Why 'destroying the suburbs' should be a Republican idea -- also, the Growth Ponzi Scheme revisited.

Exhibit 456-90-2020 in our series, "Nothing In America Makes Sense."

'Destroying the suburbs' should be a Republican idea, by Bonnie Kristian (The Week)

The Democrats, says President Trump, are going to destroy the suburbs ... so what, exactly, does destroying the suburbs entail?

Think: zoning.

Taken at face value, this is a bizarre policy choice for the Republican Party, both in its pre-2016 social conservatism and free-marketism and in its post-2016 Trumpian populism. Upzoning — allowing construction of buildings with more units or more nonresidential units than was previously permitted in a given area — seems like it should fit the GOP agenda.

It's a move toward greater economic freedom and stronger property rights. It can lower housing prices and make homeownership more accessible, especially for young couples who struggle to afford both home and kids. (A brief dig through the archives of the conservative Heritage Foundation turns up years of praise for Houston's unusual lack of zoning restrictions on exactly these grounds, and The American Conservative regularly publishes arguments for upzoning, including advocacy for doing away with single-family zoning altogether.) Also, having a granny flat means you might actually live with your granny, who can pass along familial traditions and help with childcare, a very attractive option amid pandemic. Surely this is the kind of pro-family, even pro-natalist policy Republicans ought to like. Why is Trump railing against it?

Because polls show the suburbs losing interest in Trump.

In those remarks and an even shorter comment on the subject three days prior, Trump singled out an Obama-era rule called Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing (AFFH), which Biden supports and which Trump promised to repeal. That repeal arrived Thursday. The adfarm-near-me/">ministration characterizes it as a strike for freedom, federalism, and family. It is none of those things.

AFFH didn't "force" municipalities to do anything, as some conservatives have alleged. It mainly set conditions on some federal housing and transportation subsidies. (Suburbia is very subsidy-dependent.) It told local governments that to receive cash from Washington, they'd have to meet certain requirements, most notably ending single-family zoning. But single-family zoning isn't the creature of local self-governance Trump suggests. It originated significantly because of a previous set of conditions for different federal subsidies — subsidies, in fact, introduced by the archetypical Democratic adfarm-near-me/">ministration: the New Deal-era White House of Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

We've been talking about suburban subsidies for as long as the NA Confidential blog has existed. Take it away, Charles Marohn.

"[S]ingle-family zoning became the standard for American suburbs during the New Deal when the Roosevelt adfarm-near-me/">ministration, through various programs such as the Home Owners Loan Corporation, required it for home refinancing assistance," explains Charles Marohn, founder of Strong Towns, a new urbanism advocacy organization. "So, [AFFH said,] suburban governments, you won't get the subsidy this time unless you repeal the regulation we required you to enact decades ago to get the subsidy we were offering back then," he continues. "And we oppose this today because we are conservatives?"

It makes no sense.

Ah, but there's even more to it.

In addition to being heavily subsidized in both construction and ongoing maintenance, much of suburbia was shaped by 20th-century housing and highway policies that implicitly or, sometimes, explicitly functioned to segregate American homes. "White flight" was not merely an organic movement of private prejudice and social fashion. It was in no small part engineered by federal policies, as Richard Rothstein has meticulously documented in The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America.

"To prevent lower-income African Americans from living in neighborhoods where middle-class whites resided, local and federal officials began in the 1910s to promote zoning ordinances to reserve middle-class neighborhoods for single-family homes that lower-income families of all races could not afford," Rothstein writes. Some of this was classism, he notes, but some of it was done with "open racial intent."

This, might we suggest, is the underlying reason for the suburb hubbub.

The Obama adfarm-near-me/">ministration's AFFH rule focused on the residue of that deliberate segregation, and Trump's critique of it hasn't untangled the issue of federal manipulation of local policies from the issue of racist zoning. That makes it plausible to see his talk of single-family zoning as the bastion of suburban integrity as implicitly part of an older tradition of state-enforced racism. It's not unreasonable to wonder if being "invaded by negroes" is what Trump means when he deplores watching a "beautiful suburb ... go to hell."

If you have not previously read Marohn's articles about the Growth Ponzi Scheme, as published at Strong Towns, then now is the ideal time.

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The Growth Ponzi Scheme, Part 1

The underpinnings of the current financial crisis lie in a living arrangement—the American pattern of development—that does not financially support itself. 

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The Growth Ponzi Scheme, Part 2

If you want a simple explanation for why our economy is stalled and cannot be restarted, it is this: Our places do not create wealth, they destroy wealth. 

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The Growth Ponzi Scheme, Part 3

Our development pattern is not productive enough to sustain itself.

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The Growth Ponzi Scheme, Part 4

Our national economy is "all in" on the suburban experiment. We cannot sustain the trajectory we are on, but we've gone too far down the path to turn back.

