So, now Pat McIlheran is anti-sprawl?

This past summer I had a bit of back-and-forth with Milwaukee Journal Sentinel editorial writer Patrick McIlheran regarding the issue of smaller lots vs. a continuation of sprawled out suburban development. Among other complaints, I wrote that he mono-focused on the "farmland preservation" issue without mentioning the myriad other economic and social issues brought to bear in this kind of discussion.

McIlheran's reply in his blog included gambit A-6 from the right wing playbook, asking "Why the tone of anger? Why the personal edge?"

My post really wasn't very "edgy,"especially compared to how other bloggers treat him, and, after I explained to him via email the whole "blog context" concept (subjective, etc.), he emailed to me that "your comments put lie to my impression of you as Franklin’s Kunstler" (referring to the frank and sometimes profane tone of James Howard Kunstler). So we agreed to disagree.

Warm feelings were somewhat mitigated, however, by the fact that McIlheran didn't bother to correct/update his "misimpression" in his blog.

Before our warm moment, McIlheran had in his blog overlooked my salient points and explained his theory regarding the "personal edge" he perceived in my comments: "I would contend it's because my original point is right, that this is more about aesthetics than facts."

This "it's about the trees" talking point - which ignores the facts I presented - is informed by dubious arguments in pro-sprawl Robert Bruegmann's  book, "Sprawl: A Compact History." McIlheran offered the most commonly cited Bruegmann excerpt in his August 8th column:

Cities spread and people then deplore it, [Bruegmann] says. London's elite in the 1800s saw as vulgar the inexpensive row housing developers peddled to the middle class. Now, such houses are the model of compact urbanity.

People try dressing the argument as a matter of "smart" or "dumb" growth, but, he says, the "emotional linchpin" is still "some deep-seated notions about how people ought to live in relation to nature."

Bruegmann - who, by the way, mischaracterizes London row houses and their relationship to the center city in the 1800s! - has declared that this all comes down to "some deep-seated notions about how people ought to live in relation to nature."

Evidently McIlheran either re-read my critique of his August 8th "conservation subdivision" editorial (wherein aesthetics and trees were not cited) or he was inspired by a better book: Imagine my surprise to see not one but two McIlheran editorials concerning the effects of large suburban lots - - both of which seem to find him on the anti-sprawl side of the fence.   

January 27:

Hartford [Wisconsin] is everybody's favorite city because it is rare: a place with plentiful new houses under $200,000. Builders love it, planners love it, home buyers particularly love it.

The real question, say builders, is why it should be so hard to do the same thing elsewhere.

While Hartford officials say affordability rules deserve some credit, builders say Hartford mainly gets out of their way.

Its planners don't require repeated, costly changes in subdivision designs. What gets approved in Hartford in two or three weeks, several builders said, will take months elsewhere.

Hartford's OK with smaller yards, which makes a difference because the cost of streets, sewers and water lines is borne by buyers. The fewer feet of street and pipe there is per lot, the cheaper the lots. Besides, it's inevitable that buying a 10,000-square foot lot for a house will cost less than having to buy two acres for it. By allowing fewer houses on a given amount of land, communities typically end up being costlier.

A familiar argument - similar to the non-aesthetic one I made back in August:

Watch the cost of stringing sewer and power out to sprawled subdivisions become ruinous for your city government (surely you've seen the formula: $1 of residential tax income cost suburban city governments about $1.33 largely due to reactionary "planning" and "no-close-neighbor" developments).

Back to McIlheran:

Officials... talk of affordability but are in love with large lots. "Those two ideas are basically incompatible," [Morris Davis, a real estate economist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison] says.

This has a real effect. Metro Milwaukee's median home price is now four times its median household income, marking us as relatively unaffordable overall. Since 1996, residential land costs here are up 133%, an increment similar to San Francisco, says Davis.

Davis says he can't say for certain this is because of zoning, though he says other economists do. Builders, too, say zoning restricts the supply of buildable land, so fewer homes are built here than in comparable cities - a fourth as many as in Kansas City, Indianapolis or Detroit, says Matt Moroney, head of the Metropolitan Builders Association. "I think other areas embrace growth more," he says.

