tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-50792970435520429682024-03-18T06:18:30.496-04:00Discovering UrbanismDaniel Nairnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14127732825472374125noreply@blogger.comBlogger373125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5079297043552042968.post-38935869377833455042012-06-06T23:13:00.002-04:002012-06-07T09:25:43.300-04:00Riding the Tide in Norfolk<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Last week I had a chance to ride the <a href="http://www.gohrt.com/services/the-tide/">Tide light rail</a>, an addition to the transportation system in Norfolk, Virginia that's coming up on one full year of operation. We utilized the park and ride at the Newtown Road Station, at the eastern end of the line, and traveled to MacArthur Square in the center of Norfolk. Conveniently, the same day pass could be used for the ferry to Portsmouth, so we walked the two blocks down to the port and crossed the river just in time to serendipitously catch a Memorial Day parade down High Street. <br />
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It's not exactly obvious that the Tide, in its current form, would be successful. The Hampton Roads region is not terribly dense. Robert Cervero <a href="http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=2&sqi=2&ved=0CE8QFjAB&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.its.berkeley.edu%2Fpublications%2FUCB%2F2011%2FVWP%2FUCB-ITS-VWP-2011-6.pdf&ei=TPjPT5K2K-Xi0QGs7fmoDQ&usg=AFQjCNEhpLut2Hf4oq0AOB_eeinmxvVc9w">has estimated that</a> light rail needs an average of 30 people per gross acre around the stations to be in the top quarter of cost-effective transit systems in the country. The stations along the Tide average around 5 people per gross acre. Overall public transportation ridership in the Hampton Roads area has been <a href="http://hamptonroadsperforms.org/indicators/transportation/public-transit.php">very much below</a> the national average, a statistic that does not bode well for new investment. On top of this, the route defies a fairly standard rule of transit planning. A transit system ideally should have destinations at both ends, in order to maximize usage for both directions of travel. When Virginia Beach decided <a href="http://www.wavy.com/dpp/news/the-history-of-light-rail-11-1-1999">to opt out</a>, it left the end of the line stranded in the middle.<br />
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Yet the service has done fairly well in terms of actual ridership. Between August 2011 and February 2012, weekday trips have <a href="http://www.gohrt.com/services/the-tide/">average around</a> 4,700, which significantly exceeds the initial 2,900 projection for the first year. (I wonder if ridership might be undercounted somewhat. On our way back to the parking lot, I noticed that some riders who were done for the day handed off their day pass to strangers who were just arriving.)<br />
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However, it's still several decades too early to adequately judge the Tide. Like all infrastructure, the Tide will likely shape the conditions of its own success over time. The Newtown Road station might remain a park-and-ride because of its highway access, but I can imagine a sizable parking garage being erected next door as demand grows. It's already the most popular station. Light rail shifts some burden of parking away from downtown, so that the more valuable downtown land can be redeveloped into more productive uses.<br />
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The stations in between are poised for transit-oriented development. Norfolk planners <a href="http://www.wvec.com/my-city/norfolk/Norfolks-sees-green-at-light-rail-stations-118868489.html">have anticipated this</a> and specifically zoned the areas around these stations to utilize the infrastructure to its fullest extent. Neighborhood associations in the area are also supportive. Ironically, the same low densities around the stations that might have caused elected officials to think twice about the whole project could be a net benefit. There's potential.<br />
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The long-term success of the Tide will ultimately depend on its expansion to other major destinations in the region, especially <a href="http://www.gohrt.com/about/development/vbtes">the Virginia Beach oceanfront</a> and the <a href="http://hamptonroads.com/2011/09/norfolk-start-planning-light-rail-extension-navy-base">Norfolk Navy Base</a>. The City of Virginia Beach seems to be warming to the idea. Their <a href="http://www.ourfuturevb.com/Pages/default.aspx">2009 Comprehensive Plan</a> designated most of the proposed corridor for growth, and identified light rail as a viable transportation alternative. Then, the city <a href="http://greatergreaterwashington.org/post/13781/ride-the-tide-of-light-rail-virginia-beach/">purchased right-of-way</a> that could be used for the alignment in 2010. Once again, Virginia Beach <a href="http://hamptonroads.com/2012/04/virginia-beach-hold-light-rail-referendum-nov">will hold a referendum</a> on light rail. In November, voters will decide whether to use "reasonable efforts to support the financing and development of The Tide light rail into Virginia Beach."Daniel Nairnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14127732825472374125noreply@blogger.com40tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5079297043552042968.post-53324508774197204552012-05-23T18:39:00.000-04:002012-05-23T18:39:15.605-04:00Edward Murray Bassett and the Origins of Zoning<i>The following is a summary of and reflection on <a href="http://books.google.com/books/about/Zoning.html?id=CbErAAAAYAAJ">Zoning by Edward Murray Bassett</a>, published by the National Municipal League in 1922. After writing the first comprehensive zoning ordinance for New York City six years earlier, Bassett had become the preeminent authority </i><i>in the U.S. </i><i>on this emerging land use tool. This is his case to cities for adopting a zoning code.</i><br />
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Zoning has become so ubiquitous in American cities that nobody bothers to defend the practice anymore. Steady rounds of critiques have been launched against zoning from all sides, from social justice proponents decrying exclusionary practices, to private property rights groups leveling against government intervention, to public policy academics, to urbanists and environmentalists opposed to strict separation of uses and controls on density. However, for the most part, mainstream zoning codes have been very resistant to these attacks over the years. Not much has changed, and, in fact, there are even very few general counterarguments made in defense of traditional zoning, at least that I'm aware of. It's just the way we do things.<br />
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This is why it's instructive to read an early planner who argued passionately for the creation of zoning codes. In 1922, there were only sixty codes in place in American cities, and Edward Murray Bassett made a compelling case for many more states to allow this new practice. I've pulled together the primary arguments he made in favor of zoning, many of which still apply today:<br />
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1. <b>Cooperation yields overall larger return on investment for all property owners</b>. This was Bassett's primary concern, one that he underscored with a number of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prisoner%27s_dilemma">prisoners' dilemma</a> scenarios. For example, "<span style="color: #0b5394;">In some of the larger cities a landowner in the business district is almost compelled to put up a skyscraper because if he put up a low building, his next neighbor would put up a higher one that would take advantage of his light and air</span>." He asserted that skyscrapers were probably not a sound investment in their own right, but they were built anyway in a virtual arms race for public goods of light, air, privacy, and scenery. Zoning was the truce that made everyone better off.<br />
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2. <b>Zoning stabilizes building and property values</b>, by signaling to investors what they can expect from a certain district. Markets work when people know what they are buying, and zoning creates some assurance that the product will not change fundamentally. This reason is why housing developers <a href="http://www.dartmouth.edu/%7Ewfischel/Papers/02-03.pdf">were among the most</a> ardent supporters of zoning in the early stages.<br />
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3. <b>Constitutional limits on local "police powers" would prevent zoning excesses</b>, so residents need not worry about a slippery slope toward regulating "<span style="color: #073763;">aesthetics and sentimentality</span>" (more on this below).<br />
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4. <b>Zoning is better than deed-restrictions</b>, which were already being used to accomplish a similar purpose. Unlike the latter tool, zoning is applied comprehensively and can be adjusted by elected bodies to meet evolving needs.<br />
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5. <b>Zoning is better than nuisance law</b>. Without a zoning code in place, disputes between property owners about impacts can only be settled through common law nuisance claims. This is more expensive and arbitrary than zoning. <br />
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6. <b>Zoning prevents the wealthy from leaving the city</b>. By 1922, the trend toward suburbanization was well underway. Bassett advised cities to zone for the kinds of low-density neighborhoods the wealthy were seeking, in order to prevent them from moving further out and losing the tax base. (This is reminiscent of a contemporary argument that cities must provide free downtown parking, in order to prevent shoppers from taking their business to the suburban big boxes).<br />
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7. <b>Zoning limits land speculation</b> by eliminating the possibility for large-scale buildings in low-density zones. Bassett writes, “<span style="color: #073763;">Owners of vacant corner lots, that had been held out of use so that apartment houses might be built, have in almost every case improved them as high-class one-family residences</span>.” (ok ... I don't buy this one. There <span style="color: #073763;">would </span>seem to be counterexamples that go the opposite direction)<br />
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8. <b>Zoning maximizes public infrastructure investment</b>. Major thoroughfares create natural businesses districts by giving access to numerous customers. However, if homes or other less suitable uses are built on major streets, the full economic impact of the public infrastructure is not achieved.<br />
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9. <b>Zoning manages and stabilizes growth</b>. He wrote, “<span style="color: #073763;">Zoning encourages growth while at the same time it prevents too rapid changes</span>.” A good code would lead to steady growth, without any expanding or deflating real estate bubbles. This would also facilitate reasonable planning of public infrastructure and facilities.<br />
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Notice the complete absence of social, moral, or ideological language. These are not the words of a utopian academic envisioning the city of the future, but rather a politically-astute pragmatist addressing a chamber of commerce or some other worldly audience. Bassett deliberately distanced himself from any "<span style="color: #073763;">radical experimentation</span>" even while presenting what was on the regulatory cutting edge of the time. Unlike some <a href="http://discoveringurbanism.blogspot.com/search?q=Robinson">previous planners</a>, he did not present zoning as a tool for class segregation. He didn't even really mention class, or housing conditions, or city beautification, or any of the other movements popular at the time. His focus was squarely on return on investment.<br />
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But Bassett issued a very interesting caution - tucked into the middle of a paragraph - that gives some insight into an appropriate purpose and scope for this tool. He advised cities not to pass zoning that explicitly forbids apartment buildings in single-family home zones, instead favoring one broad residential zone for all types of housing (he thought setback and height limitations could be used to achieve the same effect).<br />
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Bassett was certainly not worried about concentrating poverty or perpetuating sprawl, as we might be today. He was concerned that the courts would throw out such regulations as a breach of the constitutional power to protect "health, safety, morals, and general welfare." If this happened, he believed it would have a chilling effect for all cities, causing an over-reaction that could very well have killed zoning in its infancy.<br />
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We have to remember that the courts were still probing exactly how far land use regulations legally could go. As a father of a toddler, I can relate to the series of tests it takes to establish the exact meaning of something as simple as "don't smash your carrots." It took the U.S. Supreme Court decades to test the meaning of local police powers to control land use. First, the court allowed <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Welch_v._Swasey">building height regulation in Boston</a>, then <a href="http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/cgi-bin/getcase.pl?court=us&vol=226&invol=137">setback regulation in Richmond</a>, then <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hadacheck_v._Sebastian">regulation of industrial uses in Los Angeles</a>. Bassett was heartened by these successes, but he didn't want to push his luck.<br />
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The Village of Euclid, Ohio passed their zoning ordinance just as Bassett published this pamphlet, leaving them without the benefit of his cautionary advice. Their ordinance did, in fact, prohibit multifamily buildings entirely from single-family districts, and the Supreme Court Justices paid special attention to this fact during the landmark <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Village_of_Euclid_v._Ambler_Realty_Co.">Village of Euclid v. Ambler Realty Co.</a> case. Prohibiting a smokestack next to a school is one thing, but would allowing different housing types to share a district really detract from the health, safety, or welfare of the public?<br />
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Yes, as it turns out. Bassett was wrong. The court upheld Euclid's code, thereby granting more power to zoning than he had anticipated. From the opinion of the court delivered by Justice Sutherland, at length:<br />
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"<span style="color: #073763;">With particular reference to apartment houses, it is pointed out that <b>the development of detached house sections is greatly retarded by the coming of apartment houses</b>, which has sometimes resulted in destroying the entire section for private house purposes; that, in such sections, very often <b>the apartment house is a mere parasite</b>, constructed in order to take advantage of the open spaces and attractive surroundings created by the residential character of the district. Moreover, the coming of one apartment house is followed by others, interfering by their height and bulk with the free circulation of air and monopolizing the rays of the sun which otherwise would fall upon the smaller homes, and bringing, as their necessary accompaniments, the disturbing noises incident to increased traffic and business, and the occupation, by means of moving and parked automobiles, of larger portions of the streets, thus detracting from their safety and depriving children of the privilege of quiet and open spaces for play, enjoyed by those in more favored localities -- until, finally, <b>the residential character of the neighborhood and its desirability as a place of detached residences are utterly destroyed</b></span>."</blockquote>
(Of course, if you happened to live in one of those parasites that lead to a chain reaction of utter destruction, it's not clear how your own welfare is benefited by this ruling in any way.)<br />
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Euclid could easily have gone the other way. The Ohio Federal District Court previously struck down Euclid's zoning, <a href="http://oldurbanist.blogspot.com/2011/11/ever-since-euclid.html">declaring</a> "<span style="color: #073763;">in the last analysis, the result to be accomplished is to classify the population and segregate them according to their income or situation in life.</span>" A Euclid loss would have still allowed certain form-based regulations and limitations on industrial uses, but broader land use regulation would have been severely chastened. Bassett was probably right to doubt the odds of a victory in 1922, but the number of zoning ordinances had grown exponentially in just five years. The Justices hearing the Euclid case were reminded of the 24 million U.S. residents living under a democratically-imposed zoning code as they weighed the allowable extent of this power.<br />
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I have not been able to find Bassett's reaction to the Euclid decision, but it raises an interesting question. Was he relieved that the zoning he fought so hard for passed its most important test of constitutional scrutiny? Or was he concerned that this power was being taken too far? After all, the constitutional protection against excesses was one of his original selling points of zoning:<br />
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"<span style="color: #073763;">Zoning must be done in relation to the public health, safety, morals and general welfare. If it is done arbitrarily or by whim or for aesthetics or for purely sentimental purposes or with unjust discrimination, the courts will not uphold it</span>."</blockquote>
I'd like to think that Bassett, at least in some honest moments, felt a little like Dr. Frankenstein. He had persuasively (to me at least) argued for a community's responsibility to form some order out of chaos, only to see zoning grow to reinforce the benefit of "<span style="color: #073763;">favored localities</span>" at the expense of others. He wrote that zoning "<span style="color: #073763;">should follow nature and it should not be forgotten that the city has a history</span>," yet this tool had begun to artificially restructure the 20th century city into a form never before seen. He had expected the courts to be a bulwark against taking this power too far. But that did not happen.Daniel Nairnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14127732825472374125noreply@blogger.com17tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5079297043552042968.post-60492586827789806432012-04-26T23:27:00.000-04:002012-04-26T23:34:18.616-04:00The Nature of Adaptable Housing<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgdK4fJJLd6kk9qJsCJo2RB_zWz1g0zWCfYF36BZxeqyBjS2TukM9gJhsVF5wxt9F9M18Mql_AQIx_dy3WhXNKsB0Uo1ilybTLhWiL08DxdYI4eLEuqvvBsV0r0mYPtlR1wxmGCwTuqotwV/s1600/Townhomes.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgdK4fJJLd6kk9qJsCJo2RB_zWz1g0zWCfYF36BZxeqyBjS2TukM9gJhsVF5wxt9F9M18Mql_AQIx_dy3WhXNKsB0Uo1ilybTLhWiL08DxdYI4eLEuqvvBsV0r0mYPtlR1wxmGCwTuqotwV/s400/Townhomes.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">An older, urban townhouse in a healthy metro area: could be rented or owned.</td></tr>
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Every region needs a certain proportion of rented homes and owned homes, and this optimal balance is constantly shifting with fluctuations in housing market demand. Right now, most areas of the U.S. find themselves correcting for years of oversupplying owner-occupied homes. A combination of demographic and financial conditions have made renting a more attractive option - or at least the only option - for many households. According to the <a href="http://www.census.gov/construction/bps/uspermits.html">most recent census numbers</a>, multifamily housing starts increased by 70% between March 2012 and the year before, while single-family housing starts increased by only 18% (after falling from years before). Like warming up a bathtub by adding hot water, new construction is one way to achieve the balance. But it's very slow and sometimes the bathtub is already full enough.<br />
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Another way to adapt is to convert the tenure of existing homes. This is the premise of the Federal Housing Finance Agency <a href="http://www.housingwire.com/news/fhfa-pushes-reo-rental-bid-deadline-may">program </a>that would sell some of the inventory of government-owned foreclosures to bidders who agree to manage them as rentals for a period of time. It's somewhat of an experiment that may or may not work as intended, but the idea is to unload the holdings, provide affordable rental opportunities, and avoid squashing what might be a recovery in home prices.<br />
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But what if homes can be built to be naturally adaptable from the outset? During the lifespan of a home, neighborhood-scaled and regionally-scaled demands will inevitable change. A long-term outlook will envision how the same structure can adapt to these conditions as needed.<br />
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It turns out that certain kinds of homes lend themselves to conversion better than others. The Housing and Urban Development agency's PD&R office <a href="http://www.huduser.org/portal/datasets/ahs/ahs_renter_and_owned_markets.pdf">just released a study</a> of these adapting homes. Using the American Housing Survey, which has followed the same set of housing units over several decades, researchers picked out the homes that have switched between rental and ownership at least once between 1985 and 2009. There are 23.8 million of them, or 18% of the nation's housing stock. Looking at some of the other housing attributes in the survey, they were able to create a profile of the kinds of homes more likely to switch.<br />
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In order of strength of correlation:<br />
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<li><b>A</b><b>daptable homes tend to be townhouses or duplexes</b>. About three quarters of all single family detached homes are only ever owner-occupied, and the reverse is true of multifamily housing. But single-family attached homes are remarkably flexible, with 35.6% of all units adapting during this time period. Small multifamily buildings of 2-4 units also scored highly.</li>
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<li><b>Adaptable homes tend to be small but not that small</b>. Two bedroom and three bedroom homes are the most likely to switch tenure. Larger homes are mostly only owned, and smaller ones tend to just be rented.</li>
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<li><b>Adaptable homes tend to be in central cities</b>. In metropolitan areas, the further the home is from the center the less likely it is to have switched. Typically, outer suburban housing is only owner-occupied.</li>
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<li><b>Adaptable homes tend to be older</b>.The older a home is, the more likely it is to have switched. This holds true when the analysis is confined to only homes built before 1985, when the dataset begins. The authors speculate that this could be reflecting older homes that were built to accommodate an owner and a renter on a different floor. These housing types are particularly flexible, although new homes are rarely equipped with accessory units.</li>
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<li><b>Adaptable homes tend to be in growing and economically healthy metropolitan areas</b>. In metropolitan areas that grew by 5% or less over the last three decades, 22.4% had switched. That rate increases to around 30% in high-growth areas. Economically healthy cities have a greater need to absorb changes, and also tend to have a higher proportion of renters in general.</li>
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When you picture a switch happening, you might think of the conventional "trickle-down" process. An older home that has depreciated in value over the years eventually is converted to a rental unit, or maybe several, for households with less income. However, this storyline is not supported by the data. In fact, a conversion from rental to ownership is almost just as common as from ownership to rent. It should also be noted that we're not talking about housing as revolving doors of tenure. The ones that switched typically remained that way for many consecutive years.<br />
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The study did not consider a couple of major factors in adaptability - deed-restrictions and zoning ordinances. Homeowners' Associations or local governments forbid or heavily regulate rental in many residential areas, either, depending on your perspective, to promote neighborhood stability or to keep lower-income households at a distance. Since these occupancy restrictions are more common in the suburbs and among newer housing subdivisions, the correlation between these variables might be explained by such legal barriers. Either way, it's pretty clear these regulations considerably impede adaptability.<br />
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U.S. Presidents and Congress have quite openly <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/21/business/worldbusiness/21iht-admin.4.18853088.html?pagewanted=all">proclaimed homeownership</a> as the superior form of tenure for many decades, and housing policy continues to nudge families in this direction. However, in the wake of the housing market downturn, others <a href="http://www.brookings.edu/speeches/2009/0629_housing_katz.aspx">are seeking to</a> raise the profile of renting as a viable option in its own right. Injecting more adaptability into the housing stock will allow the succession of occupants to adjust to their own changing needs over the decades or even centuries of the home's use.<br />
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</ol>Daniel Nairnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14127732825472374125noreply@blogger.com16tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5079297043552042968.post-39334612890279444302012-03-26T22:35:00.001-04:002012-03-27T10:13:19.233-04:00New Census Geographies Tell an Ambiguous Urban StoryThe U.S. Census Bureau <a href="http://www.census.gov/newsroom/releases/archives/2010_census/cb12-50.html">announced today</a> that the U.S. population is more urbanized than ever before. In 2000, 79.0% of the population lived in an Urban Area, as defined by the Census Bureau, and in 2010 that number grew to 80.7% of all Americans. While this finding might suggest that Americans are moving into the kinds of urban places featured on this blog – walkable neighborhoods with a diversity of uses in close proximity - the full story is much more nuanced. "Urban" can mean many things.<br />
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While the urbanized population grew between 2000 and 2010, the area of land considered urbanized grew by even more. This requires some explanation of the terms. The Census <a href="http://www.census.gov/geo/www/ua/2010urbanruralclass.html#lists">determines two types of Urban Areas</a>, using a complex set of mapping criteria based on neighborhood-scale population density, impervious surfaces, and other factors. There are “Urbanized Areas” of 50,000 people or more, and “Urban Clusters” of 2,500 people or more. These are important geographies because, unlike metropolitan areas or incorporated cities, they are based on the results of the census. They are not arbitrary lines on the map but a description of the facts on the ground.<br />
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Before looking at some results, I'd like to note that the minimum density threshold to qualify an area as urban is not all that high. An area must have core Census Tracts with at least 1,000 people per square mile, and the urbanized area can spread out indefinitely as long as there are contiguous areas with 500 people per square mile. It can even "jump" and "hop" over sparsely populated land to continue along a corridor. As a point of reference, a neighborhood of single-family houses on two acres lots would qualify as "urban" under this definition, even considering roadways and other leftover spaces.<br />
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Urbanized Areas (the cities, not the towns) increased in population by 13.3% between 2000 and 2010, but they also increased in land area by 18.5%. This means the population density of all Urbanized Areas in the United States dropped by 4.4%. This fact is particularly troubling, because Urbanized Area population densities actually increased by 1.9% between 1990 and 2000 (the methodology for computing urban areas changed considerably between 1990 and 2000, but this number comes from applying the 2000 methodology back to 1990). It’s probably more accurate to say that Americans didn’t become more urbanized in the last decade, but that we witnessed a convergence. The Urban Areas grew, but became less urban in the process.<br />
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Of course, the changes in density happened differently throughout the country, and neighborhood-scaled density arranged itself much differently inside each urban area. Here are some top ten lists from the new census geographies. In each case, density is measured in People per Square Mile for the whole Urbanized Area:<br />
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Top Ten Densest
Urbanized Areas (over 50,000) in 2010</b></div>
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<tbody>
<tr style="height: 15.0pt; mso-yfti-firstrow: yes; mso-yfti-irow: -1;">
<td nowrap="nowrap" style="border-bottom: solid black 1.0pt; border-left: none; border-right: none; border-top: solid black 1.0pt; height: 15.0pt; mso-border-bottom-themecolor: text1; mso-border-top-themecolor: text1; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 36.9pt;" valign="top" width="49"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-yfti-cnfc: 5;">
<b><span style="color: black;">Rank</span></b></div>
</td>
<td nowrap="nowrap" style="border-bottom: solid black 1.0pt; border-left: none; border-right: none; border-top: solid black 1.0pt; height: 15.0pt; mso-border-bottom-themecolor: text1; mso-border-top-themecolor: text1; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 112.5pt;" valign="top" width="150"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-yfti-cnfc: 1;">
<b><span style="color: black;">Name</span></b></div>
</td>
<td nowrap="nowrap" style="border-bottom: solid black 1.0pt; border-left: none; border-right: none; border-top: solid black 1.0pt; height: 15.0pt; mso-border-bottom-themecolor: text1; mso-border-top-themecolor: text1; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 63.0pt;" valign="top" width="84"><div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-yfti-cnfc: 1; text-align: right;">
<b><span style="color: black;">Population</span></b></div>
</td>
<td nowrap="nowrap" style="border-bottom: solid black 1.0pt; border-left: none; border-right: none; border-top: solid black 1.0pt; height: 15.0pt; mso-border-bottom-themecolor: text1; mso-border-top-themecolor: text1; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: .75in;" valign="top" width="72"><div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-yfti-cnfc: 1; text-align: right;">
<b><span style="color: black;">Area</span></b></div>
</td>
<td nowrap="nowrap" style="border-bottom: solid black 1.0pt; border-left: none; border-right: none; border-top: solid black 1.0pt; height: 15.0pt; mso-border-bottom-themecolor: text1; mso-border-top-themecolor: text1; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 49.5pt;" valign="top" width="66"><div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-yfti-cnfc: 1; text-align: right;">
<b><span style="color: black;">Density</span></b></div>
</td>
<td nowrap="nowrap" style="border-bottom: solid black 1.0pt; border-left: none; border-right: none; border-top: solid black 1.0pt; height: 15.0pt; mso-border-bottom-themecolor: text1; mso-border-top-themecolor: text1; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 45.0pt;" valign="top" width="60"><div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-yfti-cnfc: 1; text-align: right;">
<b><span style="color: black;">Change</span></b></div>
</td>
<td colspan="2" style="border-bottom: solid black 1.0pt; border-left: none; border-right: none; border-top: solid black 1.0pt; height: 15.0pt; mso-border-bottom-themecolor: text1; mso-border-top-themecolor: text1; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: .5in;" valign="top" width="48"><div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-yfti-cnfc: 1; text-align: right;">
<b><span style="color: black;">2000
Rank</span></b></div>
</td>
</tr>
<tr style="height: 15.0pt; mso-yfti-irow: 0;">
<td nowrap="nowrap" style="background: silver; border: none; height: 15.0pt; mso-background-themecolor: text1; mso-background-themetint: 63; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 36.9pt;" valign="top" width="49"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-yfti-cnfc: 68;">
<b><span style="color: black;">1</span></b></div>
</td>
<td nowrap="nowrap" style="background: silver; border: none; height: 15.0pt; mso-background-themecolor: text1; mso-background-themetint: 63; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 112.5pt;" valign="top" width="150"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-yfti-cnfc: 64;">
<span style="color: black;">Los Angeles--Long Beach--Anaheim,
CA</span></div>
</td>
<td nowrap="nowrap" style="background: silver; border: none; height: 15.0pt; mso-background-themecolor: text1; mso-background-themetint: 63; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 63.0pt;" valign="top" width="84"><div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-yfti-cnfc: 64; text-align: right;">
<span style="color: black;">12,150,996</span></div>
</td>
<td nowrap="nowrap" style="background: silver; border: none; height: 15.0pt; mso-background-themecolor: text1; mso-background-themetint: 63; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: .75in;" valign="top" width="72"><div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-yfti-cnfc: 64; text-align: right;">
<span style="color: black;">1,736.02</span></div>
</td>
<td nowrap="nowrap" style="background: silver; border: none; height: 15.0pt; mso-background-themecolor: text1; mso-background-themetint: 63; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 49.5pt;" valign="top" width="66"><div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-yfti-cnfc: 64; text-align: right;">
<span style="color: black;"> 6,999 </span></div>
</td>
<td colspan="2" nowrap="nowrap" style="background: silver; border: none; height: 15.0pt; mso-background-themecolor: text1; mso-background-themetint: 63; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 49.5pt;" valign="top" width="66"><div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-yfti-cnfc: 64; text-align: right;">
<span style="color: black;"> (69)</span></div>
</td>
<td style="background: silver; border: none; height: 15.0pt; mso-background-themecolor: text1; mso-background-themetint: 63; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 31.5pt;" valign="top" width="42"><div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-yfti-cnfc: 64; text-align: right;">
<span style="color: black;">1</span></div>
</td>
</tr>
<tr style="height: 15.0pt; mso-yfti-irow: 1;">
<td nowrap="nowrap" style="border: none; height: 15.0pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 36.9pt;" valign="top" width="49"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-yfti-cnfc: 4;">
<b><span style="color: black;">2</span></b></div>
</td>
<td nowrap="nowrap" style="border: none; height: 15.0pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 112.5pt;" valign="top" width="150"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black;">San Francisco--Oakland, CA</span></div>
</td>
<td nowrap="nowrap" style="border: none; height: 15.0pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 63.0pt;" valign="top" width="84"><div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: right;">
<span style="color: black;">3,281,212</span></div>
</td>
<td nowrap="nowrap" style="border: none; height: 15.0pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: .75in;" valign="top" width="72"><div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: right;">
<span style="color: black;">523.62</span></div>
</td>
<td nowrap="nowrap" style="border: none; height: 15.0pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 49.5pt;" valign="top" width="66"><div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: right;">
<span style="color: black;"> 6,266 </span></div>
</td>
<td colspan="2" nowrap="nowrap" style="border: none; height: 15.0pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 49.5pt;" valign="top" width="66"><div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: right;">
<span style="color: black;"> 136 </span></div>
</td>
<td style="border: none; height: 15.0pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 31.5pt;" valign="top" width="42"><div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: right;">
<span style="color: black;">3</span></div>
</td>
</tr>
<tr style="height: 15.0pt; mso-yfti-irow: 2;">
<td nowrap="nowrap" style="background: silver; border: none; height: 15.0pt; mso-background-themecolor: text1; mso-background-themetint: 63; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 36.9pt;" valign="top" width="49"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-yfti-cnfc: 68;">
<b><span style="color: black;">3</span></b></div>
</td>
<td nowrap="nowrap" style="background: silver; border: none; height: 15.0pt; mso-background-themecolor: text1; mso-background-themetint: 63; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 112.5pt;" valign="top" width="150"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-yfti-cnfc: 64;">
