New Geography

Tag: Transportation

  • The South Rises Again! (In Automobile Manufacturing, that is)

    Volkswagen’s announcement last week that it will build a new assembly plant in Chattanooga, TN is the latest sign of triumph for the South’s growing auto industry. The new plant will sit within close proximity to one Toyota is building north of Tupelo, MS (where the popular Prius will be manufactured), and another that Kia broke ground for last year in West Point, GA on the Alabama border. This joins existing plants such as those operated by Nissan in Nashville and Smyrna, GA, BMW’s plant in Spartanburg, SC and three assembly plants in Alabama.
    With the average cost of building these facilities at over $1 billion, and the high-paying manufacturing jobs they represent, these plants promise to give the area a substantial industrial base for years to come. On top of all this, BMW even announced a $750 million expansion of its Spartanburg plant in March.

    What’s interesting about these decisions is how foreign auto manufacturers are all choosing to forego building new facilities in the Upper Midwest where the labor market has many idle, qualified workers. Instead they are heading to locales south of the Mason-Dixon line, where such skilled employees in the past have been comparatively scarce.

    The impact has been devastating for the upper Midwest. Michigan, for example, has lost an astounding 34 percent of its auto jobs in the last five years leading to a glut of available and experienced workers. According to the U.S. Dept. of Labor, Michigan still leads the country in auto employment with 181,000 jobs followed by Indiana. But the next three states are something of a surprise: Kentucky, Tennessee, and Alabama.

    Why is this happening? Some it may have to do with the fact that recently laid-off workers in Michigan bring habits developed working in unionized environments – something which foreign automakers do not want, even though unions are very powerful in Germany, for example. The United Auto Workers (UAW) has found it hard to organize foreign automakers in general.

    In contrast, unions are comparatively weak in the South. Though Alabama has seen a huge jump in the number of its auto workers in recent years, according to its state department of labor, only 7,100 are unionized.Nationwide, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, around 12 percent of workers belong to unions compared to just over 10 percent in Alabama. However, the “Yellowhammer State” looks positively union-saturated compared to its neighbors: less than 5 percent of workers in Georgia, Texas, South Carolina, Virginia and North Carolina belong to them.

    But it’s not only a question of unions. The South is attractive to auto makers due to its network of rail and highway lines that make transport to key markets easy and affordable. Furthermore, many southern cities — notably Houston, Charleston and Charlotte — have made big infrastructure investments in recent years.

    Another plus for the South has been the growing role of universities in creating a research hub for the auto industry. The Clemson University International Automotive Research Center is the nation’s only school to offer a Ph.D. in automotive engineering and has secured $200 million in commitments. Additionally, the South Carolina center has created partnerships beyond auto manufacturers with other universities in the area: Auburn, Mississippi State, Alabama, Alabama-Birmingham, Kentucky and Tennessee.

    Alabama has seen the biggest net gain in auto-related jobs, having added more than 30,000 in the last ten years. The state has three plants: a Mercedes-Benz U.S. International in Tuscaloosa, a Honda plant in Lincoln and one for Hyundai-Kia in Montgomery. Additionally, many suppliers have set up shop to service the new Kia plant under construction just over the border in Georgia. A survey by the Alabama Automotive Manufacturer Association found that there are nearly 49,000 auto jobs in the state with another 86,000 jobs that depend on the purchases of these employees resulting in a combined payroll in 2007 of $5.2 billion.

    The overall impact of some of these plants may not be felt for a few years since three of them are just in the process of being constructed. But, with new behemoth facilities manufacturing some of the most fuel-efficient vehicles on the road, it appears that an industrial anchor for the region’s future has been secured. It also confirms a growing shift in the industrial geography of heavy industry in this country from the traditional Midwestern heartland to regions south of the Mason-Dixon line.

    Over time these changes will provide tests for regions both North and South. In the North, regions will have to learn how to compete in higher value-added, specialized industries, as we can see in places like Wisconsin. For the southern areas, the need to maintain and develop sophisticated industrial infrastructure — particularly in term of skills — will remain a major challenge in the years ahead.

    Andy Sywak is the articles editor for newgeography.com.

  • Guzzling BTUs: Problems with Public Transit in an Age of Expensive Gas

    As gas prices inch up toward $5 per gallon, many environmentalists and elected officials are looking to public transit as a solution to higher transportation costs and rising fuel consumption. A closer look at the numbers, however, warrants more than a little skepticism that public transit can fulfill the nation’s energy conservation goals.

    The US transportation sector is a voracious consumer of fuel, accounting for 28 percent of all energy use in 2006 according to the US Department of Transportation. Petroleum products account for 95 percent of this consumption. Naturally, those interested in conserving natural resources, fossil fuels in particular, would want to focus on reducing oil use. Moving people out of cars and onto public transit seems to make intuitive sense.

    It turns out, however, moving people to transit may not be the best strategy after all. According to the US Bureau of Transportation Statistics, a typical transit bus uses 4,235 btu per passenger mile, 20 percent more energy per passenger mile than a passenger car. More interestingly, the amount of energy used by cars has fallen to 3,512 per passenger mile in 2006, an 18 percent drop since 1980. In contrast, the amount of energy used by transit buses increased by 50 percent over the same period, rising to 4,235 btus per passenger mile. Light trucks were not quite so energy friendly as energy use fell by nearly one third to 6,904 btus per passenger mile (although their energy efficiency has remained stable since the mid-1990s).