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The Growth Ponzi Scheme, Part 5 (finale)

How did we build such an amazing place before the home mortgage interest deduction? How did we accomplish this before zoning? What created this place before we had state and federal subsidies of local water and sewer systems?

We began writing about the Growth Ponzi Scheme in 2011 with a prominent series of articles that outlined the way American cities, towns and neighborhoods were growing themselves into insolvency.  Since then, the Growth Ponzi Scheme has been discussed in numerous publications. The term, as we've defined it, continues to be widely used and cited.

"No official development plan has been submitted," but obviously there's a new restaurant coming to this vacant lot in Jeffersonville.

Hanson Bar & Grill?

Just curious here.

Does the News and Tribune actively seek to connect headlines to the content below them, or is it just blind editor's bluff?

For instance, this story. The header trumpets a restaurant in the works for a recently rezoned vacant lot.

But the story by reporter John Boyle mentions a rumored restaurant in only one paragraph, then offers an excellent account of transparency and planning issues in downtown Jeffersonville.

How does this story have anything to do with a headline touting a restaurant that the writer himself acknowledges is a rumor and absolutely nothing more?

How is the headline even remotely accurate -- unless it wasn't intended to be accurate, and was purposefully floated because any article about food draws more clicks than the ones about zoning changes?

Is anyone in charge at our local chain newspaper?

New restaurant in the works near Jeffersonville's Big Four Station Park

JEFFERSONVILLE — One of Jeffersonville's booming areas could see another addition in the coming years.

Last week, the Jeffersonville City Council approved the rezoning of a property at 300 W. Maple St., where Maple and Mulberry streets converge. The lot, which sits at the northwest corner of Big Four Station Park, has been a vacant strip of grass for years.

Though it hasn't been occupied in any permanent capacity, some city officials recall it being used as parking for Thunder Over Louisville and similar festivals. That could change now that the property has been sold, with a new project currently in the works.

No official development plan has been submitted, though early talks refer to the project as a sit-down restaurant and bar.

In Germany, "You can’t walk a block without running into missing middle homes."

I read this article, then walked to work past all the vacant lots downtown, musing to myself about the way Team Gahan continues to subsidize car-centric  development on the fringe as opposed to infill at the center, where heightened density might preface a measure of critical mass, walkability and other useful outcomes.

My conclusion, as usual, is that the problem of local numbskullism goes beyond the regime's need to monetize campaign finance (although this is a big part of it). Rather, it's because the majority of the people making decisions in New Albany identify as suburbanite, and literally cannot imagine living "near" enough to other people to be part of a civil society.

As the noted cultural analyst once observed, sad.

Abundant Middle Housing, by Mike Eliason (Medium)

Four weeks ago, I left Seattle to take a job in Germany ...

 ... The big take away is that there is no single family zoning here (Zero is, in fact, the correct amount of single family zoning — there is no single family zoning *anywhere* in Germany. Or Austria. Or Japan…), and more impressively, there don’t seem to be very many single family homes here, either. You can’t walk a block without running into missing middle homes. In fact it isn’t actually missing here, it’s absurdly abundant. What is missing middle housing? It is duplexes, triplexes, rowhouses, apartments, garden courts and similarly sized housing required for a minimum of density to enable walkable neighborhoods. And it is *everywhere* here.

From the Altstadt (historic core of the city) to the outskirts — 2-to-4 story multifamily buildings are the norm, and it feels quite comfortable. Schools and parks aren’t surrounded by acres and acres of luxury detached homes —rather, nearly all of the parks and schools are surrounded by multifamily housing. Sadly, this isn’t standard practice in US cities like Seattle ...

'We Buy Cars": The face of luxury car sales in New Albany, in the form of an illegal yard sign in the verge.

A sign fairly oozing luxury.

Luxury car sales, my posterior -- even if the corner looks better.

Still, you gotta give the guy full credit for knowing the importance of meaningless buzz words. We're a city with 25% of its population below the poverty line, but City Hall is absolutely certain that if we keep repeating the word "luxury" over and over again, marketing alone will solve the problem. 

I remain fascinated: Why did the neighborhood association roll over so quickly for this guy?

Looks like ESNA and HyperCars are closerthanthis, which is why reality is so much more humorous than fiction.

It all started here:

That ugly word again: Plan Commission to consider "luxury" car sales at HyperCars on 13th and Spring.

Excerpts from Jeff Speck's new book, Walkable City Rules: "Many cities have a downtown speed limit of 25. All should—or lower."

2016.

Jeff Speck takes to CityLab to offer excerpts from his new book, and here are the ones I won't be covering in this post.

• Rule 9: Fix your codes -- Eliminate legal barriers to mixed use.
• Rule 53: Understand that cycling follows investment -- Topography, climate, and culture can’t compare.
• Rule 88: Make sticky edges -- Energize public spaces with active, deep facades.
• Rule 100: Don’t give up on sprawl --- It’s where most Americans live.

Click through to read them.

Here's one big thing worth a snip: "Street improvements should be linked to keeping speeding in check."

