Suburbs

The New Industrial City

Aaron M. Renn — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 01:57:42 -0400

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Wed, 12 Aug 2009 00:56:36 -0400

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Moving to Southern California

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Reducing Vehicle Miles Traveled Produces Meager Greenhouse Gas Emission Reduction Returns

Wendell Cox — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 02:22:14 -0400

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

People, Planet, Prefurbia

Rick Harrison — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 00:38:45 -0400

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

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

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

People: Conventional Subdivision

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

People: Prefurbia

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

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

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

Planet: Conventional

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

Planet: Prefurbia

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

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

Profit: Conventional

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

Financial Sustainability: Prefurbia

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

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

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

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

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

Downtown Central-Cities as Hubs of Civic Connection

Michael Scott — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 01:42:08 -0400

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

ULI Moving Cooler Report: Greenhouse Gases, Exaggerations and Misdirections

Alan Pisarski — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 01:34:30 -0400

Yesterday a group of environmental advocacy groups, foundations and other organizations released a report, Moving Cooler, amid much fanfare, seeking to have us believe that it is a serious study of GHG reduction options in the transportation sector. It is immensely disappointing. The world could use a dispassionate, objective and broad-based assessment of petroleum reduction options as well as their positive and negative consequences. This is not it.

As one reads one can't help but feel that you are being hit with a sales pitch, or a legal brief from advocacy groups and those who would benefit financially from the derived policy options. The main point, amidst all the array of statistics, confirms the dogma of the already convinced that the only solution to greenhouse gases is major re-structuring of society.

These notions, critically, were already on the front burner of these same groups long before the climate change issue came to prominence. “Progressive” foundations, new urbanists, planners and urban landowners long have advocated the re-assembly of urban living into high density transit-oriented bikeable/walkable communities. Even though their numbers as reported in the text don’t bear it out, the rhetoric is all focused towards that end and the pricing out of existence the automobile and all the evils it represents: suburban living and long trips.

This is a report meant to be waved rather than read as the Congress goes about its fulminations in the coming months. It understates the prospect of gaining the full potential of greater energy efficiency from the vehicle fleet – the only way to justify the wholesale reorganization of society. In fact, if the vehicle/fuel assumptions had been as comparably optimistic as the land use assumptions, with a robust and honest assessment of fuel and vehicle technological development opportunities, one wonders whether this report would be worth doing at all.

We have been here before. In the struggle to improve air quality, it turned out that the solution was not so much changing people’s behavior as it was technological – largely the improvement of fuel and vehicle technology. In the 1970s we were told we could not have cleaner air and automobiles; yet in fact that’s exactly what happened, without having to heed a sermon about our need to repent and change our suburban, car-driving ways. Some people just have a penchant for telling others how to live.

Maybe the saddest part of it all, the authors appear not to take global warming or energy security very seriously at all. Rather these public concerns are just a convenient hook, the cause du jour, on which to hang their favorite solutions. If global warming matters – and it does; if energy security matters – and it does; then early action is clearly called for, particularly given the cumulative nature of GHG gases. But somehow the things easily done and carrying with them little in the way of disruption or public costs – carpooling, telecommuting, dispersed work – are largely written off. Such immediate, low-cost actions as highway operations strategies including better traffic signalization, improved traveler information and accident response systems receive little emphasis.

Overall, the treatment of costs and benefits will leave readers gasping:

Travel times don’t get counted – so shifting from a 15 minute car trip to an hour on transit or walking has no penalty.
Transit subsidies don’t get counted – so doubling subsidies to increase ridership has only benefits.
Every possible pricing strategy is invoked – congestion pricing, cordon pricing, on-street parking fees, extreme fuel prices – in order to get people out of cars, and then the loss of their cars is counted as a benefit.

At the same time the benefits and the costs involved are so corrupted to be meaningless. It will take weeks for analysts to tease out what really was done in the way of assumptions to create winners and losers. And there is no effort to tally all the costs exacted on the average household, or the typical business or even governments for that matter. The costs would add up to a permanent recession.

I am sure the millions affected by these policies, particularly the middle and working class people who can now just barely afford a car, who would be priced out of the system by these policies, will say thank you for this “benefit”.

As we work our way through the recession, workers will be willing to travel farther and farther to find the right job – or any job. With continuing increased specialization in our society larger and larger market sheds for jobs and for workers, quality transportation will be critical to our national productivity. This is the work that transportation does and it is totally dismissed by this report. It can not be addressed adequately by rail or transit even with a complete radical reorganization of work and society.

In order to further bolster their ineffective case the proponents use a tool called “bundles” in which packages of actions are assembled for their “synergistic” qualities and either given a boost or cut based on the assertion that some things work well together. How this was done is not explained. So land use plans, which will take 30 years to come to fruition, are coupled with carbon pricing policies in a sort of horse and rabbit stew, that help make density solutions seem effective.

Those who see the solution of so many of our present ills by cramming people into ever higher densities miss the point. Residential density is one of the most fundamental choices households make. Changing residential densities to make transit work better is the smallest tail wagging the biggest dog I can think of. It puts planning dogma ahead of the most basic human needs and rights.

