Occupy to Rebuild Downtown

....In recent years, complete idiots became respected developers overnight and were making millions doing, mindless assembly line development. It was not hard for some of the brightest among us to be caught up in this....

That's not where the future lies.... the city can be built starting with the building and the street, assembling into blocks, growing into neighborhoods and then connecting into an ecosystem of a city.

... a DoTank, which is like a think tank except, instead of wasting time talking about what should be done, they get out and do it. Every city -- every neighborhood -- needs a DoTank.

... Something's not working on your block? Fix it. Need to make change in your neighborhood? Do it. The fractal nature of it means that we don't need to wait for the government or for some well-funded developer to come in and transform everything...

This was the approach we used when we were a much poorer country. It is an approach that allowed us to build some of the most beautiful places the United States has ever seen, places we destroyed with the heavy-handed approach we've used in the auto era. And it was a financially-resilient system...

"It used to be build it and they will come. Now it is occupy it and it will be rebuilt."

We have a lot to rebuild. If we embrace the financial implications of this transition, it will no doubt be scary, but we can put ourselves in position -- nationwide with a loose coalition of doers -- to start repairing the individual lots, buildings, streets and blocks that will ultimately form the neighborhoods that will make this country truly strong... -Charles Marohn, Engineer

Will Sprawl Recommence?

“What were seeing right now is an inability to look at how we live and how it relates to our problems, and financial problems,” said Kunstler Tuesday during a speaking engagement with the Congress for the New Urbanism. “Production homebuilders, mortgage lenders, real estate agents, they are all sitting back now waiting for the, quote, bottom of the housing market to come with the expectation that things will go back to the way they were in 2005.”

But despite massive government expenditures to restart the old economic engine driven by suburban homebuilding, recovery is elusive, Kunstler said. The author of “The Geography of Nowhere” and “The Long Emergency” argues that suburbanization has been a multi-decade American experiment, and a failed one. - Streetsblog

Auto Poverty

Three interesting blog/articles:

First, Steve Mouzon, the author of a blog called The Original Green has two good posts up about called automobile poverty. The first post is about the financial costs of driving, but the second post about the health of walking is even better, because he posted a picture of himself before and after he moved to a walkable neighborhood. Pretty impressive.

Secondly, I stumbled upon this interesting graphic, created by Patrick Kennedy at his blog about living car free in Dallas:
Lively City vs Empty (click to enlarge)...


Thirdly:
An article here about how some cities are removing highways:

Removal of aging highways is a strategy some cities are using to try to boost their downtown districts.

In New Haven, Conn., a mistake of the past – one that displaced hundreds, razed a neighborhood, and physically divided a city – is finally set to be rectified: A highway is going to be demolished.

...cities across the United States look to erase some of the damage from urban highway construction of the 1950s and '60s – tearing up or replacing the roadways and attempting to restitch bulldozed neighborhoods.

"For people who live and work around [urban highways], they always had huge negative side effects: They broke up the urban fabric, were noisy, and divided cities,"...

....Two things are driving these extreme make-overs. One is the simple fact that many highways built in the postwar years are nearing the end of their useful lives,... The other, is a growing faith that urban centers, including some that have been long neglected, have development potential.

Location Efficiency Study

This research analyzed a sample of 40,000 mortgages and found the higher the rate of vehicle ownership, the greater the probability of mortgage default. The authors conclude, "location efficiency matters."

Abstract:

Using a sample of over 40,000 mortgages in Chicago, Jacksonville, and San Francisco, we model the probability of mortgage default based on differences in location efficiency. We used two proxy variables for location efficiency: 1) vehicles per household scaled by income and 2) Walk Score. We find that default probability increases with the number of vehicles owned after controlling for income. Further, we find that default probability decreases with higher Walk Scores in high income areas but increases with higher Walk Scores in low income areas. These results suggest that some degree of greater mortgage underwriting flexibility could be provided to assist households with the purchase of location efficient homes, without increasing mortgage default. They also support the notion that government policies around land use, zoning, infrastructure, and transportation could have significant impacts on
mortgage default rates.

Excerpts from the Conclusion:

Our findings indicate that location efficiency matters. Taken together, our results have significant policy implications with respect to lending practices, land use, and transportation planning.