<span style="color: black;">San Jose, CA</span></div>
</td>
<td nowrap="nowrap" style="background: silver; border: none; height: 15.0pt; mso-background-themecolor: text1; mso-background-themetint: 63; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 63.0pt;" valign="top" width="84"><div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-yfti-cnfc: 64; text-align: right;">
<span style="color: black;">1,664,496</span></div>
</td>
<td nowrap="nowrap" style="background: silver; border: none; height: 15.0pt; mso-background-themecolor: text1; mso-background-themetint: 63; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: .75in;" valign="top" width="72"><div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-yfti-cnfc: 64; text-align: right;">
<span style="color: black;">285.98</span></div>
</td>
<td nowrap="nowrap" style="background: silver; border: none; height: 15.0pt; mso-background-themecolor: text1; mso-background-themetint: 63; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 49.5pt;" valign="top" width="66"><div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-yfti-cnfc: 64; text-align: right;">
<span style="color: black;"> 5,820 </span></div>
</td>
<td colspan="2" nowrap="nowrap" style="background: silver; border: none; height: 15.0pt; mso-background-themecolor: text1; mso-background-themetint: 63; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 49.5pt;" valign="top" width="66"><div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-yfti-cnfc: 64; text-align: right;">
<span style="color: black;"> (94)</span></div>
</td>
<td style="background: silver; border: none; height: 15.0pt; mso-background-themecolor: text1; mso-background-themetint: 63; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 31.5pt;" valign="top" width="42"><div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-yfti-cnfc: 64; text-align: right;">
<span style="color: black;">4</span></div>
</td>
</tr>
<tr style="height: 15.0pt; mso-yfti-irow: 3;">
<td nowrap="nowrap" style="border: none; height: 15.0pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 36.9pt;" valign="top" width="49"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-yfti-cnfc: 4;">
<b><span style="color: black;">4</span></b></div>
</td>
<td nowrap="nowrap" style="border: none; height: 15.0pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 112.5pt;" valign="top" width="150"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black;">Delano, CA</span></div>
</td>
<td nowrap="nowrap" style="border: none; height: 15.0pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 63.0pt;" valign="top" width="84"><div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: right;">
<span style="color: black;">54,372</span></div>
</td>
<td nowrap="nowrap" style="border: none; height: 15.0pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: .75in;" valign="top" width="72"><div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: right;">
<span style="color: black;">9.92</span></div>
</td>
<td nowrap="nowrap" style="border: none; height: 15.0pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 49.5pt;" valign="top" width="66"><div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: right;">
<span style="color: black;"> 5,481 </span></div>
</td>
<td colspan="2" nowrap="nowrap" style="border: none; height: 15.0pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 49.5pt;" valign="top" width="66"><div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: right;">
<span style="color: black;">(1,182)</span></div>
</td>
<td style="border: none; height: 15.0pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 31.5pt;" valign="top" width="42"><div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: right;">
<span style="color: black;">2</span></div>
</td>
</tr>
<tr style="height: 15.0pt; mso-yfti-irow: 4;">
<td nowrap="nowrap" style="background: silver; border: none; height: 15.0pt; mso-background-themecolor: text1; mso-background-themetint: 63; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 36.9pt;" valign="top" width="49"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-yfti-cnfc: 68;">
<b><span style="color: black;">5</span></b></div>
</td>
<td nowrap="nowrap" style="background: silver; border: none; height: 15.0pt; mso-background-themecolor: text1; mso-background-themetint: 63; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 112.5pt;" valign="top" width="150"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-yfti-cnfc: 64;">
<span style="color: black;">New York--Newark, NY--NJ--CT</span></div>
</td>
<td nowrap="nowrap" style="background: silver; border: none; height: 15.0pt; mso-background-themecolor: text1; mso-background-themetint: 63; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 63.0pt;" valign="top" width="84"><div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-yfti-cnfc: 64; text-align: right;">
<span style="color: black;">18,351,295</span></div>
</td>
<td nowrap="nowrap" style="background: silver; border: none; height: 15.0pt; mso-background-themecolor: text1; mso-background-themetint: 63; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: .75in;" valign="top" width="72"><div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-yfti-cnfc: 64; text-align: right;">
<span style="color: black;">3,450.20</span></div>
</td>
<td nowrap="nowrap" style="background: silver; border: none; height: 15.0pt; mso-background-themecolor: text1; mso-background-themetint: 63; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 49.5pt;" valign="top" width="66"><div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-yfti-cnfc: 64; text-align: right;">
<span style="color: black;"> 5,319 </span></div>
</td>
<td colspan="2" nowrap="nowrap" style="background: silver; border: none; height: 15.0pt; mso-background-themecolor: text1; mso-background-themetint: 63; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 49.5pt;" valign="top" width="66"><div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-yfti-cnfc: 64; text-align: right;">
<span style="color: black;"> 10 </span></div>
</td>
<td style="background: silver; border: none; height: 15.0pt; mso-background-themecolor: text1; mso-background-themetint: 63; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 31.5pt;" valign="top" width="42"><div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-yfti-cnfc: 64; text-align: right;">
<span style="color: black;">6</span></div>
</td>
</tr>
<tr style="height: 15.0pt; mso-yfti-irow: 5;">
<td nowrap="nowrap" style="border: none; height: 15.0pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 36.9pt;" valign="top" width="49"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-yfti-cnfc: 4;">
<b><span style="color: black;">6</span></b></div>
</td>
<td nowrap="nowrap" style="border: none; height: 15.0pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 112.5pt;" valign="top" width="150"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black;">Davis, CA</span></div>
</td>
<td nowrap="nowrap" style="border: none; height: 15.0pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 63.0pt;" valign="top" width="84"><div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: right;">
<span style="color: black;">72,794</span></div>
</td>
<td nowrap="nowrap" style="border: none; height: 15.0pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: .75in;" valign="top" width="72"><div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: right;">
<span style="color: black;">14.12</span></div>
</td>
<td nowrap="nowrap" style="border: none; height: 15.0pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 49.5pt;" valign="top" width="66"><div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: right;">
<span style="color: black;"> 5,155 </span></div>
</td>
<td colspan="2" nowrap="nowrap" style="border: none; height: 15.0pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 49.5pt;" valign="top" width="66"><div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: right;">
<span style="color: black;"> 312 </span></div>
</td>
<td style="border: none; height: 15.0pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 31.5pt;" valign="top" width="42"><div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: right;">
<span style="color: black;">8</span></div>
</td>
</tr>
<tr style="height: 15.0pt; mso-yfti-irow: 6;">
<td nowrap="nowrap" style="background: silver; border: none; height: 15.0pt; mso-background-themecolor: text1; mso-background-themetint: 63; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 36.9pt;" valign="top" width="49"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-yfti-cnfc: 68;">
<b><span style="color: black;">7</span></b></div>
</td>
<td nowrap="nowrap" style="background: silver; border: none; height: 15.0pt; mso-background-themecolor: text1; mso-background-themetint: 63; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 112.5pt;" valign="top" width="150"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-yfti-cnfc: 64;">
<span style="color: black;">Lompoc, CA</span></div>
</td>
<td nowrap="nowrap" style="background: silver; border: none; height: 15.0pt; mso-background-themecolor: text1; mso-background-themetint: 63; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 63.0pt;" valign="top" width="84"><div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-yfti-cnfc: 64; text-align: right;">
<span style="color: black;">51,509</span></div>
</td>
<td nowrap="nowrap" style="background: silver; border: none; height: 15.0pt; mso-background-themecolor: text1; mso-background-themetint: 63; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: .75in;" valign="top" width="72"><div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-yfti-cnfc: 64; text-align: right;">
<span style="color: black;">10.70</span></div>
</td>
<td nowrap="nowrap" style="background: silver; border: none; height: 15.0pt; mso-background-themecolor: text1; mso-background-themetint: 63; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 49.5pt;" valign="top" width="66"><div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-yfti-cnfc: 64; text-align: right;">
<span style="color: black;"> 4,814 </span></div>
</td>
<td colspan="2" nowrap="nowrap" style="background: silver; border: none; height: 15.0pt; mso-background-themecolor: text1; mso-background-themetint: 63; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 49.5pt;" valign="top" width="66"><div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-yfti-cnfc: 64; text-align: right;">
<span style="color: black;"> 3,888 </span></div>
</td>
<td style="background: silver; border: none; height: 15.0pt; mso-background-themecolor: text1; mso-background-themetint: 63; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 31.5pt;" valign="top" width="42"><div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-yfti-cnfc: 64; text-align: right;">
<span style="color: black;">487</span></div>
</td>
</tr>
<tr style="height: 15.0pt; mso-yfti-irow: 7;">
<td nowrap="nowrap" style="border: none; height: 15.0pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 36.9pt;" valign="top" width="49"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-yfti-cnfc: 4;">
<b><span style="color: black;">8</span></b></div>
</td>
<td nowrap="nowrap" style="border: none; height: 15.0pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 112.5pt;" valign="top" width="150"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black;">Urban Honolulu, HI</span></div>
</td>
<td nowrap="nowrap" style="border: none; height: 15.0pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 63.0pt;" valign="top" width="84"><div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: right;">
<span style="color: black;">802,459</span></div>
</td>
<td nowrap="nowrap" style="border: none; height: 15.0pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: .75in;" valign="top" width="72"><div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: right;">
<span style="color: black;">170.17</span></div>
</td>
<td nowrap="nowrap" style="border: none; height: 15.0pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 49.5pt;" valign="top" width="66"><div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: right;">
<span style="color: black;"> 4,716 </span></div>
</td>
<td colspan="2" nowrap="nowrap" style="border: none; height: 15.0pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 49.5pt;" valign="top" width="66"><div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: right;">
<span style="color: black;"> 56 </span></div>
</td>
<td style="border: none; height: 15.0pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 31.5pt;" valign="top" width="42"><div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: right;">
<span style="color: black;">10</span></div>
</td>
</tr>
<tr style="height: 15.0pt; mso-yfti-irow: 8;">
<td nowrap="nowrap" style="background: silver; border: none; height: 15.0pt; mso-background-themecolor: text1; mso-background-themetint: 63; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 36.9pt;" valign="top" width="49"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-yfti-cnfc: 68;">
<b><span style="color: black;">9</span></b></div>
</td>
<td nowrap="nowrap" style="background: silver; border: none; height: 15.0pt; mso-background-themecolor: text1; mso-background-themetint: 63; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 112.5pt;" valign="top" width="150"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-yfti-cnfc: 64;">
<span style="color: black;">Woodland, CA</span></div>
</td>
<td nowrap="nowrap" style="background: silver; border: none; height: 15.0pt; mso-background-themecolor: text1; mso-background-themetint: 63; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 63.0pt;" valign="top" width="84"><div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-yfti-cnfc: 64; text-align: right;">
<span style="color: black;">55,513</span></div>
</td>
<td nowrap="nowrap" style="background: silver; border: none; height: 15.0pt; mso-background-themecolor: text1; mso-background-themetint: 63; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: .75in;" valign="top" width="72"><div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-yfti-cnfc: 64; text-align: right;">
<span style="color: black;">12.20</span></div>
</td>
<td nowrap="nowrap" style="background: silver; border: none; height: 15.0pt; mso-background-themecolor: text1; mso-background-themetint: 63; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 49.5pt;" valign="top" width="66"><div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-yfti-cnfc: 64; text-align: right;">
<span style="color: black;"> 4,550 </span></div>
</td>
<td colspan="2" nowrap="nowrap" style="background: silver; border: none; height: 15.0pt; mso-background-themecolor: text1; mso-background-themetint: 63; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 49.5pt;" valign="top" width="66"><div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-yfti-cnfc: 64; text-align: right;">
<span style="color: black;">(1,095)</span></div>
</td>
<td style="background: silver; border: none; height: 15.0pt; mso-background-themecolor: text1; mso-background-themetint: 63; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 31.5pt;" valign="top" width="42"><div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-yfti-cnfc: 64; text-align: right;">
<span style="color: black;">5</span></div>
</td>
</tr>
<tr style="height: 15.0pt; mso-yfti-irow: 9; mso-yfti-lastrow: yes;">
<td nowrap="nowrap" style="border-bottom: solid black 1.0pt; border: none; height: 15.0pt; mso-border-bottom-themecolor: text1; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 36.9pt;" valign="top" width="49"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-yfti-cnfc: 4;">
<b><span style="color: black;">10</span></b></div>
</td>
<td nowrap="nowrap" style="border-bottom: solid black 1.0pt; border: none; height: 15.0pt; mso-border-bottom-themecolor: text1; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 112.5pt;" valign="top" width="150"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black;">Las Vegas--Henderson, NV</span></div>
</td>
<td nowrap="nowrap" style="border-bottom: solid black 1.0pt; border: none; height: 15.0pt; mso-border-bottom-themecolor: text1; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 63.0pt;" valign="top" width="84"><div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: right;">
<span style="color: black;">1,886,011</span></div>
</td>
<td nowrap="nowrap" style="border-bottom: solid black 1.0pt; border: none; height: 15.0pt; mso-border-bottom-themecolor: text1; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: .75in;" valign="top" width="72"><div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: right;">
<span style="color: black;">416.84</span></div>
</td>
<td nowrap="nowrap" style="border-bottom: solid black 1.0pt; border: none; height: 15.0pt; mso-border-bottom-themecolor: text1; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 49.5pt;" valign="top" width="66"><div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: right;">
<span style="color: black;"> 4,525 </span></div>
</td>
<td colspan="2" nowrap="nowrap" style="border-bottom: solid black 1.0pt; border: none; height: 15.0pt; mso-border-bottom-themecolor: text1; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 49.5pt;" valign="top" width="66"><div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: right;">
<span style="color: black;"> (73)</span></div>
</td>
<td style="border-bottom: solid black 1.0pt; border: none; height: 15.0pt; mso-border-bottom-themecolor: text1; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 31.5pt;" valign="top" width="42"><div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: right;">
<span style="color: black;">12</span></div>
</td>
</tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
The California cites remain the densest in the county by this measurement. Either because of water supply, topography, federal land, or local land-use regulations, many these cities have sharp edges that tend to maximize the density of development within the urban boundaries. We see here New York lagging behind LA in urban area density, although, as <a href="http://discoveringurbanism.blogspot.com/2011/09/which-is-denser-new-york-or-los-angeles.html">I've posted before</a>, the average person in NY lives in a neighborhood about two and a half times as dense as the average person in LA. The scale of the density measurement will give different results.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Top Ten Decreases in
Density (over 50,000) between 2000 and 2010</b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<table border="1" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="MsoTableLightShading" style="border-collapse: collapse; border: medium none; width: 529px;">
<tbody>
<tr style="height: 15.0pt; mso-yfti-firstrow: yes; mso-yfti-irow: -1;">
<td nowrap="nowrap" style="border-bottom: solid black 1.0pt; border-left: none; border-right: none; border-top: solid black 1.0pt; height: 15.0pt; mso-border-bottom-themecolor: text1; mso-border-top-themecolor: text1; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 33.65pt;" valign="top" width="45"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-yfti-cnfc: 5;">
<b><span style="color: black;">Rank</span></b></div>
</td>
<td nowrap="nowrap" style="border-bottom: solid black 1.0pt; border-left: none; border-right: none; border-top: solid black 1.0pt; height: 15.0pt; mso-border-bottom-themecolor: text1; mso-border-top-themecolor: text1; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 79.75pt;" valign="top" width="106"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-yfti-cnfc: 1;">
<b><span style="color: black;">Name</span></b></div>
</td>
<td nowrap="nowrap" style="border-bottom: solid black 1.0pt; border-left: none; border-right: none; border-top: solid black 1.0pt; height: 15.0pt; mso-border-bottom-themecolor: text1; mso-border-top-themecolor: text1; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 47.0pt;" valign="top" width="63"><div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-yfti-cnfc: 1; text-align: right;">
<b><span style="color: black;">Pop</span></b></div>
</td>
<td nowrap="nowrap" style="border-bottom: solid black 1.0pt; border-left: none; border-right: none; border-top: solid black 1.0pt; height: 15.0pt; mso-border-bottom-themecolor: text1; mso-border-top-themecolor: text1; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 52.0pt;" valign="top" width="69"><div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-yfti-cnfc: 1; text-align: right;">
<b><span style="color: black;">Change</span></b></div>
</td>
<td nowrap="nowrap" style="border-bottom: solid black 1.0pt; border-left: none; border-right: none; border-top: solid black 1.0pt; height: 15.0pt; mso-border-bottom-themecolor: text1; mso-border-top-themecolor: text1; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 45.0pt;" valign="top" width="60"><div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-yfti-cnfc: 1; text-align: right;">
<b><span style="color: black;">Area</span></b></div>
</td>
<td nowrap="nowrap" style="border-bottom: solid black 1.0pt; border-left: none; border-right: none; border-top: solid black 1.0pt; height: 15.0pt; mso-border-bottom-themecolor: text1; mso-border-top-themecolor: text1; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 49.5pt;" valign="top" width="66"><div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-yfti-cnfc: 1; text-align: right;">
<b><span style="color: black;">Change</span></b></div>
</td>
<td nowrap="nowrap" style="border-bottom: solid black 1.0pt; border-left: none; border-right: none; border-top: solid black 1.0pt; height: 15.0pt; mso-border-bottom-themecolor: text1; mso-border-top-themecolor: text1; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 49.5pt;" valign="top" width="66"><div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-yfti-cnfc: 1; text-align: right;">
<b><span style="color: black;">Density</span></b></div>
</td>
<td nowrap="nowrap" style="border-bottom: solid black 1.0pt; border-left: none; border-right: none; border-top: solid black 1.0pt; height: 15.0pt; mso-border-bottom-themecolor: text1; mso-border-top-themecolor: text1; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 40.5pt;" valign="top" width="54"><div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-yfti-cnfc: 1; text-align: right;">
<b><span style="color: black;">Change</span></b></div>
</td>
</tr>
<tr style="height: 15.0pt; mso-yfti-irow: 0;">
<td nowrap="nowrap" style="background: silver; border: none; height: 15.0pt; mso-background-themecolor: text1; mso-background-themetint: 63; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 33.65pt;" valign="top" width="45"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-yfti-cnfc: 68;">
<b><span style="color: black;">1</span></b></div>
</td>
<td nowrap="nowrap" style="background: silver; border: none; height: 15.0pt; mso-background-themecolor: text1; mso-background-themetint: 63; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 79.75pt;" valign="top" width="106"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-yfti-cnfc: 64;">
<span style="color: black;">New Orleans, LA</span></div>
</td>
<td nowrap="nowrap" style="background: silver; border: none; height: 15.0pt; mso-background-themecolor: text1; mso-background-themetint: 63; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 47.0pt;" valign="top" width="63"><div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-yfti-cnfc: 64; text-align: right;">
<span style="color: black;">899,703</span></div>
</td>
<td nowrap="nowrap" style="background: silver; border: none; height: 15.0pt; mso-background-themecolor: text1; mso-background-themetint: 63; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 52.0pt;" valign="top" width="69"><div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-yfti-cnfc: 64; text-align: right;">
<span style="color: black;">(109580)</span></div>
</td>
<td nowrap="nowrap" style="background: silver; border: none; height: 15.0pt; mso-background-themecolor: text1; mso-background-themetint: 63; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 45.0pt;" valign="top" width="60"><div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-yfti-cnfc: 64; text-align: right;">
<span style="color: black;">251.39</span></div>
</td>
<td nowrap="nowrap" style="background: silver; border: none; height: 15.0pt; mso-background-themecolor: text1; mso-background-themetint: 63; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 49.5pt;" valign="top" width="66"><div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-yfti-cnfc: 64; text-align: right;">
<span style="color: black;">53.55</span></div>
</td>
<td nowrap="nowrap" style="background: silver; border: none; height: 15.0pt; mso-background-themecolor: text1; mso-background-themetint: 63; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 49.5pt;" valign="top" width="66"><div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-yfti-cnfc: 64; text-align: right;">
<span style="color: black;"> 3,579 </span></div>
</td>
<td nowrap="nowrap" style="background: silver; border: none; height: 15.0pt; mso-background-themecolor: text1; mso-background-themetint: 63; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 40.5pt;" valign="top" width="54"><div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-yfti-cnfc: 64; text-align: right;">
<span style="color: black;"> (1,523)</span></div>
</td>
</tr>
<tr style="height: 15.0pt; mso-yfti-irow: 1;">
<td nowrap="nowrap" style="border: none; height: 15.0pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 33.65pt;" valign="top" width="45"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-yfti-cnfc: 4;">
<b><span style="color: black;">2</span></b></div>
</td>
<td nowrap="nowrap" style="border: none; height: 15.0pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 79.75pt;" valign="top" width="106"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black;">Delano, CA</span></div>
</td>
<td nowrap="nowrap" style="border: none; height: 15.0pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 47.0pt;" valign="top" width="63"><div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: right;">
<span style="color: black;">54,372</span></div>
</td>
<td nowrap="nowrap" style="border: none; height: 15.0pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 52.0pt;" valign="top" width="69"><div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: right;">
<span style="color: black;">14860</span></div>
</td>
<td nowrap="nowrap" style="border: none; height: 15.0pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 45.0pt;" valign="top" width="60"><div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: right;">
<span style="color: black;">9.92</span></div>
</td>
<td nowrap="nowrap" style="border: none; height: 15.0pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 49.5pt;" valign="top" width="66"><div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: right;">
<span style="color: black;">3.99</span></div>
</td>
<td nowrap="nowrap" style="border: none; height: 15.0pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 49.5pt;" valign="top" width="66"><div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: right;">
<span style="color: black;"> 5,481 </span></div>
</td>
<td nowrap="nowrap" style="border: none; height: 15.0pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 40.5pt;" valign="top" width="54"><div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: right;">
<span style="color: black;"> (1,182)</span></div>
</td>
</tr>
<tr style="height: 15.0pt; mso-yfti-irow: 2;">
<td nowrap="nowrap" style="background: silver; border: none; height: 15.0pt; mso-background-themecolor: text1; mso-background-themetint: 63; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 33.65pt;" valign="top" width="45"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-yfti-cnfc: 68;">
<b><span style="color: black;">3</span></b></div>
</td>
<td nowrap="nowrap" style="background: silver; border: none; height: 15.0pt; mso-background-themecolor: text1; mso-background-themetint: 63; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 79.75pt;" valign="top" width="106"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-yfti-cnfc: 64;">
<span style="color: black;">Woodland, CA</span></div>
</td>
<td nowrap="nowrap" style="background: silver; border: none; height: 15.0pt; mso-background-themecolor: text1; mso-background-themetint: 63; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 47.0pt;" valign="top" width="63"><div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-yfti-cnfc: 64; text-align: right;">
<span style="color: black;">55,513</span></div>
</td>
<td nowrap="nowrap" style="background: silver; border: none; height: 15.0pt; mso-background-themecolor: text1; mso-background-themetint: 63; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 52.0pt;" valign="top" width="69"><div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-yfti-cnfc: 64; text-align: right;">
<span style="color: black;">6345</span></div>
</td>
<td nowrap="nowrap" style="background: silver; border: none; height: 15.0pt; mso-background-themecolor: text1; mso-background-themetint: 63; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 45.0pt;" valign="top" width="60"><div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-yfti-cnfc: 64; text-align: right;">
<span style="color: black;">12.20</span></div>
</td>
<td nowrap="nowrap" style="background: silver; border: none; height: 15.0pt; mso-background-themecolor: text1; mso-background-themetint: 63; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 49.5pt;" valign="top" width="66"><div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-yfti-cnfc: 64; text-align: right;">
<span style="color: black;">3.49</span></div>
</td>
<td nowrap="nowrap" style="background: silver; border: none; height: 15.0pt; mso-background-themecolor: text1; mso-background-themetint: 63; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 49.5pt;" valign="top" width="66"><div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-yfti-cnfc: 64; text-align: right;">
<span style="color: black;"> 4,550 </span></div>
</td>
<td nowrap="nowrap" style="background: silver; border: none; height: 15.0pt; mso-background-themecolor: text1; mso-background-themetint: 63; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 40.5pt;" valign="top" width="54"><div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-yfti-cnfc: 64; text-align: right;">
<span style="color: black;"> (1,095)</span></div>
</td>
</tr>
<tr style="height: 15.0pt; mso-yfti-irow: 3;">
<td nowrap="nowrap" style="border: none; height: 15.0pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 33.65pt;" valign="top" width="45"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-yfti-cnfc: 4;">
<b><span style="color: black;">4</span></b></div>
</td>
<td nowrap="nowrap" style="border: none; height: 15.0pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 79.75pt;" valign="top" width="106"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black;">Port Arthur, TX</span></div>
</td>
<td nowrap="nowrap" style="border: none; height: 15.0pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 47.0pt;" valign="top" width="63"><div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: right;">
<span style="color: black;">153,150</span></div>
</td>
<td nowrap="nowrap" style="border: none; height: 15.0pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 52.0pt;" valign="top" width="69"><div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: right;">
<span style="color: black;">38494</span></div>
</td>
<td nowrap="nowrap" style="border: none; height: 15.0pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 45.0pt;" valign="top" width="60"><div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: right;">
<span style="color: black;">105.56</span></div>
</td>
<td nowrap="nowrap" style="border: none; height: 15.0pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 49.5pt;" valign="top" width="66"><div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: right;">
<span style="color: black;">59.70</span></div>
</td>
<td nowrap="nowrap" style="border: none; height: 15.0pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 49.5pt;" valign="top" width="66"><div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: right;">
<span style="color: black;"> 1,451 </span></div>
</td>
<td nowrap="nowrap" style="border: none; height: 15.0pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 40.5pt;" valign="top" width="54"><div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: right;">
<span style="color: black;"> (1,049)</span></div>
</td>
</tr>
<tr style="height: 15.0pt; mso-yfti-irow: 4;">
<td nowrap="nowrap" style="background: silver; border: none; height: 15.0pt; mso-background-themecolor: text1; mso-background-themetint: 63; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 33.65pt;" valign="top" width="45"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-yfti-cnfc: 68;">
<b><span style="color: black;">5</span></b></div>
</td>
<td nowrap="nowrap" style="background: silver; border: none; height: 15.0pt; mso-background-themecolor: text1; mso-background-themetint: 63; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 79.75pt;" valign="top" width="106"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-yfti-cnfc: 64;">
<span style="color: black;">Fairfield, CA</span></div>
</td>
<td nowrap="nowrap" style="background: silver; border: none; height: 15.0pt; mso-background-themecolor: text1; mso-background-themetint: 63; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 47.0pt;" valign="top" width="63"><div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-yfti-cnfc: 64; text-align: right;">
<span style="color: black;">133,683</span></div>
</td>
<td nowrap="nowrap" style="background: silver; border: none; height: 15.0pt; mso-background-themecolor: text1; mso-background-themetint: 63; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 52.0pt;" valign="top" width="69"><div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-yfti-cnfc: 64; text-align: right;">
<span style="color: black;">21237</span></div>
</td>
<td nowrap="nowrap" style="background: silver; border: none; height: 15.0pt; mso-background-themecolor: text1; mso-background-themetint: 63; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 45.0pt;" valign="top" width="60"><div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-yfti-cnfc: 64; text-align: right;">
<span style="color: black;">39.46</span></div>
</td>
<td nowrap="nowrap" style="background: silver; border: none; height: 15.0pt; mso-background-themecolor: text1; mso-background-themetint: 63; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 49.5pt;" valign="top" width="66"><div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-yfti-cnfc: 64; text-align: right;">
<span style="color: black;">13.64</span></div>
</td>
<td nowrap="nowrap" style="background: silver; border: none; height: 15.0pt; mso-background-themecolor: text1; mso-background-themetint: 63; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 49.5pt;" valign="top" width="66"><div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-yfti-cnfc: 64; text-align: right;">
<span style="color: black;"> 3,388 </span></div>
</td>
<td nowrap="nowrap" style="background: silver; border: none; height: 15.0pt; mso-background-themecolor: text1; mso-background-themetint: 63; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 40.5pt;" valign="top" width="54"><div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-yfti-cnfc: 64; text-align: right;">
<span style="color: black;"> (967)</span></div>
</td>
</tr>
<tr style="height: 15.0pt; mso-yfti-irow: 5;">
<td nowrap="nowrap" style="border: none; height: 15.0pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 33.65pt;" valign="top" width="45"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-yfti-cnfc: 4;">
<b><span style="color: black;">6</span></b></div>
</td>
<td nowrap="nowrap" style="border: none; height: 15.0pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 79.75pt;" valign="top" width="106"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black;">Grand Forks, ND--MN</span></div>
</td>
<td nowrap="nowrap" style="border: none; height: 15.0pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 47.0pt;" valign="top" width="63"><div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: right;">
<span style="color: black;">61,270</span></div>
</td>
<td nowrap="nowrap" style="border: none; height: 15.0pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 52.0pt;" valign="top" width="69"><div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: right;">
<span style="color: black;">4697</span></div>
</td>
<td nowrap="nowrap" style="border: none; height: 15.0pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 45.0pt;" valign="top" width="60"><div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: right;">
<span style="color: black;">24.44</span></div>
</td>
<td nowrap="nowrap" style="border: none; height: 15.0pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 49.5pt;" valign="top" width="66"><div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: right;">
<span style="color: black;">7.68</span></div>
</td>
<td nowrap="nowrap" style="border: none; height: 15.0pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 49.5pt;" valign="top" width="66"><div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: right;">
<span style="color: black;"> 2,507 </span></div>
</td>
<td nowrap="nowrap" style="border: none; height: 15.0pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 40.5pt;" valign="top" width="54"><div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: right;">
<span style="color: black;"> (869)</span></div>
</td>
</tr>
<tr style="height: 15.0pt; mso-yfti-irow: 6;">
<td nowrap="nowrap" style="background: silver; border: none; height: 15.0pt; mso-background-themecolor: text1; mso-background-themetint: 63; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 33.65pt;" valign="top" width="45"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-yfti-cnfc: 68;">
<b><span style="color: black;">7</span></b></div>
</td>
<td nowrap="nowrap" style="background: silver; border: none; height: 15.0pt; mso-background-themecolor: text1; mso-background-themetint: 63; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 79.75pt;" valign="top" width="106"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-yfti-cnfc: 64;">
<span style="color: black;">Lewiston, ME</span></div>
</td>
<td nowrap="nowrap" style="background: silver; border: none; height: 15.0pt; mso-background-themecolor: text1; mso-background-themetint: 63; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 47.0pt;" valign="top" width="63"><div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-yfti-cnfc: 64; text-align: right;">
