UrbDan Planning

I just want to give a quick plug to the KunstlerCast, James Howard Kunstler’s podcast, dubbed “a weekly conversation about the tragic comedy of suburban sprawl.” While listening to it on the train or in the gym, I frequently find myself laughing out loud and receiving strange stares from neighbors. Usually once a week, Kunstler and his sidekick, Duncan Crary, hole up in the “Crary Cave” to discuss a range of issues related to urban planning and architecture, but topics can touch on everything from cyberspace to rock-n-roll. I’ve read most of Kunstler’s books (The Long Emergency, The Geography of Nowhere, World Made by Hand) and really appreciate his opinions on all of the various subjects of the podcast.

Kunstler, a self-proclaimed bohemian now in his 60s, has worked for newspapers, was an editor at Rolling Stone magazine in the 1970s, has authored numerous books, and much more. Contemporarily, he is most popular for his opinions about the American built environment, resource consumption, and human interactions. This interesting and diverse range of life experiences contributes to the conversations and ensures that they are always very entertaining and often educational.

Check it out and let me know what you think.

Here is a great quote from our President delivered at the U.S. Conference of Mayors on January 21, 2010. The comment is referring to the Partnership for Sustainable Communities between the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), U.S. Department of Transportation (USDOT), and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA), an unprecedented inter-agency agreement to coordinate efforts on issues, such as federal housing, transportation, and environmental investments; to protect public health and the environment; to promote equitable development; and to help address the challenges of climate change.  This agreement, established June 2009, means that these three agencies at long last will hopefully begin to speak with one voice on these hugely important issues.

It’s time to throw out old policies that encouraged sprawl and congestion, pollution, and ended up isolating our communities in the process. We need strategies that encourage smart development linked to quality public transportation, that bring our communities together.

Earlier in January, USDOT Secretary Ray LaHood, had announced sweeping changes to the New Starts program.  The change rescinded a rule implemented by the Bush Administration in 2005 that made “cost-effectiveness” the major criteria in determining whether a project gets funded or not. Cost-effectiveness will remain an important factor, but other criteria, such as livability, congestion, and environmental impact, will be elevated under the Obama administration.  Representative Keith Ellison, democrat from my home state of Minnesota, was among the first politicians to call for this rule to be revoked and sweeping changes to occur.  The much needed change was a relief to House Transportation Committee Chairman, Jim Oberstar (another political star from Minnesota), who had begun to joke that the New Starts program should be renamed “small starts, low starts, and no starts.”

Below are the six “Livability Principles” that will guide this new partnership:

1. Provide more transportation choices. Develop safe, reliable, and economical transportation choices to decrease household transportation costs, reduce our nation’s dependence on foreign oil, improve air quality, reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and promote public health.
2. Promote equitable, affordable housing. Expand location- and energy-efficient housing choices for people of all ages, incomes, races, and ethnicities to increase mobility and lower the combined cost of housing and transportation.
3. Increase economic competitiveness. Improve economic competitiveness through reliable and timely access to employment centers, educational opportunities, services and other basic needs by workers, as well as expanded business access to markets.
4. Support existing communities. Target federal funding toward existing communities—through strategies like transit oriented, mixed-use development, and land recycling—to increase community revitalization and the efficiency of public works investments and safeguard rural landscapes.
5. Leverage federal investment. Align federal policies and funding to remove barriers to collaboration, leverage funding, and increase the accountability and effectiveness of all levels of government to plan for future growth, including making smart energy choices such as locally generated renewable energy.
6. Value communities and neighborhoods. Enhance the unique characteristics of all communities by investing in healthy, safe, and walkable neighborhoods—rural, urban, or suburban.

Here is an explanation of “livability” from Secretary LaHood:

Livability means being able to take your kids to school, go to work, see a doctor, drop by the grocery or Post Office, go out to dinner and a movie, and play with your kids in the park – all without having to get into your car.

It is so refreshing to hear rhetoric like this from our elected officials, especially those that occupy the White House.  Keep it coming!

Read more at these links:

http://www.epa.gov/smartgrowth/partnership

http://www.dot.gov/livability/index.html

http://dc.streetsblog.org/2010/01/13/big-transit-news-bush-era-rule-tossed-enviro-benefits-on-the-table

http://dc.streetsblog.org/2009/12/17/two-dems-propose-to-end-bush-era-rule-on-transit-cost-effectiveness

Check out this promotional video I saw today on YouTube showing off a prototype of the PUMA, which stands for Personal Urban Mobility and Accessibility, a joint venture between GM and Segway.  Apparently, the small car runs on a lithium-ion battery and can drive 35 miles per charge.  I read on FT.com that GM made a statement saying the small car,

“..could change the way we move about in cities.  Not everybody in the world will be driving these things, but it certainly has applicability for cities, college campuses, and things of that ilk.”  FT.com

This video certainly gave me some things to think about.  As many of you know I am a big supporter of carsharing as a way of reducing vehicle ownership, use, and parking space.  These little vehicles have the potential of bridging the gap between traditional transit services and home or work, the last (or first) leg of most journeys, which has historically been the portion that keeps many from using transit.  I can envision many applications of it, including surburban settings.

