Showing posts with label suburban logic. Show all posts
Showing posts with label suburban logic. Show all posts

Friday, July 24, 2020

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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Wednesday, November 07, 2018

Ain't talkin 'bout guns: "Understanding Safety at Neighborhood Schools."


Did any of the school board candidates discuss this?

Don Sakel, maybe?


I trust Strong Towns will forgive me for reprinting this piece in its entirety, which I seldom do, but it strikes me as precisely the sort of thinking that isn't ever considered locally.

Ever.

---

Understanding Safety at Neighborhood Schools, by Charles Marohn (Strong Towns)

 Earlier this year, I was part of an unsuccessful effort to keep my local school district from tearing down an historic structure—a 1930s-era elementary school—as part of an effort to create two square blocks of parking in my city’s core downtown. Our efforts were called “disingenuous” by school officials who wrongly assumed we were anti-school, anti-education, or anti-taxes.

 No, we’re just anti-destroying the city.

 Geographically, the school district is enormous. Most of the people who voted do not live in one of the city’s core neighborhoods. Advocates for the school district had few misgivings with sacrificing an historic structure for more convenient parking. Most voters experience Brainerd as a place to drive through to get to a destination. For them, there will never be too much parking; trying to save the building was merely misplaced nostalgia.

 Even so, there was controversy in the district’s discernment process over proposals to convert playgrounds into parking lots. Early site drawings showed off-street parking in the existing playground areas. In the months before the vote, this parking was removed from the drawings, and a note was added indicating parking would be built, with the location to be determined at a later date. I’m not suggesting anything sinister at this point; district officials said their drawings were creating confusion, that they had not intended to put the parking in the playground, and so they removed the parking from the drawings. It just also happened to be a convenient omission from the public conversation.

 Now that the district has voter approval and is moving ahead with its plans, the full extent of the damage to my city’s core neighborhoods is becoming more widely understood. While they have yet to release schematics, the list of properties they are seeking through eminent domain suggests they are going to convert multiple blocks of residential dwellings into surface parking. It’s a double tragedy in that (1) it will permanently damage these struggling neighborhoods, and (2) few who are involved with the district or as advocates for the school’s plans seem to care.

 In fact, in very predictable fashion, the people promoting the off-street parking are adamantly claiming that their motivation is safety. Specifically, safety for the children.

Safety First, or Driver Convenience First?
Call me cynical. I’ve read the school district’s documentation where faculty indicated that more convenient parking was one of the “top five priorities.” I’ve been in many of these schools, and while I’m sure there are staff members who live in the neighborhoods surrounding the schools, the vast majority do not. These neighborhoods tend to be poor and struggle with disinvestment. While education is not a lucrative career, it is a solidly middle-class career here in Minnesota. Most middle-class people live outside these neighborhoods and drive in. It’s understandable why, come February in Minnesota, people driving to their place of employment would want their parking to be more convenient.

 It’s also easy to understand why a school board and senior administration—none of whom live in these neighborhoods, all of whom drive in—would be intuitively sympathetic to the convenience argument.

 As psychologists have taught us, humans tend to reach conclusions based on their intuition and then use reasoning to justify those conclusions after-the-fact. We’re going to build parking lots to increase convenience, but we’re going to justify it based on safety for children. Alright, so let’s talk safety.

 The Difference Between Urban and Suburban Environments
The vision for safety that the school district espouses comes from a misapplication of suburban design standards to an urban neighborhood. In a sense, what the district is proposing to do is to convert an urban neighborhood school into as close a facsimile as possible of a suburban campus. In that environment, safety is then addressed in standard suburban ways: separating conflicting uses, increasing traffic flow, and managing points of conflict.

 In terms of safety for an urban neighborhood, this approach is an absolute disaster. Let me explain why.

 Separating conflicting uses means keeping kids who are walking away from traffic. The theory is that, if we keep them separated, there will be no chance of any accidents occurring. The bus lane, pickup lanes, and surface parking departure lanes are all designated and kept away from where kids will be walking. Everyone in their place.

 I find this approach suspect in suburban schools, but at least there the expectation is that most students will be driven in a car or bus to and from the site. For each of our neighborhood schools, the school district’s policy is to provide no busing for students living within a mile of the school. They are all expected to walk, bike or be driven by someone to school. As the school is in a poor neighborhood with a lot of working families, a high percentage of students walk, and they will be walking in every which direction. Compared to a suburban campus, walking patterns around urban schools are more random and chaotic.

 That randomness conflicts directly with the second aspect of the district’s safety strategy: to increase traffic flow. Suburban schools channel personal vehicles and buses into their own designated lanes to help traffic flow more smoothly. This is accomplished by removing conflicts, by giving drivers a sense of security that potential conflict points have been managed. If we don’t expect turning cars, stopping traffic, wandering kids and the like, we feel more confident driving faster. A.k.a.: increase traffic flow.

 Again, I’m not sold on this as a general concept even in a suburban setting, but in an urban neighborhood, it is an obscene level of negligence. These are random environments by their nature. Students are all over the place, like they should be in a good, urban neighborhood. Doing things that artificially speed up traffic, or give drivers a heightened sense of security, makes the environment vastly more dangerous for a child on foot.

