Every municipality in Virginia bases its land use planning on the anticipated demand for new housing. Their plans are only as good as their projections. And the projections are good only as long as historical trends hold up.
The demand for housing is based upon the rate of new household formation. And that is driven by population growth and the average size of the household. Of the two, population growth is the most important, but average household size is by no means insigificant. Look what's happened over the past century or so: In 1915, the average household size stood at 4.5. By 1967, it had declined to 3.0, and by 2006, it had dipped again to 2.6.
Bottom line: Shrinking household size has turbo-charged the growth in demand for housing. Insofar as housing projections are predicated upon past increases in household formation, the planning assumptions embedded in comprehensive plans across Virginia assume that average household size will continue to shrink.
While population is expected to continue increasing, we cannot assume that household sizes will continue to shrink. Indeed, there is evidence that household sizes actually may begin to increase in size. That is the thesis of a column, "Reinventing the Family," that I wrote earlier this week for the Times-Dispatch. (Here is the version posted on the Boomer Project web site.)
One factor is the increasing tendency of adult GenYs to live longer with their parents. Whether the trend reflects a prolonged adolescent dependency or the economic realities of student loans and credit card debt, I don't know. But it's happening. At the same time, on the older end of the age scale, more parents are moving in with their children. Thus, we're seeing signs of a re-emergence of a three-generation household. (There are other factors reversing the atomization of the family, but those are the two biggest.)
I suspect this trend will be accelerated by the severity of the current recession. As unemployment shoots up, it only makes sense for family members to combine residences and reduce overhead. As much as Americans love their big homes and personal privacy, they are not immune to economic forces. They will change their behavior in response to adverse economic circumstances.
Yesterday, USA Today published an article quoting the National Association of Home Builders to the effect that the average size of new single-family homes, which has climbed steadily over the decades, has gone into reverse. The NAHB's analysis showed that the average size of new houses declined from 2,629 square feet in the third quarter of 2008 to 2,438 -- the steepest dip since researchers started collecting the data in 1999.
Business-As-Usual is on its last legs. Many assumptions that underpinned Virginia's governance systems of the past half century are no longer valid. We are entering a new era -- and I fear that our planners and elected officials are not prepared for it.
Friday, January 09, 2009
Tuesday, January 06, 2009
Back from the Dead: the Bacon's Rebellion E-zine
The Jefferson Institute for Public Policy has published the Jan. 5, 2009, edition -- its second -- of the Bacon's Rebellion e-zine. The highlights:
Privatization Can Transform the Delivery of State Psychiatric Services
by Leonard Gilroy
Wanted: A Virginia Land Inventory
by John Palatiello
The Ultimate Tax Cut that can Help President Obama get America’s Economy Moving Again
by Paul Goldman
The Right to Choose…Secretly
by Christian Braunlich
The Economic Mess
by James Atticus Bowden
Global Virginia
by Michael Cecire
Change We Can Believe In
Lawrence W. Framme III
Privatization Can Transform the Delivery of State Psychiatric Services
by Leonard Gilroy
Wanted: A Virginia Land Inventory
by John Palatiello
The Ultimate Tax Cut that can Help President Obama get America’s Economy Moving Again
by Paul Goldman
The Right to Choose…Secretly
by Christian Braunlich
The Economic Mess
by James Atticus Bowden
Global Virginia
by Michael Cecire
Change We Can Believe In
Lawrence W. Framme III
Sunday, January 04, 2009
MORE ON MONTANA McLODGES
Reporting from Los Angles (‘The West’ is “The West” to WaPo) Karl Vick in today’s WaPo is back on the Plum Creek / McLodges story addressed in column # 127 “Rocky Mountain Low” of 21 July 2008.
The sources Vick quoted in the earlier story -- that EMR heard from after it was published -- were not very impressed with Vick’s July coverage.
If Vick has this report about our home territory even partially right, EMR is not at all impressed with ANY of the players.
FEDS: The feds (US Forest Service) are trying to get a new “agreement” in place before 20 January (Inauguration of the new administration) to allow paving roads on public land to access potential Urban home sites on Plum Creek Timber Co's land. What would you expect from an Agency which is being run by a former timber lobbyist?
MUNICIPAL AND STATE AGENCIES. The municipal and state governance practitioners (and the tut-tut-ers in Congress) are hoping the feds will keep Plum Creek from paving logging roads so they do not have to acknowledge their central role in fostering dysfunctional human settlement patterns.
PLUM CREEK: Plum Creek Timber cannot be so deluded as to think they can sell enough land for McLodges to make a difference in their bottom line.
Many owners of existing McLodges now realize they will NEVER be able to afford to spend another late summer / early fall in Montana. When the snow melts and current owners put their second, third and fourth ‘places’ on the market, the market will disappear.
If selling any significant part of their land for McLodge development is in Plum Creek's business plan, they might as well file for bankruptcy right now.
ENVIROS: By failing to address the root problem – scattered Urban dwellings and dysfunctional human settlement patterns – Enviros have opened the door to ignorance compounding ignorance. See Larry Grosses’ note on Wal*Mart @ Wilderness Battlefield. Same problem here: The issue is Regional, Subregional settlement patterns – inside and outside the Clear Edges. Fussing over this or that transgression is a losing battle.
Further, ‘conservation advocates’ have never run the numbers. If they had, they would understand that the McLodges ploy is a smoke screen to get ‘conservation interests’ to buy the land and perpetuate the myth that these “Remote and Inhospitable” lands have Urban “development” value. Almost no one would want to develop most of the land. And the rest? If all the location-variable costs were fairly allocated almost no one could afford to “develop” or maintain a McLodge much less subdivisions of them.
EMR
The sources Vick quoted in the earlier story -- that EMR heard from after it was published -- were not very impressed with Vick’s July coverage.
If Vick has this report about our home territory even partially right, EMR is not at all impressed with ANY of the players.
FEDS: The feds (US Forest Service) are trying to get a new “agreement” in place before 20 January (Inauguration of the new administration) to allow paving roads on public land to access potential Urban home sites on Plum Creek Timber Co's land. What would you expect from an Agency which is being run by a former timber lobbyist?
MUNICIPAL AND STATE AGENCIES. The municipal and state governance practitioners (and the tut-tut-ers in Congress) are hoping the feds will keep Plum Creek from paving logging roads so they do not have to acknowledge their central role in fostering dysfunctional human settlement patterns.
PLUM CREEK: Plum Creek Timber cannot be so deluded as to think they can sell enough land for McLodges to make a difference in their bottom line.
Many owners of existing McLodges now realize they will NEVER be able to afford to spend another late summer / early fall in Montana. When the snow melts and current owners put their second, third and fourth ‘places’ on the market, the market will disappear.
If selling any significant part of their land for McLodge development is in Plum Creek's business plan, they might as well file for bankruptcy right now.
ENVIROS: By failing to address the root problem – scattered Urban dwellings and dysfunctional human settlement patterns – Enviros have opened the door to ignorance compounding ignorance. See Larry Grosses’ note on Wal*Mart @ Wilderness Battlefield. Same problem here: The issue is Regional, Subregional settlement patterns – inside and outside the Clear Edges. Fussing over this or that transgression is a losing battle.
Further, ‘conservation advocates’ have never run the numbers. If they had, they would understand that the McLodges ploy is a smoke screen to get ‘conservation interests’ to buy the land and perpetuate the myth that these “Remote and Inhospitable” lands have Urban “development” value. Almost no one would want to develop most of the land. And the rest? If all the location-variable costs were fairly allocated almost no one could afford to “develop” or maintain a McLodge much less subdivisions of them.
EMR
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