More Highway Waste

Unfortunately, I recently drove most of the eastern portions of I-275.  I noticed that miles and miles of precast concrete sound barrier has been installed and continues to be installed.  A quick internet search shows that these walls cost in the range of $3 million per mile, and effectively reduce the sound by 4 decibels within a few hundred feet of the walls.  But the walls also sometimes bounce sound and have negative effects further out.

I understand that living near a interstate sucks and that they REDUCE property value, so I can understand the lobbying to mitigate the hazard.   But no walls are proposed to help residents anywhere near downtown.

I once considered living on historic Dayton Street in the West End.  But the house was on the western end of the street, and the highway noise was oppressive.  I've never seen sound barriers on any of the western half of I-275.  Just wondering.. Why would  Milford, Loveland, Indian Hill, Blue Ash and Springdale get more attention than say Colerain, Harrison, Mt Airy and Northside?  Gee I couldn't begin to guess...

But despite the inequity of the chosen locations, is this really an important priority for transportation dollars? Seems extremely wasteful to me.

In related news: Parking lots and highways kill cities.

Also related, vehicle miles traveled  (VMT) is decreasing for the first time in the history of the automobile, and Millennials have less interest in cars than previous generations.

Also, car / truck oil consumption graphs here. And why we should dismantle freeways here.

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

Density Increases Wealth

....We’re both happier and more productive when we’re interacting with other people in person. And so high-density development patterns have the same kind of productivity-enhancing benefits that free trade does. Tall buildings, walkable neighborhoods, and a good transit system reduce the average cost of face-to-face interaction in exactly the same way that steam ships and low tariffs reduced the average costs of shipping goods to the other side of the world. In both cases, the result is greater wealth, on a per-capita basis.

....we’re just coming out of a half-century in which the benefits of density were severely underestimated. For decades, urban planners pursued policies that systematically undermined our cities. Limits on density destroy wealth in exactly the same way that limits on free trade do. There’s a lot of work to be done to allow cities to reach their full wealth-creating potential.
-in Forbes

RFK on Gross National Happiness

....we seem to have surrendered community excellence and community values in the mere accumulation of material things. Our gross national product ... if we should judge America by that - counts air pollution and cigarette advertising, and ambulances to clear our highways of carnage. It counts special locks for our doors and the jails for those who break them. It counts the destruction of our redwoods and the loss of our natural wonder in chaotic sprawl. It counts napalm and the cost of a nuclear warhead, and armored cars for police who fight riots in our streets. It counts Whitman's rifle and Speck's knife, and the television programs which glorify violence in order to sell toys to our children.

Yet the gross national product does not allow for the health of our children, the quality of their education, or the joy of their play. It does not include the beauty of our poetry or the strength of our marriages; the intelligence of our public debate or the integrity of our public officials. It measures neither our wit nor our courage; neither our wisdom nor our learning; neither our compassion nor our devotion to our country; it measures everything, in short, except that which makes life worthwhile. And it tells us everything about America except why we are proud that we are Americans.

-Robert F. Kennedy Address, University of Kansas, Lawrence, Kansas, March 18, 1968

California City

View Larger Map

A fascinating article in the NY Times about city in the California desert that had big aspirations but is now mostly vacant:

..."People lined up to buy them," said Cheryl Hoffman, a local real estate agent. "They were being told, 'This is where you're going to make your fortune.' "

Now those lots cost $3,000 again. Graded flat, they make good weekend camping sites. The sandy streets are popular with the off-road-vehicle crowd. ...

But the only year-round residents of California City's empty reaches are coyotes, jackrabbits and rattlesnakes who don't mind the triple-digit summer temperatures that turn this country into a convection oven.

..."Its monumental folly is evocative, especially in this era of widespread home foreclosures," ...

"When we think of ruins, we typically think of European castles and churches,... but the U.S. also has ruins. It's just that they're made of different stuff. In this case, it's the ground itself and what was done to it."