Not coincidentally, it's the one least understood by City Hall in New Albany. Shall we join together to reduce illegal speeding?

A Step-by-Step Guide for Fixing Badly Planned American Cities, by Jeff Speck (CityLab)

An excerpt from Jeff Speck’s Walkable City Rules, a step-by-step guide to fixing America’s cities and towns.

I published the book Walkable City in 2012. Since then, many of our leaders have realized that establishing walkability as a central goal can make cities better in a whole host of ways. That book did a decent job of inspiring change, but it didn’t tell people exactly how to create it. My new book, Walkable City Rules: 101 Steps to Making Better Places (released on October 15 by Island Press) is an effort to weaponize Walkable City for deployment in the field. An excerpt follows below.
—Jeff Speck

Rule 31: Focus on speeding

Street improvements should be linked to keeping speeding in check.

“It’s the speed, stupid.” Roughly half of this book addresses different aspects of the street and how they are designed and managed. Many of these points may serve multiple objectives and audiences, but they all aim back, in one way or another, at a single issue, vehicle speed.

While many different factors influence the safety of humans in cities, none matters nearly so much as the speed at which vehicles are traveling. The relationship between vehicle speed and danger is, to put it mildly, exponential.

The diagram below is one of many that can be found to communicate this relationship. (Other diagrams show people falling out of buildings, with 20 miles per hour equaling the second floor and 40 miles per hour equaling the seventh.) The basic message to remember is that you are about five times as likely to be killed by a car going 30 as a car going 20, and five times again as likely to be killed by a car going 40.

The risk to pedestrians from vehicles takes a dramatic upturn at 25 miles per hour, as this chart based on data on pedestrian casualties (collected by S.J. Ashton) shows. (The dashed lines are confidence intervals.) (D.C. Richards Transport Research Laboratory)

This threshold zone of 20 to 40 miles per hour is basically where it all happens—the difference between bruises, broken bones, and death. And 20 to 40 is roughly the range of speeds that we find cars traveling on the best downtown streets. Keeping cars on the lower end of that range, therefore, must be the central objective of urban street design.

The speed of the impact itself is not the only factor. As cars move faster, the likelihood of a crash also rises. Drivers and pedestrians alike have less time to respond to conflicts; stopping distances lengthen; and the driver’s cone of vision narrows. These factors multiply the impact of speed beyond those indicated in the above graph. It is safe to say that a car traveling 30 miles per hour is probably at least three times as dangerous as one going 25. Many cities have a downtown speed limit of 25. All should—or lower.

These limits simplify the conversation, because it is no longer necessary to talk about “slowing drivers down.” Who wants to be slowed down? That sounds like congestion. Instead, we can simply talk about “reducing illegal speeding.”

The newspaper faithfully records what Deaf Gahan wants us to know about the new zoning ordinance. Boots, meet fish tanks.

As we contemplate the questions that might yet be asked, from the intended effect on slumlords and the public housing putsch, to those fine-print exceptions required for heroic statuary of Deaf Gahan to be erected on mid-slope by the sad bison at our Summit Springs fun mudslide park, here is by-the-numbers coverage from the local chain newspaper.

7 things we've learned about New Albany's new zoning ordinance, by Danielle Grady (Tom May Monoculture Daily)

Over the next few weeks, the City of New Albany will be conducting public input sessions to gather feedback about its revised zoning ordinance, which will set new requirements for any future buildings (and all other projects) that residents and developers want to bring to the area.

A steering committee of New Albany planning staff, city council members and a hired contractor named 11th Street Development created the updated ordinance.

About this 11th Street Development firm ...

1. It’s the first overhaul of the city’s zoning ordinance since 1971.

The vision for New Albany has changed quite a bit since the ‘70s, but the city’s zoning ordinance has not.

There have been some updates to the ordinance on an “ad hoc basis,” but not much beyond that, said Brian Stumpf, the president of 11th Street Development, which is based in Lebanon, Ind.

The original ordinance was based on a comprehensive plan for New Albany that was written in the 1960s, according to Stumpf.

“Much like zoning in the 1970s, this envisions New Albany as a suburban community, very low-density, very residential,” he said.

That’s not the vision the city has for New Albany now.

We already know that Deaf's personal vision is tinted green. It involves a regimented wetting of beaks, but it's always nice to have a new age contractor to apply lipstick to City Hall's in-house porcine campaign finance generator.

It will be interesting to see when 11th Street's reported iceberg-tip donations begin.

The numbered newspaper list continues; you can go to the newspaper's web site with a machete, cut through multiplying thickets of Tom May-penned content, and read the list in its entirety. In the process, you'll absorb exactly what City Hall wants you to believe, sans critiques or hard questions.

You know, like always.

2. The zoning ordinance will help implement the comprehensive plan.
3. The ordinance is meant to encourage infill and redevelopment.
4. The ordinance simplifies property classifications.
5. The ordinance may be simpler in some ways, but more detailed in others.
6. The ordinance creates a design review board.
7. It’s all about future development.

