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  • JimE

  • One Step for Short-term Economic Stimulus, and One Giant Leap (backward) for U.S. Energy Sustainability

    The “cash for clunkers” (or CARS) program that was widely predicted to be extended by the Congress has been, if nothing else, a clear public relations win for the Obama Administration. It may also be, at least for the short-term, a shot in the arm for the beleaguered American auto industry (including domestic dealerships of foreign car companies, like Honda and Toyota). But the program’s extension may also be bad news for anyone who was hoping that candidate Obama’s campaign promises to fix our domestic energy policy would translate into something resembling a robust make-over.

    Don’t get me wrong; I am a huge fan of President Obama. And I am generally very supportive about what the Administration is trying to do. The President’s agenda is nothing if not ambitious, or may be better described as audacious. In no particular order, President Obama is seeking to fix the environment, reform the healthcare system, overhaul banking and financial services regulations, reverse a downwardly spiraling national and global economy, repair race relations in America, and get drivers to cease texting and talking on their cell phones while driving.

    And yet, one of President Obama’s greatest strengths may also be his greatest weakness: The willingness and ability to compromise, as it is the fundamental nature of compromise that the outcome will inevitably be less than ideal. This consequence of compromise can be seen clearly in the President’s efforts to secure Congressional approval of an additional $2 billion in funding for the CARS program.

    The initial concept behind CARS was elegant in its simplicity: give owners of “gas-guzzlers” (i.e. automobiles with highly inefficient internal combustion engines) a monetary incentive to trade their fuel inefficient vehicles for highly fuel-efficient replacements. The auto industry – albeit more centered in Tokyo than Detroit on this point – clearly is producing numerous passenger vehicles capable of achieving a combined city/highway rating of 30 miles-per-gallon (mpg) or more. Yet there remain a number of registered motor vehicles in the U.S. with substantially less than 18 mpg ratings under the program (any vehicle with a mpg rating above that is not worthy of the “clunker” moniker).

    If this was the Administration’s original goal for the CARS program, the $1 billion authorization could have had a considerable impact on fuel consumption. Assuming the maximum rebate of $4,500 on every trade-in, almost a quarter of a million (222,222 to be exact) fuel-inefficient vehicles would have been voluntarily taken off America’s roads. Great idea! Triple that program funding amount to $3 billion, coupled with the same lofty goal, and two-thirds of a million fuel inefficient cars would have been swapped out for highly fuel efficient cars. If the average driver puts 12,000 miles per year on a car, and the average improvement in fuel efficiency is 12 mpg (i.e. from 18 mpg to 30 mpg) the program would save 1,000 gallons of gas per car, per year, or 666,666,000 gallons of gas annually.

    If only this purpose – to incentivize drivers to purchase only the most fuel efficient vehicles – had remained the thrust of the CARS program. However, it seems that the elegant simplicity behind the CARS concept became intertwined in the “since the government now owns GM and Chrysler don’t you think we should do something to spur domestic car sales” debate. All of a sudden, light trucks (the product type on which the Big Three hung their hats and, subsequently, on which they were hung by their collective petard) became eligible provided they are more fuel-efficient than the millions of light trucks already registered and on domestic highways. So, instead of a rising fleet of truly efficient cars we now see sales of new SUVs of all sizes and dimensions, and not just the recently introduced hybrid versions, being allowed a “cash-for-clunkers” rebate. All that is necessary is for the trade-in vehicle to qualify under CARS and the newly purchased SUV achieve a paltry 18 combined mpg.

    In other words, the concept behind the initial legislation appears to have quickly devolved from “let’s incentivize the best consumer behavior possible when it comes to fuel efficiency” to “let’s get people to buy passenger cars, SUVs, and light trucks.” The Hummer H3, for example, with an MSRP of less than $45,000 (the maximum MSRP allowed under CARS), and a combined city/highway mpg of 18, could qualify for the rebate program (hoping the irony is not lost on anyone that a vehicle, the Humvee, that was the exclusive product of a publicly owned entity, the Defense Department, ended up being the product of another publicly owned entity, GM).

    There’s no doubt that CARS was wildly successful in its public debut, so much so that the $1 billion in federal rebate funds were projected to run out within the first 30 days of the program’s roll-out. Car dealerships and automakers were as ecstatic in their praise for the program as they were vociferous in their clamor to seek the additional $2 billion in Congressional funding. However, the pace at which the CARS rebates were utilized strongly suggests that the cash-for-clunkers program would have been equally successful even if Congress had stuck to the original premise of the program: To get car owners to trade in the worst mpg offenders for the exemplars of fuel efficiency. Instead, Congress and the Administration have botched the chance to make a real, lasting difference, while spending $3 billion in the process.