    The long term trend toward more fuel efficient private vehicles is likely to continue as more and more energy-frugal cars such as gasoline-electric hybrids and electric plug-in vehicles become more popular. The Toyota Prius sold its one millionth vehicle in 2008 as it achieved mass production status. Sixty-five hybrid models are expected to be on the US market by the 2010 model year, nearly tripling the current number available. Moreover, all-electric vehicles such as the Tesla sports car are expected to become more popular as consumers become more accepting of personal vehicles fueled by non-traditional technologies. (Notably, Toyota is experimenting with solar panels on new generations of the Prius.)

    These trends, of course, don’t imply that fuel consumption has declined overall. On the contrary, US motorists are consuming 75.4 million gallons of fuel each year, up 7.8 percent from 1980. Yet, this is remarkably stable trend given the fact vehicle mile traveled have increased by 49 percent since then. Travel demand has more than doubled for light trucks and similar vehicles while fuel consumption by these vehicles increased by just 59 percent. Efficiency gains, then, have effectively compensated for large shares of the increase in travel demand, dramatically reducing the amount of energy used for each mile driven.

    Unfortunately, the same can’t be said for public transit. While transit ridership has increased significantly over the past year, climbing to 10.3 billion trips during the first quarter of 2008 according to the American Public Transit Association, the overall effect on the travel market has been modest. Long-term, transit’s market share for all travel fell from 1.5 percent in 1980 to 1 percent in 2005. Transit’s market share for work trips has fallen to 5 percent overall. Meanwhile, the public transit infrastructure – buses, route miles, etc. – has remained largely intact. That means more buses are transporting fewer people, significantly curtailing public transit’s energy efficiency. Not surprisingly, the energy intensity for public transit increased on average by 1.5 percent per year from 1970 to 2006.

    The story is a little different for passenger rail, which carries about half of the nation’s public transit riders (although national data are dominated by ridership in New York City). Transportation consultant Wendell Cox has calculated the energy intensity for other modes of transit in 2005 and found that commuter, heavy, and light rail transit used significantly less energy per passenger mile (about 40%) than public bus or passenger cars.

    Yet, the prospect for reducing energy use significantly by improving rail transit’s market share of overall travel is slim. Despite double-digit increases, light rail ridership accounts for just 3.4 percent of transit passenger miles nationally . In contrast, commuter and heavy rail ridership growth was just 5.7 percent and 4.4 percent respectfully. Moreover, increased ridership for rail services depend on the availability of other transit services, most notably feeder bus routes as well as urban densities that are difficult to sustain outside a few major cities such as New York, Chicago, or Boston.

    Thus, as a practical matter, public transit is unlikely to provide a meaningful solution to reduced energy use in transportation. This becomes clear after looking at travel behavior in the wake of the increase in gas prices over the past year. Overall, public transit ridership increased just 3.3 percent. If we convert ridership into passenger miles traveled – a distance-based rather than trip-based measure – a 3.3 percent increase translates into 1.6 billion passenger miles over the course of a year. That may seem like a big number, until it’s compared to overall US travel.

    As gas prices went up, US automobile travelers eliminated 112 billion passenger miles from our roadways as vehicle miles traveled fell by 2.3 percent. Even if we assume all the increased transit ridership was accounted for by the migration of automobile travelers to public transit, buses and trains captured fewer than 2 percent of the reduction in automobile-based travel demand.

    Thus, in the end, those seeking ways to promote energy conservation are still relying on market forces to affect behavior and resource use. Higher-income consumers value mobility, and automobiles provide the flexibility and adaptability they demand. As energy prices rise, incentives to provide resource stingy alternatives such as hybrid and electric only vehicles increases, stimulating even further innovation that bring down costs over the long run. Meanwhile, contrary to public perception, as fewer segments of the population rely on fixed route transit systems, the relative energy efficiency of public transit declines.

    Samuel R. Staley, Ph.D., is director of urban and land use policy at Reason Foundation and co-author of “The Road More Traveled: Why the Congestion Crisis Matters More Than You Think and What We Can Do About It” (Rowman & Littlefield, 2006). He can be contacted at sam.staley@reason.org.

  • Which Cities Will the High Cost of Energy Hurt (and Help) the Most?

    A high cost energy future will profoundly impact the cost of doing business and create new opportunities, but not necessarily in the way most people expect.

    By Joel Kotkin and Michael Shires

    The New York Times, the Atlantic Monthly and the rest of the establishment press have their answer: big cities like New York, Chicago, and San Francisco will win out. Our assessment is: not so fast. There’s a lot about the unfolding energy economy that is more complex than commonly believed, and could have consequences that are somewhat unanticipated.

    On the plus side there are some undoubted winners — those areas that produce energy and those with energy expertise. What’s working for Moscow, St. Petersburg, Calgary, Edmonton, and Dubai is also working for the U.S. energy regions as well. Not surprisingly, many are located deep in the heart of Texas. This includes not only big cities like energy mega-capital Houston but a host of smaller ones, like high-flyers Midland, Odessa and Longview.

