhood at a time.

    Google “online community”, and you’ll receive over 60 million results. From the “ASPCA Online Community” to the “children with diabetes community”, all of the participants have entered in to a group due to some affinity – common experiences, hobbies, ethnicity, religion, etc. – but most will never actually meet. Along with these “communities of support” are “communities of practice” – sites like Flickr and Wikipedia, where participants with particular skill sets or knowledge edit/critique/contribute to a particular product. What Michael Wood-Lewis is building in Vermont turns these models on their heads. He has created FPF to force interaction, and while people are free to sign up, they “qualify” only because of where they live, not who they are, or what they know. With this micro-geographic focus, Wood-Lewis is deepening community ties by bringing people together who may have very little “in common” save for their street address.

    What does all this mean nationally? A couple months ago, I wrote about the White House’s well-intentioned efforts to convene “national discussions” around particular policy issues. The whitehouse website, in fact, calls itself an “online community”. While it has been focused on gaining public input on policies ranging from transparency to health care, much of the online “community organizing” has taken place over at DNC headquarters, with Organizing for America, or OFA 2.0.

    Gathering local supporters to talk about the president’s policies is a far cry from the community-building of Front Porch Forums. As online gatherings get more focused on a particular subject, or expand geographically, they diminish the chances of enabling the kind of reciprocating community – the kind of neighborhood – which is most naturally found when geography is focused and interests broadened.

    Pete Peterson is Executive Director of Common Sense California, a multi-partisan non-profit organization that supports civic engagement in local/regional decision-making. His views here are not meant to represent CSC. Pete also teaches a course on civic participation at Pepperdine University’s School of Public Policy.

  • The New Industrial City

    Most American urban economic development and revitalization initiatives seek to position communities to attract high wage jobs in the knowledge economy. This usually involves programs to attract and retain the college educated, and efforts to lure corporate headquarters or target industries such as life sciences, high tech, or cutting edge green industries. Almost everything, whether it be recreational trails, public art programs, stadiums and convention centers, or corporate incentives, is justified by reference to this goal, often with phrases like “stopping brain drain” and “luring the creative class”.

    The future vision underpinning this is a decidedly post-industrial one. This city of tomorrow is made up of people living upscale in town condos, riding a light rail line to work at a smartly designed modern office, and spending enormous sums – with the requisite sales tax benefits – entertaining themselves in cafes, restaurants, swanky shops, or artistic events.

    In contrast the factory has no place in this future city. Indeed industry is considered a blight that needs to be eliminated or repurposed. What were once working docks are to be converted to recreational waterfront parkland. Warehouses and small factories become the site for developing lofts, studios, or boutiques. This urban economy is based almost solely around intellectual work and services, not physical production.

    But there is a problem with this equation. In almost any city, the bulk of the people do not have college degrees. According to Brookings, the average adult college degree attainment rate for the top 100 metro areas is only 30.6% In the many years it will take to raise this, what are the rest of the people supposed to do for a living? Younger cohorts are better educated than their grandparents, so this will improve over time. But better educated for what? Not everyone is cut out, or wants to be a stock-trader or media consultant. We have to think about those who would rather work with their hands, or are better suited for that kind of work.

    The vision touted by too many urban boosters is that of an explicitly two-tier society. There are elite, well paid knowledge workers in industries like finance, law, and technology, and then there is everybody else. Programs designed to boost knowledge industries turn out to be subsidies to cater to the most privileged stratum of society. The public is called on to pay for urban amenities for the favored quarter of the intelligentsia, with the benefit to the rest of the people assumed.

    But little thought is given as to how everyone else will get by, other than working in low wage service occupations catering to the privileged. In the Victorian era, they called this going “into service”. Today we might think of them better as globalization’s coolie class.

    Beyond this, can we as a country prosper if we don’t actually make things anymore? Some of the fear of manufacturing decline is overblown. Despite large scale job losses in the manufacturing sector, the US has continued to set industrial production records outside of recessions. However, as the chart below from the Federal Reserve shows, industrial production growth flattened significantly in the late 1990s.

    Sadly, manufacturing has been hammered in this Great Recession. There will certainly be a cyclical upturn in output, but restructuring in the automobile industry portends a permanent reduction in domestic output in that sector among others. Unless carefully handled, increasing regulation of carbon emissions, along with the associated energy price rises, will encourage further offshoring to countries with few climate change obligations, such as China, India, Brazil and other developing nations.

    Yet to remain both a prosperous and fair society, the United States must remain a manufacturing power. Manufacturing still provides the traditional route to middle class wages for those without college degrees. It also alone employs 25 percent of scientists and related technicians and 40 percent of engineers and engineering technicians.

    Of course, the next wave of manufacturing will differ greatly from the past. Improvements in productivity and global competition mean a bleak future for large scale, low value-added, routinized production. The era where an assembly plant provided thousands of good jobs at good wages is a thing of the past other than for the lucky few. And where there are new factories, they are often in greenfield locations like the new Honda plant in Greensburg, Indiana – halfway between Indianapolis and Cincinnati – not urban centers. Polluting heavy industry like primary metals and refining really are incompatible with neighborhoods. So what is to be done?