The best thing that can happen for the safety of students is counter-intuitive for those who prioritize convenience of parking and driving: people driving through a school zone should be so terrified of hitting someone or something that they drive very slow and with an extreme level of caution. In other words, the exact opposite of what is being designed.

 The third aspect of this misapplied suburban safety strategy relates to managing points of conflict: how we handle instances where children walking or biking must cross areas where buses or cars are driving. This is where we get the greatest insight as to the true motivation of the design, because designers are forced to prioritize one group over the other.

 Let’s guess which one gets prioritized for safety purposes. Come February in the dead cold of winter, will the flow of traffic for parents picking up their kids, or faculty leaving the off-street parking lot, be halted so that students on foot can cross the street and get on their way? Or will students be expected to wait on the corner while those in their heated cars and on the bus are provided the opportunity to improve traffic flow?

 Designers, in the name of safety, will attempt to channel kids on foot to designated locations where they will be collected and then, at intervals that don’t excessively interfere with traffic, be allowed to cross. In these situations, the design relies on everyone to follow the rules—or to put it another way, to mindlessly follow the rules, and be more obedient than attentive—and stay in their designated place.

Predictably, this creates the perfect excuse for the well-intentioned when tragedy strikes: “They weren’t following the rules.”

 Not: “We should have anticipated that kids don’t always follow rules.” Not: “This is a complex and random urban neighborhood where unpredictable things happen, despite our planning and design.” Not: “We shouldn’t have given everyone a false sense of security.” None of the above.

And all of this reasoning applies merely to the roughly 75 minutes per day people are entering and exiting the school site. For the remainder of the time, and through all evenings and weekends and the three months of summer, this over-engineered design approach leaves a doughnut of desolation around each school, an inducement to drive even faster through this area where we know slower speeds are the key to safety.

 From a pure safety standpoint, imposing a suburban design on an urban school is a disaster in the making. School officials who argue that this must be done for the safety of the students do not have the proper sense of how to create a safe environment in an urban setting. For the well-being of our students, and the health of our neighborhoods, we need a different vision for how to implement the will of the voters.

 Fortunately, the city council in my hometown has the capacity to stop this. At its last meeting, the Planning Commission—which I am part of— recommended a moratorium on tearing down structures for conversion to surface parking. The council has the capacity to approve this time-out at any point, without any further public notice.

 Such a time out would give city officials the opportunity to meet with the school district and work out the details in a way that is respectful to the neighborhood and truly safe for students. And if common ground could not be reached, the city has the capability to act unilaterally to require an implementation strategy that doesn’t damage the neighborhood where these students live.

 I don’t think it will come to that, however. School district officials are smart and our city council has some very good leadership. And despite different concepts of convenience and safety, everyone involved does seem to want what is best for the students. I’m optimistic we can find a way to have a great neighborhood school while still having a neighborhood.
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Saturday, May 19, 2018

Comments to city council: "Let’s talk about Develop New Albany’s second edition of the Taco Walk."


Let's all eat at Israel's Delicias de Mexico Gourmet on Saturday, May 19.

Today is the second iteration of the Taco Walk, now a "signature" Develop New Albany event, and accordingly, non-agenda public speaking time at Thursday's city council meeting was devoted to reading the following summary, which also has been sent to the city clerk for inclusion in the official minutes of the meeting. 

 This way, in the absence of public dialogue (and with the newspaper predictably AWOL), at least there's a permanent record of sorts. We're hoping nothing happens today to compel revisiting this topic -- at least until next year. 

 Of course, DNA might begin to show responsiveness to reality by removing the sombrero from the "official" event poster, but even this lies beyond the organization's ability. 

 It's sad. Very, very sad.

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COMMENT TO CITY COUNCIL DURING NON-AGENDA SPEAKING TIME, THURSDAY 17 MAY 2018

Let’s talk about Develop New Albany’s second edition of the Taco Walk, coming this Saturday (May 19).

There are two fundamental problems, neither of which the organization has been willing to address openly – although let me tell you, I’ve tried, but in New Albany, the anchor seal of approval apparently means never having to answer e-mails, admit errors, say you’re sorry or turn mistakes into useful teaching tools – which is what should be happening here if we can just un-circle the wagons.

First, cultural appropriation, which is defined as “a concept dealing with the adoption of the elements of a minority culture by members of the dominant culture. It is distinguished from equal cultural exchange due to the presence of a colonial element and imbalance of power.”

As for imbalances, the most recent numbers show that the population of New Albany is 85% White, 8% African-American and 3% Hispanic/Latino.

So, Taco Walk was brought to DNA in 2017 by a citizen volunteer named Kelly Winslow, as a way of showcasing any and all downtown restaurants willing to fashion a taco, without reference to ethnicity, including Japanese tacos, vegan tacos, fudge tacos or any other creative flourish.

As it turns out, local memories are short. In 2015, then-president James Ramsey of the University of Louisville was photographed with university administrative workers dressed to party in sombreros, serapes and fake mustaches. There was a tremendous scandal, and the university was compelled to apologize.