Chicanery as always: City Hall gifts us with the 238-page draft zoning ordinance a mere 24 hours before two "public input" meetings. Rental property owners, turn to page 159.

Earlier today, City Hall released the latest in a series of triumphant announcements. The News and Tribune made feeble non-invasive gurgling sounds, so again it falls to us to warn you.

Zoning Ordinance Set to be Updated for First Time in Nearly 50 Years

As usual, this one raises as many questions as it answers, and a good place to begin is the front page of the "draft" document.

Here's the skinny: It's a 238-page ordinance, and although it was finished a month ago, today marks the first time it has been made available for viewing, which is oh so fortunate, since two of the three public "meetings" scheduled to allow functionaries to condescendingly explain what already has been concluded in private take place tomorrow -- on Tuesday, August 28.

It's almost as though Gahan's lickspittles don't want members of the public to have time to digest a document that if passed surely will mark the single greatest expansion ever of city government's powers.

In other words, if your idea of progress is David Barksdale wielding 238 pages of details in a daily crusade to coerce 37,000 residents into organizing the condiment bottles by size and purpose, then this complete absence of fair vetting time will be orgasmic.

I've skimmed through all 238 pages of the ordinance, and it's impossible for non-bureaucrats to grasp -- which reminds me, who is 11th Street Development, and how much money has it already shifted into the mayor's Midas Money Machine?

Rental property owners will be interested in the section beginning on page 159, as it is the debut of the long-delayed inspection/enforcement component of the rental property registration toe-in-the-water.

Rental Housing Maintenance Standards.

1. Purpose and Applicability: The purpose of this Section is to establish periodic, systematic inspection of rental housing within the City to protect the health and safety of the public, prevent blight, and preserve property values. This Section shall apply to all rental housing units within the planning jurisdiction of the City unless otherwise exempted in Section 6.17(D)(2).

But never fear, slumlords; you've been handed a magical "Self-Certification Program" that probably is tied directly into the Gahan re-election campaign cash depository.

Here's the boilerplate. You bring the lube and I'll bring the gin.

Zoning Ordinance Set to be Updated for First Time in Nearly 50 Years

For the first time since 1971, a full-scale replacement zoning ordinance is set to go before the New Albany City Council for approval. The ordinance has been carefully crafted by a team consisting of the New Albany City Planning staff, City Council members, and qualified consultants. The proposed ordinance simplifies the existing zoning districts into 10 easy-to-understand districts derived from the recently adopted Comprehensive Plan.

“This action is long overdue, and we are excited to bring the first Zoning update to the council in nearly 50 years,” stated Mayor Jeff Gahan. “This ordinance incorporates the best qualities of our recently adopted Comprehensive Plan and sets a sound path for future development and redevelopment of New Albany.”

TO READ THE FULL DRAFT ORDINANCE, PLEASE CLICK HERE

Open Door Meetings Scheduled to Gather Public Input

Three open-door style meetings have been scheduled to gather valuable feedback from residents and business owners in New Albany. We encourage you to attend one of the following meetings:

Tuesday, August 28, 2018 from 2:00 – 4:00 PM
Strassweg Auditorium, NAFC Public Library

Tuesday, August 28, 2018 from 6:00 – 8:00 PM
Griffin Street Recreation Center

Thursday, September 6, 2018 from 6:00 – 8:00 PM
Hazelwood Middle School Cafeteria

A public hearing will also be held by the New Albany City Plan Commission on Tuesday, September 18th, at 7:00 PM in the third floor assembly room of the City County Building (311 Hauss Square).

Pinocchio Rosenbarger says don't worry, we can write the words later, after we've already started what we're waiting to be approved.

I have a few suggestions for the blank space.

#FireGahan2019
#FlushTheClique
#CleanSweep2019
#GetOutYourPitchforks

Looks like ESNA and HyperCars are closerthanthis, which is why reality is so much more humorous than fiction.

What's a concerned citizen have to do to get back on the neighborhood association mailing list?

Thanks to the Green Mouse for forwarding what my eyes obviously aren't supposed to be viewing.

On Wednesday August 1 at 6:00 PM Hyper Cars Auto Detailing, located at 13th & Spring St, will hosting a special Open House for members of the ESNA. Please come and see the improvements made to the building and property. On August 7th the owner, Christian Betz, will be requesting a special exception at the BZA to sell a limited number of high-end cars at the location and he would like to have support from members of the neighborhood.

Hope to see you there.

Greg Roberts
ESNA President

It appears that ESNA's president-for-life has decided to hop into bed with HyperCars over "luxury" auto sales; given the bed already is occupied by Jeff Gahan, it may be time to upsize.

Have you noticed the default? Just about anyone who become aligned with city hall in any way suddenly feels the need to discourage dialogue and communication, keeping as much activity as possible below the surface.