<span style="color: black;">59,397</span></div>
</td>
<td nowrap="nowrap" style="background: silver; border: none; height: 15.0pt; mso-background-themecolor: text1; mso-background-themetint: 63; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 52.0pt;" valign="top" width="69"><div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-yfti-cnfc: 64; text-align: right;">
<span style="color: black;">8830</span></div>
</td>
<td nowrap="nowrap" style="background: silver; border: none; height: 15.0pt; mso-background-themecolor: text1; mso-background-themetint: 63; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 45.0pt;" valign="top" width="60"><div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-yfti-cnfc: 64; text-align: right;">
<span style="color: black;">35.40</span></div>
</td>
<td nowrap="nowrap" style="background: silver; border: none; height: 15.0pt; mso-background-themecolor: text1; mso-background-themetint: 63; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 49.5pt;" valign="top" width="66"><div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-yfti-cnfc: 64; text-align: right;">
<span style="color: black;">14.76</span></div>
</td>
<td nowrap="nowrap" style="background: silver; border: none; height: 15.0pt; mso-background-themecolor: text1; mso-background-themetint: 63; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 49.5pt;" valign="top" width="66"><div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-yfti-cnfc: 64; text-align: right;">
<span style="color: black;"> 1,678 </span></div>
</td>
<td nowrap="nowrap" style="background: silver; border: none; height: 15.0pt; mso-background-themecolor: text1; mso-background-themetint: 63; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 40.5pt;" valign="top" width="54"><div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-yfti-cnfc: 64; text-align: right;">
<span style="color: black;"> (772)</span></div>
</td>
</tr>
<tr style="height: 15.0pt; mso-yfti-irow: 7;">
<td nowrap="nowrap" style="border: none; height: 15.0pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 33.65pt;" valign="top" width="45"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-yfti-cnfc: 4;">
<b><span style="color: black;">8</span></b></div>
</td>
<td nowrap="nowrap" style="border: none; height: 15.0pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 79.75pt;" valign="top" width="106"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black;">Vallejo, CA</span></div>
</td>
<td nowrap="nowrap" style="border: none; height: 15.0pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 47.0pt;" valign="top" width="63"><div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: right;">
<span style="color: black;">165,074</span></div>
</td>
<td nowrap="nowrap" style="border: none; height: 15.0pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 52.0pt;" valign="top" width="69"><div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: right;">
<span style="color: black;">6107</span></div>
</td>
<td nowrap="nowrap" style="border: none; height: 15.0pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 45.0pt;" valign="top" width="60"><div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: right;">
<span style="color: black;">42.01</span></div>
</td>
<td nowrap="nowrap" style="border: none; height: 15.0pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 49.5pt;" valign="top" width="66"><div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: right;">
<span style="color: black;">8.06</span></div>
</td>
<td nowrap="nowrap" style="border: none; height: 15.0pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 49.5pt;" valign="top" width="66"><div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: right;">
<span style="color: black;"> 3,929 </span></div>
</td>
<td nowrap="nowrap" style="border: none; height: 15.0pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 40.5pt;" valign="top" width="54"><div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: right;">
<span style="color: black;"> (753)</span></div>
</td>
</tr>
<tr style="height: 15.0pt; mso-yfti-irow: 8;">
<td nowrap="nowrap" style="background: silver; border: none; height: 15.0pt; mso-background-themecolor: text1; mso-background-themetint: 63; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 33.65pt;" valign="top" width="45"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-yfti-cnfc: 68;">
<b><span style="color: black;">9</span></b></div>
</td>
<td nowrap="nowrap" style="background: silver; border: none; height: 15.0pt; mso-background-themecolor: text1; mso-background-themetint: 63; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 79.75pt;" valign="top" width="106"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-yfti-cnfc: 64;">
<span style="color: black;">Provo--Orem, UT</span></div>
</td>
<td nowrap="nowrap" style="background: silver; border: none; height: 15.0pt; mso-background-themecolor: text1; mso-background-themetint: 63; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 47.0pt;" valign="top" width="63"><div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-yfti-cnfc: 64; text-align: right;">
<span style="color: black;">482,819</span></div>
</td>
<td nowrap="nowrap" style="background: silver; border: none; height: 15.0pt; mso-background-themecolor: text1; mso-background-themetint: 63; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 52.0pt;" valign="top" width="69"><div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-yfti-cnfc: 64; text-align: right;">
<span style="color: black;">179139</span></div>
</td>
<td nowrap="nowrap" style="background: silver; border: none; height: 15.0pt; mso-background-themecolor: text1; mso-background-themetint: 63; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 45.0pt;" valign="top" width="60"><div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-yfti-cnfc: 64; text-align: right;">
<span style="color: black;">168.97</span></div>
</td>
<td nowrap="nowrap" style="background: silver; border: none; height: 15.0pt; mso-background-themecolor: text1; mso-background-themetint: 63; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 49.5pt;" valign="top" width="66"><div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-yfti-cnfc: 64; text-align: right;">
<span style="color: black;">83.97</span></div>
</td>
<td nowrap="nowrap" style="background: silver; border: none; height: 15.0pt; mso-background-themecolor: text1; mso-background-themetint: 63; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 49.5pt;" valign="top" width="66"><div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-yfti-cnfc: 64; text-align: right;">
<span style="color: black;"> 2,857 </span></div>
</td>
<td nowrap="nowrap" style="background: silver; border: none; height: 15.0pt; mso-background-themecolor: text1; mso-background-themetint: 63; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 40.5pt;" valign="top" width="54"><div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-yfti-cnfc: 64; text-align: right;">
<span style="color: black;"> (715)</span></div>
</td>
</tr>
<tr style="height: 15.0pt; mso-yfti-irow: 9; mso-yfti-lastrow: yes;">
<td nowrap="nowrap" style="border-bottom: solid black 1.0pt; border: none; height: 15.0pt; mso-border-bottom-themecolor: text1; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 33.65pt;" valign="top" width="45"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-yfti-cnfc: 4;">
<b><span style="color: black;">10</span></b></div>
</td>
<td nowrap="nowrap" style="border-bottom: solid black 1.0pt; border: none; height: 15.0pt; mso-border-bottom-themecolor: text1; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 79.75pt;" valign="top" width="106"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black;">San Luis Obispo, CA</span></div>
</td>
<td nowrap="nowrap" style="border-bottom: solid black 1.0pt; border: none; height: 15.0pt; mso-border-bottom-themecolor: text1; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 47.0pt;" valign="top" width="63"><div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: right;">
<span style="color: black;">59,219</span></div>
</td>
<td nowrap="nowrap" style="border-bottom: solid black 1.0pt; border: none; height: 15.0pt; mso-border-bottom-themecolor: text1; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 52.0pt;" valign="top" width="69"><div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: right;">
<span style="color: black;">5721</span></div>
</td>
<td nowrap="nowrap" style="border-bottom: solid black 1.0pt; border: none; height: 15.0pt; mso-border-bottom-themecolor: text1; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 45.0pt;" valign="top" width="60"><div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: right;">
<span style="color: black;">20.41</span></div>
</td>
<td nowrap="nowrap" style="border-bottom: solid black 1.0pt; border: none; height: 15.0pt; mso-border-bottom-themecolor: text1; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 49.5pt;" valign="top" width="66"><div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: right;">
<span style="color: black;">5.58</span></div>
</td>
<td nowrap="nowrap" style="border-bottom: solid black 1.0pt; border: none; height: 15.0pt; mso-border-bottom-themecolor: text1; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 49.5pt;" valign="top" width="66"><div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: right;">
<span style="color: black;"> 2,901 </span></div>
</td>
<td nowrap="nowrap" style="border-bottom: solid black 1.0pt; border: none; height: 15.0pt; mso-border-bottom-themecolor: text1; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 40.5pt;" valign="top" width="54"><div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: right;">
<span style="color: black;"> (706)</span></div>
</td>
</tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
New Orleans, of course, suffered dramatic population loss in the wake of hurricane Katrina, but note that the city also expanded in land area by about 25% over the decade. New Orleans was the 7th densest Urbanized Area in the country in 2000, right behind New York, but a natural disaster interacting with suburban sprawl has knocked it down to 31st, just ahead of Denver. We could be seeing the results of a different kind of disaster in some of the California cities on this list, many of which were hit hard by foreclosures. Extensive home construction over the decade may have increased the urbanized area without a corresponding increase in people to live in those houses. Provo-Orem, Utah has a much more straight-forward explanation: lots of growth, all spreading outward at very low density.<br />
<br />
<b>Top Ten Increases in Density among Urbanized Areas (over 50,000) between 2000 and 2010</b><br />
<b> </b> <br />
<table border="1" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="MsoTableLightShading" style="border-collapse: collapse; border: none; mso-border-bottom-alt: 1.0pt; mso-border-bottom-alt: solid black; mso-border-bottom-themecolor: text1; mso-border-top-alt: 1.0pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid black; mso-border-top-themecolor: text1; mso-padding-alt: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-table-layout-alt: fixed; mso-yfti-tbllook: 1184;"><tbody>
<tr style="height: 15.0pt; mso-yfti-firstrow: yes; mso-yfti-irow: -1;"> <td nowrap="nowrap" style="border-bottom: 1.0pt; border-bottom: solid black; border-left: none; border-right: none; border-top: 1.0pt; border-top: solid black; height: 15.0pt; mso-border-bottom-themecolor: text1; mso-border-top-themecolor: text1; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 7.16%;" valign="top" width="7%"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-yfti-cnfc: 5;">
<b><span style="color: black;">Rank</span></b></div>
</td> <td nowrap="nowrap" style="border-bottom: 1.0pt; border-bottom: solid black; border-left: none; border-right: none; border-top: 1.0pt; border-top: solid black; height: 15.0pt; mso-border-bottom-themecolor: text1; mso-border-top-themecolor: text1; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 24.74%;" valign="top" width="24%"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-yfti-cnfc: 1;">
<b><span style="color: black;">Name</span></b></div>
</td> <td nowrap="nowrap" style="border-bottom: 1.0pt; border-bottom: solid black; border-left: none; border-right: none; border-top: 1.0pt; border-top: solid black; height: 15.0pt; mso-border-bottom-themecolor: text1; mso-border-top-themecolor: text1; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 13.4%;" width="13%"><div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-yfti-cnfc: 1; text-align: right;">
<b><span style="color: black;">Population</span></b></div>
</td> <td nowrap="nowrap" style="border-bottom: 1.0pt; border-bottom: solid black; border-left: none; border-right: none; border-top: 1.0pt; border-top: solid black; height: 15.0pt; mso-border-bottom-themecolor: text1; mso-border-top-themecolor: text1; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 11.28%;" width="11%"><div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-yfti-cnfc: 1; text-align: right;">
<b><span style="color: black;">Change</span></b></div>
</td> <td nowrap="nowrap" style="border-bottom: 1.0pt; border-bottom: solid black; border-left: none; border-right: none; border-top: 1.0pt; border-top: solid black; height: 15.0pt; mso-border-bottom-themecolor: text1; mso-border-top-themecolor: text1; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 9.4%;" width="9%"><div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-yfti-cnfc: 1; text-align: right;">
<b><span style="color: black;">Area</span></b></div>
</td> <td nowrap="nowrap" style="border-bottom: 1.0pt; border-bottom: solid black; border-left: none; border-right: none; border-top: 1.0pt; border-top: solid black; height: 15.0pt; mso-border-bottom-themecolor: text1; mso-border-top-themecolor: text1; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 11.36%;" width="11%"><div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-yfti-cnfc: 1; text-align: right;">
<b><span style="color: black;">Change</span></b></div>
</td> <td nowrap="nowrap" style="border-bottom: 1.0pt; border-bottom: solid black; border-left: none; border-right: none; border-top: 1.0pt; border-top: solid black; height: 15.0pt; mso-border-bottom-themecolor: text1; mso-border-top-themecolor: text1; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 11.36%;" width="11%"><div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-yfti-cnfc: 1; text-align: right;">
<b><span style="color: black;">Density</span></b></div>
</td> <td nowrap="nowrap" style="border-bottom: 1.0pt; border-bottom: solid black; border-left: none; border-right: none; border-top: 1.0pt; border-top: solid black; height: 15.0pt; mso-border-bottom-themecolor: text1; mso-border-top-themecolor: text1; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 11.3%;" width="11%"><div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-yfti-cnfc: 1; text-align: right;">
<b><span style="color: black;">Change</span></b></div>
</td> </tr>
<tr style="height: 15.0pt; mso-yfti-irow: 0;"> <td nowrap="nowrap" style="background: silver; border: none; height: 15.0pt; mso-background-themecolor: text1; mso-background-themetint: 63; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 7.16%;" valign="top" width="7%"><div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-yfti-cnfc: 68; text-align: right;">
<b><span style="color: black;">1</span></b></div>
</td> <td nowrap="nowrap" style="background: silver; border: none; height: 15.0pt; mso-background-themecolor: text1; mso-background-themetint: 63; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 24.74%;" valign="top" width="24%"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-yfti-cnfc: 64;">
<span style="color: black;">Lompoc, CA</span></div>
</td> <td nowrap="nowrap" style="background: silver; border: none; height: 15.0pt; mso-background-themecolor: text1; mso-background-themetint: 63; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 13.4%;" width="13%"><div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-yfti-cnfc: 64; text-align: right;">
<span style="color: black;">51,509</span></div>
</td> <td nowrap="nowrap" style="background: silver; border: none; height: 15.0pt; mso-background-themecolor: text1; mso-background-themetint: 63; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 11.28%;" width="11%"><div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-yfti-cnfc: 64; text-align: right;">
<span style="color: black;">-4,158</span></div>
</td> <td nowrap="nowrap" style="background: silver; border: none; height: 15.0pt; mso-background-themecolor: text1; mso-background-themetint: 63; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 9.4%;" width="9%"><div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-yfti-cnfc: 64; text-align: right;">
<span style="color: black;">10.70</span></div>
</td> <td nowrap="nowrap" style="background: silver; border: none; height: 15.0pt; mso-background-themecolor: text1; mso-background-themetint: 63; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 11.36%;" width="11%"><div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-yfti-cnfc: 64; text-align: right;">
<span style="color: black;">-49.40</span></div>
</td> <td nowrap="nowrap" style="background: silver; border: none; height: 15.0pt; mso-background-themecolor: text1; mso-background-themetint: 63; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 11.36%;" width="11%"><div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-yfti-cnfc: 64; text-align: right;">
<span style="color: black;"> 4,814 </span></div>
</td> <td nowrap="nowrap" style="background: silver; border: none; height: 15.0pt; mso-background-themecolor: text1; mso-background-themetint: 63; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 11.3%;" width="11%"><div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-yfti-cnfc: 64; text-align: right;">
<span style="color: black;"> 3,888 </span></div>
</td> </tr>
<tr style="height: 15.0pt; mso-yfti-irow: 1;"> <td nowrap="nowrap" style="border: none; height: 15.0pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 7.16%;" valign="top" width="7%"><div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-yfti-cnfc: 4; text-align: right;">
<b><span style="color: black;">2</span></b></div>
</td> <td nowrap="nowrap" style="border: none; height: 15.0pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 24.74%;" valign="top" width="24%"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black;">Sierra Vista, AZ</span></div>
</td> <td nowrap="nowrap" style="border: none; height: 15.0pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 13.4%;" width="13%"><div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: right;">
<span style="color: black;">52,745</span></div>
</td> <td nowrap="nowrap" style="border: none; height: 15.0pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 11.28%;" width="11%"><div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: right;">
<span style="color: black;">5,804</span></div>
</td> <td nowrap="nowrap" style="border: none; height: 15.0pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 9.4%;" width="9%"><div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: right;">
<span style="color: black;">30.28</span></div>
</td> <td nowrap="nowrap" style="border: none; height: 15.0pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 11.36%;" width="11%"><div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: right;">
<span style="color: black;">-50.16</span></div>
</td> <td nowrap="nowrap" style="border: none; height: 15.0pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 11.36%;" width="11%"><div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: right;">
<span style="color: black;"> 1,742 </span></div>
</td> <td nowrap="nowrap" style="border: none; height: 15.0pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 11.3%;" width="11%"><div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: right;">
<span style="color: black;"> 1,158 </span></div>
</td> </tr>
<tr style="height: 15.0pt; mso-yfti-irow: 2;"> <td nowrap="nowrap" style="background: silver; border: none; height: 15.0pt; mso-background-themecolor: text1; mso-background-themetint: 63; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 7.16%;" valign="top" width="7%"><div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-yfti-cnfc: 68; text-align: right;">
<b><span style="color: black;">3</span></b></div>
</td> <td nowrap="nowrap" style="background: silver; border: none; height: 15.0pt; mso-background-themecolor: text1; mso-background-themetint: 63; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 24.74%;" valign="top" width="24%"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-yfti-cnfc: 64;">
<span style="color: black;">Santa Maria, CA</span></div>
</td> <td nowrap="nowrap" style="background: silver; border: none; height: 15.0pt; mso-background-themecolor: text1; mso-background-themetint: 63; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 13.4%;" width="13%"><div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-yfti-cnfc: 64; text-align: right;">
<span style="color: black;">130,447</span></div>
</td> <td nowrap="nowrap" style="background: silver; border: none; height: 15.0pt; mso-background-themecolor: text1; mso-background-themetint: 63; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 11.28%;" width="11%"><div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-yfti-cnfc: 64; text-align: right;">
<span style="color: black;">10,150</span></div>
</td> <td nowrap="nowrap" style="background: silver; border: none; height: 15.0pt; mso-background-themecolor: text1; mso-background-themetint: 63; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 9.4%;" width="9%"><div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-yfti-cnfc: 64; text-align: right;">
<span style="color: black;">29.13</span></div>
</td> <td nowrap="nowrap" style="background: silver; border: none; height: 15.0pt; mso-background-themecolor: text1; mso-background-themetint: 63; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 11.36%;" width="11%"><div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-yfti-cnfc: 64; text-align: right;">
<span style="color: black;">-6.42</span></div>
</td> <td nowrap="nowrap" style="background: silver; border: none; height: 15.0pt; mso-background-themecolor: text1; mso-background-themetint: 63; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 11.36%;" width="11%"><div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-yfti-cnfc: 64; text-align: right;">
<span style="color: black;"> 4,478 </span></div>
</td> <td nowrap="nowrap" style="background: silver; border: none; height: 15.0pt; mso-background-themecolor: text1; mso-background-themetint: 63; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 11.3%;" width="11%"><div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-yfti-cnfc: 64; text-align: right;">
<span style="color: black;"> 1,094 </span></div>
</td> </tr>
<tr style="height: 15.0pt; mso-yfti-irow: 3;"> <td nowrap="nowrap" style="border: none; height: 15.0pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 7.16%;" valign="top" width="7%"><div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-yfti-cnfc: 4; text-align: right;">
<b><span style="color: black;">4</span></b></div>
</td> <td nowrap="nowrap" style="border: none; height: 15.0pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 24.74%;" valign="top" width="24%"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black;">Victoria, TX</span></div>
</td> <td nowrap="nowrap" style="border: none; height: 15.0pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 13.4%;" width="13%"><div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: right;">
<span style="color: black;">63,683</span></div>
</td> <td nowrap="nowrap" style="border: none; height: 15.0pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 11.28%;" width="11%"><div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: right;">
<span style="color: black;">2,154</span></div>
</td> <td nowrap="nowrap" style="border: none; height: 15.0pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 9.4%;" width="9%"><div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: right;">
<span style="color: black;">29.02</span></div>
</td> <td nowrap="nowrap" style="border: none; height: 15.0pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 11.36%;" width="11%"><div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: right;">
<span style="color: black;">-21.99</span></div>
</td> <td nowrap="nowrap" style="border: none; height: 15.0pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 11.36%;" width="11%"><div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: right;">
<span style="color: black;"> 2,194 </span></div>
</td> <td nowrap="nowrap" style="border: none; height: 15.0pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 11.3%;" width="11%"><div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: right;">
<span style="color: black;"> 988 </span></div>
</td> </tr>
<tr style="height: 15.0pt; mso-yfti-irow: 4;"> <td nowrap="nowrap" style="background: silver; border: none; height: 15.0pt; mso-background-themecolor: text1; mso-background-themetint: 63; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 7.16%;" valign="top" width="7%"><div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-yfti-cnfc: 68; text-align: right;">
<b><span style="color: black;">5</span></b></div>
</td> <td nowrap="nowrap" style="background: silver; border: none; height: 15.0pt; mso-background-themecolor: text1; mso-background-themetint: 63; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 24.74%;" valign="top" width="24%"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-yfti-cnfc: 64;">
<span style="color: black;">Corvallis, OR</span></div>
</td> <td nowrap="nowrap" style="background: silver; border: none; height: 15.0pt; mso-background-themecolor: text1; mso-background-themetint: 63; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 13.4%;" width="13%"><div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-yfti-cnfc: 64; text-align: right;">
<span style="color: black;">62,433</span></div>
</td> <td nowrap="nowrap" style="background: silver; border: none; height: 15.0pt; mso-background-themecolor: text1; mso-background-themetint: 63; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 11.28%;" width="11%"><div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-yfti-cnfc: 64; text-align: right;">
<span style="color: black;">4,204</span></div>
</td> <td nowrap="nowrap" style="background: silver; border: none; height: 15.0pt; mso-background-themecolor: text1; mso-background-themetint: 63; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 9.4%;" width="9%"><div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-yfti-cnfc: 64; text-align: right;">
<span style="color: black;">21.11</span></div>
</td> <td nowrap="nowrap" style="background: silver; border: none; height: 15.0pt; mso-background-themecolor: text1; mso-background-themetint: 63; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 11.36%;" width="11%"><div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-yfti-cnfc: 64; text-align: right;">
<span style="color: black;">-7.87</span></div>
</td> <td nowrap="nowrap" style="background: silver; border: none; height: 15.0pt; mso-background-themecolor: text1; mso-background-themetint: 63; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 11.36%;" width="11%"><div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-yfti-cnfc: 64; text-align: right;">
<span style="color: black;"> 2,958 </span></div>
</td> <td nowrap="nowrap" style="background: silver; border: none; height: 15.0pt; mso-background-themecolor: text1; mso-background-themetint: 63; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 11.3%;" width="11%"><div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-yfti-cnfc: 64; text-align: right;">
<span style="color: black;"> 948 </span></div>
</td> </tr>
<tr style="height: 15.0pt; mso-yfti-irow: 5;"> <td nowrap="nowrap" style="border: none; height: 15.0pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 7.16%;" valign="top" width="7%"><div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-yfti-cnfc: 4; text-align: right;">
<b><span style="color: black;">6</span></b></div>
</td> <td nowrap="nowrap" style="border: none; height: 15.0pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 24.74%;" valign="top" width="24%"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black;">Madera, CA</span></div>
</td> <td nowrap="nowrap" style="border: none; height: 15.0pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 13.4%;" width="13%"><div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: right;">
<span style="color: black;">78,413</span></div>
</td> <td nowrap="nowrap" style="border: none; height: 15.0pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 11.28%;" width="11%"><div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: right;">
<span style="color: black;">20,386</span></div>
</td> <td nowrap="nowrap" style="border: none; height: 15.0pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 9.4%;" width="9%"><div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: right;">
<span style="color: black;">22.39</span></div>
</td> <td nowrap="nowrap" style="border: none; height: 15.0pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 11.36%;" width="11%"><div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: right;">
<span style="color: black;">-0.22</span></div>
</td> <td nowrap="nowrap" style="border: none; height: 15.0pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 11.36%;" width="11%"><div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: right;">
<span style="color: black;"> 3,502 </span></div>
</td> <td nowrap="nowrap" style="border: none; height: 15.0pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 11.3%;" width="11%"><div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: right;">
<span style="color: black;"> 936 </span></div>
</td> </tr>
<tr style="height: 15.0pt; mso-yfti-irow: 6;"> <td nowrap="nowrap" style="background: silver; border: none; height: 15.0pt; mso-background-themecolor: text1; mso-background-themetint: 63; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 7.16%;" valign="top" width="7%"><div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-yfti-cnfc: 68; text-align: right;">
<b><span style="color: black;">7</span></b></div>
</td> <td nowrap="nowrap" style="background: silver; border: none; height: 15.0pt; mso-background-themecolor: text1; mso-background-themetint: 63; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 24.74%;" valign="top" width="24%"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-yfti-cnfc: 64;">
<span style="color: black;">Lodi, CA</span></div>
</td> <td nowrap="nowrap" style="background: silver; border: none; height: 15.0pt; mso-background-themecolor: text1; mso-background-themetint: 63; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 13.4%;" width="13%"><div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-yfti-cnfc: 64; text-align: right;">
<span style="color: black;">68,738</span></div>
</td> <td nowrap="nowrap" style="background: silver; border: none; height: 15.0pt; mso-background-themecolor: text1; mso-background-themetint: 63; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 11.28%;" width="11%"><div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-yfti-cnfc: 64; text-align: right;">
<span style="color: black;">-14,997</span></div>
</td> <td nowrap="nowrap" style="background: silver; border: none; height: 15.0pt; mso-background-themecolor: text1; mso-background-themetint: 63; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 9.4%;" width="9%"><div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-yfti-cnfc: 64; text-align: right;">
<span style="color: black;">15.91</span></div>
</td> <td nowrap="nowrap" style="background: silver; border: none; height: 15.0pt; mso-background-themecolor: text1; mso-background-themetint: 63; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 11.36%;" width="11%"><div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-yfti-cnfc: 64; text-align: right;">
<span style="color: black;">-7.63</span></div>
</td> <td nowrap="nowrap" style="background: silver; border: none; height: 15.0pt; mso-background-themecolor: text1; mso-background-themetint: 63; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 11.36%;" width="11%"><div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-yfti-cnfc: 64; text-align: right;">
<span style="color: black;"> 4,320 </span></div>
</td> <td nowrap="nowrap" style="background: silver; border: none; height: 15.0pt; mso-background-themecolor: text1; mso-background-themetint: 63; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 11.3%;" width="11%"><div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-yfti-cnfc: 64; text-align: right;">
<span style="color: black;"> 763 </span></div>
</td> </tr>
<tr style="height: 15.0pt; mso-yfti-irow: 7;"> <td nowrap="nowrap" style="border: none; height: 15.0pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 7.16%;" valign="top" width="7%"><div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-yfti-cnfc: 4; text-align: right;">
<b><span style="color: black;">8</span></b></div>
</td> <td nowrap="nowrap" style="border: none; height: 15.0pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 24.74%;" valign="top" width="24%"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black;">San Diego, CA</span></div>
</td> <td nowrap="nowrap" style="border: none; height: 15.0pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 13.4%;" width="13%"><div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: right;">
<span style="color: black;">2,956,746</span></div>
</td> <td nowrap="nowrap" style="border: none; height: 15.0pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 11.28%;" width="11%"><div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: right;">
<span style="color: black;">282,310</span></div>
</td> <td nowrap="nowrap" style="border: none; height: 15.0pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 9.4%;" width="9%"><div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: right;">
<span style="color: black;">732.41</span></div>
</td> <td nowrap="nowrap" style="border: none; height: 15.0pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 11.36%;" width="11%"><div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: right;">
<span style="color: black;">-49.88</span></div>
</td> <td nowrap="nowrap" style="border: none; height: 15.0pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 11.36%;" width="11%"><div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: right;">
<span style="color: black;"> 4,037 </span></div>
</td> <td nowrap="nowrap" style="border: none; height: 15.0pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 11.3%;" width="11%"><div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: right;">
<span style="color: black;"> 618 </span></div>
</td> </tr>
<tr style="height: 15.0pt; mso-yfti-irow: 8;"> <td nowrap="nowrap" style="background: silver; border: none; height: 15.0pt; mso-background-themecolor: text1; mso-background-themetint: 63; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 7.16%;" valign="top" width="7%"><div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-yfti-cnfc: 68; text-align: right;">
<b><span style="color: black;">9</span></b></div>
</td> <td nowrap="nowrap" style="background: silver; border: none; height: 15.0pt; mso-background-themecolor: text1; mso-background-themetint: 63; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 24.74%;" valign="top" width="24%"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-yfti-cnfc: 64;">
<span style="color: black;">Colorado Springs, CO</span></div>
</td> <td nowrap="nowrap" style="background: silver; border: none; height: 15.0pt; mso-background-themecolor: text1; mso-background-themetint: 63; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 13.4%;" width="13%"><div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-yfti-cnfc: 64; text-align: right;">
<span style="color: black;">559,409</span></div>
</td> <td nowrap="nowrap" style="background: silver; border: none; height: 15.0pt; mso-background-themecolor: text1; mso-background-themetint: 63; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 11.28%;" width="11%"><div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-yfti-cnfc: 64; text-align: right;">
<span style="color: black;">93,287</span></div>
</td> <td nowrap="nowrap" style="background: silver; border: none; height: 15.0pt; mso-background-themecolor: text1; mso-background-themetint: 63; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 9.4%;" width="9%"><div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-yfti-cnfc: 64; text-align: right;">
<span style="color: black;">187.84</span></div>
</td> <td nowrap="nowrap" style="background: silver; border: none; height: 15.0pt; mso-background-themecolor: text1; mso-background-themetint: 63; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 11.36%;" width="11%"><div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-yfti-cnfc: 64; text-align: right;">
<span style="color: black;">-9.52</span></div>
</td> <td nowrap="nowrap" style="background: silver; border: none; height: 15.0pt; mso-background-themecolor: text1; mso-background-themetint: 63; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 11.36%;" width="11%"><div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-yfti-cnfc: 64; text-align: right;">
<span style="color: black;"> 2,978 </span></div>
</td> <td nowrap="nowrap" style="background: silver; border: none; height: 15.0pt; mso-background-themecolor: text1; mso-background-themetint: 63; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 11.3%;" width="11%"><div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-yfti-cnfc: 64; text-align: right;">
<span style="color: black;"> 616 </span></div>
</td> </tr>
<tr style="height: 15.0pt; mso-yfti-irow: 9; mso-yfti-lastrow: yes;"> <td nowrap="nowrap" style="border-bottom: 1.0pt; border-bottom: solid black; border: none; height: 15.0pt; mso-border-bottom-themecolor: text1; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 7.16%;" valign="top" width="7%"><div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-yfti-cnfc: 4; text-align: right;">
<b><span style="color: black;">10</span></b></div>
</td> <td nowrap="nowrap" style="border-bottom: 1.0pt; border-bottom: solid black; border: none; height: 15.0pt; mso-border-bottom-themecolor: text1; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 24.74%;" valign="top" width="24%"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black;">Lady Lake, FL</span></div>
