A Fresh Look at the Housing/Transportation Crisis

We're all familiar with the housing crisis, and we're all familiar with the transportation crisis. And readers of this blog understand that the two phenomena are hopelessly entangled because many households seeking less expensive housing are willing to trade longer commutes for lower mortgages.

To gauge a region's livability, one cannot consider the affordability of housing in isolation. It is far more meaningful to analyze the cost of housing and transportation together. That is the purpose behind the Housing and Affordability Index created by the Center for Neighborhood Technology for 52 major metropolitan regions around the country.

The map above shows in blue the parts of Hampton Roads where housing/transportation is unaffordable (consuming more than 48 percent of area median income). The map below displays Northern Virginia.

Visit the Housing & Affordability Index website here to view other metro areas and experience the full functionality of the mapping tools. (Hat tip to Jonathan Mallard, who referred me to a post on Buttermilk & Molasses.)

ON THE ECONOMY

As we point out in PART IV of THE PROBLEM WITH CARS, 15 May 2007 may be thought of decades from now as the ‘Ides of March’ of the Autonomobile – Large, Private Vehicles.

The week that proceeded and the week that followed the 15 th of March in 2008 may be thought of as the ‘Ides of March’ for the leveraged, securitized, subsidized Global Economy, as we knew it.

The last few days there has been a “too-numerous-to..” count, cite or link-to flood of MainStream Media coverage but there is no examination of the bottom line:

Two items get no press.

First the real cause of the current crisis. Behind (or perhaps underneath?) the current financial Enterprise meltdown is the very same problem that was the root cause of the Savings and Loan Crisis (mid-80s), the Banking Crisis / Commercial Real Estate Meltdown (late-80s to mid-90s). The problem?

Dysfunctional human settlement patterns.

We had dogs in all these fights. We also had friends who we had warned five years before they went under in every downturn since Boise Cascade was wiped out by raw land speculation in the mid 70s. Our personal, inside experience includes not just national poster children like Boise Cascade and Continental Illinois Bank but a lot of Regional ones as well.

The lesson for citizens is simple: Evolve functional settlement patterns or suffer the economic consequences.

Sure, the “cause” of the current crisis is said to be the securitized sub-prime loans and securitized credit card debt that kicked over the house of cards. There were many other sub-problems too.

However, those most who were convinced by MainStream Media ads and low initial mortgage payments to buy a $300,000 to $900,000 dollar house in the R = 25 Miles to R = 60 Miles Radius Band could have afforded a $120,000 to $500,000 dwelling in R = 2 to R = 20 Radius Band.

The cause of the Affordable and Accessible Housing Crisis is this: Agency regulation and Enterprise short term profit objectives resulted in the building the wrong size house in the wrong location. The cause of the Mobility and Access Crisis is the need to rely on Autonomobiles to get from where citizens are to where they need to be.

The second overlooked issue: The headlong rush to solve the wrong problem.

Some – the Lame Duck White House and the lame candidates who want to next occupy the White House – are pretending there is no Recession. Recent polls indicate that around 75 percent of the citizens think, and are acting as if, there is a Recession at hand With about the same percentage of the economy dependent on consumer spending, citizens and not Wall Street Titans or Federal regulators, are the ones who will make the decisions.

For most citizens, the past 10 years have been much like a recession as we point out in “Good News, Bad Reporting,” 5 March 2008.

At the same time as some some are in denial, others are focused on bailing out the leveraged, securitized, subsidized fools who got us here.

Steven Pearlstein quotes Nouriel Roubini: The current system has perfected a system of “socialized risk and privatizing gain.” E. J Dionne Jr says the Wall Street Titans have turned into “a bunch of welfare clients.”

Yes, there is a lot to be said for Groveton’s point that now that everyone in the boat is where they are, Agencies have to bail out the fat cats that caused the problem because if not far more citizens will suffer.

The point we make in “Good News, Bad Reporting” is that trying in vain to prevent a needed Recession may throw us all into a Depression.

