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  • How About a Rural Stimulus?

    In Pennsylvania, public and private funds mainly are directed into areas where people live and where people vote. As a result urban Pennsylvania has significant advantages over rural communities in securing public funds and private investment.

    Although rural Pennsylvania comprises a significant percentage of Pennsylvania’s geography it contains a very low percentage of the overall population and its political clout is dwindling. According to Trends in Rural Pennsylvania March/April 2003 overview of the state’s population, urban counties outnumber the population of rural by a ratio of more than 3 to 1.

    Politically rural and small town Pennsylvania once wielded considerable power. The “T” which ran up the center of Pennsylvania and east to west across the northern tier of the state was key to Republican victories statewide. In recent elections, it has been the southeastern region that has dominated politics. It has reached the point where it can be safely stated that no candidate can win statewide in Pennsylvania without carrying at least one of the five southeastern counties.

    All this puts rural Pennsylvania at a distinct disadvantage, particularly in terms of basic infrastructure. Rural Pennsylvania has 57,065 miles of highway compared to 62,577 in urban counties. Local governments receive only about 10 percent of state revenues from the Motor License Fund and the rest is funded by local taxes.

    In rural Pennsylvania, because miles of roadway responsibility are funded by a smaller tax base per mile, the choice is between higher taxes or ignoring the problem. More and more, residents in small, rural communities are driving on outdated highways and over creaky bridges. In many ways, highway infrastructure is moving backwards in time as bridges close or become weight restricted isolating rural communities.

    Mass transit is another issue in the divide. Pennsylvania has 46 fixed transit systems. Twenty-four serve small urban areas and another twenty service rural communities. This said the two systems that serve the cities of Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, SEPTA and PAAT, receive roughly 90 percent of all transit monies in the state.

    Transit receives about $900 in annual state subsidies. These funds come from a wide-variety of sources and are distributed under a myriad of conditions most of which the rural systems cannot meet. The result is the budgets of rural systems must rely more on passenger receipts and local subsidies than the much larger systems.

    In 2007, as part of an effort to find more funds for roads, bridges and transit, Act 44 was passed. Under this legislation Interstate 80 would be tolled. This superhighway runs through rural Pennsylvania. In blunt terms, the politics played out that rural Pennsylvania was being tolled to fund transit in Philadelphia. The only reason I-80 has not been tolled yet has been because the U.S. Department of Transportation rejected Pennsylvania’s proposal.

    There are other dramatic differences between the two Pennsylvanias in terms of basis infrastructure. Census data show that 36 percent of people in rural Pennsylvania get their drinking water from wells or some other sources. There are 5,697 active drinking water systems in rural Pennsylvania of which 70 percent are owned by investors or individuals according to n Trends in Rural Pennsylvania May/June 2004. Most of the sewer and other basic water systems are antiquated. The American Society of Civil Engineers’ that rural Pennsylvania needs $5.26 billion invested over the next 20 years in drinking water infrastructure and more than $6 billion over the same period to update sewage.

    Yet when Pennsylvania speaks about the upcoming stimulus, the primary voices are urban, epitomized by Governor Ed Rendell, a former Mayor of Philadelphia and fervent urbanist. We can expect that he will be working hard for more stimulus in the big cities, including for such things as the $800 million expansion of the Pennsylvania Convention Center which is now under way.(link to piece on this) Once again demographics and politics could be working against rural and small town communities where projects are on a much smaller scale, but equally important to the welfare of areas of rural Pennsylvania.

    Like many similar places around the country, rural Pennsylvania has many assets that would benefit from new infrastructure. It is an area of tremendous natural beauty and bountiful recreational opportunities. Most of these areas have good school systems and are safe areas to live. They could contribute to the nation’s economic recovery and provide an alternative for many urban residents who want improved quality of life or are thinking about retiring to an area that is less expensive. The problem is we have to get our own state officials, and the Obama administration to start paying attention.

    Dennis M. Powell is president and CEO of Massey Powell an issues management consulting company located in Plymouth Meeting, PA.

  • Farmer’s Markets: Reviving Public Space in Central Florida

    By Richard Reep

    Noted architect Daniel Liebeskind, teaching at Yale in the early 1990s, proclaimed “Public space is dead”. A provocative notion at the time, he was simply observing American cultural phenomena, and our evolution away from Main Street into the mall, away from the downtown church to the suburban megachurch, and away from common space into private space. While all this is true, it misses a countercyclical element in our cities, and in the Orlando area, public space is very much alive and assuming a new role in the neighborhoods.

    Human social activities still need to take place, and we are surprisingly adaptable when it comes to getting the interaction we need, when we need it. Public space has hosted political, sacred, commercial, and ceremonial activities for the entire history of the city. This recent flight from public to private is due to the perception of personal safety, and the need to conduct social activities in a secure zone. We simply don’t much care whether the backdrop for our social life is a 19th century town square, or a 20th century suburban shopping mall.

    Crime rose in the last half of the 20th century beyond the level of comfort for most citizens, and although it receded in the late 1990’s (for reasons yet to be satisfactorily explained), crime has resurged. This year, Orlando jumped from a relatively crime-free status to a position within the top 10 in the country for violent crime, and nearly every neighborhood has experienced an increase in various forms of break-ins, vandalism, and theft. Along with our economic lives, our civic lives seem to be going backward at the present moment.

    Thus, private space thrives and public space dies; this has been our only means of control over our personal security. Shopping malls and big box stores are our new Main Streets, and instead of condemning their form, we should be studying them, because they are telling us what people need and crave as part of their daily lives.