Less than two years later, DNA’s brain trust repeated Ramsey’s mistake, with the governing committee itself, minus Winslow (the volunteer, who was horrified) bringing sombreros and maracas to Taco Walk, then adding the creative twist of parading through the streets while singing the Frito Bandito corn chip theme song, and posing for photos in the News and Tribune – which also failed to notice what was happening.

Really? Do any of them pay attention to internet essays each year during Cinco de Mayo warning against bad behavior?

By the way, the Frito Bandito song was written by a New York City ad agency in the late 1960s. There’s nothing Mexican about it. There are good reasons to wear a sombrero, but cultural appropriation is when you borrow the symbols and use them to reinforce a stereotype, which in this instance is the view that while Mexicans are happy napping while using a sombrero as shade, and rising from their naps to sing and dance, it’s unlikely they’ll do any useful work – and this, as most of us should know by now, is really, really dumb.

I’m hoping that DNA’s brain trust knows better than to stage a minstrel show in blackface, or have a wet t-shirt contest, or indulge in preening lisping stereotyping of gay Americans of the sort that used to be Hollywood caricatures, and if they know better in these cases, then the sombrero-wearing, maraca-shaking misbehavior should be left to the ticket-buying public; if Joe Six Pack wants to make a complete fool out of himself, fine, but DNA itself shouldn’t encourage it.

The second issue has to do with Winslow, who brought the idea to DNA in the first place, thinking she’d found an organization to partner with, but was very disappointed in the way Taco Walk went down. She decided to take her idea and decline further participation, to which DNA said nope, it’s ours now.

It may not have been intellectual property rights enforced by written contract, but if you ask me, that’s still thievery. From where I’m sitting DNA has been bullying and trolling Winslow ever since, and I’m not the only one who’s noticed it.

I’d like to ask at what point this organization, which I believe still receives a funding tithe each year from the city, is held accountable for matters like these – like cultural appropriation and infringement of intellectual property rights, or is it fine so long as that mayoral anchor seal of approval is hanging around their necks?

Last year, seeing a Taco Walk board member wearing a sombrero, shaking maracas and singing the Frito Bandito song made one employee of a downtown eatery cry.

When does DNA apologize, not just to her, but to us all?

Thank you.
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Friday, June 16, 2017

Charles Marohn on the "incremental approach to development."

How NOT to incremental it.

This week, Charles Marohn is discussing incrementalism. I'm not expecting this to be a focus for the incoming redevelopment/dishevelment director, so it's our job to bone up.

I’ve found that the most difficult thing for people to grasp about Strong Towns is our insistence on an incremental approach to development. I stress how we need to be making small investments over a broad area over a long period of time. I talk about the small bets our ancestors made when building places, how their approach fit with a complex world where we lack the ability to predict, project or even fully understand, after the fact, why one place succeeds and another fails. I show how the incremental approach results in places that are resilient, adaptable and – most incredibly – financially far more successful than our modern approach.

Here are the four parts of this week's series. Happy browsing.

THE POWER OF GROWING INCREMENTALLY
It is incrementally rising land values, combined with the ability to redevelop to something more intense, that naturally prompts the redevelopment of property in decline. Take away one of those two factors and redevelopment breaks down.


THE LITTLE HOUSE, A STORY OF INCREMENTALISM
It's the incremental nature of both the private and the public investments that made traditional cities strong, resilient and financially productive.


THE END OF INCREMENTALISM
Where improvement is not an option, stagnation and decline are all that remain.

THREE NEIGHBORHOODS IN ARRESTED DEVELOPMENT
We have come up with many ways to explain the decline we see around us. In reality, we've simply given our cities no other option.
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Monday, May 22, 2017

Urban, suburban and UniGov: "Municipal consolidation will only amplify the underlying fragilities inherent in our development pattern."


I'm going to repeat something written two years ago during the pirate's mayoral campaign, but first, the 2011 article that prompts it.


CONSOLIDATION IS THE WRONG RESPONSE, by Charles Marohn (Strong Towns)

... Consolidation is a response to the notion that our problem is essentially one of efficiency. The idea is that local governments are not efficient enough and therefore we can increase efficiency by combining them into fewer governments. Like the banking sector, fewer players means more efficiency, and like banks, fewer players will amplify fragility.

Take school consolidation as an example ...

LEAP FORWARD

... Our biggest problem as a nation right now is that our places are generally all vulnerable to the same things. That is because we have all used the same cookbook (standard zoning) and the same Mechanisms of Growth (government transfers, transportation spending and debt) to get to where we are now. Fundamentally, our cities are all pretty much the same. When gas prices rise, our cities struggle. When growth slows or stalls, our cities go into decline. When government aid goes away, our places start to implode. This lack of resilience will only be covered up by consolidation, the day of reckoning pushed off and made more difficult as a result.

Instead of consolidation, we should embrace the core strength of our system; an ability to innovate. This means loosening the controls we have placed on our cities and towns thus allowing local officials to try different solutions to the problems they face. The correct response is not to become more parochial, it is to become less ...

Indeed, county government no longer is "starved" of cash since last year's sale of Floyd Memorial Hospital. But the pattern of development remains exactly the same.

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Urban, suburban and UniGov.

Hoosiers typically refer to combined city-county government as "Unigov," this being the catch phrase that originated 45 years ago when Indianapolis and Marion County undertook a "consolidation" of government pushed by then-mayor Richard Lugar.

