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

Fountains of Franklin: No tenants, but looking to build. Here's a suggestion -

(Image above from Cooltown Studios)

Let me make a (in light of my current situation, rather selfish) suggestion to the developers of Fountains of Franklin: TWO STORY BUILDINGS with co-working spaces up top - - WiFi, phones, electric, desks and chairs - - that collect nominal monthly/weekly/daily "user fees" whether or not the commercial spaces below are leased. Maybe a handy FedEx Kinko's Office and Print Center moves in. Starbucks loves these gatherings of coffee-swilling laptop pounders who can be counted on to show up every day (better yet, let a locally-owned coffeeshop get in there).

Imagine - - actual all-day foot traffic! People coming and going! Impromtu meetings in the greenspace! Bike racks!

Truth is, you should have done that with the ANDY'S building, which now has attractive empty windows on either side of the service station section of the building - no tenants.

C'mon - think outside the box already. Shoppes at Wyndham Village is certainly no threat to do something the least bit innovative or outside their build-a-stripmall kit - - make yourself stand out! Create a positive vibe over there!

Or build another strip mall.

See also:
Third place coffeehouses and coworking sites as economic development tools
Attract more creatives with 'anchored coworking'

From FranklinNow.com:

For the second time in six weeks the Plan Commission conditionally approved a plan for the next phase of the Fountains of Franklin Sendik's development. The Common Council has yet to cast its vote on the plan.

The $25 million to $30 million project would feature two commercial buildings totaling 39,700 square feet. Both structures, which do not have tenants yet, would be adjacent to the 61,500-square-foot Sendik's Fine Foods, a popular store that opened in November.

After reviewing revised architectural plans, the commission on June 19 conditionally approved a revised certified survey map for the next phase of the multiphase development in the 5300 to 5400 blocks of West Rawson Avenue. The commission called for more tweaking, particularly to the larger building's south elevation, which will face Rawson Avenue.

The commission approved a similar plan last month, but it was rejected the the Common Council on May 20.

"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.

"Civilization advances by extending the number of important operations which we can perform without thinking about them."

Excellent point made by a letter writer in the Journal Sentinel recently. Make transit an integral, pleasant part of infrastructure, and people will quickly incorporate it into their daily routines. We're about 12 years behind on this.

Habit-forming transit

Philosopher A.N. Whitehead's rule of thumb: "Civilization advances by extending the number of important operations which we can perform without thinking about them."

Applied to our ecologically threatened lives, this rule of thumb means that an effective green strategy has got to be one that doesn't require anyone ever to think green. Green has got to be built into the infrastructure that shapes our daily routines.

Roads and rails are just such routine-shapers and therefore deserve our full attention and wisest decisions. As we assess their impacts, we can see that a widened road encourages car-centered habits; mass transit encourages greener routines. Forecasting the long-term future, I contend that the road to ecological hell is paved with wide swaths of concrete - not with intentions of any sort.

William Washabaugh
UWM Professor of Anthropology
Milwaukee

The Political Environment: "Light Rail Pays Off In Charlotte: Milwaukee Loses Through Political Timidity"

James Rowen links to a terrific article about transit success by Alex Marshall, author of a favorite book of mine, How Cities Work: Suburbs, Sprawl, and the Road Not Taken. 

Meantime, Milwaukee wallows in dogma-enforced mediocrity. 

You will recall that Charlie Sykes hauled out all the old chestnuts the other day when he attacked me for suggesting that light rail, killed by Tommy Thompson eleven years ago, could have offered motorists in the Milwaukee area today an appealing alternative to $4-per-gallon.

And an economic development tool, with stations and lines that attract residential and commercial investment.

That very scenario is unfolding in one city now constructing light rail - - Charlotte, North Carolina - - with a population of about 625,000 people.

Milwaukee's most recent population estimate is 602,000, or about 5% less than Charlotte's.

Here is the text of a recent story from Governing Magazine about what's happening in Charlotte - - and by contrast, what we are missing because of traditional risk-aversion and one-dimensional thinking and governing here.

More than Just a Train

June 2008 Governing Magazine

By ALEX MARSHALL

I’m starting to believe the hyperbole about the revolution being spawned by Charlotte’s new light-rail line.

