Sprawled Out: The Search for Community in the American Suburb

Big Triangles

"It's less clear where home is; I mean, basically as Americans we live our lives in big triangles. One point of the triangle is where we sleep, one point is where we shop, and one point is where we work. And our American triangle has gotten much larger."

Robert Putnam, author of BOWLING ALONE, in the film "Subdivided: Isolation and Community in America"

SUBDIVIDED: Isolation and Community in America

"Three years ago I moved to the suburbs. I was pretty excited about it. There was lots of shopping, lots of parking, and plenty of room for new houses. But after several weeks, I hadn't met a single person. One day, I saw the neighbor across the street mowing his lawn. A perfect time to go and introduce myself. I started toward him with a big grin on my face. But then a funny thing happened. As he turned his lawn mower and took sight of me coming toward him, he spun on his heel and mowed his way behind his house.

"I realized I was living in a subdivision, and not a neighborhood. I wondered: is THIS the new American Dream?"

So begins "SUBDIVIDED: Isolation and Community in America," a film by Dean Terry (see a page full of video clips here).  The documentary hews very, very close to the subject matter I explore here in the SPRAWLED OUT blog, exploring issues of public space, thoughtless development and developers, loss of community, etc., all against a backdrop of strikingly evocative footage and music (also by Terry). If you're the least bit interested in the sorts of topics I explore here, you'll enjoy this DVD very, very much.

Looking beyond the tip of our respective noses

"We have always known that heedless self-interest was bad morals. We know now that it's bad economics."

- Franklin Delano Roosevelt. quoted in a column by Paul Krugman

Whitney Gould: "Instead of being a model for walkable, affordable, environmentally friendly neighborhoods, Pabst Farms right now looks to become a monument to uninspired design, timid planning and blinkered tax policy."

Another commentator disappointed with Pabst Farms. From the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel:

Pabst Farms harvests dismay

Posted: Oct. 14, 2007

Spaces Whitney Gould E-MAIL

Oconomowoc - "Next to us, everything else is just a subdivision," the promotional literature for Pabst Farms boasts.

Alas, Pabst Farms is just another subdivision, albeit a very big one. Bad enough that the 1,500-acre development under way north and south of I-94 off Highway 67 paves over what was once prime farmland. But that irreplaceable asset was probably doomed by the early 1960s, when the interstate sliced through the fertile farms started in 1906 by Milwaukee beer baron Frederick Pabst.

So, even if the loss of farmland was a given, what's taking its place is dismaying. Instead of being a model for walkable, affordable, environmentally friendly neighborhoods, Pabst Farms right now looks to become a monument to uninspired design, timid planning and blinkered tax policy. Call it the Vale of Lost Opportunities.

How can this be happening at a time when smart people have begun to realize that resources are finite and development practices must change?

According to "Growing Cooler: The Evidence on Urban Development and Climate Change," a recent report by the Urban Land Institute, more compact land use patterns could reduce automobile use nationwide by 20% to 40%, thus cutting the vehicle emissions that contribute to global warming.

This is not an argument for planting wall-to-wall high rises in the countryside but instead for locating shops, schools and offices within walking distance of homes - the approach known as New Urbanism. It is, in fact, old urbanism, a re-creation of the traditional neighborhoods that most Americans grew up in before World War II.

And, the report says, demand for such mixed-use development is growing as the population ages and the share of households with children shrinks. The authors project that by 2025, the demand for attached and small-lot housing will exceed the current supply by 71%, while the demand for large-lot housing will actually be less than what's currently available.

Pabst Farms' northern section, which will eventually have 1,200 residences (single-family homes, condos and townhomes), does make a little stab in the direction of New Urbanism. In its first phase, the houses are on smaller-than-average lots; they're close to the street; and most have sidewalks.

These homes are big and pricey - $400,000 to $800,000 - but only one or two are McMansion-scale. Future houses, however, will be on half-acre to one-acre "estate-size" lots, and it's a safe bet that these dwellings will be much bigger and more costly.

Moreover, the newly built shopping area is at least a half-mile away, too far for most people to walk, to judge from all the cars I saw in the huge parking lot. A business park under way south of I-94 is also auto-dependent.

