Sprawled Out: The Search for Community in the American Suburb

The developer as thwarted hero: Are suburban Unified Development Ordinances preventing sustainable, smart growth development?

"We don't have that opportunity here." What a difference a little city support can make; two streets that are the same age but have totally different characters. ABOVE: A Franklin residential street. BELOW: A Traditional Neighborhood Development-type street in Middleton Hills, WI.

Way back in June of 2007, I wrote a post that featured the pictures above, entitled Traditional Neighborhood Design (TND) in Franklin: Who Will Step Up?

I said:

Franklin has room, opportunity and need for a TND development, yet we see bleak subdivision after bleak subdivision go up, accompanied by malformed commercial developments that serve vehicles and shun people.

You can imagine, then, how my ears perked up at the first Mayoral Ad-Hoc Development Process Review Committee meeting this past Thursday, when I heard Franklin developer Mark Carstensen address some of the frustrations he faces in dealing with the city of Franklin's development process.

He began by reminding the assembled that, when asked, Franklin residents regularly cite "rural character" as one of the elements of our city that they find important.

But what do people mean by "rural character" or "rural feel"?

Carstensen: 

Do people really understand what that term means? Versus the suburbs of Milwaukee County; what does it mean? Has it really been defined? Because it can mean a lot of different things; you throw out words that mean a lot of things to different people.

For instance, if I were to take -- and I don’t want to get too long winded here -- but the way things are set up right now...

For instance, we did a development up in Mequon a few years back that entertained the idea of clustered development. So they were rewarding developers to, let’s say that you were out in the areas that were not served by sewer yet, and the zoning would require that you could only have one unit per five acres. What the city did was they provided an avenue for the developers to come in and say, look, let’s say you have a tract of land 40 acres, 80 acres, what have you; the real goal here is to preserve green space, the real goal here is to preserve sensitive areas and so forth. If you show us you can condense the footprints of your lots, what we’ll do then is there’ll be a ratio we’ll give you for density.

Therefor we were conserving more green space -- and everybody wins.

So we did that. I think we had a 40-acre parcel property; by the time it was done, the lots themselves, there were seven lots on that development. I think the lots averaged an acre and a half. And the rest was left green space. Very easy.

That's Mequon. Now the bad news for Franklin. Carstensen continues:

We don’t have that opportunity here. When you go through Franklin and you start adding all the disciplines where you can put retention basins, setback requirements from sensitive areas, landscaping ratios; and if you were to create a map to overlay all of these things, you would see that you’re burning up more land and getting less out of that land because we do have to also take a look at the tax base and revenues of the city. And as Randy [Plan Commissioner Randy Ritter, who has been on the commission for 17 years] is pushing for the "70/30" [the city's stated goal of balancing the tax burden at 70 percent residential, 30 percent commercial]; well, if the UDO [Unified Development Ordinance] is forcing you to use up more land to build less, I think it’s pretty easy to understand that you are going to leave what we would call a lot on the table, and not use your land that you can’t replace in the best possible manner and get the most out of it.

So, if nothing else comes of this effort, you have in the statement above some very clear proclamations from the leading developer in Franklin:

A) The current system simply does not allow him to propose and execute the sorts of forward-looking developments that will prove sustainable and create economic growth in Franklin;

B) Nearby communities (in this case, Mequon) are capable of encouraging (and thereby benefiting from) high quality, high demand, smart-growth, tax-base expanding development;

C) A proven hometown developer sees, through personal experience, the economic upside to these sorts of high quality, smart growth developments -- which yield results consistent with the wishes of current residents and the desires of potential residents and businesses-- but plainly feels there is no effective mechanism in place in Franklin by which he can execute them.

Franklin City Attorney Jesse Wesolowski immediately recognized that Carstensen was talking about Traditional Neighborhood Development -- a community design that has seen success across the country -- and pointed out that the concept has been included the Franklin UDO since 2003.

True enough. However, here is the sum total of the Franklin UDO's language regarding Traditional Neighborhood Development:

Page 3-61
“Part 3: Zoning Districts: District Establishment, Dimensional, and Use Regulations”

Planned Development District: Traditional Neighborhood Development Intent. Proposed developments contemplated by an applicant to include design features described as “Traditional Neighborhood Development” in Wisconsin Statutes 66.1027 (1)(c), as amended, may be considered for approval as a “PDD Planned Development District” under the applicable procedures and standards described under Section 15-90208 of this Ordinance and at locations and with conditions determined appropriate by the Common Council with recommendation from the Plan Commission. The document identified as “A Model Ordinance for Traditional Neighborhood Development” dated April 2001 as published by the University of Wisconsin Extension pursuant to Wisconsin Statutes 66.1027(2), serves as the nonexclusive guidebook to assist in further defining the various aspects and elements of the for of URBAN design, along with such other sources of guidance the Plan Commission and Common Council may choose to consult.