Riding the spiffy silver and blue trains of Charlotte's new light-rail line, I watch through the train's windows how cranes and excavators push around dirt for new development projects.

Back when urban junkies — myself included — dreamed that cities could center around train lines, we railed at the formula-oriented developers who could crank out only cul-de-sacs and subdivisions near the newest highway off-ramp.

They ignored the possibility of putting apartment buildings and mixed-used projects beside a trolley line, even if a city could manage to get a rail line built.

No longer.

Now big international companies such as Cherokee Investment Partners, which is involved here in Charlotte, are poised — even eager — to swoop down, buy land and put up pedestrian-friendly businesses and homes around new transit stations.

And they're being joined by plenty of competitors.

This is not to suggest that progress in Charlotte has been easy. Arranging streets, parking, condominiums, shops, plazas and other components of development around transit here involves many choices.

Planners and developers still are struggling to balance the competing needs of parking and active street life in these new projects.

But in terms of a market and a vision, there is increasing clarity. Living near a transit stop has become part of a tried-and-true formula of downtown living.

Charlotte opened its $465 million, 15-stop, 10-mile "blue line" last November.

LYNX, as it is called, has about 13,000 riders daily, well ahead of the low-ball federal projections.

Now, the city and region are working on the many other ideas for lines and extensions.

A total of 7,000 new condominiums are planned along the line.Seeing how successful Charlotte's new line is, I start believing what I first dismissed as hyperbole — that it was revolutionary.

David King, who helped shepherd through assistance for LYNX from the state's transportation department when he was its deputy secretary, says, "Most people don't realize this is going to change the face and shape of Charlotte."

Last November, just weeks before LYNX opened, a grassroots referendum backed by angry anti-tax and anti-transit activists asked voters to repeal the half-cent sales tax for transit funding.

It failed by a two-to-one margin.

"The light-rail vote was a seminal moment," says Mark Peres, the president and editor of Charlotte Viewpoint, a magazine about culture and civic life.

"We were being held hostage by a minority viewpoint. Those people just sort of went away. It's just seismic in its impact."

The original plan for financing the system, however, builds in some difficulties for the future.

Back in the late 1990s, Mecklenburg County and the city of Charlotte banded together with Raleigh, Durham, Greensboro and other cities to push a bill through the legislature allowing counties to propose tax increases to their citizens to fund transit.

Charlotte's voters approved the tax in a referendum. There also emerged an agreement that the state DOT would match local funding, or 25 percent of the total cost.

The federal government was expected to pay 50 percent.Now, as new lines are planned that go beyond Mecklenburg, there is a question of who will pay and how.

Will surrounding counties and localities enact their own sales taxes?

Or is Charlotte expected to be the primary local funder, even for lines outside Mecklenburg County?

And what should the role of the state transportation agency be?

It is, after all, the one agency whose jurisdiction cuts across multiple county lines.

I believe the parties should explore having the state agency take more direct responsibility for building and paying for transit within urban areas.

When the state builds a road, it takes on the burden of coordinating with all the counties it goes through. It buys land, negotiates rights of way and designs and builds a project.

Why should transit be any different?

DOTs are traditionally highway-minded, and North Carolina's is certainly no exception. But bringing these agencies into the transit fold suggests a way to turn them into allies.

Eventually, it makes sense for state transportation money to be portable and to be used for either roads or transit lines, as conditions fit.

Whatever the models developed, it's a near-certainty that the new lines here in Charlotte will be built. There is simply too much interest in this new way of living.

Editorial: "The truest fact of American politics is that no candidate running this year is going to upset or even challenge the suburban sprawl industry. "

Bruce Fisher makes a contention that is hard for many to swallow:

Towns are the problem. Towns disrupt regional planning. Towns insist on going it alone. Towns poach development from cities and from each other. And towns demand that subsidies flow.

Yet, observing "planning strategy" here in Franklin, I see more competitiveness with neighboring municipalities than I see real planning. "If we don't offer this or that incentive or subsidy, Oak Creek will get 'em!" So, another TIF district is born.

Can you imagine the reaction to a proactive regional strategy by the Little Caesars who run suburban enclaves?

From Courant.com:

Ghost-Towns In A Sprawl-Land

By BRUCE FISHER

May 25, 2008

The truest fact of American politics is that no candidate running this year is going to upset or even challenge the suburban sprawl industry.

