Sprawled Out: The Search for Community in the American Suburb

Oil Prices: Reality still hasn't descended upon mainstream media

Milwaukee isn't the only region in denial when it comes to the upcoming crisis. A confused nation waits for Dr. Phil to tell them how to feel:

All this reality content is beginning to penetrate the collective consciousness in the US, but the result is mostly panic or paralyzed disbelief rather than any set of intelligent responses. For example, I got a call from one of Katie Couric's producers at CBS news on Friday. Somehow, they had noticed that oil prices were becoming a problem in America. They called me for a comment. The scary part was they were clearly treating the issue as a "lifestyle" story. Did I think more suburbanites would move downtown? And would that be a good thing...?  They have no %$#ing clue how broadly and deeply these dynamics will affect the life of this nation, or even our ability to remain a nation. Also, by the way, this demonstrates how the nightly network news has become the equivalent of the old "women's pages" of the daily newspapers.

James Howard Kunstler, Cluster$%$ Nation

Was that so hard? 27th Street Committee launches website with a sane name

south27thstreet.com.

How much did THAT name cost?

And these clever guys went out and locked down all the domain names with "Boomgaard" in it, and were prepared to pay giant money to the holder of domain rights to one particular version of the name.

Whoever thought of south27thstreet.com - buy that person a cold beer or their preferred beverage.

They need a new copywriter, though. Whoever wrote this:

....this up-and-coming area has all the amenities of a great Milwaukee suburb – including easy freeway and interstate access, commercial development and a sense of character.

... is either in on the joke or hasn't recently visited a suburb ("sense of character"?)

So, ladies and gentlemen of Franklin and Oak Creek, allow me to list your amenities:
- easy freeway and interstate access
- commercial development
- a "sense of character"(!)

That's all, move along.

So, so sad.

"Why are streets and land uses in postwar suburbs arranged so that everyone has to have a car to reach even the most routine daily destinations?"

From Planning Quote of the Day:

"Why do we lay out subdivisions that make it impossible for a ten-year old to walk to a store for a Popsicle or a loaf of bread? Why are streets and land uses in postwar suburbs arranged so that everyone has to have a car to reach even the most routine daily destinations? Wouldn't it be better if everyday necessities were easy to reach and if the streets and sidewalks were designed as convivial places for meeting friends and neighbors?"

-- Philip Langdon, "New Development, Traditional Patterns" (in Planning Commissioners Journal #36)

FLICKR set of Charlette, NC transit photos

PA130097, originally uploaded by davereid2.

Thanks to Dave Reid at UrbanMilwaukee.com for the great shots.

The very definition of obstinacy: I-94 widening

The very definition of obstinacy; in the face of an obvious oil crisis, throw $1.9 billion (BILLION!) at more asphalt while at the same time further crippling any possibility of sane mass transit that would address the upcoming oil crisis.

Can you imagine these minds addressing supply issues during WWII? "Rationing? Why it's every American's RIGHT to hoard newsprint and hosery!"

Be sure to read Ms. Schulte's blog, Milwaukee Rising, regularly.

Via Milwaukee Journal Sentinel:

I-94 widening will bring woes

By GRETCHEN SCHULDT

It's unfortunate that Wisconsin Department of Transportation Secretary Frank Busalacchi is rejecting his department's own finding that widening I-94 in Racine and Kenosha counties will not improve traffic flow. Busalacchi, instead, in his stubborn support of expansion, is investing his faith in a 5-year-old, politically driven, fundamentally flawed and inaccurate report by the Southeastern Wisconsin Regional Planning Commission.

Did I mention that SEWRPC put a road builder lobbyist on the committee overseeing the report and that the consulting firm that helped the agency determine that freeway expansion is needed is the same one that the DOT later hired to help it determine that freeway expansion is needed?

Here are the facts about the North-South I-94 expansion project:

• It will hurt the redevelopment of older commercial districts in Milwaukee, while spurring sprawl in southern suburbs.

• It will increase by 50% the impervious area devoted to the freeway in Milwaukee County, leading to more polluted runoff. The DOT, by the way, has not proposed any methods for dealing with potential flooding that results from the additional lanes.

• The proposed expansion will bring the freeway closer to homes and schools, especially in Milwaukee, subjecting residents and students to more illness-inducing pollutants.

• The expansion will make necessary the construction of more ugly sound walls. Conversely, it will increase traffic noise in areas that do not qualify for sound walls.

• The state hasn't even figured out how to pay for the project. It says only, "We'll figure it out later."