Keep your fingers crossed on a proposed rezoning that would allow apartments, a necessary component for the people expected to keep all those shops, services and offices humming.

Pabst Farms' design work is largely in shades of bland. The shops are all look-alikes with tan brick and stone veneer. The houses are equally predictable, the kind you'd see in any subdivision: mostly tan or gray, with multiple gables and three-car garages.

The one bright spot, also too far away for most people to walk, is a long, low-slung YMCA designed by Zimmerman Architectural Studios, with big, welcoming windows, orangy brick skin, jazzy burgundy trim and louvered canopies. Why couldn't that same breezy, contemporary spirit have infected some of the housing choices?

Technically, Pabst Farms is not suburban sprawl, since it includes municipal services and most of the development is in Oconomowoc.

But the project already is sparking scattered growth nearby, the essence of sprawl. Even with modest transit connections, it all adds up to more cars on the interstate and on local roads - there is already a $25 million interchange in the works at I-94 and county Highway P - and that means higher costs for state and local taxpayers.

You can argue, I suppose, that it's all worth it, since the project will generate $400 million in new land value, plus $3 million in annual tax revenue for Oconomowoc, which created a $24 million tax-incremental financing district to kick-start Pabst Farms.

But the city might have invested the money more wisely in its own lovely downtown, which almost certainly will suffer as more and more people gravitate to this glossy newcomer sprouting in the cornfields. Failing that, the city could at least have insisted that Pabst Farms chart a radically greener, more progressive course.

Correction: In last week's column, I incorrectly attributed the New York Public Library to the architect Stanford White. It was designed by Carrere and Hastings.

E-mail to  wgould@journalsentinel.com or call (414) 224-2358.

The road is now like television...

.... violent and tawdry. The landscape it runs through is littered with cartoon buildings and commercial messages. We whiz by them at 55 miles an hour and forget them, because one convenience store looks like the next. They do not celebrate anything beyond their mechanistic ability to sell merchandise. We don't want to remember them. We did not savor the approach and we were not rewarded upon reaching the destination, and it will be the same next time, and every time. There is little sense of having arrived anywhere, because everyplace looks like no place in particular." 

-James Howard Kunstler (The Geography of Nowhere)

Wanna bet?

I wager they're talking to Target and/or Kohl's right now.

UPDATE: I learned through The Political Environment that there is an online poll at the Daily Reporter website (a Wisconsin construction news source) asking whether the state should fund an interchange near Pabst farms. Vote and view results here.

From the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel:

Pabst Farm zoning won't permit big boxes

Mayor says city will wait for upscale retailers

By AMY RINARD
arinard@journalsentinel.com

Posted: Oct. 8, 2007

Oconomowoc - Mayor Maury Sullivan said Monday that zoning and land-use plans do not permit so-called big box stores to be built on the Pabst Farms site where a large shopping mall has been proposed, and city officials will wait as long as it takes to get the upscale retail development they want there.

"If somebody comes here with a row of big boxes, they know what our expectation is and what our reaction will be," he said. "We're not into big box row."

With last week's announcement that General Growth Properties was backing out of its plan to build a large regional shopping center at the northeast corner of I-94 and Highway 67, retail industry analysts had speculated that big box stores, such as a Kohl's or Target, could replace it.

General Growth had proposed an upscale "lifestyle center" complete with more than 100 stores, several restaurants, two hotels and a multiscreen cinema. That plan won approvals from the Common Council, which adopted a zoning ordinance and master land-use plan designating that site for a high-quality retail center.

Even without General Growth's moving forward with its plan, that zoning and land-use designation for the site remain in effect, the mayor said.

"We've adopted a master plan and zoning for that location, and it does not have big boxes in it," Sullivan said.

Peter Bell, president of Pabst Farms Development Inc., said he is talking with several other national developers of upscale regional shopping malls about taking on the Pabst Farms Town Centre project and opening it in 2010.

Sullivan said the city does not view development of the mall as urgent and is willing to wait to get the type of high-quality project that city officials envisioned when it endorsed the General Growth plan.

"That ground has been idle for years. We can just wait and see what comes along," Sullivan said.