It is clear that most people, excepting a small but often very loud minority, opt for lower density living when income permits. As the society changes and choice patterns evolve, the marketplace must be ready to respond with development that is both responsive to household choices and to the demands of environmental needs. Any public policies that inhibit a market trend toward higher densities must be addressed. But the market place must be the final arbiter in a free society. People do not live “efficiently” in order to optimize some imposed societal goal, certainly not commuting.

The serious work that needs to be done in this area still awaits an independent and credible group to undertake this work. It can't come soon enough.

For almost 40 years Alan E. Pisarski has been involved in the national transportation policy scene, from vantage points at the original Tri-State Transportation Commission in New York, the Metropolitan Washington COG, the Office of the Secretary, U.S. DOT, or in a personal consulting capacity. In his work he has measured the transportation activities of our nation from the metropolitan, state, national and international levels. In the U.S. DOT he organized the major travel surveys of the nation and designed and managed the U.S. transportation statistical system under the Assistant Secretary for Policy, establishing programs that are still the basis of much of the U.S. transportation statistical system today.

Globalization Leads to Civic Leadership Culture Dominated by Real Estate Interests

Aaron M. Renn — Sat, 25 Jul 2009 01:34:01 -0400

"Cleveland’s leadership has no apparent theory of change. Overwhelmingly, the strategy is now driven by individual projects. These projects, pushed by the real estate interests that dominate the board of the Greater Cleveland Partnership, confuse real estate development with economic development. This leads to the 'Big Thing Theory' of economic development: Prosperity results from building one more big thing."

- Ed Morrison, "Cleveland: Reconstructing the Comeback"

Ed Morrison wrote the above about Cleveland, but he could have been describing any number of other cities. Why is it that so many cities have turned to large real estate projects to attempt to restart growth, turning away from strategies that previously made them successful?

The answer possibly lies in structural economic changes resulting from the nationalization and globalization of industry. Up until the 1990s, many businesses – including retail, utilities, some manufacturing, and especially banking – operated on a regional or local basis. This meant that the civic leadership of a community was heavily dominated by businessmen, again, especially bankers, whose success was dependent on the overall macroeconomic health of the particular city or region they were located in.

But with banking deregulation, we saw large numbers of hometown banks merged out of existence. Industry after industry was subjected to national or international level roll-ups as changes in the economy and regulatory environment gave increasing returns to scale.

Why is it that "real estate interests" dominate in a local economy like Cleveland? Because, to a great extent, they are among the only ones left. Consider the local industries that were not as subject to roll-ups. Principal among these are real estate development, construction, and law. This means the local leadership of a community is now made up of executives in those industries, and they bring a very different world view versus the previous generation.

Consider the difference between a banker and a lawyer. Banks make money on the spread between what they pay for deposits or wholesale funding, and what they charge for loans. This means the CEO of a bank is making money while he plays golf at 3. He's got a cash register back at the office that never stops ringing.

By contrast, lawyers get paid by the hour for work on specific matters and transactions. The law partner is only making money on the golf course if he is closing a deal. It's similar between many other "operational" businesses that were previously prominent in communities, and the "transactional" businesses that are now often dominant.

Additionally, even where the hometown bank or company did not get bought out, it likely escaped that fate by getting big itself and making large numbers of acquisitions or otherwise expanding. This means those institutions are less dependent on the health of the particular local market they happen to be headquartered in than they are overall macroeconomic conditions. While no doubt they want the headquarters town to be successful, not least of which so they can effectively recruit talent, they can afford to take a portfolio view of local markets.

Not only has the drying up of local and regional operating businesses led to a business leadership community unbalanced in favor of transactionally oriented firms, the loss of those local and regional operating businesses robbed many of the transactional companies such as law and architecture firms of their principal local client base. Large national businesses employ national firms for advertising, law, architecture, etc. If they use local firms, it is in a subsidiary role. (Or, if a smaller firm is fortunate enough to land a contract, it is servicing a client on a national, not local basis).

Richard Florida described this in his Atlantic Monthly article on the financial crash. "As the manufacturing industry has shrunk, the local high-end services—finance, law, consulting—that it once supported have diminished as well, absorbed by bigger regional hubs and globally connected cities. In Chicago, for instance, the country’s 50 biggest law firms grew by 2,130 lawyers from 1984 to 2006, according to William Henderson and Arthur Alderson of Indiana University. Throughout the rest of the Midwest, these firms added a total of just 169 attorneys. Jones Day, founded in 1893 and today one of the country’s largest law firms, no longer considers its Cleveland office 'headquarters'—that’s in Washington, D.C.—but rather its 'founding office.'"

Where then is the source of transactions these firms can turn to in order to sustain their business? The public sector, of course.

I would hypothesize that many local transactionally oriented services companies have seen the public sector take on a greater share of billings than in the past. With the old school bankers and industrialists mostly out of the picture, the leadership in our communities consists increasingly of the political class and a business community dominated by transactional interests.