    In the public arena, cities cope with the crime trend variously, and it is instructive to look at Orlando’s methods in light of its commitment to New Urbanism as a city growth model. Orlando has recently published Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design via a Bureau of Justice Assistance grant. Aimed at both businesses and individuals, the booklet recommends that private outdoor space be well-defined by gates and clear perimeters, and suggests other design elements to reduce the risk of being targeted by criminals.

    Much of the booklet makes sense and reinforces strategies such as natural surveillance, target hardening, territorial reinforcement, and access control. The booklet also tries in vain to tie new urbanist ideals to crime prevention. For example, speed tables, a favorite new urbanist device to reduce speeding, are cited as a way to tell “potential offenders they had better think twice before committing a crime.” Whether there is a correlation between speed bumps and safe neighborhoods remains to be seen.

    The booklet rightly states that “streets should be designed to discourage cut-through traffic” as a means of natural access control. Ironically, this flies in the face of new urbanist development patterns, which encourage open-ended, straight street grids, and discourage cul-de-sacs as elitist. The practical reality of safety and security necessarily overrides the theory and rhetoric of New Urbanism as it is applied in Orlando.

    We continue to evolve into a city that has troubled public spaces and increasing private spaces, much like the rest of the country. While the crime rate has risen suddenly in Central Florida, however, our public space, far from being doomed, is now hosting scenes of new civic involvement.

    The age-old agora, contrary to reports of its death, is actually alive and well. Weekend markets are springing up in public nooks and crannies around the older, urban core, and in the suburban public parks as well. These markets are scenes of a new American involvement with each other, in a manner similar to the traditional European town square and the historical American village green. “Farmer’s Markets,” “Fresh Markets,” and “Weekend Markets” are becoming popular not just in downtown Orlando, but in downtown Winter Park, Maitland, College Park, and surrounding communities. These markets are exciting because they are growing, despite all the forces working against them: crime, internet commerce, and the accelerated kinetic lives we lead in this new millennium. People are finding something important at these small, crowded, open-air market stalls, and it isn’t just good tomatoes.

    For merchants, they ostensibly cut out the army of middlemen between the customer and contemporary, chain-store retail. Open-air markets are an exciting and interesting alternative to the internet, a medium that prevents direct sampling of a physical, sensual product such as food. And, a visit to the Winter Park Farmer’s Market on any given Saturday would make any mall-store merchant green with envy: hands holding full shopping bags, and lots of them. Business is being done!

    For customers, the thrill of a bargain is supplemented by a sense of community and a shared enjoyment of a vibrant local scene. Maitland, a suburban municipality five miles north of Orlando, recently started its own Farmers’ Market and has already outgrown Quinn Strom Park, and will soon be moving to the larger Lake Lily Park next year. Customers are treated to live music performances, occasional tables of Fresh Art by Maitland Art Center artists, and stalls by masseuses, cheese makers, and ethnic food providers. The informal nature of these markets guarantee spontaneity, an enjoyment of shared community, and an opportunity for relaxed interaction and discourse free of the manipulation of marketers, advertisers, designers, and other enablers of the high art of contemporary Western consumption.

    At least in Central Florida, public space is not dead at all; people seek ways to maintain the tradition of the agora, despite assault upon this tradition. Although safety needs have forced us to flee to malls, supermarkets, big box retail, and the internet for our consumer needs, we’ve traded safety and security for spontaneity and deeper interaction. We are ingenious at finding ways around the slick, sophisticated veneer of chain-store commerce for a more visceral sensory and social experience.

    In Central Florida, these markets are springing up to provide this, and they reinforce locality and pride in our neighborhoods, for they are a reference that citizens are more and more often using to reinforce their neighborhoods’ identity. If this trend continues, these markets may increase in weekly frequency and broaden their involvement by becoming a forum for public speaking and political dialogue. Public space is alive and well in the new millennium, and its new adaptation to this old use can provide an exciting glimpse into the future.

    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.

  • Auto Bailout: Follow the Money to House Votes

    This probably won’t shock you, but MapLight is reporting today that those House of Representatives members voting for the auto bailout received 65% more in campaign contributions from the auto industry than did those who voted against:

    House Democrats voted overwhelmingly in favor of this bill, 205 voting Yes and 20 voting No (11 not voting). Democrats voting Yes received an average of $74,846 each, about 19% more than those voting No, who received an average of $63,140.

    House Republicans were somewhat more divided on this bill, 32 voting Yes and 150 voting No (16 not voting). Republicans voting Yes received an average of $69,323 each, 63% more than those voting No, who received an average of $42,598.

    MapLight charted a similar situation with the financial industry bailout.

  • China Should Send Western Planners Home

    For centuries, the West sent missionaries around the world to spread various gospels. It is no different now, though the clerics tend to hold degrees from planning schools rather than those overtly specializing in theology.

    This could also create tragic results as ideologies created in one context are imported into a totally foreign one.

    China, which is creating a new future, needs to forge its own path for urban development. For one thing China is experiencing unprecedented economic growth on a scale unimaginable in the contemporary West. Over the past two decades, living standards have risen at a rate that may be unprecedented in world history. Gross domestic product per capita still remains below high-income world standards, at one-sixth that of the US level. Nonetheless, there is great regional disparity, with incomes in east coast urban areas above that of urban areas in the central and western regions

    Yet in sharp contrast to the west, which has been heavily urban for over a century, China remains substantially more rural than urban. According to United Nations data, China’s population was only 40 percent urban in 2000. This compares to urban rates of over 70 percent in many high-income nations. But now people are moving in large numbers from rural areas to the urban areas, following the pattern of development that has occurred virtually wherever incomes have risen markedly.