We test our hypotheses regarding vehicle ownership and mortgage default and find that the probability of default does increase with vehicle ownership. Moreover, the impact of location efficiency (as measured by income-normalized vehicle ownership) on default is nontrivial. ... The results strongly suggest that researchers developing and refining automated mortgage underwriting models should seek to test the impact of location efficiency
variables within their models.

It is interesting to note that there is an additional possible explanation for why mortgages for location-efficient homes perform better, beyond the household budgetary savings of lower vehicle ownership. This explanation is that location efficient homes might hold their value better than other homes, and therefore better enable borrowers to avoid foreclosure through alternative measures (such as selling or refinancing the home) if they fall behind on payments or need to manage payment shock from an adjustable rate mortgage.

... our results provide support for policies supporting smart growth development and urban revitalization. That is, designing neighborhoods in such a way that reduces transportation needs is beneficial to borrowers as well as the environment.

Location Efficiency and Mortgage Default (PDF File)
Authors: Stephanie Y. Rauterkus, Grant I. Thrall, and Eric Hangen
Journal of Sustainable Real Estate Vol. 2, No. 1, 2010

Smart Money Follows Smart Growth

...the previous model was based on the assumption that the United States could prop up the single family home in a distant location by keeping the cost of oil and mortgages low. But that era is over. "The true cost of transportation and housing is going to start to surface," ...

...Boomers are eager to liberate themselves from the maintenance of house, lawn and car ... They want necessities within walking distance because they know they will not be able to drive forever.

... "Cities need to understand that a great city needs a mix of housing. It creates dysfunction when workers are required to live at great distances," he said.

...Now citizens with real estate savvy are honing in on the cities. Unlike the suburbs, and despite the downturn, homes closer to downtowns tended to retain their value...

In 15 of 20 major housing markets, such as New York City but also Milwaukee, Wisconsin and Durham, North Carolina, higher home prices correlated with proximity to the city center and its restaurants, parks and libraries.

More specifically, walking distance to those amenities generates a home price premium in the range of $4,000 to $34,000, according to a 2009 study of 90,000 homes ...

...Residents of communities like Sacramento and Rockville are ponying up for the urban privilege of public transportation in their own backyards.

... governments reap much more in taxes from urban centers than from malls or "big box" retail like a Wal-Mart, but pay more to build suburban infrastructure such as sewers and streets.

In the city and county of Sarasota, for example, 3.4 acres of urban residential development consumes one-tenth the land of a multi-family development in the suburbs. But it requires little more than half of the infrastructure investment and generates 830 percent more for the county annually in total taxes: that's $2 million from the city structure and $238,529 from the suburban one.

What's more, suburban housing takes 42 years to pay off its infrastructure costs. Downtown? Just three. ... "These (city) centers produce a tremendous amount of revenue and then hemorrhage it out to the suburbs," ... "We don't have a rational discussion on the true costs of the way we manage land."

....cash-strapped governments struggling with the recession's hit to tax revenue are starting to press developers to share the pain of paying for highways and other infrastructure...

As a result, profitability will come to depend on higher-density construction, said Rich,.."Just as they evolved to start, they will de-evolve the product," he said, of suburban developers.
-Reuters

TED Talk - Retrofitting Suburbia

New Urbanist ReTweets

Brookings: Fastest growing poverty rates occur in suburbs: In places where sprawl without smart regional planning ...

Obama administration shows promise with location-efficient mortgage reform: DC Streets Blog had an important follo...

New Urbanist principles drive revitalization plans in Rockford, IL: The Rockford Register Star recently profiled the efforts...

High Cost of Ignoring Beauty

....People need beauty. They need the sense of being at home in their world, and being in communication with other souls. In so many areas of modern life—in pop music, in television and cinema, in language and literature—beauty is being displaced by raucous and attention-grabbing clichés. We are being torn out of ourselves by the loud and insolent gestures of people who want to seize our attention but to give nothing in return for it. Although this is not the place to argue the point it should perhaps be said that this loss of beauty, and contempt for the pursuit of it, is one step on the way to a new form of human life, in which taking replaces giving, and vague lusts replace real loves. -Roger Scruton

The Poor Must be Included

You cannot have a great city without rich and poor living downtown. This is the first requirement of healthy cities. - Jacquein Robertson, 1995

A 10 minute video, probably too long for general readers, but some of you in the planning field will find it interesting:
The Way We Live - A Modern Architecture Conversation

New Streetcar Architecture

...A century ago, many buildings on commercial streets served by streetcars were built with storefronts flush to the sidewalks and with one or two stories of apartments or offices above.

