Sprawled Out: The Search for Community in the American Suburb

"The developers’ favorite role models, the laissez faire free-for-alls, are the most troubled, the suburban slums."

 

Tomorrow night is the first meeting of the Franklin Mayoral Ad Hoc Development Process Review Committee. It's mission, in short, is to streamline our development and approval process so developers can be more effective. I will attend, record, and post all pertinent documents.

Download Dev proc ad hoc agenda 2-18

Download Dev proc ad hoc resolution

The agenda has no "public comment" item included; I will be curious to see whether this will be a process that genuinely makes possible better development or if it'll simply be a forum for the two developers on the committee to vent their frustration and demand that standards be lowered further; "Get out of my way, I'm trying to turn a quick profit here!"

In a best case scenario where the development process is made more user-friendly, can we begin to expect developments with site plans that are more like the "after" example above, complete with more long term gains for developer and city alike?

Or, how about some "suburban rehab" to correct some of our existing, unsustainable mistakes and spur economic growth, as illustrated below? (Urban Sprawl Repair Kit via Inhabitat):

 

Unfortunately, there is no one on the new Committee who has demonstrated any particular affinity for Smart Growth, sustainable development practices, or any effort to significantly raise the standards to which developers must rise.

For those who think we can afford to just continue sprawling out wherever the developer's dart lands, here's potent food for thought via the New York Times online opinion section:

In the meantime, during these low, ragged years, a few lessons about urban planning can be picked from the stucco pile.

One is that, at least here in California, the outlying cities themselves encouraged the boom, spurred by the state’s broken tax system. Hemmed in by property tax limitations, cities were compelled to increase revenue by the easiest route: expanding urban boundaries. They let developers plow up walnut groves and vineyards and places that were supposed to be strawberry fields forever to pay for services demanded by new school parents and park users.

Second, look at the cities with stable and recovering home markets. On this coast, San Francisco, Portland, Seattle and San Diego come to mind. All of these cities have fairly strict development codes, trying to hem in their excess sprawl. Developers, many of them, hate these restrictions. They said the coastal cities would eventually price the middle class out, and start to empty.

It hasn’t happened. Just the opposite. The developers’ favorite role models, the laissez faire free-for-alls — Las Vegas, the Phoenix metro area, South Florida, this valley — are the most troubled, the suburban slums.

Come see: this is what happens when money and market, alone, guide the way we live.

Read the rest here: Slumburbia (New York Times)

"Tax revolt" fans, meet the piper. Pay up.

I attended a Council of the Whole meeting a few nights back where my city's Common Council discussed funding for the annual 4th of July celebration. Because of a tight city budget, the mayor asked for cuts. Here's what he got:

 
The 4th of July celebration is NOT self-funding; revenue coming in does not match expenditures, and the city generally has to kick in (yet, I think beer is a mere fifty cents at this ostensibly family-oriented event - but that's a topic for another blog Beer is $3 per cup - tickets for beer are fifty cents each.). So, visitors to this year's celebration may well have to go without childrens games, flags and bleachers for the parade. (Update: flags are back).

One more community amenity on its last legs due to budget shortfalls.

There is no shortage of local pandering to tax revolt fantasies in suburban America. In communities where precious few public amenities exist to begin with, the mathematically challenged (is it really so hard to look up the definition of "median"?) rail against what they view as an egregious property tax bill.

These are the same people, of course, who celebrate the 1979 "taxpayer revolt" passage of California's Proposition 13, the result of a campaign funded by eccentric millionaires. It's effects have rippled out across the country, eviscerating communities while perhaps saving homeowners fifty or sixty bucks a year on their property tax bill. 

Why do strip malls and speedway collector roads dominate the landscape where we once enjoyed prosperous downtowns, safe streets, parks, open-all-week libraries, and actual sidewalks? You can trace the genesis of our current "geography of nowhere" to tax freeze enthusiasm whipped up by well-heeled interests. 

Troy Senik in National Affairs:

The two-thirds requirement for tax increases, for instance, is a result of 1978's Proposition 13 ballot initiative, which also capped the state's property taxes at 1% of assessed value and ensured that the assessed value can't increase by more than 2% per year. In the three decades since Prop. 13 passed, it has saved California taxpayers more than half a trillion dollars. But its limitations on property-tax revenues have also led the state to rely far more on income and sales taxes. And with the state's steeply progressive tax code leaving it heavily dependent on the capital gains of California's wealthiest citizens, bear markets inevitably lead to disproportionately sharp downturns in state revenue. The legislature then finds itself unable to stanch the financial bleeding through tax policy, since it is constrained by the two-thirds rule.