    But it’s not just Texas cities that are winning. A host of other places have strong ties to energy production and exploration — Salt Lake City, Denver, and the North Dakota cities of Bismarck, Fargo, and Grand Forks. And it’s not just oil: The U.S. Great Plains have also been described as “the Saudi Arabia of wind.” If the right incentives are put in place, a wind-belt from west Texas to the Canadian border could be produce new jobs, both in building mills and also for the industries — manufacturers, computer-related companies — that will harness the relatively cheap energy.

    Alternative renewal energy producers in biofuels, thermal, and hydro-electric will also become big business. The Sierra Nevada cities like Reno could benefit from thermal; the Pacific Northwest’s hydro-power gives places like Portland, Seattle, and a host of smaller communities — Wenatchee, Bend, Olympia — a great competitive advantage in terms of dependable, low cost and low carbon energy.

    How about the big cities and metros that consume less energy? It seems logical that San Francisco, D.C., Los Angeles, Boston, Chicago, and New York should have an advantage over other cities and their suburban hinterlands; these cities, especially New York, have higher than average transit use. San Francisco and Los Angeles enjoy milder climates requiring less air conditioning and heating.

    But these advantages are somewhat mitigated by the fact that these same cities often pay far more for energy than their rivals. Electricity in New York, notes an upcoming study by the New York-based Center for an Urban Future, costs twice the national average. California cities also suffer much higher prices — almost 50 percent higher than their counterparts in the Midwest. So even if you use considerably less energy, you might end up paying more. Being a big, dense city clearly has advantages, but they too often are squandered by aging infrastructure, lack of new plants and high business costs.

    One other problem for big Northern cities: colder regions will feel the ripple in local economies as the impact of high heating bills is felt next winter. A cold winter will push northeastern city-dwellers to join the chorus of complaints now voiced by drivers in auto-heavy Sunbelt states like Florida and California.

    Nor is it certain suburban areas will do so much worse in tough energy times. Studies of commuting patterns in Chicago and Los Angeles show that many suburbs thirty miles or more from their downtowns — places like Naperville, Illinois and Thousand Oaks or Irvine, California — have shorter commutes than most inner-ring urbanites. This is a result of the movement of jobs to “nodes” on the periphery over the past 30 years.

    Another kind of area that will do well are those that have well-developed telecommuter economies. In Los Angeles, notes California State University at Los Angeles geographer Ali Modarres, telecommuters are concentrated not only in places like Santa Monica, but also in sections of the San Fernando Valley (which has most of the region’s entertainment workers) as well as further out inu highly educated communities like Thousand Oaks and Irvine. In the long run, the best and most energy efficient commute is none at all.

    So who are the losers? Certainly some of the distant outer suburbs, like the high desert communities far east of Los Angeles, which lack jobs for their residents, and suffer longer than average commutes. Also hurt will be poorer inner city areas where workers have to commute, by transit or car, over great distances. Sadly, it’s many of the communities that have already suffered the most. The changeover to lower mileage vehicles will be particularly tough on those communities that produce SUVs and trucks — places like Flint, Michigan; Ft. Wayne Indiana; and Janesville, Wisconsin.

    But there are also some auto centers that are likely to do better. Just follow where low-mileage vehicles, particularly those built by Toyota, Honda, Nissan, and the Korean makers, are either being built or planned. This is mostly a southern play — Tupelo, Mississippi; Nashville, Tennessee; and Georgetown, Kentucky, site of the largest Toyota plant outside Japan.

    Economic change has always impacted America’s communities. But with the current energy price surge, we may find that “creative destruction” may be sweeping through many communities even faster than we anticipated.

    Cities and Oil Prices: The Winners and The Losers

    For most places, it’s hard to tell what the long-term effect of the high cost of energy might be. But there are some fairly safe bets.

    Two kinds of areas tend to perform best in a harsh energy environment. One is the energy-producing cities, whose place at the top of this list should come as no surprise. Another, though it may take a bit longer to emerge, may be those cities that are sites for production of fuel-efficient vehicles. These tend to be located in parts of the country — Texas, the Southeast, and the Great Plains — that have lower energy costs and more favorable business climates.

    Winners:

    1. Houston: This is one town where $150 a barrel gasoline is viewed more as an opportunity than an atrocity. Not that Houstonians don’t drive — like other Texans, they tend toward the profligate in energy use. But prices are not terribly high by national standards and, more to the point, energy is producing lots of high wage jobs here for both blue- and white-collar workers. As headquarters to sixteen large energy firms — far more than New York, Dallas, and Los Angeles combined — Houston, which ranks No. 4 on our list of the best large cities to do business, provides an irresistible lure to hundreds of smaller firms specializing in everything from shipping and distribution of energy, to trading, exploration and geological modeling.
    2. Midland-Odessa, Texas: Houston is no longer the oil production center it once was, but the twin cities of Midland (No. 1 on our Best Cities list overall and among small cities) and Odessa (No. 4 on the list of small cities) certainly are. The two cities, only 20 miles apart in the energy rich Permian Basin, experienced hard times when energy prices dropped. Office buildings went empty, and people fled. But now the big problem is finding enough labor to keep the rigs going. Boomtimes are back — and only a dramatic change in the energy markets will slow them down.
    3. Bismarck, North Dakota: No. 30 on our Best Cities list of small cities, Bismarck may be in the early stages of a big time expansion. It’s the closest “big” city to the rapidly developing Bakken range — rich with oil and shale deposits — and already enjoys the advantages of being the capitol of a state that boasts a $1 billion surplus. North Dakota’s biofuels, wind, and coal industries also make the city a natural focal point for Great Plains energy. As in Midland-Odessa, the biggest constraint may well prove to be the availability of labor.
    4. The Mid-south Autobelt: The shift to smaller cars may seem dismal in Detroit, but it’s pure joy to much of the mid-South. Foreign companies specializing in energy efficient vehicles — Volkswagen, Kia, Honda, Nissan — are concentrated in a belt running from Nashville (No. 18 on the large metro list) and Chattanooga (No. 59 on midsize list) in Tennessee to Huntsville, Alabama (No. 5 on the midsize list). Local universities in the area are also getting into the act, with several cooperating in an automotive research alliance.

    Our list of losers is all too familiar. Basically, these are areas dominated by America’s weak automakers and are particularly wedded to the SUVs and trucks that are losing market share at an astonishing rate. Most fall in states that are strong union bastions, have relatively high energy prices, and get much of their energy from coal, a fuel that’s even less popular with environmentalists than oil is.

    Losers:

    1. Detroit: The center of the American auto industry ranks dead last, No. 66, on our big city list. The Motor City’s legacy as headquarters town for the former Big Three is now its biggest headache. It’s not just factory workers being hurt here; Detroit is where much of the technical, manufacturing, and design talent base of the U.S. auto industry resides. It’s also where ad agencies, law firms, and other high-end business service providers to the industry cluster. All have taken big hits over the last few years, which has led to increased out-migration, high rates of foreclosure and a deteriorating fiscal situation.
    2. Flint, Michigan: No. 171 on the small city list, just two from the bottom, Flint seems to make more and more of what Americans don’t want. In 2006, it made more than 170,000 pickup trucks; it’s doubtful it will see that level of production for a long time to come. And this is a place that was hurting even before gas prices went up. Over 40 percent of all manufacturing jobs disappeared between 2002 and 2007.
    3. Ft. Wayne, Indiana: Compared to Flint or Detroit, Ft. Wayne (No. 85 on the mid-sized list) is not doing too badly. Between 2002 and 2007 manufacturing employment dropped only 2.5 percent. The big problem is the future of the industrial sector. Ft. Wayne made 200,000 pickup trucks in 2006. It’s hard to see many of these jobs surviving if energy prices stay high.
    4. Janesville, Wisconsin: No. 92 on the small list, the Janesville plant manufactures GMC Yukon, the Yukon XL, the Chevy Tahoe, and the Suburban. Although more than 200,000 SUVs were produced at this plant in 2006, the plant will close by the end of 2010. The largest private employer in Janesville is Mercy Health Systems. Being in Wisconsin helps — the state is in better shape than Midwest neighbors such as Michigan and Ohio.

    Joel Kotkin is a presidential fellow at Chapman University and executive editor of Newgeography.com.

    Michael Shires, Ph.D. is a professor at Pepperdine University School of Public Policy.

  • Suburbs Will Adapt to High Gas Prices

    Will high gas prices doom the suburbs? The short answer is no. America’s investment in suburbia is too broad and deep and these will drive all kinds of technological and other adaptations. But the continued outward growth of new suburban housing tracts and power centers is unsustainable.

    It is, of course, risky to predict anything, particularly the future. No one can predict with certainty the direction of gas prices, let alone how they will reshape our landscape. While the long-term trend for oil and gas is almost certainly rising prices, volatility will continue to make short-run bets risky either way.

    But whether gas prices plateau, spike or even decline in the next five years, larger forces will reinforce the shift to greater reinvestment in older urban areas – and towards reinvention of existing suburban areas, particularly those with strong economies.

    There will still be some “greenfield” peripheral development, but unplanned “sprawl” will wither. New development will be look more like New Urbanist new towns. There will be a revival of the integrated planned community, like Reston in Virginia, the Woodlands near Houston or Valencia and Santa Margarita in Southern California.

    The forces converging to curb sprawl go beyond gas prices. There will be regulatory and market pressure to cut carbon emissions to address global warming, but the most serious threat to outward sprawl will be the private and public shortage of financing for new infrastructure, which is likely to be chronic. Given the deepening crisis in the housing and lending industries, in the long interval building resumes, new development will be very different from what we’ve seen in the past fifty years of most conventional suburbia.

    Of course, even if we adopted a universal program of “smart growth” across America tomorrow, it would be decades before we had repaired and reshaped our landscape and economy to a more sustainable model. In the meantime, there will be tremendous pressure to exploit existing and new energy sources to maintain the suburban model we live in. But we can’t ignore the pragmatic economist Herb Stein who first observed, “Things which can’t go on forever, don’t (known as Stein’s Law).”