    One answer is to build a new industrial city focusing on small scale craft and specialty manufacturing with high value added. We’re seeing a precursor to this in the rise of organic farming and artisanal products of all kinds. TV shows featuring hip young carpenters renovating homes or gearheads tricking out cars and motorcycles make these professions seem glamorous. Magazines targeted at the global elite like Monocle scour the world in favor of the finest handcrafted products from old school workshops, building demand for these products. The New York Times Magazine recently did an article making the case for working with your hands, and also noted how digitally oriented designers are rediscovering the use of their hands. Perhaps it is no surprise that sociologist Richard Sennett turned his attention to the idea of the craftsman. In short, making things, craftsmanship, and quality are back in fashion.

    The challenge for urban economies is to develop this and put it on a sound industrial and economic footing. One key might be to inspire people to start these craft oriented businesses by tapping into people’s desire to purchase ethical and sustainable products. We increasingly see with foods and other items that people want to understand their provenance, to know who made them, how, with what, and under what conditions. Often today businesses catering to this desire are small scale “Mom and Pop” type operations, but there is no reason they can’t be done at greater scale, or expanded into areas like organic food processing, not just organic farming. American Apparel has done just that by manufacturing low cost, stylish clothing “Made in Downtown Los Angeles. Sweatshop Free.” at scale, for example.

    Beyond craft products, reinvigorating small scale, specialty fabrication and other businesses, to rebuild an American version of Germany’s Mittlesand, creates another, often ignored option for urban economies. Quality, flexibility, responsiveness, and a willingness to do small runs are keys. These businesses can also underpin product companies higher in the value chain. They start building an ecosystem of local companies and expertise that can be useful for related or spin-off businesses. Jane Jacobs, and before her the great French historian Fernand Braudel, noted how cities could incubate many new enterprises because all the diverse products and services they needed were available locally. If you need to scour the globe looking for custom parts and services, it can quickly overwhelm a small business. That’s one reason American Apparel started in Los Angeles, which already had a network of garment producing firms and expertise to draw on. What’s more, these firms might be ideal candidates to take over empty strip mall or other space in decaying inner ring suburbs, helping to solve the “graybox” problem. Even Main St. locations could potentially benefit from businesses beyond traditional boutiques.

    Today these types of specialty firms are often found in America’s largest cities, so they stand to benefit most from this. Smaller cities also need to figure out how to build this ecosystem. The culture needs to change too. Particularly in the Midwest/Rust Belt area, industrial labor has tended towards low skill, repetitive work in larger scale mass production industries. Retraining will be needed for these newer types of businesses, but this is vocational or skill training, not necessarily a college degree. It is a much more tractable problem.

    Not only could this new manufacturing base be a source of urban middle class jobs for the non-college degreed, it would do something arguably more important. It links the fortunes of the new upscale urban residents, the people who are both the customers for many of these products and potentially also the entrepreneurs making them, with that of their less educated neighbors. For many owners, managers, and workers, it might bring into daily contact people who might not otherwise ever interact if one group worked in an office and another in a warehouse. Rebuilding that sense of community and commonwealth, that we are neighbors, fellow citizens, and all in this together, is critical to building a truly sustainable, well-functioning and broadly prosperous society.

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

  • Nice Houses for Ducks

    During the long hot summer of the expenses scandal in British politics, one of the most bizarre stories concerned a Conservative MP who claimed from the public purse for a second home: a place for his ducks. It wasn’t any old duck house, however, but a ‘Stockholm’ floating model, valued at over £1,500. It is over 5 feet high.

    If only two ducks lived in the duck house, with its prime waterside location and spectacular views of the gardens beyond, their living space would be on a more generous specification – measured by their weight – than the hundreds of thousands of new homes that have been built in Britain in recent years. For one of the lesser-commented upon hypocrisies of the expenses scandal has been the chasm between those with two or more houses, and the many thousands who have just bought a home to find they couldn’t swing a duck around in it, let alone a cat.

    The BBC recently reported some of the new homes are so small that they have been rejected by the housing associations: these are the agencies that have taken over a great deal of the rented housing in Britain since the Conservatives abolished council house building in 1980. Housing associations are empowered to purchase some homes from the private market for rent to their tenants, or for shared ownership schemes.

    Good housing for those who cannot afford private ownership should be welcomed, and the housing associations congratulated for dismissing the smallest new dwellings. But the key question is: why should so much of the new housing seem to be built for birds, not people?

    British new housing today is rapidly becoming a scandal, at least for those who have to live in it. The BBC report found that in some new dwellings valued at over £200,000 ($326,000), rooms were tiny, and many basic construction faults were to be found. And Britain is now building the smallest new homes in the developed world: in Holland the average size of a new build home is 115 square metres, and in Japan it is 92.5 square metres. In Britain a paltry 76 square metres is common. (BBC News, New Homes Rejected for Social Housing (16 May 2009))

    The causes of this cramped and unhappy state of affairs cannot completely be laid at the door of New Labour. During the 1980s the Conservative government of Margaret Thatcher terminated the obligation of private builders to construct new homes according to the Parker Morris standards set out in the report of the same name in 1961. The Toryism of Thatcher may have been more stridently in favour of the aspirational home owner than the more ‘one-nation’ Conservatism of Harold Macmillan, who legislated them, but these guidelines should not have been revoked. Whatever their faults, those standards laid down decent room sizes, and allowed for more generous interpretations of internal uses of space. Council tenants and private home owners benefited from both.

    Now, following the abolition of Parker Morris, it was possible to build new dwellings with a double bedroom that was marginally bigger than a double bed. This tendency to cram became commonplace, however, under Labour, whose housing policies mindlessly follow the idea that, when it comes to housing, tiniest is next to godliness.