That ugly word again: Plan Commission to consider "luxury" car sales at HyperCars on 13th and Spring.

When I finally was allowed to attend an ESNA meeting recently and the question of used car sales at HyperCars was raised, the association's Greg Roberts said there'd be none.

Yesterday I asked Greg for a clarification, and he offered this revision: it seems the neighborhood elders have been monitoring the situation, and they knew all along that HyperCars someday would seek to park no more than seven cars at a time on the lot for sale, but no one thought the business actually would pursue an exception this quickly, and learned of it only when the Plan Commission mailing arrived.

That's poor communication on several levels.

Whereas I'd previously declined to get involved with this situation, I can feel the dander's upward creep.

Ironically, after the last ESNA meeting Roberts told me it would be okay for my address to once again be added to the mailing list, from which it had been removed after I foolishly assumed a few YEARS back that I could "reply to all" in an effort to facilitate communicating with neighbors -- but NO; this apparently is a violation of East Gregland protocol.

Add another column to the Chronicles of New Gahania: I'm being excluded from a neighborhood association that barely exists because dialogue is a threat to "proper" communication.

Shrug. If you're a 3rd district voter, hasn't eight years of this been enough?

That ugly word again: Plan Commission to consider "luxury" car sales at HyperCars on 13th and Spring.

Better or worse than a neighborhood crematorium?

Oh, dear.

I was surprised to see this one on the Plan Commission agenda.

Public Meeting Item(s):

Docket B-36-18: HyperCars LLC requests a Special Exception to permit luxury auto sales in the C-1b, Local Business district at 1212 E. Spring Street.

It's funny what sort of precedents comes bubbling up from Google searches. This one's from Las Vegas, 18 years ago.

An informal group of citizens on the western reaches of Sahara Avenue is mobilizing to fight another battle against used-car lots in the neighborhood.

Twice the group has defeated proposals and zoning amendments for 10-acre used-car lots along Sahara that would have held hundreds of cars. Now they are fighting a smaller proposal for a seven-car used-car dealership at the corner of Sahara and Belcastro Street.

The would-be dealership, Total Eclipse, is currently a small window-tinting and auto-detailing shop.

More recently over in Jeffersonville, the city council declared a moratorium on gas stations, which are about as car-centric as it gets.

JEFFERSONVILLE, Ind. (WDRB) -- Jeffersonville leaders have put a city-wide hold on new gas stations.

“We don't want to be a city of gas stations,” Councilman Ed Zastawny said.

Council recently enacted a six-month moratorium on new gas station development permits.

“With all the development in Jeffersonville, we found that a bunch of gas stations wanted to come to the same corners," Zastawny said. "And we thought that's a problem."

This next one is from Warren, Michigan in 2015. The counties of Oakland and Macomb are part of Detroit metro, north of the city center -- and Detroit's the veritable Mecca of car-centrism.

Warren Mayor Fouts to veto approval of used car lots, by Norb Franz (Daily Tribune)

Reiterating his concern that Warren will be dubbed “used car lot city,” Mayor James Fouts said Monday he will veto the City Council’s unanimous approval of another used car sales lot and the expansion of a second one ...

... on Eight Mile at Albany Avenue, Majed Marogi purchased vacant parcels and buildings next to his existing Julian Auto Sales and proposed to expand the size of his sales lot by tearing down empty buildings and installing wrought iron fencing.

“It’s going to be such an improvement,” Mallet said.

“It’s exciting to see business come to that area of the city,” Councilwoman Kelly Colegio said.

The wrong type of business, according to Fouts.

“Even if this was going to be a stellar used car lot that everyone is proud of … it’s still a used car lot and sends the wrong message,” he said.

Along East Spring Street amid the acreage comprising the East Spring Street Neighborhood Association (ESNA), a used car lot has been located on the northeast corner of 15th for quite a while.

Just a few months ago, an auto repair business appeared on the southwest corner of 15th and Spring, next to the body shop that's been operating there for decades.

Now the owner of HyperCars, a newly minted auto detailing shop in the former ServPro building on the southwest corner of Spring and 13th, wants to sell "luxury" used cars.

This recurring word, "luxury." But like Mayor Fouts up in Warren said, "it's still a used car lot."

I looked all over New Albany's zoning code and found no reference to "luxury" anything. The C-1b zoning classification refers to a "local" business, and it references the stipulations of C-1a, which seems to be describing small neighborhood retail shops, not car sales, hence the special exception being sought.

I'm the first to admit that the owner of HyperCars has improved the appearance of the building, and you've got to hand it to him for keeping up with current events in New Albany, and grasping City Hall's fetish for "luxury" over all other modifiers, whether applicable to products and services or the human condition itself.

I find it annoying for other, more sadly comprehensive reasons.

When I finally was allowed to attend an ESNA meeting recently and the question of used car sales at HyperCars was raised, the association's Greg Roberts said there'd be none.