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

Delhi Grossness

“A land full of places that are not worth caring about will soon be a nation and a way of life that is not worth defending.” -JH Kunslter
 

Federal Policy Depopulated Cities

In an editorial piece in the Enquirer last month, Ed Cunningham claimed that Federal Government policy assisted the depopulation of US cities. As I read this, I thought that his point can be demonstrated by my own family history. On a recent trip to the library, I paged through a 1911 City Directory and wrote down the addresses of 3 great-grandfathers, and found that two of them lived in houses that were later destroyed by freeway construction and urban renewal projects:

In 1911 Thomas, a plumber, lived at 1060 Wade Street. The house was near the Reds baseball field, which I guess is why my grampa was always talking about sneaking into games etc... This whole area was reconfigured for I-75 and the site is now the Enquirer printing press:

Anthony, a coachman, lived at 3840 Colerain. This site is now right next to an I74freeway ramp and the house was later demolished for the construction of a gas station:

Today:

Edward, a pressman, lived in Mt Auburn at 556 Milton, and thankfully, that house still remains in use:

I have no info on the fourth great-grandfather who was on a farm in Alexandria, KY in 1911.

It was a mistake to install freeways through the center of the our city. Thousands of brick dwellings were destroyed, and the properties nearby were made unpleasant and unlivable. It did not have to be this way. Freeways in Europe for example were often built on the edge of the city and connected via boulevards. Urban boulevards can move lots of cars and still support a vibrant city. As it is, we are still struggling to reconnect the parts of our city that were divided by freeway construction.

Anyway, I thought it was a relevant look back. Does anyone else out there want to share a story about their family home being demolished for highways, road widening or some urban renewal project?

Car Costs Make Housing Unaffordable

The Not-So-Affordable Neighborhood
Three out of five U.S. communities are too pricey for the average American when transportation costs are considered, according to a new study.

Even with market corrections bringing the cost of homes down in recessionary times, the United States remains in the midst of an affordable housing crisis. And a new study by the Chicago-based Center for Neighborhood Technology (CNT) illustrates just how bad it may be.

Some 48,000 American communities that are currently considered affordable to those making the median family income may actually not be affordable when you factor in the transportation costs necessary for homeowners to get to work, school, and the other locations that shape their daily lives. The study, “Pennywise and Pound Fuelish,” examined housing costs in 337 metro areas nationwide, which collectively are home to 80% of the U.S. population.

...
“The [current definition of affordability] does not take into account the almost equal cost of transportation, which can effectively double the cost of housing,” said Scott Bernstein, president of the Center for Neighborhood Technology, during a March 23 media briefing. Transportation costs can range from 12% to 32% of household income, he said, depending on the location.

To this end, CNT has parlayed the study data into a new interactive mapping tool that allows users to get ultra-granular in charting cost-of-living calculations by place. The Housing + Transportation Index contains data on 161,000 neighborhoods, allowing consumers, builders, and developers to pull up average housing and transportation costs for block-by-block comparisons. The architects of this new tool hope it will help home buyers and renters make more informed decisions about where to live, thereby avoiding the risky decisions and overleveraging of assets that lead to foreclosures.
...
“Transportation planning in the United States needs to be recalibrated so that the focus is broader than merely reducing traffic congestion,” Bernstein argued. “We are now realizing that the more we expand road capacity and encourage driving, the more we are contributing to cost of housing.”
...
“We have crashed into our limits of 20th-century thinking, policies, and solutions. This is an issue that’s critical to the future survival of the middle class.”

Sprawl vs Conservatism

Sometimes, when I read articles like this, I think that in an alternate universe wherein this was normal conservative writing, I could be a conservative... In that universe, conservatives are truly building strong communities, not just strong corporations, strong families of all types, not just families that fit a 1950s norm, strong transit infrastructure, not just more and more lanes of highways, etc..