What this notion of "combining" governments implies to me is an economy of scale -- but not the one we usually hear mentioned. We're told about the myriad small efficiencies to be derived from reducing or eliminating overlap, and while I don't contest these in every instance, what I see is a different kind of efficiency, or more accurately, inefficiency: Compact urban expenditures versus suburban sprawl subsidies.

It's the 800-lb gorilla in the room, as illustrated and explained here.

Sprawl Costs the Public More Than Twice as Much as Compact Development, by Angie Schmitt (Streetsblog)

How much more does it cost the public to build infrastructure and provide services for sprawling development compared to more compact neighborhoods? A lot more, according to this handy summary from the Canadian environmental think tank Sustainable Prosperity.

To create this graphic, the organization synthesized a study by the Halifax Regional Municipality [PDF] in Nova Scotia, and the research is worth a closer look.

Halifax found the cost of administering services varied directly in proportion to how far apart homes were spaced. On the rural end, each house sat on a 2.5 acre lot. On the very urban end, there were 92 people dwelling on each acre. Between those two extremes were several development patterns of varying density.

It costs more to "service" infrastructure for a few houses five miles off the main road outside Greenville than it does multiple homes located on a city block downtown. Precisely for this reason, Floyd County government is starved for money. Sprawl costs more, and revenues aren't sufficient to cover it. Somewhat surprisingly, the News and Tribune recently editorialized in favor of higher taxes to make up the difference, although the newspaper's editorial board didn't trace the need to the root cause: Sprawl costs more.

Of course there are areas suitable for sharing and cooperation between city and county government. These can and should be explored.

There's also a fundamental difference in settlement patterns between more and less densely populated areas, with ramifications for the cost of services and infrastructure maintenance. The latter represents a serious discussion we have not had.

Shall we begin?
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Sunday, March 26, 2017

Snowbelt-to-Sunbelt migration? Not to worry -- we got Break Wind and Amazon.


As of 2015, Louisville metro was growing. According to WFPL, "Most of the growth is happening on the periphery. If you were in, what we call, the city, you’re not seeing any change at all."

The Midwest Is in Trouble, by Laura Bliss (CityLab)

New Census estimates show the Snowbelt-to-Sunbelt migration pattern is deepening.

For all the talk of downtown revitalization in places like Detroit, Pittsburgh, and Baltimore, the numbers don’t lie.

The U.S. Census bureau released population estimates covering counties and metro areas today, and the picture is grim for the post-industrial Midwest and Northeast. For example, the city of St. Louis lost nearly 3,500 residents between July 2015 and 2016, representing a 1.1 percent population drop—the sharpest out of any city in the country, and a much sharper local decline than in recent years. Chicago, too, saw its long-term losses compound, with the largest numeric decline out of any metro area: more than 21,000 people, or 0.4 percent of its population. A similar story unfolded in Baltimore, which saw a rapid acceleration in population loss from 2015 to 2016. Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Syracuse, Hartford, Buffalo, Scranton, and Rochester also lost thousands.

All told, according to Governing magazine, the “146 most densely populated counties lost a total of 539,000 residents to other parts of the country over the 12-month period ending in July, representing the largest decline in recent years.”
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Sunday, October 30, 2016

"The town is broke because there’s a structural gap between revenue and expenses due to a suburban land use pattern that can never pay for its own obligations or maintenance."

From the article.

What is a talisman?

1. a stone, ring, or other object, engraved with figures or characters supposed to possess occult powers and worn as an amulet or charm.

2. any amulet or charm.

3. anything whose presence exercises a remarkable or powerful influence on human feelings or actions.

That guy trying to cross the stroad (above) is a talisman of sorts, though most drivers wouldn't give him a second thought, at least until the point of impact.

The Talisman of Colerain, by Johnny Sanphillippo (Strong Towns)

As perhaps the world’s most lapsed Catholic I still instantly recognized this rusty bit of iron for what it is. It’s a relic. A talisman. It’s a distant cousin three times removed from a splinter from the Cross or a tiny fragment from a Saint’s robe. It’s meant to have special healing powers that will bring health and prosperity to the town. It’s a shield to protect the innocent and vanquish evil. All you have to do is believe and its blessings will be revealed. I’ll get back to that in a moment. But first, there’s that other image ...

The talismanic influence of certain objects can reflect the surroundings.

The town is broke because there’s a structural gap between revenue and expenses due to a suburban land use pattern that can never pay for its own obligations or maintenance. The memorial park is sitting in a sea of low-value surface parking lots, empty buildings, and buildings that are only occupied because they were bribed into existence with subsidies and tax abatements to keep up appearances. Meanwhile millions of dollars worth of public infrastructure sit underutilized.

And the verdict isn't pleasant (bold type mine).

I doubt the good people of Colerain are interested in transforming their old parking lots and dead strip malls into a thick Main Street downtown full of mixed-use buildings with shops on the ground floor and offices and apartments upstairs. I don’t think they’d even know how to build that sort of thing if they tried. They’re too obsessed with parking ratios and flower beds that look like the prosperous suburbs they no longer are. I’m not even sure there’s even a market for that kind of thing in this location. So I see continued decline and more desperate attempts at resurrection by pure faith. So be it.