Yesterday I asked Greg for a clarification, and he offered this revision: it seems the neighborhood elders have been monitoring the situation, and they knew all along that HyperCars someday would seek to park no more than seven cars at a time on the lot for sale, but no one thought the business actually would pursue an exception this quickly, and learned of it only when the Plan Commission mailing arrived.

That's poor communication on several levels.

The larger irony of yet another used car lot on Spring Street in a residential neighborhood is that when internationally renowned expert Jeff Speck wrote a street grid plan for New Albany, it was significant precisely because it showed how we could begin transforming downtown into a walking, bicycling kind of place.

Then Mayor Jeff Gahan, whose fundamental car-centrism no longer is a topic for debate, blithely stripped Speck's plan of nearly all its usefulness for walking and biking, declared war on street trees, loudly announced victory, and voila -- traffic's barely slowed, the pedestrian crossing signals are a joke worthy of late-night television monologues, almost all of Speck's proposed bicycle infrastructure was deposited on the cutting room floor, and now there's to be an automobile-related business coming to every vacant commercial space on Spring Street.

Combine the purely intentional street grid regression with the Plan Commission's concurrent consideration this week of the peak car-centric Summit Springs Raised Middle Finger, Phase Two ...

Plan Commission to consider phase two of the Summit Springs Kelley Enrichment cluster muck development atrocity.

... and one has no choice except to confirm the wisdom of my high school baseball coach, who turned to us after a botched play and said, "He could fuck up a wet dream."

Yes, indeed. Jeff Gahan's very adept at that.

#FireGahan2019

At Strong Towns: A Conversation with Walkability Expert Jeff Speck."

Here's the pitch.

Jeff Speck is a nationally-recognized expert on building walk-friendly, people-oriented places. His book, Walkable City: How Downtown can Save America, One Step at a Time, is beloved by planners, leaders and residents of cities big and small; and his planning firm, Speck & Associates, works in communities across the country.

We recently invited Jeff onto our webcast to chat with Chuck Marohn about how to build slower, safer streets and why this goal is so important if we want to live in prosperous, successful cities.

At the 27:54 mark, Speck name drops New Albany (along with Oklahoma City) as an unqualified success story for two-way reversions. Personally I find it highly qualified, but don't let this stop you from listening.

A CONVERSATION WITH WALKABILITY EXPERT JEFF SPECK (Strong Towns)

Questions discussed include:

• What have you seen change in our national dialogue about walkability and on the ground since publishing your book? (3:42)
• Why and how did you make your book accessible to a broad, non-professional audience? (5:34)
• Tell us about some of the innovative changes you're witnessing and taking part in in cities around America in terms of walkability. (7:25)
• Why have you shifted your goals from eliminating suburban development to reforming it or building new urban development? (14:16)
• What population density is required to support a walkable commercial center? (18:43)
• Can bus rapid transit be a viable transit option as opposed to light rail? (22:30)
• How do you make change around walkability issues when a majority of residents aren't politically engaged or involved in established government processes? (24:40)
• How can we convince municipalities to convert one-way streets to two-way streets? (27:54) Has tactical urbanism ever been used to accomplish this? (30:50)
• Why do we have to push a button to get a walk signal at some intersections? (33:08)
• Do you see the growth of ride-hailing services as helpful or harmful to our cities? (37:10)
• In your recent essay, 10 Rules for Cities Thinking about Automated Vehicles, you talked about the issue of induced demand, which goes counter to many of the autonomous vehicle boosters who argue that the proliferation of these cars will decrease auto usage overall. Walk us through your argument. (42:50)
• What is the best practical argument to persuade local leaders to reduce parking requirements? How should we be approaching this issue in our communities? (50:55)
• Many small towns seem set up for the worst kind of development. When you go into a small town hoping to change things, where do you start? (55:44)

It wasn't about drainage at all. Rather, an irrational fear of density doomed the West Street Mews.

The single most hilarious aspect of Coffey's resistance is the juxtaposition of these two statements, both coming from the Wizard's mouth.

"I don't think it’s the government’s responsibility to make sure people profit."

"You have to have green space for people. You have to, it’s a healthy [necessity] for people."

Or, while it isn't Coffey's job to make money for a developer -- not receiving some from one in particular might be the root of the problem in this instance -- it's very much his job to decide how much green space is healthy.

Many persons residing in major cities, or even some renting at Break Water, likely have a different view of green space versus density. Maybe it's why they decided to live in a 190-unit apartment complex as opposed to a ranch house in Georgetown.

When I asked my councilman Greg Phipps for his reason voting no, the reply was terse: "Too dense." He mentioned nothing about drainage or green space.

Oddly, Phipps' own mayor just recently unveiled a 20-year comprehensive plan. It's already been used by Jeff Gahan -- the guy who in effect wrote it -- as justification to reduce public housing units.

And yet at roughly 35 separate places in this document, the word "density" is used in a positive fashion to describe the sort of development needed in the epicenter of the city, and near the core.