Today, planners call these structures mixed-use buildings with ground-floor retail, but many historians and architects call them something else: streetcar architecture. Today's versions may be taller and clad with modern materials, but the concept is the same. They add human density and retail services on streets served by public transit...

...Unlike many cities, Portland has used its zoning code to encourage housing-above-retail on commercial arterials since the mid-1980s. "Housing supports the commercial and helps make for a more vibrant street,"... - Oregon Live

Build the Places the Market Wants

From an article in a Lansing real estate magazine, Chris Leinberger talks about how to turn Michigan around:

...If you don't offer the market the breadth of choice it wants, you're not competitive. If you're a Millennial, or if you're an urban dwelling Baby Boomer, and the only option ... as far as how you live is a one-to-the-acre single family house, you're just not competitive.

You haven't held onto your young people because you've not offered them the walkable urban way of living, and they've left.

It's not the only reason, of course, but it's significant. You've got folks in this country that would love to move back ....if there was any hope and any option that they could live the kind of life that they want to live.

When you start seeing more and more of that happening, you'll know. The young people, the entrepreneurs in their 20s and 30s—when you start having your phone ring off the hook from your classmates that you went to high school and college with—that's the sign that the outside world is beginning to recognize that (your city) is making the turn.

...If you put in the infrastructure that allows walkable urban development to take place, you're going to put in place the preconditions for them to come back.

...Rail transit drives walkable urban places. I've never seen one dollar of real estate investment invested because of a bus stop. But if you have [rail] transit, it's a different story altogether.

...If you don't build the built environment that the market wants, it's going to Chicago, it's going to D.C., it's going elsewhere. . . .

... It is a necessary precondition for this state to move forward. You've got to offer choice. You've got plenty of drivable suburban product. Give the market what it wants. That's the future.

Cincinnati Home of the First Cul-de-sac

The first cul-de-sac?

Happened upon this old advertisement which shows Linden Place in Mariemont. This street and houses are still there. (It is a minor road on the left when entering from Cincinnati/Fairfax).

In case you cannot read it, the caption reads:

Gathered about a grassy circle and picturesque garage, with shady lanes leading to street and boulevard, these pretty frame cottages, with rose-covered porches, will be the first to greet people entering Mariemont from Cincinnati by the State Highway, Wooster Pike.

Linden Place is intended to be a typical residence development for people of moderate means. The houses were erected in 1925 by the Company on easily graded, cheap land and therefor approach the lowest cost-ideal consistent with large lots and attractive planting. It is hoped here to demonstrate how a little skillfully placed shrubbery lends charm to the simplest home.

Mariemont 1924, Elzner and Anderson Architects

Articles retrieved from Google date the cul-de-sac a few years later:

Since its early use in 1928 as part of the hierarchical circulation system in the design of Radburn, New Jersey, the cul-de-sac has been the preferred instrument for controlling through traffic.

The town’s structure exemplified the ideal subdivision layout. ... A town ‘for the motor age.’ A town turned outside-in—without any back doors. A town where roads and parks fit together like the fingers of your right and left hands. A town in which children need never dodge motor-trucks on their way to school.”

A couple of things I noticed. First, there is a green lawn in the center of the cul-de-sac as drawn. Also, it is not really a dead-end, because a small lane connects the end to an adjacent street.

R Crumb's Short History of America

And Crumb asks "what next?.." Well we have had 30 years of development since this was drawn, and I think the 13th panel of the above intersection would show larger cars and maybe some vacant stores. And the shame of it is that a few miles further out of town, they may still be on panel #10 or 11, headed down the same path.

A year after publishing the above series, Crumb added the following three scenarios:

Disaster:


Futurama:

Ecotopia:

In reality, we have gotten a bit of all three of these final panels. Some cities (or parts of cities) look more like the Disaster panel, and after the disinvestment and abandonment, the final two are often tried as solutions. I would equate the Futurama panel to grand Urban Renewal plans in which everything is demolished and new modern buildings are built. The Ecotopia is closer to a Hippie version of the New Urbanist model, with all the walking and biking, though much more rural. I was thinking that someone should draw a more realistic and optimistic new panel. What would it look like?

Crumb Family Official Site Go there to buy a poster of this.