Victory for the "tax revolt." Meanwhile, California - its education system and public sector the envy of the nation in the sixties - sinks into ruin.

Read below about another tax revolt victory in Colorado Springs. Facing property tax increases to make ends meet, politically fearful municipal "leaders" bent to threats by "anti-big government" sentiment.

Welcome to the concept of consequences.

COLORADO SPRINGS — This tax-averse city is about to learn what it looks and feels like when budget cuts slash services most Americans consider part of the urban fabric.

More than a third of the streetlights in Colorado Springs will go dark Monday. The police helicopters are for sale on the Internet. The city is dumping firefighting jobs, a vice team, burglary investigators, beat cops — dozens of police and fire positions will go unfilled.

The parks department removed trash cans last week, replacing them with signs urging users to pack out their own litter.

Neighbors are encouraged to bring their own lawn mowers to local green spaces, because parks workers will mow them only once every two weeks. If that.

Water cutbacks mean most parks will be dead, brown turf by July; the flower and fertilizer budget is zero.

City recreation centers, indoor and outdoor pools, and a handful of museums will close for good March 31 unless they find private funding to stay open. Buses no longer run on evenings and weekends. The city won't pay for any street paving, relying instead on a regional authority that can meet only about 10 percent of the need.

"I guess we're going to find out what the tolerance level is for people," said businessman Chuck Fowler, who is helping lead a private task force brainstorming for city budget fixes. "It's a new day."

Read the rest at:Colorado Springs cuts into services considered basic by many - The Denver Post.

And MORE piper-paying: LA City Council slated to consider 1,000 job cuts

Further reading: Paradise Lost: California's Experience, America's Future by Peter Schrag

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.

Slide show: street network design pre-1950 vs. post-1950

Though unaccompanied by narration, clicking through these 50 slides from the Congress of the New Urbanism will give you a good general overview of street connectivity issues and how we arrived at our current sad state of affairs.

Norman Garrick compares street network design from pre-1950 and post-1950, factors that help determine the overall safety of safe pedestrian travel, and explains why it is so obvious that the pandemic of sprawl development is to blame for unsafe, poorly designed, disconnected neighborhoods.

Street Networks: Traffic Safety, Travel Mode Choice and Emergency Services

View more presentations from Congress for the New Urbanism.

Factoring ‘Walkability’ Into Home Values

The New York Times highlights increased home values in cities where people can walk from place to place:

Real estate agents often chant the mantra “location, location, location,” which essentially means “find a home in a well-kept neighborhood with good schools and a low crime rate.”

Some may cite a fourth factor, “walkability,” a concept supported by self-styled “new urbanists” who advocate denser cities designed for the pedestrian and mass transit as much as for the car. In their ideal neighborhood, you could walk to a bookstore and then to an ice cream shop, and your children could walk to school, probably unescorted. (It sounds like so many movie depictions of America in the 1950s.)

They argue that walkability lowers crime — that good people on the streets drive away the bad guys — and that it generally improves life and sharply raises home values. Whether it helps homes retain their value when the market slumps, however, seems a harder question to answer.

A study published in August by C.E.O.’s for Cities, a group of urban redevelopment advocates, found that in many ways, the street corner beats the cul de sac. It looked at the sales of 90,000 homes in 15 markets to estimate how much value was associated with something called the Walk Score. Using a 100-point scale, this score rates the number of destinations, including libraries, parks and coffee shops, within walking distance of a home.

The scores for America’s 40 largest cities can be found at Walkscore.com by typing in an address. For instance, the White House scores a near-perfect 97: a “walker’s paradise,” the Web site says. Another famous home, the Playboy mansion in Los Angeles, rates a 25. (You can get lost in Walkscore.com for hours; the “Brady Bunch” house, the exemplar of 1970s suburban life, scores an above-average 75.)

The study found that houses with above-average Walk Scores commanded a premium. It was as much as $30,000 in cities like Charlotte, N.C., Chicago, Sacramento and San Francisco, wrote Joe Cortright, the study’s author and an economist at Impresa, a consulting firm in Portland, Ore.

Read the rest at: Everybody’s Business - Factoring ‘Walkability’ Into Home Values - NYTimes.com

Guess what? Walkable neighborhoods INCREASE home values

This was an excellent presentation to come across as I prepare for tonight's Franklin Trails Committee meeting. This is one of the reasons I try to get the Economic Development Commission involved in creating USEFUL trails rather than simply recreational paths.

From Kaid Benfield's blog:

Home values in walkable neighborhoods are measurably higher than those that are not, even when other relevant factors are controlled in the analysis.