EMR

SERENEDIPITY

When someone has been working for nearly 50 years to answer a set of questions it is splendid to come across another person who has arrived at many of the same answers to those questions via a much different route.

In 1961 while standing in what we now call a Cluster (Lewisburg Square) in a place of the scale we now call a Village (Beacon Hill) in the Boston New Urban Region we were finally able to articulate questions that had bounced around in our head while growing up on a farm, in the desert and in what we now call the Northern Rocky Mountain Urban Support Region.

The complexity of the questions was magnified by studying forestry, physics, mathematics, architecture and philosophy in Montana and Hawaii and by military service and travel in most of states of the US of A.

It took until 2000, aided by more studies, teaching at three universities, extensive travel in Europe, the Carribean and North America as well as working for some very smart clients to be in a position to set down a comprehensive Conceptual Framework and the Vocabulary necessary to address these questions in The Shape of the Future.

Imagine our delight at encountering the work of Richard Register! We have not met Register and do not agree with everything he writes but we do agree on a lot. The areas of agreement range from the problems with settlement patterns that require extensive or exclusive use of Autonomobiles, to the level of energy and resource efficiency one can expect from functional human settlement patterns, to what is happening to put citizens back in jeopardy in the New Orleans New Urban Region, to what Bill Gates and Warren Buffett could better be doing with their money.

Register’s base of operation and his current hands-on projects are focused in the Community and Subregion where we went to law school so we have an appreciation for the places he is trying to make better. His work takes him around the world and his observations about the places we have also experienced are on target. His insights into those we have not yet seen are enlightening.

Where does serendipity come in? We found out about Register when we contacted a college roommate to congratulate him on being named a Professor Emeritus at the University of Montana. His daughter, Kristin Miller, works with Register in Oakland, a Zentrum in the San Francisco Bay New Urban Region. We quoted Kristin in PART I of THE PROBLEM WITH CARS. We have not met Kristin either but heard about her years ago when her father was a struggling grad student at the University of Texas. Miller and Register are hard at work getting ready to host the seventh International Ecocity Conference (www.ecocityworldsummit.org )

We will be quoting Register in PART IV of THE PROBLEM WITH CARS and will be reviewing his book “Ecocities: Rebuilding Cities in Balance with Nature.” in Chapter 16 of TRILO-G. (Back in 1973 we started planning, building and managing what became the Village scale enclave of Burke Centre with the logo “Community in Harmony with Nature.” Burke Centre is home to around 20,000 citizens living in as much harmony with nature as is possible in National Capital Subregion and stay within the regulations of Fairfax County, VDOT, et. al.)

Register’s main web site is www.ecocitybuilder.org He maintains a Blog on that site where he post his current thinking. You can learn about the Denis Hayes Paradox – “Why are environmental Organizations winning so many battles and losing the war?” and the Richard Register Pledge: “This is the last new car I will every buy.”

Ecocity Builders publishes an enewsletter. It was a “perspective” in the March – April 2008 edition titled “Enduring Civilization” that cemented my respect for Register’s thinking. He outlines four parameters and two guidelines for future action. They have the heft of Fundamental Change.

Unfortunately the enewsletter is not accessible from the web site. If you would like a copy, send me an email and I will forward it.

We are calling attention to Registers work not so much for the Denizens who post comments on Bacons Rebellion Blog but for those who follow our columns and posts and communicate with us directly. We are chagrined to say some who find our work useful refuse to post or comment on a web site that is listed in some sources as being a “right” site and has contributors who are identified as being “right of center,” libertarian or conservative.

Our view is that if those who believe that it is imperative that civilization achieve a sustainable trajectory do not stop tossing rocks at one another then an evolution toward sustainability will never happen. See “Good News: Bad Reporting” 5 March 2008.

Alas, we will probably never be friends with Register because he has centered his work around developing “Ecocities.” We have found that the word “city” is a Core Confusing Word. But then he is working on “urban Villages” so there may be hope.
OK, we will not mention Core Confusing Words when we meet Richard Register.