When you look at the composition of this group, it should come as no surprise that the publicly subsidized real estate development is the preferred civic strategy. Politicians get to cut ribbons. Cranes always look good on the skyline. Local architects, engineers, developers, and construction companies love it. And there is plenty of legal work to go around.

This is not to say these people are acting nefariously. And nor were old school bankers and industrialists always acting purely altruistically. Rather, the difference comes from the world view and "theory of change" that people steeped in transactionally oriented businesses bring with them.

With the current financial crisis, bigness, as a strategy, is out of favor for the moment. Also, the gimmicky financial transactions that underlie much of the crisis are calling the entire transactional model into question. There's an increasing alarm at the precipitous decline of manufacturing, particularly the auto sector. And people are questioning whether we as a country can survive simply through services, or whether we need to revitalize the concept of the operational business and actually making things. Plus, real estate deals are tougher to get done because of tight credit, and it seems unlikely that the go-go days of recent years are coming back soon.

We'll see where this leads. But if we see more local and regional scale operating businesses start to emerge again, then perhaps the urban development pendulum will start swinging the other direction again. In the meantime, large scale real estate development will likely continue to be preferred.

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

Moving to Reloville, America's Cross-Country Careerists

Joel Kotkin — Sat, 25 Jul 2009 01:19:30 -0400

Peter T. Kilborn’s Next Stop, Reloville: Life Inside America's New Rootless Professional Class documents an important piece of social history: the lives of relocating corporate executives. These modern-day nomads—overwhelming white, well-educated and middle-class—maintain the business machine of large companies. They include the technicians, marketing executives and professional managers who accept a rootless life in exchange for handsome remuneration.

Most of these people live in what Mr. Kilborn calls Relovilles, an archipelago of mostly newer, upscale suburban communities that includes places such as Alpharetta, Ga., Highland Ranch, Colo., Overland Park, Kan., and a series of Texas locales from Plano, outside Dallas, to the Woodlands on the periphery of Houston.

In the many vignettes he provides, Mr. Kilborn portrays these executives and their families in a dispassionate, even sympathetic manner. We meet Jim and Kathy Link, who have moved seven times in a little more than 10 years as Mr. Link pursued a career in selling employee-benefit services. The author rides along with Kathy as she shuttles the kids to soccer practice,and he tracks the buying and selling of the Links’ homes. “The basement is approximately the same size as my parents’ entire house,” says Jim, marveling at how much house his $200,000 annual income bought in Alpharetta.

We also meet Matt Fisher and his family. He’s an inventory-management specialist who, we’re told, has “averted dead-ending his career by mining his network of contacts to move from Chicago to Cleveland, to Columbus, to Houston, and finally to Flower Mound,” in Texas. Matt explains: “You can escalate your career if you want to move around. The ones who don’t move around don’t get the calls . . . because nobody knows who they are.”

Although Mr. Kilborn is clearly an advocate for the ideal of rooted, organic communities—a value shared by many of the “Relos” in his book—he evinces none of the snobbish dismissal of middle-class values and aspirations that one finds in the work of new urbanists such as James Howard Kunstler or Andres Duany. Yet despite the appealingly sensible outlook of “Reloville,” the book does not rise to the level of the great social histories, such as Herbert Gans’s “Levittowners” or even Alan Wolfe’s “One Nation.” Mr. Kilborn’s work lacks both the statistical rigor and deep historical perspective found in the best such works.

Mr. Kilborn also falls into something of the old journalist’s trap: trying to sell your story as something bigger than it is. He calls the Relos “a disproportionately influential strain of the vast middle class.” Yet in many ways they may not be as important as he suggests.

Overall, Mr. Kilborn estimates the total Relo population at around four million in 2007. The number includes something like 800,000 households that are moved every year by companies in the U.S.—not an insignificant group but hardly a major one in a country of more than 300 million people.

Despite his claims of their significance, Mr. Kilborn acknowledges that the Relos are far from “masters of the universe” who actually shape economies and societies. In fact, most are more the servants of top management than people in control of their own destinies. They are, Mr. Kilborn notes, “twenty-first-century heirs of William S. Whyte’s ‘Organization Man,’ who exchanged the promise of job security and a pension for his loyalty and toil.”

Yet it seems clear that the whole world of “The Organization Man” of the 1950s—predicated on stable employment— is shrinking, and rapidly. The days of large corporate organizations with a secure cadre of midlevel executives seems itself an anachronism. Companies routinely restructure their bureaucracies and outsource—to smaller independent firms domestically as well as to firms overseas. Relos may represent less the wave of the future than a stubborn hangover from the past.

One critical reason for the reduced need to uproot workers is new telecommunications technology. For generations, IBM was instrumental in shaping the Relo group that Mr. Kilborn describes. After all, this was a company with initials that, executives joked, really meant “I’ve been moved.” Yet today IBMers are not as mobile as in the past—not in terms of physical movement anyway. As much as 40% of the IBM work force operates full-time at home or remotely at clients’ businesses. For members of the company’s highly regarded consulting practice, the percentage is even higher—they’re logging frequent-flyer miles, and piling up points at Residence Inns, not putting down even shallow roots.