    This brilliant approach arose in the 1990s as part the notion that creating higher densities in British cities would stimulate urban renewal. The formula was simple, or rather simplistic, and was best articulated by the leading architect Lord Rogers of Riverside. ‘Let’s cram our city centres’ he wrote provocatively. Of course, this was not for his usual clients for whom he designed spacious office blocks and sizeable swanky houses.

    Rogers was appointed as Head of the Urban Task Force, commissioned by the New Labour government. Its report entitled Towards an Urban Renaissance (1999), called for flats to populate the city centres at high densities. And as for those sprawling suburbs around the outskirts of town, so popular with English home owners, they were to be retro-fitted to utilise existing green spaces for housing.

    So much for verdant England. Even little parks and large private gardens are now vulnerable to development. Interestingly, the first illustration in Towards an Urban Renaissance is a photograph of the then Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott, who, of course, has two homes and more than one car. Needless to say, he welcomed the recommendations in the report since he likely never saw it applying to him or his friends.

    Environmentalism has further accelerated the trend for the shrinking of the British home. The emphasis upon the Rogers-style compact city has been trumpeted by the Green Party and other environmental lobby groups because higher densities and small build theoretically cause less carbon emissions and use up less non-renewable sources of energy.

    Yet let the obstreperous commoner be a bit put off by the high priests of cramming. Some of the most outspoken advocates of environmentalism come from wealthy patrician backgrounds, for example Jonathan Porrit and Prince Charles. Buckingham Palace and High grove House are hardly exercises in low-density living.

    All this leads to some doubts about the democratic future under the influence of our feudalist betters. A recent article in Regeneration and Renewal magazine by Sir Peter Hall draws attention to research led by Marcial Echenique at Cambridge University. Echenique and his team compared the ‘Richard Rogers-style compact city’ with ‘market-led dispersal, US fashion’. Their findings raise some profound questions in an urban democracy:

    The compact city cut carbon emissions by just 1 percent; but there were higher economic costs in outer areas where people still want to live, and where demand was greatest. Also, any social aspects of the compact city were to some extent undermined by crowding, exposure to noise and the crush on facilities.

    American style sprawl by contrast raised energy use and CO2 emissions by almost 2 percent, but engendered lower house prices, less crowding and less road congestion. (Hall, Sir Peter ‘Planners may be wasting their time’, Regeneration and Renewal, 6 July, 2009)

    None of this has yet created the momentum for a radical push back on housing policies, but it should. Conservative, Liberal and Labour MPs are now guiltily paying back their sums for using their expenses to buy their own often lavish second homes. It is striking how they have enjoyed a privileged access to accommodation which they, through legislation, would make all but unaffordable to millions outside the wealthiest classes.

    Once upon a time our political class understood that they ignored the hopes of less-well-off owner occupiers at their peril. Labour’s spectacular victories in 1997 and 2001 owed much to the votes of those who wanted to get on the housing ladder, or who had just clambered onto it, and naturally wanted the best home for their money. Before then, under Thatcher, the Conservatives successfully garnered the support of the same class.

    Now lamentably all the parties display little interest in the aspirations of working-class, lower middle-class and immigrant wannabe homeowners for a decent space. Instead they are to be treated like water fowl by those who generally have access to one or more homes. Some may do it in the name of being “green” but there’s a better term for what they are doing: hypocrisy and class privilege.

    Mark Clapson is a social historian, with interests in suburbanisation and social change, new communities in England and the USA, and war and the built environment.

  • Glimpsing the Good in Police Chief Bratton’s Goodbye to L.A.

    Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) Chief William Bratton’s pending departure makes now a good time to give him credit for a habit that draws scant attention amid talk of his traveling ways and unapologetic ego: The guy works very hard at every aspect of his duties.

    It’s a habit that can touch other lives as a matter of course. It touched me one morning at the Los Angeles Police Academy. Bratton had invited me there to address a graduating class with a reading of a column I had written about the challenges of policing our city. I sat on the main dais with my wife, while some of my other family members were in a front row to the right, where the sun soon drew a bead on them.

    At one point Bratton had finished an inspection of the graduates arrayed on the greensward and was returning to the main dais when he stopped smartly and told my family members to feel free to move back a row or two for some shade.

    It was a considerate gesture amid a precisely timed ceremony – made all the more so because Bratton had no way of knowing that one of my sisters had recently been treated for skin cancer. This is a younger sister of mine, and it’s been some time since she’s needed me to look out for her, but I still do in small ways.

    I took Bratton’s courtesy personally, as a helping hand. It was one of those moments when someone extends themselves without knowing the full effect of their effort. It was the residue of a solid work ethic. It was the by-product of a constant dedication to the protocol that helps inform a sense of duty.

    Bratton has it – and he will be missed.

    There are also plenty of very public reasons to regret Bratton’s departure. Crime has gone down consistently on his watch. Relations between LAPD and the city’s ethnic communities are better than ever, although there’s still work to be done. In any case, the agency has seen broad reform and earned a release from federal oversight.

    Yet there’s an opportunity to be found in taking a break from the intensity Bratton brings to his work. This is a fellow who comprehends much more than the core of policing, taking pains to understand anything that could have a significant bearing on the job, including technology and statistical analysis. Lately he’s talked about using those disciplines in something called predictive policing, an effort to pinpoint who is likely to commit crimes, at what times, and in which locations.

    I think we should all appreciate the fact that substantial individuals are dedicated to an exhaustive pursuit of new tools for law-enforcement.