EMR

Good News, Bad Reporting

I'm heading off to Wyoming next week, and I won't be able to publish the next edition of the Bacon's Rebellion e-zine until a week after I return. But Ed Risse has a time-sensitive column he'd like to put into the public domain before it gets too stale.

Good News, Bad Reporting

As the economy weakens, you can count on the MainStream Media to defend MassOverconsumption and Business As Usual in a desperate bid to keep the advertising dollars flowing.

In this column, EMR picks through a stack of year-end articles from the Washington Post and other MSM publications on the economy, and interprets them through the prisms of the Mobility and Access Crisis, the Affordable and Accessible Housing Crisis and the Helter Skelter Crisis. EMR argues that the rash of gloomy headlines confirms his thesis that the Business-As-Usual economy is not just environmentally unsustainable but fiscally and socially unsustainable.

EMR also argues that WaPo and the rest of the MainStream Media fail to see the forest for the trees, unable or unwilling to elucidate the common threads that bind these seemingly divers developments. He attributes this institutional blindness to the transformation of newspapers and other news outlets from members of the "Fourth estate" to commercially driven enterprises with a stake in maintaining Business As Usual.

RIGHT ON CUE

Jim Bacon did a find job of pointing out some of the problems with innovation in shared-vehicle systems in his lead column this week. "The Innovation Gap."

Right on cue, METRO demonstrated how right he is.

In today’s WaPo it is reported that METRO is considering running some Blue Line trains through the underutilized Yellow Line Potomac tunnel. We will not bother with the details, except to say it is a good idea.

It is such a good idea that over 25 years ago, while working to increase the capacity of the Orange line we suggested this very same move.

Most of the ideas that became the Backgrounder "It is Time to Fundamentally Rethink METRO and Mobility in the National Capital Subregion" http://www.baconsrebellion.com/ surfaced in white papers by EMR and reports by the Fairfax County Chamber of Commerce Transportation Committee. (FCC of C Trans Comm was one of the seven large Enterprise-backed Organizations EMR chaired / served on from the mid 70s to the late 80s.)

The initial feedback from staff at METRO was positive on the ideas including the Turquoise Line. Later we learned that they were vetoed by senior staff. "We are going to complete the 101 mile system before we make any changes," and "it would cost too much to reprint all the maps" were the only specifics that we ever heard.

So Jim is right. To understand why he is right read Supercapitalism by Robert Reich.

The problem is now that the settlement pattern in most of the urbanized area within R=23 to R= 25 is not suitable for METRO-like shared-vehicle systems (aka, Heavy Rail). That means citzens must morph the settlement patterns and come up with new technology.

We focus on these critical issues in column after column on Rail to Dulles. See "Who Killed Rail-to-Dulles?" and "Why METRO-to-Tysons Is a Mess."

In a comment yesterday, Larry Gross noted interest in Personal Rapid Transit. For years the advocates of PRT including our friends who started the Advanced Transit Organization have said that PRT can better serve dispersed origins and destinations.

We have reservations. Those interested in PRT search "PRT" in the back columns at http://www.baconsrebellion.com/

Vocabulary is also an issue here as it is everywhere in the real world. As long as shared-vehicle systems are called "mass transit" few will be interested in the topic.

EMR

THE PENDULUM SWINGS

Our next Backgrounder will examine why MainStream Media is doing such a bad job of providing the information citizens need to make intelligent decisions in the marketplace and in the voting booth.

From time to time MainStream Media does do a very good job of documenting the results of citizens making bad decisions in the marketplace and in the voting booth.

A case in point is the series WaPo is running on "Harvesting Cash" – details of federal farm subsidy pork barrel / fraud. In another good example, WaPo recently ran a series on the disasters generated by federal pork barrel water projects about which the veto override made the news this week. Both are available in the archives at http://www.washingtonpost.com/

Of interest today is the Page One coverage by Steven Mufson: "Oil Price Rise Causes Global Shift in Wealth." The wealth transfer is stupendous, the graphic on the jump page with respect to the impact on the US of A is frightening.