    So here are the “outcomes” of CARS thus far: According to cars.com, the top ten fuel-efficient cars sold in the U.S. range from the Honda Fit (32 combined mpg) to the Toyota Prius (46 combined mpg). However, based on statistics tracked by jalopnik.com, of the top ten new vehicles purchased using CARS rebates only two, the Toyota Prius (#1 in fuel efficiency and #4 in most-purchased) and the Honda Fit (#10 in fuel efficiency and #9 in most-purchased), are on both lists (see the table below). In fact the list of the most-purchased vehicles using CARS rebates appears to be comprised of more lower-priced cars (e.g. the Chevy Cobalt and Hyundai Elantra) and cars that were already very high-volume sellers before the economic downturn (e.g. Toyota Camry and Corolla).

    Ten Most-Purchased Vehicles Using CARS Rebate*

    Ten Most Fuel-Efficient Vehicles Sold in the U.S.**

    1

    Toyota Corolla

    1

    Toyota Prius 48/45/46 mpg

    2

    Ford Focus FWD

    2

    Honda Civic Hybrid 40/45/42 mpg

    3

    Honda Civic

    3

    Smart Fortwo 33/42/36 mpg

    4

    Toyota Prius

    4

    Nissan Altima Hybrid 35/33/34 mpg

    5

    Toyota Camry

    5

    Toyota Camry Hybrid 33/34/34 mpg

    6

    Hyundai Elantra

    6

    Volkswagen Jetta TDI 30/41/34 mpg

    7

    Ford Escape FWD

    7

    Ford Escape Hybrid*** 34/31/32 mpg         

    8

    Dodge Caliber

    8

    Toyota Yaris 29/36/32 mpg

    9

    Honda Fit

    9

    MINI Cooper/Clubman 28/37/32 mpg

    10

    Chevrolet Cobalt

    10

    Honda Fit 28/35/31 mpg

    *as posted on jalopnik.com Aug. 7th

    **as posted on cars.com Aug. 7th, city/hwy/combined mpg                             

    *** also includes Mercury Mariner/Mazda Tribute Hybrid

    Inasmuch as Congress has already approved the additional $2 billion for the CARS program – without improving the fuel efficiency goals the program incentivizes – then why don’t we at least be honest about it and just add the $3 billion CARS price tag to the federal auto industry bailout. Sadly, as it stacks up now, claiming that this program is all about fuel efficiency or domestic energy policy is a sham.

    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.

  • Confronting Street Art

    By Richard Reep

    Street art has been around since ancient times, with the triple theme of craft, sabotage, and branding. Paris’ “Blec le rat” and New York’s Taki 183 were early pioneers in street art. Today, street art has spread into nearly every city with artists, media, and collectors. Skateboards, tattoos, stickers, and spray paint are but a few examples of the craft of the street. The adrenalin rush an artist feels in executing his work is augmented by the urban thrill of working at night, rushing to leave behind a signature before the police come. The chief aim of most street art is branding, as the artist’s main form of expression is to create a recognizable personal logotype.

    On the street, the city’s public space in general has slowly been eviscerated by our culture of consumption, for it provides an antiquated, nearly obsolete physical format for civic discourse. Long ago proclaimed dead by noted architect Daniel Liebeskind, physical public space has precipitously declined in value to most of the citizens of the city. In its place has risen virtual public space – first television, which was a one-way path, and then the internet, which provides a two-way path.

    Yet physical public space continues to serve as medium of the new Street Art form. Stickers, tags, skateboards, and tattoos are all viewed on the street, offering a means to carry this new art form into the next century. The so-called “cutting edge” artists have retreated into their private studios to conceive their next moves in video or computers, but the street artists have taken over the city.

    The elite artists may inhabit the galleries but street artists proclaim their brand of art as supreme. Globalism is achieved by hard work: Artists like Barry McGee or Banksy are no longer confined to one city; Space Invader, having successfully placed his own particular brand across the face of Paris, now has spread to London and New York, making his own global art tour as a form of civic art.

    Viewing a piece of graffiti at once causes a reaction of fear and a perception of danger. Can anyone claim the same immediate, visceral reaction to anything seen in a gallery or museum? This art form reaches people at such a gut level that it trumps most of the work of other artists being exhibited and discussed in the art world. Street artists use this to their own advantage, and their craft reinforces what McLuhan described so well in his epigram “the medium is the message.” The content of the piece is almost irrelevant; the viewer’s reaction is the same regardless of the tag’s content or author.

    Street art is tied into a larger urban culture, and expresses the visual aspect of this larger milieu. As Western mainstream culture retreats from the street into the air-conditioned, connected bubbles of the suburbs, street art and its culture expands to fill the empty space. The zone emptied by the suburbanites does indeed reek of death, more so today, as public investment in the city dwindles or becomes remarkably predictable or prosaic. Budget cuts in schools, government facilities, and even basic street maintenance presage an ever higher level of decay and disrepair, of neglect and abandonment of our shared space, and those who inhabit this space are simply documenting what they see and returning it back to us. We cannot escape the messages of street art, for they are everywhere, embedded into the context. Some are more overt, and some are covert – only noticed, for example, when waiting for a red light – but they are there, reminding us that there is life amidst the emptiness.

    Graffiti’s barrage of skulls, vacant-eyed cartoon children, and other signs of death and destruction are easy to ignore, but they are telling us something important about the urban environment. The sooner we stop and examine this evidence, the sooner we can begin a process to find common ground, and to seek out a shared vision that does not divide the urban world into an us-and-them mentality. Street art simply puts visual form to the voices we have so long shut out of the urban conversation.