</td> <td nowrap="nowrap" style="border-bottom: 1.0pt; border-bottom: solid black; border: none; height: 15.0pt; mso-border-bottom-themecolor: text1; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 13.4%;" width="13%"><div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: right;">
<span style="color: black;">112,991</span></div>
</td> <td nowrap="nowrap" style="border-bottom: 1.0pt; border-bottom: solid black; border: none; height: 15.0pt; mso-border-bottom-themecolor: text1; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 11.28%;" width="11%"><div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: right;">
<span style="color: black;">62,270</span></div>
</td> <td nowrap="nowrap" style="border-bottom: 1.0pt; border-bottom: solid black; border: none; height: 15.0pt; mso-border-bottom-themecolor: text1; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 9.4%;" width="9%"><div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: right;">
<span style="color: black;">71.07</span></div>
</td> <td nowrap="nowrap" style="border-bottom: 1.0pt; border-bottom: solid black; border: none; height: 15.0pt; mso-border-bottom-themecolor: text1; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 11.36%;" width="11%"><div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: right;">
<span style="color: black;">21.09</span></div>
</td> <td nowrap="nowrap" style="border-bottom: 1.0pt; border-bottom: solid black; border: none; height: 15.0pt; mso-border-bottom-themecolor: text1; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 11.36%;" width="11%"><div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: right;">
<span style="color: black;"> 1,590 </span></div>
</td> <td nowrap="nowrap" style="border-bottom: 1.0pt; border-bottom: solid black; border: none; height: 15.0pt; mso-border-bottom-themecolor: text1; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 11.3%;" width="11%"><div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: right;">
<span style="color: black;"> 575 </span></div>
</td> </tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
Lompoc, CA and Sierra Vista, CA are probably flukes in the counting method. The urban areas for these places in 2000 were very odd, and the 2010 calculations show much more constricted, and probably more accurate, areas. San Diego certainly has a legitimate claim to an increase in density, but the fact that the Camp Pendleton Marine Corp base was dropped from the Urban Area between 2000 and 2010 gives it an artificial boost. The only other big cities to show notable increases in density were Portland, OR (5.6%) and Seattle (6.5%). Although it's just short of making the top ten, the population density of Charlottesville, Virginia grew by 23% over the decade to a respectable 2,672 people per square mile.<br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Top Ten Densest Urban
Clusters (2,500 > = < 50,000) in 2010</b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<table border="1" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="MsoTableLightShading" style="border-collapse: collapse; border: medium none; width: 535px;">
<tbody>
<tr style="height: 15.0pt; mso-yfti-firstrow: yes; mso-yfti-irow: -1;">
<td nowrap="nowrap" style="border-bottom: solid black 1.0pt; border-left: none; border-right: none; border-top: solid black 1.0pt; height: 15.0pt; mso-border-bottom-themecolor: text1; mso-border-top-themecolor: text1; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 45.05pt;" width="60"><div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-yfti-cnfc: 5; text-align: right;">
<b><span style="color: black;">Rank</span></b></div>
</td>
<td nowrap="nowrap" style="border-bottom: solid black 1.0pt; border-left: none; border-right: none; border-top: solid black 1.0pt; height: 15.0pt; mso-border-bottom-themecolor: text1; mso-border-top-themecolor: text1; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 135.85pt;" width="181"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-yfti-cnfc: 1;">
<b><span style="color: black;">Name</span></b></div>
</td>
<td nowrap="nowrap" style="border-bottom: solid black 1.0pt; border-left: none; border-right: none; border-top: solid black 1.0pt; height: 15.0pt; mso-border-bottom-themecolor: text1; mso-border-top-themecolor: text1; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 1.0in;" width="96"><div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-yfti-cnfc: 1; text-align: right;">
<b><span style="color: black;">Population</span></b></div>
</td>
<td nowrap="nowrap" style="border-bottom: solid black 1.0pt; border-left: none; border-right: none; border-top: solid black 1.0pt; height: 15.0pt; mso-border-bottom-themecolor: text1; mso-border-top-themecolor: text1; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 1.0in;" width="96"><div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-yfti-cnfc: 1; text-align: right;">
<b><span style="color: black;">Area</span></b></div>
</td>
<td nowrap="nowrap" style="border-bottom: solid black 1.0pt; border-left: none; border-right: none; border-top: solid black 1.0pt; height: 15.0pt; mso-border-bottom-themecolor: text1; mso-border-top-themecolor: text1; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 76.5pt;" width="102"><div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-yfti-cnfc: 1; text-align: right;">
<b><span style="color: black;">Density</span></b></div>
</td>
</tr>
<tr style="height: 15.0pt; mso-yfti-irow: 0;">
<td nowrap="nowrap" style="background: silver; border: none; height: 15.0pt; mso-background-themecolor: text1; mso-background-themetint: 63; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 45.05pt;" width="60"><div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-yfti-cnfc: 68; text-align: right;">
<b><span style="color: black;">1</span></b></div>
</td>
<td nowrap="nowrap" style="background: silver; border: none; height: 15.0pt; mso-background-themecolor: text1; mso-background-themetint: 63; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 135.85pt;" width="181"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-yfti-cnfc: 64;">
<span style="color: black;">Richgrove, CA</span></div>
</td>
<td nowrap="nowrap" style="background: silver; border: none; height: 15.0pt; mso-background-themecolor: text1; mso-background-themetint: 63; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 1.0in;" width="96"><div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-yfti-cnfc: 64; text-align: right;">
<span style="color: black;">2867</span></div>
</td>
<td nowrap="nowrap" style="background: silver; border: none; height: 15.0pt; mso-background-themecolor: text1; mso-background-themetint: 63; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 1.0in;" width="96"><div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-yfti-cnfc: 64; text-align: right;">
<span style="color: black;">0.29</span></div>
</td>
<td nowrap="nowrap" style="background: silver; border: none; height: 15.0pt; mso-background-themecolor: text1; mso-background-themetint: 63; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 76.5pt;" width="102"><div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-yfti-cnfc: 64; text-align: right;">
<span style="color: black;"> 10,016 </span></div>
</td>
</tr>
<tr style="height: 15.0pt; mso-yfti-irow: 1;">
<td nowrap="nowrap" style="border: none; height: 15.0pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 45.05pt;" width="60"><div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-yfti-cnfc: 4; text-align: right;">
<b><span style="color: black;">2</span></b></div>
</td>
<td nowrap="nowrap" style="border: none; height: 15.0pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 135.85pt;" width="181"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black;">Parlier, CA</span></div>
</td>
<td nowrap="nowrap" style="border: none; height: 15.0pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 1.0in;" width="96"><div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: right;">
<span style="color: black;">14490</span></div>
</td>
<td nowrap="nowrap" style="border: none; height: 15.0pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 1.0in;" width="96"><div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: right;">
<span style="color: black;">1.58</span></div>
</td>
<td nowrap="nowrap" style="border: none; height: 15.0pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 76.5pt;" width="102"><div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: right;">
<span style="color: black;"> 9,162 </span></div>
</td>
</tr>
<tr style="height: 15.0pt; mso-yfti-irow: 2;">
<td nowrap="nowrap" style="background: silver; border: none; height: 15.0pt; mso-background-themecolor: text1; mso-background-themetint: 63; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 45.05pt;" width="60"><div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-yfti-cnfc: 68; text-align: right;">
<b><span style="color: black;">3</span></b></div>
</td>
<td nowrap="nowrap" style="background: silver; border: none; height: 15.0pt; mso-background-themecolor: text1; mso-background-themetint: 63; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 135.85pt;" width="181"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-yfti-cnfc: 64;">
<span style="color: black;">Mattawa, WA</span></div>
</td>
<td nowrap="nowrap" style="background: silver; border: none; height: 15.0pt; mso-background-themecolor: text1; mso-background-themetint: 63; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 1.0in;" width="96"><div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-yfti-cnfc: 64; text-align: right;">
<span style="color: black;">4988</span></div>
</td>
<td nowrap="nowrap" style="background: silver; border: none; height: 15.0pt; mso-background-themecolor: text1; mso-background-themetint: 63; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 1.0in;" width="96"><div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-yfti-cnfc: 64; text-align: right;">
<span style="color: black;">0.62</span></div>
</td>
<td nowrap="nowrap" style="background: silver; border: none; height: 15.0pt; mso-background-themecolor: text1; mso-background-themetint: 63; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 76.5pt;" width="102"><div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-yfti-cnfc: 64; text-align: right;">
<span style="color: black;"> 7,985 </span></div>
</td>
</tr>
<tr style="height: 15.0pt; mso-yfti-irow: 3;">
<td nowrap="nowrap" style="border: none; height: 15.0pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 45.05pt;" width="60"><div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-yfti-cnfc: 4; text-align: right;">
<b><span style="color: black;">4</span></b></div>
</td>
<td nowrap="nowrap" style="border: none; height: 15.0pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 135.85pt;" width="181"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black;">San Luis, AZ</span></div>
</td>
<td nowrap="nowrap" style="border: none; height: 15.0pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 1.0in;" width="96"><div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: right;">
<span style="color: black;">24091</span></div>
</td>
<td nowrap="nowrap" style="border: none; height: 15.0pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 1.0in;" width="96"><div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: right;">
<span style="color: black;">3.57</span></div>
</td>
<td nowrap="nowrap" style="border: none; height: 15.0pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 76.5pt;" width="102"><div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: right;">
<span style="color: black;"> 6,755 </span></div>
</td>
</tr>
<tr style="height: 15.0pt; mso-yfti-irow: 4;">
<td nowrap="nowrap" style="background: silver; border: none; height: 15.0pt; mso-background-themecolor: text1; mso-background-themetint: 63; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 45.05pt;" width="60"><div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-yfti-cnfc: 68; text-align: right;">
<b><span style="color: black;">5</span></b></div>
</td>
<td nowrap="nowrap" style="background: silver; border: none; height: 15.0pt; mso-background-themecolor: text1; mso-background-themetint: 63; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 135.85pt;" width="181"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-yfti-cnfc: 64;">
<span style="color: black;">Santa Paula, CA</span></div>
</td>
<td nowrap="nowrap" style="background: silver; border: none; height: 15.0pt; mso-background-themecolor: text1; mso-background-themetint: 63; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 1.0in;" width="96"><div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-yfti-cnfc: 64; text-align: right;">
<span style="color: black;">29742</span></div>
</td>
<td nowrap="nowrap" style="background: silver; border: none; height: 15.0pt; mso-background-themecolor: text1; mso-background-themetint: 63; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 1.0in;" width="96"><div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-yfti-cnfc: 64; text-align: right;">
<span style="color: black;">4.42</span></div>
</td>
<td nowrap="nowrap" style="background: silver; border: none; height: 15.0pt; mso-background-themecolor: text1; mso-background-themetint: 63; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 76.5pt;" width="102"><div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-yfti-cnfc: 64; text-align: right;">
<span style="color: black;"> 6,735 </span></div>
</td>
</tr>
<tr style="height: 15.0pt; mso-yfti-irow: 5;">
<td nowrap="nowrap" style="border: none; height: 15.0pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 45.05pt;" width="60"><div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-yfti-cnfc: 4; text-align: right;">
<b><span style="color: black;">6</span></b></div>
</td>
<td nowrap="nowrap" style="border: none; height: 15.0pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 135.85pt;" width="181"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black;">Mountain House, CA</span></div>
</td>
<td nowrap="nowrap" style="border: none; height: 15.0pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 1.0in;" width="96"><div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: right;">
<span style="color: black;">9616</span></div>
</td>
<td nowrap="nowrap" style="border: none; height: 15.0pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 1.0in;" width="96"><div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: right;">
<span style="color: black;">1.43</span></div>
</td>
<td nowrap="nowrap" style="border: none; height: 15.0pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 76.5pt;" width="102"><div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: right;">
<span style="color: black;"> 6,703 </span></div>
</td>
</tr>
<tr style="height: 15.0pt; mso-yfti-irow: 6;">
<td nowrap="nowrap" style="background: silver; border: none; height: 15.0pt; mso-background-themecolor: text1; mso-background-themetint: 63; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 45.05pt;" width="60"><div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-yfti-cnfc: 68; text-align: right;">
<b><span style="color: black;">7</span></b></div>
</td>
<td nowrap="nowrap" style="background: silver; border: none; height: 15.0pt; mso-background-themecolor: text1; mso-background-themetint: 63; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 135.85pt;" width="181"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-yfti-cnfc: 64;">
<span style="color: black;">Guadalupe, CA</span></div>
</td>
<td nowrap="nowrap" style="background: silver; border: none; height: 15.0pt; mso-background-themecolor: text1; mso-background-themetint: 63; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 1.0in;" width="96"><div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-yfti-cnfc: 64; text-align: right;">
<span style="color: black;">7080</span></div>
</td>
<td nowrap="nowrap" style="background: silver; border: none; height: 15.0pt; mso-background-themecolor: text1; mso-background-themetint: 63; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 1.0in;" width="96"><div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-yfti-cnfc: 64; text-align: right;">
<span style="color: black;">1.06</span></div>
</td>
<td nowrap="nowrap" style="background: silver; border: none; height: 15.0pt; mso-background-themecolor: text1; mso-background-themetint: 63; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 76.5pt;" width="102"><div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-yfti-cnfc: 64; text-align: right;">
<span style="color: black;"> 6,689 </span></div>
</td>
</tr>
<tr style="height: 15.0pt; mso-yfti-irow: 7;">
<td nowrap="nowrap" style="border: none; height: 15.0pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 45.05pt;" width="60"><div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-yfti-cnfc: 4; text-align: right;">
<b><span style="color: black;">8</span></b></div>
</td>
<td nowrap="nowrap" style="border: none; height: 15.0pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 135.85pt;" width="181"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black;">Orange Cove, CA</span></div>
</td>
<td nowrap="nowrap" style="border: none; height: 15.0pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 1.0in;" width="96"><div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: right;">
<span style="color: black;">9774</span></div>
</td>
<td nowrap="nowrap" style="border: none; height: 15.0pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 1.0in;" width="96"><div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: right;">
<span style="color: black;">1.51</span></div>
</td>
<td nowrap="nowrap" style="border: none; height: 15.0pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 76.5pt;" width="102"><div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: right;">
<span style="color: black;"> 6,471 </span></div>
</td>
</tr>
<tr style="height: 15.0pt; mso-yfti-irow: 8;">
<td nowrap="nowrap" style="background: silver; border: none; height: 15.0pt; mso-background-themecolor: text1; mso-background-themetint: 63; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 45.05pt;" width="60"><div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-yfti-cnfc: 68; text-align: right;">
<b><span style="color: black;">9</span></b></div>
</td>
<td nowrap="nowrap" style="background: silver; border: none; height: 15.0pt; mso-background-themecolor: text1; mso-background-themetint: 63; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 135.85pt;" width="181"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-yfti-cnfc: 64;">
<span style="color: black;">Soledad, CA</span></div>
</td>
<td nowrap="nowrap" style="background: silver; border: none; height: 15.0pt; mso-background-themecolor: text1; mso-background-themetint: 63; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 1.0in;" width="96"><div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-yfti-cnfc: 64; text-align: right;">
<span style="color: black;">25943</span></div>
</td>
<td nowrap="nowrap" style="background: silver; border: none; height: 15.0pt; mso-background-themecolor: text1; mso-background-themetint: 63; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 1.0in;" width="96"><div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-yfti-cnfc: 64; text-align: right;">
<span style="color: black;">4.14</span></div>
</td>
<td nowrap="nowrap" style="background: silver; border: none; height: 15.0pt; mso-background-themecolor: text1; mso-background-themetint: 63; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 76.5pt;" width="102"><div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-yfti-cnfc: 64; text-align: right;">
<span style="color: black;"> 6,269 </span></div>
</td>
</tr>
<tr style="height: 15.0pt; mso-yfti-irow: 9; mso-yfti-lastrow: yes;">
<td nowrap="nowrap" style="border-bottom: solid black 1.0pt; border: none; height: 15.0pt; mso-border-bottom-themecolor: text1; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 45.05pt;" width="60"><div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-yfti-cnfc: 4; text-align: right;">
<b><span style="color: black;">10</span></b></div>
</td>
<td nowrap="nowrap" style="border-bottom: solid black 1.0pt; border: none; height: 15.0pt; mso-border-bottom-themecolor: text1; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 135.85pt;" width="181"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black;">Greenfield, CA</span></div>
</td>
<td nowrap="nowrap" style="border-bottom: solid black 1.0pt; border: none; height: 15.0pt; mso-border-bottom-themecolor: text1; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 1.0in;" width="96"><div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: right;">
<span style="color: black;">16451</span></div>
</td>
<td nowrap="nowrap" style="border-bottom: solid black 1.0pt; border: none; height: 15.0pt; mso-border-bottom-themecolor: text1; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 1.0in;" width="96"><div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: right;">
<span style="color: black;">2.74</span></div>
</td>
<td nowrap="nowrap" style="border-bottom: solid black 1.0pt; border: none; height: 15.0pt; mso-border-bottom-themecolor: text1; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 76.5pt;" width="102"><div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: right;">
<span style="color: black;"> 5,997 </span></div>
</td>
</tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
We can't forget the small towns. California towns with heavy agriculture dominate this list, and with some very high levels of density.<br />
<br />
Now we'll leave population behind, and look just at the increasing amount of land used for human habitation.<br />
<br />
<b>Top Ten Urbanized Areas (over 50,000) with Greatest Increase in Area between 2000 and 2010</b><br />
<br />
<table border="1" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="MsoTableLightShading" style="border-collapse: collapse; border: medium none; width: 700px;"><tbody>
<tr style="height: 15.0pt; mso-yfti-firstrow: yes; mso-yfti-irow: -1;"> <td style="border-bottom: 1.0pt; border-bottom: solid black; border-left: none; border-right: none; border-top: 1.0pt; border-top: solid black; height: 15.0pt; mso-border-bottom-themecolor: text1; mso-border-top-themecolor: text1; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 40pt;" valign="bottom" width="40"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-yfti-cnfc: 5;">
<b><span style="color: black;">Rank</span></b></div>
</td> <td nowrap="nowrap" style="border-bottom: 1.0pt; border-bottom: solid black; border-left: none; border-right: none; border-top: 1.0pt; border-top: solid black; height: 15.0pt; mso-border-bottom-themecolor: text1; mso-border-top-themecolor: text1; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 200pt;" valign="bottom" width="200"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-yfti-cnfc: 1;">
<b><span style="color: black;">Name</span></b></div>
</td> <td nowrap="nowrap" style="border-bottom: 1.0pt; border-bottom: solid black; border-left: none; border-right: none; border-top: 1.0pt; border-top: solid black; height: 15.0pt; mso-border-bottom-themecolor: text1; mso-border-top-themecolor: text1; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 70pt;" valign="bottom" width="70"><div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-yfti-cnfc: 1; text-align: right;">
<b><span style="color: black;">Area</span></b></div>
</td> <td nowrap="nowrap" style="border-bottom: 1.0pt; border-bottom: solid black; border-left: none; border-right: none; border-top: 1.0pt; border-top: solid black; height: 15.0pt; mso-border-bottom-themecolor: text1; mso-border-top-themecolor: text1; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 70pt;" valign="bottom" width="70"><div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-yfti-cnfc: 1; text-align: right;">
<b><span style="color: black;">Change</span></b></div>
</td> <td nowrap="nowrap" style="border-bottom: 1.0pt; border-bottom: solid black; border-left: none; border-right: none; border-top: 1.0pt; border-top: solid black; height: 15.0pt; mso-border-bottom-themecolor: text1; mso-border-top-themecolor: text1; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 70pt;" valign="bottom" width="70"><div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-yfti-cnfc: 1; text-align: right;">
<b><span style="color: black;">% Change</span></b></div>
</td> </tr>
<tr style="height: 15.0pt; mso-yfti-irow: 0;"> <td style="background: silver; border: none; height: 15.0pt; mso-background-themecolor: text1; mso-background-themetint: 63; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 70pt;" valign="bottom" width="70"><div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-yfti-cnfc: 68; text-align: right;">
<b><span style="color: black;">1</span></b></div>
</td> <td nowrap="nowrap" style="background: silver; border: none; height: 15.0pt; mso-background-themecolor: text1; mso-background-themetint: 63; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 165.05pt;" valign="bottom" width="165"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-yfti-cnfc: 64;">
<span style="color: black;">Atlanta, GA</span></div>
</td> <td nowrap="nowrap" style="background: silver; border: none; height: 15.0pt; mso-background-themecolor: text1; mso-background-themetint: 63; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 58.5pt;" valign="bottom" width="59"><div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-yfti-cnfc: 64; text-align: right;">
<span style="color: black;">2,645.35</span></div>
</td> <td nowrap="nowrap" style="background: silver; border: none; height: 15.0pt; mso-background-themecolor: text1; mso-background-themetint: 63; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: .75in;" valign="bottom" width="54"><div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-yfti-cnfc: 64; text-align: right;">
<span style="color: black;">682.77</span></div>
</td> <td nowrap="nowrap" style="background: silver; border: none; height: 15.0pt; mso-background-themecolor: text1; mso-background-themetint: 63; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 67.5pt;" valign="bottom" width="68"><div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-yfti-cnfc: 64; text-align: right;">
<span style="color: black;">34.79</span></div>
</td> </tr>
<tr style="height: 15.0pt; mso-yfti-irow: 1;"> <td style="border: none; height: 15.0pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 38.35pt;" valign="bottom" width="38"><div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-yfti-cnfc: 4; text-align: right;">
<b><span style="color: black;">2</span></b></div>
</td> <td nowrap="nowrap" style="border: none; height: 15.0pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 165.05pt;" valign="bottom" width="165"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black;">Dallas--Fort Worth--Arlington, TX</span></div>
</td> <td nowrap="nowrap" style="border: none; height: 15.0pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 58.5pt;" valign="bottom" width="59"><div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: right;">
<span style="color: black;">1,779.13</span></div>
</td> <td nowrap="nowrap" style="border: none; height: 15.0pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: .75in;" valign="bottom" width="54"><div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: right;">
<span style="color: black;">372.09</span></div>
</td> <td nowrap="nowrap" style="border: none; height: 15.0pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 67.5pt;" valign="bottom" width="68"><div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: right;">
<span style="color: black;">26.45</span></div>
</td> </tr>
<tr style="height: 15.0pt; mso-yfti-irow: 2;"> <td style="background: silver; border: none; height: 15.0pt; mso-background-themecolor: text1; mso-background-themetint: 63; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 38.35pt;" valign="bottom" width="38"><div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-yfti-cnfc: 68; text-align: right;">
<b><span style="color: black;">3</span></b></div>
</td> <td nowrap="nowrap" style="background: silver; border: none; height: 15.0pt; mso-background-themecolor: text1; mso-background-themetint: 63; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 165.05pt;" valign="bottom" width="165"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-yfti-cnfc: 64;">
<span style="color: black;">Houston, TX</span></div>
</td> <td nowrap="nowrap" style="background: silver; border: none; height: 15.0pt; mso-background-themecolor: text1; mso-background-themetint: 63; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 58.5pt;" valign="bottom" width="59"><div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-yfti-cnfc: 64; text-align: right;">
<span style="color: black;">1,660.02</span></div>
</td> <td nowrap="nowrap" style="background: silver; border: none; height: 15.0pt; mso-background-themecolor: text1; mso-background-themetint: 63; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: .75in;" valign="bottom" width="54"><div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-yfti-cnfc: 64; text-align: right;">
<span style="color: black;">364.75</span></div>
</td> <td nowrap="nowrap" style="background: silver; border: none; height: 15.0pt; mso-background-themecolor: text1; mso-background-themetint: 63; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 67.5pt;" valign="bottom" width="68"><div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-yfti-cnfc: 64; text-align: right;">
<span style="color: black;">28.16</span></div>
</td> </tr>
<tr style="height: 15.0pt; mso-yfti-irow: 3;"> <td style="border: none; height: 15.0pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 38.35pt;" valign="bottom" width="38"><div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-yfti-cnfc: 4; text-align: right;">
<b><span style="color: black;">4</span></b></div>
</td> <td nowrap="nowrap" style="border: none; height: 15.0pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 165.05pt;" valign="bottom" width="165"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black;">Phoenix--Mesa, AZ</span></div>
</td> <td nowrap="nowrap" style="border: none; height: 15.0pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 58.5pt;" valign="bottom" width="59"><div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: right;">
<span style="color: black;">1,146.57</span></div>
</td> <td nowrap="nowrap" style="border: none; height: 15.0pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: .75in;" valign="bottom" width="54"><div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: right;">
<span style="color: black;">347.56</span></div>
</td> <td nowrap="nowrap" style="border: none; height: 15.0pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 67.5pt;" valign="bottom" width="68"><div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: right;">
<span style="color: black;">43.50</span></div>
</td> <td nowrap="nowrap" style="border: none; height: 15.0pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 49.5pt;" valign="bottom" width="50"><br /></td> <td style="border: none; height: 15.0pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 63.0pt;" valign="bottom" width="63"><br /></td> </tr>
<tr style="height: 15.0pt; mso-yfti-irow: 4;"> <td style="background: silver; border: none; height: 15.0pt; mso-background-themecolor: text1; mso-background-themetint: 63; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 38.35pt;" valign="bottom" width="38"><div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-yfti-cnfc: 68; text-align: right;">
<b><span style="color: black;">5</span></b></div>
</td> <td nowrap="nowrap" style="background: silver; border: none; height: 15.0pt; mso-background-themecolor: text1; mso-background-themetint: 63; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 165.05pt;" valign="bottom" width="165"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-yfti-cnfc: 64;">
<span style="color: black;">Chicago, IL--IN</span></div>
</td> <td nowrap="nowrap" style="background: silver; border: none; height: 15.0pt; mso-background-themecolor: text1; mso-background-themetint: 63; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 58.5pt;" valign="bottom" width="59"><div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-yfti-cnfc: 64; text-align: right;">
<span style="color: black;">2,442.75</span></div>
</td> <td nowrap="nowrap" style="background: silver; border: none; height: 15.0pt; mso-background-themecolor: text1; mso-background-themetint: 63; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: .75in;" valign="bottom" width="54"><div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-yfti-cnfc: 64; text-align: right;">
<span style="color: black;">319.94</span></div>
</td> <td nowrap="nowrap" style="background: silver; border: none; height: 15.0pt; mso-background-themecolor: text1; mso-background-themetint: 63; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 67.5pt;" valign="bottom" width="68"><div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-yfti-cnfc: 64; text-align: right;">
<span style="color: black;">15.07</span></div>
</td>
</tr>
<tr style="height: 15.0pt; mso-yfti-irow: 5;"> <td style="border: none; height: 15.0pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 38.35pt;" valign="bottom" width="38"><div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-yfti-cnfc: 4; text-align: right;">
<b><span style="color: black;">6</span></b></div>
</td> <td nowrap="nowrap" style="border: none; height: 15.0pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 165.05pt;" valign="bottom" width="165"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black;">Charlotte, NC--SC</span></div>
</td> <td nowrap="nowrap" style="border: none; height: 15.0pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 58.5pt;" valign="bottom" width="59"><div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: right;">
<span style="color: black;">741.49</span></div>
</td> <td nowrap="nowrap" style="border: none; height: 15.0pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: .75in;" valign="bottom" width="54"><div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: right;">
<span style="color: black;">306.58</span></div>
</td> <td nowrap="nowrap" style="border: none; height: 15.0pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 67.5pt;" valign="bottom" width="68"><div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: right;">
<span style="color: black;">70.49</span></div>
</td> <td nowrap="nowrap" style="border: none; height: 15.0pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 49.5pt;" valign="bottom" width="50"><br /></td> <td style="border: none; height: 15.0pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 63.0pt;" valign="bottom" width="63"><br /></td> </tr>
<tr style="height: 15.0pt; mso-yfti-irow: 6;"> <td style="background: silver; border: none; height: 15.0pt; mso-background-themecolor: text1; mso-background-themetint: 63; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 38.35pt;" valign="bottom" width="38"><div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-yfti-cnfc: 68; text-align: right;">
<b><span style="color: black;">7</span></b></div>
</td> <td nowrap="nowrap" style="background: silver; border: none; height: 15.0pt; mso-background-themecolor: text1; mso-background-themetint: 63; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 165.05pt;" valign="bottom" width="165"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-yfti-cnfc: 64;">
<span style="color: black;">Austin, TX</span></div>
</td> <td nowrap="nowrap" style="background: silver; border: none; height: 15.0pt; mso-background-themecolor: text1; mso-background-themetint: 63; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 58.5pt;" valign="bottom" width="59"><div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-yfti-cnfc: 64; text-align: right;">
<span style="color: black;">523.03</span></div>
</td> <td nowrap="nowrap" style="background: silver; border: none; height: 15.0pt; mso-background-themecolor: text1; mso-background-themetint: 63; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: .75in;" valign="bottom" width="54"><div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-yfti-cnfc: 64; text-align: right;">
<span style="color: black;">204.90</span></div>
</td> <td nowrap="nowrap" style="background: silver; border: none; height: 15.0pt; mso-background-themecolor: text1; mso-background-themetint: 63; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 67.5pt;" valign="bottom" width="68"><div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-yfti-cnfc: 64; text-align: right;">
<span style="color: black;">64.41</span></div>
</td>
</tr>
<tr style="height: 15.0pt; mso-yfti-irow: 7;"> <td style="border: none; height: 15.0pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 38.35pt;" valign="bottom" width="38"><div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-yfti-cnfc: 4; text-align: right;">
<b><span style="color: black;">8</span></b></div>
</td> <td nowrap="nowrap" style="border: none; height: 15.0pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 165.05pt;" valign="bottom" width="165"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black;">Raleigh, NC</span></div>
</td> <td nowrap="nowrap" style="border: none; height: 15.0pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 58.5pt;" valign="bottom" width="59"><div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: right;">
<span style="color: black;">518.14</span></div>
</td> <td nowrap="nowrap" style="border: none; height: 15.0pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: .75in;" valign="bottom" width="54"><div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: right;">
<span style="color: black;">198.53</span></div>
</td> <td nowrap="nowrap" style="border: none; height: 15.0pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 67.5pt;" valign="bottom" width="68"><div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: right;">
<span style="color: black;">62.11</span></div>
</td> <td nowrap="nowrap" style="border: none; height: 15.0pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 49.5pt;" valign="bottom" width="50"><br /></td> <td style="border: none; height: 15.0pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 63.0pt;" valign="bottom" width="63"><br /></td> </tr>
<tr style="height: 15.0pt; mso-yfti-irow: 8;"> <td style="background: silver; border: none; height: 15.0pt; mso-background-themecolor: text1; mso-background-themetint: 63; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 38.35pt;" valign="bottom" width="38"><div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-yfti-cnfc: 68; text-align: right;">