    The reasons for the move are also the same as they have been through history: Urban areas offer great opportunities and generally higher standard of living than rural areas. The United Nations estimates that by 2030, 60 percent of the Chinese population will live in urban areas. This represents a staggering migration – the movement of 350,000,000 people – a population greater than that of the United States and Canada combined.

    Already, China has very large urban areas. Shanghai, Beijing, Shenzhen and Guangzhou have 10,000,000 or more residents. A number of other urban areas have more than 5,000,000 people. Dongguan, the world’s largest unknown urban area is nestled between Guangzhou and Shenzhen on the Pearl River Delta and no one seems to know what its population is – estimates range from 7.5 million to more than 10 million. See Demographia World Urban Areas.

    Western Planners Descend
    To a cadre of western urban planners, developers and architects, China represents the ultimate market. Like the Christian missionaries, they come to China with a sense of both rectitude and guilt about their own countries. They admonish Chinese officials “not to repeat our mistakes.” The primary mistakes, they explain, are urban sprawl (a pejorative term for suburbanization) and automobile use. To go to planner heaven, they must eschew these steps and go straight to the ideal state of smart growth, transit dependence and new urbanist principles.

    Chinese officials visiting the United States, Western Europe, Canada or Australia must wonder at the disconnect between the wasteland described by Western planners and the unparalleled quality of life enjoyed by people in the West. It is not without reason that the Chinese (and for that matter, the Indians, Indonesians, Nigerians, etc. ad nausea) would like to be rich like us. It is not without surprise that the hosts graciously listen, nod and, to their inestimable credit and good fortune of Chinese citizens, largely ignore the bankrupt advice.

    You don’t have to be an American or European to realize that the automobile has created mobile urban areas in which employers and employees have far greater choices or that mobility makes labor markets more efficient. It is not a mistake that housing built on inexpensive land on the periphery of urban areas has made it possible for so many millions to build up financial equity in their own homes, or enjoy the kind of privacy that the more wealthy or well-connected have enjoyed. Nor is it a mistake that nearby inexpensive land has been developed by retailers and other businesses who are, as a result, able to provide lower prices than would otherwise be possible.

    The West has achieved its unparalleled affluence because planners were unable to impose their will to prevent suburbanization and the expansion of mobility. They could not hold back the democratization of prosperity.

    If planners had been in charge, mass low cost, relatively low density housing would not exist. Western nations would now be principally inhabited by renters rather than homeowners. Employees would be limited to those few places they could get on foot or public transport, rather than the whole urban area made accessible by the automobile.

    There would be less wealth and it would be less broadly distributed. “Big-box” stores on the urban fringe would not have emerged, resulting in people paying higher prices with their smaller incomes.

    Indeed, for any who might wish for China to stumble in its competition with the West, it is hard to imagine a more promising strategy than importing Western planning ideas and planners to China.

    China should continue to develop commercial and industrial land on the urban periphery, while expanding the already extensive freeway system to bring production and prosperity to every nook and cranny of the nation. China should continue down the road of allowing people to live how they like, whether it is in the new high-rise luxury condominiums or the lower rise town houses and detached housing (called villas in China) that can be found throughout its urban areas. It is clear that China will continue to become more mobile (and thereby richer and more productive) as car ownership explodes and those who cannot afford cars increasingly obtain the same level of mobility with electric motorbikes.

    The operative word here is “continue.” Generally, Chinese urban planning policies have been a substantial contributor to the nation’s rising wealth. It is to be hoped that the advice of the western planners will continue to be respectfully listened to and largely ignored. The people of China are entering an era of great new opportunity; they should not close the gates just as it arrives.

    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.”

  • City Planning and The Politics of Pollution

    Part Two. Yesterday, in Part One, Critser discussed scientific advances in understanding air pollution. Today, he addresses the social implications.

    The new science of air pollution, with its emphasis on dose-response mechanisms, may remake the traditional advocacy realm of social and environmental justice. In the past, that world has been focused on class, race and ethnicity, classic markers of inequality and vulnerability. Today, the focus is more “exposure driven.” “Dosage… may be something people who have ignored environmental justice can get their heads around,” one researcher at last month’s Environmental Epidemiology conference in Pasadena noted. “It may get people’s attention on something that affects us all.”

    Other new observations are recasting ancient (and highly suspect) urban-suburban dichotomies as well. If one parses the science of small, regional temperature increases—the kind we may see more of in the future—and how those spikes “activate” ultrafine particles, one discovers a disturbing phenomenon: The combination of heat and UFPs makes airborne plant pollens more inflammatory. Such was the finding of Italian researchers studying how traffic emissions and high temperatures in Naples fortify the toxicity of urtica, the common allergen known as the nettle plant. One wonders how the same combination remakes the lovely sage and chaparral environment surrounding Southern California suburbs, even when the region isn’t burning. It is a disturbing prospect for those who believe they have escaped inflammation by exchanging big cities for exurban greenlands.

    What, besides moving to Iceland, can be done? Few have thought more about that, at the practical level, than Andrea Hricko, an associate professor of clinical preventive medicine at USC, where she is trying to translate epidemiological data about pollution into practical public health policy. For years, Hricko’s focus was the Port of Los Angeles and the neighborhoods and schools surrounding that diesel-saturated realm. What she found were huge spikes in childhood chronic diseases, especially asthma, as well as other heart and lung problems. She and others succeeded in getting one school relocated—pushed back from the most truck-intensive route near the Alameda Corridor—but even that victory was a lesson in the unintended consequences of regulation.