The US of A is a wounded whale with a lame duck president and such dysfunctional settlement patterns that there is little hope of changing course without massive economic, social and physical pain.

Fundamental Change in human settlement patterns is the only possible course of action that will significantly reduce foreign oil dependency. It is the only way to substantially reduce the demand for Autonomobile use other transport waste that consums 70 percent of the oil imports.

Fundmental Change in settlement patterns is the only way citizens can be happy and safe, and not be hostage to rising oil prices.

WaPo tells us where citizens are going due to past errors in the marketplace and in the voting booth. They did not tell citizens that there were alternatives nor did they articulate the result of the current trajectory when the resources were available to make Fundamental Change without massive pain.

Enjoy to game.

EMR

TAMU AGAIN

A quick review of the newly released "TAMU 2007 Urban Mobility Study Based on 2005 Data" (aka, TTI ‘07) indicates:

This version has the same basic flaws as the earlier ones that are outlined in our 20 September 2004 column "Spinning Data, Spinning Wheels." TAMU’s 2007 version is:

1) Based on two year old data

2) The data is provided by Agencies who have competitive and professional interest in low balling the congestion numbers

3) The area of coverage appears to still be the Census "urbanized area" which, especially in disaggregated New Urban Regions such as Washington - Baltimore, leaves out most of the area of the MSA and does not address CMSA conditions – to say nothing of New Urban Region reality. This means those with the longest commutes and most of the Community, Village and Neighborhood scale congestion outside Radius = 20 Miles is not considered.

4) The study is authored by, paid for by, reviewed by and the information distributed by those (including MainStream Media) who have a professional and financial stake in not addressing the root cause of the Mobility and Access Crisis.

The root cause of the Mobility and Access Crisis is, of course, almost exclusive reliance on Large, Private Vehicles and a Large, Private Vehicle Support system with which citizens are expected to achieve mobility and access in an urban, technology driven society.

There must be a Balance between the travel demand generated by human settlemetn patterns and the transport systems provided to achieve mobility and access. That Balance is not possible relying primarily on Large, Prvate vehicles. It is a matter of physics, not policy.

The Crisis is perpetuated by a failure to fairly allocate the cost of location-variable goods and services. As Jim Bacon points out, a free, well informed land market is part of the solution. However, without a fair allocation of the costs and a democratic process to evaluate any tweaking of the system (aka, subsidies), Business-As-Usual rules as mobility and access tends to entropy at an accellerating rate as documented by TAMU.

Obfuscation is compounded by the those with a variety of agendas. The imagination of Peter Gordon and other anti-anti-Autonomobile apologists is nearly beyond comprehension. See "A Different Take on TTI" below.

While some understand the need for change, most who have access to the data and are willing understand the metrics involved also recognize the personal and organizational economic impact of considering Fundamental Change in human settlement patterns and Fundamental Change in governance structure vis a vis the Mobility and Access Crisis and thus stonewall rational discussion.

In spite of these and other problems raised in our 2004 column, the TAMU study is the "best available" information on the scope and cost of the Mobility and Access Crisis.

EMR

A QUICK RESPONSE TO LYLE

On the IT WILL TAKE MORE THAN LINT

At 3:19 PM, Lyle said...

Ed, let me express the foundation for my optimism on your two concerns.

1: A number of excellent ideas are brewing, being tested, and implemented. Congestion pricing is one of them, but there are many, many more such as local food systems, cradle to cradle design, green public revenue shifts (which includes congestion pricing), cutting inefficient subsidies, and improving civic participation with publicly financed elections, proportional representation, instant runoff voting, choice voting, citizen councils, and so on.

YOU ARE VERY RIGHT, THESE ARE GOOD IDEAS. ALL THESE AND MORE HAVE BEEN ON THE TABLE SINCE THE EARLY 90S WHEN WE FIRST FOCUSED ON THE NEED TO ACHIEVE A SUSTAINABLE TRAJECTORY FOR CIVILIZATION

In desperation, our politicians and business leaders will look for easy solutions and pick those that can best be implemented. Onward the slapdash evolution of our society goes, in constant fear of Fundamental Change, but constant struggle towards it.

