New Geography

Category: Urban Issues

  • Beyond The Bailout: What’s Next in the Housing Market?

    The Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008 (we’ll call it the “Bail Out”) was signed into law on October 3rd. This, combined with the new reality in capital markets and current economic conditions, will result in some major shifts in the outlook for housing over the next few years. It is always possible that the federal government will try to do even more to fix what will be an agonizing housing problem over the next few years, but seems unlikely even Bernake, Paulson or their appointed successors will be able to change the basic story line.

    The Credit Market
    Let’s set up the dynamics. The era of easy credit, especially in terms of mortgages and home equity lines, is over. The 2002 through early 2006 period will turn out to be an aberration in history. During that period, about all a person needed to do to qualify for a mortgage was to be healthy. For the foreseeable future, we will see the return of such requirements as a down payment and the ability to repay your loan based on income, along with a good credit history, that will allow a person to qualify. The tighter credit and the slow down of the economy already is making it difficult for all but the best borrowers to get mortgage loans. Thus, the housing market will remain under significant pressure and the excess supply will be absorbed only slowly.

    The Consumer
    Consumers have accumulated far too much debt; they don’t have much in the way of traditional savings; are faced with job declines and declines in hours worked and are also facing a reverse wealth affect (i.e. people tend to spend more when they feel richer and less when they feel poorer). In the 1990s, consumers felt wealthier because the stock market did very well. Studies of the wealth effect indicate that people spend about five cents out of every dollar of increased net worth from stock and housing price appreciation over about a three to five year period of time. In the early part of this decade, not only were housing prices rising rapidly, but, almost unbelievably (in retrospect), easy credit allowed people to use their house as a credit card. The result was a boom in retail spending and home buying. In fact, the rate of homeownership in the U.S. went from a long term average of about 65% in 2002, to a high of nearly 69% in 2006. The percentage of people who bought homes, as a percent of total households, reached a record level.

    Supply and Demand
    Today, there are roughly two million more homes for sale in the nation than normal (4.3 million new and resale listings versus the long-term average of 2.3 million homes for sale). In addition, foreclosures are skyrocketing and are likely to stay high for quite some time. Many recent buyers simply were not financially ready for home ownership’s financial realities. Basic demand has diminished significantly as the number of prospects who can qualify has declined. Put all of these things together and you will have a period where not only will there be fewer homes purchased, but there will be high levels of foreclosures, a decline back to the normalized level of homeownership. There will be fewer people moving (i.e. if you can’t sell your house in California, Michigan or Pennsylvania, you are not moving to Arizona). What this implies is that the demographic demand for housing will be lower than normal over the next few years until the excess supply is absorbed.

    How long will this take? Analysis suggests that it is two to four years away nationally and longer in the bubble states: Arizona, California, Florida and Nevada. All this suggests that as the homeownership rate comes down, more people will be moving to apartments, people will “double up” or move back home. As a result much of the housing demand will be absorbed by foreclosures and the excess existing housing inventory, mitigating the need for significant new housing in the near term.

    If you add this all up, this also means slower growth in what were normally rapid growing areas (like Phoenix) where a full recovery could take four to five years for housing. As the home-ownership – including condos – rate moves back to its long term trends there will be a shift back to apartments.

    Overall, there will be fewer single family homes demanded, more apartments demanded, and the homes that are demanded will be more affordable. The most affordable areas will continue to be at the edge of town. In addition, given how difficult it has been to get the entitlements necessary for new apartment construction in areas like Phoenix over the past several years along with the number of condos that are being converted back to multi-family rentals, rents are likely to increase past 2009 or 2010 as the excess supply of rental single family homes, condos and apartments are absorbed.

    Overall homeownership will still be the American dream, but that dream will not again be something people think about until housing prices stop declining and start recovering. It’s going to be a tough ride, particularly in Sunbelt ‘boomtowns’ like Phoenix.

    Elliott D. Pollack is Chief Executive Officer of Elliott D. Pollack and Company in Scottsdale, Arizona, an economic and real estate consulting firm established in 1987, which provides a broad range of services, specializing in Arizona economics and real estate.

  • The Geography of Inequality

    The global financial crisis has drawn greater attention to the world of the super rich and to the astounding increases in inequality since 1980, returning the country to a degree of inequality last seen in 1929 or perhaps even 1913. In the year 2006 alone, Wall Street executives received bonuses of $62 billion. Financial services increased from 10 percent of all business profits in 1980 to 40 percent in 2007, an obscene and indefensible development that now threatens the rest of the ‘real economy’.

    Here’s what happened to income and wealth between 1970 and 2005

    These figures reveal an inexorably growing concentration of income and wealth, which has taken place under both Democratic and Republican regimes. Conversely, given inflation over the last 35 years, lower and middle classes receive smaller shares. Only the affluent – the top 10% – and the rich – the top 1% – have gained ground.

    This pattern of inequality also has a geography with variations across the country between different places (here counties). Generally between 1970 and 2000 the greatest inequality has developed in the largest metropolitan regions and their suburbs.


    Large metropolitan core counties are by far the most likely to have higher inequality. In contrast other geographies have much lower inequality, with small metropolitan, small city and rural counties near the national average. In other words, core metropolitan counties are skewed toward greater inequality (higher shares of very rich and of very poor), while suburban and exurban areas generally exhibit lower inequality (values bunched centrally, with fewer extremely rich or poor households).

    Overall the greatest inequality lies in the very largest metropolitan cores (Los Angeles, Chicago, New York, Houston, etc), areas with large racial or ethnic minorities (e.g., in FL, TX, CA and much of the South), as well as in selected large northeastern metropolises (suburb as well as core, as in Chicago, Cleveland, Pittsburgh, New York, Philadelphia, and Washington DC) and across the southern half of the country more generally. Lower inequality occurs mainly in suburban or small metropolitan counties, and mainly in the north.