<b><span style="color: black;">9</span></b></div>
</td> <td nowrap="nowrap" style="background: silver; border: none; height: 15.0pt; mso-background-themecolor: text1; mso-background-themetint: 63; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 165.05pt;" valign="bottom" width="165"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-yfti-cnfc: 64;">
<span style="color: black;">San Antonio, TX</span></div>
</td> <td nowrap="nowrap" style="background: silver; border: none; height: 15.0pt; mso-background-themecolor: text1; mso-background-themetint: 63; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 58.5pt;" valign="bottom" width="59"><div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-yfti-cnfc: 64; text-align: right;">
<span style="color: black;">597.10</span></div>
</td> <td nowrap="nowrap" style="background: silver; border: none; height: 15.0pt; mso-background-themecolor: text1; mso-background-themetint: 63; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: .75in;" valign="bottom" width="54"><div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-yfti-cnfc: 64; text-align: right;">
<span style="color: black;">189.54</span></div>
</td> <td nowrap="nowrap" style="background: silver; border: none; height: 15.0pt; mso-background-themecolor: text1; mso-background-themetint: 63; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 67.5pt;" valign="bottom" width="68"><div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-yfti-cnfc: 64; text-align: right;">
<span style="color: black;">46.51</span></div>
</td>
</tr>
<tr style="height: 15.0pt; mso-yfti-irow: 9; mso-yfti-lastrow: yes;"> <td style="border-bottom: 1.0pt; border-bottom: solid black; border: none; height: 15.0pt; mso-border-bottom-themecolor: text1; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 38.35pt;" valign="bottom" width="38"><div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-yfti-cnfc: 4; text-align: right;">
<b><span style="color: black;">10</span></b></div>
</td> <td nowrap="nowrap" style="border-bottom: 1.0pt; border-bottom: solid black; border: none; height: 15.0pt; mso-border-bottom-themecolor: text1; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 165.05pt;" valign="bottom" width="165"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black;">Philadelphia, PA--NJ--DE--MD</span></div>
</td> <td nowrap="nowrap" style="border-bottom: 1.0pt; border-bottom: solid black; border: none; height: 15.0pt; mso-border-bottom-themecolor: text1; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 58.5pt;" valign="bottom" width="59"><div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: right;">
<span style="color: black;">1981.37</span></div>
</td> <td nowrap="nowrap" style="border-bottom: 1.0pt; border-bottom: solid black; border: none; height: 15.0pt; mso-border-bottom-themecolor: text1; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: .75in;" valign="bottom" width="54"><div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: right;">
<span style="color: black;">181.86</span></div>
</td> <td nowrap="nowrap" style="border-bottom: 1.0pt; border-bottom: solid black; border: none; height: 15.0pt; mso-border-bottom-themecolor: text1; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 67.5pt;" valign="bottom" width="68"><div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: right;">
<span style="color: black;">10.11</span></div>
</td> <td nowrap="nowrap" style="border-bottom: 1.0pt; border-bottom: solid black; border: none; height: 15.0pt; mso-border-bottom-themecolor: text1; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 49.5pt;" valign="bottom" width="50"><br /></td> <td style="border-bottom: 1.0pt; border-bottom: solid black; border: none; height: 15.0pt; mso-border-bottom-themecolor: text1; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 63.0pt;" valign="bottom" width="63"><br /></td> </tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
<br />
Maps of some selected urbanized areas paint a picture of the bookends of urban change over the decade:<br />
<br />
Dark purple = in 2000 and 2010 urban areas<br />
Light purple = new for 2010 <br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjhqW8yRK2chlKYzQ3QOOt1NOmIfsby2IODIyy6RDGORlDigEtTdmMmDDUSXvUzNjXTElYY6JMK12lx-02NPVgZzAr6Xpp-2WAT1ijZUN7drZ1kl4WomC2mED1FKYcoqN7heK6Jcr4seura/s1600/Atlanta.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="456" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjhqW8yRK2chlKYzQ3QOOt1NOmIfsby2IODIyy6RDGORlDigEtTdmMmDDUSXvUzNjXTElYY6JMK12lx-02NPVgZzAr6Xpp-2WAT1ijZUN7drZ1kl4WomC2mED1FKYcoqN7heK6Jcr4seura/s640/Atlanta.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
<br />
Atlanta had the greatest expansion of urban land over the decade, with no less than 683 square miles of growth.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh4n8CgTr-t0G0oMWr7ri_4RLZNxt2cM_EpeqHfGbKORPr32pkcggkwLnFah9hEM5gINvh2Pm7ToulwTbq5ruqFDcgRCysmdDZUBprWLzz4dcWG0XAgwexzPr8v7H_ZGHXZqqUhFTvtvSB8/s1600/Charlotte.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="456" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh4n8CgTr-t0G0oMWr7ri_4RLZNxt2cM_EpeqHfGbKORPr32pkcggkwLnFah9hEM5gINvh2Pm7ToulwTbq5ruqFDcgRCysmdDZUBprWLzz4dcWG0XAgwexzPr8v7H_ZGHXZqqUhFTvtvSB8/s640/Charlotte.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
<br />
Charlotte had the fastest population growth of any urbanized area, but the expansion of land was even faster at a 70% rate of growth.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjxkmdk8Oaas19etqwMOXWQlQkewxfJxvXQ9Oq0vgMKdxQbnxml44OZtWRI_cdSGTBIZDA1o7efDE5uZLRejGGqUMUpeWlHvkhCISggnxxuOldG4PDO3iGkdI0tJP22c25TSl_tABzx0KmF/s1600/Phoenix.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="457" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjxkmdk8Oaas19etqwMOXWQlQkewxfJxvXQ9Oq0vgMKdxQbnxml44OZtWRI_cdSGTBIZDA1o7efDE5uZLRejGGqUMUpeWlHvkhCISggnxxuOldG4PDO3iGkdI0tJP22c25TSl_tABzx0KmF/s640/Phoenix.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
<br />
After several decades of rapid expansion, the Phoenix-Mesa urbanized area increased by another 43% between 2000 and and 2010. Atlanta had much more growth and Charlotte had a much higher growth rate, but Phoenix held it's own on both measures, perhaps adding more ammunition to <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Bird-Fire-Lessons-Worlds-Sustainable/dp/0199828261">those who consider</a> this desert oasis to be the world's least sustainable city.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj89bE6RBNEHxBkm0rAWTjTBptpnp6DmBoSH5hbfjO7ww1Iw4vVus9KwHfJeN2_desXpOYkDrK2wUg7MXlz5gBmnQm3p3Q4qAkyO2X7RpBtX7Ss1gq0K-R5HXPOO3iTMXitmRvF12QRYmZY/s1600/Philadelphia.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="457" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj89bE6RBNEHxBkm0rAWTjTBptpnp6DmBoSH5hbfjO7ww1Iw4vVus9KwHfJeN2_desXpOYkDrK2wUg7MXlz5gBmnQm3p3Q4qAkyO2X7RpBtX7Ss1gq0K-R5HXPOO3iTMXitmRvF12QRYmZY/s640/Philadelphia.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
<br />
It was a surprise to me to see the older Philadelphia ranked as an expanding urbanized area.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjeX-1_1hN3MZvpuKvnKr3X6ppQh3sMZyZGPHadvsMNTPkQx3CUFnmpuO-Iwt-0HXV0EG7VDQO7sqJXFCucY_z9WSofaKknY9G5csPXNmf4N1HhK-JqW1caB8ME3-WMrZXFy4sA-KDxNDMW/s1600/Austin.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="456" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjeX-1_1hN3MZvpuKvnKr3X6ppQh3sMZyZGPHadvsMNTPkQx3CUFnmpuO-Iwt-0HXV0EG7VDQO7sqJXFCucY_z9WSofaKknY9G5csPXNmf4N1HhK-JqW1caB8ME3-WMrZXFy4sA-KDxNDMW/s640/Austin.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
<br />
The urbanized area of Austin kept pace with Dallas-Fort Worth and Houston in terms of total land growth. But it's rate of land expansion was far higher than the large Texas metropolises.<br />
<br />
And now for some more positive news:<br />
<br />
Dark blue = in both 2000 and 2010 urban areas<br />
Grey = new for 2010<br />
Light blue = in 2000, but not 2010 urban areas <br />
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All of the Bay Area urbanized areas held steady on expansion, and the urban area even shrunk in Marin County and some spots in Silicon Valley. Population growth in San Francisco-Oakland was not particularly strong, but the San Jose urbanized area grew by a moderate 8.2% over the decade. <br />
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San Diego showed little outward expansion, while absorbing an additional 282 thousand people. The official number was even negative, but the drop was caused by the removal of a military base from the urban area.<br />
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Colorado Springs is an especially interesting case. The urbanized population grew by an impressive 21% over the decade with very minimal expansion of its footprint.</div>
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This decade will remain very tricky to characterize as a whole, because of the sharp divide in development rates that struck in 2008. Because the census was taken in April of 2010 and construction always lags behind financing, most of the growth shown here probably represents the pre-recession reality of homebuilding and commercial expansion. We only have such thorough snapshots of urban growth once per decade, so discerning the future, in this case, may come down to reading between the lines.<br />
<span id="goog_422737689"></span><span id="goog_422737690"></span>Daniel Nairnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14127732825472374125noreply@blogger.com118tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5079297043552042968.post-7063365916356586672012-03-20T17:01:00.002-04:002012-03-20T17:05:52.944-04:00Review of Lasting Value<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.planning.org/apastore/lib/Images/Products/A00033_125.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://www.planning.org/apastore/lib/Images/Products/A00033_125.jpg" /></a></div>A vibrant city and a healthy countryside are vitally interrelated, or at least they should be. This is one of the conclusions reached by Rick Preutz in the new book <a href="http://www.planning.org/apastore/meet/2012/lastingvalue.htm?print=true"><i>Lasting Value</i> from APA Planners’ Press</a>. The author meticulously evaluates twenty-five communities around the United States that are considered successful in preserving land for recreational parks, agricultural, and protection of ecosystems. Beyond simply presenting an inventory of achievements – although it does, down to the acre – the book explores why these policy objectives came into being and how they have been carried out.<br />
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As I read through the stories of communities working to protect their natural heritage, one striking fact kept reinforcing itself over and over again. The methods and motivations for land preservation are as varied as the Everglades is from the front range of the Rockies. Localities across the country have arrived at similar conclusions from vastly different starting points, belying the notion of a monolithic environmental movement driving policy forward over the decades.<br />
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Let’s start with who the actors are. In the public sector, actions range from local governments purchasing open space through bonds to federal acquisition of park or managed land. The private sector, especially in the form of community land trusts, plays an important role, sometimes partnered with governmental agencies and sometimes operating on an independent, parallel track. What’s interesting is the interplay between all of these scales. Point Reyes National Seashore was borne out of grassroots advocacy at the community level that bubbled up all the way to Congress. In Pima County, Arizona, the story played out in reverse. The county purchased land from the federal Bureau of Land Management that would likely have been sold to developers, in order to place the lots under easements as ranchland.<br />
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The motivations behind land preservation also vary significantly. I appreciate how Pruetz, instead of simply listing a rote set of benefits textbook-style, presents real situations in which a message resonated loudly enough to result in action. Lexington-Fayette County, Kentucky, seeks to maintain their tradition as a horse-breeding region. Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, values their farming heritage and the tourist revenue it generates. Minneapolis, Minnesota, wants a fully connected greenway encircling the metro area for recreation. Collier County, Florida, wants to preserve a unique wetland ecosystem. Burlington County, New Jersey, needs to protect an aquifer vital to a large population. And everyone, to some degree, understands the cost savings of avoiding inefficient installation of public services. It’s clear that each place has driven preservation through values conjured up from within, rather than imposed from outside by an abstract ideology or large institution.<br />
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And then there are the tools. The complex cocktails of preservation policies and programs gives some insight into how folks like Preutz can make a career out of guiding localities through it all. Boulder County, Colorado has no less than ten distinct programs targeted toward protecting recreational open space and productive ranchland. The author has a clear preference for permanent preservation over regulatory approaches, such as zoning or other land use controls, which I suppose should be obvious with the choice of Lasting Value as a title. Zoning can be changed in a single election cycle, but an easement or purchase of public land is usually effective in perpetuity (as long as easements are enforced, a limitation the book doesn’t really address).<br />
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While <i>Lasting Value</i> is likely to inspire those who are already committed to conservation, it does not, in my mind, adequately lay out all of the costs associated with many of the policies described. There are several criticisms that have been lodged against these, and some consideration of the possible pitfalls, in addition to the clear benefits of land conservation, could help decision-makers determine when the use of a tool is appropriate and what side-effects may need to be mitigated.<br />
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Housing affordability is an important issue, considering a few back-of-the-envelope calculations. In 2010, the median home value for all metropolitan areas in the U.S was $217,121, which was 4.16 times the median metro income. However, the median home value of counties recognized for preservation in the book was $293,776, or 5.46 times the somewhat higher median income of these areas. This fact alone doesn't point to causation, but see recent Kindle singles by urbanists <a href="http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2012/03/06/the_rent_is_too_damn_high_available_today.html">Matthew Yglesias</a> and <a href="http://www.treehugger.com/culture/ryan-avents-the-gated-city-are-nimbys-killing-the-economy-book-review.html">Ryan Advent</a> for some explanation on the effects certain limits on development have on housing costs and urban form. I don't believe this is a fatal flaw of land preservation, but it does highlight some consequences of putting more emphasis on where not to build than on encouraging development in the right places. <br />
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I'll focus the rest of this post on a critique of Transfer of Development Rights (TDR), because this tool figures so heavily in the communities profiled. TDR is presented as a means for protecting rural land without incurring public cost, but there are some hidden costs to think about. Once again, I don't intend this to be a wholesale dismissal of the tool in all cases, but only a caution to add. See also <a href="http://www.coopercenter.org/sites/default/files/econ/Reports/transferrights0509.pdf">this report</a> from the Weldon Cooper Center on the pros and cons of the policy.<br />
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In a nutshell, A TDR policy designates a <i>sending area</i>, where development is to be discouraged, and a <i>receiving area</i>, where the community would like to allow more residential growth. Developers are then allowed to purchase the right to develop in the receiving area from landowners in the sending area. The transaction is made on an open market at some predetermined ratio, such as one development right for five acres in Montgomery County, Maryland. In exchange, the seller agrees to place their land under a conservation easement.<br />
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However, in order to create the conditions for a market in development rights, density must be restricted by zoning in the <i>receiving area</i> – the place where growth is supposedly desired. Although this may seem counter-intuitive, it is necessary to provide an incentive for developers to pay for the right to exceed the requirement. After all, the value of a development right, to a buyer, is exactly the perceived difference in value between what a developer is currently allowed to build and what the right will allow, and this value needs to be high enough to make a sale worthwhile to the rural landowner. Otherwise, the whole system is just a few pages of code in a book on the shelf.<br />
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There are a few problems with artificially restricting density in urban areas, in order grease the wheels of the market. The developer may simply choose to sidestep the whole process and build according to the legal low-density allowance. This is a lose-lose-lose game of chicken. If this happens no rural land is preserved, the landowner and developer are not able to maximize their investment, and urban areas are squandered with inappropriately scaled development. Nobody desires this outcome, but the risk of it occurring, particular during times of economic hardship, should be taken into account.<br />
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Secondly, when the transfers do happen, they cost the public in "leverage" over development. What does this mean? Suppose a developer does decide to work with a locality in order to exceed density restrictions in the receiving area. Depending on the state, there are a number of concessions the developer could offer. They could deed-restrict a few units for affordable housing, create a bike and pedestrian trail to connect other neighborhoods, use community-supporting urban design, or build basic infrastructure to support the development. Often, a developer will be willing to stretch further to create on-site amenities that also directly benefit the project's bottom-line. However, if the developer could achieve the desired result with the purchase of a development right, all of these negotiations are bypassed and none of these benefits to the neighborhood come to fruition.The end result can be seen as a transfer of resources away from urban neighborhoods and into the accounts of individual rural landowners.<br />
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<i>Lasting Value</i> is a thorough and well-documented portrait of the success stories in land preservation, although the book would be improved by a broader definition of success that takes into account how the benefits and costs/risks of conservation have been distributed throughout the community.Daniel Nairnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14127732825472374125noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5079297043552042968.post-90698348353570734012012-02-08T22:19:00.005-05:002012-02-08T22:53:27.286-05:00Principle and Power in Federal TransportationThe Republican majority in the federal House of Representatives <a href="http://republicans.transportation.house.gov/singlepages.aspx/911">laid down the gauntlet</a> last week in what is shaping up to be a dramatic fight over the future of transportation in the United States. The Transportation and Infrastructure Committee passed their bill along partisan lines, while the House Ways and Means Committee ousted transit funding entirely from the Highway Trust Fund.<br />
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These proposals have instigated strong reactions. Transportation Secretary Ray Lahood, a moderate Republican, <a href="http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0212/72369.html">called it</a> "the worst transportation bill I’ve ever seen during 35 years of public service.” Federal Transit Administrator Peter Rogoff <a href="http://transportationnation.org/2012/02/08/rogoff-slams-house-transportation-bill/">considers it</a> “a huge step backward.” The <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/09/opinion/a-terrible-transportation-bill.html">New York Times</a> and <a href="http://articles.latimes.com/2012/feb/03/opinion/la-ed-transportation-20120203">Los Angeles Times</a> issued scathing and unequivocal editorial rebukes.<br />
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Whether or not this bill makes it through the full House in its current form, or through a compromise with the <a href="http://dc.streetsblog.org/2012/02/02/senate-transit-bill-clears-committee-with-unanimous-bipartisan-support/">much more bipartisan</a> Senate, it's at least serving the useful purpose of drawing widespread public attention to a clear decision before the American public. In the interest of paying attention, I've cobbled together a few principles that have generally been used to evaluate federal transportation policy. I believe they are all sensible, even if they do not fit together as neatly as one would like.<br />
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<b>User Pays, User Benefits</b><br />
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What makes the marketplace, in general, such an effective tool for allocating resources is the alignment between the costs of a decision and the benefits accrued to the decision-maker. If you buy the stick of gum, you get to chew it. If you want gum, you have to pay for it. Because of this linkage, each of us is able to perform hundreds of tiny cost-benefit analyses everyday, using our own preferences and brainpower, to maximize quality of life and minimize waste. In the aggregate, goods and services are shifted to where they are used most effectively.<br />
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Because of monopolistic tendencies, transportation infrastructure <a href="http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&ved=0CCkQFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Farticles.latimes.com%2F2011%2Fjul%2F13%2Fopinion%2Fla-oe-schweitzer-infrastructure-20110713&ei=zN0uT-2mKafo0QGph-y5Cg&usg=AFQjCNFP__xCNF9MW5pBT3Hc9yc6WVlMGQ">cannot be fully handed over to the private market</a>. However, at least since the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956, officials have tried to emulate its logic by requiring infrastructure to be paid for directly by those who benefit from it, and in proportion to the benefit they receive. A user fee sends a price signal to the consumer, empowering each person to decide what travel is worth to them, while also sending an investment signal to the government provider, allowing it to allocate more funds when more maintenance and capacity is necessary.<br />
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The gas tax, the primary user fee feeding the Highway Trust Fund, has been imperfect. You pay a fixed amount per gallon, whether 100% or 0% of the miles driven are on federally-funded roadways. Hybrid vehicles pay much less than automobiles with traditional combustion engines for the same product, and electric vehicles pay nothing at all. For these reasons and more, transportation analysts <a href="http://www.cts.umn.edu/Publications/ResearchReports/reportdetail.html?id=2048">are in hot pursuit</a> of a more comprehensive VMT fee. But, for now, the gas tax <a href="http://www.wtop.com/?nid=654&sid=2721764%20">is the best we’ve got</a>. <br />
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The House transportation bill has been criticized from<a href="http://heritageaction.com/2012/02/house-transportation-bill-falls-short/"> across the</a><a href="http://www.aashtojournal.org/Pages/020312cei.aspx"> political spectrum</a> for breaking the User Pays, User Benefits precedent. The bill expects to make up for a $50 billion revenue shortfall by selling leasing rights for oil extraction in Alaska and off-shore, a move the Competitive Enterprise Institute <a href="http://cei.org/events/2012/01/30/cei-hill-briefing-don%E2%80%99t-drill-and-drive-weakening-%E2%80%9Cuser-pays%E2%80%9D-highway-funding-prin%20">has labeled</a> “drilling for roads.” Even if (<a href="http://fuelfix.com/blog/2012/02/08/cbo-oil-gas-measures-to-raise-just-2-billion-for-gop-highway-bill/">big if</a>), enough money is eventually generated by this scheme, getting the horse back into the barn of a closed fiscal loop will be very difficult politically.<br />
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Transportation analyst Alan Pisarski <a href="http://www.globalwarming.org/2012/01/25/the-case-against-drilling-for-roads/">cautioned</a>:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">"<span style="color: #073763;">The loss of the user pays principle would further diminish the trust fund and the whole concept of a balanced relationship between spending and use</span>."</blockquote><b>Internalize Social Costs</b><br />
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If we want individuals to be able to set national priorities by making hundreds of tiny cost-benefit analyses throughout the day, then each person ought to be shouldering the true costs attributed to their actions. The fact is that, more than any other mode of travel, driving imposes costs that are not paid by the driver. The Freakonomics guys <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/20/magazine/20wwln-freakonomics-t.html?pagewanted=all">put it this way</a>:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">"<span style="color: #073763;">What are the negative externalities of driving? To name just three: congestion, carbon emissions and traffic accidents. Every time Arthur gets in a car, it becomes more likely that Zelda — and millions of others — will suffer in each of those areas</span>." </blockquote>They estimate these costs to be about 10 cents a mile, or the equivalent of a $2/gallon gas tax. As a point of reference, the federal gas tax has stood at 18.4 cents/gallon since 1993. (If you happen to believe that global climate change is an international hoax perpetrated by scientists, then you can feel free to shave 13 cents off their gas tax estimate). On top of this, some other costs forced upon non-users are non-residential parking, air quality, stormwater runoff, and noise and aesthetics. Obviously, reaching an agreement on the exact price of all of these values is difficult, but intangible costs are real.<br />
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Sometimes the User Pays, User Benefits principle and the Internalize Social Costs principle are presented as mutually exclusive, as if the gas tax can either be only a user fee or a tax. But it can certainly be both, as long as the funds generated are used to benefit the user as well as offset the costs imposed by the user. There are many ways to offset the costs, spending on transit historically being the most significant.<br />
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The <a href="http://safety.fhwa.dot.gov/saferoutes/">Safe Routes to School Program</a> is a good example of an internalization of social costs. There's nothing inherently unsafe about children walking to school, at least since humans neutralized threats from large predators. However, the presence of automobile travel introduces a new threat that either endangers schoolchildren or forces them to shift over to more costly modes. That's why it makes sense for each driver to chip in about a dollar a year to offset this impact. The House transportation bill would eliminate Safe Routes to School, along with all other programs dedicated to walking and bicycling.<br />
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<b>Scale to Geographic Range of Impact</b><br />
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Two hundred years after Hamilton and Jefferson argued over federalism, the debate between state and federal power in the United States <a href="http://opencrs.com/document/R40431/2011-04-20/">has never been adequately resolved</a>. At least in theory, the answer to this question for transportation can be determined empirically: the scale of governmental authority over a system ought to match the geographic range of impact from the system. This was essentially <a href="http://publius.oxfordjournals.org/content/22/3/67.abstract">the conclusion</a> reached in 1987 by the (now defunct) U.S. Advisory Commission on Intergovernmental Relations:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">“<span style="color: #073763;">This concept of the geographic range of highway benefits is a key test to determine which unit of government should bear responsibility for highway finance</span>.”</blockquote>According to this test, the entire transportation network can be teased apart, from federal interstate and intercity rail to neighborhood roads and trails, and responsibility assigned to the scale of government that matches the particular component. Grey areas can be smoothed out by cost-sharing ratios or various kinds of block grants passed between governments.<br />
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The ACIR was right to focus on the geographic scale of the network, but they were wrong in a few ways. First, actually sorting infrastructure by scale is hard to do. They considered the Interstate Highway System the classic case of national interest, but, in reality, many interstate trips made within metropolitan areas will never cross a state line. Motorists use the interstates for commuting, bypassing congested local roads, and various other daily tasks. If the federal role in transportation were selectively limited to highways alone, it would introduce a host of distortions into the regional and local systems, forcing them to accommodate an inefficient overemphasis on driving. The federal government, in this case, would have the responsibility of offsetting its own impacts.<br />
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Secondly, they only considered the geographic range of benefits, without considering the geographic range of costs. Air pollution drifts across state lines, all U.S. citizens share the costs of treating crash victims through insurance premiums and medicare/medicaid, and carbon emissions are global. There is certainly a federal interest in keeping these costs down.<br />
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The House bill <a href="http://republicans.transportation.house.gov/singlepages.aspx/911">is being sold</a> as a further step toward devolution of federal control to the states, but no spatial evidence has been provided for why the current balance should be shifted in that direction. Scale changes over time. A small metropolitan area may have once had a transportation network that could easily be contained within a state boundary, but <a href="http://discoveringurbanism.blogspot.com/2011/11/in-search-of-megapolitan-scale.html">the emergence of megapolitan areas</a> might necessitate passing government oversight up the ladder to some degree. <br />
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<b>Fix it First</b><br />
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The lifetime costs of infrastructure should be accounted for in the original decision to build. In other words, maintenance takes precedence over new construction, and federal funding formulas ought to appropriately prioritize it. This is simply a manifestation of the broader principle: live within your means. Deferral of maintenance is exactly the same thing as taking on debt. The interest rate may start out low, but it is <a href="http://davisvanguard.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=3428:road-maintenance-backlog-approaching-dire-stages&catid=58:budgetfiscal&Itemid=79">ratcheted upward exponentially</a> by the bank of physics. And physics cannot be bailed out.<br />
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<a href="http://dc.streetsblog.org/2011/06/01/existing-roads-slide-into-decrepitude-as-states-splurge-on-highway-expansion/">A 2011 Report</a> by Smart Growth America showed that states spent 57% of their federal appropriations on building new roads, while simultaneously accruing a backlog of maintenance on existing bridges and highways. The same organization <a href="http://www.smartgrowthamerica.org/2012/01/31/house-transportation-bill-slashes-safety-funding-but-theres-a-chance-to-fix-it/">calls the</a> House transportation bill, unlike its equivalent in the Senate, still short of the mark in resolving this.<br />
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<b>Provide Accessibility over Mobility</b><br />
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It’s not about the journey; it’s about the destination. Most of us travel in order to achieve a purpose that has nothing to do with transportation: visit your parents for dinner, work at the office, see Yellowstone, deliver a package to a customer. The old paradigm of transportation planning held that maximizing mobility was the primary purpose of the system, and the metric of success was defined in terms of vehicle miles traveled. But mobility is just one means to an end. The ultimate goal of transportation is to empower humans to meet their own goals by connecting where they are with where they want to be.<br />
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The paradigm shift from mobility to accessibility brings multimodal travel options and the interconnections between transportation and land use into sharper focus.Todd Litman <a href="http://www.planetizen.com/node/54215">says</a>:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">"<span style="color: #073763;">An efficient transport system is multi-modal, encouraging travelers to use each mode for what it does best: walking and cycling for short trips, ridesharing and public transport for travel on congested urban corridors, and automobile travel when it is truly most efficient overall, taking into account all impacts</span>."</blockquote>The House bill would maintain the current federal funding formulas that reward states for inducing more driving. State A with destinations spread out from each other would be considered more "successful" in providing mobility than State B with dense cores of activity, even if State B actually facilitates more connections between origins and destinations. State A would be apportioned more federal funds.<br />
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President Obama's <a href="http://www.sustainablecommunities.gov/">Sustainable Communities Initiative</a> has been a tentative first step toward this more rigorous and robust understanding of transportation. The House transportation bill does not attempt to build upon this discussion in any recognizable way.<br />
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<b>Support Household Resilience</b><br />
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Even if the federal government does manage to balance its transportation budget, this achievement would matter little if it has the effect of pushing struggling American families further underwater. There is a broad moral consensus that each individual deserves the opportunity to better oneself through hard work and personal responsibility, but the reality is that holding a job and operating a household are preconditioned upon an affordable and reliable means for getting around.<br />
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Americans that live in a place with no options beside driving face constant pressure, what the New America Foundation <a href="http://energytrap.org/content/what-energy-trap">refers to as the</a> "Energy Trap."<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">"<span style="color: #073763;">Every 25 cent jump in the price of gas siphons $90 million a day away from the recovering American economy. Because we have few choices but to commute to work in private cars, we are trapped by high gas prices.</span><br />
<div style="color: #073763;"><br />
</div><span style="color: #073763;">The energy trap is particularly hard on American households. The average family of four making $50,000 a year spends nearly $8000 a year on their cars, maintenance, and fuel combined--more than they pay for taxes or medical care</span>."</blockquote>It's is important to note that a car-dependent system of transport not only restricts the 9.1% of American households <a href="http://factfinder2.census.gov/faces/tableservices/jsf/pages/productview.xhtml?pid=ACS_10_1YR_DP04&prodType=table">without a vehicle available</a>, but it squeezes those who <i>are </i>able to scramble together the funds to provide personal mobility. Families under pressure are less likely to take risks on their career, and may neglect other important elements of their budget. And one little leak in the hull, maybe a few more dollars at the pump or a "check engine" light, might just sink the ship.<br />
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<b>Create jobs</b><br />
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We've come to expect politicians in recent years to tout the job creation potential of their proposals, so it's not surprising that the House transportation bill even <a href="http://republicans.transportation.house.gov/singlepages.aspx/911">includes the word "jobs" in its title</a>. While the primary purpose of federal transportation may be to connect people with their destinations, the bill is also rightfully judged by how the planning, construction, and operation of the sector itself moves money through the economy.<br />