...the rise of this hyper-ideological movement conservatism has many roots, but one important and oft-overlooked one is this modern American landscape of sprawl and steel, of suburbs and hour-long commutes, of strip-malls and vast concrete scissures. The distance created by sprawl is both a material and spiritual one. Something is lost when we tear apart the natural, organic community and replace it with long lines of indistinct houses, well-groomed lawns, and endless stretches of highway. The very wrong sort of ‘individualism’ which so infests the modern American left and right is spawned from such distances...
...
Conservatism itself is rooted more in the community and especially in the fertile soil of tradition than in the individual. In a land of strip malls and ten-lane freeways, of rampant materialism and unending competition, tradition and community become irrelevant – become skeletal ghosts on display behind panes of glass....
...
Sprawl is a result of massive statist interventions into our culture and society, and its symptoms are equally enormous. Everything that conservatism has historically stood for is undermined by sprawl. It is not only the physical manifestation of our decline, it is a poison which continues to contribute to that decline. Its repercussions can be felt in our discourse, in our speech, in our way of thinking. This is not merely a matter of aesthetically pleasing communities, but of communities which allow individuals to be a part of the whole. I doubt this is sustainable, this suburban maze – in any way: fiscally, socially, spiritually... - Trueslant

White Flight Still Happening

I thought this was the 21st century?! The article in the Enquirer today about new growth in Harrison has generated the typical nonsense commentary, but commentary that nonetheless is telling:

mustbGWBsfault wrote:
i grew up in covedale, moved to delhi. then the metro moved in and now there are shopping carts turned on their sides at the bus stops, trash in the streets, the businesses are getting robbed (krogers, walgreens). is it a coincidence that crime has gone up since the metro came through? i think not. will the metro ever make it to harrison? possibly (i hope harrison fights to keep it out). either way, i know it won't go into indiana! hoosiers, here we come!

nasdadjr wrote:
I have had multiple friends move to Harrison, and you want to know why they do it? They don't allow the Cincinnati metro to go out there which means no section 8 housing. That means less crime and less sorry to say it but ghetto people from going out there. Not trying to be racist or economicist or whatever you call it, but take an honest census of the people who live or have moved out there and that is one of the big reasons why they move or stay there cause the cost of living there isn't as high as Blue Ash, Mason, or other high priced areas, and they don't have those people.

UncleRando wrote:
Harrison is not actually growing. The increase in population is just a relocation of westsiders from communities like Green Township, Delhi Township, Price Hill and Westwood. Overall the population trend for the westside as a whole is probably very small when looked at comprehensively.

dlacey31 wrote:
This is happening because the lower west side has become so nasty and ghetto the middle class as usual have to find different neighborhoods to move to . The housing authority should have never switched to section 8 vouchers they should have kept all the ghetto in one area. now they can live anywhere they want almost for free right next door to hard working middle class families. and trash the neighborhoods and lower property value . Thanks cincinnati housing authority

A Crack in the Pavement

The Enquirer had an article about this documentary, and I also happened to see it the following week. It is interesting because it uses two older Cincinnati suburbs as examples of the problem: Elmwood Place and Madeira. Before watching this film, I knew Elmwood Place was down on its' luck, but I wouldn't have thought that Madeira had any real problems. Worth watching.

Watch the film Sunday (tomorrow) at 6pm on WCET, channel 48.

The film looks at the precarious state of many older, first-ring suburbs by profiling two small town officials from Ohio. They take viewers on a tour of the challenges their communities are now facing. The federal and state money that helped establish these communities is gone – redirected toward new development in ever-expanding suburban rings. Like many parts of the Midwest, their hometowns are strapped for cash. Their roads, sewers and bridges built years ago now need to be replaced or repaired. Residents and businesses are leaving, and schools are emptying. Government programs to help these communities maintain and revitalize themselves are virtually nonexistent. Yet just a few miles away, a new ring of suburbs is growing and prospering.

Tax and Road Policies Encourage Sprawl

..No Kidding:

....the tax code encourages Americans to live in big, energy-guzzling homes, ... and Congress seems intent on further unbalancing the federal budget to egg on home buyers. ...A particularly bizarre feature of the proposed extension is that the credit would go not only to new home buyers, but also to current owners who decide to upgrade.

But the real problem with the credit is that it continues the long-standing federal push toward far-flung McMansions and away from dense, apartment living. In the 1950s, the Interstate Highway System encouraged Americans to flee older urban areas. Nathaniel Baum-Snow of Brown University found that each “new highway passing through a central city reduces its population by about 18 percent.’’ The home mortgage interest deduction further encouraged suburbanization, because rental units are disproportionately in cities while owner-occupied homes are disproportionately distant from city centers...