    Among smaller metropolitan (< 50,000 households) and non-metropolitan counties there emerges a truly dramatic north-south cleavage just around the Iowa border and along the Ohio River divide. A more mixed pattern prevails in the west and in the northeast, where intermediate levels of inequality are common. Especially high rates of inequality characterize racial and ethnic minority areas and Appalachia, as could be expected, but also many environmental amenity areas, especially in the west. Low inequality is fairly extensive in the hinterlands of selected Great Lakes and upper Midwest metropolises, like Omaha, Minneapolis and Chicago. Generally more egalitarian areas boast higher incomes, female labor force participation, more shares in manufacturing, greater incidence of husband-wife families, of whites, of home ownership, but lower percentages of government and service jobs, fewer residents with less than a 9th grade education, people 18-24, singles, single parent families, and less Blacks and Hispanics. High levels of inequality are generally the opposite of the egalitarian areas: more minorities, single parent families, less manufacturing and dependence on government as well as service sector jobs. Inequality varies by both kinds of settlement geography and by the social and economic character of areas. The most obvious and visible attributes that signify greater inequality are social characteristics: racial and ethnic minorities, low levels of education, low proportions of traditional husband-wife families (partly because of fewer earners), and high dependency (many of the very young and very old). Unequal places tend to be those with low concentrations of manufacturing and higher shares of both managerial-professional occupations and service jobs. Geographic impacts vary. Most rural, newer suburban and exurban areas tend to have lower inequality because they tend to maintain middle income homogeneity. Yet rural areas that are isolated and have weak economies, like Appalachia, suffer high inequality. Large metropolitan areas with the highest inequality also tend to have large concentrations of racial minorities and of non-families, especially young singles Overall it is clear that inequality has been on the rise since 1970. This was a time when the nation was prosperous, manufacturing was strong, as were unions, income taxes fairly progressive, while “war on poverty” legislation had helped those at the bottom, the baby boom was still on and families dominant. But if the extent of inequality has grown, its geography has changed far less. Large metropolitan cores had the highest inequality in 1970 and 2000, and metropolitan suburbs and exurbs the lowest, with small cities in between. Yet inequality grew fastest in large metropolitan cores and suburbs. Small metropolitan areas (many were small cities in 1970) had the next highest increase (80 percent) and rural small town areas the lowest (69 percent). Sadly, only a few counties had decreases in inequality. Many were military base counties, mainly in the south. Another group of counties with lower inequality are new suburban counties, which have become more uniformly middle class as a result of significant urban growth, mainly in the South with more rapid urban and industrial growth. Overall, the change in inequality between 1970 and 2000 was substantial and wide ranging. The causes for this tend to be national and structural, including deindustrialization, the rise of a service economy, the decline of the traditional family and tax changes favoring the very wealthy. Areas that traditionally were most unequal – notably the great global cities – have simply become more so. It is here, in the command and communication centers of the economy, that the greatest wealth has been accumulated and where we can see the rise of a new aristocracy nevertheless dependent on a large low wage service class. The next Administration and Congress should start to address these trends or the traditional American dream will become, for most citizens, no more than that. Richard Morrill is Professor Emeritus of Geography and Environmental Studies, University of Washington. His research interests include: political geography (voting behavior, redistricting, local governance), population/demography/settlement/migration, urban geography and planning, urban transportation (i.e., old fashioned generalist)

  • Gentrification from the inside out in Brooklyn’s Ditmas Park

    Twenty some years ago my husband, 2 young sons and I moved from our cramped 16-foot wide attached row house in Brooklyn’s trendy Park Slope to a free-standing, 7-bedroom Victorian house in the Ditmas Park section of Flatbush with stained glass windows, pocket doors, original wood paneling, a back yard, front porch, driveway and 2-car garage in a little-known, tree-lined neighborhood about 10 minutes away – on the other, high-crime side of Prospect Park. Friends thought we’d taken leave of our senses!

    Built early last century, our neighborhood Long has been known for its architecture, with the largest concentration of Victorian houses in America. It’s the kind of neighborhood sensible new urbanists dream about it; the only block in New York with subway stations at each end. This was a tribute to the clout of the neighborhood’s original developers who had a strong commitment to building “suburbs in the city,” and secured the best in public transportation for their customers.

    Driveways help preserve the neighborhood’s low density, while also allowing ample street parking. But before and after WWII, entire blocks of houses were torn down and apartment buildings erected in their place. Today, blocks of beautiful, 3-story Victorian houses with large front porches alternate with blocks of 5 and 6-story apartment buildings.

    Not surprisingly, the people in the houses differed, in terms of race and social class, from the people in the apartment buildings. They rarely interacted. The subway tracks demarcated the neighborhood; one side was mixed, the other predominantly black and lower middle class. When crime exploded in the 1960s and welfare tenants were moved into some of the apartments, much of the middle class – white and black – fled. By the early 1990s many assumed that nothing could be done about the collapse of the quality of life. It wasn’t unusual for police officers in that era, many of whom lived in suburban Suffolk County, to respond to crime victims condescendingly by asking, “What do you expect if you live in a neighborhood like this?”

    Little changed even after the extraordinary Giuliani/Bratton efforts brought down crime, little changed in the mid-1990s. The district’s once thriving shopping street, Cortelyou Road, still had no bank, no coffee shop, no diner, no sit-down restaurant, no children’s store, no real estate office. So there wasn’t much pedestrian traffic – or “eyes” – on the main commercial street, still dominated by 99 cent stores competing with 97 cent stores.

    Most neighborhood residents, if possible, shopped elsewhere. Frustrated by this situation, in 2001 I founded “Friends of Cortelyou,” a (very) small group dedicated to recruiting new businesses to our commercial strip. A couple of “friends” and I went to lunch, dinner, and coffee at places that we liked in other neighborhoods in Brooklyn. We introduced ourselves to owners and managers as Friends of Cortelyou, trying to convince entrepreneurs to expand into our still “below the radar” neighborhood.

    To us, the broader, social implications of local shopping were clear; people who walked to local stores on local streets, instead of driving or taking the subway to more developed neighborhoods would generate the everyday interaction that defines a lively neighborhood. Cortelyou’s commercial strip is only 7 blocks long, and a few new stores could have a significant impact.

    I figured that someone who had taken a chance in Brooklyn’s Ft. Greene, that edgy, racially (and income) diverse neighborhood might see the potential in ours which US News and World Report described as the “most diverse neighborhood in America.” One owner, a half Martiniquen, half Jewish former Parisian was hooked; he saw the possibilities for commercial development and knew first-hand the advantages of being first (namely, cheap rent and “buzz”).

    The former Parisian negotiated to take over the lease of an existing corner bar. When he ran into trouble securing “the last $30,000”, we put out a call to about 40 neighbors to raise the last start-up capital. Thirty six different neighbors agreed to loan (or give) $1000 each to back someone who would open a new restaurant in our neighborhood!