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In one sense, all government spending creates jobs (the money has to go somewhere, right?). But not all spending is equally constructive. <a href="http://www.cnt.org/news/2009/12/17/analysis-finds-that-funding-public-transit-creates-more-jobs-than-funding-highway-projects/">An analysis</a> of the funds spent on the 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) showed that:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">"<span style="color: #073763;">For every billion dollars spent on public transportation projects, 16,419 job-months were created. A billion dollars spent on highway infrastructure projects created only 8,781 job-months</span>."</blockquote>This is because ARRA transit projects spent less on land acquisition and raw materials and more on hiring labor with a diverse skill set to operate and maintain the system. <a href="http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/2011/06/22/how-to-create-jobs-bike-lanes/">Another study</a> came to the same conclusion, only adding that infrastructure for bicycling and pedestrians created even more jobs per dollar spent.<br />
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Americans are going to eventually grow tired of empty "jobs, jobs, jobs" platitudes. The operative question is how much stable job creation is generated per dollar spent.<br />
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<b>Power</b><br />
<br />
The cynic wonders whether any of this matters.<br />
<br />
Any bill will result in winners and losers, at least in the short-term before private interests are able to adapt to new conditions. Many of the largest interests are vested in pushing the transportation system along it's current trajectory. The Center for Responsive Politics <a href="http://www.opensecrets.org/industries/indus.php?cycle=2012&ind=e01">has tracked</a> over $13.5 million in campaign donations from the oil and gas industry toward candidates in the 2012 election, almost 9-to-1 going to Republicans. Oil executives, who understand the concept of return on investment, will likely be pleased if they can manage to open up new supply fields, solidify their demand from a car-dependent American populace, and even get a <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/01/31/republican-transportation-bill-highways-drilling_n_1245452.html">new Keystone XL pipeline</a> thrown in as a cherry on top.<br />
<br />
Then there are the voters. Yonah Freemark <a href="http://www.thetransportpolitic.com/2011/01/25/understanding-the-republican-partys-reluctance-to-invest-in-transit-infrastructure/">has shown</a> a strong correlation between density and political affiliation, with Republicans much more likely to live in more sparsely populated congressional districts than Democrats. Constituents who may be accustomed to driving are probably less likely to approve investing in alternatives than those who stand to benefit directly from them (full disclosure: I own a house next to a bus stop). Although there are two major caveats here: some suburbanites live in locations that could potentially <i>become</i> transit-oriented and walkable with further investment, and there are some rural and exurban denizens who like it that way and don't necessarily want to see a new highway drop a big box store in their backyard.<br />
<br />
Transportation really should be a pragmatic political arena. There are no deep moral conflicts that transcend the purview of reasonable conversation. Democracy functions best when citizens are able to think carefully about the alternatives before them, and the wake up call from last week may be just in time.Daniel Nairnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14127732825472374125noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5079297043552042968.post-54209130366177548212011-11-28T17:44:00.002-05:002011-11-29T16:49:16.511-05:00In Search of the Megapolitan Scale<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.arch.utah.edu/cgi-bin/wordpress-newsletter/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/Megapolitan-America.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://www.arch.utah.edu/cgi-bin/wordpress-newsletter/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/Megapolitan-America.jpg" /></a></div>When Jean Gottmann popularized the term Megalopolis in the 1960's, he mostly had the Northeast Corridor in mind. By this time, so many interconnections had developed between the string of cities from Boston through Washington DC that it could be referred to as a single unit. Arthur Nelson and Robert Lang, two noted planning academics, continue this line of reasoning in their new book <a href="http://www.planning.org/apastore/meet/2011/megapolitan.htm">Megapolitan America</a>, only now highlighting eleven Megapolitan Clusters around the United States. While this nation is a very large one spatially, a significant chunk of economic activity, real estate development, and innovation takes place on only 17% of the privately-held land area. The authors argue that this reality should effect how we conceive of ourselves as a nation.<br />
<br />
This is more than just a battle over geographic nomenclature. Once the boundaries of regions are widely accepted, they can define the scale of public and private activities and shape the impact of these activities. The cities of Dallas and Fort Worth formed with completely separate self-images, until a short while after the Census Bureau labeled them a single metropolitan area based on a quantitative definition. The change triggered an adjustment in the federal aid formula used by the FAA, and the two cities were compelled to cooperate on the construction of a single airport. This launched a <a href="http://www.metroplextbc.org/">string of practical joint actions</a>, out of which the single identity of "Metroplex" emerged - the result of a convergence of both top-down and bottom up forces.<br />
<br />
So how do you find a Megapolitan Area? If urban systems are dynamic, the boundaries of Megapolitan Areas must be defined by movement. This is a fundamental insight Nelson and Lang adopt from Gottmann and <a href="http://www.census.gov/geo/www/cob/ma_metadata.html">decades of Census Bureau practice</a>. It may be tempting to define regions by drawing a circle around concentrations of stuff, whether population (where people sleep at night) or employment (where those who work in a fixed place spend a large portion of their week), but the movement of people, goods, water, animals, energy, and whatever you can think of through space is what connects places together.<br />
<br />
The authors use commuting data to define the shape of Megapolitan Areas, mostly because it's readily available. This works as a proxy but it also misses a majority of human movement, even most work-related travel, since our daily travel patterns are becoming more diffuse and harder to define on a two-point scale. What if you travel to the local office three days a week, work from home sporadically, and visit the regional headquarters a few times a month? Here's where Google or Apple could step in. They've both been <a href="http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703983704576277101723453610.html">amassing huge databases</a> of personal locational information from smartphone users, at least those who have opted in. You can imagine meandering lines on a map, one for each individual path, crisscrossing into a jumbled mess. What most resembles a massive hairball? There's your Megapolitan Area.<br />
<br />
If Megapolitan Areas are defined as such by numbers, they remain that way with a story. Nelson and Lang use the apt word "organic" to describe a region that captures the public imagination by tapping into an already understood sense of place. Language is notoriously hard to dictate by fiat, which is why Americans still measure temperature in Fahrenheit. Even if the Census Bureau is convinced to create a new category for megapolitan areas - and the book makes a good case for it - the label will not have much currency until it is accepted by media outlets and the general public in each individual community. They also need a catchy name.<br />
<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4023/4366645420_f0b11b11c1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="196" src="http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4023/4366645420_f0b11b11c1.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Two very different prognoses for the Sun Corridor</td></tr>
</tbody></table>Much of the book focuses on projecting population growth and development out to 2040, in order to predict the continued importance of Megapolitan Areas well into the 21st century. Suffice it to say that the authors are pretty bullish on American growth, expecting it to continue in roughly the same trajectory it has been on for the last several decades, not withstanding our major housing hiccup. Seeing that Las Vegas and the Sun Corridor (Phoenix to Tucson) are slated to be among the fastest growing regions brought to memory an image from a couple of weeks ago. James Howard Kunster was addressing the <a href="http://cityworksxpo.com/main/">CityWorks (X)po</a> in Roanoke, Virginia. He showed an aerial photo of houses stretching into the Arizona desert, then quickly remarked, "oh yeah, and Phoenix is toast. There will be no Phoenix" before moving on to the next slide.<br />
<br />
So what do you do when two people whom you respect differ in their forecast by ... oh, nine million or so? Well, you cut the difference. Kunstler is clearly being hyperbolic. There's too much vested capital in these Megapolitan Areas for even the worst-case scenario to simply erase them. On the other hand, Nelson and Lang could stand to internalize the possibility of resource scarcity into their projections. They've written a whole chapter on the pressure megapolitan growth will exert on farmland, water, and air quality, but they don't seem to accept that these pressures, in turn, will shape the built environment in a measurable way. For example, the authors point out that water use in the dry Sun Corridor, which is the highest per household in the nation, will have to be reduced somehow. But will those restrictions curtail business? Will future sunbirds be deterred if they can't have the lawn promised in the brochure? That's easy ... yes. Growth will slow down.<br />
<br />
But quibbling about the exact distribution of population would be missing the point of the book, and the authors are appropriately cautious in the epilogue with looking so far into the future. The question is whether the definition of Megapolitan Areas will continue to accurately reflect the American pattern of development into the future. Charles Darwin noticed two kinds of taxonomists, the "lumpers" who saw few species and the "splitters" who saw many species. Likewise, reasonable people could look at the same Megapolitan Areas and see many metropolitan areas connected to each other rather than a single whole. Or even a whole galaxy of neighborhoods and employment centers. <br />
<br />
This is not a problem. Really, we need as diverse a taxonomy as we have problems to apply it towards. The authors make a strong case for using the megapolitan scale for planning national rail infrastructure, which fits nicely because of the needed density and optimal range inherent to this technology. Some economic development efforts, at least for global markets, would work well at the megapolitan scale, but in other regional markets businesses and communities would be better served by competing with each other.<br />
<br />
However, there are points in the book where it feels like the Megapolitan scale is being championed as a superior way of dividing up the nation, rather than just another tool with some good applications. I'm personally very <a href="http://discoveringurbanism.blogspot.com/2010/11/is-broadacre-city-worth-reviving.html">fond of the terms</a> "urban" and "rural" and everything they connote, so it would be sad to see these traditional distinctions melted away into one big megapolitan stew. After all, it's just as legitimate to use labels on the basis of how we want the world to be than on how it currently is. Megapolitan Areas also have the liability of not being exhaustive, which makes the old-fashioned state boundaries more appropriate for applications where complete inclusiveness is necessary.<br />
<br />
I'm happy to think in terms of Megapolitan Areas and use the term in the way Nelson and Lang present it, along with several other geographical constructs that have their own appropriate uses.Daniel Nairnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14127732825472374125noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5079297043552042968.post-59997910190995603362011-10-20T17:42:00.000-04:002011-10-20T17:42:32.425-04:00Instant City: Life and Death in Karachi<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj1XVHqZVAL880rQWkgWZLO59X0dpoDiK5hUWg1vjzyDFmO-2YqTgVey7gVYGvMXPxg0BtMUFh0szQ-g26yY-JJ952Gbmx8rL-Kg3dpLB3VIh3_C6r9k-ikPNRQ2C7OWQacpIRwWV7yDmEB/s1600/Instant+City.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj1XVHqZVAL880rQWkgWZLO59X0dpoDiK5hUWg1vjzyDFmO-2YqTgVey7gVYGvMXPxg0BtMUFh0szQ-g26yY-JJ952Gbmx8rL-Kg3dpLB3VIh3_C6r9k-ikPNRQ2C7OWQacpIRwWV7yDmEB/s1600/Instant+City.jpg" /></a></div>Reading a book by an NPR host is a different kind of experience. So was the case with <a href="http://www.npr.org/2011/10/13/141316474/inskeep-explores-growing-pains-of-an-instant-city">Instant City: Life and Death in Karachi</a>. As Steve Inskeep shares his impressions of Karachi's explosive urban growth, I could almost hear the subtle enthusiasm in his voice over the crunches of granola in my mouth. Fortunately, his skill for parring down complex subjects into bite-sized remarks translates well onto the written page.<br />
<br />
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<div class="MsoNormal">Something like a city-wide version of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs shows up in various forms throughout the tale of Karachi’s growth. Faced with an ongoing tidal wave of immigrants from rural areas, urban planners and developers alike tried over the years to shape that growth into a desired form. However, in the absence of more basic government services such as security, sanitation, and public infrastructure these higher-level organizational schemes had no chance of actually working. If prospects did seem good for a moment, the regime would change and it would be all over. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In many cases, city officials and businessmen would import ideas from the West, often directly through global consultants, without paying enough attention to the very different political reality on the ground in Karachi.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">The 50-year-old suburbs of Korangi and North Karachi are apt examples. Inspired by the West’s suburban expansion in the 1950s, Pakistan’s ruling general Mohammad Ayub Khan envisioned many of Karachi’s poor lifted into decent suburban lifestyles to the north of the city. With help from the Ford Foundation, the famous Greek planner Constantino Doxiadis was hired to create, from scratch, a self-contained community for at least a half million people. Doxiadis was careful to take design cues from local architecture and cultural preferences, but the design – and he recorded doubts about this in his journal all along– just could not be fitted to Karachi’s economic situation.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Although tens of thousands of families were relocated to these suburbs, problems arose immediately. First, the proliferation of privately-owned automobiles that made American suburbanization possible just weren’t there. Workers who had always walked now had to improvise bus services and pay to commute to their modest jobs across the city. Along with transportation, the residents just couldn’t pay for the houses they lived in, even with heavy subsidies. Without funds to continue, the city-building was cut short. Although Doxiadis had every intention of integrating rich and poor, the opposite happened. The suburb served as a mechanism for pushing the poor to the periphery of the city, which is how Karachi is arranged to this day. Finally, the carefully laid out designs eventually eroded away as unauthorized settlements filled in the open spaces and yards. The end result was the kind of informal settlement the entire endeavor was intended to alleviate - only now miles away from the center.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Other lofty goals were thwarted. A lavish casino had to be torn down before ever opening when the tide changed and the temptation that Muslims might gamble was no longer acceptable. A grassroots movement to save a national park from encroaching development ended with the assassination of two leading neighborhood activists. The essential functions of placemaking, whether from citizen-activists, developers, or planners, were all drowned out by the deeper needs of security and at least a certain degree of political stability. There is no use putting the cart before the horse.</div>Daniel Nairnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14127732825472374125noreply@blogger.com21tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5079297043552042968.post-48151073634125696972011-10-16T14:54:00.000-04:002011-10-16T14:54:29.143-04:00Visions for an Urban National Park<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEggsKFDTbsVdGQ9GfS5enzz0NoFZcyciCqTbmUlngIIFO4jb09jS3Iky8Q9GKWiyPjdf3mSjU_8EM_FhOvzTi4eHLmG2gEP_x7fVNIQfrlWb1MMoV0FTWn1gL_tOE7gfY7JjV3Zb6N_JXX_/s1600/Gateway.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEggsKFDTbsVdGQ9GfS5enzz0NoFZcyciCqTbmUlngIIFO4jb09jS3Iky8Q9GKWiyPjdf3mSjU_8EM_FhOvzTi4eHLmG2gEP_x7fVNIQfrlWb1MMoV0FTWn1gL_tOE7gfY7JjV3Zb6N_JXX_/s1600/Gateway.jpg" /></a></div><span id="goog_1297132527"></span><span id="goog_1297132528"></span>I'll admit that I had no idea a reasonably large national park existed within the boundaries of New York City. Even after a short-lived but legitimate childhood obsession with national park trivia, and after having worked in a national park in Wyoming for a little while, this urban recreational area escaped me. That is until opening <a href="http://www.scapestudio.com/news/gateway-bookstores/">Gateway: Visions for an Urban National Park</a>, a book recently released from Princeton Architectural Press. It catalogs the collaborative effort between the National Park Service and a host of designers, mostly landscape architects, in telling the story of this park while continuing to write it. <br />
<br />
Maybe I missed Gateway, because it has yet to find a clear identity. As Alexander Brash, a director in the National Parks Conservation Association, writes "Gateway really has no clear thematic past, nor has an easily recognizable and unifying vision for its future been embraced."<br />
<ul><li>Gateway is split in to three units: Staten Island, the Jamaica Bay section of Brooklyn, and Sandy Hook in New Jersey. There's no clear way to tie them together. </li>
<li>Gateway's history is split between a location of early native Lenape trails, the site of NYC's first airport, and America's largest World War II naval base. Less glamorously, it contains a quarantine island that housed sickly immigrants, as well as the final and gruesome destination for most of the city's 19th century transportation system. </li>
<li>Gateway is an important estuary for migratory birds, but also a grand experiment in the remediation of over a century worth of unmitigated pollution. </li>
<li>Gateway also functions essentially as a regional park for seven million people a year, allowing many to benefit from a national park who may otherwise never visit one.</li>
</ul>The park's complexity is what makes it such a compelling topic for the design competition. Some of the ideas generated can be more feasibly implemented than others, but, in this case, that's fine. The goal was never to select an out-of-the-box design to be built but rather to generate a host of concepts that could help re-envision the park's future. While the NPS will never actually construct thousands of hydroponic pontoons and push them off into Jamaica Bay, the picture of these floating pods underscores Gateway's need to adapt to the shifting interface between water and land after climate change. This was a major theme that many designers picked up on.<br />
<br />
Others focused on the park's almost teasing sense of accessibility. While located very near millions of people, it's barely out of reach of the subway and planned ferry services throughout between park sites never materialized. Jamaica Bay became another of Robert Moses' victims when he cut off access from Brooklyn neighborhoods with the Belt Parkway (although, to be fair, Moses also oversaw construction of the popular Jacob Riis park in Gateway). Many proposals tie together ferry lines, subway extensions, multiuse trails, and even overhead cable cars to unify the park and the city.<br />
<br />
Of all the parks features, by far the greatest attention was paid to the abandoned Floyd Bennett Field, with its crumbling runways and nameless structures scattered around. This is a canvas to good to pass up. An editor of the volume, Kate Orff describes Gateway as "post-picturesque," in contrast to Olmstead's Central Park.<br />
<blockquote>"<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #073763;">Just as Central Park's construction sharpened our concept of 'the public realm' for an industrializing New York City, re-envisioning Jamaica Bay as a thriving cosmopolitan ecology would further evolve the concept of public space based on stewardship and cultivated wilderness for post-industrial contexts</span></span>."</blockquote>If the National Park System has traditionally evoked transcendence through spectacular natural beauty or historic narratives, Gateway could be something different. One of the designs had members of the public walking through each stage of a water treatment process. From the point where the effluent flows in, through a series of settling pools, and into a restored marsh. At first, I was skeptical. I doubted that families would really bother to follow the informational signage through this seemingly mundane process. But why not? Where else is this kind of story being told?Daniel Nairnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14127732825472374125noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5079297043552042968.post-7593636420373282492011-09-06T11:58:00.001-04:002011-09-06T12:21:20.089-04:00Which is denser: New York or Los Angeles?Your intuitions are correct. New Yorkers live in neighborhoods with much higher density than do Angelenos. But its not obvious how this conclusion is reached, and there's <a href="http://www.demographia.com/db-porla.htm">plenty of confusion</a> <a href="http://www.cato-unbound.org/2011/04/06/randal-otoole/using-markets-to-enhance-mobility/">going</a> <a href="http://www.newgeography.com/content/002418-avent-cities-understanding-part-equation">around </a>about measuring density. Where you draw the lines on the map can have a significant impact on the results you get.<br />
<br />
If you measure density purely regionally, Los Angeles comes out ahead. I've used the Census Bureau's MSA to show the two metro area's population densities in 2010. Sometimes the geography of Urbanized Area is used to capture the region, but that hasn't been determined for 2010 yet. So the MSA will do ...<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi3gfJT-yQZ-EuJr3bBY4on776c-yfbejSd37MwCbF9ZV3_kyrP8aE8I2OCNVu6OYigqTQzjgblSGmUM_3mpMCsk2pqmkZd4ljeHOgILN9VgIrR-cKYtt-shH4Tv2PMVY6ZNGsfKrZB9IVv/s1600/DensityCompare_Metro.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="358" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi3gfJT-yQZ-EuJr3bBY4on776c-yfbejSd37MwCbF9ZV3_kyrP8aE8I2OCNVu6OYigqTQzjgblSGmUM_3mpMCsk2pqmkZd4ljeHOgILN9VgIrR-cKYtt-shH4Tv2PMVY6ZNGsfKrZB9IVv/s640/DensityCompare_Metro.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>However, this measurement misses the important story. As <a href="http://www.ryanavent.com/blog/">Ryan Avent explains</a>,<br />
<blockquote>"<span style="color: #073763;">Simple population density measures the average density across a particular area. If you have a metro that covers a large area but which features a very dense core, however, you can easily have a situation in which the vast majority of the metro’s population lives at densities </span><i style="color: #073763;">above</i><span style="color: #073763;"> the average population density. I think it’s more informative to focus on weighted-average population density.</span>"</blockquote> So here's the weighted-average density (by census tract) for the two metro areas:<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiC2QSJ9tLu9r_takipIoYsG4ZBjvhjWIWn1WqKjscHHvDowCkxcVczinFzZmHBWtBYL43ytHPY-mSQYqllQLR2gPiWgAosL-gXxbg0tnFK2cl-ygZvhwP5QSZIy8lLXHE33hDwz27Dq58T/s1600/DensityCompare_Tracts.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="344" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiC2QSJ9tLu9r_takipIoYsG4ZBjvhjWIWn1WqKjscHHvDowCkxcVczinFzZmHBWtBYL43ytHPY-mSQYqllQLR2gPiWgAosL-gXxbg0tnFK2cl-ygZvhwP5QSZIy8lLXHE33hDwz27Dq58T/s640/DensityCompare_Tracts.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><br />
New York metro goes from being about 30% behind LA in regional density to more than doubling LA in average neighborhood density. <br />
<br />
If you were to drop from a parachute flying over the center of a city on a very windy day, the first regional density figure would tell you how many people to expect to see in the square mile around the random place in the region you land. However, if you currently live in the New York or Los Angeles metro areas (or are considering moving there), the latter figure would tell you how many people you would expect to see in the square mile around you. It's tethered to actual human experience, which is usually what we are asking about when we talk about density.Daniel Nairnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14127732825472374125noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5079297043552042968.post-77169152421743479132011-09-01T20:51:00.001-04:002011-09-01T20:52:23.623-04:00London Bus TourThis is a wonderful video shot during a course of 30 hours riding a London bus. Every person the bus passes seems to have their own story, even if only captured in two-second film clips. I don't think I've seen a more humane portrait of a great city.<br />
<br />
<iframe frameborder="0" height="394" src="http://player.vimeo.com/video/28341276?title=0&byline=0&portrait=0" width="700"></iframe><br />
<a href="http://vimeo.com/28341276">London Bus Tour</a> from <a href="http://vimeo.com/cyrilloberholzer">moritz oberholzer</a> on <a href="http://vimeo.com/">Vimeo</a>.Daniel Nairnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14127732825472374125noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5079297043552042968.post-36300155445589181222011-08-27T09:43:00.000-04:002011-08-27T09:43:00.452-04:00Harlan Douglass: The Little Town<i>I've decided to resume reviews of books from the the first wave of City Planning in the early 20th century. I'm reading them because a) they're free (copyright expired) and b) there might be something to learn from this period that still applies. Here's the list so far:</i><br />
<ol><li><i><a href="http://discoveringurbanism.blogspot.com/2009/06/ebenezer-howards-garden-city-concept.html">Garden City</a> - Ebenezer Howard</i></li>
<li><i><a href="http://discoveringurbanism.blogspot.com/2009/07/raymond-unwins-town-planning-in_06.html">Town Planning in Practice</a> - Raymond Unwin</i></li>
<li><i><a href="http://discoveringurbanism.blogspot.com/2009/08/charles-robinsons-planning-textbook.html">City Planning with Special Reference to Planning of Streets and Lots</a><span style="font-style: italic;"> - Charles Robinson</span> </i></li>
<li><i><a href="http://discoveringurbanism.blogspot.com/2010/06/john-nolen-new-ideals-in-planning.html">New Ideals in Planning</a> - John Nolen</i></li>
<li><i>The Little Town - Harlan Douglass</i></li>
<li><i>Cities in Evolution - Patrick Geddes (upcoming</i><i>)</i></li>
</ol><i>All of these reviews are truthful, but they are also selective and editorial<b>. </b>I'm not a trained historian; I only play one on TV. </i><i>In other words, don't steal this for your class paper. I don't care, but you're professor probably will.</i><br />
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<b>The Small Town Ideal</b><br />
<br />
Americans, today, have a schizophrenic relationship with small towns. We consistently tell pollsters that <a href="http://www.embarq.org/en/node/1047">we want to live in one</a> above any other kind of place, yet we just as consistently choose not to. The Atlantic just ran <a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2011/09/home-remedy/8602/">a story</a> about an idyllic small town in Missouri that, like many around the county, can not attract enough doctors. They've determined that it's not the economic incentives, but the lifestyle that's deterring them. Even small towns that have been engulfed by expanding metro areas tend to receive a scant share of the new arrivals compared to the exurbs around them. Yet the ideal lives on and we like imagine ourselves on the <i>inside</i> of a tight community as we enjoy, at the same time, our freedom from its responsibilities and constraints.<br />
<br />
The small town ideal did not exist in 1921. Harlan Paul Douglass wrote <a href="http://books.google.com/books/about/The_little_town.html?id=YFY3AAAAYAAJ">The Little Town especially in its rural relationships</a> as a heartfelt defense of what was, in the eyes of many, a pitiable character. He quotes the president of the American Civic Association: "God made the country, man the city, but the devil the little town." From the urban perspective, the townsfolk were unsophisticated, incurious, and many steps behind the moving edge of history. At the same time, rural areas were being lauded by the "county life movement," which had made substantial inroads into the federal government. The farmer was the hero, and the townsfolk were, at best, parasitic middlemen and, at worst, emissaries of corruption from the big city. Farmers were beginning to pull their kids out of town schools and look for a nice field to start their own.<br />
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Those who lived in little towns were no easier on themselves. They wanted nothing more than to be the next Chicago, and this overwrought ambition led many to foolishly invest in lavish infrastructure only to be bypassed by the railroad company and left with a dusty, wide main street. Douglass wanted to study and plan for the little town, along with its connected rural areas, as a kind of place that deserved its own category. His aim was to "make it the centre alike of inspiration and administration in the reconstruction of rural civilization."<br />
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<b>The Walkable Town</b><br />
<br />
Douglass noted that the maximum size of a town was a function of the walking radius from a single core, enough room for about 5000 people at most. This was the threshold before investment in streetcar lines would have to be justified, creating a natural plateau. With public buildings and business operations at the core and residences surrounding it, every person remained connected to the same sphere. Even the women busy tending their homes could still make it downtown several times a day. The outer ring of the town he calls the "black belt." These were the slum-farms that invariably popped up just outside of a comfortable walking distance but not far enough away to require a motorcar or a team of horses. The farms were small and their buildings created a depressing entrance corridor into the town.<br />
<br />
The scale and common center of a town created a unique physical space for diverse interactions. According to Douglass, "no other community enjoys such close daily fellowship with men of so wide a range of vocation or calling." Professional classes in the larger cities would cluster in distinct social groups and neighborhoods, but the size of the small town forced interactions across these lines. Yet there were also physical features of many towns that did create an impediment to interaction. Groups lived on the "other side of the tracks" or "across the river." In these cases mere physical access was directly translated into economic and social access. Douglass believed that, <br />
<blockquote>"<span style="color: #073763;">a well-planned town with its civic centre is both a means and impulse to social integration, and to the realization of the common life of its people. The physical plan to a town is this as fundamental as the skeleton to the human organism</span>."</blockquote>This is a notable stance to take, considering that some other planning advocates were, at the time, considering how zoning could be used to properly separate social classes from one another.<br />
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<b>The Natural Political Unit</b><br />
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The primary aim of <i>Little Towns</i> is to depict individual towns and their surrounding countryside as interdependent units making up a single "natural community." Despite the significant differences in lifestyle - rural areas were still without electricity - and cultural outlook, the two kinds of places relied on each other economically and socially. Proving that tacky neologisms have always been with us, Douglass liked to use the work <i>Rurban</i> to describe this synthesis.<br />
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A central problem consisted in the mismatch between these natural communities and existing political boundaries. So, for example, a farmer would need to travel into town to sell crops, buy goods, and attend church, yet the incorporation of town limits precluded him from the political sphere. The farmer was not expected to pay taxes for the town's function, and he did not have a voice in town matters. Towns compensated for this imbalance by taxing trade, which Douglass believed was underscoring an antagonistic relationship. The farmer then viewed the town as a miniature fiefdom funneling away a portion of his labor, rather than as his own community. For their part, townsfolk considered their rural counterparts to be outsiders.<br />
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Douglass believed this could be remedied by a simple exercise. Conduct a scientific town survey to determine the trade area, the availability and use of roadways, and the social identification people declare. Once a map has been made empirically showing the use of services and town identity, the arbitrary political boundaries should be replaced with new ones that match reality. If necessary, multiple zones drawn concentrically from the core outward could be created to define classes with different service needs and different funding responsibilities. Interestingly, Douglass' approach is very similar to later <a href="http://deadbolt1100.hubpages.com/hub/Lewis-Mumford-Life-in-Context-of-Urban-Planning-in-America">regionalists like Louis Mumford</a> or, much later, <a href="http://citistates.com/wp-content/uploads/legacy/assocspeakers/m_orfield.html">Myron Orfield</a>, only at the much smaller rural scale.<br />
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As enticing as this solution appears, there remains the challenge of geographical change to deal with. The boundaries of the natural community are always shifting, yet institutions are much stickier. Not only must local governments deal with the transaction costs of redrawing jurisdictions on a regular basis, vested interests start to accrue over time that eventually solidify the boundaries as they are. Annexation was the tool used to deal with spatial change for many years, but this has become politically impossible in most regions. There has yet to emerge another tool that effectively accomplishes what Douglass set out to achieve.<br />
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Daniel Nairnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14127732825472374125noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5079297043552042968.post-18084626744700217952011-04-16T14:12:00.000-04:002011-04-16T14:12:42.390-04:00New study sheds light on roadway safety for allTraffic safety has been one of those long-standing fault lines in <a href="http://www.grist.org/transportation/2011-03-23-the-latest-battle-in-the-non-existent-war-on-cars">the purported war between cars and pedestrians</a>. In the one corner, we have traffic engineers who are given the task of designing roadways to maximize speed and capacity, while maintaining what is considered an acceptable level of safety for motorists. You do this by making the roadway as forgiving as possible with wider lanes, longer sight distances, and nothing to crash into along the side of the road. In the other corner, pedestrian advocates have insisted on slowing cars down with traffic calming, on-street parking, pedestrian signal prioritization and lots of other strategies to look after their own safety. As the story goes, each side is locked in a shouting match over whose safety is the most important.<br />
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<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh9LbfyzOsQHPYvYAxruSs7nYP5faG5CJDvgnKToiaOOan3a1Oh5m9tRxfPqmtVWI1DemtGxrT871esCwpJeyclfb4_3RnJQYv4c4c-rgekMJg8lIM88vYIr6REnKp3fNi09sZMKCVQ-GTq/s1600/RoadTypes.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh9LbfyzOsQHPYvYAxruSs7nYP5faG5CJDvgnKToiaOOan3a1Oh5m9tRxfPqmtVWI1DemtGxrT871esCwpJeyclfb4_3RnJQYv4c4c-rgekMJg8lIM88vYIr6REnKp3fNi09sZMKCVQ-GTq/s1600/RoadTypes.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Design Solutions for Balancing Traffic Conflicts and Speed. Source: Dumbaugh et. al.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>But <a href="http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/content%7Econtent=a931668506%7Edb=all%7Ejumptype=rss">a new study</a> that appears in the Journal of the American Planning Association sheds more light than heat on the subject. Eric Dumbaugh and Wenhau Li found that designs that make the travel safer for any road user make travel safer for every road user. Really, there is no zero sum game. We don’t have to pick one team. Thankfully.<br />
