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We will take transit if it meets our needs (IOW, don’t fall for “the fundamental attribution error”)

2010-03-18T13:32:54Z

Here’s an insight from relating human behavioral science to transportation: people who use a particular form of transportation such as driving or taking transit sometimes misunderstand the motives of those that use a different mode. We generally have a basic understanding of why we may take the bus, for example, but we make the assumption that the guy who drives is doing so because, well, he’s the kind of guy who drives.

In fact, it’s not that simple. Except for those of us who are environmental purists – and I am not one – our behavior stems not (or seldom) from something intrinsic to how we feel about driving or transit but, rather, on our particular circumstances. For most of us, how we get somewhere depends on how well each available mode meets our needs. This sounds sort of self-evident, but unfortunately the fallacy – that people in [insert name of community] do not and will not use transit in the future, given evidence that they don’t use it now – still infects too many transportation planning and investment decisions.

Michael Druker, a student in behavioral neuroscience at Waterloo University in Ontario, and writer of the blog Psystenance, calls this “the fundamental attribution error.” In a recent post, he explains:

“In social psychology, the fundamental attribution error refers to the tendency for people to over-attribute the behaviour of others to personality or disposition and to neglect substantial contributions of environmental or situational factors. (Actually it isn’t quite fundamental, as collectivist cultures exhibit less of this bias.) People are generally more aware of the situational influence on their own behaviour.

“Thus, the fundamental attribution error in transportation choice: You choose driving over transit because transit serves your needs poorly, but Joe Straphanger takes transit because he’s the kind of person who takes transit. This is the sort of trap we find ourselves in when considering how to fund transportation, be it transit, cycling, walking, or driving.

“Let’s say you live in a suburban subdivision. You can afford to drive, and it’s the only way you can quickly and easily get to your suburban office and to the store, and pick up your child from daycare. How do you interpret the decision of other people to take transit? Is it something about the quality of transit where they are? More likely you are going to attribute it to something about those people themselves — they’re poor, or they’re students, or they’re some kind of environmentalists. It’s difficult for people to realize the effect of the situation, e.g., one with frequent transit service to many destinations along a straight street that is easy to walk to. (I’d also point out that students, the poor, and even environmentalists do drive as well.)

“Why do Europeans walk more, cycle more, and take transit more? Surely it is something about their culture? But this is an excessively dispositional attribution. I won’t deny that culture plays some role in transit use, especially in the decisions that lead to the creation of transportation infrastructure. But that infrastructure itself and the services provided on it are a strong influence on the transportation choices people make. The European infrastructure situation facilitates those other modes of travel much more so than does typical North American transportation infrastructure.

“Where our infrastructure gets closer to the European model, so does the transportation mode choice, and conversely, where Europe is more like the North American model, Europeans turn out to drive more.”

Read Druker’s entire post here. Transportation planner and writer Jarrett Walker called it “the most important blog post you’ll read this year.” On his blog Human Transit, Walker adds:

“My own work is built on the belief that people making routine trips will make reasonable choices based on their situation and options, subject to the limits of their information. Everybody knows that they do this, but they need to be reminded that everyone else does too . . .

“When we say that Americans drive because they're a car culture, we imply that that the choice of most Americans to drive isn't a rational one, in light of each person's situation, and therefore requires a cultural explanation . . .

“But in the places most Americans live, given the current economics of driving, and transit options being as they are, the decision to drive is rational for most of the people making it. If most Americans are in situations where driving is the rational choice, we don't need the ‘car culture’ to explain their behavior, and we can see a clearer path to changing it, by helping to change people's situations.

“Conversely, car advocates who cite current car use as evidence that people want to drive cars are also making the attribution error; they're implying that everyone who rationally chooses to drive is culturally committed to driving. That's wrong; some of the people driving cars would like to be in a situation where they didn't have to.”

Sounds right to me. If we want more people to use environmentally preferable ways of getting around, we need to build the kinds of communities and provide the kinds of convenient and comfortable alternatives that make the preferable choices also the rational ones.

