On to Virginia

I've accepted enrollment in the University of Virginia school of architecture for an MA in urban and environmental planning. I chose this school not only because of its good reputation, but also because the department espouses a vision for cities and land use that fits well with my own emerging vision.

"The trademark of our program is an abiding concern for sustainable communities signified by our inclusive urban AND environmental planning title. Our faculty values environments where countrysides are productive and appropriately protected, where cities have vital centers and efficient means of movement, and where neighborhoods offer opportunities for all to live affordably and safely. We are as much concerned with the economy and issues of equity as we are with the environment."

Yes, and yes. I believe that the next two years will help me fine-tune some of the thoughts that have been bouncing around this blog and learn how to put them to work in practical ways.

Kudos to the Missoula Federal Credit Union

I must admit I was a little skeptical when my local bank changed the name of my checking account to "green draft" last year simply because they were going to stop sending my bank statements by mail. Sure, I appreciated the gesture, but I already opted out of paper statements when I opened the account. We've reached a time when companies and organizations are falling all over themselves to prove their environmental credentials (Just look at the marketing for all major oil companies). Was there any substance behind the "going green" marketing campaign?

It turns out that there is. This year's annual meeting was transformed into a "sustainability fair" and was used to showcase many local groups who are involved in conservation of some kind. I noticed that the meeting was moved from the Hilton conference center, which dwelleth outside of Missoula in the land of motorcars, to the Holiday Inn, which dwelleth inside Missoula in the land of people. Choosing a walkable location for such events does communicate a certain level of commitment.

But, most importantly, the new branch on Russell street is hoping to be a LEED platinum certified building, which is a big deal. I'm told it will be the first of its kind in the region. Being a trailblazer through all of the regulations involved can help other businesses in Missoula feel confident in their own LEED projects. The concrete used in the building will contain fly ash, a coal byproduct, as well as recycled glass. Missoulians will be given another rare chance to recycle glass next week in order to provide more material for the building: Caras Park, between 10 am and 3 pm on April 19 & 20.

These are the kinds of real steps in the right direction that the people of Missoula can be proud of.

Another reason to scrap the HMID

I've spent a couple of posts reflecting on the damage done by the IRS home mortgage interest deduction. This extremely regressive tax deduction is essentially a form of corporate welfare for the real estate and construction industry. It also wrecks the environment by encouraging mansions and huge yards. But these not the only problems. I picked up on another negative consequence of this policy while listening to a tribute to Jane Jacobs on the Open Source radio show.

This generous tax deduction encourages households to put an inordinately high proportion of their assets into their home (or a second home). While normally the rational financial behavior is to diversify investments as much as possible to protect them from any single market problem, thanks to this deduction most middle-income Americans end up essentially putting all of their eggs into the one basket of their home.

The trouble is that a single house is actually a pretty risky investment. This makes people very protective of their nest egg. A few too many of the "wrong people" in the neighborhood or a well-placed convenience store could send their investment into a downward spiral, so they react by imposing rigorous exclusionary zoning laws or fighting tooth and nail with city council over anything that could disrupt the value of their home. The end result is a series of residential districts highly segregated according to real estate value. This is the antithesis of healthy urbanity.

Nobody is suggesting that an elimination of the HMID will end the practice of Nimbyism (Not In My Back Yard) altogether, but it at least could lower the stakes a little. If investments are more carefully diversified, as they naturally would be, then homeowners will not have to see any little infraction in their neighborhood as a threat to their entire financial well-being. It could infuse a little sanity back into process of land use planning.

The Public Square on Air

NPR just finished running a beautiful two-part series on the unique history of Washington's U-street neighborhood. The once vibrant black neighborhood was devastated by riots following the assassination of Rev. Martin Luther King in 1968. It took more than 30 years for the seeds of revitalization to finally start to grow, and now the neighborhood faces the challenge of ensuring that this growth comes with a true racial integration. The interviews reveal how particular neighborhoods can carry with them a living history, sketched into the collective memory of the community.

Stories like this are one more reason to support your local NPR station during pledge week.