In its later stages, General Growth's plans for its mall at Pabst Farms did include a separate section east of the enclosed mall that was to be the site of several free-standing big box stores, each with its own parking lot. At the time General Growth withdrew from the project, the city had not approved its request to add a big box area to the overall plan for the retail center.

Sullivan said the city had been willing to consider including big box stores in the plan only because they were linked to the upscale mall.

Sendik's Rising

P1000330.JPG, originally uploaded by johnruexp.

Sendik's at Fountains of Franklin is getting closer and closer to the finish line. More photos here.

"As we lose pedestrians, we lose the human connections that make safe and healthy neighborhoods. We lose our identity, and our communities become merely a collection of buildings connected by roads."

Flickr photo by "misternaxal" - Fort Worth, Texas "Sprawl Y'All"

Excellent guest editorial in today's Journal Sentinel:

The dangers of autobesity

By STEVE HINIKER

Posted: Oct. 7, 2007

Face it. We have a driving problem, and it's killing us.

We are addicted to driving, and we are in denial about it. We lash out at those who bring it to our attention and label them as "anti-car." Unfortunately, that is about as constructive as labeling a doctor as "anti-food" if that doctor recommends a diet.

The signs of autobesity are everywhere. If miles were calories, we would be in intensive care. Last year, Wisconsinites racked up an unbelievable 60 billion miles behind the wheel. Each one of us drove, on average, twice as many miles as drivers 25 years ago. We spend, on average, $7,000 a year per car on our addiction - plus parking costs.

Our driving addiction is costing us lives, dollars and destroyed communities every day. In Wisconsin, there is a motor vehicle crash once every five minutes, an injury every 14 minutes and a fatality every 11 hours. We use euphemisms to rationalize the horrible side effects of driving. Though we refer to car crashes as "accidents," almost all car crashes are avoidable events.

Like most addictions, we are often oblivious to the consequences our habit has on others. Motor vehicles are the principal cause of ozone air pollution and contribute to about one-third of our global warming gas emissions. Highways have destroyed vibrant neighborhoods throughout the state, and more neighborhoods are at risk because of expansion plans. Farmland, wetlands and cultural resources are all-too-frequent victims of road expansion.

Our fixation with driving leads us to build new housing, shopping centers and job centers that are entirely auto-dependent. It is no longer an option to have a car in the typical new development in Wisconsin; it is a requirement.

Unfortunately, those who still walk face increasing obstacles. No sidewalks mean pedestrians must risk sharing the street with cars to reach any destination. Pedestrians often become simply another obstacle for drivers.

As we lose pedestrians, we lose the human connections that make safe and healthy neighborhoods. We lose our identity, and our communities become merely a collection of buildings connected by roads.

So if autobesity is killing us, what can we do about it?

Like eating, driving is necessary. And like eating, driving can be fun. And like eating habits, we can develop healthy driving habits. Recognizing that cars can be an obsession doesn't mean that cars are bad - nor do we need to take the fun out of driving. Just as we like good food, we can enjoy nice cars. We just need to know when to say "enough."

We need to stop investing in developments that require driving. The proposed $25 million interchange to feed cars into a proposed mall at Pabst Farms is a good example of auto-dependent development that should not be subsidized by state taxpayers. The mall will stand like a chocolate fudge cake with sour cream frosting for the autobesity crowd.

We should invest in healthy alternatives that don't require a driver's license for admission. Transit-oriented development can accommodate auto traffic while allowing and encouraging access by pedestrians and transit users.

Oconomowoc would be better served by re-establishing rail service to Milwaukee and Madison. New retail could be incorporated with downtown plans accommodating cars as well as shoppers and workers arriving by train service. We also would have fewer cars clogging up the interstate and spilling over to local streets.

The choice is clear: Feed autobesity with the junk food diet of ever-expanding highways or start a new healthy multimodal diet that recognizes the necessity of driving but also promotes healthy communities by investing in transit, walking and bicycling.

Steve Hiniker is executive director of 1000 Friends of Wisconsin, an environmental group.

Journal Sentinel letter writer picks unfortunate example of "development utopia"

Even as the "over-planned" Pabst Farms development falls apart due to... poor planning, a Milwaukee Journal Sentinel letter-writer felt compelled to complain about too much planning.

