Sprawled Out: The Search for Community in the American Suburb

Responding to Incentives - Strong Towns Blog - Strong Towns

Interesting perspective on incentives, something under discussion ad nauseam locally (to no effect):

A monkey sits on a chair in front of a panel with two buttons. If the monkey presses button number one, they get one treat. Pressing button number two yields two treats. After participating in this experiment for some time and seeing consistent results, which button is the monkey likely to press?

I appear before dozens of city councils and town boards each year, often to talk about economic development, growth and land use planning. There is a belief system that is near universal that is revealed in these conversations. It goes something like this:

• Our budget is tight, cutting services is difficult and so we need more revenue.
• The best way to get more revenue is by adding commercial development.
• We need more commercial development.
• Mr. Planner, zone more property for commercial development.

Today we're not going to challenge that dead idea - although there are some fundamental flaws in the logic - but instead focus on the incentives that bring about this delusion.

Read the rest at: Responding to Incentives - Strong Towns Blog - Strong Towns

"A huge national company conducts a dirty tricks campaign for its own goals, and a city and a developer become collateral damage," complains.... WAL-MART?!?!?!

You have to read it to believe it.

The Wall Street Journal -- a paper that feels comfortable cutting checks to Karl Rove for his forgot-we-messed-up-the-economy ramblings, and champions the concept of "corporate personhood" when it comes to campaign finance -- published today an "expose" revealing that -- GASP! -- smaller grocers might be hiring professional help to keep Wal-Mart's job-killing, wage-lowering supercenters out of their market.

Shocking!

The story comes complete with photo of tie-wearing bad guy (consultant who fights developments) and shirt-collar "good guy" (the poor, victimized developer).

Wal-Mart has stepped up recently in terms of sustainable practices and should be recognized for that (better late than never). However, even the most hardened Wal-Mart apologist has to wince at the crocodile tears shed by the WSJ for the poor megacorporation, which virtually wrote the book on dirty tricks and shameless astroturf campaigns.

Shameless as well is this fantasy-based assertion from an Illinois city official:

City Administrator John Labaido says the village and school district have lost an estimated $6 million a year in sales and property-tax revenue.

His city must be that rare place where Wal-Mart does not demand -- and get -- many more millions than that in subsidies and infrastructure spending in their vicinity. 

The Search for Community One Sleepover at a Time? | Planetizen

From a review for the book IN THE NEIGHBORHOOD: THE SEARCH FOR COMMUNITY ONE SLEEPOVER AT A TIME:

What was most interesting to me was that almost all of the neighbors on Lovenheim’s street had an intense need to be part of a community and a social network, but they didn’t have the facilities to achieve it. One neighbor observed that public spaces have largely been privatized into commercial spaces. Think about the coffee shop, king Starbucks, bookstores. These are little self-contained units with a small entry fee.  Another neighbor contrasted American neighborhoods to African tribal villages whose homes are traditionally organized around acentral space out of a primal need for survival. She observed that American neighborhoods are designed for privacy to fuel the prevailing ideology that we can survive alone. And then she suggests the antidote to this landscape of isolation…parks! Brilliant.

Read the rest at: The Search for Community One Sleepover at a Time? | Planetizen

Good news for fans of wine, beer, and fresh air

Local business THREE CELLARS had their plans for an outdoor Wine and Beer garden APPROVED last night by the Plan Commission. 

Perhaps a step toward making the old strip mall on 76th and Rawson a more pleasant place to visit.

Frank Gruber: What To Do With the Suburbs?

From the Huffington Post:

The issues facing 21st century planners will be how to deal with population growth while avoiding more sprawl at the edges, and how to prevent more decades marked by (i) disinvestment in cities and older suburbs and (ii) isolation of the disadvantaged (who may well include a huge mass of elderly Baby Boomers). The consensus among planners is that to solve these problems there need to be strategies for allowing and encouraging existing suburbs to evolve into denser versions of themselves, with more of the good qualities of cities and towns.