Kaid Benfield writes (almost) daily about community, development, and the environment. For more posts, see his blog's home page.

Why we do this: a musical tribute to the Irish landscape

2010-03-17T13:32:16Z

Lovers of music and the landscape, this is for you. Well, and for myself, since I truly love what I'm about to share.

I originally came to environmentalism, and eventually to smart growth and urbanism, from the conservation side. I grew up in the North Carolina mountains and would not, and will not, abide their destruction. Now I'm a dedicated city boy, and wouldn't have it otherwise, but for me there is no dissonance: the survival of the natural and rural landscape in the face of growth is utterly dependant on smart, livable urbanism.

The science and the law and the transportation data and the emissions and all that came later. Much later. Without the spiritual underpinning, the raison d'etre, there's no way I could suffer all the policy details.

Which brings me to today, Saint Paddy's. I have enjoyed beautiful landscapes far and wide, but none moves me more than that of western Ireland. Here, to the accompaniment of some of my very favorite Irish musicians, is a sampling of some of the best.

First up are the mighty Saw Doctors, from Tuam, County Galway. They may be my favorite band from anywhere. The song is about County Mayo, next door to Galway:

If you prefer things a bit more traditional and folkie, here's Mary Black, who comes from a great family of Irish musicians. The music is "Song for Ireland," written by Phil and June Colclough:

Finally, and musically a bit in between the first two, is the majestic "Homes of Donegal," written by Sean MacBride and performed by the great Paul Brady. The visual sequence shows the County's traditional, walkable towns and villages:

For me, this is pure inspiration, and not just for environmentalism.

Kaid Benfield writes (almost) daily about community, development, and the environment. For more posts, see his blog's home page.

Small town changes: “I watched the growth – it’s become ‘Paradise Lost’ for me”

2010-03-16T13:31:48Z

Today’s title comes from Jeff Holm, chair of the Board of Supervisors for Baldwin Township, Minnesota. Baldwin is a rural community struggling with its identity in the face of change. Holm, who grew up in the unincorporated township of around 6,500 residents, was participating in a discussion about Baldwin’s future hosted by Minnesota Public Radio.

As you can see in the first satellite image, Baldwin is north of the Twin Cities, about 40 miles from Minneapolis and in between the small towns of Princeton and Zimmerman. Its story is like that of many rural and once-rural places in America: First, a small community is populated with independent souls (very independent: even though Baldwin’s average household income is somewhat above the state average, only ten percent of eligible residents vote) who are drawn to the easy-going, peaceful lifestyle. In Baldwin, most have worked service jobs, although there are also some small farms. But, over time, others become attracted to the same lifestyle. And, if the town is located within driving distance of a job center, some of the newcomers are commuters, reaping the rewards of a city or suburban job on weekdays while coming home in the evenings and on the weekends to a more bucolic environment.

This, essentially, was the promise of the great suburban migration of the 1950s and 1960s. As readers of this blog know, that migration exacted an environmental, economic, and social price.

But what we now also know is that, unless managed very carefully, the pattern becomes a self-defeating cycle that fails even to deliver on the basic promise: the more people come, the less the community holds the appeal that attracted them. In the second satellite image, you can see the locations of some of the relatively new, suburban-style development now sprinkled around Baldwin. The township’s population has doubled as a result of the more than 100 subdivisions built in Baldwin since 1990.

Today Baldwin is experiencing a different kind of change, as new development has essentially come to a halt with the recession. More than 200 homes have been foreclosed in the last three years. But forecasters and Baldwin’s residents expect the growth to resume at some point.

And so, for the very first time, the community is thinking about planning for growth. Should the township incorporate as a city? Should it be annexed into nearby Princeton? (It is clear from the recording of the town meeting, below, that “becoming Princeton” is not a popular option with many residents.) Should it remain an unincorporated township?

What should happen with services and taxes? What are the residents willing to pay for? How will the streets and roads built with new development be maintained over time? Should house numbers be required in front of each home? What provisions should be made for an aging population? Is it time for a comprehensive plan? Is attracting new development essentially a “Ponzi scheme” that requires never-ending additional development to pay for the cost of each new increment? Is the development coming anyway?

