Sprawled Out: The Search for Community in the American Suburb

Cul-de-sacs: Eating your property taxes while eliminating connectivity

If you live on the typical suburban cul-de-sac, as I do (that's mine in the photo above), snow events like the one we experienced today drive home another expensive consequence of suburban non-planning: The intricate, time-and-fuel-consuming snowplow ballet that is required in order to clear the huge circle of non-permeable surface created by cul-de-sacs.

It's a tedious job, to say the least. Trucks designed and engineered to generally go forward have their gears mashed back and forth as the driver struggles to push piles of snow off a skating rink-sized area. In the time it takes for a plow to clear a single cul-de-sac street, the same crew or driver could have finished six streets of the traditional pattern.

If you've looked closely at the City of Franklin's 2010 budget -- and have followed deliberations as the common council struggles to keep municipal services reasonably effective without significantly raising property taxes -- you are aware that fuel, vehicle and crew expenditures for snow removal are already necessarily cut to the bone.

These are cuts you may have already noticed in the past couple of years as your street didn't seem to get cleared as quickly. Or, as in my case, your mailbox may have been clipped as drivers hurry to cover more ground with fewer resources.

 
No one bats 1.000.

So - want to venture a guess as to exactly how many cul-de-sacs the city of Franklin's Highway/Parks Department is responsible for clearing, salting and de-icing each and every time it snows?

A couple dozen - 22?

Maybe fifty?

One hundred?

Nope.

DOUBLE that last guess. And add another 11.

211 cul-de-sacs.

That's 211 times that city trucks and city crews have to do a job that takes six times as long as it would take in a traditional, grid neighborhood.

Six times as much fuel.

Six times as many man-hours.

Six times as much mechanical wear-and-tear (in reality, much, much more as the trucks must shift into reverse repeatedly on each and every cul-de-sac).

Multiplied by 211.

In 2009 the city budgeted for $40,000 in overtime funds. Expenditures as of 7/30/09 were already $53,973.14, with $70,100 estimated as the year-end total. The 2010 budget requests $58,262.

The Highway Department notes that they face a 42% increase in the cost of road salt for 2010 as well.

Cross your fingers.

Still think sprawl and poor design doesn't cost you money?

See also: The Cul-de-sac Safety Myth

Sad Suburban Reality: Investment in anything beyond the area patrolled by your riding lawn mower is socialism

Why are today's suburban landscapes devoid of public spaces, connective roadways and trails, and other shared amenities? Because each house aspires to be its own gated community.

We've been made to believe that, somehow, $4,500 for a personal Rainbow Play Structure in the backyard is preferable to an $35 yearly bump in shared property taxes to fund, for instance, a network of community parks that would in turn attract commercial development capable of easing the tax burden on private property owners. (The play structure in my backyard, by the way, is a Rainbow knock-off. The "soon-to-be completed" park promised nearby is now a dozen years late.)

But, "You take care of your own."

Almost imperceptibly, the societal idea of what it means to be a resident of a community seems to have changed; it is more common now to speak of taxpayers than of citizens.... In gated communities and other privatized enclaves, the local community that many residents identify with is the one within the gates. Their homeowner association dues are like taxes; and their responsibility to their community, such as it is, ends at that gate.... One city official in Plano, Texas, summed up his view of the attitude of the gated community residents in his town: "I took care of my responsibility, I'm safe in here, I've got my guard gate; I've paid my [homeowner association] dues, and I'm responsible for my streets. Therefore, I have no responsibility for the commonweal, because you take care of your own."

- Fortress America: Gated Communities in the United States, Edward Blakely and Mary Gail Snyder

Movie theaters in corn fields and empty grocery store shells: Time for a more proactive Economic Development Council?

This is a four year-old picture, but nothing has changed. Located across from the Northwestern Mutual campus on 27th and Drexel; 1.200 employees headquartered across the street(!) couldn't keep a restaurant in business here.

Communities can be shaped by choice, or they can be shaped by chance. We can keep on accepting the kind of communities we get, or we can start creating the kind of communities we want.

— Richard Moe, National Trust for Historic Preservation

After enduring fairly alarming comments by fellow commissioners at Thursday's meeting, I'm compelled to prepare a presentation for the next gathering of the Economic Development Commission on how principles of Smart Growth drive economic development and sustainability.

Our discussion -- held with three members absent -- regarded possible incentives for developers wanting to build in Franklin. I am generally against subsidies; however, I brought up the idea of offering certain incentives in exchange for "placemaking" considerations by a potential builder or developer. Locating in the City Civic Center district, for instance, rather than out on the outskirts of town; adding neighborhood-access amenities; creating an innovative site plan; revitalizing an empty property; etc.

More than one of my fellow commissioners disagreed out of hand, riffing on the "Business will tell you where it wants to go" mantra. In other words, Let the chips fall where they may; let developers build where and how they see fit.

And how's that worked for us so far?

Well, Franklin's unofficial motto remains "there's no 'there' there." So much for a "sense of place."

