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.

How could the mortgage crisis get worse in suburbia? How about some BRAIN SWELLING DISEASE?

Via Slate: The Big Money:

Filmmakers Andrew and Leslie Cockburn discuss a scene from their new documentary American Casino. The scene shows how a sea of abandoned swimming pools in California has become a mosquito Club Med.

Weekend Viewing: James Howard Kunstler dissects suburbia | Video on TED.com

Few say it better.

James Howard Kunstler dissects suburbia | Video on TED.com.

UPDATED: Bush attempts to indulge in a little sprawl vandalism before he leaves office

Always time for another profitable outrage or two before headin' back to the ranch.

UPDATE: Timber firm drops road use request ("When we heard about the concern for further input, we said, 'Well, that makes sense,' and we apologized and set up some [public] meetings," said Kathy Budinick, a spokeswoman for Plum Creek)

The squeaky wheel ...

Forest Service paves way for development in Montana woods:

Washington Post

January 4, 2009

The Bush administration appears poised to push through a change in U.S. Forest Service agreements that would make it far easier for mountain forests to be converted to housing subdivisions.

Mark Rey, the former timber lobbyist who heads the Forest Service, last week signaled his intent to formalize the controversial change before the Jan. 20 inauguration of President-elect Barack Obama.

As a candidate, Obama campaigned against the measure in Montana, where local governments complained of being blindsided by Rey's negotiating the policy shift behind closed doors with the nation's largest private landowner.

The shift is technical but with large implications. It would allow Plum Creek Timber Co. to pave roads passing through Forest Service land. For decades, such roads were little more than trails used by logging trucks to reach timber stands.

But as Plum Creek has moved into the real estate business, paving those roads became a necessary prelude to opening vast tracts of the company's 8 million acres to the vacation homes that are transforming landscapes across the West.

Scenic western Montana, where Plum Creek owns 1.2 million acres, would be most affected, placing burdens on county governments to provide services and undoing efforts to cluster housing near towns.

"Just within the last couple weeks, they finalized a big subdivision west of Kalispell," said D. James McCubbin, deputy county attorney of Missoula County, which complained that the closed-door negotiations violated federal laws requiring public comment because the changes would affect endangered species and sensitive ecosystems. Kalispell is in Flathead County, where officials also protested.

The uproar last summer forced Rey to postpone finalizing the change, which came after "considerable internal disagreement" within the Forest Service, according to a Government Accountability Office report requested by Sen. Jon Tester (D-Mont.). The report said that 900 miles of logging roads could be paved in Montana and that amending the long-held easements "could have a nationwide impact."

Tester and Sen. Jeff Bingaman (D-N.M.), chairman of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, then asked for an inquiry by the inspector general of the Agriculture Department, which includes the Forest Service.

"I think we need another set of eyes on it," Tester said Friday. "I don't think that's running out the clock. If this is a good agreement, then what's the rush? Why do it in the eleventh hour of this administration?"

Obama sharply criticized Rey's efforts during the presidential campaign, citing concerns that a landscape dotted with luxury homes would be less hospitable to Montanans accustomed to easy access to timberlands.

"At a time when Montana's sportsmen are finding it increasingly hard to access lands, it is outrageous that the Bush administration would exacerbate the problem by encouraging prime hunting and fishing lands to be carved up and closed off," Obama said.

Rey vows to act soon. In a Dec. 12 letter to Tester and Bingaman, he repeated his logic for granting Plum Creek the changes it requested, then closed with a promise to schedule briefings "to describe how we plan to proceed."

In a phone interview Wednesday, Rey said he would act immediately after the courtesy meetings with the lawmakers. "Probably in the next week or so, before this goes forward," he said. Tester said he had not yet heard from Rey's office to arrange a meeting.

On environmental questions, the Bush administration has a checkered record of following through on promised eleventh-hour changes, said Robert Dreher, a lawyer with Defenders of Wildlife.

"I suppose it's a legacy issue," Dreher said. "They've already backed off on a couple of things they said they were going to do," including proposed changes on marine fisheries and industrial emissions.

On the other hand, the Bush White House went ahead with controversial changes to the Endangered Species Act, despite opposition from environmentalists.

The Plum Creek deal could be accomplished with the stroke of a pen. Because it amends existing easements, the change involves no 30-day waiting period. But the step carries a political cost that the administration evidently has been assessing since June, when Rey said he expected to formalize within a month the change that half a year later is still unresolved.

"It's conceivable they don't want to leave office looking like bad guys," Dreher said. "There's been a lot of concern about the nature of the process and the lack of inclusiveness. You've got the county government in Montana angry over it. If they do this walking out the door, they're kind of ramming it down their throats."

"Said property shall be used and occupied by white persons only except these covenants shall not prevent occupancy by domestic servants of different race or nationality in the employ of a tenant."

The title is an old bylaw in President Bush's new neighborhood. However, they eliminated that racist rule way back in.... 2000.

Almost got it straight before the turn of the 21st century.