    We should also remember, however, that Bratton is a cop who views the world from a cop’s perspective. That is altogether appropriate for him — and it leaves us with the responsibility of considering whether a hard-charging chief who is intrigued by predictive policing could hold the potential to bring serious erosion to our civil liberties.

    It’s true that we have elected officials and a judicial system to stand guard against incursions on our civil liberties, adding more than a cop’s view to the debate.

    That’s a bit shaky, though, given political trends of recent years.

    Bratton adds to my worries because he’s as good at politics as any politician in our city. I worry about having a police chief who not only has the ability and drive to get a grasp on something like predictive policing but might also have enough political skill to sell the notion in a way that bypasses healthy debate.

    Perhaps Bratton’s departure will provide time for Mayor Antonio Villaragiosa and others at City Hall to ponder the balance of liberty and security – and to consider how much of one we are willing to trade for the other.

    I thank Bratton for his dynamic approach to reshaping law enforcement in our city, and I certainly don’t intend to diminish his success at fulfilling the mission he took on in Los Angeles.

    I address my concerns to our elected officials, all of whom should recalibrate their relationships with the sort of authority figures who possess the ability to make folks feel safe.

    It could be downright unsafe to get in the habit of relying on a top cop to handle the whole job.

    Jerry Sullivan is the Editor & Publisher of the Los Angeles Garment & Citizen, a weekly community newspaper that covers Downtown Los Angeles and surrounding districts (www.garmentandcitizen.com)

  • California Wastes Its Public Space

    California’s favorable climate makes it a haven for outdoor activity. Enlightened and forward-looking planning has largely preserved the waterfronts for public access and set aside a lot of space for public use and activity. Yet despite this, there are few great urban gathering spaces. This is most obvious in the two largest population centers – Los Angeles and San Francisco.

    As a result, potentially great urban districts are dragged down by a dearth of desirable activity, something exacerbated by an already damaging real estate slump. Although all is not lost in these cities, some of the most high profile public spaces fail to attract large numbers of visitors on a daily basis, particularly when no special events are planned.

    Pershing Square, Los Angeles – Located in the heart of downtown, Pershing Square is poorly designed, both as its own project and in a contextual sense. In an already warm climate made even hotter by its CBD location, there is too much hardscape. Extensive softscape, whether flowers, grass, and/or trees, would provide a cooling effect. There are also too many symbolic structures serving no purpose. These are expensive to install and maintain; they provide very little benefit. Also, an already bad relationship to the street was made worse by restricting access points and hiding the interior space. Although some changes over the past several years have softened the space somewhat, it still lacks some basic creature comforts, such as adequate lighting and clean restrooms, to make it a daily destination for the scores of office workers within easy walking distance.

    County Mall, Los Angeles – County Mall, located west of Los Angeles City Hall between Broadway and Grand Avenue, is in the unenviable position of being relatively unknown. Poor graphics and signage do little to improve its profile. Although there was extensive softscape in the design, many of the original shrubs and flowers have eroded. Further, the large space is not properly organized to allow and encourage different types of activity. Adjacent uses alone are not enough to sustain the park. Unlike in Pershing Square, the design here is not the primary issue. Instead, more programming and better maintenance would make County Mall successful, and provide for a dramatic promenade connecting City Hall and the Los Angeles Music Center.

    Union Square, San Francisco – Despite an expensive redesign nearly five years ago, Union Square is still not the central urban gathering space for San Francisco. Although it does serve as an incidental focus of pedestrian activity within the immediate neighborhood, the primarily hardscaped design is too fussy and too formal to encourage casual passive use and extended stays, except, perhaps, within limited zones at the fringes. The little available seating is poorly designed, intended to prevent homeless use rather than to promote use by casual park visitors. Primarily a concrete space with grass at the corners, Union Square lacks the “warmth” that makes such spaces comfortable. Imagine a Union Square with a great lawn in the middle, rather than cold (and expensive) hardscape.

    Market Street, San Francisco – Punctuated by intermittent triangular plazas along most of its downtown stretches, portions of Market Street’s public space are more the domain of homeless panhandlers than workers, residents, strollers, and the like (it should be noted, however, that some parts of Market Street, such as in the Financial District, can be pleasant at times). The plazas, quality architecture, and mix of uses create potential. But the pedestrian environment discourages extended dwell times, except by the homeless, panhandlers and drug dealers, many of whom, the city has documented, commute daily to Market Street from elsewhere in the Bay Area. The design offers little in the way of seating options and softscape. Sanitation and maintenance need to be substantially upgraded and programming is needed.

    Proper seating, adequate lighting, and extensive horticultural displays would serve to populate these public spaces. Proper management and maintenance would ensure long-term success. Places such as Bryant Park in Midtown Manhattan, itself the beneficiary of a remarkable turnaround masterminded by Daniel Biederman of the Bryant Park Restoration Corporation, have shown what visionary management can do to struggling urban public spaces. [Kozloff worked for BRV Corp., Biederman’s private consulting company that is independent of the Bryant Park Restoration Corporation, from 2001-2004.] Although once run on a city budget of $200,000, Bryant Park is now managed on a privately-funded budget. Biederman turned Bryant Park – once the domain of drug dealers and other such undesirables – into Manhattan’s premier address without using public coffers.

