The City of Squares... Or, Bring Back the Grid

When James Oglethorpe sketched out a design in 1733 for the settlement of Savannah, Ga., he didn't have "smart growth" in mind. It was some 150 years before the invention of the horseless carriage, and the biggest "green" revolution occurring in his era was the spread of the plantation form of agriculture. Indeed, in laying out the city in the form of identical, easy-to-replicate wards, or squares, he did so with military considerations in mind.

At the center of each ward was a smaller square, which Oglethorpe left as open space to function as a military exercise ground. The four corners of each ward contained a "tything," 10 lots for housing. And on the east and west flanks of each square, he allotted larger parcels designated for public structures such as churches, banks or government buildings.

The original plan called for six contiguous wards. As the city expanded, it replicated the squares repeatedly, eventually creating 24 of them, then re-developing three of them so that 21 remain. The military training grounds were converted into parks, usually focused on a statue to some great American, or a monument to a momentous battle. Wealthy ante-bellum merchants built magnificent mansions facing some of the parks. Most of the historical buildings remain today, although an occasional '60s-era atrocity did manage to creep in. In the early 21st century, historical Savannah is an urban gem -- one of the truly great places of America.

As I explore in "The City of Squares" this week, the city exemplifies all the traits of smart growth: grid streets, small lot sizes, mixed uses, walkability and abundant green space. As a bonus, historic Savannah has adapted to the automobile remarkably well.

So, what does any of this have to do with Virginia? Do we need to visit Savannah to embrace the virtues of grid streets and compact development? Well, that wouldn' t hurt, if you're looking to be inspired. But here's what's really cool about Oglethorpe's replicatable squares: (a) They contain within themselves a balance of houses, jobs, stores and amenities, and (b) they provide a schema for extending the urban grid pattern incrementally as the city expands, while preserving that balance.

Each ward is like an independent cell, containing within itself a balance of elements required for a quality life: 40 residential units (unless lots are combined to create larger dwellings), a central green space within a block or two walking distance from every dwelling, and space to accommodate shops, professional offices and small office buildings. Oglethorpian wards are not totally self-sufficient, of course. Residents cannot possibly meet all of their needs within the square, but they can meet some of them. This is the kind of balance of land uses at the "cluster" level that Ed Risse calls for.

Like the cells of a living organism, Savannah's wards work together. While the wards are interlaced internally with streets and lanes, providing multiple routes between any two points, the perimeter streets align to create thoroughfares, as can be seen in the aerial photo to the left. (Click on the image for a more detailed picture.) These handsome, tree-lined boulevards enhance the surrounding areas and comfortably accommodate pedestrians.

Compare that to conventional "suburban" development in which a majority of roadway lane miles are contained in dead-end cul de sacs -- private streets, for all intents, with minimal traffic -- that provide no public connectivity whatsoever. All traffic funnels into connector roads and arterials that are easily bottlenecked.

Thus arises the supreme irony: Because all streets contribute to mobility and access, historic Savannah supports a relatively high population density with a minimum of traffic congestion.

These dynamics are are well understood and fully appreciated in the literature of the smart-growth and New Urbanism movements. What I haven't heard discussed is how Oglethorpian squares provide a mechanism for extending the grid pattern outward from the core as the city grows. These squares fit together with Lego-like precision, all streets aligning perfectly for maximum connectivity. Plug and play, baby!

The squares are small enough -- 40 residential lots at most, no more than a modest subdivision -- that they allow for incremental, organic growth. Furthermore, the internal structure of the squares are incredibly flexible. While Oglethorpe designed his squares with 40 single-family dwellings, lots can be combined for larger houses, or merged to create apartments or townhouses. Developers of the squares have the means to be highly responsive to the demands of the marketplace.

Bring back the grid. It worked in Savannah, maybe it can work in Virginia, too!

POACHED SQUARED ON THE FORTH

Independence Day is a good day to consider how the leadership of Agencies and Enterprises in the US of A have managed to abandon energy independence over the past 60 years. Yes, the US of A was a net exporter of energy – and almost every other critical resource – 60 years ago.

We have all heard about the experiment: Put a frog in a pan of hot water and he jumps out. Put the frog in cool water and raise the temperature slowly and he poaches.

Citizens of the US of A have been poached by OPEC and Saudi Arabians. Back in 1973 oil -producing Regions (OPEC) tried to send a message to oil-dependent Regions about messing in their “internal, religious and regional” affairs. However, it was the oil-producing Regions that learned the lesson:

Cut off the oil supply and / or significantly raise the price of petrochemicals, and consumer Regions will look for ways to be conservative and for alternatives to buying more and more oil. In my home town the number of people who lived and worked in the Beta Community went from 19 percent to 39 percent in just 12 months. Raise the pain of acquiring gasoline and they cut commuting.

Agencies and Enterprises in the US of A did not learn from the experience. When the oil was flowing again, the energy policy and consumption pattern was again driven by expediency and short-term profit.

Scattered, dysfunctional settlement patterns grew; a dysfunctional transport system continued to get worse. (See THE PROBLEM WITH CARS.) The temperature has been going up a little at a time for 35 years.

The Saudi / OPEC poaching strategy was stated publicly at the “summit” held on Sunday, 22 June, in Riyadh. Oil suppliers need to increase the flow in order to lower the cost so that those Regions dependent on oil will not look for alternatives. In other words keep supplies and prices such that those in power in the oil-exporting Regions can sell oil at the highest possible price while they are in power. Long-term sustainability? Who cares, we are all getting richer and the economy is growing.