Perhaps even more important may be social changes that could make Relos less relevant in the future. For decades in the post-World War II era it was believed that “spatial mobility” would increase, hastening social disintegration. This vision was epitomized in Vance Packard’s 1972 best-seller, “A Nation of Strangers,” with its vision of America as “a society coming apart at the seams.”

But in fact, far from becoming ever more nomadic, Americans are becoming less so, as the population ages and as formerly urban amenities are more widely dispersed and accessible. As recently as the 1970s, 20% of Americans moved annually; by 2004 the number had dropped to 14%— the lowest since 1950. By 2008, barely 10% were relocating.

These days human-resource executives complain that workers are increasingly unwilling to move even for a promotion, citing family and other concerns. With the recent economic downturn, worker mobility in the U.S. has waned further. The decline in the relocation tradition seems likely to persist in good times or bad.

Even the denizens of Relovilles who bought houses under the assumption that they’d be selling and moving on after a few years are now deciding to stay put. And formerly transient communities are evolving into something more permanent. Recent interviews that I conducted in the Woodlands, near Houston—one of the Relovilles identified by the author—revealed a growing sense of community, with some three-generation families now settled in the area.

Over the past 40 years the institutions of community have emerged in the Woodlands. For example, a well-managed and expansive social-service organization called Interfaith has risen to take care of many needs, from welcoming new families to providing services to children and seniors. A well-attended cultural center has grown up in the town, as has something of a Main Street shopping district. The Woodlands is shedding its past as a generic Reloville and becoming its own place.

Urban critics might see these evolving Relovilles as too faux for their tastes, but they do hint at a more rooted, less mobile suburban world, far more human than that envisioned by many futurists over the past few decades. Mr. Kilborn’s “Reloville” may turn out to be less about America’s social future than a fair and well-written chronicle of a phenomenon that is slowly, but inexorably, relocating into the history books.

This article first appeared in The Wall Street Journal.

Joel Kotkin is executive editor of NewGeography.com and is a presidential fellow in urban futures at Chapman University. He is author of The City: A Global History. His next book, The Next Hundred Million: America in 2050, will be published by Penguin early next year.

The Blue-State Meltdown and the Collapse of the Chicago Model

Joel Kotkin — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 12:15:52 -0400

On the surface this should be the moment the Blue Man basks in glory. The most urbane president since John Kennedy sits in the White House. A San Francisco liberal runs the House of Representatives while the key committees are controlled by representatives of Boston, Manhattan, Beverly Hills, and the Bay Area—bastions of the gentry.

Despite his famous no-blue-states-no-red-states-just-the-United-States statement, more than 90 percent of the top 300 administration officials come from states carried last year by President Obama. The inner cabinet—the key officials—hail almost entirely from a handful of cities, starting with Chicago but also including New York, Los Angeles, and the San Francisco area.

This administration shares all the basic prejudices of the Blue Man including his instinctive distaste for “sprawl,” cars, and factories. In contrast, policy is tilting to favor all the basic blue-state economic food groups—public employees, university researchers, Silicon Valley, Hollywood, Wall Street, and the major urban land interests.

Yet despite all this, the blue states appear to be continuing their decades-long meltdown. “Hope” may still sell among media pundits and café society, but the bad economy, increasingly now Obama’s, is causing serious pain to millions of ordinary people who happen to live in the left-leaning part of America.

For example, while state and local budget crises have extended to some red states, the most severe fiscal and economic basket cases largely are concentrated in places such as New York, New Jersey, Illinois, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Oregon, and, perhaps most vividly of all, California. The last three have among the highest unemployment rates in the country; all the aforementioned are deeply in debt and have been forced to impose employee cutbacks and higher taxes almost certain to blunt a strong recovery.

The East Coast-dominated media, of course, wants to claim that we have reached “the twilight” of Sunbelt growth. This observation seems a bit premature. Instead, traditional red-state strongholds such as the Dakotas, Idaho, Texas, Utah, and North Carolina, dominated the list of fastest-growing regions recently compiled for Forbes by my colleagues at www.newgeography.com.

When the recovery comes, job growth also is most likely to resurge first in the red states, while the blue states continue to lag behind. For reasons as diverse as regulatory policy, aging infrastructure, and high levels of taxation, blue states continue to be more susceptible to recessions than their red counterparts.

This assumption is borne out by an analysis of economic cycles by the website JobBait.com, which has found that since 1990 the states most vulnerable to economic downturns include the Great Lakes states of Michigan, Illinois, Ohio, and New York as well as Connecticut and California. Those most resistant have been generally red bastions such as the Dakotas, Nebraska, and Texas, and resource-rich states such as Alaska, Montana, New Mexico, and Wyoming.

This suggests that even the hardest-hit red states, notably Florida and Arizona, are likely better positioned in the long term for a recovery. A generation of out-migration may be slowing down temporarily due to the recession, but many people moved to places such as Arizona, Florida, Texas, and Georgia over the first seven years of the decade; in contrast, the high-tax blue states, including New York, New Jersey, and California, lost 1,100 people every day between 1998 and 2007. Most of them headed to the red states.

