Urban Issues

High-Speed Rail: Toward Least Worst Projections

Wendell Cox — Sat, 16 Jan 2010 00:19:31 -0500

It comes as welcome news that the United States Department of Transportation Inspector General is concerned about the integrity of high-speed rail projections, “including ridership, costs, revenues and associated public benefits.” The issue has become ripe as a result of the $8 billion for high speed rail that the Obama Administration slipped into the economic stimulus bill early in 2009.

The response was more than 250 applications from 30 states totaling $57 billion. It is easy to understand the Inspector General’s concern, though no-one should be surprised that the demand for free money outstrips the supply. Applicants range from the huge California High Speed Rail proposal, to a greenhouse gas belching magnetic levitation (maglev) line in population-losing Pittsburgh, to comparatively modest railroad grade crossings that could improve both railroad and highway safety.

In a January 4 letter to the Federal Railroad Administrator, Inspector General Mitchel Behm announced an evaluation of “best practices” with respect to high-speed rail forecasts, noting that “it is of critical importance that the Federal investments are directed to the most worthy projects.” For starters, the Inspector General needs to understand that there are is no such thing as “best practices” in high-speed rail forecasts. Best practices and high speed rail in the same sentence sounds like a line from a comedy routine. The record of ridership, revenue and cost projections in high speed rail projects is abysmal.

An Object Lesson: The Las Vegas Monorail Default: This was brought home earlier this week, when the privately financed Las Vegas Monorail defaulted on its bonds, principally because its ridership was absurdly over-projected. Even before the economic implosion (2007), the Las Vegas Monorail was carrying only 21,000 riders per day, far below the 53,500 riders that had been predicted for 2004 by the world-class planning firm retained by the promoters. In 2000 we produced a report predicting that the Monorail would carry between 16,900 and 25,400 daily riders. The reality was in the middle of that range. Of course, no venture could survive with consumer demand 60 percent below projections and default was inevitable, as we predicted. People who purchased the bonds may have overlooked the shaky foundations of the project, assuming that the state required bond insurance would make them whole. It did for the first defaulted payment, however the bond insurer, Ambac, itself is also in financial difficulty. Abmac has been characterized as “a borderline insolvent bond insurer.” Following Ambac’s debt payment, the Las Vegas Monorail filed for bankruptcy improbably claiming that it was necessary to permit expansion to the airport.

High Speed Rail Follies: Of course, the Las Vegas Monorail is not a high-speed rail line, but high-speed rail projects are subject to the same risk of absurdly inaccurate projections of ridership, revenue and costs.

High speed rail has often been touted by proponents as being profitable. However, they usually exclude such basic costs building the system and buying the trains. This is like a household that claims to be saving, but does not pay the mortgage. Proponents routinely repeat claims of profitability for one line or the other, without the slightest concept of reality. Indeed no less than Iñaki Barrón de Angoiti, director of high-speed rail at the International Union of Railways in Paris, said that high speed rail is not a profitable business and said that short Paris-Lyon and Tokyo-Osaka routes are the only ones in the world that have “broken even.”

The California proposal, in particular, anticipates substantial private investment. Anyone courageous enough to invest will want due diligence performed by consultants other than those who produced the numbers to support the Las Vegas Monorail bond issue.

Within the past few days, the non-partisan California Legislative Analyst’s office issued a critical report of the new California High Speed Rail business plan. The most damning criticism was that the plan “appears to violate law, because it assumed operating subsidies, which were prohibited by the bond issue passed by the voters of the state. This is particularly relevant to the USDOT Inspector General’s inquiry, since the California High Speed Rail Authority has been claiming for years that the project would not require operating subsidies. California, needless to say, is not in a position to be offering subsidies of any kind.

Cheerleader Projections: There is plenty of reason for concern:

Taiwan’s high-speed rail line, the only fully privately financed line in the world, has attracted approximately one-half of its projected ridership and has suffered considerable construction cost overruns. During its first few years of operations, its debt has been restructured, its bonds downgraded, expansion plans have been suspended and the Taiwan government has now taken majority control of the board. It should not be long before Taiwan taxpayers will be footing the bill.

The new high-speed rail line in Korea is attracting approximately one-half of its projected ridership, while its costs were three to four times the projected level.

This problem is all documented in Megaprojects and Risks: An Anatomy of Ambition, by Bent Flyvbjerg of Oxford University, Nils Bruzelius of and Werner Rothenberger of the University of Karlsruhe and former chairman of the World Conference on Transport Research. The authors examined decades of major transportation projects in Europe and North America and identified a general pattern of projection inaccuracy. With respect to the systematic cost projection errors, Professor Flyvbjerg says: “Underestimation cannot be explained by error and is best explained by strategic misrepresentation, that is, lying.” He further notes that “The policy implications are clear: legislators, administrators, investors, media representatives, and members of the public who value honest numbers should not trust cost estimates and cost-benefit analyses produced by project promoters and their analysts.”

The California High Speed Roller Coaster: The proposed California High Speed Rail system seems poised to break “lower the bar” even further with respect to performance relative to projections. The ridership projections have been like a roller coaster. In 2000, the California High Speed Rail Authority’s modelers predicted, in an “investment grade projection” that the system would carry 32 million riders a year by 2020. Then, in 2007, the projection gurus raised the “base” number to 69 million by 2030 and added a “high” number of 97 million. By the time the high speed rail bond election was underway, some Authority board members went around the state citing a number of 117 million riders that included commuter ridership.

Within the last month, the Authority has released a new plan indicating that ridership will be 41 million in 2035 (See Figure). If the 2000 ridership projections were “investment grade” then the subsequent projections have been “junk bond grade.”

Joseph Vranich and I projected annual ridership of 23 million to 31 million for 2030 in a report published by the Reason Foundation (The California High Speed Rail Proposal: A Due Diligence Report). We also predicted, based upon our analysis of high speed rail systems worldwide, that the costs will rise by as much as another 70 percent to cover the usual cost overruns and to build portions of the system not included in the projections.

The erratic ridership projections are just the beginning. We also found the proposed fare structure to be far too optimistic (fares far too low). Apparently the California High Speed Rail Authority agrees, because it has doubled its proposed fare levels. Meanwhile, its costs continue to rise, despite having risen by half from 2000 to 2008 (inflation adjusted), at the same time that the size of the proposed system was shrinking.

Perverse Incentives: Part of the problem here lies with incentives. The “world class“ consulting firms have no incentive to produce reasonable numbers. Indeed, some actually participate in later stages of the projects and as a result have exactly the opposite incentive – an interest in projections being optimistic enough that the project gets approved.

Solutions: The Inspector General might look at removing the incentive for misrepresentations and exaggeration, by prohibiting the participation of planning consultants in the implementation phase of high speed rail projects. Another modest proposal could revolutionize major project projections. Perhaps the world class consulting firms should be required to guarantee their projections financially.

We certainly wish the Inspector General the best, though he has certainly set a standard (“best practices”) not likely to be achieved. But perhaps he can move the industry from absurdity to least worst projections.

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.”

Las Vegas: The Boom - Bust Bender

Rick Cole — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 00:09:14 -0500

It's delightfully easy to blast Las Vegas… or simply to make fun of it. It is the world capital of shamelessness, so it is more or less beside the point to criticize. Yet with the debut of the colossal $8.5 billion CityCenter, Vegas makes pretension to "sustainable urbanism." Even by Vegas standards of hype, this is mendacity at a colossal scale.

CityCenter describes itself as "a collection of spectacular hotels and residences, sensational spas, astonishing dining and extraordinary shopping." But MGM Mirage CEO Jim Murren asserts higher aspirations for the largest private development in U.S. history, saying he aimed to create "something with expert urban planners” that would “put world-class architects into the mix" in order to “stretch the boundaries of our knowledge and create something that would be a gift, a resource to the community that we could make a lot of money on.” CityCenter’s developers claim that it is "one of the largest sustainable developments in the world, with six Gold LEED certifications from the U.S. Green Building Council."

The distinction says more about the shallowness of LEED scoring than about the depth of CityCenter's commitment to sustainability. Although the buildings employ state-of-the-art energy saving (hence money saving) technology, the gold ratings are based in part on pure gimmickry, like “the world’s first fleet of stretch limos powered by clean-burning compressed natural gas." A mecca for gambling, shopping and recreation built in a desert climate is, by definition, unsustainable.

