Sprawled Out: The Search for Community in the American Suburb

Wondering why we don't bother building community amenities anymore?

I'm long overdue in noting the unfortunate end of the Franklin Cultural Center board's efforts to fund and build an arts center here. The organization was chaired by Don Dorson (read his letter after the jump). So much for local community amenities.

I also just started reading a newly published book called THE CUL-DE-SAC SYNDROME: TURNING AROUND THE UNSUSTAINABLE AMERICAN DREAM. And there's Franklin - a favorite for authors and journalists needing an object lesson in sprawl economics -  on page 53:

High-growth areas nearly always translate into higher property taxes. One study in Dane County, Wisconsin, where the tax burden is among the highest in the United States, showed that while the county's population grew 12 percent from 1990 to 1996, total property taxes soared 3.57 times faster than the population. Part of the reason is that developers rarely pay the long-term costs of building communities. Impact fees are often minimal.

Once subdivisions are built, builders are off the hook to fund schools parks, roads, and other infrastructure. In fact, the disparity between what a single-family home costs taxpayers and what developers pay is huge. In Franklin, Wisconsin, just south of Milwaukee, each new home cost taxpayers more than $10,000 for schools and services in 1992 (it was considerably more by 2008). The developer's contribution: $813 per home. Impact fees vary from locale to locale, but they never cover the full cost of development.

"People overshot the mark. They moved to the exurbs because they wanted space and order. But once there, they found that they were missing community and social bonds."

I've never been a huge fan of the columnist David Brooks (he once said Barack Obama was not an "Applebee's salad bar kind of guy," though Applebee's does not have a salad bar; so much for being in touch with the common man.)

I have to agree with his current column, however. It may be shocking to conservatives who expect Obama supporters to simply agree with each and every policy decision made by the President-elect, but getting the guy elected is only the beginning of the job. When he announced his intention to address the nation's crumbling infrastructure with an enormous building program, those of us who care about smart planning and traditional neighborhood development immediately started beating the drum to make sure this initiative is properly channeled; we certainly don't need more of the same. 

After all:

If you asked people in that age of go-go suburbia what they wanted in their new housing developments, they often said they wanted a golf course. But the culture has changed. If you ask people today what they want, they’re more likely to say coffee shops, hiking trails and community centers.

One terrific suggestion from the Washington Post: Invest in Mass Transit:

NYTimes.com:

This Old House

By DAVID BROOKS

The 1980s and 1990s made up the era of the great dispersal. Forty-three million people moved every year, and basically they moved outward — from inner-ring suburbs to far-flung exurbs on the metro fringe. For example, the population of metropolitan Pittsburgh declined by 8 percent in those years, but the developed land area of the Pittsburgh area sprawled outward by 43 percent.

If you asked people in that age of go-go suburbia what they wanted in their new housing developments, they often said they wanted a golf course. But the culture has changed. If you ask people today what they want, they’re more likely to say coffee shops, hiking trails and community centers.

People overshot the mark. They moved to the exurbs because they wanted space and order. But once there, they found that they were missing community and social bonds. So in the past years there has been a new trend. Meeting places are popping up across the suburban landscape.

There are restaurant and entertainment zones, mixed-use streetscape malls, suburban theater districts, farmers’ markets and concert halls. In addition, downtown areas in places like Charlotte and Dallas are reviving as many people move back into the city in search of human contact. Joel Kotkin, the author of “The New Geography,” calls this clustering phenomenon the New Localism.

Barack Obama has said that he would start an infrastructure project that will dwarf Dwight Eisenhower’s highway program. If, indeed, we are going to have a once-in-a-half-century infrastructure investment, it would be great if the program would build on today’s emerging patterns. It would be great if Obama’s spending, instead of just dissolving into the maw of construction, would actually encourage the clustering and leave a legacy that would be visible and beloved 50 years from now.

To take advantage of the growing desire for community, the Obama plan would have to do two things. First, it would have to create new transportation patterns. The old metro design was based on a hub-and-spoke system — a series of highways that converged on an urban core. But in an age of multiple downtown nodes and complicated travel routes, it’s better to have a complex web of roads and rail systems.

Second, the Obama stimulus plan could help localities create suburban town squares. Many communities are trying to build focal points. The stimulus plan could build charter schools, pre-K centers, national service centers and other such programs around new civic hubs.