“When the economy comes back,” notes veteran California-based economist and forecaster Bill Watkins, “there will be a pent-up demand. People will compare and move to the places that are affordable and don’t have the fundamental tough tax and regulatory structures.”

Devolution in Blue

These demographic and economic trends will have a long-term political impact. The net in-migration states—almost all of them red—will gain new representatives in Congress after the next census while New York, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and perhaps even California could see their delegations shrink.

In fact, amidst the Blue Man’s current political ascendency, the devolutionary process is likely to continue. Its roots are very deep, and will prove more difficult to reverse than media and policy claques suggest. In historic terms, blue states’ relative decline represents one of the greatest shifts of political and economic power since the Civil War.

In the modern period that starts with the end of the Second World War, the states that are now blue were also, to a large extent, the best. They included the undisputed centers of finance, industry, culture, and education. Blue-state politicians also dominated both parties, either directly or behind the scenes.

In contrast, the Red Man was disdained. As late as the 1940s, Los Angeles—still then very much in its red period—as well as Houston, Dallas, Charlotte, and Phoenix, were all not listed on the Social Register, the ultimate list of the socialite elite. You might visit Texas or invest in its oil, buy Los Angeles real estate, or winter in Scottsdale, but these were not places of consequence. These cities were not for civilized, serious people.

Yet demographic forces changed this balance of power forever. In sharp contrast to Europe, often the preferred model for the Blue Man, the United States’ population exploded in the postwar era. This expansion could not be comfortably accommodated in the old cities.

New demographics and timing shaped America’s urban patterns in largely unforeseen ways. Urban theorist Ali Modarres notes that America’s population over the second half of the 20th century grew by 130 million, essentially doubling, while the populations of France, Germany, and Britain together increased by 40 million, or 25 percent.

In Europe slower population growth meant that planners could accommodate expansion through gradual expansion of existing cities. In contrast, America’s huge growth could only be accommodated by creating new places and vastly expanding others. This led to the growth of suburbs everywhere, but the bulk of expansion took place in vast emerging metropolitan areas such as Los Angeles, and later Phoenix, Dallas, Houston, Atlanta, Miami, and Las Vegas.

This trend held up through much of the past decade. Nevada’s s population grew at four times the national increase of 8 percent while Arizona expanded three times as much and Florida twice the average. In contrast, growth in the blue states of the Northeast and Midwest generally stood well behind the national average.

More important still, the new regions experienced a broad entrepreneurial explosion that reshaped the whole economy. In many cases, this growth came directly at the expense of the blue states. When major companies relocated they tended to leave places like New York, Pittsburgh, Cleveland, and Chicago for the burgeoning red cities.

In 1950 Atlanta did not rank among America's most important economic centers; 50 years later it stood among the most popular cities for large corporations and their subsidiaries. The same could be said for places like Houston, Dallas, and Charlotte. It was the quintessential American story, evidence, as Marxist scholar William Domhoff observed, that America’s “open class system is almost the opposite of a caste system.”

Blue Man Economics

Today two principles now drive the political economy of the blue states—and so shape the Obama administration today. The first one is the relentless expansion of public sector employment and political power. Although traditional progressives such as Franklin D. Roosevelt, Harry Truman, Fiorello La Guardia, and Pat Brown built up government employment, they never contemplated the growth of public employee unions that have emerged so powerfully since the 1960s.

Public sector employees initially played a positive role, assuring that the basic infrastructure—schools, roads, subways, sewers, water, and other basic sinews of society and the economy—functioned properly. But as much of the private economy moved out of places such as New York, Illinois, and, more recently, California, public sector employment began to grow as an end to itself.

Some blue-state theorists, columnist Harold Meyerson among them, have identified this new, highly unionized public sector workforce not so much an adjunct to the middle class but its essence. This has become very much the reality in many core blue regions—particularly big cities like New York, Chicago, and Detroit—as the private-sector middle class has drifted to the suburbs or out to the red states.

Even before the recession these public-sector unions and their lavish benefits had become a major burden for blue states and cities. In California alone state pensions are now $200 billion underfunded. San Francisco has more than 700 retirees or their survivors earning pensions in excess of $100,000 per year. In New York, despite Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s occasional utterances about the city’s expanding pension system being “out of control,” city contributions to the pension system have grown fivefold under his watch. They now consume roughly one in ten dollars in the city budget.

The only way to pay for these expenditures rests on the second key blue economic principle—the notion of an ever expanding high-end “creative economy.” This conceit is based on the notion that tangible things matter little and that, as former Wired magazine editor Kevin Kelly put it, “communication is the economy.”

New York pioneered the idea that the economy could depend totally on the efforts of the talented few, mostly those on Wall Street but also those in the media and other “creative” industries. This formula has been widely accepted since New York Mayors John Lindsay and Ed Koch allowed New York City’s public sector to expand, often with borrowed money.

Sadly this focus has tended to leave little room for a diverse economy that might employ an expanding, upwardly mobile middle class. Instead, companies and employees in these high-value industries tend to dominate almost all the attention of blue-state policy makers.