OK, the way US of A citizens have been poached is pretty clear. But what is Poached Squared?

When James Hansen made his I-told-you-so tour on 23 June – the twentieth anniversary of his landmark testimony on the climate change – he acknowledged that humans are condemned to burn up the rest of the petroleum that can be extracted. Hansen did not say it but citizens are condemned primarily by human settlement patterns that Agencies, Enterprises and Institutions refuse to acknowledge as a key problem. More important, to date they have not committed to Transform these generators of economic, social and physical dysfunction and unsustainability.

Hansen points out that while a intelligent oil strategy may be a lost cause, coal is the bigger problem and there is still a chance to create a sustainable strategy vis a vis coal. As luck would have it, the US of A is the Saudi Arabia of coal deposits.

And what are the Agencies and Enterprises doing in Virginia and across the US of A?

Building more coal-fired plants to keep the price of electricity from going up too fast. This in spite of the fact that half of all the energy devoted to the production of electricity in remote plants is wasted in generation, transmission and distribution.

Oh, yes, there are also the pollution problems, the transmission problems and the power failures due to fragile distribution systems without even mentioning climate change. But, not to worry, “the men and women of your electric utility are working to keep your rates reasonable...” You can do your part by going out a buying new light bulbs and ...

Bottom Line: Citizens are being poached again.

In a CNN Money poll on 19 June only nine percent of those responding believe the energy future is in oil / gas. The other results: Nuclear 42%, solar 38%, wind 11%. Coal was not deemed to be a “future” option worthy of being among the choices.

In a CNN Money poll on 27 June 58 percent of those responding say “lack of financial independence” is the worst aspect of dependence on oil.

We first recall hearing that in 1956 – the Suez Crisis – and every citizen should have known it in 1973 – the OPEC oil embargo. Where was the leadership 52 years ago or 35 years ago? Getting the pot ready to poach citizens.

Claude Lewenz argues that dependence on oil and Autonomobiles was a intentional strategy planned in the mid 40s to keep the industrial capacity of the war machine humming and the economy growing. I am not sure it was “planned” but I am sure it could have been “unplanned” 35 years ago when it was obvious that the strategy was unsustainable.

In the meantime, citizens have been poached and are being poached again.

Happy Fourth.

EMR

Deep Green in Blacksburg

Yesterday I blogged about the need to take a "deep green" approach to energy conservation. It's one thing to snap up low-hanging fruit, but Virginia needs to enact fundamental institutional changes -- to transportation and land use especially -- if we are to achieve meaningful reductions in energy consumption. As it happened, at least three speakers at the Governor's Commission on Climate Change meeting in Blacksburg yesterday brushed up against those topics.

I wasn't there, so I don't know what exactly what they said. But the Commission has posted PDFs of their presentations online, and you can get a flavor of what they had to say.

Providing Transportation Choices to Reduce Greenhouse Gas Emissions, Petra Mollet, American Public Transportation Association

Urban Development and Climate Change, John V. Thomas, Ph.D., Development Community and Environment Division, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency

Climate Change and Development Patterns, Eric J. Walberg, Principal Planner, Hampton Roads Planning District Commission

Obligatory Ruminations about Human Settlement Patterns in Disney World

Before departing on vacation, I promised to share my impressions of what might be gleaned from the Disney World experiment for building functional human settlement patterns in the Rest of the World. I fully acknowledge that the commentary that follows is based upon quick and superficial observation, which may be of limited value. But some interesting points do emerge.

Utilidors. Disney turned down my request to view the underground complex -- a network of corridors that contain utilities and accommodate logistical transportation -- that I deemed the most innovative aspect of Disney World and, possibly, the most instructive for design of other communities. Accordingly, most of what I know about the "utilidors" I gleaned from an online article, "Under the Magic Kingdom," on the HiddenMickeys.org website.

The 15-foot-high corridors were built at ground level, then covered with soil from excavation of the Seven Seas Lagoon. Disney World was actually built atop this spoil, creating the above-ground level visible to visitors and a below-ground level used by employees. From the website:

You have never seen a delivery truck at Disney - have you? Magic Kingdom's first floor has all the access roads for the Cast Members (employees) and service vehicles, the "tunnels" or Utilidors, the AVAC, service rooms, wardrobe and costuming, male and female locker rooms, offices, storage, kitchens, break rooms, two employee cafeterias, including the Fantasyland Dining Room, Kingdom Kutters, a Fire Prevention Center, Studio "D" and many of the support departments for the Magic Kingdom. The Fantasyland Dining Room and restrooms are to the left.

Underground corridors strike me as a possibly useful adjunct to Claude Lewenz' concept of pedestrian villages. (See "First, Shoot All the Cars.") While the pedestrian-only aspects of Lewenz' village are highly appealing, the difficulty in accommodating delivery trucks and other utilitarian vehicles creates problems that I'm not sure that Lewenz ever resolved satisfactorily. Disney-esque corridors could solve those problems -- though, admittedly, at a significant cost.

Monorail. I did have a chance to ride the monorail, which is showing its age after 27 years. The mass transit system has 12 trains consisting of six cars each, capable of running up to 40 miles per hour. I'm no expert in mass transit, so I apologize in advance if my commentary sounds like Urban Planning 101

The Disney monorail strikes me as a "niche" system that is appropriate in certain settings, but not a tool capable of providing mobility and access for large populations. The beauty of the monorail, or so it would appear to my uninformed eye, is that the structure takes up relatively little space. The struts upon which the track rests have a small "footprint," therefore can be retrofitted into an existing urban space, presumably a highway or boulevard, relatively easily.

