ALPHA SCALE DENSITY AND RESTON by AZA

ALPHA COMMUNITY SCALE DENSITY AND RESTON by AZA

Note: Some may have seen that AZA and TMT have been playing “I post, you post” in the comment threads following somewhat unrelated posts concerning the parameters of functional density of Alpha Communities and how these densities relate to the Beta Community of Reston.

In response to TMT’s latest note I have tried to put these perspectives – clarified and updated – together in one place. I asked Prof. Risse to post it and welcomed him to edit and add notes from his perspective. Since this is all about human settlement patterns, I also asked him to alert those that review comments for violations of The Litmus Test to be especially watchful of unfounded Idea Spam and Intentional Information Sabotage.

AZA


DENSITY IN FOCUS

Following the post by Mr. Bacon on school reform, I noted:

Only when there are densities of around 30 persons per acre at the Alpha Community scale can there be efficient and effective transport alternatives that enable students to choose different educational options.

This statement is based on our understanding of the transformations that reflect 1) the end of the era of the ‘Autonomobile’ domination of settlement patterns, 2) the end of vast subsidies for dysfunctional settlement patterns, and 3) the changes in citizen settlement pattern preferences noted below.

In a later comment, TMT noted that “30 persons per acre” seemed high to him. (Most of the dialogue from his comment and my response is summarized below.)

I responded to the reference to “30 persons per acre” by noting that the original statement was “30 persons per acre AT THE ALPHA COMMUNITY SCALE.” I suggested that without a spacial quantifier, a statement on density is a meaningless abstraction. This is NOT just nit picking. Density must always be expressed in terms of quantity per some measure of area that has a specific definition.

TMT said: “I don't think this level of density is politically feasible except in selected locations.”

I responded: Of course, it is not politically (or economically) feasible (or desirable) except in specific locations. At 30 pn ac / Alpha Comm scale, even with with half the land in the County completely vacant, Fairfax County would have a holding capacity of 3.6 million citizens over 3 times the current population. Wall to wall 30 pn ac / Alpha Comm scale would put 7.2 million people in Fairfax County. Further, a wall-to-wall 30 pn ac would be a monoculture disaster.

Sustainable densities vary from Cluster to Cluster, from Neighborhood to Neighborhood, etc. The important metic is density at the Alpha Community scale.

However, the critical fact to understand in this context is that the territory within the present boundaries of Fairfax County contains not one Community but all or part of 11 or Beta Communities.

If these Beta Communities were to mature to be Alpha Communities they would have much larger populations – and all but Tysons Corner and Reston would have more Jobs – but there would also be more open land due to subdivision recycling and parcel recycling coupled with transfer of development rights and transfer of property rights.

TMT said “I believe that many current residents believe the County is already too crowded. Of course that is just my view of the dominant perception. In politics, many times perception becomes reality.”

Unfortunately ‘perception’ IS political reality until that perception is changed through education.

‘Crowding’ is an function of settlement pattern design and use. But the indicators of ‘crowding’ that most NIMBYs harp on are functions of bad design not ‘too many people.’ There is great truth in the statement:

It is not how dense you make it, it is how you make it dense.

By far the most expensive land per acre has far higher densities at Neighborhood and Village scales than are needed to have 30 persons per acre at the Alpha Community scale. In other words the market values density.

It is now becoming more and more clear that the market also values Balance and a Resilient MIX of uses.

Too often, “crowded” is just a term used to deflect the need to change. Traffic problems are thought to flow from ‘crowding’ when in fact they result from a mismatch between the pattern and density of land uses and transport system provided to achieve Mobility and Access.

Research has now demonstrated, it is also a huge mistake to believe that lower densities yields more ‘privacy’ and ‘freedom’ for citizens. This is a common myth perpetuated by those who profit from the conversion of NonUrban land to Urban land uses.

It is also a huge mistake to believe that there is a way to provide affordable and sustainable Mobility and Access to large Urban agglomerations with Larger, Private Vehicles. Prof. Risse calls this the Large, Private Vehicle Mobility Myth and has proven this point beyond a shadow of a doubt for anyone who cares to pay attention. Also see the work of the Victoria Transport Policy Institute often cited by both Bacon and Risse.

The idea that the large single Household dwelling is ‘the American dream’ is slinking away but is still prevalent enough to use to attack ‘density.’ Without informed citizens / voters, the politicians have not choice but to cave in to the irrational demand for ‘lower density and less crowding.’