(See neighborhood covenant document here.)

We are in the dark ages of home construction, part 2

"We love the suburbs for the privacy."

ABOVE: McMansion bedroom windows peek up over the outbuildings of Shoppes at Wyndham Village.

CBS News: "We've put so much of our national wealth and even identity into the idea of suburbia that we can't imagine having to let go of it or substantially change it."

This drumbeat will not let up; another mainstream outlet reporting the potential end of suburbia as we know it. This time it's The CBS Evening News:

Parade of Homes: We are in the dark ages of home construction

This is the actual photo accompanying a story in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel about this year's Parade of Homes, with accompanying headline: "Parade homes are a bit more down-to-earth this year."

What an abomination - - the vehicles are well pampered, however. And the house forms its own skyline; a mini village of pointless roofline peaks.

Ah, the Parade of Homes - - only in America do we pay for tickets to learn what we're supposed to want ("Honey - heated towel racks!").

See also The Jeep Cherokee Residence.

Suggested reading: House Lust: America's Obsession With Our Homes, by Daniel McGinn

The Decline of the Exurban Lifestyle: Still not convinced?

Though this blog is more concerned with improving present suburban communities than it is in seeing them wiped out, a story in today's New York Times paints a pretty dismal picture for those suburbs that are even more far-flung - - the so-called "exurbs"; collections of subdivisions that are utterly and completely dependent upon automobiles for their very existence.

Sure, people like having their space and their 5-car garages, but ...

... life on the edges of suburbia is beginning to feel untenable. Mr. Boyle and his wife must drive nearly an hour to their jobs in the high-tech corridor of southern Denver. With gasoline at more than $4 a gallon, Mr. Boyle recently paid $121 to fill his pickup truck with diesel fuel. In March, the last time he filled his propane tank to heat his spacious house, he paid $566, more than twice the price of 5 years ago.

Though Mr. Boyle finds city life unappealing, it is now up for reconsideration.
....

In Atlanta, Philadelphia, San Francisco and Minneapolis, homes beyond the urban core have been falling in value faster than those within, according to an analysis by Moody’s Economy.com.

Car-worshippers (and Bush-Cheney-Big Oil apologists) who constantly confound Milwaukee's efforts to get a sane light rail system built would do well to observe Denver, Colorado's experience:

A $6.1 billion commuter rail system has been in the works over the last four years, drawing people downtown without cars, while stimulating swift sales of densely clustered condos near stations.

Coors Field, the intimate, brick-fronted baseball stadium for the Colorado Rockies, has transformed the surrounding area from a desolate skid row into fashionable Lower Downtown, a neighborhood of restaurants and microbreweries in restored warehouses. Along the Platte River, new condos set on a park strip offer an arresting tableau of glass, steel, and futuristic geometry, attracting throngs of buyers at rising prices.

“This is a city where it’s fun to be in the center,” said Tim Burleigh, 56, who sold his house in the suburbs and now walks to Rockies games from his downtown condo.

But, alas, you gotta spend some real money and change the one-person-per-car paradigm to get out from under the thumb of Big Oil. The same "conservative" attitudes (and a few liberal ones as well) that have led to the current crumbling state of our national infrastructure and dismal community standards (optional sidewalks?) are raising the stakes of the upcoming crisis by obstinately denying the fact that we desperately need a mass transit re-fit program at the level of 1956's Federal Aid Highway Act.

And, what the heck, put the word "defense" in the name of whatever act we come up with (ala the Highway Act's alternate name, National Interstate and Highways Defense Act). Imagine a foreign policy scenario wherein OPEC-member nations observe an entire nation gearing up to drastically reduce consumption of their cash cow. Imagine NOT spending lives and money in Iraq (because that's an oil war, pure and simple).

The full NYT story is after the jump. (NYT story Via Calculated Risk:)

See also this entry from Calculated Risk linking to an LA Times story that describes a California community where 15%(!) of homes are bank-owned or in some level of foreclosure.

New York Times Graphic (click to enlarge)

Is Ed McMahon the Rock Hudson of the mortgage lending crisis?

Bear with me.

Remember when AIDS was considered by the high-minded to be some sort of punishment from on high sent to punish libidinous homosexuals for their morality-flouting lifestyles?

It wasn't just southern evangelists. Ronald Reagan's communications director, Pat Buchanan, stated that AIDS is "nature's revenge on gay men." Reagan's response to the growing epidemic was anemic at best. It was a problem confined to "others," people outside of his conception of reality (he fought World War II on a soundstage, remember).

The message was clear whne it came to AIDS: Fund programs for prevention, education, treatment and a cure? Why should we upstanding heterosexuals pay for the profligate lifestyles of morally bankrupt homosexuals - - i.e. bad people?

Because, you see, only bad people got AIDS.