 

Zombie Subdivisions

Click CNN to see a news video about why these new streets have no houses on them:


View fayetteville in a larger map


Then look at this graph comparing sales of existing and new homes:

I'd like to see the graph above with a line added showing old house demolitions/abandonments, because in the recent past, we were building more than we needed... or at least more than we could afford.

Springfield Township

Hamilton Avenue: Unincorporated Area.

I remember this area of town pretty well from when I was little. We had a great aunt that lived right around here, and there are some side streets here named after presidents: Roosevelt, Lincoln etc.. that have modest houses on tiny lots:

This was Franks Nursery and Crafts, Now "OverFlow" Church:

Franks sign still up:

Across the street a closed, quanset hut drive-tru. I rember going here with my dad a long time ago:

Rail Builds Better Cities

A few days ago, I saw that Liberty Township was touting the construction that is following the millions of dollars spent on a new highway interchange. This is what they are proud of:

Candlewood Suites

This is the kind of development that follows new highway interchanges. This is what is already built all across this country at every highway interchange.

Just like a highway interchange attracts development, so to does a rail stop. But since rail is people centered, not auto-centered, the development that follows is inherently better. Even if it is some ugly modern building, it is still built for pedestrians and connects with the sidewalk and city life.

Below are two photos I took last year in Portland along the streetcar line.

Under construction adjacent to streetcar:

Recently completed:

Do we want our transportation dollars supporting urban development or more auto traffic as seen below in Liberty Township?

The type of city we get flows from the type of transportation we build.

New Homes Shrinking

A CNN article:

The size of newly built homes fell in 2008 for the first time in almost 15 years. Is the McMansion era on the wane?

... "A new ethic is arising right now that will become commonplace -- as commonplace as is recycling today, when just a few decades ago it was rarely, if ever, done," said Sarah Susanka, author of the book, "The Not So Big House."

...She believes the current shrinking trend mimics one of 100 years ago, when simple bungalows supplanted elaborate Victorian homes as the design choice for many Americans...

Or maybe it is just the recession. We'll see what the numbers look like in a few years.

Stupid O'Toole Quote

http://www.nytimes.com/cwire/2009/07/15/15climatewire-a-son-of-portland-ore-tries-to-puncture-the-52412.html
Randall O'Toole is given a fair write-up in the NY Times since he was called by Congress to testify on transit funding. But he cannot avoid sticking his foot in his mouth when he speculates that the smart growth movement is just a reaction of the upper classes against the working class moving into the suburbs. What kind of crack is this guy smoking?

...Smart-growth advocates see another flaw in O'Toole's argument. They say he focuses narrowly on transit's carbon footprint but never considers how transit can reshape communities.

... vast research shows that if transit serves a dense area where people can meet many of their daily needs by biking and walking, the whole "transportation system" shrinks its carbon footprint. ....

Other cities see something in the hype. According to the American Public Transportation Association, light-rail systems or extensions have been proposed in 37 cities, among them Phoenix, Atlanta and Jacksonville, Fla.

O'Toole, of course, sees another force behind the movement -- class warfare.

"I think a lot of the anti-suburban sprawl crowd is made up of middle-class people who resent the fact that working class people have adopted their lifestyles," he said. "Many of them have moved into their neighborhoods, and they don't want to see those kind of people in their neighborhoods, because they have different lifestyles. Maybe they drink more, maybe they're noisier. I don't know."

But it it not just about shrinking carbon footprint either, it is about building places that people want to be. Building places for people, not for cars.

Ruins of 2nd Guided Age

NYT slideshow of partially built projects that may never get finished:
 

In a similar vein, an article in WSJ:

...Small houses on small lots—or condos and townhouses—require more dense zoning than is currently on the books in suburbia. Unless an area is already blighted and abandoned, the "threat" of higher density inevitably resurrects "not in my backyard" fears of more noise, traffic and overcrowded schools, which often results in considerable citizen pushback and bad publicity for the builder. That is, of course, why sprawl happened in the first place—builders almost always find it less of a hassle to build on undeveloped land than to create so-called "infill" housing.

... several big suburban builders, including K. Hovnanian, KB Homes and Toll Brothers, have started divisions for building urban housing, while other companies have started to convert failed suburban shopping malls, office parks, car dealerships and even golf courses into denser mixed-used buildings....