To review (from the Journal Sentinel): At 1,600 acres, Pabst Farms is bigger than Shorewood. Most in the news this week have been 184 of those acres, where General Growth Properties planned, then backed away from, a 1.5 million-square-foot retail complex including a mall, multiscreen cinema and two hotels.

And, in the face of this...

Too much time spent on planning

A quote in the Oct. 2 article "Close vote advances freeway funding," attributed to Waukesha County Supervisor Patricia Haukohl of Brookfield, struck me. She said regarding the Pabst Farms development, "It's all happening too fast."

Too fast? You've got to be kidding! This project, as Scott Williams reported and supporters point out, has been in the planning and early implementation stage for a long, long time. I've lived in Delafield for 11 years, and it seems as though it's been almost that long that we've been debating the pros and cons of this development.

The attitude about development in southeastern Wisconsin is that we have to plan and debate and replan and debate and plan again before we get something done. It is one of the major problems we face as we try to compete for jobs and business expansion in our state. We are generally conservative about development and fanatically analytical about new developments to the extent that we become uncompetitive compared to other states.

I travel frequently to Atlanta. It is not unusual for whole subdivisions to be built in a period of three months there. Seemingly whole communities can spring up in a year.

When we have officials at any level of government who think development projects move along too fast, we need look no further to answer the question of why we aren't more successful in recruiting companies to locate here.

Raymond A. Mazurek
Delafield

Ah, Atlanta, Mr. Mazurek. A nice place to visit, but you wouldn't want to live there.

 

How City Hall Causes Sprawl

Abstract: Some commentators have labeled Atlanta, Ga. as America's poster child for sprawl. Atlanta is highly auto-oriented, and suffers from higher levels of traffic congestion and air pollution than most other cities. This book review explains how sprawl happened in Atlanta - not through the mysterious invisible hand of the free market, but through transportation and zoning decisions made by city officials.

Costs of Sprawl Adding Up for Atlanta's Moderate Income Families    

''Density is the single best way of getting affordable housing,'' stressed Progressive Redevelopment CEO Bruce Gunter at the 10-county Atlanta Regional Commission's (ARC) housing forum, focused on a recent Center for Housing Policy analysis of 28 major cities, which found the metro area the second-most expensive for families earning between $20,000 and $50,000 a year, with 29 and 32 percent of their income taken by housing and transportation, respectively, for a total of 61 percent, just behind 37 and 27 percent, or a total of 63 percent in San Francisco.

The metro's non-affordability, reports Atlanta Journal-Constitution writer Maria Saporta, ''startled'' Atlanta Neighborhood Development Partnership (ANDP) President and CEO John O'Callaghan, whose group helps finance affordable housing.

''Atlanta has been built on the car,'' he pointed out. ''People drive until they can find a home they can afford. But they don't add up the car payments, car insurance and transportation costs. And it's getting worse as gas prices are going up.''

Among the least dense nationwide, metro Atlanta shows 60 percent of its households with two cars, 2 percent over the national average, and makes long commutes ''a way of life,'' the writer observes, quoting ANDP's Mixed-Income Communities Initiative Director Susan Adams.

Area commuters, she noted, drive an average of 12 miles one way, in comparison to nine miles for the other 27 major cities studied by the Center for Housing Policy.

What makes the situation worse, the writer continues, is the metro's sluggish per-capita income growth of only 5.1 percent between 2000 and 2007, in contrast to a national average of 13.4 percent.

''It makes us nervous,'' said ARC chief of research Mike Alexander. ''A lot of high-paying jobs are leaving the region. And the jobs we have added don't pay as much as the jobs we have lost.''

The remedies are clear, and now is the time for state and regional officials to put them in practice, the writer concludes.

''In order for metro Atlanta to be affordable to its growing population, it must make sure that its residents can reduce their transportation costs,'' she writes. ''Building affordable dense housing around job centers will enable people to live close to where they work. And by investing in an extensive public transit system, we will be able to free up our residents from having to rely on their cars to get where they want to go.'' -- Atlanta Journal-Constitution  6/11/2007

A weekend in Atlanta brings lessons in sprawl and density

Bill Dawers | Tuesday, September 25, 2007 at 12:30 am

I went out on the town Saturday night and didn't see anyone I knew.