The city budget shortfall, strained by the demands of sprawled infrastructure, requires service cut after service cut - including possible public safety cutbacks.

We have a newish movie theater complex built out in the middle of a cornfield in proximity to... nothing. Go catch a flick - then get back in your car.

The city is dotted with roads that end with no rhyme or reason. "We're waiting for a developer to eventually ..."

We've allowed a regionally-owned grocer (Wyndham Village Sendik's) to be driven out of business in under a year.

There is no "support local businesses" initiative in place.

The former Sentry grocery store, a huge building, is vacant. Walgreens next door is threatening to tear it down to facilitate a drive-thru window.

Children who live less than the length of a football field away from Pleasant View Elementary have to take a bus to a building they can see from their back yard. The school is nearly 50 years old, and the problem has yet to be solved.

Franklin is home to a single coffee shop, Moondance (with great food, by the way), which is unfortunately located on 27th street rather than "inside" the city.

Franklin's single "inside the city" local coffee shop and meeting space, 5-Star, remains vacant next to an also-vacant martini bar in a brand new building.

The "City Civic Center" is devoid of any manner of "third place" development that would augment and invigorate the Public Library and/or spur further investment there. (I had to actually debate my fellow commissioners in order to simply pass a motion, at the mayor's request, recommending that the city consider a vacant site next to the library for a coffee shop/co-working facility concept I'd advocated. Even though the concept originated in the EDC (via me), there was still one "nay" vote and an attempt by a commissioner to add a superfluous "spend no money on this" amendment to a mere recommendation to the council motion!)

And on and on ...

The simple truth regarding "business will tell you where it wants to go" is that any land a developer happens to own or have access to is always the best place to build, as far as the developer is concerned (see Shoppes at Wyndham Village). The developer then hires a site consultant to work backwards from the fait accompli. 

That's why we have a movie theater in the middle of a corn field, and why we had two Sendik's grocery stores within spitting distance of each other.

And why, in Franklin, we have none of the multi-use public space amenities and "third places" that are on the wish lists of home buyers and businesses looking to take root.

In their well-regarded book on local economic development, Planning Local Economic Development: Theory and Practice, authors Edward Blakely and Ted Bradshaw note that “industry and business regard livability as an important locational factor.” and that local governments need to “identify their quality of life attributes, build on them and effectively promote them to the business community.” *

That means "incentivising" developers to think outside their strip-mall comfort zone (again, see Shoppes at Wyndham Village) so they'll work with the city to create inspiring, interconnected places and spaces that will, in turn, attract further investment. That's how you strengthen the tax base and lower your citizens' property taxes.

The current economy places great value, for instance, on proximity and clustering. Placing jobs, homes, shops and recreation in walkable proximity increases business opportunities, helps create a much-needed sense of place, and can attract talented workers.*

Failing to invest in acknowledged quality of life attributes like walkability and placemaking can have dire consequences for a local, state or regional economy. In 2003, for example, the Brookings Institution found that Pennsylvania’s land development practices -- which, like Franklin's, had the effect of decentralizing growth and ignoring community-building -- contributed to the state’s loss of young people and its subsequent job and wage stagnation.*

The laissez-faire approach has been tried, and it failed. Time to be proactive.

* [See http://www.iedconline.org/ for the report, Economic Development and Smart Growth]

The death of sprawl (and the death of editorial responsibility in local news)

New McMansions are demolished in Victorville, CA earlier this year to free the city from liability resulting from possible vandalism, crime and fire danger. (LA Times photo)

I have before me the city of Franklin "Mayor's 2010 Recommended Budget," and it's not a pretty picture. Services are going to have to be cut; fire and police positions unfilled; city staff thinned.

Still think suburban sprawl - "planning" dictated by developers' schemes and their personal ROI - is sustainable? How about another movie theater or gym a mile and a half out of town, standing alone in the middle of a field?

There will be a public hearing on the proposed budget, by the way, on Tuesday, September 17th at City Hall.

Speaking of budget coverage: Another of the unfortunate results of dwindling local coverage by the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel is the fact that it's become clear that you cannot count on the weekly FranklinNow newspaper to provide clear-eyed coverage of ongoing budget issues. Editor Mark Maley thinks it appropriate, for instance, to reprint in the paper the blog entries of a Republican state senator's aide whose ongoing income and media aspirations are dependent upon maintaining the party line. Even after I successfully forced him to acknowledge his blogger's place of employment in his blog bio (which makes clear his particular bias) Mr. Maley continues to identify this gentleman in print as nothing more than "a Franklin resident," robbing the readers of any manner of context.

When did Mr. Maley relieve himself of his editorial responsibility to his readership?

•••

With our tortured budget in mind, I'm passing along a great two-part post on the connection between our current economic situation and decades of government-aided sprawl.