    Given the warm weather, long growing seasons, and urban renaissance occurring in adjacent portions of Los Angeles and San Francisco, even in the midst of our current downturn, there are opportunities to improve the public realm so that it serves its intended purpose, including boosting civic pride and, in turn, encouraging public stewardship. And, these improvements could be made without costly redesigns and extensive capital construction. Urban environments do not need places that drain public funds and then are shunned by the citizenry; there are enough other issues for urban mayors to deal with. Great cities need comfortable and inviting gathering places that both anchor and bolster civic pride, and simultaneously provide backdrops for special events and day-to-day activity.

    Howard Kozloff is Manager of Development Strategies and Director of Operations at Hart Howerton, an international strategy, planning and design firm based in New York, San Francisco and London. Kozloff is also a lecturer on Urban Real Estate Markets at the University of Pennsylvania.

  • Is the Stage Set for Another Housing Bubble?

    Both the world and the nation remain in the midst of the greatest economic downturn since the Great Depression. But with all the talk of “green shoots” and a recovery housing market, we may in fact be about to witness another devastating bubble.

    As we well know, the Great Recession was set off the by the bursting of the housing bubble in the United States. The results have been devastating. The value of the US housing stock has fallen 9 quarters in a row, which compares to the previous modern record of one (Note). This decline has been a driving force in a 25 percent or a $145,000 average decline (inflation adjusted) in net worth per household in less than two years (Figure 1). The Great Recession has fallen particularly hard on middle-income households, through the erosion of both house prices and pension fund values.

    This is no surprise. The International Monetary Fund has noted that deeper economic downturns occur when they are accompanied by a housing bust. This reality is not going to change quickly.

    How did the supposedly plugged-in economists and traders in the international economic community fail to recognize the housing bubble or its danger to the world economy? It is this failure that led Queen Elizabeth II to ask the London School of Economics (LSE) “why did noboby notice it?”. Eight long months later, the answer came in the form of a letter signed by Tim Besley, a member of the Monetary Policy Committee of the Bank of England (the central bank of the United Kingdom) and Professor Peter Hennessey on behalf of the British Academy.

    The letter indicated that some had noticed what was going on,

    But against those who warned, most were convinced that banks knew what they were doing. They believed that the financial wizards had found new and clever ways of managing risks. Indeed, some claimed to have so dispersed them through an array of novel financial instruments that they had virtually removed them. It is difficult to recall a greater example of wishful thinking combined with hubris.

    The letter concluded noting that the British Academy was hosting seminars to examine the “Never Again” question.

    Among those that noticed were the Bank of International Settlements (the central bank of central banks) in Basle, which raised the potential of an international financial crisis to be set off by a bursting of the US housing bubble. Others, like Alan Greenspan, noticed, telling a Congressional Committee that “there was some froth” in local markets. Others, across the political spectrum, like Nobel Laureate Paul Krugman, Thomas Sowell and former Reserve Bank of New Zealand Governor Donald Brash both noticed and understood.

    Missing the Housing Market Fundamentals: The housing market fundamentals were clear. With more liberal credit, the demand for owned housing increased markedly, virtually everywhere. In all markets of the United Kingdom and Australia, house prices rose so much that the historic relationship with household incomes was shattered. The same was true in some US markets, but not others (Figure 2).

    On average, major housing markets in the United Kingdom experienced median house prices that increased the equivalent of three years of median household income in just 10 years (to 2007). The increases were pervasive; no major market experienced increases less than 2.5 years of income, while in the London area, prices rose by 4 years of household income. In Australia, house prices increased the equivalent of 3.3 years of income. Like the UK, the increases were pervasive. All major markets had increases more than double household incomes.

    Based upon national averages, the inflating bubble appears to have been similar, though a bit more muted in the United States, with an average house price increase equal to 1.5 years of household income. But the United States was a two-speed market, one-half of which experienced significant house price increases and the other half which did not. In the price escalating half, house prices increased an average of 2.4 times incomes. The largest increases occurred in Los Angeles, San Francisco and San Diego, where house prices rose the equivalent of 5 years income. In the other half of the market, house prices remained within or near historic norms relative to incomes. A similar contrast is evident in Canadian markets. In some, house prices reached stratospheric and unprecedented highs, while in others, historic norms were maintained.

    Underlying Demand: Greater Where Prices Rose Less: The difference between the two halves of the market was not underlying demand. Overall, the half of the markets with more stable house prices indicated higher underlying demand than the half with greater price escalation. Overall, the housing markets with higher cost escalation lost more than 2.5 million domestic migrants from 2000 to 2007, while the more stable markets gained more than 1,000,000 (Calculated from US Bureau of the Census data).

    The Difference: Land Use Regulation: The primary reason for the differing house price increases in US markets was land use regulation, points that have been made by Krugman and Sowell. This is consistent with a policy analysis by the Dallas Federal Reserve Bank, which indicated that the higher demand from more liberal credit could either manifest itself either in house price increases or in construction of new housing. Virtually all of the markets with the largest housing bubbles had more restrictive land use regulation.

    These regulations, such as urban growth boundaries, building moratoria and other measures that ration land and raise its price collaborated to make it impossible for such markets to accommodate the increased demand without experiencing huge price increases (these strategies are often referred to as “smart growth”). In the other markets, less restrictive land use regulations allowed building new housing on competitively priced land and kept house prices under control. The resulting price distortions leads to greater speculation, as has been shown by economists Edward Glaeser and Joseph Gyourko.