Since this class had less need than traditional industries for basic infrastructure, a confluence of interest has emerged between the post-industrial elites and the public employees. Money raised from the monied post-industrial elite would essentially buy social peace by funneling largesse not into improving the roads, subways, or ports but into the pockets of the public employees.

The Great Delusion and Its Blue-State Victims

This elite strategy has served to bifurcate most blue states into an affluent core and a rapidly declining periphery. For example, California, a state whose shift from red to blue has given some heft to “progressives” everywhere, has experienced an increasing gap between a small sliver of wealthy metropolitan residents along the coast and an increasingly marginalized interior populated largely by middle- and working-class Hispanics.

And then there is the imposition of increasingly stringent environmental regulation. This has hit hardest the essential sectors of the non-“creative class” economy such as manufacturing, warehousing, and agriculture. Basic industries depend more than finance or “creative” ones on reasonably priced energy and land, access to raw materials, and a sane regulatory regime. “In California,” notes economist Watkins, “everything has priority over the economy.”

You can see the effects clearly in California. Climate change regulations work to constrain new construction of homes, particularly suburban single-family homes. Manufacturing industries, even relatively “clean” ones, make easy targets for carbon-hunting regulators. A recent Milken Institute report found that between 2000 and 2007 California lost nearly 400,000 manufacturing jobs, all this while industrial employment was growing in major competitive rivals such as Texas and Arizona.

Trucking firms, saddled with harsh new deadlines to shift to cleaner vehicles, also are going out of business. Like manufacturers, many of these have historically been sources of upward mobility for largely Latino entrepreneurs and workers.

Perhaps the most searing disaster is unfolding in the rich Central Valley. Large areas are about to be returned to desert—due less to a mild drought than to regulations designed to save obscure fish species in the state’s delta. Over 450,000 acres have been allowed to go fallow. Nearly 30,000 agriculture jobs—mostly held by Latinos—were lost just in May. Unemployment, 17 percent across the Central Valley, reaches to more than 40 percent in some towns such as Mendota.

"We are getting the sense some people want us to die," notes native son Tim Stearns, a professor of entrepreneurship at California State University at Fresno. "It's kind of like they like the status quo and what happens in the Central Valley doesn't matter. These are just a bunch of crummy towns to them."

A similar process of secular decline can also be seen in the peripheries of other blue states such as upstate New York, which has ranked near the bottom of job growth nationwide over the past 40 years. But nowhere has this occurred more completely than in Michigan.

Under the leadership of Governor Jennifer Granholm, Michigan has sought to reinvent itself from an industrial powerhouse to a center of the “creative economy.” For much of her first term, Granholm focused on such inanities as promoting a “cool cities” program, following the notion that creating places for the terminally hip would help turn around her state’s economy.

Yet in the end, Michigan stands at the worst end of almost every calculator, with the highest unemployment and rates of out-migration, and the worst cities for business. Its per capita income, which was 16th in the nation shortly before Granholm ascended as governor, has now dropped to 33rd, the lowest since the federal government has been keeping records.

Detroit now suffers a 22 percent unemployment rate, the highest of any major city. Nearly one in three residents is on food stamps. But the pain goes well beyond Motor City. Altogether Michigan communities account for a remarkable six of the nation’s ten worst job markets, according to the most recent Forbes–New Geography survey.

Waiting for Obama

Many in the true blue states greeted Barack Obama’s election like the coming of a Messiah who would redress these serious problems. After all, it is widely believed in blue states that the red-state barbarians had looted the Treasury for their clients in the energy, industrial, home-building, pharmaceutical, and defense industries. Now the blue states, and their industries, would get payback. A vast expansion of public infrastructure, more emphasis on basic industry, and incentives for new entrepreneurial ventures could now help rapidly declining areas in the blue states.

Yet hopes that Obama would emphasize such basic infrastructure now have been dashed. Instead, the stimulus has been largely steered to social service providers, “green” industries, and academic research. One reason, as we now know, is that feminists saw such an approach as too favorable to “burly men” who might not have been among the president’s core fan base.

Sadly, many of those “burly men,” particularly the unemployed, still reside in the blue states. They might not be in the places inhabited by the post-industrial elites but they do live in the hardscrabble neighborhoods, industrial suburbs, and small towns from Michigan and upstate New York to California’s vast interior.

Another group that may be unexpectedly hurt by the Obama policies will be the middle and upper middle classes in blue states. Already burdened by high rates of taxation locally and higher costs for everything from housing to education, these hardy souls—making more than $125,000 to $250,000 a year—now are about to find themselves heaped in with the “rich.” Higher federal tax rates, as proposed by the administration, could prove disastrous for many blue-state middle-income families.

The Chicago Model: Obama’s ‘Closed Circle’

This skewed allocation of resources reflects the administration’s roots in contemporary Chicago. It derives from a pattern of rewarding core constituencies as opposed to lifting up the whole economy.

The financial bailout reflects one part of this. Money lavished on bankers and lawyers, most of them in New York and Chicago, represents relief to what is now a core Obama constituency. Indeed the whole Troubled Asset Relief Program mechanism is being run by what Simon Johnson, a former chief economist at the International Monetary Fund, has described as a “wonderfully closed circle.”