But remember, kiddies -- we've got hospital sale money to make it all right.
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Sunday, May 15, 2016

"A recent Newsweek article on urbanism is chock-full of nonsense."


You can't reinforce this point often enough: A "free" market has not determined our development patterns. 

The Media Attacks Urbanism: A recent Newsweek article on urbanism is chock-full of nonsense, by Michael Lewyn (Planetizen)

... But where the article errs is in treating this as an immutable fact of life, rather than as something caused by a wide range of government policies. For the past 60 or 70 years, government at all levels has made suburban life easy and urban life hard: by building highways to facilitate suburban commuting, by insuring mortgages in suburbs but not in cities, and by moving urban schoolchildren around in the name of racial balance while tolerating overwhelmingly-white suburban public schools.

And because our zoning system gives neighbors of a development disproportionate weight in determining what gets built and how much, it is easier to build new housing in exurbia (where the only neighbors are trees and wildlife who don’t know how to pack a zoning board meeting) than in urban areas full of easy-to-outrage neighbors. As a result, some cities don't have enough housing to go around, forcing middle-class households into suburbia.

Of course, large chunks of the Newsweek article are less about logic than about emotionally loaded language designed to inflame ...
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Monday, April 04, 2016

'How Long Before Regionalization Is Rebranded as a Suburban Bailout?"

Last evening following the city council meeting, a friend suggested that one way to minimize the the hospital's effects on city infrastructure, i.e., as a non-profit paying no property taxes and thus not contributing to the cost of city services, would be to have unified city-county government.

This article explains why I disagree with my friend's position.


How Long Before Regionalization Is Rebranded as a Suburban Bailout?

 BY 

Back in January Strong Towns ran a great piece by Nathaniel Hood called “This isn’t an annexation – it’s a bailout.”  It’s a short story about a town in Minnesota that’s about to annex a small 1960’s subdivision that somehow remained in incorporated territory for many years.
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Saturday, March 12, 2016

Team Gahan's walkability gap (2 of 3): "Is your city pedestrian unfriendly"? YEP.


A classic example of the idiocy described below is pictured above.

We have allowed the national chains Rally's, White Castle and Walgreen's to construct a suburban maze in the middle of a densely populated urban area, with multiple curb cuts, each building set back from the street.

But the part that continues to amaze me is that in each instance, if you're crossing either Vincennes or Spring using push button signals that may or may not work -- the terrors of vehicular traffic here is another story entirely, as we seem determined not to calm traffic or place trucks where they should be -- you cannot proceed directly to the business's door using the layout built for your feet.

That's because it was designed for cars, NOT your feet.

Rather, one either must traverse corner landscaping, which works for me only because I'm not in a wheelchair, or use the entry lanes alongside oblivious autos. In short, these three businesses are built and situated adjacent to sidewalks in an area of prime potential walkability, and simultaneously are cut off from use as a walker.

Director of Mayhem John Rosenbarger was on duty when these were approved. Anyone interested in holding his or her breath until he explains why atrocities like this occurred?

I didn't think so, seeing as the human instinct is to live, even if butchers like Rosenbarger and Warren Nash continue to deposit their paychecks for ... what?

IS YOUR CITY PEDESTRIAN-UNFRIENDLY?, by Sarah Kobos (Strong Towns)

As more and more people say they want to live in walkable neighborhoods, it’s fun to watch the old-school, suburban developers squirm. Unwilling to change what they do, they instead attempt to market their car-centric products as “pedestrian friendly.” Generally, this occurs at planning commission meetings, where words like “walkability” and “pedestrian amenities” are tossed around like claims in a presidential debate. It sounds great when they say it, but there’s no substance behind the jargon.

Here are just a few of my favorite pedestrian unfriendly amenities.


  • THE SIDEWALK TO NOWHERE
  • HIGH-SPEED DRIVEWAYS
  • MULTIPLE CURB CUTS
  • DEEP SETBACKS
  • WHERE IN THE WORLD IS CARMEN SAN DIEGO… AND WHERE THE !@#%*#! IS THE FRONT DOOR?
  • ENORMOUS PARKING LOTS
  • TITANIC SCALE
  • BLANK WALLS
  • ELEVATION DROPS
  • WALLS


Then this. I see examples of each of these in New Albany every single day,as noted above. What is Team Gahan and his Bored of Works doing apart from coordinating the political finance largess from paving bids?

BUT WE CAN’T JUST BLAME THE DEVELOPERS

It’s not just old-school developers who design barriers into the pedestrian experience. Every day, people who don’t drive experience discrimination in the form of bad street design, sidewalk obstacles and blithe disregard for their needs.

A few common examples…

WHOOPS! WE FORGOT!
The most common form of pedestrian unfriendliness is the ubiquitous street without a sidewalk.

THE SIDEWALK STORAGE AREA
Many street crews obviously see the sidewalk as a convenient place to store construction materials, park cars, and locate temporary signage, even if it means that a person in a wheelchair has absolutely no way to cross the barrier.

UTILITIES!
Imagine the outrage if utilities were placed in the middle of traffic lanes, forcing cars to bob and weave their way down the street. This casual disregard for the needs of people who use sidewalks is an impressive symbol of how we prioritize auto travel over all other modes.