    In part, because of legislation such as AB 32, the “Global Climate Solutions Act,” California may be one of the first test cases of this transition. Whether you think this is the greatest threat to our planet in human history or you think this is environmental hysteria, global warming legislation is now a political reality.

    We can’t meet reduce greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 levels by 2020 – the fundamental goal of the legislation – without reducing vehicle miles traveled. With transportation producing 40 percent of the problem, improved fuel efficiency will help – and so will switching to alternative fuels and increased telecommuting. But those gains will be essentially wiped out by the offsetting increases in population and mileage that people are traveling.

    While the costs of retooling new growth to be more sustainable will be significant, so are the opportunities. This year alone, according to the Economist, the oil importing nations will transfer two trillion dollars to the oil exporting nations. That’s money that will not be go to improve our infrastructure, protect our environment or educate our youth. It goes out our tailpipes.

    Here in California, the $20 billion transportation bond that voters approved in 2006 comes nowhere near to closing the $100 billion dollar gap in transportation infrastructure needed to address auto congestion and goods movement by truck. There is no way California’s government or economy can afford to continue to pay that cost. But it has taken gas at nearly $5 a gallon for people to wake up and smell the fumes.

    But halting sprawl is not the same as reversing it. Gas prices, AB 32 mandates, highway spending deficits and environmental concerns all conspire against more red-tiled roof subdivisions in Palmdale and Victorville. Yet growth pressures will fuel new demand down the road, so older suburbs and cities have to find ways to develop family-friendly housing and attract jobs that have been flowing to the suburban edge.

    These are two different, but related challenges. Older suburbs have to find a way to gracefully urbanize by strengthening or creating walkable centers and adding more population along commercial/transit corridors. They need to transition from auto-dependence to a wider range of real transportation alternatives. Above all, they face the challenge of persuading residents that reinvention of the suburbs can improve their quality of life and standard of living.

    Planners make a mistake if they try to tell suburban residents to give up what they like about suburbia in terms of space, privacy and safety. Acceptance of higher densities in existing suburban communities will only come if design of more urban housing improves and new development offers residents tangible improvements in amenities such as pedestrian-friendly districts, parks, bikeways and opportunities to work close to home.

    Older cities, on the other hand, already have much of the physical framework in place, but need to improve their parks, schools, libraries and neighborhoods. They must make themselves attractive to retain working and middle-class households, especially families with children. The key challenge will be to overcome the entrenched special interests that dominate urban politics to focus on the efforts that make a city hospitable to residents and businesses and be less dominated by the interests of developers and public employee unions.

    All across the state there are promising examples that suggest suburban and urban communities are getting the point. in the short run, the weak economy and awful financial market, both for public and private sectors, will slow change. But California has shown incredible resilience over the past 150 years. Our growing population and changing demographics will open up a huge market for reinvesting in our older communities.

    Now is the time to prepare for that time. Remember during the last deep real estate downturn, former Governor Pete Wilson abandoned his promise to tackle statewide growth management. His excuse was, “I wish I had some growth to manage.” The tragedy of that missed opportunity was that it wasn’t long before growth again overwhelmed our capacity.

    What if we’d not only put in place a coherent growth management strategy like Oregon, New Jersey or Maryland – but we’d established the collaborative regional structures in place like in metro Denver, Salt Lake City or Portland? Today, we’d be finishing the Subway to the Sea, the Gold Line extension to Ontario Airport and we’d have regular commuter rail between Ventura and Santa Barbara. Maybe then, $5 gas would be a little less painful.

    For too long, we’ve viewed cities and suburbia as natural antagonists. But the future may lie with greater convergence. Cities can become greener and more attractive to population growth. Suburbs can begin to urbanize in graceful and sustainable ways. Both are due for reinvention and reinvestment. The challenges we face will give us the opportunity – and the necessity – for doing just that.

    Rick Cole is the City Manager in Ventura, California, where he has championed smart growth strategies and revitalization of the historic downtown. He previously spent six years as the City Manager of Azusa, where he was credited by the San Gabriel Valley Tribune with helping make it “the most improved city in the San Gabriel Valley.” He earlier served as mayor of Pasadena and has been called “one of Southern California’s most visionary planning thinkers by the LA Times.” He was honored by Governing Magazine as one of their “2006 Public Officials of the Year.”

  • What does the end of cheap oil mean to our urban futures?

    The Contrasting Views.
    One of the most common topics on blog sites and newsgroups here and around the world is “What does the end of cheap oil mean to the future of our cities?”

    As usual, those who combine a yearning for catastrophe with a hatred of the motor car and the suburban lifestyle have leapt to their own “self evident” conclusion. They are convinced the suburbs are no longer viable and will be abandoned and left to decay into extensive ghost towns, home only to vermin and weeds.

    All those millions of of people who inhabit the metropolitan areas of Los Angeles, San Francisco, Houston, and even Auckland and Christchurch, will up-stakes and surge into downtown neighbourhoods where they will take up residence in high rise slabs from which they will be able to walk and cycle to work – or of course catch their bus or train. As James Howard Kunstler puts somewhat gleefully:

    “The US economy is crumbling because the way we conduct the activities of daily life is insane relative to our circumstances. We’ve spent sixty years ramping up a suburban living arrangement that has suddenly entered a state of failure, and all its accessories and furnishings are failing in concert. The far-flung McHouse tracts are becoming both useless and worthless in the face of gasoline prices that will never be cheap again. The strip malls and office “parks” are following the residential real estate off a cliff. The retail tenants of all those places are hemorrhaging customers who have maxed out every last credit card. The lack of business is now leading to substantial layoffs. The airline industry is dying and will probably cease to exist in its familiar form in 24 months. The trucking industry is dying, threatening the entire just-in-time distribution system of things that even people with little money to spend still need, like food.”