And not just environmentally. The project only averted bankruptcy this spring when MGM paid $100 million in debt service owed by its partner, Dubai World. Dubai World, of course, is the company that recently rocked markets across the globe by asking to postpone its gazillions in debt.

L.A. Times architecture writer Christopher Hawthorne calls City Center "a final bender for Wall Street's decade of unreason." Is it too much to hope that this glitzy fiasco will permanently discredit the blend of leveraged debt, "starchitecture," and headlong consumerism that has spread around the world with ever taller and more fanciful towers and ever more grandiose claims to represent a glorious future?

Megaprojects are the product of meglomania, whether in Las Vegas, Shanghai, Dubai, Universal Studios or downtown Los Angeles. No amount of solar-paneled green cladding can disguise their fundamental flaw: Bigness dwarfs and often destroys the human scale that great places have in common.

It is hard not to admire the audacity, the “make no little plans” grandeur of big visions. The Greeks, however, had a name for such delusions: hubris. When Icarus climbed too close to the sun his wings melted and he plunged into the sea.

In the case of giant real estate “projects,” it is not only the promoters who get taken down.

We Americans have our own parable of urban hubris in the saga of Robert Moses. Yet no matter how often the story is told (including the latest book on his nemesis, Jane Jacobs, Wrestling with Moses), public officials continue to be particularly prone to the siren song of megadevelopments. Grand Avenue in Los Angeles; Ground Zero in Manhattan; Atlantic Yards in Brooklyn; Hunters Point in San Francisco... the list of recent “public-private partnerships” to remake cities on a grandiose scale could fill a page.

The invariable promises of investment returns commensurate with the project’s size invariably disappoint. No one is that smart, it turns out. Sustainable urbanism comes in small doses, crafted to the climate and history of real places. It comes from new building that respects human scale and the fabric of organic towns and cities. It emerges from the efforts of property owners, investors, designers and craftspeople understanding and applying timeless principles to the needs of our time.

Sustainable urbanism doesn’t have to carry the weight of the overhead and egos of mega developers, starchitects, and all the myriad fixers — lobbyists, lawyers, flacks, event planners, consultants etc — that live off their wake . It doesn’t put the public purse at risk on speculative real estate ventures. The public isn’t jolted with yet another over-the-top effort to shock and awe them with ever-larger and more lavish excess. Instead, sustainable urbanism thrives off both the synergy and the competition that comes from appropriately sized and scaled additions to the cityscape.

That is not to say that urban interventions must be tiny – only that they not be bloated and autonomous. When the 104 acre Villa Italia Mall in Lakewood, Colorado was taken down, its redevelopment into the mixed-use downtown of Belmar was certainly a big project. Moreover, it shares many of the downsides of megaprojects, including public sector financial subsidies and risk as well as relatively bland, homogenous design and development, particularly in the tilt toward corporate retail tenants. Yet obviously there was no “organic” way to transform a dead mall.

Similarly, the redevelopment of the thirty-four acre Burlington Northern Railyard on the northern edge of the Pearl District in Portland, Oregon is the product of a single developer. The construction of more than 2500 midrise housing units, 90,000 square feet of retail space, and two major urban parks is a big development by any standards. Yet it differs sharply from the megaprojects in its faithful extension of the famous Portland block pattern over the grayfield site. It may be large, but it is the antithesis of the self-contained and almost invariably anti-urban design of megaprojects. It is simply several more well-executed blocks of the Pearl District, rather than a place unto itself.

These comparably large projects stretch the limit of scale on place-making, financial risk and social and economic diversity. One of the best designed and intentioned megaprojects of our time, the redevelopment of Denver’s Stapleton Airport, demonstrates that once projects cross the threshold of counting square feet in the millions it becomes essentially impossible to be successful, if success is defined as creating prosperous, human-scale urban fabric. Certainly, Forest City’s Stapleton is an exemplary model for trying to faithfully execute urbanism on a mega-scale (as distinguished from the botch made of Playa Vista in Los Angeles). But even there, the power centers, office park and suburban subdivision elements undercut their claims to authentic sustainability of real urbanism.

Nor is real urbanism simply an academic conceit or an elitist niche. On the contrary, it is the only proven model for successful civilizations, prosperous regions, environmental staying power and decent living standards for working people. The modern real estate industry’s products, of which megaprojects are simply the reductio ad absurdum examples, have yet to pass the test of surviving in geographies and economic eras not characterized by cheap oil and cheap money. The current economic reckoning is a warning that, like the dinosaurs, megaprojects are highly vulnerable to any change in the climate.

The counter argument is, of course, that no one knows if they will stand the test of time and “if you build it they will come.” Megaprojects may be forlorn or unloved by urbanists now, but when we have four billion more people on the planet, at least some of these projects will be cherished cornerstone investments in the cities of the future. The optimistic proponents of this view predict “this too shall pass” and, just as Rockefeller Center emerged triumphant from the Depression, CityCenter and its cousins will be vindicated as a form of visionary city building that was simply ahead of its time.

This view certainly has a well-funded lobby and fawning fans in the media, ever impressed by record-breaking spectacle. But common sense ought to prevail. Megaprojects are bad bets, even in Las Vegas. In almost every regard, giant projects crush the essential elements of diversity, flexibility and intimacy necessary to making – and sustaining – great places.

Instead of CityCenter, imagine something on its scale broken up into 1500 more modest projects across America; each significant enough to make a mark, yet restrained enough to strengthen the city instead of overwhelm it. Not only would the investment have made a far better contribution to the goal of sustainable urbanism, it would have been far less recklessly risky. As Jane Jacobs warned nearly 50 years ago, "the forms in which money is used must be converted to instruments of regeneration -- from instruments buying violent cataclysms to instruments buying continual, gradual, complex and gentler change."

Rick Cole is city manager of Ventura, California, and recipient of the Municipal Management Association of Southern California's Excellence in Government Award. He can be reached at RCole@ci.ventura.ca.us

High Tech Won't Save California's Economy

Aaron M. Renn — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 00:54:23 -0500

Much has been made of California's struggles, but some still say California's best days are ahead of it. In this calculus, innovation in high tech, biotech, green tech, clean tech, any tech will ultimately pull the state out of its current funk and to even greater success tomorrow. Promoters of this view cite an impressive roster of statistics around venture capital, patents, new business formation, etc., along with obligatory anecdotes of ambitious new startups with world changing products (coming soon) and their slick, dynamic founders. This view reached its apotheosis in a Time magazine cover story called “Why California Is Still America's Future”.

This view of the world is correct – but incomplete in a fundamental way. These emerging industries are in many ways the future of America, and they all have their creative epicenter in California. But they aren't generating many net new jobs there.

Let's consider the counties that make up the heart of these industries. Silicon Valley's San Mateo and Santa Clara Counties both experienced slow job growth between 1990 and 2009. San Mateo County only added 30,000 net jobs, an average of less than 1,700 new jobs per year, or a compound annual growth rate of 0.5%.

Santa Clara County added around 50,000 jobs over that 18 year period – about 2,700 jobs per year, but only a CAGR of only 0.3%.

Both counties added significant new jobs in the late 90s, but these were lost when the dotcom bubble collapsed. The recovery from that decline only reached back to the levels just before the early 90s recession, continuing the long running Silicon Valley boom-bust cycle. Silicon Valley actually added jobs at a slower rate than California as a whole during this period.

You can see the employment impacts just driving down the 101 freeway; there are more than 43 million square feet of unoccupied space, the equivalent of 15 Empire State Buildings. Twenty one percent of “Class A” space and low rise flex space – used for high-tech research and development – is empty. Unemployment overall in Santa Clara county hovers around 12%, substantially over the national average.

San Diego County, one of the key centers of the biotech industry, did much better, adding 310,000 jobs over the same timeframe. This is over 17,000 jobs per year, or a CAGR of 1.53%, much better than Silicon Valley, but hardly enough to reflate California's job market. For example, Los Angeles County added almost a million people during this time, but actually lost jobs.

A critical consideration may well be that the future could be different from the past for these industries, and that over the next 20 years they will generate far more jobs than in the previous. But the evidence seems to be the other direction.

California clearly has no shortage of dynamism in high-end economic sectors. There are still plenty of new innovative firms being founded in California or even moving there. And it seems likely these firms will continue to generate significant wealth for the state in the future. Given its current tax structure, the state treasury has significant “operational leverage” to the upside here. Another strong recovery cycle might even replenish the state's coffers, though won't offer solace for some time at least.