The monorail stations need not be large if located inside a building, as the Disney World monorail is in one of the Disney hotels. However, the ramps connecting the monorail to the pedestrian level did consume considerable space -- posing an obstacle for retrofitting an already-developed area.

Multimodal. Where Disney truly excels is in its implementation of multi-modal transportation. Each of the four main theme parks is surrounded by vast acres of parking lots, which function as the resort's interface with the world. Tens of thousands of visitors arrive by car daily. To transport them quickly and efficiently from the parking lots into the pedestrian-oriented parks, Disney operates an elaborate tram system. To provide access between the theme parks, as well as the various resort hotels and other facilities, Disney runs buses, passenger boats and the aforementioned monorail.

The key to making the Disney system work is the existence of well-placed multi-modal transportation hubs, where parking-lot trams, passenger boats, monorails, buses and pedestrian walkways all come together and visitors can easily switch from one mode to the other. Once the newcomer has figured out the system -- what connects with what -- the multimodal system functions reasonably well.

Where planning for Virginia's transportation facilities seem deficient, it strikes me, is (a) the paucity of such multi-modal centers, and (b) the failure in imagination to incorporate water-borne craft into the multi-modal system. Unfortunately, I have no idea what it cost to put the Disney system into place, nor how much it costs to operate. I suspect that Disney treats such information as closely guarded competitive intelligence. Therefore, there is no way to know whether implementation of such a system would make sense in real-world urban conditions in Virginia today.

There you have it, folks, the sum total of what I learned from the Mouse.

Celebration. P.S. To answer Ed Risse's question, I did not have a chance to visit Celebration, Disney's New Urbanist development built nearby. From what I heard from a friend who works for the Disney organization, Celebration is both a success and a failure. The New Urbanist formula was such a commercial success that the prices of property there rose to astronomical levels that priced less affluent households out of the "affordable" housing envisioned for the development. The obvious answer: Build more communities like Celebration, eliminate the scarcity value, and "affordable" housing will stay affordable.

I found one other observation made by my friend to be noteworthy: Performance of the retail development in Celebration has been disappointing. Turns out, people still like driving long distances to Big Box retail outside the development. Whether the phenomenon of $4-per-gallon changes that predilection remains to be seen.

(Photo credits: Utilidors, HiddenMickeys.org; monorail, Oren's Transit Page.)

Kaine Establishes Sub-Cabinet on Community Investment

Gov. Timothy M. Kaine has issued an executive order establishing a Sub-Cabinet on Community Investment tasked with the goal of promoting "smart, sustainable growth" by ensuring that state funds are invested in projects that reduce "suburban sprawl."

"Virginia loses 165 acres every day to development, and while we welcome growth and economic success, it is paramount that we grow in a wise and sustainable way with an eye towards conservation," said Kaine in a press release. "The Sub-Cabinet on Community Investment will prioritize the state's investments to make sure we protect Virginia's precious natural resources for present use and future needs."

The Sub-Cabinet's will destribute grants, loans, matching funds and other discretionary funds to "incentivize desirable growth." The press release identified the following principles:

• Invest in innovation
• Invest in the use of existing infrastructure
• Invest in compact development
• Protect and restore Virginia's natural resources
• Conserve Virginia's limited natural resources
• Invest in diverse housing opportunities
• Invest in alternative transportation choices
• Take a long-term view to planning.

"The Commonwealth will seek to invest in projects that promote compact development, consume less land, conserve open space, and minimize the negative social, economic, and environmental consequences of sprawl," stated the press release.

The Executive Order is an outgrowth of an internal policy summit, facilitated by the Governor's Institute on Community Design, which recommended policies for sustainable growth and open space preservation in the Commonwealth. The Institute is chaired by former Maryland Governor Parris Glendening.

"States that have been successful in protecting their natural resources, developing vibrant communities and improving mobility for their citizens have done so by encouraging cross-departmental collaboration," said Governor Glendening. "The array of issues states face in addressing the impacts of growth and development demand such coordination and I commend Governor Kaine for taking this important step."

The Sub-Cabinet will be chaired by Secretary of Natural Resources L. Preston Bryant, and consist of Secretary of Administration Viola O. Baskerville, Secretary of Commerce and Trade Patrick O. Gottschalk, Secretary of Finance Jody M. Wagner, and Secretary of Transportation Pierce R. Homer.

Bacon's bottom line: This sounds like a positive step in the right direction, although the devil is always in the details. One thing that appears to be missing from the list of state "tools" for discouraging sprawl is transportation funding. I haven't had a chance to read the Executive Order yet, so I shall refrain from further comment.

Family Vacation: Disney World

We have finally gotten Internet service restored to our condo here in Orlando, so I can drop in from afar and observe how the Rebellion is faring. Thanks to EMR for keeping the blog alive -- and especially for giving Pat McSweeney's legal victory the attention it was due.

Although the overt purpose of the Bacon family trip to Disney World is to ride a bunch of hurl-inducing rides, listen to live performances of Disney tunes we've already heard a zillion times, engorge ourselves on fried food and open up our pockets to giant vacuum cleaners calibrated to suck out every dollar bill, dime, nickel and penny, my secret agenda is to study human settlement patterns.