    All this because US gas prices may soon reach $5/gallon. We New Zealanders, like many others round the world, have been living with $5/gallon petrol for years, and have even survived $10/gallon petrol for close on two years. Yet Kunstler and many like-minded catastrophists state with total confidence that once gas hits $10/gallon all Americans will simply stop driving – and start rebuilding their cities.

    Fortunately, the simple sums suggest otherwise. Look up the population of your nearest city. Look up the housing replacement rate, and figure out how long it will take to transform present day Seattle or Auckland into a remake of 19th Century London. Then think about the costs of all the new buildings, all the new infrastructure, and the lost asset value of all those abandoned suburbs.

    Many of us believe that long before anyone has to consider such a drastic reshaping of our built environment new technologies and some minor behavioural shifts will make such disruption totally unnecessary.

    The alarmists respond that we do not have the time.

    However, we can develop new technologies and produce new products at high speed if we have to. Consider the rapid development of technology during WWII – jet engines, radar, V2s, computing and much more. By the end of WWII it was taking only five days to build a Liberty Ship in the US dockyards. When I first went on the Internet in 1994 there were only 70,000 of us in the club. Now there are over 1.6 billion of us.

    Off course we have the time. After decades of paying about $5/gallon for our petrol, the NZ urban landscape looks much like America’s although the average vehicle size may be somewhat smaller.

    Now that we are paying $10/gallon for petrol, sales of small, more efficient, cars are booming, and a few more people are cycling to work, car-pooling or taking public transport. But, hardly anyone, except our local Katastrophists, are talking about giving up their autos altogether or proposing that we rebuild our cities within the constraints of Extremist Smart Growth urban form.

    The most obvious change in behaviour is a boom in drive-away theft from petrol stations. Barrier arms or similar hardware will soon put a stop to this.

    Our Densities are Higher and uses more Mixed than in the US.
    Since the seventies, New Zealand has generally had ‘enabling’ Urban Planning rules which have allowed mixes of high, medium and low density housing and mixed uses of retail etc. Lot sizes have ranged in size but there would hardly be any suburbs built exclusively for single family homes on 1 acre lots. Consequently Auckland’s density per sq mile is about double that of most US cities of similar age and size. But we are already “densified” and further density increases are being strongly resisted because the kerbside parking is already in short supply and inner city districts are noticing the increased congestion, noise and loss of amenity.

    One effect of $10/gallon gas is that public transport prices are rising steeply too, and Councils are raising rates to keep up with the necessary subsidies. Some people seem to think that public transport runs on fairy dust.

    Our auto ownership is about the same as the US, we drive somewhat shorter distances on average but generally spend more time driving up and down hills.

    Of course we are now grizzling and complaining about the price of petrol. But the US need hardly fear any massive revolution while their gas remains at only half the price of ours.

    US consumers are reacting to a dramatic change in price. Many of those cyclists are still prepared to pay more for their litre of bottled water than they are prepared to pay for a litre of gas.

    A Force for Decentralisation
    Americans are responding to this change in price by reducing their driven mileage. (Americans drove 11billion fewer miles in March 2008 than in March 2007. ) Significantly the most dramatic reductions are taking place in the rural areas. My own experience suggests this is because the reductions are much easier to achieve in rural life. We tend to co-operate when it comes to long trips, we can more freely plan our times of day, and we spend no time at traffic lights, in gridlock, or looking for parking spaces. When gas prices are high such waste is infuriating.

    Hence, while none of us can be sure about future human behaviour, my own research and my own experience, suggests that high gas prices are a further force for decentralisation. Kunstler is sure we shall all rush to the city centre. Some people will, of course, but they will be watching many households moving in the opposite direction.

    Freeman Dyson’s book “The Sun the Genome and the Internet” identifies many present and future forces for decentralisation. My current position is that high gas prices are more likely to decentralise more people than centralise them. But no human behaviour is uniform. Some people will go downtown and some – probably more – will go to rural centres. Many will go to more remote locations for “the sea change, the tree change and the ski change.”

    Some people are convinced that this outmigration will be strongly resisted by the existing folk and even more so by people like me who will want to protect our piece of paradise. Not so – as long as the planners don’t force us all to crowd into high density settlements with no room to swing a cat or grow our vegetables. And they will probably try.

    When we moved to Northland eleven years ago there were few people in the Kaiwaka area and services were basic. Now we have a French restaurant, an Italian bread shop, a bundle of local newspapers, excellent butchers and delicatessens, the school rolls are growing and the medical services are better and nearer and so on.

    Most New Zealanders of my generation grew up in the country and we are returning to our roots. The media like to make much of a few hopeless cases who want to “de-moo” the cows and so on but I have never had any problems of that kind and frankly we are the ones who are driving many of the new rural crops such as olives, wine, truffles etc. and the new tourism establishments and so on.