But these industries won't generate many net new jobs. And that is becoming the problem in both Silicon Valley and the state.

Therein lies California's dilemma. The ability to generate large amounts of wealth on a narrow job base isn't enough to support a state of 37 million people. Brazil generates enormous wealth too, and supports lavish stores like Daslu, where you can't walk in off the street, but there's a helipad on the roof – and a favela just down the street. But Brazil doesn't have a middle class economy.

With innovation the watchword of the day, and no other realistic prospects available in the near term, it is easy to see why places from California to Michigan are placing their hopes on such high end information age jobs. Unlike most, California is already winning the war for the highest value jobs and talent in the space. The headquarters, R&D, core software development, design, and prototyping will be done in California. But it is unlikely to be where the manufacturing, customer support, sales, warehousing, back office support, and other core functions get done. And those are where the jobs are. The back of the iPhone says everything we need to know. “Designed by Apple in California. Assembled in China.”

California is clearly right to make these industries a priority. The danger is that it comes to focus on them so exclusively that it implements policies that are overly favorable to those select functions, but hostile to everything else. California needs to make sure it has a strategy for middle class and working class jobs beyond the low end service sector. That's a much harder problem than maintaining Silicon Valley's dominance, but it's clearly at least equally as important. The high end portion of various “tech” sectors alone are never going to provide enough jobs to secure a prosperous future for the vast majority of Californians.

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

Move the United Nations to Dubai

Joel Kotkin and Robert J. Cristiano — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 00:39:44 -0500

The opening last week of the world's tallest building, the half-mile-high Burj Dubai, has largely been greeted with guffaws and groans. The Daily Telegraph labeled it "the new pinnacle of vanity"--"a purposeless monument to the subprime era." The Wall Street Journal compared it to the Tower of Babel. (When the Empire State Building was completed in 1931, in the throes of the greatest financial crisis of the 20th century, it was met with similar jeers. The then-tallest building in the world was called the Empty State Building, and it remained vacant for several years.)

Yet the Burj's completion--indeed the whole wild enterprise known as Dubai--could signal a potential opportunity to the global community: turning the place into the headquarters for that other misguided ship, the United Nations.

Let's spell out the logic. The United Nations is a pain in the butt. It pays no taxes and annoys hard-working New Yorkers with its sloth, pretensions and cavalier disregard for traffic laws. The place is a sinkhole dominated by anti-American, anti-Semitic and authoritarian fantasies. It is far from the elegant crown jewel that celebrated the U.S.'s global ascendancy after the Second World War.

Today the U.N. building is a mostly empty shell--water dripping through its roof, asbestos lining its ceiling and an erratic heating and cooling system have forced most UN workers to new facilities. The building is in the midst of a $1.87 billion overhaul--of which the U.S., which could use the cash for myriad other things, would be on the hook for $437 million.

And the U.N. may be leaving anyway. A relocation committee has recommended that the organization move temporarily to Singapore by 2015. It will be hard to vacate Asia again for New York, which is far away from the bulk of the world's largest population centers.

Singapore might make a fine world capital, since it does work like a fine watch. But it's already crowded, expensive and highly regulated. You have to wonder if hard-working, rational Singaporeans would want to drive up costs and lose their ability to run things as they see fit to accommodate the U.N. bureaucracy.

In contrast, the al-Maktoum family has transformed a once vast, empty landscape into a Star Wars-like capital city of the future. There is no skyline more arresting than the one built over the past 15 years by Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, the Absolute Ruler of the tiny Emirate. In just 500 square miles, about half the size of Orange County, Calif., the sheikh has created a monument to modern architectural engineering.

Sheikh Mohammed could offer to build a United Nations City to house the U.N. in any number of vacant office towers. Business Bay has 65 million square feet of office space under construction in more than 200 high-rises. Dubai already has thousands of newly constructed apartments that await the international delegates. More than 2 billion people in Africa, Europe and Asia are within a six-hour flight from Dubai. Travel connections through the world's largest airport would be a breeze. Dubai has 55 five-star hotels to accommodate every regal and royal delegation, as well as the Harvard Medical School Dubai Center, a $1,400,000,000 facility branded with the Harvard crest, just in case one of the U.N.'s elite workers breaks a gasket.

Questions of taste and timing aside, you have to admire the sheikh's chutzpah. The al-Maktoums, descendants of the Bani Yas clan, have ruled Dubai since 1833, first under the protection of the British. The United Arab Emirates was founded in 1971 with big brother Abu Dhabi, the emirate with 96% of the confederation's oil reserves.

Like New York, Dubai aimed first to be a capital of capital. Recognizing that oil revenues at $70 a barrel brought immense cash flow to the Persian Gulf, Sheikh Mohammed set out to create a setting where Arab pride and excess oil revenues could be comfortably parked. His boldness caught the attention of the world financial community and soon the tiny emirate employed more construction cranes than any site on Earth.

For now flying so close to the sun has resulted in a painful and somewhat humiliating fall. With the financial market collapse of 2008 to 2009 international buyers disappeared and property values plummeted. Half of the $300 billion in construction projects screeched to a halt. The Dubai government, with $80 billion to $100 billion of debt, was in trouble, and Dubai World, its investment arm, announced suspension of interest payments on its loans. Enter Abu Dhabi. The neighboring emirate wrote kid brother Dubai a check for $25 billion. What does $25 billion get you in 2010? On Jan. 4, at the grand opening of the Burj Dubai, Sheikh Mohammed announced that the tower would forever be known as Burj Khalifa, named after the Emir of Abu Dhabi.

Let's look a bit longer term. Right now there's 33.6 million square feet of mostly state-of-the-art office space in Dubai. More than 8 million square feet is vacant with millions more in the pipeline. There's a great airport--as opposed to that aerial dumpster, JFK--that is hours closer to the emerging economic powers of the new century, notably the oil states, India and China. The workforce is skilled and open to foreigners, since the vast majority are foreigners. In Dubai 83% of the 2.2 million residents are from somewhere else. Talk about cosmopolitan.

But how about New York? "Moving the U.N. to Dubai would be a boon for New Yorkers who have to put up with traffic jams created by the likes of Colonel Qaddafi, scofflaws protected by diplomatic immunity and the loss of real estate revenue they would gain if the U.N. building were turned into something far more useful--condos with a view," suggests urban historian Fred Siegel, a visiting professor at Saint Francis College in Brooklyn and a fellow at New York's Manhattan Institute.

Liberating New York from the United Nations, in fact, would open up some of the best situated real estate in the world. A treasure trove of great apartments and offices right along the East River would suddenly become available, bringing a potential revenue windfall to New York City, which could use it. None of this would threaten the city's---or the country's--economic and political status. That grows out of economic and military power, which the U.N. does little or nothing to augment.

What would Dubai get? It's an ideal opportunity to refurbish its tarnished image on the world stage in a way that plays to its infrastructural and geographical advantages. The Arabian Sea and the Indian Ocean are increasingly the focal point of the world economic and political systems. Some of the biggest challenges facing the U.N. are concentrated in the south in Somalia and Yemen, to the west in Israel and Palestine, and to nearby Iran and Pakistan. Dubai would have to reconcile itself to a permanent Israeli presence, but that may not be as difficult as many think. Jews, and even Israelis, do business today in Dubai with perhaps less worry about running into manifestations of anti-Semitism than in London or Paris.

Bringing the United Nations to Dubai makes sense. New York gets rid of one of its worst welfare cheats, and Dubai finds new tenants to fill its vacant towers. Dubai has already built something that looks the part of a 21st-century world capital. Let it get a cast appropriate for its glittering set.

This article originally appeared at Forbes.com.

Joel Kotkin is executive editor of NewGeography.com and is a distinguished 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 Press February 4th, 2010. Coauthor Robert J. Cristiano Ph.D. is a successful real estate developer and the Real Estate Professional in Residence at Chapman University in Orange, Calif.

Photo:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/nlann/ / CC BY-SA 2.0

Beyond Neo-Victorianism: A Call for Design Diversity

Richard Reep — Mon, 11 Jan 2010 00:40:44 -0500

By Richard Reep

Investment in commercial development may be in long hibernation, but eventually the pause will create a pent-up demand. When investment returns, intelligent growth must be informed by practical, organic, time-tested models that work. Here’s one candidate for examination proposed as an alternative to the current model being toyed with by planners and developers nationwide.