    A Wheel Disengaged from the Rudder: The normal policy response of interest rate revisions had little potential impact on the price escalating half of the housing market, because of the impact of restrictive state, metropolitan and local housing regulations. These regulations materially prohibited building on perfectly suitable land and thus drove the price up on land where building was permitted. So, while Greenspan and the Fed saw the “froth” in local markets, they missed its cause. The British Academy letter to the Queen is similarly near-sighted. Restrictive land use regulation has left central bankers in a position like a ship’s captain trying to steer a massive vessel with a wheel that is no longer connected to the rudder

    The Bubble Bursts: When teaser mortgage rates expired and other interest rates reset, a flood of foreclosures occurred, which led to house price declines that negated much of the housing bubble price increases in the United States. The most significant of these took place in restrictive markets, especially in California and Florida. By September of 2008, the average house had lost nearly $100,000 of its value in the more restrictively regulated half of the market, and averaged $175,000 in these “ground zero” markets. These losses were unprecedented and far beyond the ability of mortgage holders to sustain. This led to “Meltdown Monday,” when Lehman Brothers collapsed and the Great Recession ensued.

    By comparison, the losses in the more stable half of the market were modest, averaging approximately one-tenth that of the price escalating half.

    Can We Avoid Another Bubble? The experience of the Great Recession underscores the importance of having a Fed and other central banks that not only pay attention, but also understand. This requires “getting their hands dirty” by looking beyond macro-economic aggregates and national averages.

    This does not require an increasing of authority of the Federal Reserve or other central banks. As Donald L. Luskin suggested in The Wall Street Journal, we “don’t want the Fed controlling asset prices.” All we really need is for the Fed and other central banks to notice and understand what is going on, not only in housing, but in other markets as well.

    A public that depends upon central banks to minimize the effect of downturns deserves institutions that are not only paying attention, but also understand what is driving the market. The Fed should use its bully pulpit, both privately and publicly, to warn state and local governments of the peril to which their regulatory policies imperil the economy.

    There are strong indications that future housing bubbles could be in the offing. Not more than a year ago, the state of California enacted even stronger land use legislation (Senate Bill 375), which can only heighten the potential for another California-led housing bust in the years to come, while reducing housing affordability in the short run. There is a strong push by interest groups in Washington to go even further (see the Moving Cooler report), making it nearly impossible for housing to be built on most urban fringe land. This is a prescription for another bubble, this time one that would include the entire country, not just parts of it.

    Note: Quarterly data has been available since 1952 from the Federal Reserve Board Flow of Funds accounts

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

  • Immigrants Are ‘Greening’ our Cities, How About Giving them a Break?

    Debate about immigration and the more than 38 million foreign born residents who have arrived since 1980 has become something of a national pastime. Although the positive impact of this population on the economy has been questioned in many quarters, self-employment and new labor growth statistics illustrate the increasingly important role immigrants play in our national economy.

    There has also been an intense debate within the environmental community about the impact of immigrants. Yet there has been relatively little research done about how immigrants get to work and where most immigrants live. As the ‘green’ movement in the U.S. has increasingly pushed for higher-density housing and transit-oriented development in order to improve public transportation (specifically rail), few have considered how immigrants use transit and what might be the best way to accommodate their needs. In fact, all too often, “green” policies advocate transit choices – favoring such things as light rail over buses – that may work against the interests of immigrant transit riders.

    Based on the 2007 American Community Survey, 117.3 million native-born and 21.9 million foreign-born individuals commuted to work. As Table (1) illustrates, a higher percentage of immigrants rode buses (5.7% vs. 2.1%) and subways (4.1% vs. 1.2%) and many walked to work (3.7% vs. 2.7%). A much smaller percentage drove to work (79.8% vs. 87.7%). Unfortunately, despite their higher usage of alternate means of transportation to work, or perhaps because of it, the commute to work time was on average longer for the foreign-born commuters than their native-born counterparts (28.8 minutes versus 24.7).

    Clearly in terms of using public transportation, immigrants are a bit greener than those born here. But why? Is this habit formed elsewhere? In that case, are recent immigrants even more likely to use public transportation than those who immigrated earlier? Or is it their income that affects their transportation choices?

    Table (2) provides the answer to the first question. Recent arrivals are clearly less likely to drive to work and have a higher propensity toward using public transportation, compared to all foreign-born individuals (and significantly more than the native-born). Additionally, over 6% of the immigrants who have arrived since 2000 walk to work.

    Overall, more than a quarter of the immigrants who have arrived since 2000 use an alternative mode of transportation to work. If the rest of America could do the same, we’d be a bit ‘greener’ already. However, it seems that as immigrants stay longer, they eventually tend to use cars more often because automobile usage allows for access to better jobs, better shops, and better schools. For example, immigrants who arrived in the U.S. in the 1970s (which means they have been here over three decades) drive a bit more and use public transportation less.

    Even so, their rates are still slightly better than the native-born (compare Tables 1 and 2). This may be in part because of their lower incomes (see Table 3) yet at every level of income they are still more likely to take transit. Table (4) illustrates this point by grouping commuters into income categories and their nativity. In every income category, immigrants use their cars less and are more likely to use public transportation, even though their car ridership increases with income.

    The message from these statistics is loud and clear. Immigrants are more likely to ride public transportation than those born in the U.S., regardless of their income. The ones arriving more recently are even more likely to do so. Overall, this suggests that familiarity with public transportation, combined with the effects of income and place of residence, has made the immigrants’ lives in the U.S. a bit ‘greener’ than those of the native-born. In fact, one factor that may contribute to their higher usage of public transportation stems from their living in neighborhoods whose densities are, on average, 2.5 times higher than those of the native-born. Immigrants, in essence, are doing precisely what planners want the rest of us to do.