    The Iron Horse will prevail
    For most of human history people have had access to private point-to-point history using things called horses, camels, mules, asses, lamas or whatever. Christ rode into Jerusalem on the current equivalent of a VW. Then, in the 19th C trains and trams allowed the development of far-flung cities in which large numbers of people could get into the central city for work. (The Manhattan model). The trouble was the horses, which dominated short distance urban trips, caused dreadful pollution of air water and soil, not to mention the stench at a NY gridlocked intersection in mid-summer.

    The car was a miracle. It got rid of the pollution, and released huge amounts of food to feed people.

    In 1910, 40% of the grain grown in the US went to feed horses. This “extra” grain fed the population explosion which followed.

    So the car the was the real “Iron Horse” – not the train.

    Modern trains are at a higher level of technology than the nineteenth century trains but their new technologies only increase their speed and reduce their pollution. They do not overcome the fact that trains cannnot provide the flexibility of rubber-on-road transport such as buses, cars, and taxis – or indeed, of the family horse.

    Anyhow, the rubber-on-road system is about to go through a development phase which will leave the train in (on) its tracks, or stuck at the station.

    The next generation of cars will be a computer with four wheels.
    Many people in many different research centres are working on new technologies which will mean you will be able to drive your car to the motorway where it will link to a position over an underground cable which will guide the car – you will be able to take your hands off the wheel and read, and even use your cellphone. The same cable may use an induction system to supply power to your electric drive system. (You will of course charge your electric car up in your garage overnight).

    Then, when you get near to your destination you will put your hands back on the wheel, leave the motorway, go back on to the surface street and complete the trip. If there is no parking you will get out of the car and tell it to go park itself and it will. When you leave your business you will phone it up to tell it to come and pick you up and it will.

    That it what we mean when we say the train is 19th century technology – it is stuck and cannot make the leap into the 21st century.

    No one can be sure that this total package will prevail but there are so many options being developed that cars will certainly leap to new levels of effciency and effectiveness over the next few years. If this seems like science fantasy image convincing your great-grandparents of the reality of modern computers on your desk and the power of the internet.

    Behavioural change.
    There will be some changes of behaviour at the margins. People who are tired of congestion may make their move to the regional centres earlier than they might have, while their children might move to a downtown apartment.

    But the technology will change much more rapidly than urban form and land use can change. If need be we shall electrify the private vehicle fleet and supply nuclear power and the car will be cheaper to run than ever.

    There will be more telecommuting.

    There will be more hi tech car pooling using GPS, iPhones and the Internet.

    A few more will cycle and ride in trains and buses but the changes in travel mode will not be dramatic.

    The worst thing that can happen is that our cities move from being “Opportunity Cities” to “Panic Cities” that insist on controlling where and how their people should live, based on knee-jerk reactions to change and a total lack of confidence in people’s ability to innovate and adapt.

    Owen McShane is a Resource Management Consultant based in New Zealand

  • Commuting Suicide — the District of Columbia wants to be a residential suburb

    The Washington Post’s recent article about how the District government is making plans to make the city “less-welcoming to suburban cars” is one more example of suicidal behavior that the city is known for.

    Unfortunately, other cities are thinking similarly. In the plan, “City officials say that the moves are part of a policy of putting the needs of its residents and businesses before those of suburban commuters and that they are trying to create a walkable, bikeable, transit-oriented metropolis.” Apparently Washington has decided to become a bedroom suburb. Newsflash: even those don’t exist anymore – much less in the center of a metropolitan region of over five million.

    It is hard to believe that the District could consciously make the city less welcoming to vehicles than it already is – with potholes on every block and roads like I-295 right out of the 1930s with design features for the tin lizzie, or New York Avenue that says “Welcome to your Nation’s Capitol” with neglect apparent on every block. Maybe because they cannot fix those things they decided to turn it into a virtue at least among some segments of the society.

    You would think the District would have noticed that more of their own citizens get to work by car than by transit and about 45 percent of those riding transit are on the roads they want to make worse. This is just an extension of the District’s perennial search for revenue with a tortured way to get to a commuter tax that has been around for decades.

    All it would take is a few minutes on the back of an envelope to recognize how important commuters are to the city. First answer would be a simple thought experiment – would the city be better off with no suburban commuters or with what they have now? Someone in the District government could do a small calculation of the amount of office building space, with the attendant real estate taxes they generate, the restaurants, shops and services, the parking garages and the revenue they earn, the taxes they pay, and the District workers they support, to recognize that the benefits to the City per thousand commuters far exceeds the costs. Without the suburbs even its beloved Metro wouldn’t exist.

    More importantly, it shows that the District once again has failed to recognize its responsibility as the nation’s capitol. Those responsibilities are really not that terribly different from other center cities. This is part of a looming public policy conflict of national proportions. As cities adopt the new mantra of “metro mobility” – which is code for an attack on autos and an assumption that transit needs can be met by walking, biking and mass transit – they only address trips under five miles. This completely neglects the responsibility that every city and metropolitan region in the country has, much less the nation’s capitol, to meet the needs of interstate commerce – whether through access to ports or to major rail or highway routes.