    “Come over here, you have to see this,” she said to a visitor one day in her crammed office on the medical school campus. On her computer appeared a picture of a group of kids playing soccer. In the immediate background loomed trucks belching the substances that eventually make the port air so heinously foggy. “See, this is where the school was. This was supposed to be the buffer zone, but… being that it is also rare, unoccupied space, and LA schools have so little recreational area, it is now a defacto playground. So you have kids better protected inside, but doing their deepest breathing part of their day right on top of the trucks.” It’s a perfect public health storm, she notes, because “getting kids outside and exercising more is a huge priority in the obesity-diabetes crisis.”

    Hricko’s focus on the ports, arguably the octopus of contemporary industrial Los Angeles, has taught her some hard lessons. You can always get a regulation that says, for example, don’t build a school within X distance of a freeway, but you can rarely switch the scenario around, say, with a ruling that says don’t widen a freeway when it is within X distance of a school. The same is true of building a new rail yard, as is the case just north of the port today. For years, area residents waged war with the railroad and the port to simply locate the new yard closer to the water, which would have drastically reduced the number of short, emission-intensive trips by trucks, and thus hopefully cut down the high rate of respiratory disease in the area. The solution, instead, was to go ahead and build the yard right by the homes, with a promise by state regulatory agencies to install new, high efficiency filters in all area homes. While that protects the children while they’re inside—and, it would seem, suggests a possible boom enterprise for the filter industry—it’s far from an ideal solution. “They’re still spending most of their time outside, and we still need to get them to exercise more while they’re out there. It’s a frustrating exercise.”

    Hricko has also wondered if the same impasse won’t obtain in the arena of the low-income housing juggernaut led by Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa. One recent hearing concerned an affordable housing complex proposed alongside the 5 freeway near East Los Angeles. As Hricko tells it, that project would be sandwiched between one of the most emissions-choked portions of the freeway and the mass transit Gold Line, which would run just behind it. “There was all kinds of talk about filtering, etcetera, but the real question was never brought to the fore: Perhaps this shouldn’t be considered for housing in the first place.” She notes that a member of the LA County Public Health staff made precisely this point… privately.

    One can understand why. Affordable housing is an important, unmet need in Los Angeles, one with a substantial political establishment behind it and a charismatic mayor in front of it. There is, as a result, an understandable reluctance to get in the way of the parade, especially after years of political impasse. The mayor recently upped the ante and proclaimed a new $5 billion housing initiative, much of which would center on building new housing near mass transit stations. The essence of this transit pod strategy has a fairly sustainable logic: If you can get people to live near mass transit, you’ll dramatically reduce one of the biggest single factors in urban pollution: the numerous short, one-to-five mile trips that people make every day, whether to work or to the store or to pick up the kids at school. You’ll also reduce traffic jams.

    The problem, of course, is human nature, and the naughty desire by poor people, especially in Los Angeles, to be like the rich people, driving whenever and to wherever they want. Compounding this, for the scheme to work, we still must get from the station to work and people will use a car to do that. “For Antonio’s plan to work, you’d basically have to make it a condition of ownership that you don’t have a car. Or, that if you are going to buy this housing, you have to work somewhere on the trainline,” Hricko said with a knowing smile. “Because if you don’t, you still have people driving. You’re defeating your purpose before you ever get started.”

    That’s one realm where a leader like Villaraigosa, with his celebrity status and megawatt smile, could lead by example. But that hasn’t happened so far. Mike Woo, who describes himself as a supporter of the mayor, says “I want to say that I think the mayor’s people are on top of this. I wish I could say that. I really wish I could say that.” Woo notes that there is a slightly bigger time window for solving the housing crunch than is popularly acknowledged. The Planning Commission’s most recent staff report holds that meeting the need for housing in most transit corridors for the next 8-10 years does not require raising the density of housing.

    That’s a rare breather, Woo says. Let’s make the most of it.

    Greg Critser is the author of Fat Land: How Americans Became the Fattest People in the World (Houghton Mifflin 2003), Generation Rx: How Prescription Drugs Are Altering American Lives, Minds, and Bodies (Houghton 2005), and Eternity Soup: Inside the Quest to End Aging (Random/Harmony 2009).

  • Voting and Families: America’s Second Demographic Transition

    It has been widely accepted that geographic areas with more unconventional forms of family formation – cohabitation; children born to cohabitors; postponement of partnership, marriage and parenthood to much later ages; acceptance of interference with fertility through abortion and efficient contraception – would vote for Democrats. Conversely, those geographic areas that retain classic forms of family formation – early marriage and parenthood – and more conventional gender roles would display a preference for Republicans.

    The “Culture War” issues were prominent during the George Bush-Al Gore and the George Bush-John Kerry contests of 2000 and 2004. One of the consequences was that the spatial pattern of the election results, both by state and by county, exhibited a marked correlation with the prevalence of new patterns of family formation The shift to these new demographic patterns is often referred to by demographers as “the second demographic transition,” or SDT.

    One of the criticisms formulated against the theoretical underpinning of the Election-SDT correlation for the US was that this link was only a temporary phenomenon. If economic issues instead of cultural ones would dominate the debate during the presidential elections, critics theorized, this correlation would become unstuck.