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The researchers looked at almost 300,000 crashes in the San Antonio area and considered all of the details of where the crash happened, not just how many cars use the road or how wide the lanes are. They asked: Is this a pedestrian-scaled “Main Street” or is it an arterial lined with strip malls? Are there big box stores around? How many intersections are in the area, and how many people live nearby? Then they considered who was involved in the crash. Two vehicles? A vehicle and cyclist? A vehicle and a tree? With all of these variables in mind, they determined which factors were better correlated with a safer environment … and for whom.<br />
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The results may not entirely satisfy either side, but they make sense. Freeways turn out to be pretty safe, showing a relatively small proportion of crashes. This probably has more to do with the lack intersections on highways, than it does the opulent shoulders and smooth grades. With access limited to a few exits and entrances, there are just fewer chances to collide with an oncoming vehicle. But just as the highway engineers may consider theories are vindicated, the research shows that places on the opposite end of the spectrum are just as safe.<br />
<blockquote>“<span style="color: #073763;">The presence of pedestrian-scaled retail uses, on the other hand, was associated with significant reductions in multiple-vehicle, parked-car, fixed-object, and pedestrian crashes. We attribute this to reduced vehicle speeds. Street oriented buildings create a sense of visual enclosure of the street, communicating to the driver that greater caution is warranted, and resulting in reductions in both vehicle speed and crash incidence</span>.”</blockquote>Consider all of the chaos of a Main Street scene. A driver is trying to parallel park while a cyclist dodges the opening door. Pedestrians are crossing at will, and delivery trucks are backing into their spaces. Visual stimulation is everywhere. The old engineering models would take all of these inputs and calculate a daily bloodbath, but nothing of the sort is happening. It’s a highly functional environment. The key here is that both the Main Street and the Freeway are relatively safe for <i>all road users</i>, motorists and pedestrians alike (although let’s admit that pedestrian safety on the freeway is purely a function of their non-existence).<br />
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The absolute worst places for everyone were the ones that fell between the cracks of the two paradigms. There’s one of these in your town. The wide highway with a traffic light every few hundred feet leading into strip shopping centers. They are designed to be Freeway-esque with plenty of room for you to veer out of your lane, yet with all of the conflicts of cars pulling in and out still there. These precautions are just a cruel trick, inducing drivers to take on more speed than they really should to their own detriment. Pedestrians are caught in the cross-fire with no armor, and before you judge them for having the audacity just to be there, remember that many service-sector workers have no choice. In the twentieth century we dreamed of the best of both words for our roadways – access and speed! - but ended up with the worst of both worlds.<br />
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Freeways will still be utilized for those long-distance trips between cities, at least while gas is still relatively inexpensive. They should continue to be designed to handle the high speeds they command, to allow drivers to travel safely. But within highly-concentrated urban areas, mindlessly applying these same standards wrecks havoc. In these cases, <a href="http://www.ite.org/emodules/scriptcontent/Orders/ProductDetail.cfm?pc=RP-036A-E">a design approach that takes into account the whole context of the street</a> yields a much safer result for pedestrians and motorists alike.Daniel Nairnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14127732825472374125noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5079297043552042968.post-14385962763191753172011-02-11T23:02:00.003-05:002011-02-12T19:05:56.299-05:00Where does a revolution happen?In an historic sequence of events for the nation of Egypt, massive demonstrations were held at the Nile View mall in suburban Cairo. Protesters began gathering outside of J.C. Penney in late January. Within a week the parking lot was full, and traffic was backed up for miles with eager activists waiting to enter. The food court was taken over as a makeshift shelter, and new vendors popped up to compete with Sbarros and Panda Express to feed the demonstrators. When Hosni Mubarak agreed to step down, the elated crowds moved into the multiplex movie theater for celebration. Historians believe this may be the first revolution in world history entirely set to the soundtrack of smooth jazz.<br />
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No, wait. None of this is happening.<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg1VcGSpIWas0eSG6l9TXsiYB18R_wDiVR07R01VZcqNNGkQM1CLqjDeBYdi9YZK0zWSByjP-zQFmTaPCw1bgyr55YaCexaU9zkgNZPWyOIj1iwg9RRCKj5nZjpExPKFasSN_4oeVss9OiF/s1600/Tahrir.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="358" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg1VcGSpIWas0eSG6l9TXsiYB18R_wDiVR07R01VZcqNNGkQM1CLqjDeBYdi9YZK0zWSByjP-zQFmTaPCw1bgyr55YaCexaU9zkgNZPWyOIj1iwg9RRCKj5nZjpExPKFasSN_4oeVss9OiF/s640/Tahrir.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr align="right"><td class="tr-caption">Photo taken by Flickr user Ramy Raoof</td></tr>
</tbody></table><br />
Democracy for the nation of Egypt was won in Tahrir Square, right in the heart of Cairo. Tahrir Square is surrounded by museums, governmental offices, universities, stores and hotels, and many, many compact neighborhoods, making it a natural epicenter of human activity and the obvious site for political action. Being one of the mostly densely populated cities in the world, thousands of protestors can converge in the center and meet with others from across the socio-economic range. Protestors flooded into the square through the Egypt Metro system, one of the busiest in the world. Although authorities tried to quell the demonstration by <a href="http://www.almasryalyoum.com/en/news/authorities-ban-egypt-metro-stopping-tahrir-square">blocking the square’s Metro stop</a>, many of the participants have been getting off at nearby stops and walking the rest of the way in.<br />
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Edward Glaeser pointed out <a href="http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/02/01/its-always-the-urban-pot-that-boils-over/">in the New York Times last week</a> that “it’s always the urban pot that boils over.” Cairo, Egypt and Tunis, Tunisia are only the latest installments in the tumultuous story of cities.<br />
<blockquote>“<span style="color: #073763;">Cities are places of revolution, because urban proximity connects organizers of opposition. Large urban populations create the scale needed to initially overwhelm local law enforcement … The constant interaction of human energy in dense clusters creates innovations in every area of human life, including politics</span>.”</blockquote>All the tweets and texts flying through the airwaves <a href="http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/newsdesk/2011/02/does-egypt-need-twitter.html">have not changed the fact</a> that a physical place, a public square in the most literal sense, will always be a necessary stage for any kind of action. You know, in reality.<br />
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Here’s Sarah Goodyear <a href="http://www.grist.org/article/2011-01-31-the-egyptian-government-has-been-able-to-shut-down-the-internet-">writing in Grist</a>,<br />
<blockquote>“<span style="color: #073763;">The government of Hosni Mubarak could shut down the internet. It could shut down cell phone service. It could force Al Jazeera, which has been providing superb coverage of the events in Egypt, to close its Cairo bureau. It could arrest journalists and seize their equipment.</span><br />
<div style="color: #073763;"><br />
</div><span style="color: #073763;">But the streets of Cairo themselves have been the medium that has carried the message of the Egyptian people. So have the streets of Alexandria, Suez, and other Egyptian cities. And the government's efforts to keep people off those streets have failed completely.</span>"</blockquote>And Tahrir Square was not just a convenient place to hold a rally. Hey, we're about equidistant between most of our homes, plenty of space to work with, let's start gathering here. No, the fact that the message was brought to the center of the capital city itself conveyed meaning. The central public square is likewise the impromptu location for celebration.Daniel Nairnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14127732825472374125noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5079297043552042968.post-16866765502039732372011-01-28T09:03:00.000-05:002011-01-28T09:03:17.743-05:00Michael Sandel on public places<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.news.harvard.edu/gazette/wp-content/uploads/2009/09/SAndel-605.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="213" src="http://www.news.harvard.edu/gazette/wp-content/uploads/2009/09/SAndel-605.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i> Source: Harvard Gazette</i></td></tr>
</tbody></table>I was pleased to see Michael Sandel’s name show up as <a href="http://www.planning.org/conference/speakers/keynotes.htm">a keynote speaker</a> at this year’s American Planning Association conference. He’s a well-known Harvard political philosopher who has made a career out of pushing the boundaries of how we talk about right and wrong toward the notion of the common good. But what does high-minded ethical reasoning have to do with planning the places we live in? As I would find out, quite a bit.<br />
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I turned to Sandel’s most recent book, <a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=BrdNDG7TTUEC&printsec=frontcover&dq=justice+what%27s+the+right+thing+to+do&hl=en&src=bmrr&ei=9clCTce2MsL7lwfy0twO&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CD0Q6AEwAA#v=onepage&q&f=false">Justice: What’s the Right Thing to Do</a>, based on a course he’s taught for the last two decades (which happens to also be a hit on Japanese TV, oddly enough). It’s jam packed with those thorny moral dilemmas that are great fun to subject your friends to. After running through the answers given by the usual suspects throughout history, he finishes out the book with his own position. Here’s one salient point:<br />
<blockquote>“<span style="color: #073763;">An earlier generation made a massive investment in the federal highway program, which gave Americans unprecedented mobility and freedom, but also contributed to a reliance on the private automobile, suburban sprawl, environmental degradation, and living patterns corrosive to community. This generation could commit itself to an equally consequential investment in an infrastructure for civic renewal: public schools for which rich and poor alike would want to send their children, public transportation systems reliable enough to attract upscale commuters; public health clinics, playgrounds, parks, recreation centers, libraries, and museums that would, ideally at least, draw people out of their gated communities and into the common spaces of a shared democratic citizenship</span>.”</blockquote>To see how he lands here, we’ll have to back up a little to grasp the underlying principles. Sandel calls into the question the modern notion of grounding all of ethics in the consent of individuals, instead reaching back to Aristotle and the notion of a civic order that encourages a strong character that looks outward from itself. Asking anyone today to honor the public good seems even a little quaint, and cynics are ever looking for the angle, but Sandel is serious about reviving the calling of citizenship.<br />
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He notes that our public discourse has come to revolve almost entirely around personal rights and personal demands. On the right, this means defending the economic decisions to buy and sell as you wish. On the left, it means breaking away from the shackles of traditional social mores and leveling inequalities. Your choices are: either let everyone keep the resources they earn in the marketplace or redistribute resources to the individuals who have more of a need. But both sides seem to agree that we are essentially individuals. We may engage in relationships or associate ourselves with certain groups, but only as long as our personal goals are achieved in the process.<br />
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How does this philosophy translate into our physical places? It means big private homes and small public spaces, many yards and few parks, lots of driving alone and little public transportation, gated communities with or without the literal gates – basically a whole place arranged so that we will never have to see a neighbor or a stranger unless we specifically choose to. We could say all sorts of things about the fairness or sustainability of this arrangement, but Sandel raises another point. This kind of place makes it harder for us to build the character traits we look up to: courage, solidarity to a community, mutual respect, sacrifice for the good of others. You can’t just read about being a good person. It takes some training and a practice field.<br />
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To pluck a story from the Christian tradition, when an injured Jewish traveler was lying along the side of a road, it was the Samaritan, his sworn ethnic enemy, who decided to lend a hand. This scene was Jesus’ response to the question “who is your neighbor?” We may like to think of ourselves as similarly generous, but we forget that the Samaritan had to actually walk past the injured man in the first place just to be presented with the dilemma. <br />
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This might be what Sandel means by an “infrastructure of civic renewal,” a full-bodied public realm that may be more challenging – alas, we don’t all agree about what the good life should be – but one that will strengthen us through the give and take of a wider community. And this can’t happen if we don’t build places to facilitate these interactions.Daniel Nairnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14127732825472374125noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5079297043552042968.post-22310629343146179742011-01-03T09:15:00.000-05:002011-01-03T09:15:24.793-05:00Framing the Ethics of Metropolitan Growth<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://t3.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcRMZBi6y5NHTS84wHbwsSa2PoDIK9vai9uGEIBxeVY_yqSoyw-UGg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://t3.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcRMZBi6y5NHTS84wHbwsSa2PoDIK9vai9uGEIBxeVY_yqSoyw-UGg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Source: <a href="http://www.continuumbooks.com/books/detail.aspx?BookId=134405&SubjectId=1020&Subject2Id=1387">Continuum</a></td></tr>
</tbody></table>I'll come right out and say that <a href="http://www.continuumbooks.com/books/detail.aspx?BookId=134405&SubjectId=1020&Subject2Id=1387">Ethics of Metropolitan Growth</a> is a wonderful resource. Robert Kirkman is a philosopher employed in the realm of public policy by Georgia Tech, and he has obviously poured significant amounts of experience and reflection into this relatively short book. Without an ounce of jargon and very little academic name-dropping, it really is refreshing to read. He drills down to the basic questions of what we want out of the place we live in.<br />
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[<i>By the way, please don't confuse my effusive praise for any compensated endorsement. That wouldn't be very ethical, would it?</i>] <br />
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The book tours through many of the planning and design decisions we make in our communities, revealing the tangled knot of values and intentions that will be immediately recognizable to anyone who's been to more than a few public hearings or read through comment threads from the whole spectrum of websites. Complicated? Sure, yet he neither leaves us awash in moral ambiguity nor sets up any side in particular on the moral high ground, from which grenades of judgment can be lobbed on the opponents below. He simply builds a framework to help anyone sort through their own goals and compare them with the goals of others.<br />
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Kirkman's outlook on ethics, in general, is very modest. He accepts that every decision is uniquely determined by the situation it's embedded in, so no single rule can be applied across the boards to supply the right answer to a question. By extension, this means that blame (or praise) is often very difficult to discern. He also refuses to take sides on any of the perennial debates philosophers engage in over ethics. Is it the consequences of the action that counts? Is it the motivation behind the action that counts? Is it the character of the person acting that counts? All of the above, Kirkman says. He can do this, because he isn't really looking for a way to splice right from wrong but simply a way to think about right and wrong.<br />
<blockquote>"<span style="color: #073763;">The point is to ask critical questions about each view, to examine its scope and its limits. to test whether it holds together and whether it can be put into practice</span>."</blockquote>To be honest, this does come across as <i>too</i> modest for many topics. Most of us want to be able to conclude that raids on innocent villagers in the Darfur region of Sudan are flat-out evil, rather than suggest that the raider engage in some serious reflection over whether his intentions are internally consistent or not. But the book isn't about genocide. It's about zoning. And how to get to the store. The hushed, cerebral tone is completely appropriate. To the neighbor shouting down a greedy developer or the dude waiving a shotgun at anyone who will meddle with his property, Kirkman says: relax, let's think it through.<br />
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<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjAvJd6oEvXmcNRKA9EbY6sAB4A5lb7lQST_UXZDspwABLlw7PzyL4cEtMajSzwiZuuHJFXfm-EDnQ9oA0aoN6m5m_-La9QAjVxCeN7xlgtieTpHEjGUA7-JtL06FqFHi7j4BE9GP8GtKgP/s1600/300px-Sustainable_development_triangle.gif" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjAvJd6oEvXmcNRKA9EbY6sAB4A5lb7lQST_UXZDspwABLlw7PzyL4cEtMajSzwiZuuHJFXfm-EDnQ9oA0aoN6m5m_-La9QAjVxCeN7xlgtieTpHEjGUA7-JtL06FqFHi7j4BE9GP8GtKgP/s1600/300px-Sustainable_development_triangle.gif" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Source: <a href="http://www.eoearth.org/article/Sustainable_development_triangle">Encyclopedia of Earth</a></td></tr>
</tbody></table>So how do we do that? The framework he presents is better than anything out there. I've been taught a technique called the triangle of sustainability, otherwise known in business terms as the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triple_bottom_line">triple bottom line</a>, for making planning decisions. I've always found it to be awkward. You're suppose to balance between economic development, environmental protection, and social equity, all under the banner of "sustainability" which then immediately buckles under the weight and collapses into utter meaninglessness. The terms are not well matched up to each other, and there's no real advice for actually making the trade-off (which is really the whole source of conflict). The triangle also doesn't touch on the important question of who should be making the decision anyway.<br />
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Kirkman's framework starts with a place-based spin on Aristotle's classic quest for the good life. Since our lives are necessarily shaped by the environment that surrounds us, the issue becomes whether a place either constrains us or enables us to seek the good. We won't all agree on what the good life is, but at least we can have some clarity on how the built environment overlaps with these personal goals. The second consideration is how the identified good is distributed among people. Is it fair? The third consideration is how the identified good is distributed through time. Will it last? Finally, there's the question of process.<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgFxv9PmFVMlcwAIcXvINC1jSchoQxm5YYZIGG7NK9GynquSS6iNlD1yKCv13Mj4tald-hVqNLlmI4Uf4ACRizMmALd3HnD0V8CpAi9HmOx-dF9i015__iL_Yv06J1jp4brUu24tecTGufX/s1600/Framework.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgFxv9PmFVMlcwAIcXvINC1jSchoQxm5YYZIGG7NK9GynquSS6iNlD1yKCv13Mj4tald-hVqNLlmI4Uf4ACRizMmALd3HnD0V8CpAi9HmOx-dF9i015__iL_Yv06J1jp4brUu24tecTGufX/s1600/Framework.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Source: Ethics of the Built Environment</td></tr>
</tbody></table>Consider the suburban ideal of living in a private, detached house halfway between nature and culture, possessing the best of both worlds. Those who embrace this as their preferred lifestyle could check off each item on the well-being list, but moving to justice and sustainability reveals some difficulties. If others were to follow suit and move into the neighborhood, the balance is upset toward density and it no longer feels so natural. Therefore, you impose regulations to exclude others, which should be problematic if you consider yourself a person who values fairness. And given that land and energy is finite and human population keeps growing, it's not at all clear that this arrangement will last. Do you want your grand-children to also enjoy this life? Here is the underlying contradiction behind the old joke: sprawl and density are the two things people hate most. The point of the framework is to force a resolution between these competing personal goals.<br />
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He doesn't let New Urbanists off the hook either, pointing out how often they present a false choice between an idealized traditional town and the most chaotic of modern suburbs. This is unnecessarily limiting. One of the points of engaging in the ethical exercise is to hunt for new possibilities that had previously been ruled out or missed entirely. It should spur creativity and reveal win-win solutions that meet the unstated preferences lurking beneath some of the stubborn public positions we take.<br />
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This is a good list, but I can't pass up griping about including mobility as basic to well-being. Most of us value <a href="http://discoveringurbanism.blogspot.com/2010/02/from-mobility-to-accessibility.html">getting to the place we want to go</a> (accessibility), not just moving from one place to another (mobility). Achieving access usually includes mobility, but it also includes proximity, or not having to move very far to get to where you want to go. Although this seems like splitting hairs, setting access as the ultimate goal of a transportation system <a href="http://newurbannetwork.com/news-opinion/blogs/guest-blogger/13782/access-vs-mobility-happy-people-or-happy-cars">completely changes how performance is measured and projects are selected</a>. Just had to throw that in.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhHsT5Ptm0I_-AM_-D66KBgqL_jxIbGRIqPTwc8rFLxTMyXqeMCgFlZPlp3rdmYAgl90JdWJYtazaGPOl1OxS3lFwSsJD2StxshyphenhyphenlEVpjRT1ArK_Hswko1L3KOfU8FapeyDpdGWus57KQUo/s1600/EthicsSheet.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhHsT5Ptm0I_-AM_-D66KBgqL_jxIbGRIqPTwc8rFLxTMyXqeMCgFlZPlp3rdmYAgl90JdWJYtazaGPOl1OxS3lFwSsJD2StxshyphenhyphenlEVpjRT1ArK_Hswko1L3KOfU8FapeyDpdGWus57KQUo/s1600/EthicsSheet.jpg" /></a></div>One of the more intriguing discussions is over the legitimacy category, especially the scale of the decision. We don't act only as individuals, but also as groups. Even the most ardent libertarian will accept that sometimes decisions should be collectively made, even if he'll insist that this be voluntarily entered into (i.e. marriage, joining a Homeowners Association) and an eject button is readily available (i.e. divorce, leaving the HOA). The rest of us are even more comfortable with power vested in a range of organizations, as long as we are represented fairly in decisions the group makes. <br />
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As in the example to the left (my own), a similar inquiry can be broken down across different scales, typically matched with different ranges of time as well. Each expression exerts cause and effect on the rest, making it hard to pin-point any one as the ultimate reason for the way things are. Kirkman writes,<br />
<blockquote>"<span style="color: #073763;">To the extent all of the different ranges of government pull against one another, each asserting its own rights and prerogatives, there is less likely to be an effective response to problems in the built environment. Perhaps most important, there is often a mismatch between the scale of problems and the scale of government authority with the power to address them</span>."</blockquote>This leads him to point out the lack of effective regional bodies in American politics, not because a region is the optimal vantage point for all planning decisions but simply because it happens to be underrepresented. The issue of affordable housing is a classic regional problem. Almost everyone values a sufficient amount of housing affordable to residents with the range of incomes somewhere in their region, but the same people start having reservations about putting it in their own neighborhood, and few homeowners want to see their <i>own </i> home become more affordable. Approaching this problem with too small a scale, and you get inefficient fragmentation; too large a scale, and you're apt to be insulated from what citizens actually want for their own community. For this particular question, the region seems just about right.<br />
<br />
Kirkman is not so much of a philosopher to insist on subjecting every single decision to this level of scrutiny. He acknowledges that even stepping off the front porch, "I could find myself paralyzed, my foot poised eternally above the pavement, unable to take a single step while the deliberation goes on." Practically, we need to use reflexive behaviors and snap-judgments about the built environment. But the reader of this volume is treated to at least of a few hours of time to stand back and reflect on these habits of thought about the places we live in. It's a worthwhile exercise for any of us.Daniel Nairnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14127732825472374125noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5079297043552042968.post-71597518006736526252010-12-15T22:54:00.000-05:002010-12-15T22:54:42.149-05:00New Census numbers confirm the resurgence of citiesWith the release of the new <a href="http://factfinder.census.gov/servlet/DatasetMainPageServlet?_program=ACS&_submenuId=datasets_2&_lang=en">American Community Survey data</a> on Tuesday, we are now able to see how the fine-grained nature of metropolitan areas has changed over the last few years. This is the first release since the 2000 Census that really provides enough detail to map these changes, and the New York Times has stepped up to the plate with <a href="http://projects.nytimes.com/census/2010/explorer?ref=us">a handy mapping tool</a>. The Census American Factfinder website <a href="http://factfinder.census.gov/home/saff/aff2.html">will get an upgrade</a> in about a month, and mapping will be much easier once that happens. <br />
<br />
Poking through some of the data, I haven't been able to discern any interesting new trends that have not previously been identified. But we do see some pretty clear confirmation of earlier predictions, such as those made by Bill Lucy and David Phillips in <a href="http://www.arch.virginia.edu/%7Edlp/TCTSMain/TCTS.html">Tommorrow's Cities, Tomorrow's Suburbs</a>. Taking a look at a number of indicators, they outlined the beginnings of a reversal of the 20th century story of urban decline. Instead they found evidence of city centers prospering and the aging suburbs around them falling into economic decline.<br />
<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiMk0LdkWsLLza4d9MF9V8bV438-lIZfaEE5HNu717CgyKDnayXWZ60x3ndJffon2jlI7MnQrIL0UdzlE8dFmk3JBbay711-rivC2UNwxBmAhaTstW8qFk2rwCNiSKxC00Fyt3qcYUS3Lb7/s1600/key.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiMk0LdkWsLLza4d9MF9V8bV438-lIZfaEE5HNu717CgyKDnayXWZ60x3ndJffon2jlI7MnQrIL0UdzlE8dFmk3JBbay711-rivC2UNwxBmAhaTstW8qFk2rwCNiSKxC00Fyt3qcYUS3Lb7/s1600/key.jpg" /></a>Take a look at these maps of changes in median income by census tracts between 2000 and 2005-2009, courtesy of the NY Times site. Orange is positive, blue is negative.<br />
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<div style="text-align: center;"><b>Charlotte, North Carolina</b></div><br />
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<div style="text-align: center;"> <b>Chicago, Illinois</b></div><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgm7BV0w-X9iK59AmKsgRe1-mesdn-gArKd1DElT7qmyAzWDvnNyzaZoi25sZ0saFAnAgXzSgrIooXVFSb2p80Ycx9G1wat0HjGlUAXfOr1EInWxkyNa4S0cQTO9N9dYIbJmCPsa1H6_l0b/s1600/Chicago.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgm7BV0w-X9iK59AmKsgRe1-mesdn-gArKd1DElT7qmyAzWDvnNyzaZoi25sZ0saFAnAgXzSgrIooXVFSb2p80Ycx9G1wat0HjGlUAXfOr1EInWxkyNa4S0cQTO9N9dYIbJmCPsa1H6_l0b/s1600/Chicago.jpg" /></a></div><br />
<div style="text-align: center;"><b> Cleveland, Ohio</b></div><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi_eoRo5JOtYJ7PaA2tBsUABamSHoQAsUy7qkrgFNBxL2g1pyJsr148s5ixId_SqAk26v0lHw0u6QlZ4FO_ZbzPIO9VGwmKDTDRAcOL-r3EpWIuWykGeTq9JUKPq9rLcq2w2r23wmTGDFm7/s1600/Cleveland.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi_eoRo5JOtYJ7PaA2tBsUABamSHoQAsUy7qkrgFNBxL2g1pyJsr148s5ixId_SqAk26v0lHw0u6QlZ4FO_ZbzPIO9VGwmKDTDRAcOL-r3EpWIuWykGeTq9JUKPq9rLcq2w2r23wmTGDFm7/s1600/Cleveland.jpg" /></a></div><br />
<div style="text-align: center;"> <b>Columbus, Ohio</b></div><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhqRXKaaiOX6Q1jW5IZaoKn_rReT6P70tVXa9S3kupzwpSQZ1CAdbrRBAKK4KGa4-_HPxZU4jbDpnFV-GgrOUqrPapuZ_zpQiPTitmMkpRlPvfCyyH9Y9U_CCYgeAVnXue9K-rXn1hQEg_H/s1600/Columbus.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhqRXKaaiOX6Q1jW5IZaoKn_rReT6P70tVXa9S3kupzwpSQZ1CAdbrRBAKK4KGa4-_HPxZU4jbDpnFV-GgrOUqrPapuZ_zpQiPTitmMkpRlPvfCyyH9Y9U_CCYgeAVnXue9K-rXn1hQEg_H/s1600/Columbus.jpg" /></a></div><br />
<div style="text-align: center;"><b> Houston, Texas</b></div><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-7fhBCGvPAC-wJDvbRoAIz6OIbZzE855D_P-gLW81_N4a9VLVNTh_O0ZAa483s_Apitcmwq3c3gqzumKPsapOCo5Vtwe8ihzbdot8TloJD0bczWazO6fuL576akNC7tZkpxdp77NoUQnh/s1600/Houston.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-7fhBCGvPAC-wJDvbRoAIz6OIbZzE855D_P-gLW81_N4a9VLVNTh_O0ZAa483s_Apitcmwq3c3gqzumKPsapOCo5Vtwe8ihzbdot8TloJD0bczWazO6fuL576akNC7tZkpxdp77NoUQnh/s1600/Houston.jpg" /></a></div><br />
<div style="text-align: center;"> <b>Indianapolis, Indiana</b></div><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiu5G88GIrWodS8HxwQk5wiPOeEo8P937dGhyOunUnzmJiYzbdsvRKV8s7LT5EdBk07wPTmr4LnVb_aAl1XWeWxYABrSVZFP-9DlLzaoOEk6o6pDq9OUVg6iEmMwMtUuTanXWFegjbwjKFv/s1600/Indianapolis.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiu5G88GIrWodS8HxwQk5wiPOeEo8P937dGhyOunUnzmJiYzbdsvRKV8s7LT5EdBk07wPTmr4LnVb_aAl1XWeWxYABrSVZFP-9DlLzaoOEk6o6pDq9OUVg6iEmMwMtUuTanXWFegjbwjKFv/s1600/Indianapolis.jpg" /></a></div><br />
<div style="text-align: center;"><b> Louisville, Kentucky</b></div><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjL2fA4kxtsn0153ScRiyakTsmfIOJnnY9PgJCoyLRg9PiLsceEvaxlBpd4DkrhuhpsschH_sHkrjlpfaqQexyZGcdXqWdg0WoOYFopLokXjzNLXwQvMd4roVDCZ_0nzADV6QhSMKPSM1iE/s1600/Louisville.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjL2fA4kxtsn0153ScRiyakTsmfIOJnnY9PgJCoyLRg9PiLsceEvaxlBpd4DkrhuhpsschH_sHkrjlpfaqQexyZGcdXqWdg0WoOYFopLokXjzNLXwQvMd4roVDCZ_0nzADV6QhSMKPSM1iE/s1600/Louisville.jpg" /></a></div><br />
<div style="text-align: center;"><b> Philadelphia, Pennsylvania</b></div><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhh2h2SBSmzg6bGCbvyLGb8h-CmJ-ZGh3QBJsrW_htrIO7YGPpzySnmx7UWBr6duSmq7B2oymbbyoyU3Kef9seBFc-CKFMAQjJyxCNpA6f4Mu8Vl0Nq9NXfIbuuMAGYdYkC5S3KU1pH0Wvk/s1600/Philadelphia.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhh2h2SBSmzg6bGCbvyLGb8h-CmJ-ZGh3QBJsrW_htrIO7YGPpzySnmx7UWBr6duSmq7B2oymbbyoyU3Kef9seBFc-CKFMAQjJyxCNpA6f4Mu8Vl0Nq9NXfIbuuMAGYdYkC5S3KU1pH0Wvk/s1600/Philadelphia.jpg" /></a></div><br />
<div style="text-align: center;"><b> Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania</b></div><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhoxxS3Eonu2UjlTUXAd7qBF4J4AEH7RjON2CtpZFgDAqlTQKKXTNWQvGpOdEW-ySwb8kcO1QfWXjPKHO5XY00KdMV4iUFfA_AfKFOlJNCCsj9yrP2tLzo-zuoKMfvLRIYc8kxKodXmH2GP/s1600/Pittsburgh.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhoxxS3Eonu2UjlTUXAd7qBF4J4AEH7RjON2CtpZFgDAqlTQKKXTNWQvGpOdEW-ySwb8kcO1QfWXjPKHO5XY00KdMV4iUFfA_AfKFOlJNCCsj9yrP2tLzo-zuoKMfvLRIYc8kxKodXmH2GP/s1600/Pittsburgh.jpg" /></a></div><br />
<div style="text-align: center;"><b> Washington DC</b></div><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi4fpxoOqVP3KCkFPwW9IePXAYdVpCD7_sATkhCLnF0mf_rX0bk58oXHCnLqb2Q31d_bSa2apgRaCx8YMU4T-Sfb2nAS7yDG05Aibbou_TFmq0mSDck7LiJLXdhxzXJTdGYopVlo_uhGxcS/s1600/Washington.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi4fpxoOqVP3KCkFPwW9IePXAYdVpCD7_sATkhCLnF0mf_rX0bk58oXHCnLqb2Q31d_bSa2apgRaCx8YMU4T-Sfb2nAS7yDG05Aibbou_TFmq0mSDck7LiJLXdhxzXJTdGYopVlo_uhGxcS/s1600/Washington.jpg" /></a></div><br />
<div style="text-align: center;"><b> Atlanta, Georgia</b></div><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhSpJ8ZFq7vcwP2qmO8LlXAMAVtwTzHAh7E4AS1ax8i-JBwNUKLBu-U970pYpJ6l2bSGPwgLC2A4cY0r-SVERjsf7MTdw3Lsoeo6lbaltoA-zv4Fn7aI9aXWNymjd0vg4JxWC51od9QM-na/s1600/Atlanta.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhSpJ8ZFq7vcwP2qmO8LlXAMAVtwTzHAh7E4AS1ax8i-JBwNUKLBu-U970pYpJ6l2bSGPwgLC2A4cY0r-SVERjsf7MTdw3Lsoeo6lbaltoA-zv4Fn7aI9aXWNymjd0vg4JxWC51od9QM-na/s1600/Atlanta.jpg" /></a></div><br />
Atlanta offers a particularly striking pattern. During this interval, the median household income in the whole Atlanta metro area grew a reasonably healthy 12.4%. But looking just at urban Atlanta, we see a growth in median income of 44.5%. It turns out that Atlanta's wage growth is being driven almost entirely by wage growth in its core. The suburbs are still a tad bit wealthier in general, but that will probably not last more than a year or two longer.<br />
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Then see how this stacks up against the age of the housing stock in the core and the surrounding "suburbs."<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-R4rj5n8rpqMfIYn5bM6QCKze4_vLlO5vhx83xEuEEusukz2_1gU8_hf5iPbXFPH_lWBotkDyEh-5OeII-Dxov8EC2v1ErGhBLDeWNfb-ZqvTg5LIhOVVbSbCjo93IwBclZV0yt2hgDaC/s1600/YearBuiltChart.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-R4rj5n8rpqMfIYn5bM6QCKze4_vLlO5vhx83xEuEEusukz2_1gU8_hf5iPbXFPH_lWBotkDyEh-5OeII-Dxov8EC2v1ErGhBLDeWNfb-ZqvTg5LIhOVVbSbCjo93IwBclZV0yt2hgDaC/s1600/YearBuiltChart.jpg" /></a></div><br />
Homes in urban Atlanta are, on average, much older than they are in the rest of the metro area. Despite the remarkable wage growth in the center of the metro, there still has been relatively little actual home construction for some reason. Less than 10% of all homes built since 2000 have been built in urban Atlanta (although it's worth noting that this share is up from the low of 5% in the sprawling 90s). Conventional wisdom says that wealthy people gravitate to newer homes, and the houses then trickle down to lower-income households as they are bought and sold over time. But wealthier people are moving to the core of Atlanta despite, or maybe because of, its older homes and neighborhoods.<br />
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One last important note: this census dataset doesn't do a very good job showing changes due to the housing market collapse, because the data is sampled from both before and after it happened. We'll have to wait a couple more years for Census data showing the new spatial patterns that emerge from the rubble.Daniel Nairnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14127732825472374125noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5079297043552042968.post-17909257298188658132010-12-09T21:57:00.000-05:002010-12-09T21:57:26.050-05:00Transit Oriented (affordable) DevelopmentIn case you missed it, the Dukakis Center for Urban and Regional Policy at Northeastern University dropped <a href="http://www.dukakiscenter.org/transport-management/">a bombshell of a report</a> about Transit-Oriented Development (TOD) back in October. Key finding:<br />
<blockquote>"<span style="color: #0c343d;"><span style="color: #073763;">Rising incomes in some gentrifying [Transit-Rich Neighborhoods] may be accompanied by an increase in wealthier households who are more likely to own and use private vehicles, and less likely to use transit for commuting, than lower-income households</span>.</span>"</blockquote>Ironically, they found that enhancing transit infrastructure can actually make ridership go <i>down</i> (and car ownership up) in the neighborhood it serves. That's a puzzling dilemma that deserves some attention. <br />
<br />
TOD advocates have understood for a while that infrastructure and design need to be carefully coordinated to produce successful results. Just plop down a new station without changing any of the zoning codes in advance, and you're guaranteed to end up with a park and ride lot surrounded by much of the same 20th century stuff. There's transit, and there's development, but the orientation part is missing entirely.<br />
<br />
Back in 2003, Patrick Seigman published a handy and oft-cited TOD checklist,"<a href="http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&cd=5&ved=0CC8QFjAE&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.stanford.edu%2F%7Eadammb%2FPublications%2FTumlin_Millard-Ball_2003_How_to_Make_TOD_Work.pdf&rct=j&q=Transit%2C%20Patrick%20Siegman%2C%20in%20Tumlin%20and%20Millard-Ball&ei=JHYBTdmDB4GKlwez_MHoBg&usg=AFQjCNHTmyZ21yFvzJYBionwuACkQ2ZyDw&cad=rja">Is it Really TOD?</a>" <br />
<blockquote>"<span style="color: #073763;">A true TOD will include most of the following:</span><br />
<ul><li style="color: #073763;">The transit-oriented development lies within a five-minute walk of the transit stop, or about a quarter-mile from stop to edge. For major stations offering access to frequent high-speed service this catchment area may be extended to the measure of a 10-minute walk.</li>