    In Orlando, the trend of giving street artists “permission walls,” or walls where they have permission to paint their work, has tamed and channeled some of the sabotage. By allowing graffiti artists to work with permission, they are free to develop their craft without fear of getting caught before completion, and the artwork becomes a colorful, mural-sized effort to which the artists can point with pride. These permission walls encourage friendly competition between teams, or crews, and there is a sense of pride among them for having created something with great exposure.

    Two permission walls exist to the east of downtown Orlando, but it is the cluster of warehouses at 630 E. Central that showcase graffiti artwork at its best. Artist Robin Van Arsdol owns part of this cluster and has been sponsoring an international graffiti conference for several years, bringing in artists from Europe, the Caribbean, and North America for a weekend of painting at his studios. Driving by his property offers a study in converting urban form into art, and perhaps suggests the visual future of more than one city.

    The graffiti artists have offered a philosophical change-up that should not be overlooked. The conversation about postmodern art seemed to have reached a dead end some time ago; artists
    first threw out figure, then form, then color, then the frame, and then wandered into their process itself as an art form. Graffiti artists begin with the end: their signature, or tag, becomes the art,
    and by using this as the starting point, and the city as their canvas, they unconsciously offer a new beginning to think about the relationship between art and the city.

    We must accept the challenge that graffiti artists offer us. We need to confront this takeover of the physical urban form and push back. Street art constitutes a fresh, interesting language. It is the language of a city that is weak and divided. We must hear what graffiti says to us as a society, and retake our physical urban character as a common, broad place that offers secure, sacred, and special places for all citizens. By ignoring graffiti art, we postpone our treatment of the urban malaise. By confronting it and bringing it into the mainstream, we can better treat our urban condition and improve the city as a dwelling place for the benefit of all.

    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.

  • Toward Carbon Free Petroleum Cars

    On-board sequestration could make zero carbon dioxide emission petroleum cars possible, according to research conducted by Dr. Andrei Federov and David Damm at the Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering at Georgia Tech. According to Science Daily:

    …the Georgia Tech team outlines an economically feasible strategy for processing fossil or synthetic, carbon-containing liquid fuels that allows for the capture and recycling of carbon at the point of emission. In the long term, this strategy would enable the development of a sustainable transportation system with no carbon emission.

    Ultimately, the approach would involve carbon capture within petroleum vehicles. The petroleum would be processed into hydrogen, for propulsion and carbon dioxide. The carbon dioxide would be converted, on board, to liquid fuel and removed at gasoline stations. The liquid fuel would then be sent to power plants, where it would be used to produce electricity. As the necessary infrastructure is being developed, the captured carbon dioxide would be removed at gasoline stations and “sequestered in geologic formations, under the ocean or in solid carbonite form.”

    This breakthrough demonstrates that it is not necessary to target the automobile or the automotive lifestyle that pervades modern living to achieve sufficient reductions in greenhouse gases. This is particularly important, given the imperative for maintaining economic growth and employment growth, which is closely linked to high levels of personal mobility.

    The research was financed by the United States federal government and the Georgia Tech “Creating Energy Options” program.

  • New York City Closes Shop

    Mayor Michael Bloomberg owes 200,000 small business owners an apology.

    When Michael Bloomberg was first elected Mayor of New York City in 2001, the city’s small business owners were hopeful and confident that finally a successful businessman would be creating the city’s economic policy. They hoped to see an end to powerful special interests that, through political donations, had gained control over the economic policy of the city.

    New York’s small business community had been in a state of crisis ever since former Mayor Ed Koch gave the keys to the city and opened all the city’s government doors to real estate speculators and developers. His economic policy of favoring only a handful of developers and real estate speculators resulted in tens of thousands of long established small businesses being forced to close. New York City had the worst anti-small business environment in the nation, and the July, 1986 Inc. magazine headline said it all, “New York, New York the Worst Place in America to Start a Business.” This anti small business environment continued under two more Mayors, David Dinkins and Rudy Giuliani. It would be up to Bloomberg to change course and save the city’s small businesses from the “death grip” that landlords had on them.

    The small business community anticipated that Bloomberg’s first change would be to appoint a small business owner as Commissioner of Small Businesses. The best choice would be a Hispanic business person with no ties to the real estate industry. This would be a major change in policy because previous policy makers were closely tied to the real estate industry, and none had ever owned a small business. A Hispanic Commissioner would be justified because Hispanics owned between 42 and 45% of all the city’s small businesses.

    To the disappointment of the city’s desperate small business owners, Bloomberg appointed Robert Walsh Commissioner of Small Businesses. Walsh had never owned or operated a small business. He was in North Carolina at the time of his selection, managing the Charlotte Center City Partners, a property owners/banks organization promoting a business district in that city. His background included working for the property owners as director of a Business Improvement District, the Union Square Partnership, in New York City. Walsh’s selection would create the worst anti-small business environment of any city in the nation.