    The 2008 elections provided us with a very nice test indeed. Both candidates initially shunned the culture war issues as too divisive, and only with the choice of Sarah Palin as John McCain’s running mate was there a brief revival of this debate. Shortly thereafter, the banking crisis and the resulting economic upheaval took center stage. And very forcefully so.

    Did the link between the maps of the second demographic transition and of election results weaken or vanish as the “It’s-the-economy, dummy-” proponents predicted? The answer is a resounding ‘No,’ as our studies showed empirically.

    We examined the SDT-dimension in an analysis of a set of 22 indicators, all dealing with patterns of family formation. We looked at typical SDT features such as the postponement of marriage, greater prevalence of cohabitation and same sex households, postponement of parenthood, sub-replacement fertility, and a higher incidence of abortion.

    Two maps were prepared for the counties we studied. The first is a classic map with blue shadings for counties that are further advanced on the “second demographic transition” dimension and red ones for those with the slowest shift in that direction. The second map is a cartogram with the counties now drawn proportionally to the size of their population in the 2000 census.

    Now take a look at the scattergrams and correlations at the state level between the SDT-dimension and the Republican vote for Bush in 2004 and McCain in 2008 (Figure 1). The conclusion is obvious: the correlation that existed in 2004 is very largely replicated in 2008, and the relative positions of the states in the scattergram are essentially maintained.

    For those who like details: Indeed, Arizona voted in 2008 for McCain more than would be expected on the basis of its SDT-score, while the reverse holds for Hawaii. Also, Utah had to yield its top position on the Republican vote to Wyoming and Oklahoma, despite its very low score on the SDT.

    Nevertheless, when the correlations between the “second demographic transition” features and the vote for the Republican candidate are calculated for more than 3000 counties, the results are even stronger for the 2008 elections than they were in 2004 (corr. coeff. improves from -.57 to -.65). Moreover, that statistical link remains highly significant after controlling for competing explanations based on the degree of urbanity, income and education levels, ethnic and religious composition, and relative size of immigrant populations. And Appalachian and Southern counties, which were not following the fit so closely in 2004, now conform much better to the overall pattern.

    Hence, the spatial differentiations of the last presidential elections at the levels of states and counties have remained over this period of time. The maps may color darker or lighter, depending on the issues in the period preceding the elections and the themes that dominate the debate, but the position of counties is relatively stable.

    In other words, we cannot possibly predict the winner, but we can produce a pretty good guess when it comes to predicting in which counties each of the candidates will do well or poorly. When it comes to this type of prediction, the SDT-dimension is by no means sufficient, but it is definitely a necessary ingredient of the engine.

    While many western countries have displayed a close connection between voting results and patterns of family formation and fertility, the correlation holds particularly well in the US. The predominance of the two party system, the philosophical link of these parties to the defense of different life styles, and the very wide ideational spectrum particularly contribute. No other developed nation has retained the presence of a vocal and large “religious right” capable of organizing reactions against secular and non-conformist tendencies. The US continues, therefore, to be a textbook example of spatial connections between demographic innovation and political orientation.

    Economic issues definitely played a role in designating the winner in 2008. But the spatial map of the election results is more a reflection of sociological differences in lifestyles and their underpinning ideologies – issues which are captured so well via the “second demographic transition” features.

    Ron Lesthaeghe is emeritus professor of demography at the Free University of Brussels (VUB) and has been visiting professor at the Universities of Michigan (Ann Arbor) and of California (Irvine). Lisa Neidert is senior research associate at the Population Studies Center of the University of Michigan. Relevant materials pertaining to the SDT concept and 2004 election results (maps, cartograms, articles) can be downloaded from our University of Michigan website.

    The map and cartogram of the SDT by county has been produced by Didier Willaert at the Interface Demography Unit of the Free University in Brussels.

  • Will The New Air Pollution Science Choke City Planners?

    Part One of A Two-Part Series

    Not long ago, Michael Woo, a former Los Angeles city councilman and current member of the Los Angeles City Planning Commission, took up a case pending approval by that body: a mixed housing-retail development near the intersection of Cahuenga Boulevard and Riverside Drive. Like many of the remaining buildable sites in the city, the property is right next to a roaring motorway; the windows of some apartments would look right out onto the 134 Freeway. To Angelinos, who have grown up in a car culture, it was hardly a remarkable proposal. But Woo, perhaps one of the brainier members of the city’s political elite—after losing a mayoral race to Richard Riordan in the early 1990s he became a professor of public policy at University of Southern California—had a problem with it, and he couldn’t quite let it go.

    Just a few weeks before, the Commission had witnessed a lengthy presentation by a scientist who’d been studying how living within 500 yards of high traffic corridors—freeways and some particularly busy streets—substantially raises the risk for a number of chronic diseases. “We were all sort of sitting there, looking at this proposal and discussing it through the conventional lens we normally use, when I said, `Wait a minute. Didn’t we just hear a pretty compelling argument about this the other day? Can we talk about that for a minute?’ It struck me that it was impossible to read those studies and then continue approving housing that sits that close to freeways.”

    The Commission then asked for the developer’s point of view on the issue. “As I recall, the only real mitigation that they brought up was almost comic,” Woo says. “Their idea was, you know, we’ve got that covered: We’re going to make sure that residents can’t open the windows that face the freeway.” The project was approved.