<li style="color: #073763;">A balanced mix of uses generates 24-hour ridership. There are places to work, to live, to learn, to relax and to shop for daily needs.</li>
<li style="color: #073763;">A place-based zoning code generates buildings that shape and define memorable streets, squares, and plazas, while allowing uses to change easily over time.</li>
<li style="color: #073763;">The average block perimeter is limited to no more than 1,350 feet. This generates a fine-grained network of streets, dispersing traffic and allowing for the creation of quiet and intimate thoroughfares.</li>
<li style="color: #073763;">Minimum parking requirements are abolished.</li>
<li style="color: #073763;">Maximum parking requirements are instituted: For every 1,000 workers, no more than 500 spaces and as few as 10 spaces are provided.</li>
<li style="color: #073763;">Parking costs are "unbundled," and full market rates are charged for all parking spaces. The exception may be validated parking for shoppers.</li>
<li style="color: #073763;">Major stops provide BikeStations, offering free attended bicycle parking, repairs, and rentals. At minor stops, secure and fully enclosed bicycle parking is provided.</li>
<li style="color: #073763;">Transit service is fast, frequent, reliable, and comfortable, with a headway of 15 minutes or less.</li>
<li style="color: #073763;">Roadway space is allocated and traffic signals timed primarily for the convenience of walkers and cyclists.</li>
<li style="color: #073763;">Automobile level-of-service standards are met through congestion pricing measures, or disregarded entirely.</li>
<li><span style="color: #073763;">Traffic is calmed, with roads designed to limit speed to 30 mph on major streets and 20 mph on lesser streets.</span>"</li>
</ul></blockquote>But is there anything missing?<br />
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We're seeing that having a mix of incomes is not just a bonus policy goal, but something woven into the success of a TOD on it's own terms. On the one hand, attracting the professional class is realistically the only way to generate the capital needed to spur substantial redevelopment. But the service-sector workers are the ones who are more likely to forgo car ownership, use transit more frequently, and actually walk to work in that cool, mixed-use cafe. Both the urban design features the architects want and the return on investment the transit planners want depend on a healthy mix of incomes.<br />
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Many cities <a href="http://www.reconnectingamerica.org/public/reports/2221">now seek to capture</a> some of the value generated by their public infrastructure investment into land-banked supported affordable housing. Groups like Denver's <a href="http://www.urbanlandc.org/">Urban Land Conservancy</a> carefully anticipate any market changes along transit corridors and grab some of the land before it becomes prohibitively expensive. Then innovative housing models, such as <a href="http://www.cltnetwork.org/index.php?fuseaction=Main.SectionHome&sectionID=2">community land trusts</a>, can be used to hold down the value of the land to a level affordable to low- to moderate-income households indefinitely. When these units are built they'll be doubly affordable, in both housing and transportation costs for the residents.<br />
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"Density, Diversity, and Design" is still the operative catchphrase, as long as by diversity we mean the people as well as the structures and uses.Daniel Nairnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14127732825472374125noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5079297043552042968.post-75727908299001527412010-12-03T16:18:00.001-05:002010-12-03T16:33:30.317-05:00Smart growth and fiscal responsibilityI noticed that Geoff Anderson, President and CEO of Smart Growth America, has <a href="http://blog.smartgrowthamerica.org/2010/12/02/wasteful-development-subsidies-among-cuts-proposed-by-debt-commission/">come out in favor</a> of the <a href="http://www.fiscalcommission.gov/news/moment-truth-report-national-commission-fiscal-responsibility-and-reform">recommendations submitted this week</a> by the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility, at least the ones pertaining to tax reform.<br />
<blockquote>"<span style="color: #073763;">Unbeknownst to most, the federal government plays a massive role in the real estate market by subsidizing and enabling all kinds of development in our communities. With ballooning deficits, now seems like a good time to revisit these subsidies and make sure they are achieving a legitimate public purpose -and not, in the commission’s words, 'creating perverse incentives</span>.'"</blockquote>The smart growth movement has a long history of focusing on fiscal responsibility, dating back the the <a href="http://www.smartgrowth.org/pdf/costs_of_sprawl.pdf">Costs of Sprawl</a> published in 1974. This makes sense. Those of us who are too frugal to throw away the ketchup bottle before it's completely drained, cringe at the sight of underused parking lots being given over to weeds while far-off greener pastures are built on. It was all the more frustrating to watch this being done around the country with money that didn't actually exist. "Can we really afford this?" has been asked all along by <a href="http://www.city-journal.org/article01.php?aid=1438">John Norquist</a> and <a href="http://www.orionmagazine.org/index.php/articles/article/7/">James Howard Kunstler</a> (albeit in very different ways!), and now finally this question is gaining some traction at the federal level.<br />
<br />
The <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Home_mortgage_interest_deduction#United_States">Home Mortgage Interest Deduction</a> stands front and center in all of this. The deficit commission wants to limit the deduction to mortgages of $500,000 or less on primary residences. A healthy debate has been occurring <a href="http://greatergreaterwashington.org/post/8090/would-mortgage-tax-reform-slow-sprawl-and-gentrification/">among</a> urbanist <a href="http://marketurbanism.com/2010/10/27/mortgage-interest-tax-deduction-cuts-on-the-table/">blogs</a> about whether the HMID, in general, leads to a dispersal of housing. I'll dive in: I think no and maybe, depending on the region, but that there may be an important inter-regional impact to consider. My take on this is heavily influenced by Edward Glaeser and Joseph Gyourko's book <a href="http://www.aei.org/book/971">Rethinking Federal Housing Policy</a> (free pdf <a href="http://www.aei.org/docLib/20081205_RethinkingFedHousingPol.pdf">here</a>).<br />
<br />
In supply-constrained regions (like San Francisco), the extra money infused into the housing market by the HMID is swallowed up almost entirely into the prices of existing homes. There are few options for more development, so existing homeowners can simply raise their sale price to account for the buyer's willingness to spend more. This doesn't effect the built environment but it does mean housing affordability is compromised. In fact, the lower middle class takes a double-whammy with this. They pay taxes but don't make enough to use the deduction at all. Then they have to compete in a housing market inflated by the wealthier people who do benefit from the deduction. In these situations, the HMID may actually push people away from homeownership - the exact opposite of its stated purpose.<br />
<br />
In elastic housing markets (like Houston or Detroit), the HMID probably does effect the built environment and drive down home prices to some degree. However, Glaeser and Gyourko's research indicates that the deduction is still not inducing much homeownership, because the subsidy is only available to wealthier households who are not usually the ones on the margin between renting and owning. They would buy anyway. Instead,<br />
<blockquote>"<span style="color: #073763;">A more important effect probably is on the quality of the home consumed, with people living in bigger and better homes than they would otherwise.</span>"</blockquote>They question the wisdom of this tax incentive,<br />
<blockquote>"<span style="color: #073763;">In the old world of dumbbell apartments in dilapidated tenements, there may have been a case for government policies to improve quality and size. That case seems to much harder to make in today's world of suburban McMansions</span>."</blockquote>This is why I guess "maybe" for these regions. The quality improvement could mean either nicely-built craftsman bungalows or subdivisions of cavernous and disposable homes, but the HMID itself would not have much impact on the <i>land </i>costs - and that's what determines the spatial distribution of housing throughout the region.<br />
<br />
What about the national scale? If the HMID pushes home prices higher in San Francisco and, at the same time, makes houses bigger for the same price in Phoenix, it's not hard to imagine some people who are considering a relocation to choose Phoenix partially on account of this effect. So the HMID may not make a region more sprawling than it would be without it, but it may help redistribute the national population away from places that are condensed to places that historically have been sprawling.<br />
<br />
Bottom line: the HMID is essentially a one hundred billion dollar program for giving bigger homes to wealthier households in places that don't have much of an affordability problem anyway, all the while exacerbating the affordability in places where it already is a problem. It's not surprising that a group like Smart Growth America may question whether this is the best use of taxpayers' money in an era of overwhelming deficits.<br />
<br />
<b>UPDATE</b>: Here's <a href="http://www.spatialeconomics.ac.uk/textonly/SERC/publications/download/sercdp0055.pdf">a recently published study</a> on the Home Mortgage Interest Deduction that puts some empirical meat on the bones I've described here. The <a href="http://modeledbehavior.com/2010/12/03/the-mortgage-interest-deduction-winners-and-losers/">Modeled Behavior</a> blog summarizes the results:<br />
<blockquote>"<span style="color: #073763;">Using national data from 1984 to 2007 they found that the MID did not increase overall homeownership. In areas with light land use regulation they found that homeownership among higher income families was increased, and in tightly regulated housing markets homeownership was decreased for all income groups except the lowest. The effects, both positive and negative, generally range from 3% to 5%. Regardless of the regulatory environment, homeownership among the lowest income group was not affected at all by the MID.</span><br />
<div style="color: #073763;"><br />
</div><div style="color: #073763;">The authors estimate that it each additional homeowner created by the mortgage interest deduction costs the government $53,590, a number they rightly call “staggering”.</div><div style="color: #073763;"><br />
</div><span style="color: #073763;">An important implication of the findings is that in urban areas, where land use regulations are typically more restrictive, homeownership is likely to be negatively impacted</span>."</blockquote>Daniel Nairnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14127732825472374125noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5079297043552042968.post-14500054181528059742010-11-05T23:24:00.001-04:002010-12-10T18:58:06.628-05:00Is the Broadacre City Worth Reviving?Charles Waldheim of Harvard Graduate School of Design showcases <a href="http://www.designobserver.com/places/entry.html?entry=15518">a few historic architectural visions</a> for those who wish to explore integrating agriculture into cities. However interesting this question is, a bright red flag shows up right away in his approach to the issue.<br />
<blockquote>"<span style="color: #073763;">The categories of agrarian and urban are usually understood as distinct. Across many disciplines, and for centuries, the country and the city have been defined in opposition to one another. But today, in striking contrast, design culture and discourse abound with claims for the potential for urban agriculture. As environmental literacy among designers and scholars has grown, so too has enthusiasm for agricultural production in and around cities. Fueling this trend is rising public interest in food and its production and distribution in a globalized world.</span>" </blockquote>Maybe if it's reiterated "across many disciplines, and for centuries" there's something to it. As I’ve <a href="http://www.grist.org/article/food-2010-10-19-future-of-urban-ag-is-not-about-the-10-mile-diet">argued on Grist</a>, the urban and the rural should become oppositional again (<a href="http://discoveringurbanism.blogspot.com/2007/11/agrarians-and-urbanists-reprise.html">not to be confused</a> with being opponents - they need each other). Synthesizing both together may have the sort of <a href="http://www2.cddc.vt.edu/marxists/reference/subject/philosophy/works/ge/gadamer.htm">Hegelian appeal</a> that’s drawn in some academics over the last century, for whom transcending accepted dichotomies is a way of life, but it’s less clear whether having one’s cake and eating it too works as well in the real world. Sprawl, which is the result of the union, happens to be much less romantic when you're parking your car at Target. So, first of all, I don’t know why a simple proposal like growing and distributing food within metropolitan areas has to carry with it such an iconoclastic dismantling of traditionally recognizable forms, but he seems to assume this from the outset.<br />
<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjO1aVMQiPFPnuHeWTgMCWkr1fn9Baol3FUVALg3_0PhrbQ0J8Pkdwnd67BrM48gg5V4GbNbFOuSyrmaROK0K8eCc4T7_9xUANm0nNT7VzNR1SVaTsBeyr87_-_3U5dXwt9iHWgdLOLKmd-/s1600/BroadAcre.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="254" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjO1aVMQiPFPnuHeWTgMCWkr1fn9Baol3FUVALg3_0PhrbQ0J8Pkdwnd67BrM48gg5V4GbNbFOuSyrmaROK0K8eCc4T7_9xUANm0nNT7VzNR1SVaTsBeyr87_-_3U5dXwt9iHWgdLOLKmd-/s320/BroadAcre.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Frank Lloyd Wright Displaying Broadacre City</i></td></tr>
</tbody></table>Waldheim goes on to review some of the prominent modernist attempts at decentralizing the city from the American Frank Lloyd Wright, the German Ludwig Hilberseimer, and the Italian Andrea Branzi. Wrights’ utopian scheme of the Broadacre City is probably the most familiar. American settlements would be organized around a network of highways and (underground) power lines, with each citizen-farmer tending to his own acre. A benevolent architect would oversee the arrangement of the whole county. Wright considered cities, as they currently existed, debased beyond all possible reform. They could only dissipate into the countryside. Since Waldheim never comes out and declares a value judgment for any of these 20th century proposals, I couldn’t quite tell if he was raising them as fruitful considerations to be built upon or as warning signs, a set of <i>reductio ad absurdum</i> arguments against pureeing our low-density rural and our high-density cities into a mush of placeless mediocrity across the landscape.<br />
<br />
A quick <a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=kqhoMHcYkiAC&printsec=frontcover&dq=Landscape+Urbanism&source=bl&ots=5T_x3Epy3Z&sig=2Onex60MV33NfPtsskqtNgUehHo&hl=en&ei=TYLUTPaTDcKBlAfu0tT6Bw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=10&ved=0CFYQ6AEwCQ#v=onepage&q&f=false">background check</a> on Landscape Urbanism suggests that he may seriously be hoping to revive the Broadacre City. When we thought Jane Jacobs had thoroughly shellacked the whole decentralist train of thought <a href="http://discoveringurbanism.blogspot.com/2007/11/book-death-and-life-of-great-american.html">back in the 1960s</a>, a few academics have apparently determined that the dictates of <i>avant garde</i> subversiveness actually swing them back into the direction of auto-dependency and vigorous fragmentation of land.<br />
<br />
Michael Mehaffy describes, on Planetizen, this curious position,<br />
<blockquote>“<span style="color: #073763;">The Landscape Urbanists, like many free-market defenders of sprawl, seem to think that sprawl is the result of inexorable forces, and did not arise as a result of comprehensible historical choices – choices that can be understood and thereby, to some extent, changed. Indeed, both groups share a remarkable consistency in their laissez-faire attitudes to what is, and what cannot be changed through concerted public action. </span><br />
<div style="color: #073763;"><br />
</div><div style="color: #073763;">Yet the historical record is clear, in the writings of Le Corbusier and others: sprawl was the result of designers' visions of their future, working with industrialists (or, less charitably, as apologists and marketers for industrialists).</div><div style="color: #073763;"><br />
</div><span style="color: #073763;">Indeed, the Landscape Urbanists' shallow "understanding" of the forces that generated sprawl seem more aimed at constructing a "grand narrative" that declares that nothing is to be done, except to create art. History, precedent, typology – all of these are irrelevant now, and the only relevant force is their own imagination: "avant-gardist architectural practice, an interest in autonomy authorship</span>."</blockquote>Add to this the fact that the kind of art under consideration here is one that cannot, as a rule, use the term beauty. The ultimate purpose is to challenge preconceived notions, which works for you if you are trying to establish a niche in the global architectural pecking order. But if you happen to be someone living within the scheme, you may just prefer something beautiful and functional as a backdrop to your life - whether or not it has been done before.<br />
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Let's go with pictures. Here’s two places in my region from the last month:<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEju5t92Y58IWtjEahTH5RMv59JeI-1iv_oSzIqDjHuYbDg67R6vJsPWXCuuG3-7bFa3iDmN37YvbFMlvu6MfFDrAkFv3XLSHt5xm5pg0Rr6HQlAPjscBO9x8d-mZR0cQeUbVD8N4V176gM3/s1600/Vineyard.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEju5t92Y58IWtjEahTH5RMv59JeI-1iv_oSzIqDjHuYbDg67R6vJsPWXCuuG3-7bFa3iDmN37YvbFMlvu6MfFDrAkFv3XLSHt5xm5pg0Rr6HQlAPjscBO9x8d-mZR0cQeUbVD8N4V176gM3/s640/Vineyard.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiKtnD1gTipnxKS4l4U6veTLqVHjlq6-nmf5cI7zysWneivyb4v-7NrDN-gBLO51zuWlQcl4NxHKdF37P7viEosv8A0IeXZFecg9pH1T84Zqp0UEsemThhaJS6radwNQSWAuJNRWLrcUPAR/s1600/Cville.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiKtnD1gTipnxKS4l4U6veTLqVHjlq6-nmf5cI7zysWneivyb4v-7NrDN-gBLO51zuWlQcl4NxHKdF37P7viEosv8A0IeXZFecg9pH1T84Zqp0UEsemThhaJS6radwNQSWAuJNRWLrcUPAR/s640/Cville.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><br />
There's an aesthetic presence to each of places that would be lost if they were mashed-up together. Downtown Charlottesville benefits from the vibrancy of human interventions, and the vineyard in Albemarle county from the relative lack thereof. <br />
<br />
Frank Lloyd Wright conjured up Broadacre City during the Great Depression, when widespread automobile ownership was just starting to take hold. Perhaps he can be excused for forgetting to draw the acres of parking lots his ubiquitous highways would necessitate, or for undercounting the hard limits, in terms of land and energy resources, his spread-out settlements would run up against. But those of us with the benefit of hindsight should think twice before dusting off the old Broadacre City.Daniel Nairnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14127732825472374125noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5079297043552042968.post-56727150312484426892010-10-27T22:02:00.000-04:002010-10-27T22:02:39.753-04:00Developing a YIMBY mindsetSuppose you’re a homeowner in a nice, classic inner suburban neighborhood. There’s a little bit of vacant land down the street from you, and rumors are going around that some developers have their eyes on it for new homes. Your neighbors are looking into their legal options for stopping any construction from happening before it’s too late. They ask you to sign a petition they are bringing to city hall. You hadn’t thought much about this issue before, but now the question is sitting right in front of you with a pen and ink. Do you sign it?<br />
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You already like where you live – that’s why you chose it – but you wonder why it couldn’t become an even better neighborhood. You want to show solidarity with your neighbors, but there’s a selfish voice in the back of your head saying: maybe I <i>want</i> a few more homes or even a store on my street. It’s true that the residents of these new homes may be criminals, but that’s not very likely. Most people are decent. Maybe you’ll borrow a hedge-trimmer from them, or they might even host a block party in a few years. You could gain some new friends. You realize that it’s <a href="http://www.dispatch.com/live/content/local_news/stories/2010/10/17/less-crime-noted-in-mixed-use-neighborhoods.html">far more likely</a> these new neighbors will call the police on someone breaking into your house than actually try to break into your house themselves.<br />
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You know the neighborhood coffee shop where you stop in the morning runs on a thin profit margin, and you would hate to see it close down during an economic down cycle. It occurs to you that a few more homes nearby means a few more daily customers. Maybe with more revenue coming in, your shop could justify serving bagels and cream cheese, giving you more breakfast options. Same goes for your friend’s dental practice on the other side of the street. Economically vibrant surroundings benefit you in a number of ways.<br />
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Then there's traffic. That’s the big one. The thought of more cars speeding by your home does give you pause, but this is where you have to consider the long-term effects. The residents of these new infill homes will probably drive less than they would if they were forced out the exurbs, meaning less overall congestion. And the more people who move in the more likely this is to be true. Maybe some will even eschew their car altogether. More people also means more political clout to get neighborhood amenities like better transit, traffic calming, a nice playground, whatever it is your neighborhood wants. And there may be a way to influence the design of this new development to reduce the chance that the new people will bring motor vehicles with them.<br />
<br />
But what if you are just odd? Everyone else seems to resist more density, not embrace it. Remember, your property values are determined by what some anonymous future buyer wants in a neighborhood, not what <i>you</i> want in a neighborhood. Maybe you should just join the angry crowd at the public hearing, if only to protect your largest financial investment and keep your options open when it's time to move. But here’s the bewildering paradox: for all the resistance, there’s actually <a href="http://www.brookings.edu/articles/2010/11_real_estate_leinberger.aspx">a huge latent demand for walkable urban neighborhoods</a> not unlike what yours could become. New neighbors and services are more likely to help then hurt your nest egg.<br />
<br />
Everything points to a <a href="http://motherjones.com/environment/2010/04/urban-density-environmentalists">yes-in-my-backyard response</a>, and you haven't even gotten into the moral heroics of saving the region from sprawl or allowing more people an affordable and accessible place to live (or recognizing property rights, for that matter). These are just your own wishes for seeing your own neighborhood change for the better.Daniel Nairnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14127732825472374125noreply@blogger.com15tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5079297043552042968.post-39092434016309224682010-10-11T23:16:00.000-04:002010-10-11T23:16:33.180-04:00The Reluctant SuburbanitesRod Dreher, a social commentator who writes under the self-titled banner “<a href="http://www.amazon.com/Crunchy-Cons-Birkenstocked-evangelical-homeschooling/dp/1400050642">crunchy conservativism</a>,” <a href="http://blog.beliefnet.com/roddreher/2010/07/the-myth-of-the-downtown-boom.html">shared on his blog</a> an interesting confession about the suburbs. Not interesting because it’s strange, but interesting because it’s so altogether normal. Despite his long-standing preference for, or at times even a philosophical commitment to walkable urban neighborhoods, he thinks he just might choose the opposite kind of house next time he moves. A conventional suburban home. Why?<br />
<blockquote>“<span style="color: #073763;">Whenever we get ready to buy our next house, it's not going to be in the city -- here in Philly, there's a four percent tax added to your wages -- but in one of the suburbs. I'd be lying if I said schools weren't a big part of it. We can't afford private schools where we live now, and the urban public school in our neighborhood leaves much to be desired, for the usual reasons. … Besides, life with kids is just easier in the suburbs. I hate to admit it, but it's true. The older I get, and the older my kids get, the less tolerance I have for the kinds of things that I didn't much mind when I was younger and in love with city life</span>.”</blockquote>Looking through the lens of personal morality or rationality or whatever, who can begrudge Dreher this decision? Let me immediately distance myself from those who reflexively cast judgment on suburbia and all who inhabit it like hurling a ball of fire down onto Sodom and Gomorrah. Let the record show, suburbanites are not evil. Yet whatever honesty Dreher reveals in this personal question, there’s still a structural tension in his mind. He can go on to say <a href="http://blog.beliefnet.com/roddreher/2010/07/the-myth-of-the-downtown-boom.html">in an update</a>,<br />
<blockquote>“<span style="color: #073763;">I think any place that makes you car-dependent is bad for your soul and the community's soul. The way we built suburbia in the 20th century was foolish and destructive in a number of ways. But we are where we are, and the flaws of suburbia don't obviate the flaws of urban life for middle-class families in the year 2010</span>.”</blockquote>Very obviously, his ideals are clashing with the reality of how things happen to have been built in America.<br />
<br />
This is exactly why you should immediately distrust anyone (ahem … <a href="http://www.newgeography.com/content/001364-the-war-against-suburbia">Joel Kotkin</a>) who insists that because people are “choosing” to live in the suburbs, in fact, the suburbs are their market choice - that the silent majority has spoken with their actions. As the logic goes: if everyone seems to be buying cookie dough ice cream then it means they must really like it, so somebody should go ahead and make more cookie dough ice cream. It's only the pistachio-craving elites who urge otherwise. Ok, but buying a home is different:<br />
<br />
First, every home is a bundled good. You’re not just buying the roof that keeps rain from hitting your head and a patch of grass. You’re buying the educational options for your children, the transportation access to your job, the character of the neighborhood and the status it confers, membership into a jurisdiction (or HOA, for that matter) and the services it provides, a perception of safety, and on and on. You can’t always just disaggregate these parts, like ordering a Soy Mocha Half-Caf latte at Starbucks, at least not if you need to fit it into a middle-class budget. This is why people like Dreher may have to compromise on neighborhood form for, say, good schools.<br />
<br />
Which gets to the second point. Real estate supply is always constrained in some way, whether by geography or land use controls (yes, <a href="http://www.marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2009/09/the-myth-of-no-zoning-in-houston.html">Houston too</a>). Even in metro areas with plenty of vacant land, there’s only one piece of land with <i>that</i> house on it. That’s just the nature of space. No two places are alike. Because the market price responds to these inevitable supply constraints, consumer demand does not always win the day. Middle-class families like the Drehers can be priced out of even preference bundles that seem logically reasonable - like a modest home on a small lot with ok schools near some neighborhood amenities.<br />
<br />
Thirdly, transitions in the housing stock move painfully slowly - as they should, because these are really durable goods. But there are other reasons the supply does not hasten to meet new demand. Infrastructure built to support an old model is hard to readapt, vested financial interests try to maintain property values through land use controls, and well-worn development business models seem less risky. As a result of these forces of inertia, a lot of us are living in houses built for the preferences exerted a generation or two ago, maybe even if it was just built five years ago.<br />
<br />
Fourthly, homes have traditionally been investments as well as consumer goods. You’re not supposed to just buy what you want, but you also have to buy what you perceive others to want. This can lead to a self-perpetuating bias for the status quo and an over-emphasis on quantitative measures like square footage. But maybe <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/23/business/economy/23decline.html?_r=1">as the investment side fades these days</a>, we can feel more free to exercise our own desires. <br />
<br />
Finally, there’s a long-standing mismatch in most metro areas between the resources for social services and those who need them most. Over many years, the demographic categories <a href="http://www.brookings.edu/press/Books/1997/metrop.aspx">have sorted themselves out</a> geographically and circumscribed themselves with political boundaries. This is part of the reason for the extra tax burden Dreher is referring to. Many suburban areas have absolved themselves of having to pay this by ensuring that the region’s share of the poor are not within their borders. Making a personal decision to buck the trend usually does carry a cost.<br />
<br />
The point, maybe hidden in here somewhere, is that there has to be many Rod Drehers out there, albeit most of them without the time or ability to wrack their brains over the urban planning implications of their choices. For every household choosing the suburbs as suburbs, in all their backyard-grilling, kid-shuttling, lawn-mowing glory, there’s another household who grit their teeth and accept this spatial arrangement because it happens to be the only option available at their price point. This is hardly an argument for building more of them.<br />
<br />
Thanks to Architecture and Morality for <a href="http://architectureandmorality.blogspot.com/">launching a discussion</a> on Dreher’s housing thought process.Daniel Nairnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14127732825472374125noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5079297043552042968.post-40236534889301374952010-10-06T11:46:00.000-04:002010-10-06T11:46:50.973-04:00A housing director who understands the full cost of housingHUD Secretary Shaun Donovan <a href="http://www.planetizen.com/news/redirect_new.php?id=46280-0">was interviewed</a> on the financial costs imposed on individual families by lower density housing patterns. Ever since the <a href="http://www.smartgrowth.org/pdf/costs_of_sprawl.pdf">Costs of Sprawl report</a> was published in 1974, the talking points have mostly hovered around the increased fiscal costs to taxpayers of sprawl - you know, the pipes and roads, public services, environmental clean up, and so forth. Lately this story has been filled out with a more precise understanding of what individual Americans pay for this arrangement not just in taxes but in the everyday effort to balance the household budget.<br />
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<div style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% transparent; color: grey; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 11px; margin-top: 5px; text-align: center; width: 512px;"></div>Daniel Nairnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14127732825472374125noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5079297043552042968.post-69514703249725501862010-09-17T23:09:00.000-04:002010-09-17T23:09:19.490-04:00Consumers need full disclosure of transportation costsIf <a href="http://www.walkscore.com/">Walkscore</a> put walkability on the real estate map (it's <a href="http://blog.walkscore.com/2010/08/street-smart-walk-score/">getting better</a> all the time, by the way), the new online tool <a href="http://abogo.cnt.org/">Abogo</a> might do the same for transportation affordability. Just type in an address and the home gets placed on a map showing average transportation costs for the surrounding neighborhood and the region. This is what you can expect to pay on a monthly basis if you choose to live here. Seeing this number in black and white may help diffuse the old <a href="http://marynewsom.blogspot.com/2010/03/destroying-drive-til-you-qualify-myth.html">drive-til-you-qualify myth</a> - that you can find more house for the money the further from the city you move. Living in lower densities may pose less up-front costs per square foot, but the ongoing cost of getting to where you need to go on a regular basis is real and likely much higher. Abogo puts a number on that reality.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgh6Lbe2U7u7s4p2gKVUK_m2Yph2MPKJqzgobWzhSx1WYOnip0eoaSuw2jxw50IG5q4MKljTVIVKRMpExRvfiVbgRYD9yWjwUmhJLGyTM3m6Lr2RyAcyVlj0lolGi_TyyzuhvsyHDDx3QLL/s1600/adogoCville.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgh6Lbe2U7u7s4p2gKVUK_m2Yph2MPKJqzgobWzhSx1WYOnip0eoaSuw2jxw50IG5q4MKljTVIVKRMpExRvfiVbgRYD9yWjwUmhJLGyTM3m6Lr2RyAcyVlj0lolGi_TyyzuhvsyHDDx3QLL/s1600/adogoCville.jpg" /></a></div> The site is developed by the <a href="http://www.cnt.org/">Center for Neighborhood Technology</a>, who have been amassing an armful of data on transportation and housing for years now. Their <a href="http://htaindex.cnt.org/">Housing and Transportation Affordability Index</a> presented this data last spring to tell the story of affordable living choices from a metropolitan area perspective, and the H+T Index site has already been incorporated into plenty of policy discussions, including the federal <a href="http://portal.hud.gov/portal/page/portal/HUD/program_offices/sustainable_housing_communities">Sustainable Communities Initiative</a>. Abogo is the next logical step, because it narrows the story to the consumer level where any real change in the marketplace will have to occur. Markets work best when information is available. As a homebuyer, the basic housing cost information is in your face. You literally have to write the check for your mortgage. Transportation costs are more nebulous, hidden in gas prices, insurance costs, saving for the next vehicle, parking, etc. Because of this, they have not typically figured into the home purchasing decision to the same degree.<br />
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I wanted to see how I stacked up out of curiosity. As a new homeowner, this tool is less useful to me now than it would have been a few months ago when we were looking, but it does put my home location in context. Abogo lists my block group as $830 a month in transportation costs for the average resident. We happen to keep meticulous budget records, and, from what I can tell, we’re spending around $200 per month for transportation. This includes amortization on the vehicle, which is oldish and no-frills. We’re a family of three – pretty average on that account. The difference probably arises out of the fact that I bike to work, and neither of us use the car every day. When we do drive – to the grocery for instance – it’s usually just a mile or so. Then there’s the occasional out of town trip.<br />
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I guess this means we have an extra $630 in our pockets each month just for some of these simple lifestyle tweaks. (Or it could mean the models are out of whack, but I've read through <a href="http://htaindex.cnt.org/method.php">the methodology</a> and it seems sound to me.)Daniel Nairnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14127732825472374125noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5079297043552042968.post-90025869034048069142010-08-07T14:03:00.000-04:002010-08-07T14:03:33.306-04:00Rational choices adding up to insane resultsI really like Andy Clarkes' <a href="http://transportation.nationaljournal.com/2010/08/will-bicyclists-and-pedestrian.php#1610357%20">pithy description</a> of one of our contemporary rituals:<br />
<blockquote>"<span style="color: #0c343d;">Just look at the madness we create for ourselves with the school trip: 20%-30% of morning rush-hour traffic in many metro areas consists of perfectly able-bodied kids being ferried to school by parents with better things to do with their time who won’t let their kids walk or ride their bikes to school because there are so many harried parents rushing their kids to school and the roads and sidewalks around the school aren’t safe. And frankly, many of the kids could use the exercise</span>." </blockquote>This evokes the old prisoners dilemma situation. Everyone would presumably be better off if children had a safe environment to get themselves to school, but each person is individually worse off if everyone else chooses to drive and their child is the only one stuck breathing the exhaust. Clarke is right in calling this "madness," but it's a particularly insidious form that feeds off of mostly rational individual choices. As frustrated as parents may be with this vicious cycle, especially those who hold to personal principles of environmental stewardship and healthy lifestyles, few will want their own children to be the ones breaking it. So they drive.<br />
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I try to remind myself how structural, not necessarily personal, the ethics of transportation and land use are.Daniel Nairnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14127732825472374125noreply@blogger.com2