• The project will destroy a large amount of wetlands, and the state has not determined how to replace them in the affected river watersheds.

• The project will destroy needed floodplain.

• The project will increase greenhouse gases; the DOT is not proposing any mitigation of that issue.

• The project will provided only minimal traffic improvements throughout the corridor.

• The traffic projections the study uses are based on unrealistically low gas prices ($2.30 a gallon in 2005 with a 3% inflation rate built in - that's $2.51 in 2008).

And, of course, the project will eat up revenue needed for transit. Busalacchi says that highway money can't be used for transit, but that is an extremely cynical, misleading argument that he should be embarrassed to make. The state can reduce its highway spending and modify its budget to increase transit funding. It's that simple.

If the DOT doesn't engage in wasteful highway projects, it doesn't need highway money from a federal fund that is rapidly going broke anyway.

Gretchen Schuldt of Milwaukee is co-chair of Citizens Allied for Sane Highways.

"It's time for Milwaukee to get on board before our long-term competitiveness and quality of life are left at the gas station waiting for the big numbers on the sign to get smaller."

Great piece in Sunday's paper from Steve Filmanowitz of the Congress for the New Urbanism. It will not be read closely by any of the old guard here in Franklin, I wager.

Noteworthy automatically-generated ad in the Journal Sentinel web page for this article: Countrywide mortgage services (see "The mortgage lending crisis explained").

From Sunday's Milwaukee Journal Sentinel:

Design, build communities more intelligently

By STEPHEN FILMANOWICZ

Soaring gas prices have revealed an inconvenient truth about the communities we've been building around greater Milwaukee: They're designed perfectly for the cheap oil of years past.

Spreading subdivisions, malls, office parks and schools along highways made some sense back in the "Happy Motoring" days of $1-per-gallon gas - and back when the earth's climate seemed stable. But designing communities this way leads people to rack up lots of costly, carbon-generating driving miles, about 23,000 per year for the average U.S. household.

With the world's thirst for oil threatening to outpace exploration, the smartest thing we can do is design cities and towns to ease both our pain at the pump and the pain we inflict on the planet.

Fortunately, these communities don't have to be invented. Examples in our backyard include downtown Whitefish Bay, the older parts of West Allis and Milwaukee's fast-growing Third and Fifth wards. Here, stores, schools and often workplaces can be found around the corner - or even downstairs - from residences. Trips are shorter and don't always require a car.

Experts say that neighborhoods and their transportation options play a major role in determining our vulnerability to gas prices and our contributions to climate change. Even rail critic Randal O'Toole acknowledges that when you look not just at Priuses but at all cars, minivans and light trucks on the road, these vehicles generate 70% more CO2 per passenger mile than light rail systems and twice as much carbon as commuter rail like the proposed KRM line. They use 50% more energy per passenger mile than either commuter or heavy rail like Chicago's "L."

And because traditional neighborhoods conveniently mix uses, the daily distances people travel - whether by car, transit, bicycle or on foot - drop significantly. A transit ride becomes just one aspect of reduced car dependency. A 2007 study by the American Public Transit Association found that public transportation is so closely linked with efficient neighborhoods that every passenger mile on transit is actually associated with two miles of eliminated automobile travel. That means 37 billion fewer pounds of carbon in the atmosphere each year.

To see these differences at work around Milwaukee, explore the new interactive maps created by the Center for Neighborhood Technology for the Brookings Institution (htaindex.cnt.org). The maps use neighborhood characteristics across 52 metropolitan areas to calculate the amount of driving and transit use that result (based on detailed Census surveys).

A click shows, for instance, that in the subdivisions north of Highway 60 beyond Cedarburg, average households drive an estimated 22,386 miles per year, pretty typical for our exurbs. Around downtown Wauwatosa, the figure is 12,291 miles. In the Third Ward, it's 9,344. At Cass and Kilbourn, it's 7,974. In a compact Chicago suburb like Evanston with great transit service, these driving miles (and resulting emissions) are lower still. And the report has eye-opening comparisons of what happens when you factor transportation costs into monthly budgets. Those lured to "drive till they qualify" in far-flung subdivisions shoulder a heavy burden.

Fortunately, many southeastern Wisconsin leaders now recognize the value of connecting the region's walkable neighborhoods - and fostering new ones - with rail transit. Homebuyers recognize their convenience and value, too.