    A reliable way to evaluate the stability of New York City’s small business community is to examine the number of Commercial Warrants for Eviction. The majority of these warrants are issued to “holdover commercial tenants” whose leases have expired, and who can’t afford to pay the new, higher rent. The consensus of business organizations is that these warrants represent about one third of small businesses; the ones that stay and fight in court. The other two-thirds walk away without a fight. During what many consider the reign of terror for small businesses — 1986-1989, the last 4 years of Koch’s term — 17,433 warrants were issued to evict small businesses, out of approximately 53,000 total small business failures. During the last full four years under Bloomberg, 2005-2008, 27,809 warrants were issued to evict, with about 83,000 small businesses forced to close. Since the successful businessman Bloomberg took office, around 152,964 small businesses have been forced to go out of business.

    The circus is not the greatest show on earth; Walsh’s Small Business Services department is. For the past seven years, on paper, the department has had numerous programs to assist small businesses. If you did not see for yourself the long established neighborhood small businesses that have been forced to close every month, and the empty stores on every block in every neighborhood, you might believe that the SBS was actually helpful. The testimony by Walsh and Bloomberg on the state of the city’s small businesses before the city council is a long list of SBS programs and their successes.

    Two things happened to highlight the true state of NYC’s small businesses. The first was the decline of tax dollars generated by Wall Street. This caused a shift in the focus to NYC’s 200,000 small businesses, which were now called upon to carry more of the tax burden and job creation.

    The second was a survey of Hispanic small businesses (see PDF, below). A new Hispanic chamber, the USA Latin Chamber of Commerce, was recently formed in New York City and conducted a citywide survey of 938 Hispanic business owners in early 2009. Over half of the businesspeople believed they were at risk to close due to high rents. Seventy percent had been forced to lay off workers due to high rents. When they first opened their businesses in NYC, 91% believed it was the best city in the nation to invest in the American Dream. Today, 84% believe New York City is no longer a good place for immigrants to open their businesses. The main reason given, again, high rents and unreasonable lease terms. Of those surveyed, 82% would not recommend to a friend or family to open a business in the city.

    One of the survey’s biggest surprises concerned demands by landlords or agents for “cash money” under the table to negotiate a new lease; 31% answered yes, and business organizations have come forward to predict that the real figure is between 45-55% of mostly immigrant small businesses. The results confirmed another survey (see PDF, below), this one by the USA Bodegas Assoc., that the city’s small businesses were in a “Crisis” and in peril of disappearing completely without government protection.

    Bloomberg did not follow the leadership of President Obama, who called for quick actions to save small businesses. Walsh expanded his “dog and pony show” with a citywide PR campaign which claimed that the city’s small business problems resulted from the recent decline in the economy, and by offering a series of government programs: business conferences, business forums, loan programs, initiatives, all intended to stimulate start-ups and expansions. But at a recent city council hearing, Councilman Robert Jackson asked “Does the SBS have a single program to save or keep a single small business from going out of business in New York City?” Walsh reluctantly had to answer “no”.

    In March, 2009 a coalition of 67 citywide business/union/tenant organizations was formed; The Coalition to Save Hispanic Small Businesses released a final report recommending that the best solutions could be found in Jackson’s Small Business Survival Act. The bill is based upon a simple system of regulating the commercial lease renewal process. It would give tenants the right to renewal, and encourage bargaining in good faith between the landlord and tenant.

    A city council hearing was finally held this past June before the city council’s small business committee. The three SBS representatives took the side of the property owners against the city’s small businesses. They testified that Bloomberg would not support the bill because it would be too costly to administer at a time when funds were scarce. When asked how costly, they admitted they did not do any actual accounting, but thought it would be costly. An attorney for the Small Business Coalition explained that there was no costs associated with administering the bill since it would be a contractual process where costs would be shared equally between the tenant and the landlord.

    SBS also objected that there was no need for the bill since the rental market was weakened by the recession, and landlords were negotiating with tenants to keep them. Supporters explained that the timing was ideal because it would have no impact on those landlords negotiating in good faith.

    During the recent impasse, the SBS spokespeople made clear that they did not wish to seek a compromise or alternative solution. And the apology that Mayor Bloomberg owes to New York City’s hard working small business people is also nowhere to be found on the table.

    Stephen Null was the owner of three small businesses in New York City during the 1970s and ’80s. In 1984 he founded the Coalition for Fair Business Rents, and in 1991 he co-founded the New York Small Business Congress. He is currently Director of the Lead Free Children Foundation.

  • Reducing Vehicle Miles Traveled Produces Meager Greenhouse Gas Emission Reduction Returns

    Senators Jay Rockefeller (D-West Virginia) and Frank Lautenberg (D-New Jersey) have introduced legislation that would require annual per capita reductions in driving each year. Another bill, the National Transportation Objectives Act, introduced by Representative Rush Holt (D-Indiana), Representative Russ Carnahan (D-Missouri) and Representative Jay Inslee (D-Washington.) would require a 16 percent reduction in driving in 20 years.

    Last week, a highly publicized report by the Urban Land Institute (Moving Cooler) also called for policies that would reduce the vehicle miles traveled (VMT) by people in their cars. This report was analyzed here by Alan Pisarski). The reductions in driving would be achieved by highly intrusive land use policies that would make it impossible for most Americans to live where they want, allow for only minor expansion of roadway capacity and force almost all new development to be within existing urban footprints. It would employ such radical strategies as forcing people to pay $400 per year to park their cars in front of their own homes.

    The assumption behind these initiatives is that reducing driving will produce substantial reductions in greenhouse gas emissions. It sounds like a simple enough proposition, since cars emit greenhouse gases in direct proportion to the gasoline they consume. It would seem logical that reducing their use would lower their emissions by a similar percentage. Moving Cooler assumes that for every 10 percent reduction in driving miles, there will be a 9 percent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions.

    Meager GHG Emission Reductions from Reducing Driving: But things are not nearly so simple. It appears that reducing vehicle miles would not produce a similar reduction in greenhouse gases from cars.

    It is well known that at the slower speeds of vehicle operation in cities, fuel economy tends to decline with speed. Further, as congestion increases, so does fuel consumption, due to longer idling periods (such as at signals or in stopped traffic), more acceleration and more deceleration. Thus, not only does fuel economy drop when average speeds drop, but it drops even further when traffic congestion intensifies. The extent to which any reduction in urban driving would reduce greenhouse gas emissions is not at all well known, simply because there has been insufficient research on the subject.

    Perhaps the best indication is a comparison of Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) “driving cycles,” which are tests used to estimate some emissions (although not greenhouse gases) and fuel economy. There is considerable data for the normal urban cycle, which replicates driving conditions in most of the nation’s urban areas. There is much less information available for the “New York City Cycle,” which replicates the congested traffic conditions in New York City, which is far more congested than any of the nation’s urban areas (Note).

    Under the New York City Cycle average speeds are two-thirds less than under the average urban cycle. This reduction in speed and increase in congestion results in a 50 percent loss in fuel economy, according to an Argonne National Laboratory Study. Thus, between New York City and the average urban area, fuel efficiency drops at a rate 80 percent of the lower driving rate in New York City.

    On average, vehicle travel in New York City is approximately 8 miles per capita daily. In the average large urban area outside New York City (such as the Phoenix urban area, or for that matter the suburbs of New York City), vehicle travel is approximately 24 miles per day per capita. Thus, per capita driving in New York City is 67 percent less than in Phoenix. However, because of the loss in fuel consumption, the greenhouse gas emissions from cars per capita is only 31 percent less (Figure 1). Thus, the limited data indicates that nearly one-half of the greenhouse gas emissions difference between New York City driving rates and Phoenix driving rates are cancelled out by the impacts of slower speeds and increased congestion.

    Shortcomings of Policies to Reduce Driving: UCLA’s Lewis Center for Regional Policy Studies Program on Local Government Climate Action Policies raised concerns about relying on VMT reduction policies in a submittal to the California Air Resources Board:

    Especially in congested areas of California, VMT is an inadequate proxy for vehicle greenhouse gas emissions.

    Yet it is precisely more intense traffic congestion that we can expect if federal laws and policies should force most development into present urban footprints. Between 2010 and 2030, nearly 70,000,000 residents will be added to US urban areas, an increase of more than 25 percent. This increase would mean that the legislation introduced by Congressmen Hold, Carnahan and Inslee would require a one-third reduction in per capita driving to achieve its overall 16 percent reduction. Per capita driving declines such as those envisioned by the Congressmen or Moving Cooler have never occurred before in any American (or international) urban area. By comparison, charging people $400 to park their cars in front of their houses seems utterly reasonable.

    Further, higher population densities are associated with more intense traffic, both at the national and international level. Policies such as recommended by Moving Cooler would produce little additional highway capacity to handle the far higher levels of driving produced by a larger population. We could expect traffic congestion to increase markedly. It would take longer to get to work and local air pollution would be more intense (a health impact largely ignored by proponents of higher densities).

    The Economic Cost: A serious economic toll would be produced by more grid-locked urban areas, because of the positive relationship between personal mobility and economic performance. Remy Prud’homme and Chang-Woon Lee of the University of Paris have shown that greater economic mobility is associated with greater economic growth. Greater personal mobility also alleviates poverty, according to a Progressive Policy Institute study):

    In most cases, the shortest distance between a poor person and a job is along a line driven in a car. Prosperity in America has always been strongly related to mobility and poor people work hard for access to opportunities. For both the rural and inner-city poor, access means being able to reach the prosperous suburbs of our booming metropolitan economies, and mobility means having the private automobile necessary for the trip. The most important response to the policy challenge of job access for those leaving welfare is the continued and expanded use of cars by low-income workers.

    The UCLA submission further notes that policies aimed at reducing driving could damage the economy:

    … policies which seek to reduce VMT may hinder economic growth without reducing emissions.

    The relationship between greater mobility and economic prosperity is also demonstrated at the national level. This is vividly illustrated in the chart from the United States Department of Energy (Figure 2).