THERE IN LIES THE PROBLEM. SO FAR WE GET ABUSER FEES, ADVICE TO GO SHOPPING IN THE FACE OF TERRORIST ATTACKS AND A FAILURE TO ENFORCE LAWS OR REBUILD INTELLIGENTLY AFTER NATURAL DISASTERS.

UNLESS THERE IS AN OVERARCHING CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK SUCH AS FUNCTIONAL HUMAN SETTLEMENT PATTERNS – OR SOME OTHER THAT YOU OR OTHERS ARTICULATE IN DETAIL – THE LEADERSHIP OF BUSINESS-AS-USUAL WILL CHERRY PICK THIS AND THAT.

THUS OUR CONCERN FOR AN AGENDA FOR FUNDAMENTAL CHANGE AND OUR CONCERN THAT THERE WILL NO RESOURCES LEFT TO ACHIEVE THAT CHANGE WHEN IT BECOME OBVIOUS THAT THERE IS NO ALTERNATIVE.

AS I TELL MY OPTIMIST FRIEND JAMES A BACON: EVERY GOOD IDEA IS SEEN AS "SOLUTION" THAT GIVES BUSINESS-AS-USUAL AND EXCUSE TO DELAY FUNDAMENTAL CHANGE

2: We use a tiny percentage of the solar energy that reaches this planet.

VERY TRUE BUT READ WITH CARE OUR DISCUSSION OF THE "THICK / THIN" PROBLEM OF SOLAR (AND ALL "RENEWABLE" ENERGY SOURCES) IN OUR COLUMN "THE CONSERVATION IMPERATIVE" OF 19 JUNE 2007.

We use a tiny percentage of the potential wind energy.

THAT IS TRUE TOO AND THE SAME LIMITATIONS APPLY TO SOLAR, WIND AND EVERY "NATURAL / RENEWABLE" SOURCE VIS A VIS CREATING FUNCTIONAL HUMAN SETTLEMENTS FOR A TECHNOLOGY DEPENDENT URBAN SOCIETY.

NATURAL SOURCE STRATEGIES ARE GREAT. THEY ARE THE ONES THAT REA SHOULD HAVE DEVELOPED FOR NONURBAN SETTLEMENT PATTERNS INSTEAD OF STRINGING WIRES. THE NONURBAN POPULATION IS 5 PERCENT OF THE TOTAL.

INTERREGIONAL BIG GRIDS, INCLUDING NONURBAN DISTRIBUTION, WASTE MORE ENERGY IN GENERATION, TRANSMISSION AND DISTRIBUTION THAN THEY DELIVER TO END USERS.

We still have a hundred years or so of coal,

BUT DO WE HAVE THE TECHNOLOGY TO USE IN WAYS THAT DO NOT CAUSE MORE PROBLEMS? ARE YOU PLANNING TO GO TO BEIJING FOR THE OLYMPICS?

and several decades at least of oil.

NOT ONLY THAT BUT WE HAVE SYNTHETICS TO REPLACE OIL BUT AT WHAT COST? WHO WILL BE ABLE TO PAY FOR THESE "SOLUTIONS?" NOT ENOUGH WILL BE ABLE TO AFFORD THEM TO ELECT A STABLE GOVERNMENT.

Thin film solar promises to revolutionize that industry, and I fully expect other innovations in other areas.

I EXPECT YOU ARE RIGHT BUT AT WHAT COST AND WILL THESE NEW INNOVATIONS PROVIDE EQUIVALENT PROPERTIES TO THOSE PROVIDED BY THE NATURAL CAPITAL WE ARE BURNING UP? FOR EXAMPLE, WHAT WILL POWER LARGE, PRIVATE VEHICLES WHICH ARE IMPERATIVE TO ACHIEVE MOBILITY AND ACCESS? MORE ON THIS IN "THE PROBLEM WITH CARS."

Most urgently, we have vast expanses of government subsidized waste to tap, should we require the juice.