One developer summed up the philosophy as, "Not in my backyard unless it's darned expensive."

Good points, right? And then today's McIlheran column. Forget why; now he's all about finding out how we can get smaller lots accepted  (I've bolded the particularly - and unexpectedly - anti-sprawl points made), and he wisely points out a huge factor in this discussion: The feeling that "Exclusive zoning is a financial ledge that existing homeowners can't afford to climb off":

Smaller lots? Maybe if we offer the neighbors some upside

Ask a builder whether he'd rather build a few big, expensive homes or many more smaller, less expensive ones, and he'll tell you he can make money either way - though as one told me, building more houses is more efficient and profitable.

Ask a builder what's allowed, and the answer's clearer: Local governments don't want smaller and cheaper. "It's like you're speaking a foreign language," says Tim O'Brien of William Ryan Homes.

So in this home-show season, maybe we should be asking how we can make it worth a community's while to change its zoning.

Builders say, and economists confirm, that zoning increases the cost of houses. Rules requiring more land per lot add to costs directly, and they limit the supply of buildable land, making the price go up. This may underlie what you see in Milwaukee, listed in one January survey as among the least-affordable Midwestern metropolises.

The conspiracy-minded hint that such zoning aims to keep minorities out, though precluding houses under $300,000 sets the bar pretty high: Suburbanites' own children often can't afford a house in the old hometown. That's a big hole in the they're-all-racists idea.

It's likely suburbs get something from making houses expensive. Suburban officials say so: Residents prefer upscale neighbors or a rural feel, and those wishes carry weight in planning. Or, builders say, some towns have a break-even point in mind. Officials don't believe houses worth less bring in enough tax money to pay for services new families use, builders say, so they don't permit them.

Phil Evenson, who heads the Southeastern Wisconsin Regional Planning Commission, suggests people need to value "economic diversity." Mixing in lower-income people makes places more interesting, he argues.

Or there's an appeal to self-interest. As employers favor suburban sites, their staff will need houses they can afford unless we presume they'll all live somewhere cheaper and commute. That implies unpleasant amounts of pavement and traffic. Far better to offer housing for all ages and incomes.

But these ideas run into a powerful force: Existing homeowners have money on the line in zoning, says François Ortalo-Magné, a real estate economist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

For one thing, by making it hard to build, zoning makes existing homes worth more. It raises the value of a homeowner's investment by making it scarce.

It also creates an expectation by home-buyers that land in a community will continue to be scarce. They paid a premium to get into a place whose zoning will make it harder to get into, Ortalo-Magné says. Naturally, they won't favor loosening the zoning and debasing their investment. Of course, they support growth restrictions.

This isn't the same as simply favoring $600,000 homes nearby as a way of ritzifying the area or feeling you've lost something when your vista is filled with houses. It's that exclusive zoning is a financial ledge that existing homeowners can't afford to climb off, says Ortalo-Magné. It's part of the value of their homes.

Except he's got an idea. What if, he brainstorms, a community auctioned off building permits? Right now, when a community gives permission to build on vacant land, the land's value shoots up. The landowner gets the windfall, while there's no upside at all for neighbors. If instead the neighbors got some money from a permit auction, "Wouldn't they think about it differently?" he asks.

He knows of no such mechanism used in the United States. That doesn't mean the idea is utterly unknown. Thomas Firey, a policy scholar at the Cato Institute, notes the zoning nightmare faced in suburban Washington when a developer wanted to put dense new development between single-family homes and a subway stop. In the end, the developer bought out nearby homeowners for three times the market value, says Firey, and "everyone was made better off."

"Everyone better off" is key. As suburbs allow too little new housing, it doesn't just hurt would-be suburbanites. Those who can't afford high-end places bid up prices in cheaper areas. Scarcity filters throughout metro Milwaukee.

So as novel or even unfair as it may seem to pay off suburban neighbors to permit growth, the benefits could spread widely. In a metropolis where the price of a big yard is rising beyond the reach of young people, it's worth looking at.

Comments

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