    Moving to Southern California

    Southern California still stands as the icon of immigration and multiculturalism and is home to a large number of immigrants in the urban region that extends from eastern Ventura County to the southern tip of Orange County and the Inland Empire. As Figure (1) illustrates, in a number of neighborhoods in Southern California, the foreign-born population outnumbers the native-born by large margins. For example, in areas west and south of downtown Los Angeles, immigrants are more than three times as numerous as the native-born.

    A comparison of Figures (2) and (3) suggests a wide geographic difference between the native-born and the foreign-born and how long it takes them to get to work. The foreign-born population experiences much longer commutes in highly urbanized areas around downtown Los Angeles and the San Gabriel Valley. Conversely, in the more rural areas, such as northern Ventura County, the foreign-born population experiences shorter commutes compared to their native-born counterparts.

    Figure (4) provides a clear comparison of average travel time to work for both populations (visually comparing Figures 2 and 3). In all areas appearing in the darkest shade of green, the foreign-born population experienced shorter commutes compared to the native-born. These shorter commutes, however rarely occur in high density areas (compare with Figure 5). Conversely, in areas such as Santa Monica, the Wilshire corridor, East Los Angeles, and southern sections of downtown Los Angeles, the foreign-born population experiences much longer commutes than the native-born.


    Statistically speaking, there is a positive relationship between average travel time and density – i.e., the higher the density, the higher the reported average travel time. For the foreign-born population who live in higher density areas, this means much longer commutes, a problem caused by a number of factors, including their dependency on slower public transportation systems and the long distances they have to travel to reach job centers outside the city center.

    Figure (6) illustrates the geographic pattern of bus ridership among the foreign-born commuters. As with national patterns, immigrants in Southern California are more likely to settle in high density areas and use public transportation to work, but unfortunately, they also suffer much longer commutes.

    What should the policy responses be? One may be to promote increased car ownership among immigrants and low-income populations in the U.S. This may be objectionable to some environmentalists and planners, but it’s clear that those people who live by the principles of higher density and public transportation use are not rewarded and indeed suffer longer commutes.

    An even more relevant question is why advocates for public transportation focus disproportionately on rail, when buses are so frequently used by low income populations, including immigrants. In California, these riders outnumber the native-born on buses. The situation is reversed on rail and subways. An intelligent policy response to public transportation planning would suggest that buses should receive much more attention. Major metropolitan areas have become polycentric in their employment patterns, and most major employment centers are located at long distances from the central city. Specially-designed buses for reverse commutes could help alleviate transportation problems while helping working immigrants reach their destinations more quickly.

    This challenges the priorities of some public transport advocates, who tend to focus on very expensive rail projects designed primarily to draw more middle class, largely native-born riders who commute to places like downtown Los Angeles. Meanwhile those ‘new’ Americans who already live by a number of ‘green’ standards suffer from the misallocation of transit resources. Those who are already doing what we hope the middle class will do deserve better.

    Ali Modarres is an urban geographer in Los Angeles and co-author of City and Environment.

  • Why The ‘Livable Cities’ Rankings Are Wrong

    Few topics stir more controversy between urbanists and civic boosters than city rankings. What truly makes a city “great,” or even “livable”? The answers, and how these surveys determine them, are often subjective, narrow or even misguided. What makes a “great” city on one list can serve as a detriment on another.

    Recent rankings of the “best” cities around the world by the Economist Intelligence Unit, Monocle magazine and the Mercer quality of life surveys settled on a remarkably similar list. For the most part, the top ranks are dominated by well-manicured older European cities such as Zurich, Geneva, Vienna, Copenhagen, Helsinki and Munich, as well as New World metropolises like Vancouver and Toronto; Auckland, New Zealand; and Perth and Melbourne in Australia.

    Only Monocle put a truly cosmopolitan world city – Tokyo – near the top of its list. The Economist rankings largely snubbed American cities – only Pittsburgh made it anywhere near the top, at No. 29 out of 140. The best we can say is most American cities did better than Harare, Zimbabwe, which ran at the bottom. Honolulu got a decent No. 11 on the Monocle list and broke into the top 30 on Mercer’s, as did No. 29 San Francisco. But regarding American urban boosters, that’s all, folks.

    To understand these rather head-scratching results, one must look at the criteria these surveys used. Cultural institutions, public safety, mass transit, “green” policies and other measures of what is called “livability” were weighted heavily, so results skewed heavily toward compact cities in fairly prosperous regions. Most of these regions suffer only a limited underclass and support a relatively small population of children. In fact, most of the cities are in countries with low birthrates – Switzerland’s median fertility rate, for example, is about 1.4, one of the lowest on the planet and a full 50% below that of the U.S.

    These places make ideal locales for groups like traveling corporate executives, academics and researchers targeted by such surveys. With their often lovely facades, ample parks and good infrastructure, they constitute, for the most part, a list of what Wharton’s Joe Gyourko calls “productive resorts,” a sort of business-oriented version of an Aspen or Vail in Colorado or Palm Beach, Fla. Honolulu is an exception, more a vacation destination than a bustling business hub.

    Yet are those the best standards for judging a city? It seems to me what makes for great cities in history are not measurements of safety, sanitation or homogeneity but economic growth, cultural diversity and social dynamism. A great city, as Rene Descartes wrote of 17th century Amsterdam, should be “an inventory of the possible,” a place of imagination that attracts ambitious migrants, families and entrepreneurs.