BUT HOW DOES ONE TAP THAT WASTE WITH THE EXISTING GOVERNANCE STRUCTURE? HOW DO YOU CHASE AWAY ALL THOSE WHO ARE FEEDING AT THE TROUGH. WHAT ABOUT ALL THOSE WHO ARE CHANTING: WHAT? ME WORRY?

If we decide to act within the next decade,

A DECADE IS THE RIGHT TIME FRAME BUT IN THAT PERIOD CITIZENS AND THEIR ORGANIZATIONS MUST BE TAKING DECISIVE ACTION, NOT JUST DECIDING TO DO "SOMETHING."
AND THUS OUR TWO CONCERNS:

1) LACK OF AN OVERARCHING STRATEGY

2) TAKING INTELLIGENT ACTION BEFORE THERE ARE NO RESOURCES LEFT

we have fabulous resources to do so. Still, I do agree that urgency is appropriate.

Thank you for your good work and inspiration.

YOU ARE WELCOME, THAT IS OUR JOB

EMR

Eeeeee! We're Not Growing Fast Enough!

Here's a novel predicament: Virginia Beach city council members are worried because they're experiencing too little residential growth.

Reports Dierdre Fernandes with the Virginian-Pilot: "When City Council members approved increased development in the Princess Anne area, they assumed that hundreds of high-cost homes would quickly replace the woods and soybean fields and help pay for much-needed road improvements."

That hasn't happened.

In 2003, the City Council approved up to 3,000 homes for the transition area, 9,600 acres between the suburban north and rural south.

In the past four years, the council has allowed for 1,376 potential homes. But by the month's end, 50 are expected to have been sold. That's far less than the 700 homes Beach officials projected would be generating tax money by this point. ...

The transition area funding plan had called for a portion of real estate revenue from projects ... to be set aside for road projects in Princess Anne. A city analysis showed that the overall development in the transition area could pay for itself and create a $187 million surplus in tax revenue.

Residential development a good thing? Virginia Beach must be using a different econometric model from the localities in Northern Virginia. Somebody needs to revisit some core assumptions guiding their growth-management policies.

(Hat tip to reader Steve Horton for this story.)

THOSE LIVING IN OLD GLASS HOUSES ...

Under the post "A YARD WHERE JOHNNY CAN RUN AND PLAY
At 8:46 PM, Anonymous said...

"M. Risse's comments about settlement patterns have a deep foundation of irony for me because he lives in one of those giant houses in a small lot in a modern subdivision rather than in the city or in a place more consistent with his perspectives.

"I am a preservationist, and I live and put my wallet there, albeit I do not sell books about it.

"One can write a book advocating no alcohol but still drink. The reader may never know; does it matter?"

The work of SYNERGY/Planning is centered on a branch of science that is not yet widely understood. For this reason, the experience and veracity of spokespersons is critical. An off-hand statement such as this is deceptive, damaging and requires a factual response.

Let us examine the statement of Anon 8:46 in detail:

"M. Risse's comments about settlement patterns have a deep foundation of irony for me because he lives in one of those giant houses in a small lot in a modern subdivision rather than in the city or in a place more consistent with his perspectives."

What is "ironic" is that Anon 8:46 has no idea about what he / she speaks.

"... he lives in one of those giant houses in a small lot in a modern subdivision rather than in the city or in a place more consistent with his perspectives."

As an overview, if Anon 8:46 had any idea of the parameters of functional human settlement patterns he would know that this "place" – this Dooryard (Derby Way), this Cluster (Menlough), this Neighborhood (Culpeper / Menlough / Hospital Hill), this Village (Greater Warrenton) and this Community (Greater Warrenton-Fauquier) is / are fully consistent with our perspectives.

He / She would also know we recommend never using the term "city" because the use of the word, other than as part of the legal name of a municipality, generates confusion about the structure and function of human settlement patterns and compounds Geographic Illiteracy and Spacial Ignorance.

We will deal with "giant" house and "modern subdivision" below but first some history.