Reality is dawning due to the success of a well designed Neighborhood and Village scale developments – especially near shared-vehicle system platforms – as documented by the Urban Land Institute and others.

Reality is reinforced , by the work of Richard Florida and by new research such as the 2011 National Association of Realtor’s (NAR) home buyer preference survey. This survey shows a huge swing in potential buyer attitudes from the same questions asked in 2005.

The NAR survey indicates that the majority of potential buyers want to live in places that only exist at and above 30 persons per acre at the Alpha Community Scale.

The other clear indicator of the shift in dwelling Unit preference is the continued decline of the value of Single Household Detached dwellings, especially those outside R=30.

There is a vast glut of ‘large lot Single Household Detached Dwellings’ (28 million nation-wide at last count). This is also called the OVERBUILD of too Big Houses in the Wrong Location. Prof. Risse has documented this in THE CURRENT TRAJECTORY.

WHAT ABOUT RESTON

In the density dialogue, TMT raised the example of Reston. In our view and that of many others, Greater Reston is the closest thing that Fairfax County has to a Beta Community that could easily evolve to become an Alpha Community and thus is a very good point of reference.

“Reston might be a useful example to consider. The Master Covenants limit development in Reston to 13 persons per acre overall.”

Actually it is the Residential Planned Community (RPC) zoning that sets the limit at 13 persons per acre.

In my original response I said that “the 13 person per acre ‘cap’ does not include the Town Center, the Industrial Corridor along DAAR or the outparcels and adjacent projects.”

TMT pointed out that the Town Center is zoned RPC. I had incorrect information on that fact.

What I had heard was that the Town Center development was primarily controlled by a Cordon Line traffic generation formula – perhaps that is only the non-residential uses – and that more dwellings reduced the cross-Cordon Line traffic.

The inclusion of the Town Center in the RPC zone was not central to my comments which TMT did not address.

Reston, along with every other 60s / 70s / 80s Planned New Community, was built to accommodate Large, Private Vehicles. That means to achieve a density that supports functional future settlement patterns, the density needs to move up and alternative modes of Mobility and Access need to be provided.

Perhaps EMR can fill in some details here. [EMR has added a note at the end of this post about the 13 persons per acre issue in Reston.]

The key issue is that at somewhere between 10 and 15 persons per acre Greater Reston (not just the part zoned PRC) is closer to being able to achieve Balance and thus solve the Mobility and Access Crisis, the Affordable and Accessible Housing Crisis and the Helter Skelter Crisis than any other Beta Community in Fairfax County.

One asset is an excess of jobs and another is the Affordable Housing that is the result of Bob Simon’s original commitment to have housing suitable for everyone who had a job in the Community and for a living environment every stage of a Households existence should be accommodated within Reston.

Reston is worlds ahead of the four Beta Communities in eastern Loudoun County where there are a plenty of garden apartments and townhouses but still only about 5 to 8 persons per acre at the Alpha Community scale due to failure of the County to intelligently plan (or encourage developers to intelligently plan) at the Village and Community scales as noted by NERE in his comments on the “Stop Short Changing Road Maintenance” post.

A person landing in Reston and told they need to live without a car full-time can look around and say “I can do this!” In the four Beta Communities of eastern Loudoun that person would stare into an abyss. It is a autocentric wasteland – all be it that almost every ‘community’ contains a number of desirable Clusters, some functional Neighborhoods and many individual land uses that could become parts of Alpha Communities – if only they were differently arranged.

Back to the dialogue with TMT on Reston:

TMT said “Some within the county [I think he meant ‘Reston,’ not ‘the county’] want to raise this overall limit to add substantial density in the areas near the future rail stations. From what I have observed, there is general acceptance of adding density at the rail stations, but only so long as the overall cap is maintained.”

I said: “The issue is NOT the ‘cap.’

The critical issues are Balance and Resiliency in the station-area. Given the capacity of the METRO Silver Line, the station-area should be of Village scale, not of Neighborhood scale or Community scale. That will result in being able to achieve Alpha status in the Greater Reston Community.

TMT said: “In listening to residents and leaders in Reston, I perceive that few see any benefit for themselves by increasing density beyond 13 per acre. What economic benefits would flow to existing residents to accept a higher density cap?”