Cities, in the first decade of this millennium, seem to be infected with a sort of self-hatred over their city form, looking backward to an imagined “golden era”. The most common notion is to recapture some of the glory of the last great consumerist period, the Victorians. During this time, from the 1870s to the early 1900s, many American towns and cities were formed around the horse-drawn wagon and the pedestrian. This created cities with enclaves of single-family homes and suburbs that seem quaint and tiny in retrospect to today’s mega-scale subdivisions and eight-lane commercial strips.

One bible for the neo-Victorians was “Suburban Nation,” a 2000 publication seething with loathing and anger over urban ugliness. In a noble and earnest effort to repair some of the aesthetic damage, the writers proposed a grand solution. Their goal was essentially to swing the development model back to the era of the streetcar and the alleyway, the era when cars were not dominant form-givers and families lived in higher density and closer proximity.

In the last decade, this movement gained traction with hapless city officials often tired of hearing nothing from their citizens but complaints over traffic and congestion. They embraced the New Urbanist movement which promised to turn the clock back to an era of walkable live/work/play environment of mixed neighborhoods. In the new model, the car would at last be tamed.

Yet, looking at most of these communities, the past has not created a better future. More often they have created something more like the simulated towns lampooned by “The Truman Show”. These neo-Victorian communities ended up with some of the form of that era, but devoid of employment and sacred space. They also created social schisms of low-wage, in-town employers and high-salary, bedroom community lifestyles marking not the dawn of a new era but the twilight of late capitalism as the service workers commute into New Urbanist villages while the residents commute out.

Meanwhile, planners who believe that practical design solutions and the vast quantity of remnants from the tailfin era are “almost all right” have remained quietly on the sidelines. This silent retreat, a natural reaction, now puts many good places in jeopardy as the activist planners try to “fix” neighborhoods and districts that were not broken to begin with. We risk losing some of the important postwar building form that well serves the needs of its users and, rather than being blacklisted, should be held up as a valid, comparative model for use by developers seeking to build good city form when the pent-up development demand returns.

It is time to hit back. Midcentury modern – the era from about 1945 to 1955 – has become a darling style of the interior design world, has yet to be recognized as a valid model for urban development. For too long, neighborhoods built in this era have been treated poorly by the planning community. Yet this period created a critical transition between the archaic beloved streetcar suburbs and the 1980s commercial car-must-win planning. They provide a valuable, forgotten lesson when the middle class’s newfound prosperity was expressed by low-density, car-oriented mixed-use districts that were still walkable and expressed through their form a certain heroic optimism about the future.

With building fronts set back just enough for parking, yet still close together to give a pleasant pedestrian scale, these little districts remain abundant in the landscape of our towns and cities – nearly forgotten in the fight over form, perhaps because they are doing just fine. They were built when everyone was encouraged to get a car, but before the car became a caveman club pounding our suburban form into big box “power centers” and endless, eight-lane superhighways of ever-receding building facades. These districts were developed before the local hardware store was replaced by Home Depot and many remain intact, thriving, and chock-full of independent business owners. Many of these are true mixed-use districts – with light industrial, second floor apartments, retail and other uses peacefully coexisting.

In small commercial districts developed in the late 1940s and early 1950s, a balance was struck between the traditional town form and the car, a balance that has been forgotten in the planning war being waged today. This era produced many neighborhoods and districts that are “almost all right”, in the words of noted Philadelphia architect and thinker Robert Venturi, when defending Las Vegas to the prissy academic community.

To go right to a case study, take the Audubon Park Garden District in Orlando, Florida. Adjacent to Baldwin Park, a Pritzker-funded New-Urbanist darling of 2002, this district is a vintage collection of mixed-use commercial, residential, and industrial buildings constructed in the 1950s. Set back from the curb approximately 42 feet, the mostly one-story storefronts allow parking in front yet are visible and accessible to pedestrians. The car is accommodated in the front of the store, making access easy and convenient, yet the pedestrian can walk also from place to place without long, hot trudges. Drivers see the storefronts. Scale is preserved. (See attached file for street elevations).

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The architecture, instead of recalling nostalgic, Victorian styles, is influenced by the art deco and populuxe styles of the Truman era, when America was united, self confident, and victorious. And the businesses reflect an organic mix serving neighborhood needs, their storefronts and facades created by themselves, not by some Master Planner, theming consultant, or fussy formgiving designer. Here, one finds customers in dialogue with shopkeepers, blue collar and creative class mixed together, a few apartments over their stores, and a localism that has endured for fifty-odd years, largely forgotten because it works.

Places like this three-block district, and others like it, need to be championed. Decoding just what works here, and how it elegantly accommodates the car and the pedestrian, is critical to counterbalance the coercive impact of the New Urbanist movement and present a working model to future developers.

When New Urbanism was a fledgling movement, it represented a necessary alternative to car-dominated planning principles, and offered a choice where there previously was none. Today, the rhetoric of this movement has sadly forced out all other choices and emphasized one form – that of the streetcar era – over all others. This increasingly authoritarian movement shuts out all other choices today, and now threatens places like Audubon Park with its singular vision by sending in planners to “workshop” an ideal, Victorian makeover. Such actions, if implemented, will destroy the healthy, functioning connective tissue that makes up vast portions of our urban environment for the sake of a romantic notion of form over substance.

Instead of enforced, and often overpriced, nostalgia, we would do better to seek out districts planned after the car and have worked through time, and hold them up as valid choices to implement when planners are considering a development. These districts, whether a single building, a collection, or a whole community, will become important models as the pendulum swings back from the extremes that it reached by 2007 and 2008.

For too long, planners and developers have chosen to be silent in the face of the often strident rhetoric espoused by “smart growth” and New Urbanist ideologues. Meanwhile, a tough analysis of New Urbanism’s successes has yet to be seriously undertaken, and alternative models presented. Cities across the nation are considering a move to form-based codes which would lock out districts like Audubon Park and doom existing ones to Victorian makeovers. Useful, diverse and workable places will be destroyed to fit a “one size fits all” ideology.

So before midcentury modern becomes just another furniture style, a window of opportunity exists to fight back. These kinds of districts dot the cities and towns of America and deserve to be held up as alternative models for new development. Instead of a dogmatic slavishness to nostalgia, planners and developers need to stand up to the preachers of preapproved form, and look for multiple solutions for future urban form. Smart growth should not supersede the arrival of a more flexible, diverse approach of intelligent growth.

Richard Reep is an Architect and artist living in Winter Park, Florida. His practice has centered around hospitality-driven mixed use, and has contributed in various capacities to urban mixed-use projects, both nationally and internationally, for the last 25 years.

Counting Counties

Daniel Jelski — Sun, 10 Jan 2010 01:49:09 -0500

I was about seven years old when I got my first copy of the Rand McNally Road Atlas (RMRA), and I’ve rarely been more than 50 feet away from one ever since. Unless I was out of the country, there has probably never been a day when I haven’t looked at it at least once.

The obvious question that a kid would ask is: What is the smallest county in the United States? In those days, RMRA alphabetized counties separately from cities and towns in the index, so it was a simple matter to go through and search for the smallest one. But I didn’t have the patience to sort through all 50 states; instead I tried to use some cleverness.

I assumed that the smallest county would not be in populous states, so I excluded places like California and New York. Further, the RMRA didn’t list any counties for Alaska (nor does it today), so that state didn’t count. Thus the logical choice (for a kid) was Wyoming – the least populous state in the union (then excluding Alaska). But I soon noticed that Wyoming only had 23 counties – so despite the small overall population, it seemed unlikely that any of them were very small. Indeed, Wyoming has no counties with fewer than 1000 people.

So the trick was not only to find a sparsely populated state, but also one with a lot of counties. North Dakota, with less than 700,000 people but with 53 counties, fits the bill. And indeed, I came across Arthur County, population 444, which seemed a likely candidate.

But South Dakota has 66 counties and Nebraska 93, so it is possible that a smaller county existed in one of those two states. No joy – Arthur was smaller than any of those 159.

I confidently went out into the world thinking Arthur County, ND was the smallest county in the United States.

But then it dawned on me that Texas had 254 counties. In those days it wasn’t the population behemoth that it is today, and with only 269,000 square miles, a lot of those counties had to be pretty small.

And so I found it – Loving County – population 67. That’s its population today; I can’t recall the number from the 1950 census (which would have been the number I found), but I think it was very close to that. And Loving County really is the smallest county (by population) in the United States even now.