Obama Changing Transport Priorities

Congressional Quarterly, March 6, 2009 (subscription required)
Livable Communities' Central to Admin's Transport Goals

When Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood submits the administration's proposal to Congress for the next surface transportation authorization bill, it will focus heavily on the idea of "livable communities."

His plan would link land use and housing development with transportation projects and require him to coordinate with other federal agencies, such as Housing and Urban Development and Health and Human Services, in a way that's never been done at the federal level.

"The era of one-size-fits-all transportation projects must give way to one where preserving and enhancing unique community characteristics, be they rural or urban, is a primary goal rather than an afterthought," LaHood said at his Senate confirmation hearing.

In recent years, local and state governments have already been coordinating transportation with other development. But federal coordination would be a new development.

For the past half-century, say many observers, the federal government has ignored mobility within communities to build the Interstate Highway System to promote movement around the country. In many cases, they say, the approach has contributed to poorly planned suburban sprawl.

"It should not be that radical an idea to link up land use with the infrastructure policies that go along with it," Robert Puentes, a Brookings Institution expert, said. "The problem is institutional inertia and the previous lack of federal leadership to encourage this kind of integrated thinking."

LaHood has already met with HUD Secretary Shaun Donovan to discuss how affordable housing can be built near public transportation, neighborhood street blocks can be shortened to promote walking and bus routes can be expanded to reach more areas.

Joel Szabap, the Transportation Department's deputy assistant secretary for policy, said both Cabinet secretaries are on board.

"In a perfect world, you build where people live and want to live," Szabap said. "You will see an administration proposal focused around livable communities."

For most Americans, daily car trips are only a couple of miles long. The theory is that many people drive largely because viable alternatives such as public transportation or safe sidewalks for walking or biking do not exist.

"When you are ready to give up your keys, you need to have other options," said James Corless, campaign director of Transportation for America. "Those departments should break down silos. . . . This is not about Congress telling communities they need to become more livable, it's about them providing the resources." Strong Congressional Support

Key lawmakers who will help draft the surface transportation authorization and spending bills this year already have signaled their support for this integrated approach to transportation.

John W. Olver, D-Mass., chairman of the House Transportation, Housing and Urban Development Appropriations Subcommittee, said his panel intends to open the dialog between the housing and transportation departments.
...
"By coordinating housing and transportation policy to encourage smart land use, we can generate economic growth and create vibrant communities where people can live and work with a smaller carbon footprint," Dodd said in a February speech. "The lack of national leadership I've described at the federal level for much of the last several decades is,in many ways, only matched by our lack of creativity."
...
"The challenge has been just as all of the states started moving toward major smart-growth programs, the national government was simply not involved, and in many cases they were hostile to it, favoring major road construction over transit or walkability projects," Glendening said. "It is very clear to all of us that the Obama administration clearly gets it on smart growth."

Even with the administration and lawmakers' support, pushback will come from road builder groups that have enjoyed decades of being at the forefront of the transportation debate...

Misc Urbanism Quotes

The present idea of the street must be abolished: DEATH OF THE STREET!DEATH OF THE STREET! – Le Corbusier, The Radiant City (1933), p. 124

Also in the same article:

... the use of streets for children’s play (for example) can seem obviously wrong, and thus the departure of children from streets with the arrival of automobiles can seem an obvious and simple necessity. Only when we can see the prevailing social construction of the street from the perspective of its own time can we also see the car as the intruder. Until we do, not only will we fail to understand the violent revolution in street use circa 1915-1930, we will not even see it. This is why the full scale of the wave of blood, grief, and anger in American city streets in the 1920s has eluded notice. - Peter D. Norton, Fighting Traffic, p. 2

The Congress for the New Urbanism views disinvestment in central cities, the spread of placeless sprawl, increasing separation by race and income, environmental deterioration, loss of agricultural lands and wilderness, and the erosion of society’s built heritage as one inter-related community-building challenge. ~ Preamble, Charter of the Congress for the New Urbanism

Middle Class Duany and the Environment

...What then is this world of the New Urbanism, and why is traditional architecture important to it? There are many reasons, but the primary one is that because traditional architecture is a common language of the American middle class... The enormous American middle class is the group that really matters, and yet they are the only consumers of architecture not addressed in the modernist schools or the professional periodicals.

...the middle, class unlike the poor, the market gives choice -- and given choice they choose traditionalism. Their ability to evade the modernist discourse (which the poor cannot do) confuses architects. But it does not confuse us. ... we enlist the middle class to our cause, which is to have them inhabit again a walkable, compact, and diverse urbanism.

... the lifestyle of the American middle class is the root cause of the environmental problems of the world today. It is that simple. It is the way we supersize our habitat, the way we consume as entertainment, the way we drive around to do ordinary things, the way we so freely allocate land to our use, and even how we choose to eat... It is this lifestyle, and now its export version ... which is responsible for the environmental problems we will all suffer...
-Andres Duany

Connected Street Proposal to Obama

....the stimulus must distinguish between the right kind and wrong kind of pavement — those investments that make communities more livable and sustainable versus those that weaken our strategic position and make families frighteningly vulnerable to volatile energy prices.

...networks of highly connected walkable streets are at the heart of great urbanism and of emerging standards for green neighborhood development...

...CNU’s Connected Networks Proposal gives Congress and the Obama Administration a simple and direct means for identifying and funding walkable, high-value networks. In contrast to most federal funding programs, which target sections of individual state highways and other major roads in isolation, CNU’s proposal would apply a new “network” designation to entire areas meeting specific connectivity standards...

...connected streets are the necessary framework for enduring neighborhoods where shops, schools and other places that serve our daily needs can be found within convenient walking or biking distance... -Congress for the New Urbanism

Form Based Codes are Radical Green

"I can’t tell if the SmartCode is a radical, green, left-wing document or a developer-friendly, market based right-wing one,”...

...it's both. ... Communities aren't going to get a green code implemented, or any code, without that code appealing to developers...

I'd go so far as to state that developers using the SmartCode are the radical greenies of this decade. The market-based tendency of developers to optimize density on their sites, while giving buyers the mixed-use, human-scaled, walkable neighborhoods they seek, is in fact both radical and green. Radical, because we need comprehensive zoning reform, a serious challenge to the status quo, to allow such development. And green because those development patterns do more to preserve the health of the environment than any technological innovation is likely to deliver. -Sandy Sorlien

Semilattice

This diagram is an important part of Christopher Alexander's theories about good design, specifically urban design. His early essay "A City is not a Tree" asserts that a good city is instead a semi-lattice. The tree diagram is hierarchical and the points (places) are not connected. The semi-lattice has more interconnection. The points on such a diagram could be the public elements of a city (newspaper stand, bus stop, corner store, bench, house door, etc).

Christopher Alexander was firstly a mathmetician. He turned to design, specifically urban design and architecture secondly, so he approaches design problems from an atypical perspective.

Scrap Zoning Laws and Legalize Great Places

...What is the single most significant change that can be made in every town and city in America? One that would aid economic development, reduce greenhouse gas emissions, foster healthier lifestyles, reduce dependence on foreign oil, protect open space and wildlife habitats, and reduce wasteful government spending?

Scrapping zoning codes.

...The mix of uses that gives (our favorite places) life are outlawed by zoning in virtually every city and town in all 50 states.

...The quite sensible idea that people shouldn't live next to steel mills was used to justify a system of "zones" to isolate uses that had lived in harmony for centuries. Suddenly, new neighborhoods were segregated by income, and commerce was torn asunder from both customers and workers. Timeless ways of creating great places were ruthlessly outlawed.

This coincided neatly with the rise of the car industry, and the systematic dismantling of America's electric streetcar network...

..."The American Dream" of single-family tracts, shopping centers and business parks owes more to zoning mandates than to market economics. Zoning was imposed on the American landscape by an unholy alliance between Utopians preaching a "modern" way of life and hard-headed businessmen who profited from supplying that new model, including an auto industry steeped in the ideology that "What's good for General Motors is good for America."

...Environmentalists are slowly realizing that, in protection of the environment, cities aren't the problem, they are actually the solution. ...

... what is the DNA of livable communities?

..regulating the form of buildings, since that is what determines the long-neglected public realm of streets and sidewalks. It does that by regulating setbacks, heights and the physical character of buildings.

...some still claim that the real estate meltdown is only a nasty cyclical slump, that's just whistling past the graveyard. The model is broken. Building and financing generic products (class A office; suburban housing tract; grocery-anchored strip center; business park, etc.) through globally marketable securities has become radioactive...

...Scrap zoning. Adopt coding. Legalize the art of making great places that people cherish, that produce economic value, and that leave a lighter environmental footprint on the land.

Wow. Read the whole thing, written by Rick Cole, City Manager of Ventura, CA.