THE OBLIQUE RAMP
Why pay for two ramps when just one completely unsafe ramp will do?

NO RAMP AT ALL
It’s like CrossFit for disabled people.

LACK OF STREET TREES
If you live in the south, trees make a dramatic difference to people who walk.

I could go on, but you get the idea. We’ve spent the better part of 70 years building our cities for cars, not people, and it shows. It’s time to make walkability a priority, not just a feel-good buzzword.
Awareness is the first step. The more we can help our neighbors and elected officials recognize obstacles to walkability, the sooner we can make our cities better and healthier places for everyone.

Let’s get this conversation started! Share your examples of affronts to walkability on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram using the hashtag #PedestrianUnfriendly.
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Thursday, February 11, 2016

Hard time: Otherwise known as the era of Louisville's (and New Albany's) suburban errors.


Two articles, different eras, each providing a unique angle of observation.

First, the here and now, with a reaffirmation of urban timelessness. The scene is Charlotte, North Carolina, but as you're reading, ponder the Ohio River Bridges Project and the way this financially onerous slice of "mobility" wrongheadedness represents a veritable coup d'état on behalf of suburban power elites in Indyucky.

Developers look to urban areas, not suburbs, for growth, by Elly Portillo (Charlotte Observer)

 ... Behind the shift are changing demographics and consumer preferences, said Chris Leinberger, a developer and real estate consultant who has worked on projects in Charlotte with well-known developers such as the late Henry Faison.

“We used to think walkable urban use was a niche market,” said Leinberger, who is also a professor at George Washington University. “Now, it is the market.”

Broken Sidewalk thoughtfully provides a companion piece, illustrating Louisville's decision-making "blunders" in the 1960s and 1970s. The important point in this for me is that Southern Indiana's leaders at the time cut their tactics from the same sad cloth. In New Albany, hallowed personages like Garnet Inman, Warren Nash and a whole crop of bankers and civic leaders leveled buildings, paved parking lots, ran interstate-intensity one-way streets through the city, and always sought to keep the undesirables warehoused in controllable areas, apart from the respectable folks.

Why do we venerate and honor these people? Shouldn't they be arraigned and subjected to show trials? After all, today their ilk are the ones we must battle every unresponsive step of the way, seeking to pry slight measures of progress from their cold, clueless, unresponsive hands.

When they pretend to be "democrats" -- well, that's even worse.

Worst: Louisville went crazy with the wrecking ball in the name of “Urban Renewal”

We're still paying the price of poor urban vision from the 1960s and '70s.

[Editor’s Note: Louisville has made some pretty amazing achievements in its first 238 years—but it’s made a few blunders along the way, too. This week, we’re launching a new contributed mini-series documenting eight of the best and eight of the worst decisions, ideas, or projects that have profoundly affected the city. This list is by no means complete—and you may have strong opinions of your own about what should be on the best or worst lists. Share your thoughts in the comments section below. Or check out the complete Best/Worst list here.]

A policy that was intended to improve the quality of life for city-dwellers actually resulted in expediting the social and cultural deterioration of urban Louisville. We’re talking about, of course, the now-infamous urban renewal programs of the mid-20th century.

Large swaths of Louisville’s Downtown were essentially “scrubbed clean” of any existing structures and replaced by acres of asphalt surface parking lots and generic, bland buildings.

The poor were relocated to barracks-style housing west of Ninth Street that lacked any neighborhood appeal and shunned the variety of uses that made cities tick. In case after case, in city after city, these policies of relocation have failed the public good.
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Thursday, December 17, 2015

Mayor Jeff Gahan announces a new Deputy Mayor.


On Wednesday afternoon, immediately after a group of presumed adults wearing suits donned hard hats, grasped shovels in non-calloused hands and moved dirt around the asphalt, Mayor Jeff Gahan numbly dodged a wheelchair user unable to navigate the blocked Spring Street sidewalk, and told an assembled reporter that he’s making an appointment.

“I don’t have to do this,” yelled Gahan over the noise of passing semis, “but because my administration is dedicated to the business of uniformity, there’ll be a new job called the Deputy Mayor for Neighborhoods.

“We haven’t decided yet who his council proxy will be,” mused the mayor. “Mike Hall already has a job being me at meetings.”

According to Gahan, the key to making a good hire is to pay a competitive salary (“No one will notice if we just TIF it”) and to restrict applicants to those residing outside the city limits.

“Because our goal is to import nice, tidy, germicidal designs from the suburbs to the urban core, it’s vital to have people who understand the value of white bread, if you catch my drift.”

“That nasty dark bread is awful with Velveeta.”

Gahan continued: “See, all those people who’ve never done anything positive for this city talk about the urban books they’ve read, and how other urban places do it better – I mean look, Sellersburg’s a great model for New Albany, and it’s just up the highway.”

Gahan wants his suburban supporters to help him select the perfect Deputy Mayor for Neighborhoods.

“We’re going to have a Facebook contest, and as long as you don’t live in an apartment, you can vote for your favorite – anyone you want so long as it’s Shane or Duggins.”

Somewhere on 5th Street, a dog barked.