Some excerpts:

Note the New York Times on November 6 (p.A13):

New research about the recession has also bolstered one of transit's central premises -- that highway-driven sprawl is bad for a city's economic health. Recent studies at the University of Utah, for example, concluded that foreclosure rates in the Washington area were much lower in counties served by the Metro rail system, compared with the next ring of counties farther out, and that home prices in Phoenix had also fallen in direct proportion to the distance from downtown.

...

This is the first time in US history that sprawled low-density suburbs or exurbs have fallen faster in average value than city or inner-suburban areas; suddenly "Smart Growth" is more than a niche market or trend--it will be at the core of financially successful planning and development.

Links:

Death of Sprawl

Death of Sprawl pt 2

Building on good bones vs. making room for a drive-thru

The Former Herda's True Value Hardware Store in St. Martins

With last week's Economic Development Commission meeting canceled due to lack of a quorum (mass illness), I was able to attend and listen in on an organizational meeting of a group called Franklin Citizens for Community Development (formerly known as "Franklin First"), a project organized by blogger Greg Kowalski and James Mullarkey (a Franklin Community Development Authority Commissioner). I wanted to get a sense of their intent.

I listened as they discussed possible mission statements. At first, I heard a lot of "we need a water park," "we need a performing arts center," "why aren't we Mequon?" "high-end amenities!" etc.

I brought with me a picture of the empty hardware store down in St. Martins, which is a beautiful building, and reminded them that the city has some good "bones" to build on; their organization would do well, in other words, to exploit current assets before crying out for more new construction. This seemed to be enthusiastically received.

I also introduced the term "sustainable" to their discussion. One look at the city's budget will tell you that the current way of doing things is not going to work for much longer. Perhaps Citizens for Community Development could use their energy and voices to promote the small steps that are needed in order to create a more economically vibrant city. For instance, promoting small businesses in town is an excellent way to enrich the local economy: For every dollar spent at a local business, 45% is reinvested locally. Spent a dollar at a corporate chain and a mere 15% is reinvested locally.

(We will hopefully be talking more, by the way, about the building above on this blog in the near future.)

Meanwhile, Kowalski's Franklin Today blog reports a rumor that the now-vacant Sentry store on 76th and Rawson may be purchased by neighboring Walgreens, and - amazingly - razed to make room for a drive-thru window.

That's right: Torn down for a drive-thru window.

The bar is once again lowered.

Wondering why we don't bother building community amenities anymore?

I'm long overdue in noting the unfortunate end of the Franklin Cultural Center board's efforts to fund and build an arts center here. The organization was chaired by Don Dorson (read his letter after the jump). So much for local community amenities.

I also just started reading a newly published book called THE CUL-DE-SAC SYNDROME: TURNING AROUND THE UNSUSTAINABLE AMERICAN DREAM. And there's Franklin - a favorite for authors and journalists needing an object lesson in sprawl economics -  on page 53:

High-growth areas nearly always translate into higher property taxes. One study in Dane County, Wisconsin, where the tax burden is among the highest in the United States, showed that while the county's population grew 12 percent from 1990 to 1996, total property taxes soared 3.57 times faster than the population. Part of the reason is that developers rarely pay the long-term costs of building communities. Impact fees are often minimal.

Once subdivisions are built, builders are off the hook to fund schools parks, roads, and other infrastructure. In fact, the disparity between what a single-family home costs taxpayers and what developers pay is huge. In Franklin, Wisconsin, just south of Milwaukee, each new home cost taxpayers more than $10,000 for schools and services in 1992 (it was considerably more by 2008). The developer's contribution: $813 per home. Impact fees vary from locale to locale, but they never cover the full cost of development.

Suburban strip malls: There's no "there" there

Franklin's own Shoppes at Wyndham Village -- Good news: A handy Target store! Bad news: In no danger of being named one of the Great Places in America

Retrofitting Suburbia on suburban strip malls:

At best, the promise of freedom inherent to the road and the promise of self actualization promoted by consumerism endow the strip with the capacity to satisfy a broad range of individual needs and desires. At worst, the collective aspirations expressed by the commercial strip speak of the willing suppression of local identity by national systems of corporate investment and mass consumption.

We dare not observe International Walk to School Day in Franklin, Wisconsin

Today is International Walk to School Day.

But not in Franklin, Wisconsin, where nearby is still far away. There is no ambiguity about it: The County Sheriff has determined that all of Franklin School District is in an unusually hazardous transportation area.

How could the mortgage crisis get worse in suburbia? How about some BRAIN SWELLING DISEASE?

Via Slate: The Big Money:

Filmmakers Andrew and Leslie Cockburn discuss a scene from their new documentary American Casino. The scene shows how a sea of abandoned swimming pools in California has become a mosquito Club Med.

ALL Philly libraries set to close October 2nd

Yup - all of them. as reported at Philly.com:

Closure notices are going up at physical libraries and recreation centers throughout the day. The facilities would be closed Oct. 2 if budget relief from the state doesn't come through.

More at: PhillyBurbs.com:  Action needed NOW to keep Philly libraries open: