I’ve always been a huge fan of the Jetson’s TV Cartoon, and now my life is one step closer. I now have a roomba vacuum, and as of yesterday I found my video telephone SnapYap.com! SnapYap is a really cool browser based video conferencing application that doesn’t require me to install anything in my browser. I can just send a link to my friends, and they can call me with a click of the mouse. It is by far the best video chat application I’ve come accross to date. Skype is cool, but it takes for ever to set up, and you can’t send video email with it.

Ruh-Roh Rorge!

In the 1990’s, especially in the early part of that decade, it wasn’t uncommon to find pundits who argued that information technology and its offshot “The Information Superhighway” (as Internet and various online services were collectively and vaguely referred to back then) would benefit small and far-flung communities at the expense of cities. It didn’t quite work out that way, in part, I guess, because many cities have a critical mass of skilled and highly-educated workers who can take advantage of tehnologies that in theory are distributed.

It is fitting that the city of Chicago, America’s third largest, is hosting no less than two major e-commerce events this month at the McCormick Place West convention center on the shore of Lake Michigan.

On June 9-12 the Internet Retailer Conference & Exhibition 2008 brings thousands of e-retail professionals, including more than one hundred speakers and scores of exhibitors, to the venue.

The following week, on June 19-21, eBay Live will bring together thousands of members of the online auction site’s community of buyers and sellers, as well as a wide range of companies looking to sell their goods and services, from giants USPS and UPS to start ups like eVendor.

Richard Barber of the Mortgage Foundation decries the impact of smart-growth policies on housing availability:

A zoned-zone is an area that has embraced land-rationing policies, usually under a misleading title of “smart growth.” Policies on development such as Portland, Oregon’s urban growth boundary, and requirements for excessively large lots simply reduce the supply of land for development.

There is little argument among economists that rationing raises prices, and does so with a vengeance.

He also provides examples of less regulated markets have experienced much smaller run-ups in housing prices.

Smart Growth Agenda Seeking Less Home Ownership? View from Australia
Wendell Cox, From the Heartland, Chicago, Illinois
In his excellent blog, Wendell Cox, the author of War on the Dream: How Anti-Sprawl Policy Threatens the Quality of Life, discusses an article by Elizabeth Farelly in Australia’s Sydney Morning Herald. Her column, titled The End of the Great Australian Dream Cannot Come Soon Enough, condemns the suburban style of living (”the Great Australian Dream”) which parallels the lifestyle known as “the American Dream” in the United States. Cox analyzes the dream of home ownership and suburban lifestyle in a response to Farelly’s column, taking a scholarly eye to the situation in both Australia and America. He ultimately concludes that an anti-suburban stance is an elitist one, since it seeks to eliminate the lifestyle by which families can move up the economic ladder:

In Australia, as in the United States, Western Europe, Canada, New Zealand and Japan, the suburbanization for which Ms. Farrelly and those of her ilk have such contempt has been associated with the greatest expansion of broadly distributed wealth in the history of the world. In short, for the first time, prosperity has been democratized. …Ms. Farrelly may have emerged as the “Marie Antoinette” of urban consolidation or smart growth. “Let them eat cake” is her message and it appears to be the message (wittingly or unwittingly) of those who favor urban consolidation (smart growth).

Undevelopment: Is Shrinking Pittsburgh the Answer?
Sam MacDonald, AntiRust, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
This intelligent and often amusing blog, subtitled “In Pursuit of a New American Industrialism,” recently examined a redevelopment plan in Youngstown, Ohio that has been getting a fair amount of publicity. The New York Times article on the piece called the plan Creative Shrinkage, but Macdonald dubbed it “undevelopment.” The city is part of the “Rust Belt”—cities that reached their highest population during the height of America’s Industrial era, and have since shrunk. Youngstown now has less than half of the 170,000 residents it boasted when part of steel production, though the town retains its university, symphony orchestra, art museums, and other attractive features not found in normal towns of its size.

The “undevelopment” plan operates under a number of smart growth principles, chiefly in its attempt to consolidate the city, and in its efforts to renovate older buildings or redevelop brown- or greyfield land rather than create development in new areas. Unoccupied tracts will eventually be cut off from the city until needed, while smaller pockets will be turned into parks. MacDonald quips, “So this guy is saying that a city that has lost half its residents might do something other than encourage the construction of new housing? That it might make sense to rehabilitate existing housing stock? That it might make sense to build on strengths (affordability) rather than try to compete with Manhattan for residents? Go figure.” He suggests that some of the same principles might be applied to Pittsburgh, even though the two cities vary in size.

What’s So Smart About Smart Growth?
Laer, Cheat Seeking Missiles, Orange County, California
The author of this blog drops a self-described “logic bomb” on the concept of smart growth, which he views as an impractical theory. He agrees with Steven Greenhut’s article, Suburbs a Sin to Smart Growthers, and quotes Greenhut’s assertion that smart growth “so obviously stands athwart everything we see all around us. Who you gonna believe, your own eyes or the grandiose statements of ideologues?” (Greenhut, in his turn, quotes Wendell Cox, the author of our first blog this week. It’s a small land-use planning world after all). Laer sums up the situation as follows: “There is a lot of political power and will behind Smart Growth. Its supporters in government are happy to create no-growth zones around cities and forcing people to live downtown. The problem is, when you stifle the free market, the market bites back.”

Housing, Transportation, and Regional Success
Paul Mattessich, The Executive Summary, Saint Paul, Minnesota
Meanwhile, Paul Mattessich, the Executive Director of Wilder Research, passes on some fascinating hard facts in support of smart growth, which provide some substantiation for the purported benefits that detractors like to claim are mere ideology. For example:

• Half of Americans do not drive a car, for reasons of age, disability, or income; consequently, “the notion of the automobile as a “democratizer” [is] erroneous.”
• Car costs are part of housing costs; a person can afford to pay more for housing if they don’t need a car. For example, “if you pay $5,000 - $10,000 in expenses for your car each year, that costs you as much as adding another $100,000 or so to your home mortgage.”
• Cities can have much higher energy efficiencies than other types of land-use. “New York City, by any objective standards, may be the “greenest” (that is, most energy efficient) city in the country.”
• Preserving open space requires smart growth.

Mr. Mattessich, himself, remains objective about the facts, and makes himself neither proponent or opponent of smart growth; the facts were presented to him by Douglas Foy, former head of the Office for Commonwealth Development, a Massachusetts office created to promote smart growth. For more information, you can also take a look at the Office for Commonwealth Development’s Website, in addition to the full article on The Executive Summary.

Development Through Smart Growth
Corey Sipe, Deep River, Connecticut
The author of this piece values the configuration of Deep River’s downtown, whose many independently-owned businesses are within walking distance, enabling residents to check errands off of their lists without driving from location to location. But upcoming development has made residents nervous by plans for new chain-businesses with footprints between 3,700 and 10,000 square feet. In an effort to avoid what Sipe describes as “sprawl characterized by large shopping centers filled with chain restaurants and stores surrounded by seas of macadam with little or no landscaping,” the Citizens for Deep River group created a workshop, featuring Jim Gibbons, Land Use and Natural Resource Program Coordinator for the University of Connecticut. Gibbons spoke at length about how smart growth principles could be implemented and enforced in their community, which are catalogued in detail in Sipe’s full article.

As the city of Oakland prepares for the change in mayor, ushering in Ron Dellums while former mayor Jerry Brown takes his place as California’s new Attorney General, the various developments under Brown’s reign and the current condition of the city are being reviewed. For the past couple of years, battles have been waged over individual developments, with members of affected communities raising complaints; however, as even those who are pro-development are beginning to question the city’s structure, a broader problem in Oakland’s city planning is becoming evident.

In order to examine this very problem, the San Francisco Business Times ran a 20-page supplement on Oakland’s development under Mayor Brown. Ryan Tate, in a larger article about Oakland developer Hal Ellis, summed up with this revelation:

“Though downtown has added 4,000 housing units in the last eight years, filled up its office towers, including seven at City Center … retail has lagged. Instead of a regional mall, City Center has 60,000 square feet of mostly fast-service restaurants and small shops … A more recent mixed-use development from Forest City … also drastically scaled back its retail ambitions. In 2000, at the height of the dot-com boom, the project was to include 100,000 square feet of retail. Plans now under way call for 9,000 square feet of retail … That sort of organic retail growth can add character and bring excitement to a neighborhood. But it does not bring the kind of sales tax revenue that big-box retail … can bring the city. Nor does it meet many of the retail needs of new and soon-to-come residents. The resulting retail vacuum is the greatest failing of the development boom under Brown, [Hal] Ellis said, a boom he otherwise praises in no uncertain terms.”

The current situation roots in the longer and even more complicated history of Brown’s redevelopment plan. When originally running for Mayor in 1998, Brown proposed a plan to revitalize Oakland by bringing residential development to the city’s downtown. The theory was that once the downtown area held a critical mass of residents, retail would be drawn in, creating a natural, rather than forced, mixed-use neighborhood. Brown was seeking to end the pleading and subsidizing that had formerly marked efforts to bring retail establishments into the city center.

So, in an effort to rejuvenate the city and “put Oakland on the map,” the Brown Administration fixed upon an objective of bringing 10,000 residents into the city center, which became regionally famous as “the 10K plan.” But eventually, the endeavor attracting residents took over the Administration’s attention, and original aim of bringing in retail dissapeared. It seemed that Brown had completely forgotten about the rationale behind the plan.

Abandoning the effort to obtain the retail half of the mixed-use downtown neighborhoods has left Oakland in economic and developmental disarray. First of all, California’s economy and taxation plans are such that cities tend to lose money on residential neighborhoods, becuase city services cost more than the tax revenue received. This money is generally made back via commercial districts and their additional sales tax revenues. But without the added retail to balance the residential boom, Oakland is actually taking a financial blow.

And even in those areas that have been revitalized with a mixture of residential and commercial buildings are facing serious problems through poor mixed-use planning. A foresighted plan would have set aside a certain area for entertainment, bars, nightclubs, and other commercial establishments that might create noise problems for nearby residents. But under the come-one-come-all attitude adopted by the Brown Administration, with few provisions for these kinds of problems, developments have sprung up haphazardly, and the clashes between residents and entertainment establishments can only ensure that both will suffer, and one or the other may eventually leave.

This would have been a relatively easy situation to solve with some forethought, as Oakland does, in fact, have a General Plan. But the Brown Administration failed to take the necessary steps to ensure that the city’s plan could be followed by new development—in short, the overarching plan for the city was not met with the appropriate updates. The General Plan was updated at the beginning of Brown’s years in office, highlighting the basic types of development for areas of the city, but the zoning map was never updated to coincide with the General Plan. Consequently, the mandates of the General Plan and the zoning map are often at odds. Legally, the General Plan supersedes the zoning laws, but it leaves developers very unsure of what is allowed in a certain neighborhood. This creates poor development in some areas, and grinds development to a halt in other neighborhoods.

Though many of Oakland’s residents may find themselves going into a stupor contemplating the causes of the current city planning quagmire, the results are clear. J. Douglas Allen-Taylo, the author the piece for the Berkeley Daily Planet, writes that residents see the impact “when you try to go down to the neighborhood shopping center, and you can’t find any parking. Or you can’t get down to the shopping center when you need to—just after five—because the streets and freeways are hopelessly clogged, and public transit is either inconvenient or nonexistent along the line you need to travel. Or, worse yet, there is no shopping center in your neighborhood at all.”

The conundrum is an interesting one, insofar as it highlights the difficulties proponents of smart growth and new urbanism must be aware of as they try to bring mixed-use neighborhoods to cities. Mixed-use neighborhoods, themselves, are not the cause of Oakland’s current mess; a poorly-planned and poorly-implemented plan to create mixed-use neighborhoods is the cause. Euclidean zoning laws are simple, and ensure the preservation of residents’ peace, developers’ comprehension of their duties and regulations, and the city’s economic budget. Much more effort is required to maintain the balance while creating the high-density communities that are best for the environment and social health.

Smart Growth community in Northwest Atlanta

Brad Nix at Atlanta 575 Real Estate makes a pitch for smart growth development:

If Cherokee County must grow, and projections have the county gaining 200,000 more people by 2030 (more than double the current population of 141,903), then we better start growing smart.

Nix brings acurrent smart growth project to attention and asks his readers to support it.

A smart-growth deficit in Washington, D.C.

Sprawl and its many symptoms are well-documented issues in the area surrounding our nation’s capital. Ryan Avent has a lengthy take on regional congestion and development solutions in The DCist, as well as a companion post on his own web site. He notes that while there are smart growth initiatives, the prevailing trend remains “sprawl that shows no signs of abating.” A major problem is competition between jurisdictions over money and control.

Are restrictive land-use regulations contributing to declining homeownership among young in Great Britain?

Wendell Cox at From the Heartland writes that restrictions on land-use and development have created housing markets that are out of whack with the overall economy:

England’s Department for Communities and Local Government reports that a strong downward trend in home ownership by younger households. In its Survey of English Housing Provisional Results: 2005/2006, the Department found that in only five years, there was a 15 percent drop in households under 30 years of age buying homes (from 40 percent to 34 percent). Given the importance of home ownership to middle-income wealth creation, this is an ominous development.

A group in Clearbrook, Virginia, has formed under the name “Citizens for Smart Growth,” with the express purpose of blocking the construction of a Wal-Mart Supercenter in their town. The group may address similar issues in the future, but for the present, their attention is on the fate of the site on U.S. 220, just south of Roanoke’s city limits.

The 203,000-204,000 square-foot Supercenter was approved in late October, with plans to break ground in early 2007 and to open its doors to the public in 2008. Almost immediately, contention rose amidst the community. Those with dislike for Wal-mart’s reputation were quickly swept aside by Hollins District Supervisor Richard Flora, who announced that “if you’re just up here because you don’t like Wal-Mart, you’ve lost me. It’s not our job to tell them whether they can have a Wal-Mart or a shoe store or Home Depot.” Flora additionally deemed the special-use permit operating on the land was appropriate for the store.

But that is precisely the assessment that “Citizens for Smart Growth” hopes to challenge. The more substantial arguments waged against the looming Wal-Mart are its effects on local traffic, and whether or not a big box retailer is truly appropriate for a special-use zone that encourages “smaller commercial enterprises preserving a ‘village’ character.”

Vinton District Supervisor Michael Alitzer and Windsor Hills Supervisor Joe McNamara defended the Wal-Mart’s construction in the face of 6-year old zoning regulations which encourage a commercial footprint of no more than 50,000 square-feet—roughly a quarter of the proposed Supercenter. Wal-Mart’s acceptance of restrictions on height, color, lighting and landscaping is apparently enough to assuage this violation. “The back of this Wal-Mart looks as good as the front of many strip malls we have in Roanoke County today. It all boils down to, is it appropriate for this commercial area. I think it fits the overlay district,” opined McNamara. Alitzer agreed: “To me, the overlay has worked,” he said.

Catawba District Supervisor Butch Church was the lone vote against allowing Wal-Mart to fall under the special-use permit. He criticized of the potential increase in traffic, citing the placement of Clearbrook Elementary School only yards away. “We’ve got a dangerous situation out there on 220, it’s been dangerous for many years, and all this can do is make it worse.” Alitzer countered that “nowhere have I seen from VDOT [Virginia Department of Transportation] … that have they said, ‘you better not do this or you’re going to kill people or have terrible accidents.’ ”

The decision was made, despite the the concerns immediately raised. “Why do we have to screw up the entire area of Clearbrook to get a Wal-Mart?” asked one man, while another woman from the community reasoned, “Shouldn’t safety issues be addressed before it’s passed?” David Willis, who owns the Rockdale Quarries near the approved Wal-Mart site, declared, “It’s totally irresponsible to vote [on the project] until improvements on 220 are made.”

And “Citizens for Smart Growth” now hopes to stall further development by claiming that the decision made by the board on October 24th was based upon insufficient information regarding the traffic patterns. “There was an obligation to have all that information, to know that there will not be an adverse impact” on Clearbrook’s community, explained organizer Pam Berberich. Ideally, if the decision-making process were called into question, it might buy the group enough time to rally the entire community into opposition.

The group, which was formed a week an half ago, had until yesterday to come up with $10,000, the estimated funds required to launch a lawsuit against the Roanoke County Board of Supervisors. An additional $40,000 will be needed to carry out the plans. No further information could be found as to whether or not they succeeded, though I did happen across a petition proposing several measures to protect Clearbrook’s environment.

Thanks to bloggingstocks.com, whose original article, “Virginia citizen group tries to block Wal-Mart store,” pointed this story out.

If Washington-area Smart Growth advocates were serious, they’d want to fix this first
C.P. Zilliacus, American Dream Coalition
Not surprisingly, the American Dream Coalition promotes the idea that those who want to live in the suburbs should be able to. The suburbs of Washington D.C. house no small number of smart growth supporters—but clearly they support high-density neighborhoods for other people, and not for themselves. There is an inherent hypocrisy, the article suggests, in proponents of smart growth who live in the suburbs. C.P. Zilliacus argues this week that it is unfair to expect people to live in urban rather than suburban areas if they have children attending the local public schools. Smart growth, of course, advocates mixed neighborhoods precisely so that a more equitable division of resources will go to area schools, but the argument that the schools need to be improved first in order to make the urban environment an appealing one is fair.

Act Locally: Ten Steps Toward Sustainability — Step 5: Enact Environmentally-Friendly Land Use Laws
Steven Filler, GreenCounsel, New York
GreenCounsel’s list of ten ways in which communities can approach a greater sustainability most recently listed smart growth and related land-use laws as the fifth on its list. The article advocates the use of zoning laws to preserve environmentally sensitive areas, limit the footprint of development, and to provide incentives for developers who build with environmentally-friendly energy and substances.

“Smart Growth?”
Around Natick, Natick, MA
This blog has an ongoing discussion of a proposed smart growth development in Natick; many of the features of smart growth are perceptively analyzed through the lens of of these specific plans. The author of the blog proposes on a number of occasions that the new development may have more to do with tax revenue than community consciousness. In this particular post, the situation in Natick is contrasted with that of the nearby town Weston. Also take a look at the post Smartgrowth from Pulte.

Sprawl–what is it good for?
My Left Nutmeg, Connecticut
Conversely, author ‘commonweal’ suggests that the tax structure in Connecticut is what is responsible for suburban sprawl. Reliance on property tax for municipal expenditures, such as the public education system, creates a pressure to develop all available land for funding. Consequently, land is purposely developed inefficiently so that it will yeild a larger tax revenue. The author puts forth a sharp, suprising analysis of Connecticut’s suburban sprawl, asserting that “far from being the result of a free market system, urban sprawl is the direct consequence of government subsidies, intense corporate lobbying and manipulation through the legalized bribery we call campaign contributions, and stifling zoning regulations that have limited the choices Americans have when it comes to where we live and how we get from place to place.”

Smart Growth is Still Vital
RiteOn.org, St. Charles County, Missouri
RiteOn.org’s “Independent Conservative Voice” assesses the importance of smart growth to constituents and politicians of its local Missourian community. Recent electoral results might suggest that smart growth was of no concern, but a meeting of the County Council proved otherwise. The author notes that politicians have the choice to serve self interests, in which case they will pander to developers and their possible monetary support, or community interests, in which case they will support smart growth, which has a high showing amongst voter concerns. “Self interest on the part of politicians is common and we might even say legitimate in many instances, no question,” the article asserts, “but in this case, in a county where traffic congestion, water pollution problems and inadequate roads are noticeably impacting the quality of life, it makes more sense to set self interest aside and, among other things, take precautions to protect water quality.”

The Los Angeles CityWatch’s recent article, Planning Ahead: Do Developers Wear Black Hats? seeks to uncover the reasons for developers’ frequently negative reputations. Residents’ views of developers often involve tiny horns and pitchforks because the former are concerned with the preservation of the existing community, and they don’t like to see change coming in the form of new development, regardless of whether or not the development is actually part of larger city planning.

But, as author Jon Perica points out, developers are often merely serving the request of another body, be it a mandate from city council to affect a change upon an evolving city, or an outdated zoning code. A developer may be required to create projects that are “consistent” with the existing zoning code, meaning, for example, that more single-family homes are built in low-density zones because those are the only allowable buildings.

However, the real problems stem from the fact that communities do not remain “consistent” but must constantly be adapted to fit with their changing economic and social needs. Developers most often get their black reputations from doing projects that are not consistent with the Community Plan, but Community Plans, in many cases, are significantly outdated. An outdated Community Plan can no longer be depended upon to match the market demands, so developments with variations on the Plan are often submitted and approved. But once some exceptions are, of neccessity, made, the door is open for developments that may be inappropriate for the changing face of the neighborhood.