“Six months from now,” [Vice-President] Biden said, “if the verdict on this effort is that we’ve wasted the money, we built things that were unnecessary, or we’ve done things that are legal but make no sense, then, folks, don’t look for any help from the federal government for a long while.”

Unfortunately, the stimulus funds that are being distributed for infrastructure are not all being spent on high-speed rail and state-of-the-art projects.  Many of those dollars are being wasted on highway expansions, extensions, and “enhancements” that may create jobs, but do nothing to solve our serious infrastructure problems.  In order to put people to work, the government has stipulated that the funds must be spent quickly and in many cases that translates into the funds being spent carelessly because the plans for ill-conceived projects, which were originally created years ago, are ready to go.

This article, Highways to Nowhere: The 7 Most Ridiculous Roads Being Built in America, by Yonah Freemark, posted on the website, The Infrastructurist: America Under Construction, highlights a few of the worst projects that your tax dollars are likely to be sunk into and then promptly paved over.

I found this interview of Julia Christensen, Oberlin College professor and artist, on the The Infrastructurist about her book, Big Box Reuse.  In it she describes communities around the country that have found productive ways of reusing abandoned big box stores that would have sat vacant while they rot away, pollute as they fall apart, and collect rats and other undesirable things.

Big Box of Trouble: Dealing with the Coming Plague of Empty Superstores

If you like that, I also came across this article on the Sustainable Industries website after recently having some lengthy discussions with friends about what to do with abandoned malls and big box stores.  This article sums up the issue very nicely and provides a broad definition of a “lifestyle center” (basically a new term for a very, very old concept).

Dead Malls, by Charles Redell – 3.2.09

Here’s a short excerpt:

Only three enclosed shopping malls have been built in the United States since 2005; none were built in 2008 and only one is planned to open in 2009. A driving force in the decline of the American shopping mall as we know it is a realization that the model is not sustainable, either economically or environmentally. Centralized shopping is not about to disappear from the American landscape, however.

Malls built over the last few decades are being refurbished into so-called lifestyle centers, a term created by developers to describe what may be the world’s oldest location for retail commerce: an urban mixed-use community.

…..

“These projects are hybrids with urban streetscapes but suburban parking ratios,” [Ellen Dunham-Jones, author of “Retrofitting Suburbia,”] says. “They’re much more sustainable than what they displace, but not as much as an urban environment.”

I found out upon arriving in Washington D.C. on my recent trip that I had unintentionally scheduled the visit with absolutely perfect timing.  I discovered that the U.S. House of Representatives Transportation, Housing, and Urban Development Subcommittee (part of the Appropriations Committee) had scheduled a series of hearings entitled, “Livable Communities, Transit Oriented Development, and Incorporating Green Building Practices into Federal Housing and Transportation Policy” over two days.  The first hearing hosted Ray LaHood and Shaun Donovan, the Secretary of Transportation and Secretary of Housing and Urban Development.  The second hosted John Norquist, president and CEO of CNU and former mayor of Milwaukee, Robert Puentes, Senior Fellow of the Metropolitan Policy Program at the Brookings Institute, Grace Crunican, Director of the Department of Transportation in Seattle, Mary A. Leary, Senior Director of the Easter Seals Transportation Group.

It was a fascinating experience for me.  I had never been to Washington D.C. before, let alone a subcommittee hearing.  Apparently, this was the first time the secretaries of these two departments came before the Subcommittee in a very long time.  It was clear that the Chairman, John W. Olver (MA), has been pressing for more cooperation between DOT and HUD to promote more sustainable communities for even longer.  When asked how he felt about their appearance at the hearing he responded by saying, “I will admit that I am pleased” with a proud smirk, which recieved a roar of laughter from the crowd.

I’ve linked the full testimonies below:
Ray LaHood
Shaun Donovan
John Norquist
Robert Puentes
Grace Crunican
Mary A. Leary

James Howard Kunstler has authored of many books about our built environment and urban planning blunders, including “The Geography of Nowhere,” “Home from Nowhere” and “The Long Emergency.”  He recently sat down for an interview with Deb Woodell from the blog, Whistling Past the Graveyard, about the place of cemeteries in New Urbanist communities and had this to say about the future of the urban planning profession:

WPTG: There seem to be nearly as many zoning designations for cemeteries as there are communities. In my town, Winslow Township, NJ, they’re a “non-conforming use.” Two towns up the highway, they have specs down to lot size, frontage, percent of paved surface, and the like. So what’s the best way to include cemeteries in master plans and the like? Is there a need for some uniformity?

JHK: You may find this answer impertinent, but I genuinely believe that the disorders of “The Long Emergency” will be such that planning departments will be dismantled for lack of government funding and the public will ignore the zoning laws as the motoring experience and all its niggling demands shrinks into history.

Thanks for ruining my day Jim…

…we have a President that speaks my language.  Here he is a particularly good response to question during a recent speech in the Sunshine State…

Q    Cities throughout Florida are having a difficult time because of the mortgage crisis.  Growth has slowed.  We fund our transportation infrastructure needs through impact fees.  Now that we’re not getting that, we’re falling behind in our ability to keep up with road work, municipal water projects, being able to bring the solar panel down here to an inland port.  We need commuter rail.  We need lots of things for infrastructure in this state.  If we ran out of oil today, we would not be able to move anything around in this state, honest to God.  And I hope you’re going to help get that thing in the Gulf — to turn that around.  We don’t want to drill oil in the Gulf, thank you.  Right on.  (Applause.)  We’ve got a beautiful, pristine state.

So I want to ask you, how will we get our state going again in transportation?  I’m very worried about our dependence on foreign oil, and I don’t want to drill in the Gulf.  I want some commuter rail and I want to improve our transportation — (applause).

THE PRESIDENT:  Well, we have targeted billions of dollars at infrastructure spending.  And states all across the country are going through what Florida is going through.  There was a study done by the American Association of Engineers — that might not be the exact title, but engineers from all across the country.  We get a “D” in infrastructure all across the country.  We saw what happened in Minneapolis, where a bridge collapsed and resulted in tragedy.  And not only do we need to rebuild our roads and our bridges, our ports, our levees, our dams, but we also have to plan for the future.

This is the same example of turning crisis into opportunity.  This should be a wake-up call for us.  You go to Shanghai, China right now and they’ve got high-speed rail that puts our railroads to shame.  They’ve got ports that are state-of-the-art.  Their airports are — compared to the airports that we — you go through Beijing Airport and you compare that to Miami Airport?  Look, this is America.  (Applause.)

We always had the best infrastructure.  We were always willing to invest in the future.  You know, somebody — Governor Crist mentioned Abraham Lincoln.  In the middle of the Civil War, in the midst of all this danger and peril, what did he do?  He helped move the Intercontinental Railroad.  He helped to start land grant colleges.  He understood that even when you’re in the middle of crisis you’ve got to keep your eye on the future.  (Applause.)

So transportation, when it — is not just fixing our old transportation systems, but it’s also imagining new transportation systems.  That’s why I’d like to see high-speed rail where it can be constructed.  (Applause.)  I would like for us to invest in mass transit because potentially that energy efficient.  And I think people are a lot more open now to thinking regionally, in terms of how we plan our transportation infrastructure.  The days where we’re just building sprawl forever, those days are over.  (Applause.)  I think that Republicans, Democrats, everybody recognizes that that’s not a smart way to design communities.

So we should be using this money to help spur this kind of innovative thinking when it comes to transportation.  That will make a big difference.  All right?  (Applause.)

“Remarks by President Obama at Fort Myers Town Hall”, February 10, 2009, at http://www.whitehouse.gov/the_press_office/Remarks-by-the-President-at-Fort-Myers-Town-Hall/

This article by David Brooks in the Opinion section of the New York Times highlights the results of recent Pew Research Center surveys.

It is a bit discouraging, but instructive.  American preferences are never what is in short supply!

You may not know it to look at them, but urban planners are human and have dreams. One dream many share is that Americans will give up their love affair with suburban sprawl and will rediscover denser, more environmentally friendly, less auto-dependent ways of living.

Those dreams have been aroused over the past few months. The economic crisis has devastated the fast-growing developments on the far suburban fringe. Americans now taste the bitter fruit of their overconsumption.

The time has finally come, some writers are predicting, when Americans will finally repent. They’ll move back to the urban core. They will ride more bicycles, have smaller homes and tinier fridges and rediscover the joys of dense community — and maybe even superior beer.

America will, in short, finally begin to look a little more like Amsterdam.

Well, Amsterdam is a wonderful city, but Americans never seem to want to live there. And even now, in this moment of chastening pain, they don’t seem to want the Dutch option.

Click to read more…

Pew Research Center survey links:

• McDonald’s and Starbucks: 43% Yin, 35% Yang
• For Nearly Half of America, Grass is Greener Somewhere Else