BACKGROUND

Over first 32 years of our life we lived in 21 dwellings from Puerto Rico to Hawaii. Two were built by my father, six were historic structures. The dwellings ranged in context from a flat over a bakery in Old San Juan to a log house backing up to forest and mountains that stretched for 135 miles – Flathead National Forest Service / Bob Marshal Wilderness / Sun River Game Preserve.

The first house I purchased was a Queen Anne on Maple Street in a small college town from which I could walk to work. When our oldest child could kick a soccer ball into the flower beds we moved to a Planned New Community.

Over the next 30 years I lived in Single Family Attached Dwellings in three Planned New Communities. The cluster density averaged 30 persons per acre and the community density averaged 10 persons per acre. These places had the elements of good places to raise a family that we list in our column "A YARD WHERE JOHNNY CAN RUN AND PLAY." These were not just places to live but places where we worked and where we evolved the concepts found in our writing.

We were living in a Planned New Community when the 1973 Arab Oil Embargo provided a dramatic view of the future. We did everything we could to cut our energy consumption and reduce what is now termed our ecological footprint. Our family activities, mobility choices and lifestyle were featured on the front page of the community newspaper. When someone says put your money where your mouth is – been there, done that.

The problem was that very few others did what we did. We drove the old rabbit until our employer said he was embarrassed that a senior executive in his firm was driving such a ratty old car. He bought us Porsche.

THE SEARCH

When we completed The Shape of the Future in 2000 we spent the better part of two years looking for the best place to live next. I have a hearing loss due to military service and noise bothers me. While well located from many perspectives Fairfax Center near the confluence of I-66, US Route 50 and Fairfax Parkway is a very loud place due to the tire howl of traffic on these routes. The political erosion of the original Fairfax Center plan was also a pain to live with.

We considered places from Chincoteague, MD to Shepherdstown WV and from Southern PA to Charlottesville. Due to our regional, national and international work, a location in the Washington-Baltimore New Urban Region and not too far from Dulles was ideal.

After settling on a place in the Piedmont of Virginia we surveyed half a dozen urban enclaves and choose Greater Warrenton. We drew quarter and half mile radii from the Court House and looked at every building for sale. Early 2002 was not a time where there were a lot of houses on the market. We wanted to be within 1/4 mile of Main Street but could not find a building that would meet our needs.

I had not lived in a single family detached dwelling for 30 years and when we could not find an attached dwelling or other suitable structure, one of the tradeoffs was that a single family detached dwelling would provide an opportunity to further our research and broaden our experience. Those who read our work will be finding out what we have learned in TRILO-G. Some of it may surprise you, it did me.

THIS PLACE

Dwelling:

The house at 124 Derby Way is a "used house" and about average for its age and price range. It is not "giant" by any stretch. It is in the mid 3,000s sq ft on three floors depending on what is counted. There are two bedrooms. The lower level is devoted to our office and a large studio with conference space and four work stations for the different tasks involved in our work. There is also a map and file room, a storage closet, etc. The third level is devoted to my partner and wife’s office, studio and a guest room. We live on the first floor although that is also where the main office library is located.

The lot is one fifth of an acre and provides an opportunity to understand the benefits and burdens of living in a single family detached dwelling. It is the first time I have had an attached garage and it serves as a shop. If you have an Autonomobile, an attached garage is a fine thing.

The travel generated by the dwelling is minimal. We hold some meetings here. We meet with our assistant who lives in Greater Warrenton once a week. We communicate via email and she picks up work when she is out anyway running errands. No commuting, thank you. We have two vehicles and drive them a total of less than 5,000 miles per year. The vehicles consume far less than our per capita share energy and meet our personal safety and comfort needs.

Cluster:

When I first saw Menlough, years before we purchased the house on Derby Way, my first impression was that it was too low in density and too far from Main Street. We have found living here has given us the opportunity to help solve some horticultural problems for the cluster and test governance concepts at the cluster scale.