Yet in too many places, zoning still prohibits traditional neighborhoods. Whether it's funky Brady Street or Main Street USA, you can't build it. Transportation policies hurt, too. While transit projects usually require a local funding match, there are no such requirements for highway projects. So the state is plunging ahead with a $500 million widening and redesign of I-94 from Milwaukee south to the state line (on top of $1.4 billion simply for rebuilding), even though the project's environmental impact statement says much of that stretch is "not currently encumbered by congestion" so "reductions in travel time will be minimal."

Meanwhile, proposed commuter rail waits for local governments to create a new or expanded tax to cover "their share." If we stay on this course, future generations will wonder why the Doyle administration and Legislature invested so many tax dollars upgrading the transportation system of the dying cheap oil era, while starving the alternatives that offered relief and long-term efficiency.

Of course, it's more than future generations that are taking notice. Business investment is flowing to energy-efficient locations protected from gas-price risk. If we were connected to Chicago's Metra rail system, we might better see what's happening at the other end. BP Amoco announced this month that it is moving 1,000 jobs downtown from Chicago's western suburbs, accommodating "the desire of its workers" for an urban environment within "walking distance of rental housing and condos." BP joins United Airlines and CDW in moving jobs to the Loop to benefit from transit and proximity benefits that save employees many millions on gas and parking.

It's time for Milwaukee to get on board before our long-term competitiveness and quality of life are left at the gas station waiting for the big numbers on the sign to get smaller.

Stephen Filmanowicz of Milwaukee is communications director for the Congress for the New Urbanism, which advances walkable, neighborhood-based development. He uses a variety of modes - train, car, bicycle and teleconference - to commute to Chicago.

McMansion blight

Clip from the film Subdivided

Urban Archaeology

You'll want to check out this fascinating article and accompanying photos at Racine Post

But first, Sixth Street was our historic Plank Road:

There's a phone line down at the bottom...

Like an archaeological dig, Racine's Sixth Street utility work and repaving project is  exposing the city's history. Unlike archaeologists, however, the construction crews are destroying what they find.

Not that there is much to save, beyond some rotting planks and brick pavers upon which the city's commercial reputation was built; even a hollowed piece of wooden water pipe here and there. All have been uncovered by the Sixth Street road construction crews -- and for the most part unceremoniously hauled away to the landfill to be crushed and buried.

Sixth Street, layer by layer...

Some of the bricks have been recovered by adjoining storefront owners. Alongside the construction path today, a few small piles of rotting planks -- four or five feet long, maybe 6" by 8" in dimension -- lay by the sidewalk.

Kate Remington, whose concrete art studio overlooks -- and shortly will become part of the reconstruction project -- brought it to our attention Thursday morning. She took a portion of a plank to the mayor, suggesting that a cross-section of the road would make an interesting historical marker along the street.

"The highway came to be known as the Janesville Plank Road, and it is said to have been the first roadway constructed of planks to be laid westward from the shores of Lake Michigan. It began at Main Street and ran from the square along Sixth and out the government road. The plank pavement was considered a great improvement, a boon to travel and shipping. Stagecoaches used it daily, carrying passengers and mail on a regular schedule, and farmers drove their wagons in to the city filled with sacks of grain or piled high with hay, to be dumped for sale in the public square.

"The plank road was responsible in no small part for the growth of the City of Racine and, most particularly, of the Sixth Street business district...

"The Historic Sixth Street Business District was listed in the National Register of Historic Places on March 24, 1988."

(More at Racine Post.)

KunstlerCast #10: Children of the Burbs

The sidewalk-less, shoulder-less route to school in Franklin, Wisconsin. The reason very few kids are free to walk to school even if they live 1000 yards away.

KunstlerCast #10: Children of the Burbs:

Is raising children in suburbia a form of child abuse? What happens to developing people when public space is the berm between the Wal-Mart and the K-Mart? When school looks like a maximum  security "facility"? When parents are chauffeurs?  James Howard Kunstler addresses these topics and speaks of his own experiences growing up in the suburbs of Long Island and in Manhattan.

(Info about program and theme music at KunstlerCast.com)

Direct Download (7 MB):
KunstlerCast_10.mp3

(Via KunstlerCast.)

The Geography of Nowhere

Time, Personal Happiness and Sprawl

Personal Happiness:

''It is much more common to complain about time or money than to fume about urban design. In part this is because we think our miseries as being caused by personal problems rather than social problems Americans often say, 'There aren't enough hours in the day', rather than, 'I'm frantic because the distance between my home and my workplace is too great'.'

Source: Dolores Hayden, Redesigning The American Dream, The Future of Housing, Work and Family Life.

(Via Slow Home.)