So am I telling you anything you didn’t already know? Probably not – I’m guessing most readers of this blog have long since learned this little bit of trivia. And you learned it from Wikipedia, here. You will also discover that Arthur County is only fifth on the list, bigger than three counties in Texas.

Wikipedia makes it just much too easy! Imagine, if you will, that I’d had Wikipedia as a child. Think of all the articles I could write for this blog containing utterly useless information about everything. No more cleverness or labor required – all data is right there at your fingertips.

Now maybe I can play one-up-man-ship with Wikipedia? Through careful study of the RMRA, I discovered three states that have exclaves: New York, Kentucky and Hawaii.

* Liberty Island and the parts of Ellis Island that belong to New York are surrounded by New Jersey. These are also exclaves of New York County (Manhattan).
* The westernmost part of Kentucky (part of Fulton County) cannot be reached without crossing Missouri or Tennessee.
* Oahu and Kauai are separated by more than 24 miles, which means that one has to cross international waters to get from one to the other. (But since they are different counties, neither Honolulu nor Kauai counties have exclaves.)

I also note that Brookline, MA is in Norfolk County, separated from the rest of the county by Middlesex and Somerset counties.

So there, Wikipedia! Oh – alright – not so fast. See here. I haven’t had the courage to go through it all and see what I’m missing. Why bother?

There are some questions for which the RMRA is not especially useful. For example, what are the largest and smallest counties by land area? Excluding Alaska (and by all means, let’s exclude Alaska), then simply by inspection any kid will tell you that San Bernardino, CA, is the biggest county in the country. At 20,000 square miles, it is almost as big as West Virginia.

What is the smallest county? Before resorting to Wikipedia, I spent a sleepless night pondering this problem. I thought Hawaii’s Kalawao County might fit the bill. Boy was I wrong!

Kalawao County is what’s left over from Father Damien’s leper colony on the north coast of Molokai. At midnight, I thought it was just the famous little peninsula that juts offshore. However my American Road Atlas (published by Langenscheidt, and nicer but considerably pricier than the RMRA) shows the county is considerably bigger than that – by about 2 or 3 times.

And what about RMRA? Shockingly, it doesn’t show Kalawao County at all, neither on the map nor in the index! I don’t think it ever has. I find this bothersome.

Nevertheless, neither atlas cites areas of any county, so it really is necessary to turn to Wikipedia. Wonderfully enough, Wikipedia does not have a list of the smallest counties by area – they only list the smallest county in each state – and then you have to look at a state list. Now there’s a good job here for some kid!

The matter is complicated because Virginia has a series of independent cities – the smallest of which is Falls Church. At 2.2 square miles, this is the smallest county-like subdivision in the US. But it isn’t a county. The smallest actual county is Arlington County, VA, at 26 square miles (compared to Kalawao’s 52).

Now what subtle distinction in local governance disqualifies Falls Church, and grants Arlington the status of smallest county? I have no idea.

A county that I’ve never heard of – Colorado’s Broomfield County – has only 28 square miles. It surrounds a suburb of Denver by the same name – how it got to be its own county I have no idea. And Bristol County, RI, clocks in at 45.

But this is not the worst. I can surely be forgiven for overlooking city-states in Virginia or anomalies in Colorado. What is harder to understand is how I missed Manhattan! New York County (which includes Manhattan, some smaller islands, and Marble Hill) comes in at 34 square miles. This, surely, would have been a better midnight guess for the smallest county in the country.

Wikipedia makes me feel old, rendering the skills of a lifetime obsolete. Just the other week my daughter suggested I needed to buy a GPS.

Never!

Daniel Jelski is Dean of Science & Engineering State University of New York at New Paltz.

China’s Heartland Capital: Chengdu, Sichuan

Adam Mayer — Sat, 09 Jan 2010 00:55:29 -0500

On May 12, 2008, Chinese architect Stepp Lin was focusing intensely on his professional licensing exam in a testing center in central Chengdu when suddenly he felt someone bumping his desk. By the time he looked up to see what it was, most of the other exam takers were frantically fleeing for the exit. It turns out that what he was feeling were the tremors of what was to be the most devastating earthquake to hit China in recent memory.

China’s heartland province of Sichuan was overtaken by an 8.0 earthquake that rocked the region that day. The quake was so powerful that it was felt as far away as Beijing. Graphic images broadcast around the world showed the devastation caused by the powerful tremor. All in all, it is estimated that more than 60,000 people perished in the Sichuan earthquake.

During the aftermath, the response from both within China and abroad in terms of aid was highly encouraging. Unfortunately, the footage of primary schools reduced to rubble resulting in the deaths of thousands of children and the subsequent scandals regarding culpability denial and cover-up did not bode well for China’s new image.

Surprisingly, Sichuan’s capital and largest city, Chengdu, escaped from the earthquake largely unscathed. Most of the serious damage took place in rural areas where buildings, due to lack of sufficient funding and regulation, had not been constructed to safety standards. Building safety codes have since been updated and are now rigorously enforced.

Perhaps more importantly, the 2008 Sichuan earthquake managed to highlight the growing disparity between the rich and poor, urban and rural areas of China.
Unlike the United States, where suburbanization has managed to blur the line between rural and urban, the contrast remains stark in the Middle Kingdom.

It is no secret that within the framework of rapid development, China is urbanizing at unprecedented rates. Beijing and Shanghai continue to lead the country politically and economically, but a group of ‘second tier’ cities is now being targeted by China’s planners for increased new investment. Included in this group are up-and-coming cities like Nanjing, Dalian, Tianjin and Chongqing.

Yet perhaps no other second tier city represents the future of China more than Chengdu (pronounced chung-doo). Strategically located at the geographic heart of China, Chengdu bridges the gap between the country’s booming eastern seaboard and the still largely mysterious far west.

Chengdu is one of China’s oldest cities, with continuous settlement dating back to the ancient Kingdom of Shu. Today, the city is renowned for its local spicy cuisine and famous Panda Breeding Center. It is also a popular launching-off point for international trekkers heading onto Tibet. Within China, Chengdu is reputed for its leisurely atmosphere where friendly locals often take off work early to sip tea and relax over a game of mahjong.

Sitting at an elevation of about 1,600 feet on the western portion of the Sichuan Basin, Chengdu’s climate is mildly humid-neither too hot in the summer nor too cold in the winter. Yet one drawback is the presence of the pervasive fog that hovers low in the sky year-round, making Chengdu one of least-sunny cities in China.

Similar to Beijing, Chengdu is concentrically organized with ring roads circling the city. At the center of the city is Tianfu Square-a pleasant public space featuring larger-than-life water fountains and a large statue of Chairman Mao. Nearby is the Jin River, which flows through the middle of the city, dividing it in half.

Despite the slower pace of life, at least in comparison with the rest of China’s hyper urbanity, the Central Government has recognized the city’s advantages. Being the western-most big city in China, Chengdu is China’s gateway to central Asia. As such, the city has been identified as an air traffic hub. Already, Chengdu International airport is one of the busiest in the mainland. Next year, Air China inaugurates its new Chengdu-Los Angeles route: the first direct flight from the city to the United States.

The new Air China route to LA reflects the growing presence of U.S. firms in the area. Technology companies like Microsoft and Intel have realized the competitive advantages of opening research and development facilities in an area of the country where the cost of doing business is still relatively low. These firms have located their offices in an area in the south of Chengdu that has been designated as the ‘Hi-Tech Zone’ by China’s Ministry of Science and Technology.

Along with becoming western China’s high tech center, the city is grabbing a foothold on the country’s aviation industry. Chengdu Aircraft Industrial Group (CAC), which was contracted out by Dallas-based Vought Aircraft, supplied the rudder for Boeing’s new 787 ‘Dreamliner’ jet. CAC also supplies parts for Boeing’s 757 series.

To accommodate the new business, the city is going through a construction boom. Although Chengdu had a late start on its eastern counterparts, the city is attracting high-profile developers like New York-based Tishman Speyer and Singapore’s CapitaLand – both of whom currently have large-scale commercial and retail projects being built in the city. Chengdu has even recruited Hong Kong businessman Allan Zeman to develop a version of Hong Kong’s popular nightlife district, Lan Kwai Fong, scheduled to open in March.