Again, CAP is the wrong question. The question is Balance of J / H / S / R / A.

As for the reasons citizens should understand why it is to their benefit, see the above concerning the work of Richard Florida, the NAR study and others. Then check the trajectory of house values in those eastern Loudoun County’s Beta Communities. Without a Balance in the Village Cores, especially those at METRO stations and in the entire Community, the value of existing homes will decline. Preventing this from happening would be one big economic benefits to the existing residents and would be a good reason for them to encourage the continued evolution of functional and sustainable settlement patterns in Greater Reston.

As Dr. Risse has argued for years – before, during and after he live there (I first met him while he was living in Reston) – much of Reston is just fine for the foreseeable future so long a owners continue to invest in maintaining their properties and the Cluster Associations and the Reston Association have revenue to support their needs.

However, recycling some Clusters and some Neighborhoods would be prudent FOR ALL.

As Risse’s columns in Bacon’s Rebellion 1.0 document, the density related to the new METRO stations should be OVER and Around the Station-Platforms spanning the DAAR. There also needs to be a secondary shared-vehicle system that ties together the Village Centers and the existing Town Center.

In summary, the discussion of a 10, 13, 15 or some other number ‘cap’ is beside the point, the key issues are Balance and Resiliency.

THE BIG PICTURE

Now let me add a note in defense of NERE’s response about the future of Loudoun County in the comments following the “Stop Short Changing Road Maintenance” post.

TMT asked where NERE got his ideas:

“where is the roadmap from today's Loudoun County to one with four Alpha communities? No pun intended.”

NERE told him. It turns out there IS a roadmap and a lot of citizens understood that road map as indicated by their response at public fora in the late 90s and the candidates they voted for.

TMT then went on a tear about what EMR ought to be doing.

I have talked to him about this recently and EMR is not about to launch an new educational campaign. He has been there and done that. He clearly showed that it can be done if there are resources to support it.

It is up to leaders like TMT to establish the support to moving ahead. Citizens must be given the opportunity to become Aware of and become Interested in reality. They must then achieve Understanding and upon which to take Action if citizens are to come to well considered judgements on the path to a sustainable future.

ROCKET SCIENCE

Perhaps my perspective will help here:

There are two major differences between understanding the need to evolve functional and sustainable HUMAN SETTLEMENT PATTERNS and ROCKET SCIENCE.

First:

Understanding humans settlement patterns is much harder, and evolving functional and sustainable patterns and densities of land use is far more complex.

Second:

With respect to human settlement patterns, there is no simple chain of command which can bring together designers, fabricators and ‘deciders’ to produce, fire and reach the target (for good or evil) as there are with rockets.

ORGANIC SYSTEMS

Both of these differences are rooted in the same reality:

Human settlement patterns are organic systems. They are huge, complex systems that result from trillions of decisions by organisms that are ALSO complex organic systems (humans). The understanding of the individual human systems is still has a long ways from clarity.

Then there is this reality:

To maintain a democracy with an informed market economy to allocate resources ALL those who make the decisions that impact human settlement patterns in the market place and in the voting booth must be informed. In Groveton’s terms they must be ‘conversant’ not necessarily ‘fluent.’

(Perhaps every Cluster needs someone fluent in settlement patterns as well as someone fluent in education, someone fluent in health, someone fluent in public safety, someone fluent in communications, someone fluent in recreation, someone fluent in ecology, but EVERYONE needs to be conversant. Then must also understand how they can get answers that they can rely on from those who are fluent. Some resource persons may be at the Neighborhood or Village scales but they cannot be some remote state, federal, NATO, or UN functionary (Mr. Gooze likes to call them apparatchiks, Mr. Bacon calls them rent seeking bureaucrats and Prof. Risse calls them governance practitioners at the wrong scale of the governance structure). As Dr. Risse says in CITIZEN MEDIA, THE NEXT STEP, citizens must evolve a society that does not rely on Agents.)

THE ROLE OF CITIZENS

Long ago it became clear that one single entity cannot be responsible for making decisions on human settlement patterns.

Over the last 8,000 years the organizations created to manage the evolving human societies have changed in many ways. The evolution clearly has a long way to go. The management of civilization framework evolved slowly for 7,300 years. It started changing more rapidly after 1300. Risse lays this out nicely in THE ESTATES MATRIX. There was ‘1492 And All’ (See Guns, Germs and Steel) that stepped up the rate of change. The transformations were kicked into high gear around 1775.