    One incredible woman, Susan Siegel, decided she wanted to bring a farmers market to the neighborhood. She worked on this full time, and a year later it opened! Some Cortelyou grocers objected to having it on their strip; a few vocal homeowners objected to unlocking a public school yard and using it to house the market. Ironically the fight over the market swelled into a local “pro-development” movement, made up of people alive to the new possibilities, and sparked a neighborhood newsletter.

    Once it opened in 2002, the Farmers Market became an informal community center, a literal common ground, for our neighborhood. The Market became a place where the full range of neighborhood residents could come together to buy fresh fruits and vegetables and to catch up on what’s happening in the schools, the playgrounds, and stores including a highly successful organic food co-op. Until then, only the homeowners were organized but now new co-op owners, home owners, and renters all came, mingling freely with each other, and with “veterans”, in a way that had not previously been the case.

    At that time we realized we needed more new and engaged residents. I tried to persuade two local realtors to sell the co-op apartments; they were far cheaper than co-ops in other good (or “good enough”) neighborhoods, and seemed like the way to bring in young or single people. But the realtors were dismissive explaining, “there’s not enough money,” or “too much work” in selling coops to make it worth their while.

    I realized I’d have to take this on myself. So I got a real estate license, affiliated with a Park Slope broker, and began selling co-ops in one building in our area. Other agents in that office didn’t mind; for them, too, it was too little money and too much work. Selling real estate and developing the neighborhood were two sides of a coin; the combination turned out surprisingly to be more fun and satisfying than I had imagined. Within two years I co-founded Brooklyn Hearth Realty, an agency I currently own with two partners, young, dynamic neighborhood residents who moved here in the twenty-first century.

    The neighborhood buzz kept growing. Jim Heaton, a local advertising executive initiated an online newsletter, FREND, and also designed a logo for Friends of Cortelyou. We had the logo printed on t-shirts and oversized shopping bags, and sold them to raise money for the few activities we sponsored that required financial support. We initiated and hosted “Welcome Receptions”, at first in our homes, then in the new restaurants that we recruited for the new residents. These turned out to be very popular, and were one more mark of distinction for our neighborhood. Local businesses joined in as sponsors.

    FREND served to “connect” nearly a thousand people and families to the new initiatives, particularly around the Farmers Market and crime, but the on-line contribution really blossomed in 2003 when Ellen Moncure and Joe Wong revived the Flatbush Family Network (FFN). This site has become an invaluable source of neighborhood and childrearing information for the many young families who live here. For many people moving into this neighborhood, FFN provides an initial introduction and orientation to life in this neighborhood. For those who live here, it’s a convenient, ongoing source of information and support.

    All this really began to congeal by 2002. New stores began to open on Cortelyou Road. One of the early successes was the Picket Fence restaurant. Picket Fence was followed by a vintage furniture store (opened by Nicole Francis, a staunch FOC member), a Mexican restaurant, a café, a bar, a bagel shop, a dance studio, a real estate office, wine store, furniture store, children’s store, natural food store, new flower shop/bar, and Tibetan Café. Meanwhile the long-established food co-op and the pizza shop both expanded and upgraded. The Farm on Adderley broke new ground in 2005, attracting attention and customers from far outside the neighborhood. The owners of that restaurant opened another a few blocks away the following year, and just opened the flower shop/bar a month ago. Once seemingly on its last legs, the neighborhood now pulses with a contagious energy.

    That energy gave birth to the Ditmas Park Blog, founded in early 2007 by Ben Smith and Liena Zagare. The blog sends local information and gossip beyond the neighborhood’s families, reaching growing numbers of singles as well. This was the first institution to target singles as much as families, extending the neighborhood’s expanding demographic boundaries. Zagare, her finger on the neighborhood’s pulse, went on to found the Ditmas Workspace in summer, 2008. She created a shared workspace in a former doctor’s office. Another former doctor’s office, also on the ground floor of a large house, has a neighborhood yoga studio and several artists working in small, separate spaces. That’s the “new use of old space” that’s helping to reconfigure our neighborhood for the 21st century.

    Much of what I’ve described occurred during the boom times of 2002 through the first half of 2008. Although Brooklyn’s market stayed strong through the summer of 2008, we now face an uncertain future in a very volatile economic climate. Perhaps people will stay closer to home, like the woman who stopped in my office on Cortelyou the other day who said, “I’m not going out as much, and trying to save money. So I’m going over to my friend’s with a bottle of wine.” After all, you can save money on transportation and on babysitting by staying closer to home.

    As I write this, the owner of a successful Manhattan restaurant is looking closely at Cortelyou, hoping to open in a “real neighborhood” where customers support local businesses. No one knows yet where the economy is headed, or what this means for our neighborhood. But we now have a vibrant neighborhood. This is no longer just a location where the houses are a comparative bargain. It’s an area with an identity.

    Jan Rosenberg taught Sociology at LIU’s Brooklyn Campus for 28 years; her studies of other Brooklyn neighborhoods, and of cities, inspired her work in Ditmas Park. She is cofounder of Brooklyn Hearth Realty.

    Photos courtesy of Joanna Grazda and Mark Gilman.

  • Sprawl is ubiquitous, even in my beloved Copenhagen

    The year I attended the University of Copenhagen as an undergraduate, I lived in a suburb north of the city and commuted to the central city via bus and rail (the famous S-trains). What a great system, I remember thinking as an impressionable ingénue (you could go anywhere, and trains were on time to the second!). When I returned as a graduate student I lived right in the city center and discovered that great public transit did not obviate the need for extensive walking (I must have worn out five pairs of shoes that year). Besides my two stints as a resident, I have been fortunate enough to return to Copenhagen countless times as a visitor for business, scholarship and pleasure, and I am familiar with the place both as a motorist and public transit user.

    In all the 37 years I have been traveling to and living in Copenhagen, it has always struck me that despite one of the best public transportation systems of which I am aware (in terms of coverage, efficiency, ease of use and affordability), and despite the fact that cars are at least twice as expensive as here in the States (the sales tax on cars is 180%), and despite the fact that gasoline is three to four times as expensive as here, and despite the fact that city parking is difficult, non-existent or prohibitively expensive (and parking fines severe) – despite all of this – rush hour traffic congestion is awful (a constant source of grief and complaint), and the endless streams of cars seem to contain, as in so many cities with lesser alternatives, lone drivers.