Here's my verdict: Orlando is a mess. If you ever visit Disney, stay on the Disney property. You do not want to contend with Florida-style dysfunctional human settlement patterns. Frankly, I have seen little edifying enough here in Orlando to write about.

But the good news is, we stopped in Savannah, Ga., on the way down -- and Savannah is an urban jewel. I will have a lot to say about Savannah later on.

Indeed, if we ever head down this way again, I am determined to stay in Savannah and let the rest of the family down drive down to Orlando without me. As long as my wife can tune into National Public Radio and the kids have movies to watch, no one will even notice I'm not in the car. Somewhere around St. Augustine, someone will go, "Hey, what happened to Dad? Who's going to pump the gas?" But it will be too late. I'll be strolling around the city that inspired "Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil."

Mwa-ha-ha!

Arlington Gets Antsy about Illegals

Kirsten Downey with the Washington Post framed her story last week about Arlington County and fears of illegal immigration just perfectly:

Arlington County, which prides itself on racial tolerance and economic diversity and has sneered at anti-immigrant policies in nearby jurisdictions, now finds itself facing some of the same questions.

Many longtime residents are voicing fears that a new zoning proposal will bring an influx of immigrants and poor people. Support for affordable housing initiatives is almost an article of faith in the Democrat-dominated enclave, but the proposal to allow rental units in single-family neighborhoods is challenging that orthodoxy.

At issue is a proposal to allow homeowners to add rental units to houses in single-family neighborhoods. Other jurisdictions permit "accessory dwellings" -- garage apartments, granny flats, and such -- and they're touted by New Urbanists as a way to create affordable housing for students, young people, the elderly, domestics, laborers and others without creating income-segregated neighborhoods. By creating more affordable housing close to the Washington region's urban core, the proposal also would allow people of modest means to live closer to where they work, which would eliminate long commutes and take traffic off the region's congested arterial highways.

It makes sense in many ways, but the idea has spurred a vocal backlash among residents who fear the idea would "worsen parking problems, traffic congestion and crowding and increase the number of absentee landlords and illegal immigrants," Downey reports.

Retiree Rick Barry, 75, said that he considers the plan a wrongheaded assault on Arlington's way of life and that he fears it would attract immigrants displaced from Prince William County, which has enacted a crackdown on illegal immigrants.

"You work hard to get your family into a single-family neighborhood," Barry said. "We have a very nice neighborhood character, and we should do whatever it takes to keep it as it is."

Merryl Burpoe, a government relations consultant, said Arlington's "beautiful, stable" neighborhoods are at risk.

"We moved here for the quality of life Arlington affords," she said. "We paid a lot for our homes."

So, here's the big question: Does this mean that the residents of Arlington County, an unofficial "sanctuary" jurisdiction and politically one of the most liberal, bluest-of-blue jurisdictions, are... racist? Are phrases like "overcrowding" and "traffic congestion" and "absentee landlords" just liberal white peoples' code words for not wanting brown people around?

It's one thing to lambaste retrograde attitudes towards illegal immigration when the people allegedly behaving in a retrograde manner are Republican-leaning troglodytes in Prince William County. Clearly, the issues they raise about noise and poor upkeep and too many cars parked in the yard are indirect expressions of prejudice.

Or maybe, just maybe, the clash over illegal immigration really isn't about racism. Maybe it is a clash of cultures, reflecting the difficulty of integrating immigrants (legal or otherwise) accustomed to Third World villages and barrios, where certain norms of behavior are perfectly acceptable, into American suburbia, where those norms of behavior traditionally have been considered obnoxious.

It will be interesting indeed to see how the citizens of Arlington County resolve the tension between accepting all cultures as equally valid -- especially when the foreign cultures reside at a comfortable distance -- with the prospect of those cultures getting up front and personal.

(Hat tip: Larry Gross. The views expressed in this post are those of the author only and do not necessary represent the opinions of the hat tipper!)

Need Room for Affordable, Accessible Housing? There's Plenty in Office Parking Lots.

Where do we put new housing for Virginia's growing population? That's an enduring public policy issue in Virginia, and it's become even more pressing as the collapse of housing values in outlying juridictions have exposed the extent to which homeowners prefer shorter commutes and living close to the urban core. Some observers raise the argument that urban areas and inner "suburbs" are fully developed already -- there's no space for new housing. But that argument ignores the potential to re-develop land previously developed at extremely low densities.

Start with parking lots in office parks, suggests a recent study on moderate-income housing in Westchester County, N.Y., according to the New York Times.

Converting office parking lots to housing makes sense in a number of ways. They're already zoned for high-density occupation. They're already served by roads and infrastructure. And they create an option for some residents to live near where they work.

We're seeing similar thinking here in Richmond. Markel Corp., a leading underwriter of specialty insurance products, applied a year or two ago to convert much of its parking lot in the Innsbrook corporate center into housing and retail. The lost parking spaces would be offset by structured parking. (I'm not sure what the status of the project is: It did face some opposition from neighboring residential NIMYs.)

Development that utilizes existing infrastructure is preferable to development that requires new roads and utilities. Likewise, development that integrates mixed uses and connects them with pedestrian-friendly streetscapes so that people can take fewer car trips is preferable to development that segregates land uses, imposes low densities and requires people to drive cars to reach every destination. As Virginia politicians find they can't raise taxes fast enough to salvage a transportation system that becomes increasingly expensive to maintain with each increase in the price of a barrel of oil and ton of steel, the conclusion is inevitable: People will have to live in closer proximity to one another -- hopefully in communities with a balance of jobs, housing, retail and amenities at both the neighborhood and the regional levels.

Ritual disclaimer: I'm not advocating that anyone be forced to live in the kinds of communities they don't want to live in. I am not advocating social engineering. Indeed, I am advocating the opposite: Municipal governments need to dismantle barriers that prevent developers from building, and people from moving into, the kinds of communities for which the marketplace has documented tremendous latent demand. The alternative, as shown in the transportation-funding plan that Gov. Timothy M. Kaine was expected to roll out at noon today, is to raise taxes to perpetuate a transportation system and pattern of land use that is hopelessly out of date, expensive to maintain and unaffordable to expand.

(Hat tip: Gay Leahy.)

So Long, Suburbia?

If you think Ed Risse and I are pessimistic about the long-term future of scattered, disconnected, low-density development patterns in a era of $100-per-barrel oil, listen to James Kunstler, the author of "The Geography of Nowhere: The Rise and Decline of America's Man-Made Landscape." BusinessWeek provides some insight into his near-apocalyptic views in a brief Q&A headlined, "Good-bye Cheap Oil, So Long, Suburbia?"

Kunstler sees the "suburbs" as the product of the industrial era and cheap energy. He expects oil production to tumble and he doesn't think there are any easy technological fixes. The institutions we've developed since World War II are living on borrowed time.

The jig is up, for instance, for Wal*Mart, dependent as it is upon an autocentric society. "It is part and parcel of the suburban predicament," says Kunstler. "How long can they maintain their warehouse-on-wheels as the price of motor fuels goes up?" Our energy-intensive system of agricultural production is heading for trouble, too. Kunstler's money quote:

Virtually anything organized on a grand scale is liable to fall into trouble — government, finance, corporate enterprise, agribusiness, schools. Our gigantic Metroplex cities will prove to be inconsistent with the energy diet of our future. I think our smaller cities and towns will be reactivated. We are going to be a far less affluent society.

My outlook isn't as dour as Kunstler's. I believe that high prices will stimulate energy producers to extract oil from geological formations that were never economical before. Prices will rise for sure, but I don't foresee a precipitous fall-off in production.

But my differences with Kunstler are only a matter of degree. Energy prices will rise. Eventually, it will become clear to everyone that contemporary American suburbs are no more economically sustainable in an era of high energy prices than the Western mining towns were sustainable when the ore ran out. Electric cars and fuel cells may delay the inevitable reckoning for a time, but shifting from petroleum to electricity consumption will simply create a new set of constraints, as we are discovering here in Virginia. The sooner we re-think our transportation systems and land use patterns, the less traumatic we'll find the changes to be.

(Hat tip: Michael Cecire.)

Journey Through Hallowed Ground: The Debate

The House of Representatives joined the U.S. Senate yesterday in passing legislation to designate the Journey Through Hallowed Ground a National Heritage Area. Unless President George W. Bush vetoes the legislation, which appears unlikely, the NHA designation will be enacted into law.

What will this mean for land use in Virginia? We can all find out at May 15 meeting of the Prince William County Committee of 100, which is presenting an incredibly timely debate: "Can Private Property Rights and National Heritage Areas Peacefully Co-exist in Prince William County?" Yours truly will be the moderator.

View details here. I hope to see you there!

The "Mega-Region" and the Creative Class

The driving force in the world economy today is not the nation-state, argues "Creative Class" guru Richard Florida, but a new economic unit -- something he calls the "mega-region." The idea that nation-states are receding in relative importance is not a new one. When I was working at Virginia Business magazine some 12 to 15 years ago, we published a cover story on the "Rise of the City State," based on the thinking of regional leadership consultant Jim Crupi. And no one can read the Bacon's Rebellion blog for long without encountering Ed Risse's concept of the "New Urban Region."

But Florida is suggesting that something else is going on. In a April 12, 2008, piece in the Wall Street Journal, Florida notes that a mere 40 mega-regions around the world account for one-fifth of the world's population, two-thirds of global economic output and more than 85 percent of all global innovation. By his reckoning, the world's greatest mega-region is Greater Tokyo, with 55 million people and $2.5 trillion in economic activity, while No. 2 is the 500-mile Boston-Washington corridor, with some 54 million people and $2.2 trillion in output.

Based on the insight that mega-regions are the economic engines of the global economy, Florida suggests that the thrust of public policy should be to make them stronger and more competitive. Stay committed to global trade. Promote more urban densities, not sprawl. Modernize infrastructure. And stop transferring wealth from productive regions to lagging, unproductive ones.

These are all ideas that I'm comfortable with. But I do wonder whether the concept of a "mega-region" is really a meaningful one. Florida did not have the space to elaborate upon his thinking in a short op-ed piece. Hopefully, he has done so in his new book, "Who's Your City?", which I have not yet read. So, I remain open to being persuaded, but at this point I have to say that the usefulness of the concept in guiding thinking about economic development is less than self-evident.

The problem of defining the units of economic development is no mere academic issue. If we regard our community as part of a "city state" synonymous with a metropolitan region or a New Urban Region -- the Washington region, the Hampton Roads region, the Richmond region, etc. -- we will bend our efforts to creating institutions and linkages that match. If we regard our community as part of a "mega-region" stretching 500 miles across multiple states, we will organize our efforts quite differently.

I find it difficult to see how the defining the urban agglomeration stretching from Boston to Northern Virginia as a "mega-region" reflects any political, economic or sociological reality. The Boston-Washington agglomeration has no self identity as a region. It spans some 10 to 12 states (depending on how you define the region) and too many municipalities to count. The mega-region encompasses numerous distinct labor markets. Florida may present evidence to the contrary in his book, but I don't see the area as being tied together by any special business or economic linkages. To the contrary, to pick one example, the IT-centric economy of Northern Virginia has more corporate and business linkages with Silicon Valley in California than it does to, say, Philadelphia, New York City or even a technology center like Boston.

Using Florida's own theory of the "creative class" as a basis for thinking about the issue, I would suggest that the fundamental unit of regional economic development is the "labor pool" -- a geographic entity within which the vast majority of people who live there also work there. The outer edges of such a region coincide with the "commuter shed" -- beyond which people tend to commute to work in a different region. (This is a larger unit than the Metropolitan Statistical Areas catalogued by the U.S. Census. I believe it is how Ed Risse defines a New Urban Region, but I would welcome any clarification from him on that point.)

Looking at a region as a "labor pool" rather than a collection of municipalities puts the emphasis where it rightly belongs in a knowledge-based economy: on the workforce. The most powerful driver of economic prosperity today is the depth and breadth of human capital, and the great economic-development challenge of the age is creating the kinds of communities where the most economically, artistically and scientifically productive members of the workforce (the "creative class") are drawn to live and work by the regional quality of life.

No one personally identifies with the "Boston-Washington" mega-region. No one moves to, say, the Northern Virginia portion of the mega-region on the logic, "Oh, yeah, I moved here for the great quality of life. We've got these really great educational institutions -- like Harvard and Yale. And, man, the nightlife -- you can't beat those shows on Broadway!" No... people in Northern Virginia identify with George Mason University and Wolf Trap performing arts center, or maybe Georgetown University and the Kennedy Center.

Florida is right to say that wealth creation around the world is highly concentrated in a few very large, super-productive regions. But what appears to be a "mega-region" may really be a cluster of "city states" or "New Urban Regions" in such close proximity that they overlap with one another. The driving unit, with which people identify and mobilize their efforts, occur at the level of the city state, not the mega-region.

(Hat tip: Larry Gross.)

VEOLIA AD IN AN EVER SMALLER WORLD

Those who are accustomed to our complaining about WaPo ads – and MainStream Media ads in general – may be surprised but today’s WaPo on page A-7 has an ad that is worth a careful look.

After you have looked at the “Do you see a Tree?, We also see a universal challenge.” ad, check out the Veolia web site to find out about this Enterprise that provides “water, waste, energy and transport services” for urban areas.

Here is the story:

The ad has for a background a high-oblique air photo of what appears to be a swatch of French Countryside. It may be Tuscany or Bavaria or ?. It may even be New Zealand or South Africa but it ‘looks like’ the countryside in Europa. In this swatch of Countryside the farmsteads are not centered on hamlets because the artist did not want to distract from the ‘Tree.’

The ‘Tree’ is an Alpha Village scale urban place with a divided parkway serving as the “trunk.” It could be a large Lewenz (‘Parallel’) Village but does not have the Autonomobile Free Core. In the graphic one can identify a number of land uses that ‘could’ represent a Balance of J / H / S / R / A.

What is very apparent is the Clear Edge and the relationship between Openspace inside the Clear Edge with Open Land outside the Clear Edge.

Could it just be that Veolia, an Enterprise that provides water, waste, energy and transport services, knows a thing or two about the settlement patterns the result from the fair allocation of location-variable cost?

OK, perhaps it is just a nice graphic that happens to be useful to illustrate those realities.

We will never know.

On a related topic, NPR did a two part series on 31 March and 1 April on the climate and lifestyle impact of dysfunctional and functional human settlement patterns. The Atlanta New Urban Region is the venue. The functional example – Atlantic Station – was designed based on the Richard Thornton graphic we included and described in our “All Aboard” column of 16 April 2007.

It is a small world and getting smaller with fewer places to hide for the 12 ½ Percenters.

EMR

Voodoo Economics, Meet Cow Poo Economics

There's a reason why Albemarle County is one of the most picturesque places in Virginia. Its stately manor houses and landscapes enjoy layers of protection from the higher real estate taxes that result from providing services to a growing, urbanizing population. But people who don't live in those manor houses are beginning to grumble.

A group calling itself Forever Albemarle and claiming more than 100 members was formed in October. The leader, Hank Martin, asserts that small property owners are getting a raw deal, according to the Daily Progress. At issue is a land-use taxation program that allows landowners to defer hefty amounts of their real-estate tax bill on agricultural and open space land for up to five years. About 60 percent of Albemarle County acreage qualified for the program, with the result that $17.8 million in taxes were deferred last year-- shifting the tax burden onto homeowners. (And those numbers don't even include the tax benefits of conservation easements.)

But Albemarle Farm Bureau President Carl Tinder argues that open space and farmland don't require the same level of services that subdivisions do. Says Tinder: “My cows have never got on a school bus. ... We’re paying more than our fair share.” Without the tax deferment program, he argues, more farmers would be forced to sell their land.

Supervisor David L. Slutzky disputes that logic. As reporter Jeremy Borden summarizes his thinking:

When a rural landowner bought the land, he paid less because the sale price reflects the longer wait for emergency services, rural roads and other “dis-amenities,” Slutzky said. “I think that the land-use program in its current form is a bad idea,” Slutzky said. “The cows-don’t-go-to-school position is bogus economics.”

Voodoo economics, meet Cow Poo economics. As this controversy reminds us, the politics of growth is all about getting what you want -- and getting someone else to pay for it.

Charlottesville: How Much Leverage Over Developers Is Too Much?

It's a perennial question: What's the proper balance between planning and free markets in governing a municipality? That issue has come into sharp focus in Charlottesville as city leaders juggle property rights, economic development, transportation capacity, affordable housing and quality of life. Some developers are warning that the city’s effort to exert more control over future development downtown could backfire and deter growth, reports Seth Rosen with the Daily Progress.

Last week, the Planning Commission endorsed height limits on buildings in order to preserve the pedestrian-friendly character of downtown. Meanwhile, the planning staff is seeking to decrease by-right building densities downtown in order to force developers to apply for special permits, which in turn gives the City more leverage in extracting monetary concessions from them. The tighter regs, says commissioner Mike Farruggio, provide “some more latitude and control to make sure it is healthy development and is what we want to occur.”

Oliver Kuttner, who has re-developed several downtown properties, condemns the proposed changes. “If you drop the by-right you basically stop all development downtown," he says. "Any developer who buys property buys it strictly on by-right calculations.”

It's a tricky trade-off. Handled incorrectly, Charlottesville's proposed new approach becomes a mechanism by which the political class extorts wealth from developers for redistribution to favored causes and constituencies. If developers are spooked, downtown could stagnate.

On the other hand, a laissez-faire approach towards development has its drawbacks. Re-developing old properties at higher densities increases requirements for parking, street capacity and municipal services, which the city must bear. If the city embraces the principle that growth should pay its own way -- otherwise taxpayers wind up subsidizing the developers -- it needs a mechanism for developers to contribute to the added strain their projects impose on city infrastructure and services.

The strategy proposed for Charlottesville is very similar to the way Arlington County conducts business. Arlington officials tout their development model, but they warn that it requires certain political preconditions. First, there must be a long-term consensus on what the community should look like and how development takes place -- no whip-sawing back and forth between conflicting policies. Second, Arlington hires top professionals in their fields, including men and women with hands-on experience in the private-sector side of the business, who can approach negotiations with realistic expectations and creative, problem-solving ideas. Charlottesville leaders would be well advised to consult the Arlington County experience before proceeding with their experiment.

Obligatory Post about Land Use in Augusta, Ga.

I'd never given much thought to human settlement patterns in Augusta, Ga. I don't follow golf, so the city is no more likely to enter my consciousness than, say, Minsk or Ougadougou. But I do make it a habit to observe what I can of human settlement patterns wherever I go. I must say, I was pleasantly surprised. The neighborhoods near the August Country Club are quite beautiful. There are many handsome houses lining impressive thoroughfares. Augusta loves its trees and landscaping, and this is the season for the dogwoods and azaleas.

In most respects, Augusta displays the same human settlement patterns that pervade the United States: segregation of residential and commercial land uses, and segregation of neighborhoods by income. There was, however, one small, delightful surprise.

We took a "short cut" yesterday through a neighborhood to avoid the awful morning traffic near the golf course and managed to get quite disoriented by all the windy, hilly roads. (In other words, we got lost.) But the neighborhood was stunningly beautiful. It was heavily wooded, with steams, stone bridges and immaculately landscaped gardens . For all its beauty, though, the neighborhood appeared to be a monoculture of detached, single-family dwellings, all in the same narrow price range ($1 million or so, applying Richmond valuations).

Then, to my surprise, we rounded a curve, and there was an apartment building, a structure with eight or so units. Solid brick, tastefully done, not out of character with the houses nearby. Then, a little further, we encountered a long row of townhouses. These "multiple-family dwellings" fit seamlessly with the single-family houses.

Now, this wasn't exactly "workforce" housing. Instead of limiting itself to the top one percent of income earners, these dwellings might have opened up the neighborhood to the top 25 percent of the region's income earners. But, hey, it was income diversity of a sort.

I can fully understand why homeowners might want to keep their neighborhoods free of crack houses and halfway houses. But I never understood the need to segregate housing within the same narrow income band. Why not open up the neighborhood to households of smaller size and somewhat different incomes? This neighborhood in Augusta, Ga., did so successfully. Try it, you might like it.

Chesterfield Looks at TND Zoning

It was probably the shortest staff-written article in the Sunday Times-Dispatch, and I can't even find it posted online, but the story headlined "New zoning district proposed" may be the most significant article in the newspaper yesterday. Chesterfield County, long the poster child for dysfunctional land use patterns in the Richmond metro region, is getting close to creating a Traditional Neighborhood Development zoning category.

The zoning category would streamline the application and approval process for New Urbanism-style development, writes Wesley P. Hester, by putting a single label on what now requires a complex mix of zoning categories. And just in time, too, because many of the big new projects proposed for Chesterfield, the fastest growing jurisdiction in the Richmond region, are built around mixed uses, traditional city blocks with alleyways, and pedestrian-friendly streetscapes. The more development that takes the form of TND neighborhoods, as opposed to the old helter-skelter development, the better off the county and its residents will be.

As I've long argued in this blog, TND development in well-planned projects makes far more efficient use of land and infrastructure than scattered, single-use development. Of course, the new zoning category is only a first step on a long road to recovery for Chesterfield, which has smeared growth inefficiently over a vast expanse of territory -- and continues to see growth gravitate to the metropolitan edge toward the recently constructed U.S. 288. Even so, good development in the wrong location beats bad development in the wrong location. If approved, the measure will represent progress of a sort.

How to Build a Village

Claude Lewenz, an American-turned Kiwi, has written a fascinating book, "How to Build a Village," in which he envisions how to build a small community -- a "village" of some 5,000 to 10,000 people -- that is prosperous, environmentally sustainable and enables a high quality of life. On Waiheke Island, outside Auckland, on the far side of the world, Lewenz has elaborated many of the same principles propounded on this blog. He offers a capitalist, market-driven alternative to Business As Usual.

The central feature of the Lewenzian village is this: It has no cars or trucks. Within the village perimeter, people get about by walking, bicycling or using small electric vehicles. To many, the idea will sound ludicrous. But drawing upon real-world examples of Medieval Italian cities and Greek island villages, Lewenz makes an intriguing case. He would organize his villages around Italianate plazas and link them with pedestrian streets and lanes of various widths; cars, to be used only for travel outside the village, would be banished to a garage on the village edge.

The scheme would work because getting rid of the cars eliminates the need for the vast apparatus of streets, highways and parking lots that consume so much urban space. As a result, everything is closer together. Thus, trips are shorter. (As a bonus, Lewenz envisions using the savings in asphalt to invest in underground utilities, recycling and waste systems, organizing and promoting locally grown foods, and other village enterprises.)

While Lewenz sees his village located in the countryside, demarcated by a village wall from the fields and woods (what Ed Risse would call a "clear edge"), he acknowledges that variations of the auto-free zone could be applied in urban environments through in-fill and re-development projects. Just imagine the impact in Virginia if our major metropolitan areas developed strings of car-free villages, linked by arterial roads and mass transit, in which some 50 percent to 80 percent of all "trips" took place on foot or on bicycle.

As Lewenz notes, America already has large car-free zones. We just don't realize it. We cover them with roofs and call them malls. We just need to make them bigger: integrating shops with houses, offices, public buildings and other amenities.... and removing the roof.

In "First, Shoot All the Cars," I focus mainly on how a Lewenzian village would function without cars, but I allude to many of his other ideas for building more livable, sustainable communities. If you find the column intriguing, buy the book. It is lavishly illustrated with color photographs from Lewenz's travels around the world -- well worth the hefty purchase price.

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

Pigs, Indians and Human Settlement Patterns

Dedicated readers of this blog know that I have a special place in my heart for pigs. As one might imagine, the Bacons have adopted the pig as a family totem. Today's debased popular culture, as I have blogged on occasion, does not accord the porcine species the affection and respect that it deserves. Regular readers also know that I am fascinated as well by the original Bacon's Rebellion, one of the first expressions of popular sovereignty in colonial America -- and inspiration for this blog.

At long last, these two divergent obsessions have intersected. Pigs, it turns out, played a significant role in the historic Bacon's Rebellion! (Even better: the conflict was driven by dysfunctional human settlement patterns!!)

In "Creatures of Empire" University of Colorado historian Virginia DeJohn Anderson focuses on the critical role played by domesticated mammals -- cows, pigs, horses -- in the Chesapeake colonies and New England. Not only did these animals provide a means of subsistence, as they did in England, but they became a leading cause of conflict between settlers and native Indians. It was an Indian war that sparked Bacon's Rebellion.

The story begins in England. In a country where land was scarce and labor abundant, English animal husbandry favored the input of labor over land. Traditional farming practices called for the close human supervision of animals and considerable investment in barns, sties and, above all, fencing to keep the animals from wandering onto a neighbor's property. In the American colonies, the situation was the reverse: Land was abundant but labor scarce. As a practical matter, the colonials turned the animals loose and let them forage in the woods.

The colonials' pattern of agriculture in the New World required more land than English farmers needed back home: four or five acres of woodland for the animals to forage in for every acre of land put under cultivation. The land-intensive pattern of settlement acted as a multiplier for the growing number of settlers: Land-hungry Englishmen pushed deeper into the frontier and came into conflict with the native Indians.

Conflict, when it occurred, most frequently centered on animals. The Indians, who had no concept of animals as private property, captured pigs that ran loose and unsupervised in the woods. Englishmen, who considered that theft, often retaliated. Eventually, Indians came to understand that English concept of animals as property, but that did not resolve the tension. In the Chesapeake particularly, English settlers let their animals rove great distances for weeks and months at a time. Turning feral, the pigs proved a great nuisance to the Indians. The prolific, fast-breeding beasts found unfenced Indian corn plots a tempting source of food. When Indians killed the marauding hogs, their English owners sought retribution. Later in the century, as the pressure of the English settlers and their unsupervised animals became unbearable, Indians lashed back by killing cows and pigs for no immediate cause.

A treaty establishing peace between the English and the Pamunkey Indians articulated the problem quite clearly. Writes Anderson:

Article 4 claimed that the "Violent Intrusions of diverse English" onto native lands had forced Indians "by way of Revenge, to kill the Cattel and Hogs of the English," helping to spark "the late unhappy Rebellion."

I will let others draw conclusions regarding the baleful consequences of dysfunctional, land-intensive human settlement patterns in the 17th century and their implications for today. As for me, I will simply note that it is high time that scholars acknowledge the pivotal role of pigs in early American history.

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