I was told that the developer of West Street Mews referenced the comprehensive plan at least four times during the city council presentation last Thursday. That's four times more often than Coffey and Pat McLaughlin did in their comments to the News and Tribune's Erin Walden.

Drainage didn't doom the development so much as incomprehension in terms of what has become the weakest and most inconsistent city council in recent memory. In the case of the West Street Mews, Al Knable is right.

“We ask people to look at us, take a risk and invest in New Albany all the time and I think we shut the door on somebody who had the guts to try to make some money with us and help us out."

Drainage concerns doomed proposed New Albany development

Turns down development 5-4

NEW ALBANY — New Albany City Council members are split when it comes to a proposed development at two vacant lots on West Street.

A request to build 26 townhouses on a vacant lot at 1105-1109 West Street was turned down 5-4 during a city council meeting last Thursday. With the request denied, the developer can build a fraction, 12 units, of what was planned under its current R-2 zoning.

Previously:

FRIDAY, DECEMBER 22, 2017

Befuddlement at the news as strange council bedfellows unite to defeat West Street Mews.

MONDAY, NOVEMBER 06, 2017

City Council Monday: All the mews fit to reject?

Befuddlement at the news as strange council bedfellows unite to defeat West Street Mews.

The News and Tribune's Chris Morris recorded the quote as 6th district council representative Scott Blair tried to explain his opposition to a townhouse development off West Street in New Albany.

(Councilman Scott) Blair had other concerns. "There are just too many units for two acres. Seems too congestive for me," Blair said.

Actually, normal usage of the adjective congestive lies in specialized medical applications, like congestive heart failure: "Involving or producing too much blood or other liquid in an organ."

We use congested to describe “clogged,” “overcrowded,” or “overfull,” as when a lifetime of eating fatty fried food leaves one with congested arteries. In like fashion, overpopulated cities and crowded roads are said to be congested.

Bankers. Can't live with 'em ... can't teach 'em the meaning of words like density and infill.

Meanwhile, "mews" might be trite and annoying developer-speak for townhouses in Coffeyville, but it jibes point by point with those same passages about infill and density included in the city's new comprehensive plan -- the one authored by Team Gahan to encourage housing precisely like this, and yet opposed last night by three of four councilman in Gahan's own sad party, plus Blair (huh?) and Dan Coffey himself.

Maybe the project's backers forgot to grease Dear Leader's re-election wheels.

We are reminded of a bedrock truth pertaining to city council politics in New Albany, which won't ever change for so long as Coffey remains a councilman, because the reason why the West End forever languishes is that Coffey himself opposes change in his own environs with clock-like regularity.

The Wizard simply cannot survive in a socio-economic habitat any different from the one he has cultivated (read: kept waaaay down) during more than two decades of underachievement. He can always get the votes he needs from absentee ballots collected at Riverview Tower; not so ironically, a building comprising public housing units slated for refurbishing rather than the guillotine.

Coffey is nothing if not consistent. Blair is nothing if not confused.

By the way, the Horseshoe Foundation non-binding resolution passed unanimously. Morris must have left the meeting before then. Ominously, with Elizabeth Beilman departed, New Albany's about to get it good and hard from Hanson's tone-deaf newspaper in terms of non-coverage -- again.

Council votes down plan for townhouses

PUDD defeated by 5-4 vote

NEW ALBANY — It's back to the drawing board for the proposed West Street Mews Development.

Thursday night, the New Albany City Council voted 5-4 to reject a PUDD request in an R-2 district at 1105-1109 West Street on third reading, which defeats the proposed ordinance. The proposal was to build 26 townhouses on the 1.9 acres of vacant property. Without a PUDD, only 12 units can be built there now under R-2 zoning laws.

"It's back to the drawing board. This puts an end to this process," said attorney Greg Fifer, who represented West Street Mews Development, after the meeting.

The development had already received approval from the New Albany Plan Commission. And one city councilman, Dr. Al Knable, said he thought it would be a great addition to the neighborhood.

"It would be nice to have this sort of dwelling in there," Knable said prior to the vote. "The key to this is owner occupied. We need more of that in town. I think it would be one of the better developments in that part of town since I was a kid."

However, after a long discussion, the change to a PUDD did not have enough support. Knable, Matt Nash, David Aebersold and David Barksdale voted for the PUDD while Scott Blair, Dan Coffey, Greg Phipps, Bob Caesar and Pat McLaughlin voted against.

Dan Coffey would fit just fine over there in Prospect, except Prospect wouldn't allow Coffey to live there.

As Gerth notes, the property in question was approved for use with nary a second glance when the proposal called for luxury housing.

When luxuriousness was discarded and the topic shifted to affordable housing, suddenly "them people" (in Dan Coffey's famous words) became a pressing issue, requiring even Sam Swope to be exhumed.

Plenty of parallels with New Albany's luxury-obsessed City Hall team and the city officials it coddles, eh?