    It wasn’t supposed to be this way. The city development plan was designed as a hand with five fingers outstretched – the palm as city center and each of the five fingers as a corridor of residential, commercial and retail development (along rail lines, of course). This was smart growth before the term had been invented. It worked, but what was perhaps unforeseen was that development would also occur in areas in-between and beyond the five corridors. As a result, Copenhagen has become, like so many modern cities, a multi-centered urban metropolis. In order to function in this post-industrial economy and society, residents and workers need to travel freely and frequently to many different points around the metro area, at different times of the day, for different reasons, for different lengths of time, for different purposes. Because the existence of the five corridors has created a defacto hub-and-spoke system, it is difficult and prohibitively time-consuming to use public transit for such travel (and ungodly in winter). So of course Copenhagen has become as car-dependent as Los Angeles.

    Another piece of this picture is that Danes, being a free and intelligent people, prefer suburban living in detached single-family residences over enforced residential density, and prefer owning and driving their own cars over taking public transportation (if given the choice!). So despite a very leftist political orientation among elites, media, academia, government and public policy professionals (including urban planners), and despite a highly socialized component to its otherwise free-market economy, the Danish capital’s suburban job, business and population growth has been outpacing its urban growth for decades.

    According to Ronald D. Utt and Wendell Cox, writing on www.heritage.org (in response to a World Watch report, “City Limits: Putting the Brakes on Sprawl”), from 1950 to 1990 Copenhagen’s population dropped from 760,000 to 465,000, nearly 40 percent.

    Since 1960, the Copenhagen urbanized area (including suburbs) has dropped in population 14 percent, while its land area has expanded 24 percent. And from 1970 to 1990, per capita automobile usage increased nearly 70 percent in the Copenhagen area, while public transit’s market share declined 15 percent.

    This of course is a problem. People are not behaving according to our plans! According to the report “Urban Sprawl in Europe? The Ignored Challenge,” released by the European Environment Agency (based in Copenhagen, by the way), sprawl is affecting almost all of Europe’s cities: “If this trend continues, the European urban area will double in just over a century. Sprawling cities demand more energy supply, require more transport infrastructure and consume larger amounts of land. This damages the natural environment and increases greenhouse gas emissions.”

    The report identifies the key problem as too much local control of urban development decisions, and calls for “urgent action by all responsible agencies and stakeholders to realize common objectives,” or in other words, centralized planning and control. Among the report’s conclusions is this little chill-inducing nugget:

    “The EU has specific obligations and a mandate to act and take a lead role in developing the right frameworks for intervention at all levels, and to pave the way for local action. Policies at all levels including local, national and European need to have an urban dimension to tackle urban sprawl and help to redress the market failures that drive urban sprawl.”

    It’s all pointless, of course: sprawl is ubiquitous, natural, desirable, beneficial, and preferable. As Edward Glaeser (Harvard, Brookings) and Matthew Kahn (UCLA) document in “Sprawl and Urban Growth” (National Bureau of Economic Research), transportation technologies dictate urban form, and in the 21st century the dominant transportation technology is the car. Hence, the urban form of the 21st century is sprawl, or city living based on the automobile. Isn’t this a bad thing? Quite the contrary, per Glaeser and Kahn: “Sprawl has been associated with significant improvements in quality of living, and the environmental impacts of sprawl have been offset by technological change.”

    Robert Bruegmann, author of Sprawl: A Compact History (2005), would agree. He calls sprawl a logical consequence of economic growth and the democratization of society, a pattern of development that has provided millions of people with the kinds of mobility, privacy and choice that were once the exclusive prerogatives of the rich and powerful. Add Bruegmann, Glaeser, Kahn, Cox and Utt to the growing component of anti-anti-sprawl policy analysts such as John Carlisle (Capital Research Center), Peter Gordon (USC School of Urban Planning), Peter Huber (Manhattan Institute), Mark Mills (Competitive Enterprise Institute), Steve Hayward (Pacific Research Institute), Anthony Downs (Brookings Institution), and Harry Richardson (Cascade Institute).

    Copenhagen remains one of my favorite cities, a marvelous combination of the old and new. It has a great quality of life and in my experience, the Danes know how to live it. The central city is charming, and the urban sprawl adds to the possibilities and potentials for all manner of experience and opportunity. I’m already looking forward to my next trip back.

    Dr. Roger Selbert is a business futurist and trend guy. He publishes Growth Strategies, a newsletter on economic, social and demographic trends, and is a professional public speaker. Roger is US economic analyst for the Institute for Business Cycle Analysis in Copenhagen, and North American representative for its US Consumer Demand Index.

  • The American Dream: Alive and Well (Some Places)

    Even after the burst of the housing bubble, the American Dream of home ownership has remained alive in some places. As it turns out the “bubble” was far from pervasive, and as Nobel Laureate Paul Krugman indicated in The New York Times, the housing price increases were largely limited to the areas of the nation with stronger land use regulation.

    In all, at the peak of the housing bubble, 46 of 129 US markets had house prices at or below the historic ceiling of three times household incomes (see 4th International Demographia Housing Affordability Survey. Before the bubble, nearly all markets were at or below that norm, but many have risen to double, triple or even more than three times the standard.

    The American Dream can be said to have started with William Levitt, who revolutionized home building starting with his huge Levittown, New York development in the late 1940s.

    As Witold Rybczynski wrote in a recent Wilson Quarterly article, new Levittown houses could be purchased for three times the average wage in Levittown. This bought a detached 750 square foot house, without a garage. Interestingly, this was at a time when single-income families were still the norm.

    Levittown is the birthplace of the modern American Dream. It was only after the pioneering model of Levittown that home ownership became the norm by becoming affordable to middle-income and blue collar households in America. At the end of World War II, home ownership in the United States was 40 percent. By 1960, it exceeded 60 percent and since risen to above 65 percent.

    Levittown, and the automobile-oriented urban expansion it foreshadowed, resulted in the greatest democratization of prosperity in history. Wherever mass suburbanization occurred – whether in the United States, its first world cousins Canada and Australia, Western Europe or later even Japan – we have seen the unprecedented rise of a mass property-owning class.

    This economic and social advance was built on liberal land use regulation. It would not have been possible if the policies that have poisoned housing markets from Los Angeles and Portland to Miami and Boston had been in effect at that time.