“We’ll put all the names in a hat and have a drawing, and first place gets a year’s pass to River Runs Water Park.”

Gahan paused.

“And second place gets two years.”
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Saturday, November 21, 2015

Weyland versus Duggins on two-way property development.

Photo credit: Broken Sidewalk.

Broken Sidewalk tells the story of developer Bill Weyland's latest Louisville rehab project.

City Properties Group is planning to converting the 125-year-old Louisville Chemical Building on the northeast corner of Jefferson Street and Hancock Street into a mixed-use complex of apartments and retail ...

... Weyland is the right fit for this rehab project—he’s probably renovated more old buildings in and around Downtown than anyone else. His most notable projects include the Henry Clay, the Guthrie-Coke Building on Fourth, the Whiskey Row Lofts, and the Glassworks Building. Like these other historic renovations, Weyland plans to help fund his latest project using historic tax credits.

In at least one significant way, Weyland's checklist of necessary preconditions for success differs from those blithely discarded by Jeff Gahan during the run-up to corporate welfare for Flaherty-Collins and its subsidized construction of "luxury" apartments at the former Coyle site in New Albany.

“Jefferson Street needs to be two-way,” Weyland said. The five- to six-lane one-way road behaves more like a superhighway that results in dangerous conditions for all road users. Just last month, two motorists collided at Campbell Street, sending their cars into an uncontrolled spiral that hit a 160-year-old townhouse and causing its eventual demolition.

Insider Louisville heard Weyland make the very same point.

“Everything works in concert with each other,” Weyland told IL. “As we get more residents, there will be additional opportunities for restaurants and retail.” One hindrance, however, could be Jefferson Street, he said. The street needs to be turned into a two-way road, providing people easier access to Liberty Green and the medical district and making it safer by slowing vehicles.

“It is critical from my standpoint,” Weyland said.

In the beginning Flaherty and Collins made similar noises, to the effect that the firm would "prefer" to see Spring and Elm functioning as two-way streets, because a proper street grid would support their investment in luxury housing, not hinder it -- as truck-choked, one-way interstate traffic tends to do.

But just as quickly, New Albany's economic dishevelment czar made it clear that Flaherty and Collins was perfectly content to accept massive public monetary lubricants with or without a rational street grid. It's easy to imagine the back alley conversation:

Flaherty and Collins: Listen, hayseeds, these things work better with the correct infrastructure.

 Duggins: Do you want this pile of money, or not? By the way, the slot for Gahan campaign donations can be found in my right rear pocket.

Our reigning suburban-thinkers? They're not finished yet.
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Thursday, November 12, 2015

ON THE AVENUES: The mayor’s race was about suburban-think versus urban-think. The wrong-think won.

ON THE AVENUES: The mayor’s race was about suburban-think versus urban-think. The wrong-think won.

A weekly web column by Roger A. Baylor.

On election night, a friend in the beer biz messaged me.

John: Rooting for you from Chicago. Good luck.

Roger: Thanks, I'll need it. Democrats already have the cemeteries locked tight.

(John’s as hardcore a Chicagoan as it gets. He’s been in selling beer since forever, and knows where all those bodies are buried, too. We proceeded to have a chat via the marvel of electronics devices)

J: What’s the early returns?

R: Short version: I lost.

J: That sucks. Sorry Brutha. Don't give up the good fight.

R: Don't worry. I might have to go underground for a while, but being an underdog never gets tiring.

J: You've been underground since I've known you, lol.

R: Underground has levels ... like a parking garage.

J: The deeper it goes, the uglier it gets.

R: Just as Dante informs us.

J: Dante Bichette?

(That’s gut laugh hilarious; either you get it, or not. John bleeds baseball, hence the punch line)

J: You got big balls to try it. Lesser men prevail, I find as I get older. The Peter Principle speaks louder today than ever before.

R: Thanks, man. All one can do is get up, dust off and resume throwing punches.

J: Now go get fucked up.

(In short, these were words I needed to hear)

---

For eight months, I concede to having juggled conflicting emotions. Every time I was asked why I wanted to be mayor, it was necessary to suppress my inner Groucho Marx. After all, is anyone gullible enough to trust a person who really, really WANTS to be mayor of this or any other city?

It’s self-evident: There must be something terribly wrong with anyone who would seek the office, although the monetization’s undoubtedly savory, as the incumbent has proven.

Seeing as raw ambition’s never been my default setting, I eventually fell back on a long-term strategy for life in general terms: I work my side of the street, and you work yours. Do what you can with what you have, and never forget to have a life along the way.

I’d have liked to win, and failing that, it would have been nice to get more votes, but what I really, really wanted to achieve in this campaign for mayor was to locate, gather and articulate platform planks for a third way of local governance, in a future tense, and in the hope that they might still come in handy, if not for me, then for someone else.

I believe we succeeded in doing just that, and this achievement soothes the final result. Given local political tradition, the process of introducing subject matter ranging beyond the aptitude of one’s high school graduating class always was going to be tantamount to swimming against the tsunami.

We were a handful of insurgents without substantive financing, and yet almost 500 of you took notice, thought about it, and agreed with us. Thanks again. Next time we'll do better. Perhaps it’s little consolation at the moment, but I firmly believe we’ll be proven right in the end.