The article also deliniates the qualities that characterize a sensitive developer. Good developers will:

• meet with the Neighborhood or Community Council far in advance to recieve comments, feedback, and community-oriented suggestions;
• view themselves as a member of the community, with responsibilities for creating new projects that harmonize with the existing framework;
• meet as many of the city planning regulations as possible, and present the fewest Zoning Code violations;
• consider the importance of aesthetics and “quality” features, such as design blend, landscaping, and security measures;
• share information about the planning process with the community, including ways in which residents can involve themselves or contact the developer;
• faithfully implement all the City regulations and conditions on an approved project, and oversee its early use to make certain that it functions as an asset and retains cleanliness.

Perhaps above all, Perica emphasizes the fact that developers will gain a repuation, for good or ill, that will eventually become common knowledge. Consequently, each project must be approached with the same sensitivity and consideration. “A good developer commits her or his reputation on every project they do,” Perica explains, “and the more they follow these guidelines for appropriate quality development, the better their development projects are and the better they will be perceived in the community.”

Though the popular myth of Las Vegas may suggest that the diamond in the desert can continue glittering ever outward and outward, the current reality is quite different. Miles of suburban subdivisions, with the single-family homes that have, until now, served the thousands who move to Las Vegas each year, are hitting barriers on all sides. Mountains, national parks, military bases, a Native American community, and preservation lands for the endangered desert tortoise ring the present borders of the city, checking further outward expansion.

The moment of crisis has not yet come, but it is visible on the horizon. If current growth trends continue, Las Vegas’ 1.8 million residents will be swelled by an additional 1 million within the next decade, for a projected population of 3 million by 2020. Compound this with the building projections, which estimate that available acreage will disappear within the next ten years, and the land catastrophe is complete. Developer Kenneth Smith summed it up: “You hear anywhere from a seven to 10 years supply at our growth rates and the valley’s full.”

Anxiety about the impending land crisis has rocketed prices. Land that would have gone for $40,000 per acre 15 years ago is now selling for over $300,000. Last year, a developer paid $639 million for 2,655 acres at a public land auction. And with the land crunch only looking more serious, developers do not expect the competition for land to ease or for prices to fall. The suburban subdivisions that have been as quintessentially ‘Las Vegas’ as casinos, are now featuring houses built so close together that neighbors could almost exchange a handshake or a plate of cookies through their side windows.

Once Las Vegas hits its capacity, there are a couple of options. The first is to build outside the valley, on the other side of the current confines. Builders plan to extend north and south along Interstate 15; a 42,000-acre Coyote Springs project 50 miles north of the city is now on the drawing board. Still, home buyers looking to barter convenience for an affordable mortgage may have to wait. According to Steve Bottfeld, a senior analyst for Marketing Solutions, the prices for providing utilities and building roads and sewers for the new community “are incredible. Don’t look for it to happen in 10 years.”

But as Las Vegas may run out of land in as little as seven years, city planners must come up with alternative solutions. The result is an influx of smart growth and new urbanism principles appearing in new development plans. Neighborhood designs that promote walking, narrower streets, smaller yards, and mixed-use blends of housing and retail are all cropping up. Plans for housing in high-rises “mid-rises” and townhouses are on the increase, and building plans with a more “urban” feel, such as the placement of the garage in back rather than in front.

These changes result for the ubiquitous sense of urgency for more efficient urban planning, but also through specific zoning changes to promote higher-density neighborhoods in Clark County. “This is the time to be visionary,” said Rory Reid, a Clark County Commissioner. Councilman Michael Mack is separately quoted as asserting that ”There’s no stopping growth. We just need to be smart about it.”

“This isn’t something that’s trickling down, it’s flowing down, top to bottom, fast,” said Bottfeld of Marketing Solutions. “It’s the Manhattanization of Las Vegas.” Developer Smith elaborated on the same topic, noting that residents don’t mind the changes in city structure because most have moved to Las Vegas from elsewhere. “They’ve seen it, they know it, they’re comfortable with it,” he says. “We hear people say, ‘I never thought it would happen here. I’ve been waiting for it.’ ”

Thanks to Steve Harless, who pointed our attention to the USA Today article on his Las Vegas real estate blog.

Read contrasting opinions from Las Vegas natives; Geoff Shumacher supports the use of smart growth principles in Las Vegas, while D. Dowd Muska opposes it.