    Yet there is still life outside the high-priced coastal regions. Indeed in much of the country today, new housing affordability is at least as good as it was in Levittown. Generally, where land regulation has remained reasonable, new houses can be purchased for less than three times median household incomes. Purchasers may need two incomes to get there, but the effect remains the same. Moreover, the houses in these markets generally boast two-car garages and living space nearly double that of the typical Levittown ‘starter’ house.

    The small selection of examples below is limited to metropolitan areas with high housing demand. These are not economic basket cases like those in and around certain old industrial cities. Nor are these places where the market has evaporated because so many people have left or are planning to leave. Instead these are places attracting domestic migrants from other parts of the country (especially from metropolitan areas with strong land use regulation). These listings are the result of a quick search; they may not necessarily represent the least expensive new houses available. Each has three bedrooms and all have two-car garages.

    Atlanta: A new 1,500 square foot for a base price of $130,000 – 2.3 times the median household income View listing.

    Austin: A new 1,200 square foot for a base price of $106,500 – 1.9 times the median household income View listing.

    Charlotte: A new 1,500 square foot for a base price of $133,000 – 2.5 times the median household income View listing.

    Columbia, South Carolina: A new 1,500 square foot for a base price of $130,000 – 2.7 times the median household income View listing.

    Columbus: A new 1,400 square foot for a base price of $130,000 – 2.5 times the median household income View listing.

    Dallas-Fort Worth: A new 1,250 square foot for a base price of $120,000 – 2.2 times the median household income View listing.

    Houston: A new 1,300 square foot for a base price of $100,000 – 1.9 times the median household income View listing

    Indianapolis: A new 1,500 square foot for a base price of $114,000 – 2.1 times the median household income View listing.

    Kansas City: A new 1,200 square foot for a base price of $150,000 – 2.8 times the median household income View listing.

    The list could go on and on, including virtually every area of the nation that has not driven up the price of developable land by land use regulations. The American Dream is alive and well where it has not been snuffed out by economics-be-damned urban planning policies.

    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.”

  • California Disconnect: Don’t Get Out the Vote for Congress, State Legislature

    Have you heard about the current election season in Los Angeles?

    Sure, we’ve all gotten word about the presidential campaign. But how much have you heard about races for the U.S. Congress or State Legislature?

    The member of the U.S. House of Representatives who represents my neighborhood is up for re-election, along with his 434 colleagues. So is the fellow who represents me in the California State Assembly—and his 79 colleagues.

    I haven’t heard a peep from either one of them – no automated phone calls, signs, brochures, or door knockers. I’ll bet most of you could say the same for your representatives.

    There are a couple of reasons for all of this quiet, and the first is that elected officials don’t want to campaign.

    The U.S. Congress is just as unpopular as President George W. Bush. They’ve earned the low esteem, too, because many members of both major parties have been asleep at the switch these last eight years, dozing off while our nation continued to conduct warfare abroad and inflate a housing bubble at home, putting both ends of the deal on credit.

    Members of the State Legislature just did some foot stomping with the governor that caused their annual budget to be a couple of months late—a case of tardiness that has and will cost us all plenty.

    The second – and more discomforting – reason for the quiet campaign season is that an overwhelming number of the elected officials who represent Los Angeles in Washington and Sacramento don’t need to run hard. They have “safe seats,” with boundaries for their districts carved up to give them a lock at the polls.

    There’s also a measure on the November 4 ballot that claims to fix the process of drawing up boundaries for state offices in California. Rest assured that politicians have a hand in the deal, so don’t expect much.

    Where does that leave unhappy voters?

    It seems clear that there only a couple of ways to deal with a political system that’s in such shape. The first is for everyday folks to get together and start looking for individuals they know and trust as possible candidates for various offices. Forget about political experience—all the experience in Washington and Sacramento hasn’t done us much good. Just look for bright men and women whom you know to be honorable. Tell them you want them to run for office. Then help them make the race.

    Of course it’s too late to take such steps in this election, which leaves the matter of how to make the current crop of elected officials feel your displeasure.

    Voters could make a powerful statement by withholding their votes for members of Congress and the State Legislature. This is not suggested lightly, and it’s not to say that anyone should skip the presidential election, which is simply too important to sit out.

    It’s also understood that this will hit the few legislators who have actually been working in the best interests of their constituents lately. That’s a tough break, but it’s become clear that mass punishment of the legislative class is the only way to convince them of what poor use they’ve made of our hallowed institutions. Voters must let them all know that we know the game is rigged.

    The legislative class might get the point if its members see large numbers of us vote in the presidential election but find no reason to cast a ballot for other offices. They’ll win their rigged game, but victory will come with a warning. Maybe they’ll figure out that we’re tired of safe seats choking off any hope for vibrant campaigns where ideas matter.

    Again, this is nothing to take lightly. The right to vote is sacred. Yet the very same right is abused by the current system.

    So it’s true that your vote is your voice.

    Yet it’s also true that silence can sometimes speak volumes.

    Jerry Sullivan is the Editor & Publisher of the Los Angeles Garment & Citizen, a weekly community newspaper that covers Downtown Los Angeles and surrounding districts

  • Neither fish nor fowl: Emerging urban enclaves in inner-ring suburbia

    By Peter Smirniotopoulos

    As I was walking my dog the other morning I was struck by the fact that the City of Falls Church, Virginia, the quaintly bucolic suburban “village” to which our family moved in mid-2001, was no longer suburban. It isn’t a city in the proper sense, like Washington, DC or even Alexandria, Virginia, but it is reflective of the trend towards quasi-urban places in the close-in rings – the original turn-of-the-century and pre-Levittown suburbs – enveloping our city cores.

    The City of Falls Church was formed around the middle of the last century by a group of secessionists residing in what was then a sliver of Fairfax County along the Arlington County border. The candy coated version of the city’s history holds that these secessionists were seeking to create a better school system for their children; the more cynical view is that they were creating a segregated, white school system. Whichever version of the truth you prefer, the Falls Church City Public Schools subsequently became the first public school system in the Commonwealth of Virginia to adopt the International Baccalaureate (I.B.) curriculum. In 2001, the city’s George Mason High School ranked #5 among the country’s most-challenging high schools, eventually reaching #2.