A Three Cluster Neighborhood:

What is not apparent from first glance is that Menlough is one of three clusters making up one of the only Planned Unit Developments in Greater Warrenton-Fauquier. These clusters contain most of the dwellings in the Neighborhood. The other clusters are small single family dwellings primarily on one level marketed to empty nesters and single family attached dwellings.

The primary amenity of the Planned Unit Development is the pathway system. Right across from our driveway is a pathway that leads to a number of attractive walking opportunities and provides access to the community hospital (which has a very nice restaurant – Bistro On The Hill – open to the public), the town police station where cluster and other public meetings are held, a hardware store / lumber yard, laundry, pizza shop, 2 convenience stores, a veterinarian, dentist, orthopedic practice, an optometrist, auto repair / inspection, tattoo shop, a floor covering store, an office building, etc. Over the past five years we have had occasion to use many of these services including the tattoo shop. Main street is a hike of half a mile but not beyond question on foot.

The Village:

The Town of Warrenton, Greater Warrenton and Greater Warrenton-Fauquier provide a great laboratory for considering the role of urban enclaves in the evolution of Balanced But Disaggregated Communities. They provide opportunities for innovation as our current column "The Conservation Imperative" suggests.

At this point in my life – approaching 70 – the most important thing is have a pleasant place to complete our work. When we complete TRILO-G we may move to a single family attached dwelling, having learned about as much as we can from single family detached dwellings.

ONE LAST POINT

Anon 8:46 said: "I am a preservationist, and I live and put my wallet there, albeit I do not sell books about it."

I count myself a preservationist as well. We co-founded and served as professional staff for a ground breaking regional preservation effort, authored a regional historic architecture guide, authored the first state historic preservation plan drafted under the National Historic Preservation Act, contributed to the rescue of several historic buildings including a sugar mill on a small Caribbean island, etc,. I do not happened to have been married to a person who wanted to take on the challenge of living in and restoring a historic structure (aside from the sugar mill) when that opportunity arose. Does this mean I could not write a book about preservation?

"One can write a book advocating no alcohol but still drink. The reader may never know; does it matter?"

This snide remark implies our work is not based on experience and is taking money under false pretenses.

AN APOLOGY IS IN ORDER, ANON 8:46.

You might want to buy a few copies of TRILO-G and distribute them to your preservationist friends. Without a sustainable future, preservation is a futile effort.

EMR

WEEKEND READING

Every so often WaPo editors of one section or another strike gold with their front page stories.

The 15 May issue of the Business Section could be called "The Ides of May for Autonomobiles." You will hear more of that later.

Today the Business Section hit a grand slam. The stories provide perspectives on why The Mobility and Access Crisis, The Affordable and Accessible Housing Crisis, The Energy Conservation Crisis and the Wealth Gap Crisis are all becoming worse every day.

The feature story scopes out the dark side of the ethanol subsidy’s impact on the price of corn and thus food and other goods.

Below that is a report on how the ethanol subsidy lobbyist are being welcomed with open arms by pandering politicians looking for cover on gasoline prices.

The juxtaposition of these two items should be frightening for anyone concerned with Mobility and Access or Energy Conservation.

The top of the page reports on historic highs for home mortgage foreclosures, one important aspect of the Affordable and Accessible Housing Crisis.

The rest of the page considers the Wealth Gap – the most important threat to democracy and free markets.

The right side bar documents that all the indicators of white collar gambling – the stock market – are positive.

The left side below the fold tells of a hedge fund trying to oust the management of Sunrise Senior Living to raise the price of the stock. No word on what impact that will have on the lives of the seniors living in 444 senior living facilities in US of A, Canada and the EU.

The bottom of the page is devoted to Steen Pearlstein’s summary of the use of debt to generate profits for the flippers of Intelsat.

As a counter-point to all this, the upper right story is on how two senators are trying to block the Blackstone IPO. The problem is the private buyout shops are paying too little in taxes.

For now the private sector is awash in money and does not know how to spend it in ways to make citizens happy and safe a necessity if we are to preserve democracy and free markets over the longer term.

Read it a weep.

EMR