The Candidates on Urban Issues

Yesterday, I had a chance to hear both Hillary and Barack share their visions for America down in Butte. Up to this point, I've been quiet about the question of who will be the next to lead the executive branch of the federal government, not so much out of general apathy, but because the candidates have been mostly quiet about issues relevant to this blog. Inga Saffron made this point in the Philadelphia Inquirer last week,

"There are three times as many urbanites in America as country folk, yet you wouldn't know it listening to the three main presidential candidates, or perusing their Web sites. Instead, you might come away thinking the United States is a collection of Norman Rockwell small towns surrounded by picture-book farms ...

Supposedly, the reason that candidates are loath to mention the C-word is that the Suburban Nation of grill-obsessed dads and van-driving moms dominates the electorate. Since it's assumed that cities will vote Democratic no matter how badly they're treated, there's no percentage for either party to talk up things like pocket parks, waterfront development, or - can you imagine? - wasteful sprawl. Besides, the discussion will only alienate voters who still associate an urban platform with cities in flames."

I don't doubt there is some pandering going on, but it's also true that most land use and transportation issues are simply local problems with local solutions. However, the federal government does have an indirect role to play in urban planning that could use some more exposure. Here's a few points I can think of ...

1. Energy. Everyone agrees that our current energy consumption is totally unsustainable. All three candidates are promising more investment in alternative energy sources, although the Democrats have been more detailed in their proposals. In the speeches last night, both Clinton and Obama mentioned clean coal (an oxymoron), biofuels (stupid), solar (good), and wind (good). From time to time, we also hear plans for subsidizing hybrid vehicles and boosting energy efficient homes. Since compact living is inherently energy efficient, what cities really need from the federal government is a carbon tax. All three candidates prefer the clunkier cap-and-trade system, probably because it doesn't contain the word "tax", and that might just have to do. Obama and Clinton's plans are identical in this respect.

2. Transportation. Local public transportation needs a strong national transportation system to thrive. Clinton's national transportation plan explicitly calls for $1.5 billion annually for public transportation, and an additional billion for an inter-city rail line. She also discusses innovative methods for automobile congestion pricing. Obama's plan is less specific, but he does endorse "policies that incentivize greater bicycle and pedestrian usage of sidewalks and roads." Importantly, Obama lent unconditional support to Mayor Bloomberg's congestion pricing plan for New York City. McCain is very weak on transportation and has spoken of eliminating Amtrak altogether, much to the consternation of some of his fellow conservatives.

3. Housing. It's well known how 20th century federal housing policies deliberately subsidized low-density development and ended up desiccating inner-cities in the process. Will federal tax policy continue to support the trend of building bigger and more spread out houses? This is where both Democratic candidates are on shaky ground, especially with their continued support for expanding mortgage interest tax deductions. This policy has the good intention of bolstering homeownership, but what it really does is compels homeowners to want more home than they already have. As politically insensitive it may have been, McCain showed some courage by holding reckless home-buyers partially to account for their own situation. Also, as a Brookings Institute report shows, there are still some problems with federal low-income housing programs that continue to concentrate poverty in single areas. I'm not sure where the candidates stand on this issue.

Good planning may not be making it into the stump speeches, but a little digging does expose some real positions that the candidates are taking.

Public energy, professional wisdom

Two recent opinion pieces for Planetizen reveal an interesting tension over the extent of public involvement in the planning process. This issue is especially relevant after the rise of Web 2.0, when you have random citizens with no formal experience pontificating excitedly about complicated land use issues. Is this a good or bad thing for communities?

In Two Things People Hate: Density and Sprawl, Barbara Faga wrote,

"We’ve been conducting public meetings for years. And it used to be easier. Present the plan. Discuss the plan. Talk about how your plan is better for the neighborhood/community/city/region and provide the conclusion. But things have changed. When did the public become planning experts? People appear at public meetings and talk about density and land use. They know how many units per acre are good…and bad. Of course, they tend to be wrong, as they do not discuss design. Still, public meetings have become the forum for the public to debate density with experienced planners and designers."

Her view of planning emphasizes the technical expertise and centralized order of the profession. It would be absurd for an engineer to solicit public comment on how to build a bridge, so why would planners democratize the decision of what density is appropriate for good design. There has to be some way out of the gridlock that comes with hundreds of different voices all yelling out their own agenda.

Another planner, Scott Page, swings the emphasis in the other direction with DIY Urbanism.