    Like many other metro areas, the geographic pattern of regional growth in the Washington metro area has been driven in by the successes of its suburban public school systems, with the Fairfax County and Montgomery County, Maryland, school districts being the most notable. A metro Atlanta county executive explained this phenomenon thusly: “People don’t want to live where they can’t educate their kids,” rationalizing why his county, with a well-respected public school system, was growing and thriving while the neighboring county, with a somewhat derided public school system, was not.

    So homebuyers have flocked to the City of Falls Church and its nationally ranked high school, putting sufficient pressure on home prices (primarily single-family detached homes on modest-sized yet verdant lots) to raise the median price precipitously. The high school certainly was a primary motivation for our move from Del Ray.

    Yet when we left our Del Ray neighborhood in Alexandria we also wanted to replicate – to the greatest extent possible – our community’s walkability and mixed-use character. Yet these fundamental attributes were not as pronounced in the City of Falls Church, in part because it is bisected by two major arterials: Va. Route 7 (cleverly named “Broad Street,” being four lanes wide), an east-west connector; and Washington Street, also known as Lee Highway or Rte 29, a north-south connector (also four-lanes wide but the name “Broad Street” had apparently already been taken).

    When we arrived in the city the stretch of Route 7 that extends west from this major intersection was characterized primarily by low-scale (i.e. one and two-story) retail and commercial buildings. The predominant commercial building typology along one stretch of Route 7 was one-and-a-half story single-family residential structures fronted by surface parking adapted for commercial uses (palm reading, anyone?), reflecting neither good urban nor suburban values.

    And yet since 2001 things began to change for the better. Local elected leaders had an epiphany that a city of two-square miles is not sustainable. Relying almost exclusively on property tax revenues from single-family detached homes simply does not generate enough money to cover the expenses they generate. The success of similar suburban-to-urban transformations in nearby Arlington County along the Metro line – like Clarendon and Ballston – was both instructive and politically comforting. City leaders and staff began to embrace the concept of denser mixed-use development, although not without taking some political heat from those insisting that their suburban village be protected and preserved.

    Today, Route 7 benefits from four, very urban mixed-use buildings – ranging in height from four to eight stories – adding dramatically to the diversity of the city’s housing stock, helping to diversify the city’s tax base, and putting boots (or at least pumps and loafers) on the street. These new buildings also provide a much better focus for the city’s “Main Street” than the single-story structures they replaced, with the new building heights and strong street walls better modulating the width and traffic flow on Route 7. A fifth new building is currently under construction and a hotel has also been approved.

    In addition, two new, mid-rise, mixed-use projects now anchor either end of Lee Highway, and an ambitious City Center project may finally become a reality, potentially trumping the visual cacophony of the nearby Route 7/Lee Highway intersection (an excellent example of bad urban forms meet typical low-rise, suburban development). Moreover, the attendant broadening of the tax base will eventually insulate the city’s fortunes from the ebbs-and-flows of either the commercial or the residential real estate markets.

    As a result, in terms of physical form and character the City of Falls Church is now much closer to “urban” than “suburban.” As ground floor retail spaces fill in and mid-rise residential units become fully occupied, that evolution from suburban to urban will become more pronounced. Residents in the single-family detached homes and newly minted McMansions lining the neighborhood streets on both sides of Route 7 also will benefit from having many more things to see and do within walking distance of their homes.

    The small-town origins of the city can still play out in somewhat nostalgic events like the Annual Memorial Day Parade (and who doesn’t love to see Shriners in their fezzes and tiny race cars). Neighbors will continue their weekly chats at the Saturday morning Farmers’ Market at City Hall. However, the train has clearly left the station on the question of whether the City of Falls Church is still a classic suburb: The only question remaining may be “What the heck do we call this thing?”

    Do any of you have a good idea?

    Peter Smirniotopoulos, Vice President – Development of UniDev, LLC, is based in the company’s headquarters in Bethesda, Maryland, and works throughout the U.S. He is on the faculty of the Masters in Science in Real Estate program at Johns Hopkins University. The views expressed herein are solely his own.

  • Why Omaha?

    I lived in or near cities for 30 years because that’s where the jobs are. I left southwestern Pennsylvania in 1977 as the closing of coal mines and steel mills wrecked the local economy. It cost almost $1,000 per semester to attend the state college, many times that for the state university. There were no opportunities for a young person. I moved to California where residents received free tuition at state universities. I earned 2 college degrees in California and advanced my career from Prudential Insurance through the Federal Reserve Bank and to the Pacific Stock Exchange. When the stock exchange closed my subsidiary, I was hired by the Depository Trust Company and moved to New York. Working in the city gave me the opportunity to further advance my career and my education. In 2000 I graduated with a PhD in economics and was hired by a think-tank in Santa Monica. In 30 years, I moved cross-continent 3 times, worked in 5 countries on 4 continents, and earned 3 college degrees.

    In 2004, I started my own business in Santa Monica to provide research and consulting in economics and finance. I attended a lot of local networking meetings for the financial services industry, chambers of commerce, economic development groups, etc. After 3 years, my business was proving quite successful, but I didn’t have any clients in Southern California. My clients were in Houston, New York, Washington DC, Chicago, London, Cairo and Taiwan. It occurred to me that I didn’t need to live in or near a city anymore. I might be able to work from anywhere that had phones and internet access.

    In May 2007, I went to Honolulu for 5 days. The time difference allowed me to work in the morning, answering emails and writing research reports. In the afternoon, I took conference calls on the beach and set up business meetings in DC for the end of the month. Pretty cool. In August 2007, I considered a job in Santa Barbara and that was the jumping off point. I didn’t take the job but I realized I could leave Santa Monica. I spent five or six months looking around in Southern California before I realized I couldn’t afford to expand there. I couldn’t increase revenue without getting more office space and bringing on staff; and I couldn’t afford the office space and staff without increasing the revenue. Call it the SoCal Catch-22: it’s just too expensive to do business there.

    In December 2007 I started looking around for a city with a lower cost base and an educated workforce. I have relatives and siblings spread around the country, so it could be any one of a dozen cities that have universities, military bases and research hospitals. I was looking for a city that understands that small-businesses are the fundamental driver of economic development. I found it in Omaha. Because my clients are outside the area, my small business also provides a layer of insulation to the local economy.