How deep did the notion pervade the Reagan administration? From an article called Reagan's AIDS Legacy: Silence Equals Death:

Dr. C. Everett Koop, Reagan's surgeon general, has said that because of "intradepartmental politics" he was cut out of all AIDS discussions for the first five years of the Reagan administration. The reason, he explained, was "because transmission of AIDS was understood to be primarily in the homosexual population and in those who abused intravenous drugs." The president's advisers, Koop said, "took the stand, 'They are only getting what they justly deserve.' "

Not even a medical problem, they thought.

Things changed on July 25, 1985, when the American Hospital in Paris announced that Rock Hudson, a mainstream star in the Reagans' circle of acquaintance - - high profile good people! - -  had AIDS. Though Reagan and his administration remained resolutely silent on the epidemic (he finally publicly addressed AIDS in 1987, near the end of his second term), mainstream Hollywood rallied around the cause all the more fervently, campaigning for government funding and intervention. 

Because, you see, good people get AIDS. "Gosh, this could happen to anyone!" the people in Ron and Nancy's circle began to say to themselves.

If this could happen to Rock Hudson ...

Compare the pre-Rock Hudson attitude of righteous conservatives toward AIDS with local right wing columnist Patrick McIlheran's cold condescension toward those unlucky enough to be swept up in the mortgage lending crisis wave. He quotes an "angry renter":

"It just seems so wrong that these people made a wrong decision," she said, "and now they're crying for help and they seem to be getting it."

McIlheran himself lectures further:

Rage as you will about liars' loans and bankers' bonuses, what's still more outrageous is when we make it official public policy to punish the prudent and to help the profligate. It's grim that some people could lose their houses and have to rent for a while. It would be far worse if Big Mama Government swooped in to undo their mistake - with money taken from people who wanted to stop renting and never got the chance.

In this case the federal government has decided to take action; foreclosures are occurring at record levels, and, frankly, the banks are the main beneficiaries of the bail-out (it pays to have friends in high places). If some actual American citizens see a bit of relief, so much the better.

But, McIlheran sputters, why should we upstanding homeowners pay for the profligate habits of all those bad people? Because, you see, only bad people get into mortgage trouble. Only bad people can be taken in by fast-talking loan representatives who profit enormously from ridiculous mortgages. Only bad people experience bad breaks. McIlheran apparently can no more muster compassion for these deadbeats than Pat Buchanan could for the promiscuous, hedonistic queens he saw in his mind's eye when contemplating the scourge of AIDS.

We now learn that Ed McMahon - - by all accounts a sensible, good person with money and lawyers and powerful pals! - - is facing foreclosure on his mansion.

From CNN:

King: And the payments, you can't make -- what's the problem?

Ed McMahon: Well, if you spend more money than you make, you know what happens. And it can happen. You know, a couple of divorces thrown in, a few things like that. And, you know, things happen. You want everything to be perfect, but that combination of the economy, I have a little injury, I have a situation. And it all came together.

Anyone even vaguely acquainted with pop culture of the past half-century is aware of McMahon's countless hosting and spokesman gigs. The guy was always working, tireless - - and don't forget his profit and syndication participation in shows like Star Search and TV Bloopers And Practical Jokes (on NBC from 1982 until 1998!). I'm fairly certain he never has to pay for his Budweiser, either.

And yet, it is happening to him - - a man with armies of agents and lawyers watching over him. He's not a guy known for tossing around money or being particularly "profligate." He's known as one of the "good eggs" in Hollywood. But, nonetheless, misfortune swooped on him (a broken neck, a bad real estate market, etc.) and now he faces a crisis.

Sure - you can see gold-encrusted Evander Holyfield getting into money trouble - that fits the McIlheran "you had it coming" profile. And the McMansion-lusting young couples who jumped from dorms to five-acre cul-de-sacs via mom and dad loans and made-up income numbers - - I admit to feeling they cooked their own goose.

But Ed McMahon? There he is on Larry King saying, "You know, things happen"! He's a veteran of two wars!

Gosh, this could happen to anyone!

So, what about non-celebrity people who are equally "good eggs," not particular greedy (though McIlheran preaches incessantly that greed and wastefulness are our God-given rights as Americans), and didn't/don't have that army of lawyers and agents nearby to check the paperwork for them? What about the ones that didn't "over-buy," but just bought a modest house for their family while trusting their mortgage broker?

Remember that paperwork when you bought your house? Remember the whole afternoon of signing and initialing? Did you have a lawyer present? You don't think they could have slipped one by you during that process?

Think again. One does not have to be "profligate" to be victimized. There are solid, coupon-clipping, flag-waving citizens out there who are in a deep hole because they took bad advice.

And to the "Angry Renters" quoted in McIlheran's piece: Rather than wallow in smug self-involvement and blame the victims, count your lucky stars (as I do; I bought my house before the boom and have a "sane" fixed mortgage). You dodged a bullet - the slightest shift in circumstances and you would have been in a chair at CountryWide Mortgage with a grinning rep hovering over you, paperwork in hand, American Dream in sight. "Only a fool would pass up this deal in this market. Are you going to be a fool?"

Because if it can happen to Ed McMahon ...

RELATED: The mortgage lending crisis explained