Old, poor and black? The city of Prospect doesn't want you, by Joseph Gerth (Louisville Courier Journal)

Here's hoping the Louisville Metro Council and my neighbors in Prospect are happy with themselves.

They’ve succeeded in keeping old, poor, disabled and (they believe) black people out of the eastern Louisville city. Hurrah.

I'm talking, of course, about their opposition to the Prospect Cove apartment complex that the good folks in Prospect decided they didn't want right across the street from the Kroger, where they go to buy groceries — where I go to buy groceries.

A Louisville company had proposed building 198 apartments for low-income seniors on nearly 10 acres. Under rules of the complex, the apartments would have been leased only to families in which at least one person was over age 55.

Rent for a one-bedroom unit would have been about $930, and a two-bedroom unit would have been about $1,000.

Additionally, no one under 18 would have been allowed to live there.

The fact that the apartments were designed for people below a certain income threshold screamed "black people" to some of the folks who opposed it, and so the city of Prospect spent some $200,000 fighting the development ...

Strong Towns Week: Man buys $15,000 uninhabitable shack to renovate. What could go wrong?

We've all heard about something too big to fail. Welcome to the story of a 700-foot house too small to (be allowed to) succeed.

LESSON LEARNED, by Johnny Sanphillippo (Strong Towns)

A couple years ago, I bought a $15,000 uninhabitable house in Cincinnati, Ohio. The copper had been stripped out and no one had lived there for years. This was on a street where a third of the homes were in similar condition. When I told my friends back home in California, there were a few raised eyebrows. I shrugged. Buying a $1,200,000 one bedroom condo in a trendy coastal city seems far more terrifying to me. The little seven hundred square foot shotgun shack in Ohio was so inexpensive that if it turned out to be the worst financial decision of my life I’d only lose $15,000. It was like buying a used Volkswagen.

Well… Last month I sold the place for slightly more than I paid for it. The resale price covered my initial cost, the real estate agent’s fee, and a year of taxes and insurance. If you squint, I broke even. But if you add in other expenses associated with my attempt to renovate the place, I lost about $3,000. That’s not enough to care about in the big scheme of things, but not great either. Like I said… it was basically a used Volkswagen. So what happened?

What happened was a bureaucratic nightmare. If only the author had been eligible for sewer tap-in waivers; alas, his name is Sanphillippo, not Flaherty Collins.

I hasten to point out that in the year my designer struggled to get multiple unresponsive city bureaucracies to give us the green light on our little shack addition, a 131-unit apartment complex went up three blocks away. All the high mucky mucks were at the ribbon cutting ceremony for the cameras. The new building was “transformational.” It was “catalytic.” It was proof that a progressive developer and enlightened city authorities could work together to turn the neighborhood around.

Lesson learned.

"10 Steps to Fix a City," including axing anyone on staff who believes the fixes are unworkable.

Imagine you attend a meeting of City Council, the Redevelopment Commission or the Board of Public Works and Safety, and as you're sitting there, expecting the same ol' same ol', an elected representative or appointed official begins explaining what he or she read at Strong Towns.

It's an old link, one worth viewing again.

It's also a list for comparing platforms in 2019. I've included explanations for some, though not all of the precepts. Give the website a click, and by doing so, pole vault to the head of the queue.

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10 STEPS TO FIX A CITY, by Andrew Burleson (Strong Towns)

1. Don't issue any new bonds until the city's current debts are fully paid off.

2. Don't accept unfunded maintenance obligations.

3. Throw out your parking ordinances.

No parking ordinance is better than no parking ordinances. Allow on-street parking everywhere, and use parking meters as needed to limit on-street congestion in high-demand areas. Let the market figure out the off-street supply and demand balance.

4. Don't permit greenfield development when existing infrastructure is highly underutilized.

Almost every city has a section of town with streets and sewers surrounded by vacant lots or abandoned buildings. As long as there are big chunks of your town like this, there’s no reason to issue building permits for new infrastructure. 

5. Require buildings to front the street.

That means no parking lots in front of buildings. The ground floor has to be inhabitable, parking can be beside or behind the building, but there has to be a “front door” that lets pedestrians enter the building directly from the street / sidewalk. 

6. Dramatically simplify your zoning.

First, just throw out your entire zoning ordinance because it’s surely horrible. Then try replacing it with just four zones: Heavy Industrial, Mixed-Use, Restricted Residential, and Restricted Agricultural / Natural. Read more about zoning.

7. Dramatically simplify your traffic hierarchy.

8. Stop building stroads.

In fact, it would be ideal if you could stop building any new roads until we, as a nation, came up with a better system for funding them. 

9. Set a maximum block perimeter of 2000' and enforce it.

10. Fire anyone on staff who believes the above is unworkable.

In today’s municipal world the professionals are a big part of the problem. There are plenty of good people out there who could work well within the constraints above. If the people in your city staff don’t think that’s possible, then the city needs new staff.