The city’s development would not be complete without an overhaul of its transportation system. One word summarizes the current state of Chengdu’s roads: chaos. The traffic on the streets remains an assortment of bicycles, motorbikes, automobiles and buses. Yet, as incomes rise and more people purchase cars, the congestion on the streets is becoming unbearable. Furthermore, the fact that the streets do not follow a formal grid pattern, but rather array out from the center of the city, adds another degree of complexity to Chengdu’s traffic dilemma.

Thankfully, the city’s first subway line is slated to open in 2010. As additional underground lines become operable, it will also give the city a better sense of cohesiveness as the limited number of surface level crossings of the Jin River currently contributes to both a physical and psychological divisiveness.

In discussing the rise of Chengdu as a hotbed of economic activity, it is worth mentioning the city’s relationship with its closest rival, Chongqing. Chongqing, which was separated from Sichuan Province in 1997 to become an autonomous provincial-level municipality, lies just over 200 miles to the east. The city has the advantage of direct access to the Yangtze River, providing a strategic connection to the river’s terminus of Shanghai.

Chongqing’s urban development is limited by the surrounding mountainous terrain-thus the reason for the dense high-rise jungle rising in the skyline. Chengdu, in contrast, has an abundance of land for growth and is more likely to sustain long-term development. Also, the fact that Chongqing has been plagued by corruption and local mafia activity in recent years means that foreign firms may be more attracted to safer Chengdu.

That is not to say that there is not room for both cities in China’s future. In fact, the two cities are likely to form what will become the Chengdu-Chongqing mega-region – the economic powerhouse of western China. Already, other mega-regions in China like the Bohai Bay Rim (Beijing, Tianjin and Dalian), the Yangtze River Delta (Shanghai, Hangzhou, Nanjing and Suzhou) and the Pearl River Delta (Guangzhou, Dongguan, Shenzhen, and Hong Kong) are setting groundbreaking standards in the history of global urbanization.

The Sichuan earthquake of 2008 managed to bring about an awareness of the major issues still facing China. In stark contrast to the days of the Cultural Revolution when urban areas were viewed as pariahs, the Sichuan quake solidified the triumph of the city over the countryside. As the city on the frontier, Chengdu is likely to become a key player as thousands of migrants arrive from Sichuan and adjacent provinces. How these newcomers are incorporated represents a great challenge for China as it shifts from a largely rural to a predominately urban country.

Adam Nathaniel Mayer is a native of California. Raised in Silicon Valley, he developed a keen interest in the importance of place within the framework of a highly globalized economy. Adam attended the University of Southern California in Los Angeles where he earned a Bachelor of Architecture degree. He currently lives in China where he works in the architecture profession.

Reducing Traffic Congestion and Improving Travel Options in Los Angeles

Paul Sorensen — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 01:31:06 -0500

While traffic congestion plagues many cities, Los Angeles stands apart. The Texas Transportation Institute tracks congestion statistics for U.S. metropolitan areas on an annual basis, and Los Angeles routinely ranks first for both total and per-capita congestion delays. Considering the value of wasted time and fuel, TTI estimates the annual cost of traffic congestion in greater Los Angeles at close to $10 billion.

The map in Figure 1, based on 2006 Caltrans sensor data, illustrates the weekday pattern of traffic congestion on the LA freeway network. Congestion is pervasive throughout much of the county; most freeways have segments on which traffic averages less than 35 mph at least two hours per day, and many bottlenecks are congested at least four hours per day.

Figure 1. Traffic Conditions on the LA Freeway Network

Conditions on the surface streets are not much better. The map in Figure 2, based on 2004 volume-to-capacity (V/C) estimates from SCAG, depicts the pattern of afternoon traffic congestion on the county’s largest arterials. Here again it is evident that traffic congestion is broadly dispersed, yet the pattern is particularly intense between downtown Los Angeles and the Westside.

Figure 2. Traffic Conditions on LA Surface Streets

With the recent run-up in fuel prices followed by a severe recession, total travel in Los Angeles has declined over the past two years, and congestion has correspondingly eased. Yet if past trends hold, this reprieve is likely to be fleeting. Should the region’s economy and population grow in the coming decades, as some forecasts predict, the probable outcome is even more vehicle travel and in turn more intense congestion.

Controversial Solutions for a Daunting Problem
Researchers at the RAND Corporation were asked to recommend strategies capable of reducing LA traffic within five years or less (the short timeframe rules out land-use reforms along with major infrastructure investments). The resulting report, Moving Los Angeles: Short-Term Policy Options for Improving Transportation, offers recommendations at once controversial and likely inescapable. To achieve lasting traffic relief, it will be necessary to manage the demand for travel through pricing reforms (e.g., congestion tolls) that increase the cost of driving and parking in the busiest corridors and areas during peak travel hours. Other measures—better transit service, ridesharing programs, traffic signal synchronization, and the like—can complement pricing, but are not on their own sufficient to stem current and projected future traffic congestion.

Few Strategies Offer Much Promise
Just why should this be so? Consider, first, that traffic congestion results from an imbalance between the supply of roads and peak-hour automotive travel. In fact, congestion can be viewed as a solution (though an unpleasant one) to this imbalance; when demand exceeds supply, congestion makes us wait our turn for available road space to balance the equation. Over the past several decades, the gap between supply and demand has widened considerably; population growth, economic expansion, and rising incomes have fueled the demand for more vehicle travel, while road construction has stagnated. We have therefore been relying, more and more, on congestion to resolve this imbalance.

One response would be to build or expand more roads to accommodate additional vehicle travel. Setting aside policy concerns related to greenhouse gas emissions and energy security, the prospects for “building our way out of congestion” are limited. To begin with, there simply isn’t much space to build new roads in Los Angeles, particularly in the most densely developed urban areas. As shown in Figure 3, the density of the road network in the greater Los Angeles region, measured in lane miles per square mile, is already far greater than in any other large metropolitan area in the country.

Figure 3. Road Network Density in Major Metropolitan Areas

We also lack the resources to engage in an extensive road building spree. In recent decades, federal and state elected officials have failed to increase fuel taxes enough to offset the effects of inflation and improved fuel economy, thus hobbling the major source of funding for road construction and repairs.

Even if we could expand the road network, though, the benefits would be limited by a phenomenon described as “triple convergence.” Congestion has been a problem for years, and many individuals deliberately alter their travel patterns to avoid severe traffic. When an investment in road capacity reduces peak-hour congestion, many will conclude that they no longer need to go out of their way to avoid congestion delays and will thus “converge” on the improvement from (a) other times, (b) other routes, or (c) other modes of travel. The net effect is that the initial traffic-reduction benefits will usually not last over time. This is why we often see, for instance, that the improved traffic flow resulting from a new freeway lane does not last for more than a couple of years.

If supply-side remedies do not create sustainable reductions in traffic, it becomes necessary to examine ways of reducing peak-hour travel demand. Commonly employed options include improved transit service, voluntary ridesharing programs, flexible work hours, and telecommuting. Unfortunately, the congestion-reduction benefits of these strategies are likewise undermined by triple convergence. If a new subway line induces some peak-hour drivers to switch to transit, other drivers will soon converge on more freely flowing roads to take their place. Indeed, the effects of triple convergence explain why traffic congestion has grown steadily worse despite considerable state and local investment in a broad range of congestion-reduction strategies.

Only Pricing Strategies Promise Sustainable Reductions in Traffic Congestion
This brings us to the rationale for pricing strategies. Among the many possible options for reducing traffic congestion, only pricing resist the effects of triple convergence. By increasing the cost of driving or parking in the busiest areas or corridors during the busiest times of day, pricing measures manage the demand for peak-hour travel, in turn reducing congestion. Once traffic flow improves, the prices remain in place, thus deterring excessive convergence on the newly freed capacity.

Pricing strategies offer two additional benefits. First, pricing generates revenue to support needed transportation investments. And in comparison to sales taxes, a common option for raising local transportation revenue, pricing has been shown to reduce the relative tax burden on lower income groups (though wealthier individuals consume more taxable goods than their less-affluent counterparts, to an even greater extent they (a) drive more, (b) are more likely to travel during peak hours, and (c) are more likely to pay peak-hour tolls rather than alter their travel choices). Second, pricing enables more efficient use of the road capacity that we already have, because roads on which traffic flows smoothly (at roughly 40 mph or higher) can carry far more vehicles per lane per hour than roads snarled in stop-and-go congestion. Paradoxically, then, we see that the introduction of pricing enables roads to accommodate more peak-hour trips. It is therefore useful to think of pricing as a means of managing peak-hour travel demand rather than reducing it.