No incentives. No guidance. Frankly, no real interest. (You can download the above-referenced Wisconsin "Model Ordinance for Traditional Neighborhood Development" pdf here.)

If a developer who has been building in Franklin for 30 years (and clearly has the ear of persons at every level of municipal government) is unaware of the very possibility of executing much-needed Traditional Neighborhood Development projects here, does that possibility even exist?

At the November 23rd meeting of the Economic Development Commission, developers representing an expansion proposal by Franklin Automotive appeared before the Commission asking if there might be incentives or subsidies we could provide for their project. I suggested -- since I am largely against financial subsidies -- that their development be given priority and other process/application incentives in return for their re-visioning of their proposed mundane "multi-tenant buildings" as an amenity capable of adding value to the surrounding neighborhood. Unfortunately, all of the "new" EDC members were absent that evening; my proposal aroused no enthusiasm among the long-timers who were present.

I'll try again at tomorrow night's EDC meeting ("Incentives" are again on the agenda) -- after all, I now have the words of Franklin's leading hometown developer to cite. 

More later ...

Download *Dev. Process Review Comm. 2-18-10 Material

Coveting an interchange, will a local business pony up the cash?

ABOVE: In a photo taken while Northwestern Mutual's "phase 2" was still under construction (see girders at upper right), the Oak Creek "commitment" to connecting 27th street to a possible Drexel interchange is demonstrated. The road has since been re-paved --- but remains a narrow, near-shoulderless barrier.

Steve Jagler, executive editor of BizTimes in Milwaukee, made some spring predictions via the OnMilwaukee.com site.

While we're on the south side of the county, Oak Creek and Franklin have been unable to come up with the matching local funds that the Wisconsin Department of Transportation would require to build a new freeway interchange on Interstate 94 at Drexel Avenue. Later this year, look for Northwestern Mutual Insurance Co. to pony up and cover the heretofore missing dollars. The Quiet Company is hush about its plans, but sources say Northwestern Mutual needs the exit ramp to serve its sprawling campus on South 27th Street. The company also has acquired several parcels of land surrounding the campus, and a freeway exit at Drexel Avenue would add commercial value to the properties.

This is a fairly fascinating notion. Anyone who has traveled Drexel on the Oak Creek side of 27th Street can't help but notice that the road is very consciously "under-engineered." After all --- the "spirit of Franklin-Oak Creek 27th Street cooperation" notwithstanding --- Oak Creek wants traffic to go EAST to their burgeoning commercial strip on Howell. What do they need with 27th Street?

So a fairly superfluousness interchange may be funded because Northwestern Mutual perceives a 45-second time-savings as a possible boon to property it owns around the 27th Street campus --- most significantly, on the Oak Creek side. Rather than take the Rawson exit, which brings traffic right down 27th Street (and through a commercial district that Oak Creek-Franklin profess interest in cooperatively growing), a Drexel interchange offers drivers a choice of turning west on a narrow, uninviting road (the Franklin side), or right on a meticulously maintained, multi-lane asphalt wonder (the Oak Creek side), which has a huge, vacant Delphi plant waiting for commercial development.

It doesn't take much imagination to see, in the lack of regional cooperation at work here, a moat forming around the island city of Franklin.

I've placed this on the agenda for discussion at the next Franklin Economic Development Commission meeting and that of the Trails Committee; we'll see what sense of urgency is created.

Fountains of Franklin demise: Case Study One for new development task force

ABOVE: Completely arbitrary (and therefor as accurate as any other presented) artist's depiction of planned Fountains of Franklin retail development.

The long-languishing Fountains of Franklin development site faces a foreclosure suit.

The history of this project is, frankly, the stuff of reality TV, complete with "evil developers," a call for an alderman's resignation, sudden city "forgetfulness" regarding zoning, selective enforcement of ordinances, accusations of preferential treatment of developers whose names begin with "C" and end with "arstensen," incriminating spy photos, a comically-perturbed local blogger, startling new definitions for the term "upscale," and, finally, time travel.

That's why this project is a perfect case study for the new Mayoral Ad Hoc Development Process Review Committee, which was created, after all, to untangle the development process in Franklin.

So: I triple dog dare the Mayoral Ad Hoc Development Process Review Committee to look carefully at the development process as followed in the case of Fountains of Franklin. I submit that we would learn more in diagramming the twists and turns in that single debacle than in the pages of any expensively commissioned report.