This approach, notes University of Illinois political scientist Dick Simpson, comes naturally for an administration dominated by veterans of the Chicago machine. Politicians in the Windy City do not worry much about opposition—49 out of 50 aldermen are Democrats—and follow policies adopted by the small central cadre.

Once the message is set upon, notes Simpson, Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley operatives such as David Axelrod set about spinning things. This system is ideal for cultivating both media skill and political discipline during election season—something so evident in Obama’s brilliant campaigns against first Hillary Clinton and then John McCain, Simpson observes.

But machine politics do not necessarily work out so well for the rest of the population. “The principle problem is that the machine is not subject to democracy,” notes Simpson, who remains hopeful for the Obama presidency. “There’s massive patronage, a high level of corruption . . . There’s a significant downside to authoritarian rule. The city could do much better.”

To be sure, there has been considerable gentrification in Chicago, as in many cities. Chicago’s “revival” also has been a classic case of blue-state economics, driven largely by a now fading real estate boom, the financial industry, a growing college and university population, and tourism. But overall, from the point of view of most middle and working class residents, Chicago’s political system has proved inefficient and costly. This can be seen in demographic trends that show Chicago as the only one of few large U.S. cities to lose population. At the same time, the middle class, particularly those with children, continue to flee to the suburbs. Roughly half of all white families (as of 2005) leave when their children reach school age.

Is There Hope for Blue America?

Ultimately, waiting for Obama will not revive the blue states. Instead the best prospect lies in blue states healing themselves. Fortunately, there are some tentative signs of unrest. The same regime failure that stuck to Republicans in the wake of the Bush presidency soon may be felt by Democrats burdened with the failed legacy of Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich, New Jersey Governor Jon Corzine, or New York Governor David Paterson. Even Illinois, the president’s home state, could go Republican, suggests political scientist Simpson, if the Republicans put up a viable, middle-of-the-road candidate.

Powerful signs of mounting resistance have emerged in the most important state of all, California. The massive rejection of the budget agreement last spring was a blow to not only its architects, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and the Democrats in the legislature, but the general conventional wisdom that holds increased taxes as the key to addressing the state’s budget problem.

Even in deep blue Los Angeles, the public sector machine built around onetime union organizer and current Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa has lost some recent battles, including an attempt to create a public sector union monopoly over the city’s solar industry. There is now greater appreciation of soaring public sector pension obligations as groups like the California Foundation for Fiscal Responsibility expose lists of public employees enjoying mega-pensions.

Similar efforts have started in other states, and with private-sector pensions being cut around the country, anger over the emerging privileged class of public workers may well gain traction. Ultimately, more people in blue states will begin to realize that their states need to learn again how to compete against both their red counterparts and the rest of the world.

There is no intrinsic reason blue states should continue to decline. They have created much of the industrial enterprise, technological innovation, and cultural vitality that made the United States the world’s preeminent country. The prospects for these places can certainly be brighter than they are today.

This article originally appeared at the American.

*State map courtesy of Mark Newman: http://www-personal.umich.edu/~mejn/election/2008/

The Next Culture War

Joel Kotkin — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 23:40:44 -0400

The culture war over religion and values that dominated much of the last quarter of the 20th century has ended, mostly in a rout of the right-wing zealots who waged it.

Yet even as this old conflict has receded , a new culture war may be beginning. This one is being launched largely by the religious right's long-time secularist enemies who are now enjoying unprecedented influence over our national politics.

For all the manifest differences between these two groups, these culture warriors have much in common. Each represents an effort by a highly motivated minority to impose a particular vision of life on a population that does not share either their level of conviction or specific policy preferences.

The Christian right saw its mission as using government policy to restore family and faith to a country they saw losing adherence to both. Not content with hometown pieties, they wanted to use government power to regulate areas ranging from abortion and gay marriage to stem cell research, in ways reflecting their values and agenda.

For a while, their agenda also appealed to white ethnics in urban areas, largely Catholics, who recoiled against the crime and disorder in city streets. When they moved en masse to the suburbs, the religious right's social base narrowed further.

One critical weakness of the movement stemmed from the fact that many prominent figures like Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell and Jesse Helms rose from the segregationist South. This limited their appeal outside the white Confederate ethnic enclaves in small towns and some Southern suburbs. They were notably less successful in the fastest-growing, more ethnically and socially diverse communities, where the future of evangelical Christianity now is being shaped.

Many of the goals espoused by Christian political activists are clearly commendable – promoting charity and respect for human life. In some areas, such as abortion, they have made real inroads on influencing broader society's attitudes. But overall, their political attempts to impose a narrow religious agenda has fallen into disrepute even among Republicans.

Today, the locus of the culture war has shifted to the secularist left, whose primary geographic base lies in our densest, most elite cities. This group has evolved into its own version of what the Calvinists would call "the elect" – those chosen to thrive amid a sinful nation. They might also be called "the cognitive elite," since their self-image comes not from religious worship but from a sense of higher intelligence, greater rationality and even superior healthfulness.