    Woo doesn’t particularly fault anyone in the exchange, because the implications of the new science of air pollution—much of it driven by pioneering work at USC, the University of California at Los Angeles, and California Institute of Technology—are utterly mind boggling. No one has quite calculated exactly how much buildable land would be excised from use for housing and schools if this growing body of work were to take hold in the policy realm, but, as Woo said, “We can’t hide from this issue anymore. The hard science on the subject is compelling. It makes you fundamentally rethink some pretty key parts of how, where and why we’re building housing in such locations.”

    For decades, pretty much everyone “knew” that smog—usually measured as ozone, the gas that forms from sunlight’s ionizing effect on air particles—caused all kinds of health problems, principally those associated with the lungs, like asthma. But the truth of the matter is that, until ten years or so ago, no one knew how that happened; they didn’t know the “mechanism of action,” the intricate physiological processes that lead to chronic airway inflammation. Epidemiological data was confounding, because some high ozone communities showed lower rates of asthma than low ozone communities. Also, smog levels—measured as ozone—were going down, while asthma rates were going though the roof.

    One suspect was what researchers called fresh emissions, comprised of ultrafine particles, or UFPs, which are so small that they can penetrate the furthest reaches of the lung’s bronchial branches and set off the systemic inflammation that causes respiratory disease. Thus, it was possible to have lower ozone levels and still have increased levels of inflammation, or as USC Professor Robert McConnell notes, “You could have cleaner horizons but still have increasing inflammation to people who live closer to where the particles are being produced.” McConnell has been leading the federally funded Children’s Health Study in Los Angeles for over a decade. “I tell people that I’m studying how pollution causes asthma, and people look at me and say, `I thought we already knew that,’” says McConnell. “The fact is that we assume risks that aren’t there, and we’re ignorant of risks that are there.”

    What caused the sea change in pollution epidemiology—the ability to link exposure to tail pipe emissions and chronic diseases—is as much a story of ingenuity at the lab bench as it is one of persistence against conveniently indolent regulations. At USC, engineers over the past 20 years have invented ways to concentrate particles from the freeway, assess their specific toxicity in human doses, and then test various theses with lab animals genetically engineered to physiologically respond like humans. They have also developed ways to track real-time daily human exposures to ultrafine particles. On any given day in Los Angeles there are mobile smog units measuring how pollution ebbs and flows on a neighborhood-by-neighborhood basis. There are people wearing “personal ambient pollution” backpacks to track how individuals experience different loads of smog throughout their day, part of which may be spent in a low-pollution environment, part in a high. Through modern genomics, we also now know that several highly prevalent gene mutations make some people more susceptible to pollution, and that others make them less susceptible.

    At all three universities, engineers in the aerosol sciences developed machines that could accurately measure not just ozone—a rather crude measure of air toxicity—but also specific toxins, known as ultrafine particulate matter, or UFPs, of less than 2.5 microns. It is stuff so small that it can reach the bottom of the airways; there, it can over-stimulate the so-called inflammatory cascade of the body’s native defense system and turn it into a disease called asthma. At UCLA, cell biologists, toxicologists and lung and heart specialists have even been able to image what happens to the human cell when it’s exposed to high levels of ultrafine particles. It is the kind of image that can make one utterly despairing, but one that also might clue modern physicians, medical researchers and environmental scientists on how to better focus on the issue and perhaps mitigate it.

    A few examples of new directions within the science:

    Ultrafine Particles, Diesel Exhaust And Asthma: A growing consensus holds that, infants, young children, and expectant women experience substantial elevations in risk for deficits in lung function growth when living near high volume motorways. There is less consensus on the recommended buffer zone, ranging from 75 meters to 500 meters.

    Ultrafine Particles And Heart Disease: A growing body of laboratory experiments and human observational work links heart disease, especially the process leading to atherosclerosis and heart attack, to air pollution. Recent work at UCLA and USC on lab mice parked next to the 110 Freeway has suggested an alarming thesis of causality: That chronic exposure to high levels of ultrafine particles may make us more likely to get heart disease because it makes HDL—the so-called “good,” form of cholesterol that “cleans up” the bad form—dysfunctional.

    Diesel, Ultrafine Particles And Alzheimer’s: Work coming out of Mexico City, increasingly LA’s sister city in the environmental sciences, documents how amyloid plaque, one of two suspect brain proteins associated with Alzheimer’s, increases with exposure to air particles, especially in children and young adults.

    Diabetes, High Blood Pressure And Obesity: A small but growing body of research shows that being fat and breathing smog is really bad for you. Worse, high exposures may accentuate existing diabetes and metabolic syndrome, the perfect storm of high cholesterol, high blood sugar, and high blood pressure.

    Air Pollution, Expectant Mothers, And Infants: UCLA researchers have repeatedly demonstrated a consistent, dose-dependent relationship between expectant mothers living in high traffic-emission-adjacent housing and premature births, low birth weights, birth defects and respiratory diseases. In a recent report, the UCLA Institute of the Environment concluded that the problems were of such magnitude as to “require drastic changes to motor vehicle and transportation systems” over the next decades.

    In Part Two, Critser explores the politics of pollution.

    Greg Critser is the author of Fat Land: How Americans Became the Fattest People in the World (Houghton Mifflin 2003), Generation Rx: How Prescription Drugs Are Altering American Lives, Minds, and Bodies (Houghton 2005), and Eternity Soup: Inside the Quest to End Aging (Random/Harmony 2009).

  • Greg Critser

  • Rethinking Risk During a Financial Crisis: Learning from Mexico

    Last month I visited a small town in southern Mexico. It is a quiet and modestly prosperous place. Outside some of the homes are older Suburbans, Jeeps and Explorers; the license plates show that their owners have recently returned from the US, driven out by the collapsing economy and heightened nativist anxieties. Almost every family, it seems, has some member who has spent time up north; only a very few of them are still hanging on through the recession.