    The significant improvements in fuel economy from higher mileage cars and less carbon intensive fuels will do far more to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from cars than the meager results that can be achieved by heavy handed policies to “coerce” people out of their cars (as Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood put it). And, critically, it would do so with far less impact on both economic and physical mobility.

    Both the Economy and Greenhouse Gas Emissions at Stake: With the economic challenges facing the nation, policy makers need to steer clear of strategies that hobble the economy, like forcing people to drive less (or pay $400 to park in front of their houses) and make only minor improvements in reducing emissions. Indeed, a society with less money will have less to spend on reducing emissions through the adoption of new technologies that offer greater hope for creating a more prosperous as well as more environmentally sustainable society.

    Note: The New York City refers to the City of New York, not the metropolitan area or the urban area.

    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.”

  • People, Planet, Prefurbia

    The term “sustainable” relates to a concept called the “Triple Bottom Line” (TBL): People, Planet, and Profit (the three P’s), endorsed by the United Nations in 2007 for urban and community accounting.

    American suburban land planning is about the SBL (Single Bottom Line): Profit. In city after city, mindless cookie cutter subdivisions, with characterless architecture, serve cars more than people. This dysfunction is caused by the boiler-plate regulations; engineers adhere to the minimum dimensions mandated by city ordinances to gain density, which maximizes developer’s profits. City council and planning commission members are appalled by the monotonous plans developers submit. Subdivisions that meet the minimums must be eventually approved. Developers are judged as evil, but they rely on the engineer who simply follows the city rules. Everyone mistakenly trusts that the consultant whose business card says “Land Planner” is the expert who will lay out the best development. However, “Land Planning” is not a regulated profession.

    What? Astonishingly there are no regulatory requirements to prevent anyone from representing him or herself as a land planner… you too can become one by simply printing the title on your business card, and everyone will assume that you, too are an expert. The suburbs have been ripe for a preferable system, one that we call ‘Prefurbia’. The concept was recently featured in Environmental Protection because of its potential for urban renewal. In terms of what it can do for suburbs, compare Conventional development to Prefurbia in terms of the three P’s of sustainability:

    People: Conventional Subdivision

    The land planner subdivides lots into ordinance minimums. If the city requires that a percentage of the site be set aside for open space, the area likely to be chosen is one that would not be fit for construction, rather than the best open space location for residents. Streets are designed first, then lots. No attention is given to the home or townhome unit other than a “pad” size to fit the structure. The main design focus is always the street layout (also true in Smart Growth plans). If there are any walkways, they parallel the street edge. The typical suburban maze-like street pattern is often difficult to drive through, and even more difficult for pedestrians, which further encourages a drive over a stroll. Suburban Land Use Transitions (zoning) place the lowest income (highest densities) in the most undesirable places. Positioning a high concentration of families overlooking loading docks along the rear of strip retail centers is not just acceptable, it’s encouraged.

    People: Prefurbia

    In Prefurbia, the Neighborhood Planner designs the pedestrian system first. Destinations for the walks are targeted as a basis for the open space “system,” assuring convenient pedestrian connectivity through the developers land. This is called a Pedestrian Oriented Design (POD). In Prefurbia, the suburban desire for space reigns supreme. Each home, attached or detached, is designed to assure that living areas are placed along the best views, giving the illusion of low density. The consultants who design the Prefurbia neighborhood (architects, planners and engineers) must do something that is foreign to them: they need to actually talk to each other! The architectural floor layouts, interior walls and window locations are an integrated component of the overall neighborhood, a first for land planning. Housing is situated so that each home sculpts a unique streetscape, eliminating monotony while embracing individualism (even if the architecture is somewhat repetitive).

    Prefurbia land use places higher density along the most desired site amenities without regard to residents income. In the design process, all income levels are treated as upper class. This new land use theory is called Connective Neighborhood Design (CND).

    Retail in Prefurbia is called the Neighborhood Marketplace. Neighborhood congregation areas such as patios, boardwalks, decks, ponds, etc., are placed along the rear of retail centers, which are also main pedestrian destinations. Since the Prefurbia pedestrian systems are separate from streets, there are few conflict points with vehicles. When walks are situated along streets they meander gracefully as far from the street edge as possible.

    Planet: Conventional

    Subdivision planning sets homes parallel to the edge of the street at the exact minimum distance allowed by regulations. The land planner must stretch the street as much as possible through the site to gain density (also true with Smart Growth design). The developer is burdened with constructing enormous street and utility main lengths to achieve the greatest density. Traffic flow is an afterthought.

    Planet: Prefurbia

    The Prefurbia Neighborhood Planner designs something very unnatural… a plan with dimensions greater than the minimums. Using entirely new geometric theory made practical by new technologies, the Neighborhood Planner separates the street pattern from the positioning of the homes, which results in lesser street length, but maintains density. This creates more organic (non-paved) space – lots of it! It’s more art than science to create independent, meandering shapes that open up the streetscape. In this scenario, it’s possible to maintain density by reducing the length of street by (typically) 25% compared to conventional planning and up to 50% compared to Smart Growth principals.