 

"Not all growth is created equal. Some kinds of growth are more valuable than others. Where dumb growth is unsustainable, unfair, and brittle, smart growth is sustainable, equitable, and resilient."

Perhaps the statement above, by Umair Haque of the Harvard Business Review, encapsulates the conflict between "growth at all costs" economic development and Smart Growth approaches that are scarce in suburban enclaves like Franklin.

It should be noted that, not too long ago, some Franklin elected officials were ousted because they were deemed "anti-development" by a band of leafleters who felt no particular obligation to the truth. Though many officials who were either members of or supported by "Franklin Citizens for Responsible Leadership" have since distanced themselves from the group, "institutional memory" is strong and bow-to-the-developer habits are hard to break. I see it - and often confront it - at every city meeting I attend as a spectator or participant.

Consider Haque's four pillars of smart growth for economies, communities, and corporations:

1. Outcomes, not income. Dumb growth is about incomes - are we richer today than we were yesterday? Smart growth is about people, and how much better or worse off they are - not merely how much junk an economy can churn out. Smart growth measures people's outcomes - not just their incomes. Are people healthier, fitter, smarter, happier? Economics that measure financial numbers, we've learned the hard way, often fail to be meaningful, except to the quants among us. It is tangible human outcomes that are the arbiters of authentic value creation.

2. Connections, not transactions. Dumb growth looks at what's flowing through the pipes of the global economy: the volume of trade. Smart growth looks at how pipes are formed, and why some pipes matter more than others: the quality of connections. It doesn't just look at transactions at the global, regional, or national level -- how much world trade has grown, for example -- but looks at how local and global relationships power invention and innovation. Without Silicon Valley's relationships powering the development of personal computing and the internet, for example, the volume of trade between Taiwan, Japan, and China, would be a fraction of what it is. Smart growth seeks to amplify connection and community -- because the goal isn't just to trade, but to co-create and collaborate.

3. People, not product. The next time you hear an old dude talking about "product", let him know the 20th century ended a decade ago. Smart growth isn't driven by pushing product, but by the skill, dedication, and creativity of people. What's the difference? Everything. Globalization driven by McJobs deskilling the world, versus globalization driven by entrepreneurship, venture economies, and radical innovation. People not product means a renewed focus on labor mobility, human capital investment, labor market standards, and labor market efficiency. Smart growth isn't powered by capital dully seeking the lowest-cost labor -- but by giving labor the power to seek the capital with they can create, invent, and innovate the most.

4. Creativity, not productivity. Uh-oh: Creativity is an economic four-letter word. Why? Because it's hard to measure, manage, and model. So economists focus on productivity instead -- and the result is dumb growth. Smart growth focuses on economic creativity - because creativity is what let us know that competition is creating new value, instead of just shifting old value around. What is economic creativity? How many new industries, markets, categories, and segments an economy can consistently create. Think China's gonna save the world? Think again: it's economically productive, but it's far from economically creative. Smart growth is creative -- not merely productive.

Read the rest at The Smart Growth Manifesto - Umair Haque - Harvard Business Review.

Shared Work Spaces - WSJ.com

The Wall Street Journal takes a look at co-working spaces, which I have proposed for Franklin.

Telecommuters, entrepreneurs, and the self-employed all grapple with the logistical challenges of working alone. At home, workers face isolation and domestic distraction. At the corner coffee shop offering free Wi-Fi, there's insufficient privacy, too few electrical outlets and the nuisance of latte orders shouted out through the day.

A growing number of workers face these hassles every day. As of November 2009, there were nine million self-employed workers in the U.S., according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data. Meanwhile, the volume of workers telecommuting at least once a month for employers grew 17% between 2006 and 2008, to 33.7 million workers, according to WorldatWork, a human-resources research firm in Scottsdale, Ariz.

Read the rest at: Cranky Consumer | A Test of Shared Work Spaces - WSJ.com

What a tangled web we weave: Franklin impanels a group to examine the development process

As posted by Greg Kowalski on his Franklin Today blog, listed below are the suggested members of new Mayoral Ad Hoc Development Process Review Committee, proposed by Alderman Steve Taylor and charged with untangling the development process here in Franklin.

At Monday's Economic Development Commission meeting, both James Kerr and I answered the call for volunteers (the mayor requested one each from the Economic, Environmental, and Plan commissions). Given Mr. Kerr's enormous experience in process management (he was Deputy Airports Director/COO for the Milwaukee County Airport Division from 1983-2005), I notified the mayor via email that I think his skill set is exactly what this effort needs.