    Such places are aspirational – they draw people not for a restful visit or elegant repast but to achieve some sort of upward mobility. By nature these places are chaotic and often difficult to navigate. Ambitious people tend to be pushy and competitive. Just think about the great cities of history – ancient Rome, Islamic Baghdad, 19th century London, 20th century New York – or contemporary Los Angeles, Houston, Shanghai and Mumbai.

    These represent a far different urbanism than what one finds in well-organized and groomed Zurich, Vienna and Copenhagen. You would not call these cities and their ilk with metropolitan populations generally less than 2 million, “bustling.” Perhaps a more fitting words would be “staid” and “controlled.”

    Peace and quiet is very nice, but it doesn’t really encourage global culture or commerce. Growth and change come about when newcomers jostle with locals not just as tourists, or orbiting executives, but as migrants. Great cities in their peaks are all about this kind of yeasty confrontation.

    Alas, comfort takes precedence over dynamism in these new cities. Take the immigration issue: Unlike Amsterdam in its heyday or London or New York today, most northern European countries have turned hostile to immigration and many have powerful nativist parties. These are directed not against elite corporate executives or academics, but newcomers from developing countries. In some cases, resentment is stoked by immigrants taking advantage of well-developed welfare systems that worked far better in a homogeneous country with shared attitudes of social rights and obligations.

    Of course, these cities aren’t total deadweights. After all, Switzerland has its banks, Helsinki boasts Nokia and Denmark remains a key center of advanced and green manufacturing technology. For its part, Vancouver gets Americans to shoot cheap movie and TV shows with massive tax breaks and will host the Winter Olympics. But none can be considered major shapers of the modern world economy.

    The one American city favored by The Economist, Pittsburgh, represents a pale – and less attractive – version of these top-ranked European, Canadian or Australian cities. Its formerly impressive array of headquarters has shrunk to a handful. Once the capital of steel, it now pretty much depends on nonprofits, hospitals and universities.

    You will be hearing a lot more about Pittsburgh – the city has a prodigious PR machine funded largely by nonprofit foundations and universities – as it gets ready to host the G-20 meeting next month. Fans claim that the former steel town has developed a stable – if hardly dynamic – economy. Its torpidity is being sold a strength; boom-resistant in the best of times, it’s also proved relatively recession-proof as well.

    In this sense, Pittsburgh represents the American model of the slow-growth European city. This may appeal to those doing quality-of-life rankings, but not to those who have been fleeing the Steel City for other places for generations. Immigrants are hardly coming in droves either – Pittsburgh ranks near last among major metropolitan areas in percentage of foreign-born residents. As longtime local columnist and resident Bill Steigerwald notes, since 1990 more Pittsburghers have been dying than being born. If this represents America’s urban future, perhaps it’s one that takes its inspiration from Alan Weisman’s “A world without us.”

    Yet the future of urbanism, here and abroad, will not be Pittsburgh. Based on current preferences, something like 20 million – or more – people will have moved to U.S. cities by 2050. Most will likely settle in more dynamic places like New York, Los Angeles, Houston, Phoenix, Dallas, Chicago and Miami. These cities have become magnets for restless populations, both domestic and foreign-born. They also contain all the clutter, constant change, discomfort and even grime that characterize great cities through history.

    But it’s economics that drives migrants to these dirtier, busier metropolitan centers. Many of the cities at the top of the livability lists, by contrast, are also among the world’s most expensive. They generally also have high taxes and relatively stagnant job markets.

    Many U.S. cities, however, offer far more materially to their average residents than their elite European counterparts do. American cities, when assessed by purchasing-power parity, notes demographer Wendell Cox, do very well indeed. Viewed this way, the U.S. boasts eight of the top 10 – and 37 of the top 50 – metropolitan regions in terms of per capita income.

    The top city on Cox’s list, San Jose, Calif., epitomizes both the strengths and weaknesses of the American city. The heartland of Silicon Valley, the San Jose region has generated one of the world’s most innovative – and well-paid – economies. On the other hand, its mass transit usage is minuscule, its cultural attributes measly and its downtown hardly a tourist destination.

    Meanwhile, pricey and scenic Zurich, No. 2 on the Mercer list and No. 10 on The Economist rankings, comes in 74th when considering adjusted per capita income. Economist favorite Vancouver, one of the most expensive second-tier cities on the planet, ranks 71st. For the average person seeking to make money and improve his or her economic status, it usually pays not to settle in one of the world’s “most livable” cities.

    This is not to say that rambunctious urban centers like Los Angeles, New York or London couldn’t learn from their more “livable” counterparts. Anyone who has braved the maddening crowds in Venice Beach, Times Square or London’s Piccadily knows a city can have too much of a good thing. Los Angeles could use a more efficient bus system. Better-maintained subways and commuter trains in New York would be welcome by millions as they would in Greater London.

    Ultimately great cities remain, almost by necessity, raw (and at times unpleasant) places. They are filled with the sights and smells of diverse cultures, elbowing streetwise entrepreneurs and the inevitable mafiosi. They all suffer the social tensions that come with rapid change and massive migration. New York, Los Angeles, London, Shanghai, Mumbai or Dubai may not shoot to the top of more elite, refined rankings, but they contain the most likely blueprint of our urban future.

    This article originally appeared at Forbes.

    Joel Kotkin is executive editor of NewGeography.com and is a 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 early next year.