Pricing Strategies Will Be Particularly Valuable in Los Angeles
Pricing holds promise for most major cities, but the case in Los Angeles is especially compelling. To understand why, it is necessary to consider the interactions between population density and travel behavior, factors that help to explain the severity of LA traffic.

Contrary to its reputation for sprawl, Los Angeles is quite densely populated when viewed at the regional scale. Downtown Los Angeles isn't as dense as, say, Manhattan or central Chicago, but the suburbs surrounding Los Angeles are much denser than the typical suburb, leading to high aggregate density on a regional basis.

As population density increases, individuals tend to drive less on a per-capita basis. Trip origins and destinations are closer together, leading to shorter car trips, and in dense neighborhoods people can rely on alternatives such as walking, biking, or transit for a larger share of trips. Yet this can be overwhelmed by the fact that there are also more drivers competing for the same road space within a given area, thus intensifying traffic congestion. The net effect is that greater population density tends to exacerbate congestion—think downtown Manhattan.

LA traffic congestion is further exacerbated by the fact that Angelinos do not curtail their driving as much as one would expect in response to higher population density. Figure 4 compares per-capita vehicle miles of travel (VMT) and population density for the 14 largest metropolitan regions in the country.

Figure 4. Population Density vs. Per-Capita VMT for the 14 Largest U.S. Metropolitan Regions

Looking across the different regions, there is a fairly consistent relationship in which per-capita VMT declines with regional density. Los Angeles, though, bucks this trend. The only other metropolitan regions with higher per-capita VMT (Atlanta, Dallas, Houston, and Detroit) are all much less dense than Los Angeles. For regions in which the level of density approaches that of Los Angeles (San Francisco, Washington D.C., and New York), per-capita VMT is much lower.

In short, we see a confluence of three density-related factors that combine to explain the severity of congestion in Los Angeles: (1) congestion is likely to rise with increased population density; (2) Los Angeles is much denser than its peers at the regional level; and (3) Los Angeles exhibits a surprisingly high level of per-capita VMT relative to its density. The third of these underscores the importance of pricing strategies as a means of managing the demand for automotive travel in Los Angeles.

In the end only pricing strategies promise sustainable reductions in traffic congestion. Other measures – including improvements in alternative transportation modes – can be beneficial, but none will be nearly as effective as pricing. This recommendation will no doubt stir controversy, but pricing offers the only realistic prospects for managing peak-hour travel demand in the most traffic-choked of American metropolises.

Dr. Paul Sorensen is an operations researcher at the RAND Corporation, wherehe serves as Associate Director of the Transportation, Space, and Technology program. Dr. Sorensen has published peer-reviewed studies in the areas of geographic information analysis, location optimization modeling, emergency response logistics, and transportation finance policy, and he also holds aU.S. patent on a methodology for forecasting the demand for ambulance services. Dr. Sorensen received a BA in computer science from Dartmouth College, an MA in urban planning from UCLA, and a PhD in geography from UCSB.

Housing: Density & Desire

Rick Harrison — Thu, 07 Jan 2010 00:03:06 -0500

Density — the number of units per acre on a proposed site plan — is at the heart of the developer’s mantra: More density, more profit. Meanwhile, environmentalists and many planners preach high density as the promise for a better future. The compression of families is an attempt to curb sprawl and reduce transportation energy consumption. For these reasons, many Green programs demand a minimum density to qualify for certification. Those who sit on suburban city councils and planning commissions fear over-densification, and typical suburban ordinances are written to oppose density.

Who’s right? Nobody. There is no ideal density number in planning or development. Forget the search for a numerical value. Instead, concentrate on livability.

Ordinances throughout the world state minimal dimension requirements. Some suburban ordinances, but not most, specify density maximums. But density alone cannot determine the most important issue in any development: Is it a great place to live? If both environmental impact and affordability were added to the mix, then you could equate livability with sustainability.

Suburban Settings: The term ‘sprawl’ is recklessly used to describe all new suburban development, as if every new suburb was composed of massive lots with McMansions. Want proof that it’s not so? Take a tour of a suburb near a major city that was developed this past decade. In most, you will find smaller lots with homes compressed close together, often with less open space than older, large lot developments. Many of the new suburban developments that are close to major cities approach New Urbanism in density. There are some large lot developments for large residential estates, which are frowned upon as if achievement has become evil.

The opponents of suburbia often don’t factor in the changes that have come about in environmental regulations. When urban areas of the past were built, wetlands (previously known as “swamps”) were simply filled in for development. Wooded areas were clear cut for the new city to be built. Today, we cannot fill in wetlands that in some places constitute vast areas within suburban communities. Many suburban cities have tree preservation and slope restrictions that also result in large open spaces. Because land that developers in the past simply built over is now set aside for preservation, today’s suburbs are going to naturally appear much less “dense” than existing suburban areas. Should a new “urban” city sprout today, as a result of these same protections it too may appear far less dense.

Higher density can drive up raw land value. Developers who can place four homes on each acre are willing to pay much more than they would have a decade ago for the same land, when each acre could yield only two homes or less. The consumer ultimately pays the same (or more) for a much smaller lot, so density does not deliver affordability.

Ordinances typically do not deliver livability. When we provide amenities that are not required in ordinances such as an architectural theme, or parks, walks, trails, destination places, and then add sustainability elements such as low impact storm drainage, green building, engineering, and landscaping...what keeps all of this affordable? Increased density helps when the original plan is for large lots. But we can only push density increases to a limit that preserves the sense of space that suburban home buyers expect. Cities that have already reduced minimum lots from, say, 10,000 square feet to 5,000 gave up all of their spare space long ago. Reducing lot size on an already small space can destroy livability. When lots were larger, there was negotiating power: Want smaller lots and more density? Then we’ll build a sustainable neighborhood, not a subdivision. With a small lot that negotiating power vanishes.

Livability results from a balance of the hundreds of elements that must be taken into consideration when planning, engineering and constructing a neighborhood. A density goal can easily tip that balance in the wrong direction.

I was trained on how to abuse the regulatory system. In the early 1970s, I was on top of the planning game as a master at manipulating regulations. I was able to find holes in the regulations to legally justify cramming units together. I felt victorious when I gained density. After driving through many of the neighborhoods that were eventually built, pride turned into shame. They were nothing special. I created developments that would do nothing to enhance the living standards of the residents; instead, they made the developer (who was now long gone) more profit. I vowed to never again use increased density as a goal, but rather to use balanced design practices as the driving force of all my neighborhood plans.

Urban Settings: It is expected that density will be higher in urban areas. We recently did a proposal on a four acre infill site in Minneapolis. We pushed the density on one proposal to 111 units. Our goal was to produce an affordable (i.e. low income), environmentally sound development that would provide a sense of space and accomplishment (pride) for the residents. In low income neighborhoods it is important to hide parked cars as they can be an eyesore that can have a negative visual impact. All parked cars were to be hidden in underground parking areas or in the rear of a home.
Utilizing new architectural design practice, we provided panoramic views of landscaped spaces using the kitchen as the focal spot for every unit. In this new era, which we call Prefurbia, one goal is to make the interior floor plan an integral component of the overall neighborhood design; we break up the architecture to create that all important curb appeal and eliminate the monotony so common in urban settings, especially lower-income ones. Density was also limited because we wanted to keep each unit at a minimum of 900 square feet. Every home was tied to a meandering walk system leading to a central aquatic garden in a 0.7 acre park. A truly wonderful place to live, at any income level.

Yet when we presented the development plan we were told that the density goal was 120 units. When we asked where that number came from, we were told it was the minimum that was needed for LEED-ND standards. Jamming another 10% of density would bring the proposal out of balance – something would need to be sacrificed. We could eliminate the central park focus, or perhaps throw the parked cars in the open, or make the small units even smaller. We could eliminate the tie between the floor plans and the neighborhood. Going up another floor would just make the parking situation worse, as we would then have no room to hide the cars underneath the apartments. Demanding a minimum density does nothing to assure good development. If anything, it provides another target that detracts from creating a well balanced neighborhood that is a pleasure to live within.