I'll be attending the meetings, however, because the prospect of hearing developers give real-life examples of their frustrations in working with the city promises to be fascinating.

Suggested step one: Invest in a HUGE whiteboard and create what will likely be a complicated, multi-colored process map. And make sure you have lots of fresh markers ....

CHAIRMAN: Mayor Tom Taylor

ALDERMANIC REP: Common Council President Steve Taylor

DEVELOPERS: Mark Carstensen, Jim O'Malley, and Jim Kupfer

PLAN COMMISSIONER: Randy Ritter

ENVIRONMENTAL COMMISSIONER: Maryjane Ingersoll

ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT COMMISSIONER: James Kerr

Midwest Intercity Passenger Rail Program AT LAST?

Decades late, but here is what the beginning of a sensible transportation program looks like, via a federal grant.

Awardees : Wisconsin Department of Transportation; Minnesota Department of Transportation

Total Approximate Funding (entire corridor) : $823,000,000

Benefiting States : Minnesota, Wisconsin, Illinois

Miles of Track : Upgraded - 144 miles, New - 32 miles, Planned - 275 miles (est.), Total - Appx. 441 Miles

The corridor stretching from the Twin Cities to Madison, Milwaukee, and Chicago is an essential segment of the Midwest rail system. However, there is currently no passenger rail service between Milwaukee and Madison, the two largest metropolitan areas in Wisconsin.

Using grants from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA), intercity passenger rail service will be established between Milwaukee and Madison with stops in Brookeld, Oconomowoc, and Watertown at speeds of up to 110 mph. Service is expected by 2013.

Improvements between Chicago and Milwaukee will ultimately reduce travel time by more than 30 percent and increase maximum speeds from 79 mph to 110 mph. Eventually, passengers will be able to travel from Chicago to the Twin Cities at a top speed of 110 mph, saving time and energy compared to driving.

Summary of Corridor Investments

Chicago - Milwaukee: Station construction, infrastructure enhancements, and signal and track improvements will increase on-time performance and reliability and create the building blocks for future 110 mph service. The increased speed will eventually reduce travel time between the two cities by more than 30 percent.

Milwaukee - Madison: Implementation of a new service by upgrading infrastructure along 80 miles of track connecting Wisconsin’s two largest cities. This project also includes new and refurbished stations, as well as positive train control. Approximately 76 percent of Wisconsin’s total population lives within 30 miles of the rail stations on this corridor.

Madison - Minneapolis/St. Paul: Planning and environmental work will begin to lay the groundwork for connecting the rail line through Wisconsin to Minnesota at speeds of up to 110 mph. Several route alignments will be considered in the planning process.

Read the rest at: Fact Sheet: High Speed Intercity Passenger Rail Program: Minneapolis/St. Paul - Madison - Milwaukee - Chicago | The White House

Moving the Tipping Point for Creative Places

Human-scaled, creative development can't gain a foothold because most of the money in real estate comes from institutional investors that prefer predictable, large scale projects like subdivisions and strip malls, says Neil Takemoto of CoolTown Beta Communities:

Why is it that the vast majority of new development is at an institutional scale, and we don't see human-scaled fine-grained urban fabric, the kind that makes historic neighborhoods so desirable? Well, it's mainly because the vast majority of real estate development investment dollars come from institutional investors, and where does that money come from? Your pension and insurance dollars are sourcing this tremendous pool of capital that has to be invested somewhere. To those investment managers with billions to manage, why manage fifty projects if you can manage only ten instead? That simply means they'll prefer investing no less than $5 million at a time, which translates to $15 million projects. That precludes most every single human-scaled building you’d find, explaining why human-scaled neighborhoods weren't built since the 1920s, leaving only large-scale strip malls, subdivisions, office buildings…

The thing is, the emerging you-centric market is demanding customized and personal, not mass-produced and commoditized. So how in the world is the supply of investment capital going to accommodate this? By focusing on the long tail - which is essentially anything and everything else that’s a 'non-hit' or 'non-blockbuster', but in sum is greater. The good news is that it's inevitable - witness the rise of Netflix instead of Blockbuster; Amazon/eBay/iTunes instead of Wal-Mart; YouTube instead of TV, all of which focus on the thousands of individual niches of smaller interests that are in sum greater than the only the most popular interests. All that was missing was a reliable system of delivery.

Read the rest at: Moving the Tipping Point for Creative Places | Planetizen

Will Franklin cultivate and support local small business owners?