Below is an illuminating slide show on the subject that was presented by economist Joe Cortright at a transportation colloquium recently hosted by the Congress for the New Urbanism in Portland.  Some key points from the presentation:

• “Walkability” is not just about sidewalks.  Are there places you can walk to?
• Examining data from 98,000 home sales in 15 metropolitan areas, and controlling for other relevant factors, each increase of one point on Walk Score’s walkability scale raises home values by $700 to $3000.
• In Charlotte, the increase in value was $1,986 for each Walk Score point.
• Improving walkability raises home values by $10-30,000.
• Because mixed-use development produces big gains in walkability, the findings are evidence of a strong market for mixed-use neighborhoods.

I have to admit that the slide show was a little clunky on my computer (and there is no narration), but it is manageably short (24 slides) and well illustrated.  Enjoy:

Walking the Walk: How Walkability Increases Home Prices in U.S. Cities

View more documents from Congress for the New Urbanism.

NYT big idea: Ban cul-de-sacs

Sunday's New York Times Magazine ran its ninth annual "Year in Ideas" feature. One of the "idea" entries closely echos my blog entry of December 9th.

To the French linguists out there: Note that the Paper of Record uses the vernacular "cul-de-sacs" rather than the correct - but clumsy - "culs-de-sac":

The Cul-de-Sac Ban

Nothing divides suburban developers and "smart growth" advocates as much as the lowly cul-de-sac. The real estate community loves the meandering, dead-end streets; lots on them sell quickly and at a premium, thanks to their low traffic and perceived safety benefits. But critics complain that cul-de-sacs are a poor use of land; they funnel cars onto clogged arterial routes and restrict access to neighborhoods when emergency vehicles need to respond.

ILLUSTRATION BY LAUREN NASSEF

For decades the developers have been winning this battle. But this fall, Virginia, under the leadership of Gov. Tim Kaine, became the first state to severely limit cul-de-sacs from future developments. New rules require that all new subdivisions attain a certain level of "connectivity," with ample through streets connecting them to other neighborhoods and nearby commercial areas.

If subdivisions fail to comply, Virginia won't provide maintenance and snowplow services, a big disincentive in a state where the government provides 83 percent of road services. Virginia expects the new rules to relieve its strained infrastructure budget: through streets are more efficient and cheaper to maintain, and they take pressure off arterial roads that otherwise need to be widened. "It's about connecting land-use and transportation planning and restricting wasteful and unplanned development," Kaine said in March.

And how will the people respond who actually have to live and drive in the new, cul-de-sac-free neighborhoods? "There are pros and cons," says Kaid Benfield, the director of the Smart Growth Program at the Natural Resources Defense Council. "Residents like walkability and they like not having to be forced onto an arterial road where the traffic jam is. On the other hand, there is a sentiment out there that cul-de-sacs are safe" — though Benfield says research actually shows fewer traffic fatalities occur on connected roads. Other states are watching the Virginia rules closely, and Benfield says he expects to see similar regulations adopted around the country in the next few years — which means the dead end may soon be a thing of the past. CLAY RISEN

Read the rest at: The Ninth Annual Year in Ideas - Magazine - NYTimes.com

METROBURBIA, USA: Community-building and "Intersubjectivity"

Asphalt, concrete, parked cars, and -- benches notwithstanding - - no life.

From the excellent METROBURBIA, USA, by Paul K. Knox:

The basis of both individual lifeworlds and the collective structure of feeling is intersubjectivity: shared meanings that are derived from the lived experience of everyday practice. An important part of the basis for intersubjectivity is the routinization of individual and social practice in time and space. A positive and distinctive sense of place stems in large part from routine encounters and shared experiences that make for intersubjectivity. This requires plenty of opportunities for informal, casual meetings and gossip; friendly bars and pubs and a variety of settings in which to purchase and/or consume food; street markets; a variety of comfortable places to sit, wait, and people-watch; a sense of ease with changing seasons; and, above all, a sense of belonging, affection, hospitality, vitality, and historical and cultural continuity: not the attributes that anyone associates with American suburbia.

Suburbs must reassess the "growth" concept - USATODAY.com

Time for a re-think:

Housing bust halts growing suburbs - USATODAY.com.

Bedroom communities now must rethink their future and become "a little less sprawly, a little more village-like with clustered development, denser housing," Lang says. "The irony is that if they want to keep growing, they must grow as cities, which is diametrically opposite of how they got so big in the first place."