Over the short term, a whopping 53 percent of the 20-odd percent of registered voters in New Albany bothering to cast ballots chose surface glitz over substance and reality. Walt Disney’s hold is pervasive, but pyramid schemes never last.

We can hope only that when the hollow shell of Gahanism collapses into the ash heap of intellectual and fiscal history, the city still will have the opportunity to correct his many and manifest failures.

---

The year 2015 has been as intense a personal education curve as I’ve experienced in a while, and whatever comes next, I wouldn’t trade the insights gained for anything. Chief among them is a veritable epiphany as to the reasons why we keep fighting the same civic battles, over and over. It’s also a unifying theme to 11 years of analysis at NA Confidential, culminating in the mayoral bid.

It explains almost every misdirected act of the Gahan term, from Main Street beautification (nice flowers absent engineering benefits for the whole of the street grid) to feel-good parks lust (we need high tech rec centers for team sports, not places to ride bikes). It also says quite a lot about the thought processes of all the rest of the mayoral teams preceding the current one, probably dating back to the 1970s.

It’s all about suburban-think versus urban-think. The wrong-think won. Then again, it always has. 

Without going too deeply into the historical patterns of suburbanization, we all understand that especially after World War II, a far-flung development pattern exploded across the American landscape. The seemingly limitless possibilities of inexpensive automobile ownership were almost evangelical in nature. The suburbs would render urban living obsolete apart from those too lazy or poor to pursue alternatives, and so laden with hidden costs, we expanded outward in all available directions.

Today, many of us see sprawl differently, particularly in a context of urban infrastructure cost efficiency. At the time, when it was happening all around them, urban power elites in places like New Albany first reacted by playing the role of the deer in your headlights. Then, after decades of flailing and inertia, they finally reacted to the gospel of suburbanism by converting to it, having concluded they were on the wrong side of history.

If you can’t beat it, join it. They were mistaken, but generations of city governments here and elsewhere reacted by applying suburban precepts to what were, and remain today, urban conditions. Political systems evolved accordingly, monetizing decay management.

In short, how often do slumlords live in the same neighborhoods as their properties?

You don't think they make political donations, do you?

In New Albany, urban density was gutted for the sake of suburban traffic patterns and auto-centric imperatives. We warehoused low-income people in housing projects rather than expose the "right" people to the "wrong" ones. We sought to cure downtown retail woes by negating the best conditions for downtown retail, and imposing mall-think.

Again and again, mayor after mayor, council after council, to the present day. Never have more than a few of them grasped what it means to exist as a densely populated urban area in need of little more than thoughtful policies to assisting its function as our founders originally intended.

Now, with a mother lode of alternative strategies available to rectify the imbalance, our local political system remains firmly embedded in suburban envy. It’s more than just a revenue stream for the aggrandizement of politicians (see Coffey, Wizard). It’s a set of mental assumptions that presuppose all planning and decision-making.

It’s what I ran for mayor against. Not against Gahan, but against his political worldview.

I’ve never met Darin Givens, an urbanist from Atlanta, but he does a fine job here of explaining what we campaigned for. New Albany isn't Atlanta, and yet if you substitute one place name for another, there is remarkable symmetry.

City leaders bend over backwards as they prioritize mega developments like stadiums and corporate relocations. That’s when they bring out the big guns and use all the available municipal tools for making something happen — rezoning, tax breaks, grants, partnerships, fees… whatever it takes.

Leaders are likewise capable of prioritizing things like safe streets, blight, disused land near transit stations, geographic segregation of economic classes, the need for comprehensive services for people experiencing homelessness … all of this and more. Those issues should be getting the priority treatment.

Atlantans: don’t be afraid to step up and lead with boldness or to support others who will.

Stand up to the voices that dismiss ideas about good urbanism by claiming “that won’t work here” or “Atlanta isn’t that kind of place.” A great city is never a single kind of place. It has multiple personalities that all serve a diverse and changing population. Innovations in urbanism can have a positive impact on all those people and help the city roll with the changes in a sustainable way.

If a leader tells you that Atlanta is “world class” because it has attractions and offices that appeal to suburbanites, challenge that view. A great city center doesn’t exist to serve suburbs. Instead, it’s a livable place that carefully juggles the needs of residents and visitors together, while prioritizing the former rather than the latter.

Welcome to the next four years. We may be down, but we're not out.

---

Recent columns:

November 5ON THE AVENUES: Confusion, exile, ignobility and resistance.

October 29: ON THE AVENUES: A year later, the backroom politics of pure spite at Haughey’s Tavern still reek.

October 28: ON THE AVENUES REWOUND: How many businesses already have died because of City Hall’s street grid procrastination?

October 26: ON THE AVENUES EXTRA: Gahan says speeding sucks, but street safety can wait until after he is re-elected.

October 22: ON THE AVENUES: My career as a double naught capitalist.

October 19: ON THE AVENUES REWOUND: Courtesy bicycle to the Hotel Silly (2010, 2013).

October 15: ON THE AVENUES: To the New Albanians, each and every one.

October 8: ON THE AVENUES: There’s an indie twist to this curmudgeon’s annual Harvest Homecoming column.

October 1: ON THE AVENUES: No more fear, Jeff.
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