    Omaha has several universities, including the University of Nebraska and Creighton University. Offutt Air Force Base, home of Strategic Command (and the bunker where they secured the President on 9/11) is in Sarpy County, just twenty minutes to the south. Omaha ranked #22 by CNNMoney for best places to live and launch a business. The “Nebraska Advantage” tax incentives reach down to businesses of my size. By investing $75,000 and creating 2 jobs, my business receives tax incentives that can be used to recover sales tax and/or to offset my personal income taxes.

    Instead of a 6 hour flight from Los Angeles, I can reach my New York clients with a non-stop flight under three hours. I’m still only twenty minutes from the airport. For what I was paying just for a residence in Santa Monica, I have a residence, a 3-office suite and 2 assistants in Omaha. That means I can grow my business. As my business grows, the local economy will come with it.

  • Restless Americans: Migration and Population Change, 2000-2007

    Americans may be less mobile than in the past, but millions since 2000 have continued to be on the move, reshaping the landscape and economy of the nation. Three maps will be briefly discussed: one of population change by county, 2000-2007, one of net internal migration by county, and one of net immigration from abroad. We will then focus on the “extremes”, unusually large levels or intensities of net internal migration and of immigration.

    Overall population growth

    As was true in the 1990s, big growth has concentrated overwhelmingly in selected metropolitan regions — and within them, primarily in their suburbs and exurbs. The big growth areas are concentrated in Texas (Houston, Dallas-Fort Worth, San Antonio, Austin), greater Atlanta, North Carolina (Charlotte-Raleigh), most of Florida, the Virginia and Maryland suburbs of Washington-Baltimore, the desert Southwest (Riverside-San Bernardino, Las Vegas, Phoenix, Tucson). Substantial exurban or spillover growth was common, with the Bay Area extending into California Central Valley, in far exurban New York and Pennsylvania as well as in largely once rural counties around such places as Salt Lake City, Denver, Portland, Seattle, Minneapolis, Chicago, Kansas City, Nashville, Indianapolis and Columbus.

    Many smaller metropolitan areas grew, especially in the south and west. Many counties with universities appear to have also grown, notably in the South. Many rural or small-town counties with substantial growth boasted environmental amenities and a strong ‘quality of life’ appeal.

    The only big population losses were New Orleans and vicinity, but there were also vast rural small town areas with small losses, characterized by continuing out-migration, but often also by natural decrease, more deaths than births (870 counties), and covering the Great Plains, but also much of the Midwest, Appalachia and the Northeast.

    Overall the population grew by 20 million, 12 million from natural increase, and 8 million from immigration. Around 80 million Americans “migrated” (moved across a county line), 28 percent of the population, resulting in net gains of over 10 million in gaining areas, and net losses of the same 10 million to losing areas.

    Immigration

    Net immigration into the US was almost 8 million in seven years, raising the legal/known share of the foreign born to almost 12 percent of the population. There were hundreds of counties — rural, small town and small metropolitan — where immigrants landed to take agricultural and industrial jobs or to work in service jobs or in construction. This trend is exemplified by a set of counties in far southwestern Kansas (which also had high internal out-migration—mostly Hispanics moving to meat-packing jobs) and to environmental amenity ski-resort counties in Colorado (construction, service).

    The largest immigration flows continued to flow to metropolitan areas, including many large core central counties, many of which were losing heavily among domestic migrants to their suburban and exurban fringe counties. The 21 largest losing counties lost a net of 4.7 million, but gained 3.5 million immigrants. Some 40 percent of the 8 million immigrants were destined for just 8 metropolitan cores, most notably Los Angeles-San Diego, New York City, Miami-Fort Lauderdale, San Francisco-Oakland-San Jose, Chicago, Dallas-Fort Worth and Houston.

    Internal Migration

    The story of gains and losses from internal migration is a little more complex. Gaining counties attracted around 45 million migrants and sent out around 35 million, for a net gain of over 10 million. One obvious feature from the maps is the “donut” phenomenon, the prevalence of large central county net out-migration, surrounded by a ring of substantial suburban and exurban net in-migration (about two-thirds of which is from the central core counties).

    This pattern is particularly marked in Houston, Dallas, Miami, Minneapolis, Washington, DC., Atlanta, Denver, Portland, Kansas City, Memphis, Nashville, and Indianapolis. In the cases of Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle, New York and Philadelphia, the ring of growth has pushed beyond the suburban counties to adjacent areas – as to the Central Valley of California or to NE Pennsylvania and Delaware.

    Some core areas did gain, mostly and Southern communities such as Phoenix, Las Vegas, San Antonio, Charlotte and Raleigh, NC, and Knoxville, TN — southern and of more recent importance. In many of these areas the “core” county also includes many areas which might be considered suburban. In this sense, the fastest “urban growth” took place in relatively low-density, auto-dominated regions as opposed to traditional urban cores. Finally, and most obvious on the map, is the continuing high growth of central Florida across most counties.

    In contrast there are places so hurt by de-industrialization that the entire (or most) of the metropolitan areas have substantial out-migration. These include places like Detroit, Cleveland, Pittsburgh, Buffalo, Rochester, and Boston. In some places, notably Pittsburgh, even suburban areas are losing population.

    Rural and small towns also show their own dynamics. There is also continued net-out-migration for almost half of rural small –town counties in all parts of the country, but especially in the Great Plains and Midwest and in the Mississippi delta. But on the other hand, we can see continuing f net in-migration to environmentally attractive areas, often for retirement or recreation, notably in parts of the west, but also in the Ozarks and other areas in the south, upper Midwest and Northeast.

    Conclusion

    The constants here are (1) the restless mobility of the population, (2) the dominance of suburban growth; and (3) the continuing decline of more than half of rural small-town counties. Prominent in recent years, but uncertain in the longer run are (4) our strong dependence on immigration (40 percent of net national growth), (5) the locus of fastest growth in exurbia, (6) the decline of northeastern and Midwestern industrial regions; (7) the rapid growth or rural environmental amenity counties and (8) the specific set of fast-growing metropolitan areas.

    Given the severity of economic conditions, immigration could begin to slow as a result of declining employment opportunities or political opposition. Similarly exurban expansion could slow because of the housing credit collapse. It is not impossible that older industrial areas could partially recover (ample plant and housing stock) while environmental amenity areas could be hurt by recession and the housing collapse. This could also apply to some of the fastest gaining areas 2000-2005 — notably Florida and southern California — that have been the hardest hit in the 2007 on housing debacle.