Cheaper than dinner for two at Olive Garden: The implications of Franklin's new tax levy

Much as I regularly lament the lack of comprehensive local coverage of municipal issues in a new newspaper-depleted era, I have to give credit to FranklinNow for their clear explanation of the ramifications of the City of Franklin 2010 Budget's 2.9% tax levy increase.

The new levy is $5.94 per $1,000 of assessed property value, which is reportedly the lowest in Milwaukee County.

Far from hiding it inside the story, FranklinNow included a "By the Numbers" pull quote that did the math for those who may not understand the personal ramifications of a 2.9% tax levy increase (though they did not do so online).

So, a family living in a home in Franklin with an assessed value of $250,000 faces an annual property tax bill increase of... $27.

Twenty-seven dollars.

To keep the increase from rising over the price of dinner for two at Olive Garden, cuts had to be made. In addition to an across-the-board, 1.7% cut in the overall operating budget (from FranklinNow):

The budget reduces funding to the July 4 celebration and St. Martin's Fair by 50 percent, leaves open a highway worker and custodial position and cuts funding for an intern in the planning department.

Tax dollars to other areas, including the library and street improvement funds, were frozen.

Not great news from an Economic Development standpoint.

How, with community amenities and services dwindling, do you attract to Franklin the sorts of companies that will drive down personal property taxes?

Indeed, the cost of a dinner for two at Olive Garden is not so bad, you may argue, but what about business's aversion to taxes? Conservative dogma states that "high" taxes scare business away; Franklin is a "tax hell," and that's hinders its attractiveness to business and commercial development.

Really?

Robert Ady was a longtime executive at the Fantus Company, the legendary site location business that virtually invented the process. Now the head of his own company, Ady International, Robert Ady is said to have assisted in more site locations than any living person.

Based on hundreds of face-to-face dealings with companies deciding upon the best place to locate or relocate, here are some of Ady's observations:

“[I]n the facility location process, taxes are not relatively important when compared with other cost factors such as labor, transportation and utility and occupancy costs. . . . In summary, site selection data do not suggest any correlation between low taxes and positive economic growth, or between high taxes and slow growth. The location requirements are too many, the process too complicated, and other factors too important to justify a strong relationship.”

As further reported by author Greg LeRoy:

Ady’s finding is consistent with those of others: tax-rate differences and tax incentives are too small to make a difference. Subsidies cannot make a bad place a good place. Good places are competitive because they have the long-term business basics that a company needs to produce supply to meet demand. So if cities and states want to grow good jobs, instead of cooking up more tax breaks, they should focus on improving their business basics—the valuable inputs and linkages they have.

Like, for instance, walkability, which has been shown to increase property values in communities that embrace the concept. This is why the National Association of Realtors is a vocal proponent of Smart Growth and Sustainable Development practices - specifically walkable, less car-dependent communities.

Simply put, it's easier to sell houses in - and attract CEOs to - communities that invest in long-term amenities like non-vehicular connectivity. Even if it costs TWO dinners at Olive Garden per year.

LeRoy explains the importance of creating attractive communities:

There are often personal factors in location decisions. Executives especially like to create a short commute for themselves. They may also locate for amenities such as golf courses or good schools for their children. The smaller the company, the more likely it is that such factors will come into play, but they are sometimes evident at bigger companies, too. For example, a study of 38 companies that left New York City found that 31 moved closer to their chief executive’s home, reducing the average CEO commute to eight miles.6 When the founder of Kinko’s sold the company to a group of New York investors, the company moved its headquarters in 2000 from Ventura, California, to Dallas, where the new CEO lived.

Back to the tax boogie-man. Robert Ady's chart of site location cost factors for an office project puts "Labor" at 72% and "Taxes" at a mere 5%.

Again, Greg LeRoy:

Federal tax statistics suggest that even Ady’s low ranking of taxes is overweighted. They provide even stronger evidence on why taxes—and therefore tax breaks—can rarely influence corporate location decisions. Internal Revenue Service statistics show that all state and local taxes make up only 1.2 percent of the typical company’s cost of doing business, far less than labor, materials, marketing, overhead, transportation—the business basics. And then companies get to deduct those state and local taxes when they file their federal tax returns, so Uncle Sam actually foots up to 35 percent of the bill. The bottom line: after federal deductibility, state and local taxes make up only 0.8 percent of the average company’s costs.

And, in Franklin, we have an alderman wishing on a star that a property tax freeze will fill public safety positions, create a sustainable community, and somehow increase the quality of life for local families.

I'll bet him dinner at Olive Garden that he's wrong.

(Greg LeRoy's book is called THE GREAT AMERICAN JOBS SCAM, and is highly recommended for it's solid research and excellent sourcing.)