This kind of stimulus would be consistent with Obama’s campaign, which was all about bringing Americans together in new ways. It would help maintain the social capital that’s about to be decimated by the economic downturn.

But alas, there’s no evidence so far that the Obama infrastructure plan is attached to any larger social vision. In fact, there is a real danger that the plan will retard innovation and entrench the past.

In a stimulus plan, the first job is to get money out the door quickly. That means you avoid anything that might require planning and creativity. You avoid anything that might require careful implementation or novel approaches. The quickest thing to do is simply throw money at things that already exist.

Sure enough, the Obama stimulus plan, at least as it has been sketched out so far, is notable for its lack of creativity. Obama wants to put more computers in classrooms, an old idea with dubious educational merit. He also proposes a series of ideas that are good but not exactly transformational: refurbishing the existing power grid; fixing the oldest roads and bridges; repairing schools; and renovating existing government buildings to make them more energy efficient.

This is the federal version of “This Old House.” And this is before the stimulus money gets diverted, as it inevitably will, to refurbish old companies. The auto bailout could eventually swallow $125 billion. After that, it could be the airlines and so on.

It’s also before the spending drought that is bound to follow the spending binge. Because we’re going to be spending $1 trillion now on existing structures and fading industries, there will be less or nothing in 2010 or 2011 for innovative transport systems, innovative social programs or anything else.

Before the recession hit, we were enjoying a period of urban and suburban innovation. We could have been on the verge of a transportation revolution. It looks as if the Obama infrastructure plan may freeze that change, not fuel it.

And not to get all Rod McKuen on you or anything, but the larger point is this: Social change has a natural rhythm. The season of prosperity gives way to the season of economic scarcity, and out of the winter of recession, new growth has room to emerge. A stimulus package may be necessary, but unless designed with care, its main effect will be to prop up the drying husks of the fall.

A community Arts Center in the era of big screen TV's and backyard Rainbow playsets?

 

What used to be a common community amenity is now a rare novelty. Here in Franklin, the idea of an arts center is met with grumpy indignation.

My goodness - the very idea that public money be used for a public amenity in the era of the bigscreen TV and Rainbow playsets ....

'A Christmas Carol' breaks in new Oconomowoc Arts Center tonight - JSOnline

Franklin Candidate Forum notes: part 3

I've got six pages of notes on the mayoral candidates forum, but I'm going to toss those and focus on the specific issue that jumped out at me that is both appropriate to the theme of this blog and an area where Franklin is hurting.

To wit:

Mayor Tom Taylor has on different occasions expressed his idea of where Franklin's downtown is or will be located. Sometimes it's Fountains of Franklin; other times it's Shoppes at Wyndham Village.

On the night of the forum, it was 76th and Rawson, of all places (aka the intersection of Ugly and Bleak). He then identified a separate civic center for Franklin roughly radiating outward from the library and eventually connected by walkways.

ABOVE: 76th and Rawson - downtown Franklin?

I cannot disagree more with that non-unified, scattered, "pod" vision of community life - the very definition of "hither and yon."

When did we get it in our heads that we can (or should) separate civic and commercial amenities? I'm mystified by that notion. The very reason that vibrant community centers  - and the cities within which they thrive - become so popular and lucrative is the fact that useful and desired facilities are within walking distance of each other. Take the kids to the park, then walk over to the coffee shop. Drop off dry cleaning after story-time at the library. Grab a sandwich before mailing a package at the post office.

In the meantime, meaningful interaction occurs again and again, and money changes hands between citizens and merchants again and again.

Did it not occur to anyone leaving the library on the night of the forum that you were, once you hit the parking lot, effectively nowhere? No nearby coffee shop, deli, bar, or restaurant to which to adjourn; everyone to their cars and back to their pods.

Challenger Basil Ryan impressed me with his alternative vision: Let's utilize the investments and infrastructure already in place (and already paid for) - -   beautiful library, a palace-like "Law Enforcement Center," city hall, and park - - and make that Franklin's nominal downtown and civic center by using the city-owned land between facilities in a more efficient manner.