One problem with this is that the zoning in suburbs is rigid and politically difficult to change. The culture celebrating the single-family house is so strong that people don't like to convert their single-family neighborhoods into something else, even as demographics change. For instance, in November 2009 the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency published a guidebook called "Essential Smart Growth Fixes for Urban and Suburban Zoning Codes", with suggestions based on a panel the E.P.A. had convened in 2008. But nearly all of the suggested fixes would only affect the zoning on un-built land or in commercial zones -- the book has no concrete suggestions about what to do with existing single-family home districts.

This political reality puts the densification focus on existing commercial zones, such as malls or office parks or, where they exist, in the vestigial centers of small towns that existed prior to being engulfed by sprawl.

Two current strategies to do this are "de-malling", i.e., turning existing (often enclosed) malls into "town centers" by opening them up and adding housing and/or offices, and creating the equivalent of high-density urban downtown job centers in the suburbs, ideally connected to the regional center (the historic downtown) by rapid transit.

 

Read the rest at: Frank Gruber: What To Do With the Suburbs?

The Political Environment: WisDOT Becomes Kohler's Caddy

The golf course was built by and belongs to the privately-owned Kohler Company, which has always had, shall we say, an out-sized presence in Sheboygan County affairs. (There have been long and bloody strikes at the company; when I covered the 1983 walkout for the Milwaukee Journal, I remember seeing bullet holes in company property that dated to the historic 1930's strike.)

Read the rest at: The Political Environment: WisDOT Becomes Kohler's Caddy

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel story

I'm trying in vain to imagine the faintest possibility of something so progressive and economically foresighted occurring in my suburb

The greening of Greendale:

But Greendale has gone even greener by implementing a digital energy management system, timing lighting and recycling the heat that escapes from the pool’s surface. Grants from both WE Energies and Focus on Energy helped fund the pool’s thermal heating system. The total cost was just over $55,000 but Greendale paid only 30 percent, with grants from Focus on Energy ($19,343) and WE Energies ($19,343) paying the rest.

Read the rest at: The greening of Greendale | Milwaukee News Buzz

The parking mess at the local Little League Complex is as eloquent a visual aid as you'll ever need for the tragic comedy that is suburban "planning"

When you can't walk or bike to a community's Little League Complex because the roads leading to it and bordering the complex are typical suburban speedways with no provision for walkers or bikers, what do you get?

Repeated pandemonium and rising frustration. 125 players on six diamonds means 125 cars, minimum. Now add the incoming cars for subsequent games, and you get pandemonium squared.

Parking lot culture replaces what used to be a valuable community gathering point.

Poverty moves to the suburbs | Milwaukee News Buzz

And you were worried about the ash borer ...

Across the country, poverty is moving to the suburbs. Once affluent areas are finding it difficult to cope. Many blame the economic downturn, but most of the rise in poverty predates 2008. In both Madison and Milwaukee, the number of suburbanites living in poverty grew about 50 percent between 2000 and 2008 – twice the national average.

The percentage of people living in poverty in Milwaukee suburbs grew from 3.6 percent in 2000 to almost 5 percent in 2008, according to a study of suburban poverty released by the Brookings Institution earlier this year. In Madison’s suburbs, the rate is worse. There, it climbed from 4.8 percent in 2000 to 6.6 percent in 2008.

Read the rest at: Poverty moves to the suburbs | Milwaukee News Buzz

Franklintoday.com: "Another Economic Development Commission subcommittee? I think not."

Can't disagree with him:

...the Economic Development Commission (EDC) doesn't deserve a subcommittee, and while I might get some flack for stating such an opinion I'm prepared for that. I've stated many times my disapproval of the EDC's (non)actions for the past few years. The way I see it, when one of their own commissioners has been trying to motivate the commission to do something, to take strong action on something, the rest of them would likely fail to impress even a 6th grader at Ben Franklin Elementary. Heck the 6th graders over there, working on their yearly class projects for their ideas for the betterment of the community, would probably be more motivated or open minded than some on the EDC. No offense intended. Those words are meant as constructive criticism, and to be honest some of the commissioners need a good kick in the rear to get them into gear.

via www.myfranklintoday.com