    This is not optional. An area cannot opt out of that obligation. If all areas of the Baltimore-Washington metropolitan area operated that way, rather than a great region comprised of dozens of counties it would be a series of hamlets adjacent to each other with the obvious decline in market power and productivity that entails.

    The great challenge to the nation in the next few years will be providing access to those workers needed to replace the aging baby boom generation. We will need to expand the commuter market-sheds around our cities not contract them. Congressman Moran got it right, providing a sense of scale when he told reporter Eric M. Weiss, “U.S. Rep. James P. Moran Jr. (D-Va.) said … the city should be careful not to chase people away. Like the District, Old Town Alexandria would be a nicer place without all the cars, he said. But there is an economic component to be considered, he said, and people in cars represent customers for restaurants and shops.”

    He also said be careful what you wish for… For a city that lost 180,000 people over the last 30 years the District should listen to wiser heads.

  • Moving from the Cities to the Suburbs… and Beyond

    The current concern over soaring gas prices has raised serious questions about the sustainability of what we commonly consider “the American dream”. Some urban boosters and environmentalists seem positively giddy about the prospects that suburbanites, reeling under the impact of high-energy prices, will soon be forced to give up their cars, backyards and highly regarded privacy for the pleasures of crowded multi-family homes and commutes on packed public transit to jobs downtown.

    This is part of a profoundly nostalgic notion that we can return to the 19th Century idyll .It is a kind of dream world where everyone walks on bustling streets, greeting their neighbors who sit on the front porch or hang out on a brownstone stoop. Of course, any serious student of history knows that life in urban America was hardly so idyllic — with families of five or more packed into tiny three-room apartments in neighborhoods often characterized by gangs, unsanitary conditions and limited economic opportunities.

    One generally does not expect newspaper reporters to know, much less understand history. However, it would be nice if they bothered to look even at the recent facts. Yet to read The New York Times, the Washington Post and even The Wall Street Journal, you would think there is a mass movement out of automobiles into mass transit. Yet, in reality, they rarely note that the decline in driving is more than 30 times the increase in transit ridership.

    This is not to deny that transit ridership, after decades of relative decline, is rising, but statistically it remains relatively insignificant. That is because transit’s market share, outside New York, is barely one percent. However, why shouldn’t people take transit if it is a viable alternative to the car? The problem is that how we live, work and shop in most places simply does not work with transit; other trends, like a shift to cars that are more efficient, telecommuting and working closer to home all seem far more likely to shape our future transportation pattern.

    But where the really far off is with respect to demographic trends — where people are moving. Readers are continuously misled about the imagined return of people from the suburbs to the city. The claim is that this has being going on since before energy prices really spiked but has become even more pronounced now.

    The demographic reality is quite at odds with these assertions, even now. For one thing suburbanization never was principally about moving from cities to suburbs, it was more about moving from small town and rural areas to the suburbs. Even in St. Louis, which has lost more of its population than any city since the Romans sacked Carthage, most new suburban residents were not from the city.

    More critically, an examination of metropolitan county domestic migration data from 2000 to 2007 simply fails to show any demonstrable back-to-the-city movement. We examined domestic migration in 47 metropolitan areas of the nation with more than 1,000,000 population (four metropolitan areas were excluded, see file). Here is what the data show:

    • Core counties of metropolitan areas continue to lose domestic migrants and have done so every year of this decade. There have been ups and downs, but in 2006-2007, more than 500,000 people moved out of core counties. Every year in the decade, from 34 to 39 of the 47 core counties have lost domestic migrants. In 2006-2007, 37 core counties lost domestic migrants.
    • Suburban counties of metropolitan areas continue to gain domestic migrants and have done so every year of this decade. The trend has been generally downward, with more than a net 400,000 migration gain in 2000-2001, falling to a gain of 180,000 in 2006-2007. Every year in the decade, from suburban counties in 33 to 40 of the 47 metropolitan areas have gained domestic migrants. In 2006-2007, suburban domestic migration gains occurred in 33 metropolitan areas.
    • Domestic migration was greater (or losses were lower) in the suburban counties of 39 of the 47 metropolitan areas in 2006-2007. During the decade, this figure has ranged from 38 to 42.

    The decline in domestic migration to the suburbs, however, does not suggest that people are moving back to the city. On the contrary, it may suggest even greater decentralization as people move from the suburbs, as well as core cities, of major metropolitan areas to smaller urban areas and perhaps even rural areas. Perhaps it is being made possible by advances in information technology and telecommuting. To some degree, it is people “voting with their feet” often due to high housing prices, failing schools and congested conditions even in suburbs of large metropolitan centers.

    Basically, from a statistical point of view, there is simply no hard evidence of any material movement of people from suburbs to cities. Between 2000 and 2007, millions of people moved from the most expensive housing markets to more affordable markets — in many times prices made worse by land use policies commonly imposed in some areas.

    The reality is that people are adaptable to changing conditions. They will work to preserve the lifestyles they prefer. They will buy more fuel efficient cars; they will work and recreate closer to home. A decade from now, we will likely find that the reports of suburban demise will be greatly exaggerated once again.