Sprawl is the endless increase in housing supply, the endless outward redistribution of population from cities and older suburbs, the endless federal subsidy for roads and the endless chatter about "good schools" that is just a code for "schools without poor, visible minorities" that dominates American political life.

Sprawl exists because of a bipartisan commitment to avoiding any talk about reining in the immense power of the real estate industry.

Americans tend to believe that sprawl is a natural consequence of free market forces when, in fact, sprawl is a consequence of decision-making by governments that are responsive to one single industry.

Alas, the people who would lead our national government are not addressing sprawl. That means that the long-avoided discussions America ought to have on race, on climate change, on imported energy, on highway construction and on agriculture will all continue to be lacking a certain element of reality.

Meanwhile, as the silence continues, sprawl continues to rule. And American cities will continue to die.

Folks in Hartford may be forgiven for believing that this is a Hartford phenomenon. The population within the city's boundaries fell from 136,392 in 1980 to 124,387 in 2003.

Did you know that it's San Francisco's problem, too? And Boston's? And Cleveland's?

In 2005, the Census Bureau measured domestic migration — people moving within the United States — from 1990 to 2000, and from 2000 to 2004. The report provides the number of people moving into and out of each state and the 25 largest metropolitan areas.

What that report showed is that thanks to immense national, state and local subsidies, population is being shifted out of cities and out of older suburbs and into sprawling suburbs.

The main incentive for sprawl: silence.

So far, Barack Obama is the only candidate who is speaking about urban America.

But he is speaking within the bounds of the 1960s paradigm about cities. His talk is all about the poverty of the deserted minorities of central cities, and not about the huge countervailing incentives that keep poor people marooned inside central cities.

The Brookings Institution's Center for Metropolitan Studies is trying to change the paradigm by getting thought-leaders across many disciplines to start thinking about cities again — not as enclaves, but as the indispensable centers of regional economies.

Governmentally, cities remain isolates. Former Albuquerque Mayor David Rusk suggests that the cities of the Northeast and Midwest are dying because they are trapped within "little boxes" that have no planning power over their suburbs, and so remain isolated.

That means that suburbs get to make their own planning and spending decisions as if they are independent, supreme, self-sustaining entities rather than components of regional economies.

Towns are the problem. Towns disrupt regional planning. Towns insist on going it alone. Towns poach development from cities and from each other. And towns demand that subsidies flow.

So in a marketplace where there is already a huge oversupply of housing, the availability of county, state and federal funds to build new roads and to maintain an already-overbuilt infrastructure leads to more and more subdivisions being built.

If our politics is going to be run by towns, is there any hope for cities or for metro regions?

There's despair about Washington, because Washington has been stuck in the 1960s mind-set — which is, to be brutal about it, that cities are for the very rich and the very poor, and that suburbs are for white folks, and that there's nothing to be done about it because the free market means that folks are going to live where they're going to live.

Governors are the logical players to disturb the political status quo.

Until they do, though, cities will continue to get special aid. Suburban real estate developers will continue to receive their subsidies for further sprawl through the town governments they already control.

Thus suburban town officials across the Northeast and Great Lakes states will continue to do what town officials do — which is to facilitate the sprawl that kills cities.

Because the inevitable alternative is something like this: If cities are to live, the power of town governments must die. That's a paradigm shift that would disrupt everything we think we know about race relations, transportation, imported oil, agriculture and democracy.

But wait — isn't that what we need?

Bruce Fisher heads a public policy institute in Buffalo, N.Y., where he served as deputy county executive from 2000 to 2007.

Copyright © 2008, The Hartford Courant

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.

Losing the last vestige of public free space

Planning Quote of the Day:

"Public libraries are the last vestige of public free space." -- Joshua Prince-Ramus, who worked on the design of the Seattle Public Library.

From today's Milwaukee Journal Sentinel:

Milwaukee Public Library Director Paula Kiely is proposing to shut down four of the city's 12 neighborhood libraries, eliminate 39 jobs and cut the hours the Central Library is open. Kiely said she didn't want to do any of that, but she was faced with the need to slice $2 million from her budget.

[Milwaukee Mayor] Barrett said he hoped private donors would help, recognizing that libraries play a vital role as "institutions of learning and democracy." Murphy said aldermen would try to avoid closing libraries.