    For the most part, Mexicans are innocent by-standers in the current financial debacle. They didn’t allow themselves to be talked into strange mortgages or multiple credit cards; whether north or south of the border, this is for them still predominantly a cash economy. Even for those who went to the US, their key goal was to accumulate dollars and send them south, where, as pesos, they provide the basics and even a few luxuries for many families. Until recently, these remittances have been second only to oil income in importance for Mexico; now both are shrinking fast.

    There is something more than a little unfair in the manner in which the recession is hurting our southern neighbor. Mexicans, for the most part, have a personal risk calculus that is the complete reverse of ours. Like most people who have experienced hard times, they are not obsessed with the little things that might go awry; they don’t place little flags around puddles in the grocery store, and most dogs have never received a rabies shot. The sidewalks often look as though a tree is trying to push its way through the ground and electrical cables are frequently visible. It’s not unusual to see a local butcher frying up vast cauldrons of meats in front of his carnecineria, something that would drive American health inspectors to apoplexy.

    In contrast to their wealthier Northern neighbors, Mexicans seem quite happy to take responsibility for themselves and don’t expect to sue someone every time they stub their toe. But their collective view of risk is also the reverse of ours. Property is, for most people, something to live in and not something for speculation. Building one’s own home is common but it’s usually done in stages, whenever there is cash to spare. The results may be untidy, with streets perpetually possessing the appearance of construction zones, but there is no evidence of any foreclosure crisis—forests of ‘for sale’ signs are absent, in Veracruz, at least.

    Nor is that the only visual difference between nondescript Mexican and American cities. Antiseptic zoning is much less common in Mexico, with the result that families live above the store, or behind the workshop, or even on the roof of some buildings. Affluent homes may stand next to literal ruins. In most American cities, this would be evidence of a neighborhood slipping into decay, causing realtors to flee to more ordered areas. But for Mexicans, this juxtaposition simply adds to the sense of being in an organic place rather than on a Disney set. What it means for neighborliness is hard to judge, but it would certainly make an interesting comparative research project.

    Of course, there are some equivalents to the homogenous subdivisions that dominate the American housing market. I saw several large up-scale gated communities that were standing idle, waiting for better times. I was also shown several housing developments, where government agencies were building terraced homes for state workers. What is striking to the visitor is that these would never be offered in the US housing market, as they would be judged to be unacceptably small. At approximately one thousand square feet, they are half the size of the average American home, (approximately 2200 square feet) and significantly smaller than most new houses.

    Even though Mexican families are, on average, larger (with more children and more generations living together), the expectation is not that every member of the family gets a bathroom or even a bedroom. It is also common to buy small and build out, or up, as needs dictate and finances permit. Anyone who has traveled in Asia will also be familiar with this phenomenon, which manifests itself in ground floor apartments that encroach upon the street, balconies that become bedrooms and so forth. High density and modest means lead to invention, if not the kinds of appearance mandated by Home Owner Associations or preferred by the fusspot New Urbanist designers.

    In the past, the Mexican financial system has been criticized for maintaining a tight hold on credit. Even before the current crisis, high interest rates were unfriendly to the consumer, slowing the pace of both urban development and speculation. Given our current crisis, perhaps it’s worth asking whether this points to how the American market may develop in the future. Certainly, we can expect that credit will remain tight for a significant while. The rules for obtaining a mortgage will become more onerous; interest rates will be fixed, appraisals will be exact. McMansions will be of little interest except to large families of means; smaller and older homes will be at a premium. Definitions of overcrowding may change; design expectations will be downsized, and home maintenance will become more usual. As opportunities in the formal labor marketplace shrink, perhaps for an extended period, more Americans will work from their homes and garages, much as occurs in many developing countries.

    There may also be significantly less mobility, with little or no speculative purchasing. This is likely to have the greatest impact on the condominium market. Even affluent parents will be obligated to keep their college-age kids on campus rather than in condos that they hope to flip after graduation. And even when they have a degree, these young adults – with large student loans, minimal credit and no cash for a down payment – will become used to staying with their parents for longer periods, as is frequently the case in Mexico and other developing markets. This could extend into marriage and even family formation. The condos themselves will, for the foreseeable future, revert to rental properties, catering to those who can no longer maintain a foothold in the owner market.

    This does not imply that American cities are going to turn into Mexican ones any time soon. But there is much to be learned by studying the ways that Mexicans calculate risk. We might have fewer families borrowing beyond their means, and continually trying to beat the market. And with less aggregate risk in one part of our lives, we might then view other parts of our daily world with a little less obsession with control. We might be a little more relaxed about who lives next door; we might also be a little more tolerant about the age of their truck or the color of the drapes. After all, they might be Mexican, in which case we know that, if they are there, they can probably actually afford it.

    Andrew Kirby is the editor of the interdisciplinary Elsevier journal “Cities.”This is his 20th year as a resident of Arizona.

  • Former Insider on the Auto Bailout: Never Underestimate Brainpower in Detroit

    In all the many (how many) years I worked as an engineer in and around the auto industry, I got to compare conditions in Europe, Japan and America. Yet in many ways the American situation was perhaps the most tragic – the most potential, most eagerly squandered. It’s not Americans who are flawed, but the business model imposed from the top.

    For example, I do not believe American engineers are inferior to those working elsewhere. It’s just the way their inputs are handled. Toyota and Honda have long-term viable plans that forecast many years down the road. This gives engineers a clear direction.

    On the other hand, Detroit’s automakers, as well as some European ones, tend to look at short-term gains in order to satisfy shareholders. GM’s big problems were due to planning short-term while sacrificing the farm down the road.

    GM became too big. They had too many brands and too many models. Alfred P. Sloan created all these brands in order to counter Henry Ford, but also to provide various products for people at all economic levels. These internal GM brands were to compete against one another as well as outside companies. What Sloan did not realize is how this internal competition would impact the engineers who develop products and the marketing staff who have to sell them.

    Of course some of the problem had to do with the power and influence many of GM’s shareholders had over the board as well as the CEO. These shareholders wanted their cut and they wanted things done their way. For years, it all came down to satisfying the shareholders at the expense of GM’s long-term reputation. To this day, I know people who will not buy a GM product simply because they had a poorly made Pontiac back in 1983.

    Keep in mind, buying a car is a HUGE purchase for just about anyone. This cannot be compared to purchasing a ticket on a bankrupt airliner or buying a golf club from a defunct golf manufacturer. Americans today have long memories when it comes to vehicle purchases. Yet, these are the same Americans who demand instant gratification and who trample people at stores on Black Friday in order to save an extra $12.00 on a Chinese-made sweater.

    But my biggest complaint has to do with the wasting of great talent. There is a popular myth that American engineers are lazier or more stupid than their Asian and European counterparts. I highly disagree with this notion. There may well be different cultural values, but that does not define a worker’s skill set or determination. American engineers are simply more independent in their thinking than their Japanese and European counterparts. Independently-thinking renegades will create nothing but extra trouble for a platform design team.

    This is system that American engineers and designers are placed into once they graduate from college. It’s a cultural “machine” if you will. In Japan, Toyota’s engineers become “one” with the company and they simply work as one machine. There is no “I” in Toyota’s system – or in Japan’s industrial marketplace for that matter. Unfortunately, at GM people appeared to be hell-bent on receiving singular credit for their accomplishments.

    Please understand that the Japanese people are not a diverse bunch. They are known in the automotive industry for improving upon established ideas, designs and systems. The Japanese, however, are not known to create something from the ground up like their American counterparts. American engineers take more risks, since they want to be rewarded. The Japanese simply create and work for the common good of their employer.

    Toyota
    Toyota is a company that is known for its stubborn planning and ways. They take their time and do things right the first time. This is the Toyota way – most of the time.

    But this is not always the case. Toyota got derailed with their Avalon model. This car has been nothing but trouble from the drawing board to the production line. It is a piece of garbage.

    Why is it so bad? Maybe it is because this time they followed the flawed American model. Toyota rushed it because it saw the potential for a quick profit. They did not take their time to think things through. They simply used the American business model for a short-term gain and it failed them.

    In contrast, GM took its time to develop the new Malibu, and Ford used over 1100 engineers to develop the new F150. The Malibu is better than anything Toyota has right now. How do I know? I drive a Camry and I compared it to the Malibu.

    Interestingly enough, GM Vice Chairman Bob Lutz had personal input into the Malibu’s development. That is the MAJOR divergence from traditional platform development in the past. Engineers and designers received personal hands-on feedback from a car-guy at the top, not some bean counter. I am sure they felt invigorated to hear his thoughts from him rather than receiving them in a fluff letter typed by a secretary.

    Back to Michigan?
    Up until the late 90s, many in Michigan simply did not value a college education. Many were simply cushioned by the fact that they could graduate high school and get a job on the assembly line. I fear that this attitude towards college will grow in the southern states such as Mississippi and Alabama. Many down there are starting to have the “I’ll be fine” attitude that many in Michigan once had.

    But the future in Michigan may be brighter than many suppose. Southeast Michigan will remain a research and development powerhouse well into the future. Many of Detroit’s auto engineers and related companies can easily adapt (technically speaking) to alternative technologies such as wind, solar, and new materials. Never underestimate the amount of brainpower in Detroit. Prior to my stint in Detroit, I was under the impression that every Big Three employee was a lazy slouch. My ignorant attitude was squashed pretty damn quickly once I started working with them.

    So here’s a bright point for the future. You will see more technical industries branching off from the auto industry. Companies like Dow are already taking advantage of Metro Detroit’s diverse and increasingly well-educated Arab population. I see a future in Michigan revolving around chemicals, green energy, transportation and international trade in general.

    But the car industry won’t go away either. Toyota, for example, decided to keep its R&D operation in Michigan rather than relocate to Alabama. There was simply no incentive for Toyota to migrate its brainpower to the South. Right now – although this may change – the auto industry in the south is incomplete since they lack the planning and design processes needed.

    With or without a bailout, the Big Three as we have known them will not be the same. One or two could disappear. Others will no doubt shrink. But the intelligence that exists within the engineering and industrial talent of Michigan remains. This is what the country should look to save from extinction, not the mediocrities who have ruled from highest management.

    Amy Fritz was born in Cambridge, England during World War II. Her mother was a seamstress and her father a pilot with the RAF. Her uncles worked in various capacities within the British automobile industry and her father became an engineer and professor.

    After studying engineering at Cambridge, Fritz developed an interest in automobiles and went to work for a now defunct automotive supplier. Her occupation took her to Europe, Asia and North America, where she eventually settled as a technical engineering contractor for various auto-related companies. She is now semi-retired and living in the Denver area.