My repeated suggestions to the Franklin Economic Development Commission to construct and steer incentives to small, locally-owned businesses -- indeed, to give any sort of overt, structured support to local businesses -- has fallen on deaf ears thus far. 

Why make any out-of-the-ordinary effort to support local small businesses? A nice encapsulation appears on the New Rules Project website:

Local Character and Prosperity
In an increasingly homogenized world, communities that preserve their one-of-a-kind businesses and distinctive character have an economic advantage.

Community Well-Being
Locally owned businesses build strong communities by sustaining vibrant town centers, linking neighbors in a web of economic and social relationships, and contributing to local causes.

Local Decision-Making
Local ownership ensures that important decisions are made locally by people who live in the community and who will feel the impacts of those decisions.

Keeping Dollars in the Local Economy
Compared to chain stores, locally owned businesses recycle a much larger share of their revenue back into the local economy, enriching the whole community.

Job and Wages
Locally owned businesses create more jobs locally and, in some sectors, provide better wages and benefits than chains do.

Entrepreneurship
Entrepreneurship fuels America's economic innovation and prosperity, and serves as a key means for families to move out of low-wage jobs and into the middle class.

Public Benefits and Costs
Local stores in town centers require comparatively little infrastructure and make more efficient use of public services relative to big box stores and strip shopping malls.

Environmental Sustainability
Local stores help to sustain vibrant, compact, walkable town centers-which in turn are essential to reducing sprawl, automobile use, habitat loss, and air and water pollution.

Competition
A marketplace of tens of thousands of small businesses is the best way to ensure innovation and low prices over the long-term.

Product Diversity
A multitude of small businesses, each selecting products based, not on a national sales plan, but on their own interests and the needs of their local customers, guarantees a much broader range of product choices.

Monday's EDC meeting includes the following agenda item: "Discussion Concerning Possible Incentive Programs for Development."

Though the EDC has been ambivalent thus far to my calls to create an overt program of support for small- and locally-owned businesses, perhaps "peer pressure" from nearby municipalities will get their attention this time around.

Cudahy, Shorewood OK aid to businesses - JSOnline.

Cudahy has created a cash and loan program that would give up to $57,300 to businesses, and Shorewood has approved a loan and a grant to help a restaurant move into larger space.

Both actions, taken Tuesday by the Cudahy Common Council and the Shorewood Village Board, are aimed at boosting economic development.

will give up to $57,300 in cash and loans to each of five small businesses that open on Packard Ave. Among the incentives that would be offered to the retail businesses: loans of up to $25,000 at 2% interest; matching grants of up to $25,000 to build or improve a storefront façade; up to $10,000 in cash to buy out an existing business' current lease so that the business can move to Packard Ave. Shorewood approved loan of $102,500 at 2% and a $50,000 grant to help North Star American Bistro move across N. Oakland Ave.

"In 2005, we found that the suburban poor population is greater than the urban poor population."

Photo: From the Flickr collection of TheTruthAbout.

One of the main forces compelling people to abandon central cities in favor of far-flung suburbs in the years following World War II (besides government subsidized home loans and highways) was the concentration of poverty in urban environments.

The worm has turned: A long-term series of policies aimed at squeezing/eliminating the middle class combined with suburban growth patterns that have proved unsustainable have created clusters of entire cul-de-sacs and subdivisions that are foreclosed or rapidly degrading. Beyond the blight of abandoned McMansions, property tax-funded school districts are being de-funded to the bone, causing economically stable families to leave - - sprawling further out - - while depleted suburbs are left wondering how, for instance, they'll pay to plow those cul-de-sacs.

Highlights from The Brookings Institute Study:

By 2008, suburbs were home to the largest and fastest-growing poor population in the country.

Between 2000 and 2008, suburbs in the country’s largest metro areas saw their poor population grow by 25 percent—almost five times faster than primary cities and well ahead of the growth seen in smaller metro areas and non-metropolitan communities. As a result, by 2008 large suburbs were home to 1.5 million more poor than their primary cities and housed almost one-third of the nation’s poor overall.

Midwestern cities and suburbs experienced by far the largest poverty rate increases over the decade.

Led by increasing poverty in auto manufacturing metro areas—like Grand Rapids and Youngstown—Midwestern city and suburban poverty rates climbed 3.0 and 2.2 percentage points, respectively. At the same time, Northeastern metros—led by New York and Worcester— actually saw poverty rates in their primary cities decline, while collectively their suburbs experienced a slight increase.

Read more at: More suburban residents living in poverty - JSOnline.

See also: A Cul-De-Sac of Closures, and Responding to the Transport Needs of the Impoverished Suburbs