He said:

We need the vision to do it here, right in our backyard, with the land that’s available here. We can tie in the police department, city hall, the library. We DO have enough space. We need someone with a creative vision, work with the existing buildings, and if we do that I think that would be your downtown. The land is there and we can encompass the buildings we’ve already paid for - - the city owns that land in between.

This was something I suggested in this blog last year using the photo below. The areas in green have potential.

And, as I noted a few days back: how sad is it that locally-owned Moondance Coffee goes out of business in a crummy 27th street location when we have no coffee shop in walking distance of the well-used library? The simple injection of two or three commercial amenity-type businesses in the area around Legend park and the library will create a much-needed civic AND commercial center that will pull together the eventual Shoppes at Wyndham Village and Legend Creek commercial developments as well. That's how you create a vibrant, tax-base expanding community focal-point. Add a literal Civic Center building (or the Franklin Cultural Arts Center), and now you have a real town center.

Hear the cash registers?

At the same time, why not use that opportunity to give locally-owned businesses first dibs by offering subsidies and incentives to them for a change? Moondance Coffee should be right where the enormous (and useless) front lawn of the library is currently, a public courtyard between. With a coffee shop nearby, I defy you to visit the library without stopping for java and/or a bagel while there.

Money changing hands!

Mayor Taylor said at the forum: "Business will go where business will do well." Drive by the library parking lot on any weekday - it's always nearly full - and do the math.

Ryan further impressed me by shifting focus away from 27th Street and calling our attention to the area around the House of Corrections. We can either develop it ourselves or wait for the County to place an undesirable - and non-lucrative -  facility or facilities there. What he didn't mention is that we will actually increase security for the area by making it inhabited and trafficked; hard to sneak off the jail property and melt into the surroundings when the surroundings contain alert humanity and lit streets.

We are a city without a center, and to further "decentralize" Franklin with talk of separate "civic" and "commercial" areas will merely reinforce Franklin's identity as a loose collection of subdivisions and strip malls with no vibrant community focal point.

And guess what? Tech companies don't want to move their employees to a "placeless place," no matter what kind of TIF you wave in front of them. On the other hand, TIF or not, progressive companies are hot for progressive communities; they and their money sniff out places like Middleton Hills and, if they follow up on certain plans, Oak Creek.

What does this mean for the mayor's race?

At the forum, Mayor Taylor claimed "in recent days and months we are being literally inundated with requests to build commercial development in the Franklin School District." If that's so, we need a person in the lead who is able to convey in no uncertain terms Franklin's vision and identity along the lines I laid out above. If we present an unambiguous set of standards and a confident plan, developers will be glad to work within Franklin's vision and indeed contribute to the process rather than rail against it.

Which candidate will strengthen the city Plan Staff (whose mandate is smart, effective, forward-thinking growth) and take it out from under Economic Development (whose mandate is just "growth" at all costs)?

Which candidate can look a big box in the eye and make them happy to become part of Franklin's plan, rather than the other way around?

Which candidate realizes that subdivisions need not be speedways, and that sidewalks and right-angle turns save kids' lives?

Which candidate recognizes the needs of the elderly and differently-abled to the extent that he will hold developers to a standard of walkability and accessibility in their site plans rather than mere sheds surrounded by parking lots?

Which candidate is willing to think creatively about mixed-used zoning and better, more cost-effective use of current infrastructure rather than more single-use pods and expensive sprawl?

If the southwest portion of Franklin is to be developed, which candidate is ready and willing to meet with a developer with ambitious plans for a Traditional Neighborhood Development (TND) plan, and effectively communicate that plan and its strengths to nearby residents so they understand its value to them as taxpayers and community members?

Which candidate sees the value of leveraging all of the above to create a strong, vibrant, desirable community identity that will attract more business and expand the tax base without the need for subsidies and TIF's?

I'll vote for, and then work with, that guy.

Franklin Community Arts Center information meeting set

From Franklinnow.com:

The Franklin Cultural Arts Center will hold a community information meeting from 1 to 2:30 p.m. Saturday, April 5, at the Franklin Public Library, 9151 W. Loomis Road.

FCAC officials will present a concept for the center, which will be a multiuse facility featuring an auditorium, meeting space and arts-based educational outreach programs.

The center is to be built and operated without taxpayer dollars.

The Franklin MOMS club will present a $250 donation to the FCAC at the meeting.