    The extra landscaped area allows the Prefurbia Neighborhood Engineer to design with much lower environmental impact, and to reduce development costs. The flowing vehicular pattern reduces both time and energy when driving through the neighborhood. All of this together means that in Prefurbia, Green is affordable. Imagine the implications worldwide.

    Profit: Conventional

    A cookie-cutter subdivision developer relies on a price point to generate a profit. The local Land Planner is likely to design the same style for all clients with the thought that the minimum dimensions allowed by ordinance are in fact the absolute dimensions. Because of this, most, if not all, of the developments within the town will look and feel alike. Because competing developments look the same they must compete mainly on price. Selling cheaper to make a profit makes little sense. This is made worse when the Conventional (and Smart Growth) design requires the longest possible street lengths (and, therefore, costs) to achieve density. With the reduced lot values today, building excessive infrastructure from Conventional and Smart growth design can make many developments unprofitable.

    Financial Sustainability: Prefurbia

    Profit is not the correct word to describe the financial advantages of Prefurbia. A home is not something that is disposable after the initial sale. Subdividing land sets a pattern that continues to exist for many centuries. An average home sells once every six years. If the number of residents for each home represents just three people, a 100 unit layout will affect the lives and finances of 10,000 people over two centuries. The financial advantage of Prefurbia is based on a significant reduction of infrastructure that’s needed for development, which allows more funds to be spent on curb appeal. The ability to pay more attention to character building (architectural and landscaping elements) without increasing the initial home price provides a tremendous market advantage.

    Will the home buyer or renter prefer the claustrophobic garage grove subdivision over the beautiful, functional, open Prefurbia neighborhood? The advantages will continue to provide financial sustainability every time a resident resells the property.

    And with a significant reduction of public infrastructure, the municipality is the big winner. A 25% reduction in streets translates into 25% less cost to maintain, yet the tax base stays the same. With the increase in open space, Prefurbia neighborhoods can justify an increase in density that reduces the effects of sprawl.

    Perhaps the best news is that Prefurbia can be ideal not just to develop new suburbs and exurbs, but to redevelop urban areas… and maybe to rewrite the triple bottom line to People, Planet, Prefurbia.

    Rick Harrison is President of Rick Harrison Site Design Studio and author of Prefurbia: Reinventing The Suburbs From Disdainable To Sustainable. You can view a portfolio of pictures and videos of prefurbia at his website, rhsdplanning and at prefurbia.

  • Green Jobs Can’t Save The Economy

    Nothing is perhaps more pathetic than the exertions of economic developers and politicians grasping at straws, particularly during hard times. Over the past decade, we have turned from one panacea to another, from the onset of the information age to the creative class to the boom in biotech, nanotech and now the “green economy.”

    This latest economic fad is supported by an enormous industry comprising nonprofits, investment banks, venture capitalists and their cheerleaders in the media. Their song: that “green” jobs will rescue our still weak economy while saving the planet. Ironically, what they all fail to recognize is that the thing that would spur green jobs most is economic growth.

    All told, green jobs constitute barely 700,000 positions across the country – less than 0.5% of total employment. That’s about how many jobs the economy lost in January this year. Indeed a recent study by Sam Sherraden at the center-left New America Foundation finds that, for the most part, green jobs constitute a negligible factor in employment – and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future. Policymakers, he warns, should avoid “overpromising about the jobs and investment we can expect from government spending to support the green economy.”

    This is true even in California, where green-job hype has become something of a fetish among self-styled “progressives.” One recent study found that the state was creating some 10,000 green jobs annually before recession. To put this into context, the total state economy has lost over 700,000 jobs over the past year (more than 200,000 in Los Angeles County alone). Any net growth in green jobs has barely made a dent in any economic category; only education and health services have shown job gains over this period.

    More worrisome, in terms of national competitiveness, the green sector seems to be going in the wrong direction. The U.S.’s overall “green” trade balance has moved from a $14.4 billion surplus in 1997 to a nearly $9 billion deficit last year. As the country has pushed green energy, ostensibly to free itself from foreign energy, it has become ever more dependent on countries such as China, Japan and Germany for critical technology. Some of this is directly attributable to the often massive subsidies these countries offer to green-tech companies. But as New America’s Sherraden puts it, this “does not augur well for the future of the green trade balance.”

    Nor are we making it any easier for American workers to gain from green-related manufacturing. Some of America’s “greenest” regions are inhospitable for placing environmentally oriented manufacturing facilities. For example, high taxes and regulatory climate have succeeded in intimidating solar cell makers from coming to green-friendly California; a manufacturer from China told the Milken Institute’s Ross DeVol that the state’s “green” laws precluded making green products there.

    Attempts to put windmills in Nantucket, Mass., the Catskills and Jones Beach in New York and other scenic areas have also been blocked by environmentalist groups. Transmission lines, necessary to take “renewable” energy from distant locales to energy-hungry cities, often face similar hurdles. Solar farms in the Mojave desert might help meet renewable energy quotas but, as wildlife groups have noted, may not be so good for local fauna.