There have been many paths to the current reality. In Western societies one can trace the shared responsibility for decisions on settlement pattens with some ease:

Inside The Clear Edge the responsibility to determine human settlement patterns was extended beyond the dominate chief, priest, prince, king or emperor by the granting of charters to create Urban enclaves (at that time correctly called ‘cities’)

Outside The Clear Edge it is more complex. In the English speaking Regions (lawyers like to say “in the Anglo-American Legal Tradition”) there were two separate paths. First, there was ‘The Common Law’ for private property and second, the ever evolving Law of the Forest (first articulated 1215) for common lands that were primarily crown property.

Unless and until citizens learn about the process and the alternatives to create functional human settlement patterns and to take action on those strategies, humans will struggle in a forest of myths and misunderstandings.

It may be acceptable for citizens to be ignorant about rocket science, molecular biology or celestial mechanics BUT

Humans must come to understand – for themselves, their Households, their Organizations and their the communities to which the belong at ALL scales – about 1) human heath, 2) human safety, 3) successfully raising the next generation of humans (education, et. al.), 4) the parameters of human happiness AND 5) human settlement patterns.

It is clear that citizens cannot rely on Agents or Politicians to make decisions for them if they expect to achieve a sustainable trajectory for civilization.

That may seem like a big task but the alternative is, as Jared Diamond says, Collapse.

AZA


EMR’s Note on Reston density

Ed Prichard (Edgar Allen Prichard – Booth, Prichard and Dudley, 1920-2000) drafted PRC zone category to meet Bob Simon’ objectives. (As most readers of BRB 2.0 know, Bob was the original developer of Reston.) Ed did a great job of meeting Bob’s needs. There were two major obstacles to Bob achieving his goals for Reston: The DAAR though middle of the parcel that Bob bought and Bob lost control to Gulf Oil Co early on. See Reston, the First Twenty Years for all the details.

In spite of these and other problems Reston has evolved to be a great place to live, work and seek services. EMR lived there for a decade before moving to a Planned New Community in which he had participated in the design.

EMR used the RPC zone in the development of the Village scale Burke Centre. The RPC zone worked well at that scale. The developer kept tabs of the ‘people pool’ as the project developed. The number of allowable dwellings (the metric that developers, builders and Households are concern with) changed every time the Census Bureau changed the number of people per dwelling unit. In the US and in Virginia, the number of people per dwelling unit declined from 1960 to 2005. It has since started back up and may go much higher due to the overbuild of ‘too- big’ dwellings.

An overarching problem with most municipal plans and most zoning, including the RPC zone, is that it is assumed that once a place is ‘built out’ it will not change. In most cases when change is needed one applies to change the zoning. It appears that this has not happened in the RPC zone because so much depends on the general and final plans required in the multi-phased RPC process. A static RPC may be tolerable at the Village scale but not at the Community scale. Communities must continue to evolve as the last ten years in Reston document.

In addition, once most of the land is developed there is no ‘developer’ to manage the RPC zone.

As EMR has said for years, Reston needs a new plan and a new plan process before it can evolve to become an Alpha Community. The idea that there is an immutable ‘cap’ is a product of poor strategy and a misunderstanding of organic system health.

There is one other question about which EMR has no information. Where did Ed Prichard come up with the 13 persons number? As documented in THE SHAPE OF THE FUTURE no developer of any Planned New Community in the US who had to pay for most of the costs of creating the Community designed or built a Community of less than 10 persons per acre. This is the 10 Person Rule, one of the Five Natural Laws of Human Settlement Patterns laid out in THE SHAPE OF THE FUTURE. Ten persons per acres is about what 13 persons per acre RPC zone yielded when the land along the DAAR, outparcels and adjacent land is figured in. Reston was a pioneer Planned New Community and Prichard came up with that number before Reston or any of the others were planned beyond the rough conceptual sketch phase, much less built.

Long story, short: AZA is right about the cap issue. The critical issues are Balance and Resiliency. The 30 persons per acre at the Alpha Community scale makes a lot of sense as a target for those who do not want to live in the Zentrum of a large New Urban Region and not have to rely on the Autonomobile for Mobility and Access.

EMR