"I think many planners, in principle, agree that public involvement and grass-roots approaches to planning are necessary. The emphasis on the sheer numbers of people a plan "includes" is only one recent example of our profession’s emphasis on public involvement. But I think deep down, many colleagues see a distinctive split between involving the public and empowering them to implement. Involving is necessary and important to get any plan endorsed. But once that plan is complete, the public (residents, business owners, local stakeholders) is many times not regarded as an implementation partner except perhaps in roles of advocacy...

In essence, a little anarchy (as in less centralized governing) ... would be good for society and cities in particular. It’s the DIY ethic on the community scale – self reliance and empowerment would do an immense amount of good for all communities because people would be forced to organize themselves into action."

Scott Page favors a more genuinely grassroots approach, where planners play the role of harnessing the repository of ideas and enthusiasm of the public into workable solutions. After all, the people are the ones who actually live in the community, so they should be able to impose their own values from the bottom up rather than be told by experts how to arrange themselves.

This really is an ancient and universal tension. It showed up between the writers of the Federalist papers, with Madison pushing for a robust Republicanism of participatory politics and Hamilton wanting more authority given to educated and specialized elites. A sort of balance shimmied its way into the American system of representational democracy. On the corporate level, innovative companies like Google have also struck upon a similar balance. On the one hand, they have intentionally fostered a spirit of chaos. Employees are given a remarkable amount of latitude to explore their own ideas and passions, and open source techniques open up the tableau of self-expression to the public at large. Yet, you know it's still a hierarchical corporation, not just a massive free-for-all.

How will local planners draw some order out of the chaos in their communities without squelching its simmering energy?

No growth isn't very smart either

In a place like Missoula, its tempting to just freeze time and keep our town the way it is. We're small enough in population so that you run into friends at the grocery store, yet we are large enough to provide many of the cultural activities of a city. The pristine mountains and valleys are still here, yet we are seeing them slowly covered over in a carpet of sprawl. Crime levels are relatively low. It seems like a great time to circle the wagons and protect what is here before it's gone.

Yet, this is impossible. The ancient Greek philosopher Heraclitus once remarked, "No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it's not the same river and he's not the same man." Movement and change are realities that cannot simply be shrugged away. Cities are not abstract entities that can be artificially tweaked and assigned certain properties, but they grow organically like a plant in response to sunlight and water. Regulating new housing out of existence will merely channel the growth in different ways, as the river flows down the path of least resistance.

A no growth policy in a desirable town will result in another Aspen, Colorado. On the surface, it looks like there will be winners and losers. The winners: independently wealthy, retirees, non-resident property owners. Losers: poor, young people starting careers, and renters. Yet, at a deeper level, everyone will be losers. Jane Jacobs has drawn attention to the natural synergy developed in cites that have a true diversity of people, younger and older, service industry and creatives, commerce in all of its variety. With the loss of diversity, so goes the energy, innovation, and essential lifeblood of the community. A real city would be transformed into a mere plastic representation of a city for tourists.

But the biggest selling point of no growth is its benefit to the environment. Wouldn't cutting off growth at least protect the land? Superficially yes, but ultimately no. Local growth policy has no effect whatsoever on birth rates, death rates, or even international migration patterns. It would merely shuffle the same total number of people to a different place in the United States. The reason this would have a net negative effect on global energy usage and carbon emissions is pretty simple. First, economically polarized communities are not at all self-sustaining. Workers will have to be transported in from somewhere else to serve the wealthy, and this is hard on the planet. Secondly, if communities with the political wherewithal to manage growth in sustainable ways opt to cut it off entirely than all growth will be diverted to sprawling metropolises like Houston, who could frankly care less.

The genius of smart growth is its navigation between these poles. Sure, the fact that "smart growth" is endorsed by both the Sierra Club and the National Association of Home Builders is more a testament to the slipperiness of language than it is an instance of the lion laying down with the lamb (who wants "dumb growth"?), yet this only underscores the need for objective and observable criteria. The key really is concentration of development. Missoula could easily welcome each and every person who wishes to live here a place into the heart of town, within city limits, and simultaneously stop sprawl entirely. But the sticks of peripheral regulation should never outpace the carrots of density incentives.