    And then there is the impact of green policies on the overall economy. Green power is expensive and depends on massive subsidization, with government support levels at roughly 20 times or more per megawatt hour than relatively clean and abundant natural gas. Lavishing breaks for Wall Street investors and favored green companies also may be harmful to the rest of the economy. A recent study on renewable energy subsidies on the Spanish economy found that for every “green” job created more than two were lost in the non-subsidized economy.

    So how do we build a green economy that is sustainable without massive subsidies? First, governments need to learn how to say no to some environmentalists. Green jobs and renewable energy can not be fully developed without affecting somebody’s backyard. Windmills will have to be built in some scenic places; transmission lines may mar somebody’s “view-shed.”

    Arguably, the thing that would spur green jobs and domestic industries most would be economic growth. Environmentalists long have been cool to growth, since they link it to carbon production and other noxious human infestations. As an official at the Natural Resources Defense Council put it, the recession has “a moment of breathing room.” Disaster may be still looming, but bad times add a few more moments to our carbon clock.

    Long term, though, I would argue hard times may prove harmful for the environmental cause. Even with subsidies, many renewable energy projects are now on hold or being canceled across the country. Slackening energy demand, brought on by a weak economy, has undermined the case for new sources of energy generation; what looked attractive with oil prices at $140 a barrel and headed higher looks at $70 less so.

    Similarly, hard-pressed homeowners and businesses don’t constitute the best market for new, often expensive “green” products. A growing economy, which would drive up energy prices, could spur a more sustainable interest in alternative energy from firms that now only do so for public relations concerns. At the same time, cash-rich consumers could more afford to install energy-saving home insulation or rooftop solar panels. A strong economy would also spur sales of new energy-efficient appliances and cars.

    This process would go more quickly if government relied less on mandates, which tend to scare serious investors, and turned toward incentives. With the right tax advantages, energy efficiency could become a positive imperative for companies.

    There’s also an unappreciated political calculus at work. A persistently weak economy undermines support for the green agenda. For the first time in 25 years, according to a Gallup poll, more people place higher priority on economic growth than on the environment.

    Furthermore, more people now feel claims about global warming are “exaggerated.” Early this year, Pew reported that global warming ranked last among the top 20 priorities of Americans.

    Ultimately, environmentalists need to realize that the road to a green economy does not lie in promoting hysteria, guilt and self-abnegation while ignoring prohibitive costs and grim economic realities. Green enthusiasts should focus on promoting a growing economy capable of generating both the demand and the ability to pay for more planet-friendly products. After all, the economy needs green jobs less than green jobs need a thriving economy.

    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.

  • Brother Rabbit’s Bonuses

    New York State Attorney General Andrew Cuomo delivered a report to Congress on the bonuses paid to the employees of nine recipients of the TARP bailout money. He called it “The ‘Heads I Win, Tails You Lose’ Bank Bonus Culture.” (July 30) AG Cuomo concluded that even “in these challenging economic times, compensation for bank employees has become unmoored from the banks’ financial performance.” The report is only about banks, of course, since all the investment banks and brokerage firms changed their status to “bank” to become eligible for TARP bailout money last fall.

    Some of the banks that took the TARP money, like JP Morgan (NYSE: JM), Morgan Stanley (NYSE: MS) and American Express (NYSE: AXP), did what they could to return it as quickly as possible, including buying back the warrants. It will be very hard, indeed, for the financial institutions to change the public perception now that we have seen their willingness to take any risk, to make money at any cost – only to take a handout from the public coffers when things go badly so they can continue to “make money” for themselves. The banks are entities but they are run by people who have jobs and get bonuses and perks. Former-Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson’s plan to plunder the US Treasury on behalf of his former Goldman Sachs (NYSE: GS) mates on Wall Street set these banks up as the target of public scorn.

    Late Friday, July 31, the House of Representatives approved a bill that would allow regulators to limit executive compensation at financial institutions with assets greater than $1 billion if they find that the programs would “induce excessive risk-taking” behavior among bank executives. This comes a full eight months after Bank of America (NYSE: BAC) was first subpoenaed by AG Cuomo about executive bonuses. It is a far cry from anything that would create a sense of justice out of a system where two TARP recipients, Citigroup (NYSE: C) and Merrill Lynch, operated in a way that lost $54 billion in 2008, took $55 billion in TARP bailout money, and then paid $9 billion in employee bonuses.

    Despite the hue and cry of the public, these bonuses have continued. In my view they will continue into the future. Although we may think that sticking labels on the banks behavior, or asking Congress to legislate some discipline, will make a difference, it is unlikely to change anything. After the early 2009 bonuses were revealed, the banks claimed that the bonuses were required by contracts and could not be broken without violating the rule of law. They got away with this claim even as contracts with the United Auto Workers were being revised. It’s like a modern version of a folk story by Joel Chandler Harris. “Bred and born in a briar patch, Brother Fox, bred and born in a briar patch!” And with that Brother Banker skipped out just as lively as a cricket in the embers.

    Thanks to David Friedman for bringing the FT article on the report to our attention.

  • Downtown Central-Cities as Hubs of Civic Connection

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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