Density Instead of Profitability: When I began to plan developments for a nationally recognized firm, we achieved the density goals, but had no clue as to the actual costs of constructing a neighborhood. We would cross a creek to reach isolated corners of a site and gain a few lots, never realizing that a bridge costs much more than the profits gained in those few units. Using geometry instead of smart design practices, we stretched the length of streets, never realizing that streets cost about $300 (today’s dollars) for each extra foot. In the end we did get to the desired density ratio, but at what cost? Smarter design would have been to balance the infrastructure needs against the density goals. That was 40 years ago. Unfortunately those regulating and planning many of today’s new developments and redevelopments still look only to density, not to other costs.

Density And The Environment: Planners assume that if we increase density in one place then we will not need to build somewhere else, and the end result will be that we will be left with vast, natural open spaces. This fantasy can only become a reality if the additional density achieved on a site corresponds with the dedication of a permanent preserve of open space elsewhere in the same city.

Want to make this a better world to live in? Forget trying to justify a particular number of units per acre. I was guilty of this approach at one time. There is actually a term for the attitude: it’s defined as “difficult to understand or follow because of being closely packed with ideas or complexities of style”...and that word is “Dense”!

Rick Harrison is President of Rick Harrison Site Design Studio and author of Prefurbia: Reinventing The Suburbs From Disdainable To Sustainable. His website is rhsdplanning.com.

Will Anyone Stand Up for American Industry?

Aaron M. Renn — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 01:58:36 -0500

“Esau for one morsel of meat sold his birthright. For ye know how that afterward, when he would have inherited the blessing, he was rejected: for he found no place of repentance, though he sought it carefully with tears.” - Hebrews 12:16-17

Built from 1933-1936, the Bay Bridge linking San Francisco to Oakland was an engineering marvel of its day. A complex series of multiple spans, when it opened – six months ahead of the more famous Golden Gate Bridge – it was both the longest suspended bridge deck in the world and the longest cantilever bridge in the world. The western suspension bridge section, technically two bridges in one, had to settle for being only the second and third longest suspension bridges in the world.

The 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake badly damaged the Bay Bridge. The iconic western suspension span was seismically reinforced, but the eastern steel truss section required replacement. San Francisco wanted another iconic span, not just a functional one. A striking self-anchored suspension structure was selected and is under construction.

The dubious part of this new span isn't the usual matter of being way late and massively over budget - though it is - but where it's being made. The steel for the bridge is not being built in America but in China.

Why is this bridge being fabricated in China? The troubling answer, according to a lengthy article in the SF Public Press, is that no American company can do the job. America, a country that once pulled off the most audacious of engineering projects with panache, one that put a man on the moon in the 1960s, now can't even build a bridge to replace one it constructed with ease in the 1930s.

What's more disturbing, is that China can't really build it either – but we are teaching them, and paying for them to learn how.

When you drive across that new Bay Bridge, your tolls will literally be helping to finance the advancement of China's industrial base and the evisceration of America's.

I believe in free trade, strongly. I believe America can compete in a free market. But the United States is a country curiously uncommitted to industry. Other countries build, promote and protect industrial champions. They blockade their markets against American competitors. India freely sells us software and BPO, but passes laws to hamper Wal-Mart and other American firms. China demands many foreign companies do business there only through joint ventures, and transfer technology to local partners. It also intervenes to keep its currency artificially low. Many countries outright ban foreign involvement in many sectors such as energy. They view even their privately owned firms, many of which have close and corrupt ties to the state, as instruments of national and foreign policy.

These places see Japan as a model to follow, a country that used its closed market to build industrial champions, even in high technology markets. Perhaps in time the same problems that hobbled Japan – asset bubbles, debt, demographic collapse, or an inflexible economy – will similarly afflict these emerging markets. But by that time it might be too late for American industry. And those problems are just as likely to affect us as them.

This raises difficult questions about the future of America. Can we thrive as a purely post-industrial economy? Can we have a long term prosperous society built on little more than selling each other ever more exotic pieces of financial paper, creative consultancies, typing away at computers, serving up caffe lattes, and the like? Can we have a just social order as a two-tier society of only highly-paid elite knowledge workers and a low end service class, but not the robust middle class a manufacturing economy – along with agriculture and energy – supported?

Can America even retain its military industrial strength under such conditions? In the past, military technologies launched spin-offs to the commercial world. Today, the reverse is as likely to happen. Already the only major ship builders left in America are captive suppliers to the US Navy. Only the anomalous Jones Act has kept a tradition of small and medium sized commercial shipbuilding alive.

There's a positive reinforcement cycle at work. The less we manufacture, the less we can manufacture. We slowly lose the skills, the facilities, the institutions, and the culture that enable a robust manufacturing economy to thrive. Eventually, we won't be able to recover.

Maybe we won't even want to. The less we make, the less we want to make. As we become unmoored from our agro-industrial roots, we fail to see them as central to our national identity and frequently treat them with hostility. As Douglas and Wildavsky put it in Risk and Culture (1982):

A larger proportion of the population of working age was disengaged from the production process than had been before. The economic boom and educational boom together produced a cohort of articulate, critical people with no commitment to commerce and industry.

Increasingly, Americans have no personal experience with industry, and even no family experience with it. What was once common is just another niche, much like military service has become. This means most people have little familiarity or affection for industry, agriculture, or energy production. Many, especially urban dwellers, view most productive industry as a negative, as a source of blight where once others saw jobs and a strong tax base.

Portland provides the perfect example. It views its waterfront as prime territory for residences and recreation, but not for industry. As the Oregonian reports:

The question makes Jay Zidell uncomfortable. When will he stop building barges on the waterfront and start building high-rises? The room goes silent....Oregon power brokers have nudged the Zidell family for decades to do more with their prime Portland real estate...In the 1970s, Gov. Tom McCall called Jay Zidell's late father, Emery, to suggest he stop adding industrial buildings. As Jay Zidell has told the story, McCall said: "We have big plans for the waterfront."

Those big plans don't include manufacturing. Portland is the perfect example of where America is heading. It's a place where thousands of highly educated but often underemployed young people sip lattes by the light rail while on the waiting list for a job at Starbucks. Meanwhile people in third world countries, hungry for more, hustle to build an ambitious future for themselves and their nation. Americans increasingly view manufacturing as an undesirable activity, particularly in an urban context, when in fact we should be looking to build new industrial cities - updated, re-imagined, and re-designed for a 21st century economy.

Also, too often industry is viewed only as a source of pollution. Many industrial expansions are opposed on environmental grounds. But from a global, not local perspective, an ever stricter regime of regulation is sending firms offshore where pollution standards are usually far laxer. Corporations put a green gloss on their branding campaigns while building their products in China, where they get electricity from one of the new coal fired power plants that open at a rate of more than one per week. They also escape independent unions, anything like the Environment Impact Statement process in the US, and operate in a regime of weak property rights, questionable worker health and safety conditions, and a limited ability for the public to dissent. It's not just cheap labor, it's regulatory arbitrage. It's like inverse colonialism, only this time the joke's on the West. And the end result is a global environment that ends up worse, not better.

To really protect the environment, we should be doing more manufacturing at home, where we can keep an eye on it and prevent the worst abuses. It's like the Steak 'n Shake boast about their open kitchens: “In sight, it must be right”.

The sometimes exception to this negative take on manufacturing is, of course, “green” industry, notwithstanding that the concept does not exist except as a transitory state. In a decade there will just be “manufacturing”, and virtually all will adhere to green standards. But if America can't succeed at traditional manufacturing, why would anyone think it will be different with green manufacturing? Even if so, by then there might not be many major American producers left to succeed.

American firms and labor have made many mistakes over the years, but more often today they are adopting the new approaches needed to compete in tomorrow's world. American labor can compete, even against cheap foreign workers, since it is the best and most productive workforce in the world. But not when public policy implicitly favors shipping manufacturing overseas.

The answer is not protectionism, it's freeing American labor to compete and developing policies designed to advance American manufacturing interests. Alexis de Tocqueville talked about Americans knowing the difference between raw, naked self interest, and “self-interest well-understood”. Likewise, we need to find a new approach to create “free trade, well understood”, a modern day trade equivalent of speaking softly, but carrying a big stick. Billions for American infrastructure, but not one $4 Bay Bridge toll to finance China's technology ambitions.

Alas, this seems unlikely. American industry is trapped between a political right that can't see beyond instinctive anti-federalism and an overly ideological vision of free trade, and a political left that, while paying lip service to labor interests, no longer embraces industry. Almost alone among nations, America today lacks political champions for its industry. That, more than anything, is why it is being left to wither. Will anyone stand up and be counted before it's too late?

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