    But I believe American society is resilient, and even with needed constraints on excessive housing finance abuses, and even if we are indeed approaching the era of “peak oil,” the geographic settlement pattern of recent decades most likely will persist. People will continue to migrate for the same reasons they have for decades — in search of cheaper, larger houses, for jobs, warmer weather or scenic beauty. So we can expect, as the financial crisis gradually recedes, continued growth in suburban, exurban and satellite zones of metropolitan areas, and a net flow southward and to amenity areas.

    Richard Morrill is Professor Emeritus of Geography and Environmental Studies, University of Washington. His research interests include: political geography (voting behavior, redistricting, local governance), population/demography/settlement/migration, urban geography and planning, urban transportation (i.e., old fashioned generalist)

  • Florida: The Music Has Stopped

    And those without chairs will be standing for an awfully long time

    By Richard Reep

    Florida real estate, which boasts a notorious tradition that dates back to Ponce de Leon’s search for the Fountain of Youth in 1513, has recently exceeded even its own flaky reputation. Quality of life here will suffer in the near term. In the long term, Florida’s economy will recover its viability, but in a new form.

    The immediate future will be difficult. By referendum, Florida enacted multiple property tax cuts in a state already known for low taxes. Now, with declining property values, the state legislature has drastically less money to spend on infrastructure, services, and capital improvements. Business, mostly tourism and land development, suffers from the economic turmoil. But it is the nonprofits who probably struggle the most. Floridians, known as the least generous donors to nonprofits, have now even less to donate, causing more holes in the safety net, reduced care for the needy, and reduced funding for the arts. It’s going to be a tougher state, particularly for the poor.

    Consider the Gulf coast town of Sarasota. Once known for its high-net-worth retirees, Sarasota diversified and prospered in the 1980s and 90s. Sarasota sported world-class public art along the waterfront, terrific galleries, and an affinity for contemporary architecture rare in the Southeast. Downtown was surrounded by a necklace of authentic, unique neighborhoods ranging from the Ringling School of Art in the north to Towles Court in the south. Sarasota County also boasted a mix of marine/industrial, agricultural, and tourism economies.

    Little of this has been sustainable in the current boom/bust cycle. Florida’s growth management dictates that each county submit a Comprehensive Plan for development. Once submitted, this Plan may be amended by the county Planning Commission if a landowner has sufficient cause to challenge it. Sarasota County’s Comprehensive Plan historically focused on coastal development. The pressure to add massive tracts of subdivisions, however, amended the Plan multiple times, diluting this concentration and allowing eastern inland regions of agricultural land to be rezoned for single-family houses. “It’s as if a company’s business plan could be changed at will by any employee of the company”, commented one county staff member recently, “making this Plan totally meaningless.” Sarasota threw away its own special sense of place, to its own detriment.

    As a result, the cultural life of Sarasota has perceptibly declined. Art galleries are closed, the public art venue is vacant, and waterfront redevelopment has stalled. In an effort to chase high-tech jobs, the county ignored the needs of a major local employer, causing the employer to relocate thousands of jobs out of the county. No high-tech companies were recruited in the process. Sarasota will need a great effort to pull out of this dive.

    Orlando, in the northern center of the peninsula of Florida, is a quintessential Ephemeral City, supporting private, world-class family entertainment. Orlando has suffered from similar issues as Sarasota, but somewhat less dramatically. Unlike Sarasota, Orlando can expand in all directions and has earnestly done so, encompassing three counties and two million people.

    Orlando seems to live in Disney’s bright shadow. Getting to know the older, denser parts of Orlando in more detail takes time. This mostly-ignored area offers an authentic and beautiful place that is relatively livable in terms of affordability, access, and social life.
    When the music was playing, downtown politicians were giving tax incentives to unique arts-oriented businesses that moved downtown. Today, they offer similar tax breaks to big box retail. Like downtowns of many primary and secondary cities, Orlando has sprouted multiple – mostly empty – condominium towers, but the city escaped the egregious situation of Miami (20+ empty towers). Nearly all surrounding communities have emulated this condition, with even sleepy Sanford (population 39,000) displaying an empty downtown condominium.

    Spreading out from downtown Orlando are older suburbs – including College Park, Thornton Park, and Old Winter Park – where marvelous pockets of sustainable mixed-use streets are interlaced with lakes and diverse residential neighborhoods. The saddest counterpoint to these jewels is the half-brownfield efforts of developers from Texas, North Carolina, and Atlanta. Large tracts of older building stock in these neighborhoods have been bought and scraped clean, with billboards advertising bland, residential-over-retail “town centers.” Without residential buyers, these projects have stalled, leaving empty wastelands of sand poignantly anchored by lonely sales trailers likely to remain dormant for years.

    Central Florida is also the breeding ground of garish New Urbanism developments, most notably Celebration and its facsimiles. These form-obsessed developments issue patternbooks for architecture, hoping that front porch control will instill community values and social order among those able to afford their mortgages and community association dues. Planners of these neighborhoods seem to find the industrial-era “streetcar suburb” to be the best America has had to offer. Every advance or innovation since then is regarded as too ‘modern’.

    At the same time, the social dimension of New Urbanist development has been very disappointing. Promoted in its early phase as a way to integrate multiple income levels into one community, New Urbanism is instead an excuse to ratchet up home sizes, lot sizes, and property prices to the highest possible threshold. There may be far more diversity in post-1950s suburban tracts than in these Celebration look-alikes.

    Further out, Orlando’s more conventional new subdivisions are in a similar condition to those of Phoenix and parts of California. All these trends make for a mixed prognosis for the livability of this region, and the State of Florida overall, after the unsold inventory is finally distributed and occupied.

    Yet despite the global factors working against them, both Orlando and Sarasota still have areas of interesting, special, and authentic quality for which locals and visitors express genuine affection. People who care about the quality of their built environment always seem to find a way to improve it, whether by overt investment in downtowns or in more covert fashion by staging cutting-edge art events in abandoned warehouses. The spirit of a good community seems to be alive, despite the uncertain future of Florida. Due to the intrinsic appeal of warm weather and beaches, a broad cross-section of people will continue to relocate here.

    Florida real estate will certainly continue its colorful tradition, but who will profit in the long run? I think communities that invest in the basics – good education, good jobs, and well-planned infrastructure – will find themselves leading the state’s next resurgence.

    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.