In Atlanta.

A couple of friends and I trekked to our fair capital city to see Bob Dylan and Elvis Costello at the 13,000-seat arena at Gwinnett Center in the Atlanta suburb of Duluth. (I actually didn't even know we were in Duluth until Costello made a joke about it.)

Those who doubt the utility of Savannah's proposed arena ought to take a gander at that four-year-old facility, which is about the same size as ours being funded right now through SPLOST.

The arena has excellent sight lines and great acoustics for a facility so large. Costello's solo acoustic rendition of his classic "Alison" sounded great, and so did Dylan and his band's jazzy, almost zydeco version of "Stuck Inside of Mobile with the Memphis Blues Again."

The common spaces, including the vending areas and the bathrooms, are wide and comfortable - the exact opposite of our current arena.

But will we get acts of the same caliber as the Gwinnett Center? Well, why not?

Big name acts at a great facility in Savannah would draw concertgoers from Charleston to Jacksonville and beyond. After all, my friends and I drove 250 miles to see Dylan and Costello.

I had not been to Atlanta in years. In addition to the concert, we had wonderful experiences at reasonably priced restaurants that don't have any equivalents in Savannah: Baraonda in Midtown, The Vortex Bar & Grill in Little Five Points, and the Highland Tap in Virginia Highland.

But Atlanta would be a hard place for me to live, accustomed as I am to the convenience, intimacy and beauty of Savannah.

At least I know that here I'll never have to get caught up in an hourlong traffic jam like the one we endured late Saturday night on Interstate 85. By the time we saw the first sign warning "Left 5 Lanes Closed Ahead," it was already too late to exit.

There are definitely trade-offs living in a city the size of Savannah.

But there's no reason we can't have more of the cultural offerings of a larger city, and in the last decade we've seen a major shift in that direction.

We lost a symphony, but we've gained a magnificent art museum. Our major festivals are booming. Dozens of new stores have brought added options for shoppers.

Still, we'll never be Atlanta - and we don't want to be. However, Savannah's downtown and adjacent urban neighborhoods have the potential to support many more small businesses similar to those in Atlanta's most interesting neighborhoods.

Which brings me to a common theme here at City Talk.

Despite the legendary sprawl and traffic, Atlanta is dotted with high-density residential areas, especially apartment buildings. Those residents are the primary drivers of the economy.

As long as Savannah's urban neighborhoods remain at such low levels of density, consumers are unlikely to see offerings significantly different than those we have now.

It's fine to get defensive about this. "Well, Savannah's good enough for me," I can hear some of you saying. Heck, I say that too, or I wouldn't live here.

But that doesn't mean that we can't make things better.

Bill Dawers can be reached at billdawers@comcast.net. Send mail to 10 East 32nd St., Savannah, GA 31401.

It's official: Mall developer pulls out of Pabst Farms

Cart was before the horse ...

Reported by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel:

General Growth Properties Inc. (GGP) has confirmed that the Chicago-based mall developer has dropped plans for a regional shopping center in Oconomowoc.

The company said in an e-mail today:

"General Growth Properties has decided not to participate with Pabst Farms in the development of a shopping center at Oconomowoc. We gave the project long, careful consideration, but in the end it proved to be not the right time or conditions for us to pursue this project. We sincerely appreciate all of the hard work that the city, county and state put into working with Pabst Farms and us, and we are confident that those efforts will bear fruit in the form of other kinds of economic development for Oconomowoc."

General Growth is the owner and operator of Mayfair Mall in Wauwatosa.

The new plan: Let some big boxes (Target, Best Buy) run wild with the property. So it'll look like every other freeway interchange. This is where hellish edge nodes come from; see creepy picture below (an example in Coon Rapids, Minnesota).

Related: "Officials Who Approved Mall Interchange Funding Have Some Explaining to Do":

There's no way that officials at the Wisconsin Department of Transportation, the Waukesha County Board and County Executive's Office, and in the City of Oconomowoc hadn't heard the rumors about the possible collapse of the Pabst Farm mall plan while they went ahead and cut the deal to spend $25 million to build an interstate interchange to the now-scrubbed mall.