Perhaps the most honest description of this largely urban grouping was made in the Seattle alternative paper The Stranger shortly after George Bush's 2004 re-election. Shocked by John Kerry's defeat, The Stranger defined their preferred constituency as "islands of sanity, liberalism and compassion." The red regions, they concluded, were the abode of "people [who] are fatter and slower and dumber."

At the time, The Stranger's solution was to secede in spirit from the red states and build a new America hewing to what they considered humane and scientific values. Yet four years later, the self-proclaimed "islands of sanity" now dominate the government in a manner unprecedented in recent American history.

The rapid ascendancy of the new culture warriors has everything to do with class and caste. The religious right's base lay predominately in the small towns and lower middle class. They may have had more votes than the sophisticated city-dwellers, but in the end they had little influence among Bush-era policy-makers, whose greater allegiance was to Wall Street, energy and other corporate interests.

In sharp contrast, the cognitive elites rise straight from the critical bastions of Obama-era power. They draw strength from the mainstream media, the vast "progressive" non-profit community, the universities, and the professional policy elites. University and think-tank denizens, according to a recent National Journal survey, constitute 37 percent of the top 366 appointees by the Obama administration, far more than under the Bush regime.

One group, not surprisingly far less well-represented, are white Christians, whose number, according to the National Journal, has dropped from 71 percent under Bush to 46 percent. It's not that the Obamites lack faith, just that they lean less to conservative Christianity and more toward the gospel according to Al Gore.

Like their Christian right counterparts, the cognitive elite's agenda does address some important issues. You do not have to embrace the theology of global warming (aka climate change) to favor incentives for reducing energy use and cleaning up pollution. Advocating healthier outcomes through more walking, bike riding and better school lunches also make sense as public goals. And a planning approach that allows for more housing options in suburbs and better access to transit also could be useful.

The problem here, as with the Christian right, lies with overzealousness and intolerance. Whether environmentalism qualifies as a religion or ideology for legal purposes, it is clearly being embraced in a quasi-theological way. As Bjorn Lomborg and others have pointed out, any objection to the Gorite carbon emissions agenda invites scorn and denunciation for, as Paul Krugman recently suggested, "treason against the planet." Even mild skeptics can expect to be treated like a strident atheist at a mega-church – although probably with likely far less compassion or politeness.

Critically, the climate-change zealots likely will be in our faces and wallets far more than the religious fulminators. Although the public is widely skeptical of the whole climate change agenda, they will have to confront a huge new bureaucratic apparatus that could impact millions of businesses and local planning decisions down to the household level.

This desire to micromanage in the public interest also extends well beyond climate change. There is clear desire now to influence everything from how we live to what we eat. You can see the beginnings in everything from ever-higher cigarette taxes to bans on trans-fats at your local hot dog stand.

San Francisco, always ground zero for such intrusive lunacy, now has determined to find ways to shove healthy foods on the plates of city residents, preferably from urban gardens. The city is even taking steps to prevent city workers from ordering donuts for meetings. Now bureaucrats must follow guidelines from the Health Department.

City workers even have to cut bagels into quarters or halves, presumably so that workers may all look as svelte as Mayor Gavin Newsom. "We have an eating and drinking problem in America," declared Newsom, a candidate for governor with an admitted former alcohol problem of his own.

But perhaps the most intrusive changes may come in terms of planning and development. The Obama administration has already declared its desire to "coerce" people out of their cars and discourage sprawl in order to promote its health and carbon-cutting agendas.

This could evolve into a concerted attempt to force more Americans into the high-density housing as opposed to the single family suburban homes they prefer for reasons ranging from cost to privacy and safety. It may be questionable how much these steps will improve health or the environment, but this may not matter much given the current theological consensus.

What we now see is policy enacted in the name of scientific dogma, even though science's essence lies in open inquiry and debate. In the process, agendas are often conflated; reports even mildly contrary to the received wisdom of climate change are ridiculed or ignored. For some urbanists, climate change also provides a convenient excuse to reverse the dispersion to suburbs that they have railed against for decades.

What we need now is not self-interested dogma, but open, wide-ranging debate designed to find the most effective ways to achieve energy efficiency in both cities and suburbs. Amid the worst economic downturn in a half-century, we also might want to weigh the impact of some "green" policies on the employment, income and wealth prospects for middle- and working-class Americans.

The anointed secular clerisy seems destined to become very unpopular. Americans do not like to be preached to by their political leaders about how to manage the details of their lives, particularly when the preachers often fail to follow their own precepts; this was a core problem with those who aligned with the religious right. Environmental and health activists would do better to focus more on suasion as opposed to coercion and to offer incentives rather than dictates to achieve their goals.

They should also learn that problems are addressed most effectively at the local, community and familial levels. The wide access to information through the Internet undermines the very logic for relentlessly centralized solutions; the best "green" policies may be those that evolve organically and fit specific local conditions.

Basically, cultural warfare makes for stupid politics, as the Republicans should have – but likely have not – learned by now. The new culture war now developing could pose similar dangers for the Democrats, if they are not careful.

This article originally appeared at Forbes.