For now, Baldwin is still the kind of place that has a bounty on gophers (“$2.00 per pair of feet. The pairs of feet should be mounted to a cardboard with your name and address listed”). But only barely. The population is expected to double again in the next two decades. Perhaps it will be helpful to planning that the township recently received a grant from the Initiative Foundation’s Healthy Communities Partnership to assist with citizen engagement.

I first read about Baldwin and its issues on the Strong Towns Blog, whose Chuck Marohn was one of the panelists at the growth forum. Marohn posted a terrific, fascinating video about Baldwin and its challenges that “in a very real, yet charming and respectful way . . . captures many of the value clashes” confronting the township and other communities like it across the American landscape. I highly recommend the video, and I also recommend the longer audio clip just below the video, which contains the discussion at the very well-moderated town meeting. In both, you will see and hear Baldwin's residents voice their concerns, which are not always what you might expect. Enjoy and learn:

Audio recording of MPR News' Ground Level forum on the future of Baldwin Township (55 min.)

Photos by Curtis Gilbert, Minnesota Public Radio News (excellent full, narrated slideshow here.)

Kaid Benfield writes (almost) daily about community, development, and the environment. For more posts, see his blog's home page.

Beware the Ides of March Madness: brackets based on walkable urbanism

2010-03-15T13:27:38Z

This time of year does funny things to me. I eat bad food in front of the television. I run weird calculations, some of which you’re about to see. I yell. I despair. I vanish at odd times of the day to find TV sets. I spend a lot of time in Lisa’s office where there is both a TV and another rabid fan just as crazy as I am. I really get insane after about the 50th sappy commercial for the upcoming Masters golf tournament on CBS (cue hushed voice: “a tradition unlike any other . . .”). Oh, please.

I do all this because I. Love. This Game. Not golf, mind you, which isn’t even a sport as far as I’m concerned, but college basketball. And the brackets are upon us, yes they are. I follow two teams closely, and they are both in the big dance and highly seeded this year. I’ll certainly be rooting for them.

But for whom do I cheer in the other games? There are a couple of schools I’ll cheer against because their fan bases are classless (and Lisa knows who they are), but the rest is kind of arbitrary, really. This got me thinking: what if I ranked schools on their neighborhoods, their relation (or not) to smart growth – I mean, it’s as good a reason as any, right?

So I took the top 16 seeds in the NCAA tournament, tracked down the location of the gyms in which they play home games, and ran Walk Score to get rough values for the walkability of each neighborhood. Here’s the ranking:

Georgetown 98
Kentucky 95
Wisconsin 91
Vanderbilt 85
Kansas State 77
Kansas 77
Pittsburgh 72
Syracuse 72
Purdue 60
Ohio State 54
Villanova 52
West Virginia 51
Maryland 48
New Mexico 48
Baylor 34
Duke 29

Walk Score considers anything scoring 90 or above to be a “walker’s paradise.” Above 70 is “very” walkable. Below 50 is car-dependant. (When I’m in Durham, I do walk to Duke’s Cameron Indoor Stadium from the hotel, but I guess there really isn’t a lot else in walking distance.)

And then I thought, well, some schools have off-campus arenas (like the downtown Verizon Center where my Hoyas play), and others put their arenas in strange corners, so maybe it’s not entirely fair. To address this, I also ran Walk Score for central points on the main campuses, in each case using the admissions office as my locale. I then averaged the two scores. This helped Syracuse and hurt Villanova:

Georgetown 94
Wisconsin 93
Vanderbilt 88
Kentucky 86
Syracuse 79
Pittsburgh 75
Kansas State 74
Ohio State 68
Kansas 64
Purdue 64
West Virginia 62
Maryland 60
New Mexico 60
Baylor 51
Villanova 45
Duke 39

Assuming all of these teams made the final sixteen (which of course they won’t), four in each of the regions where the NCAA has placed them, here’s how the official brackets would play out if results were based on walkable urbanism:

East

Wisconsin beats Kentucky, West Virginia beats New Mexico. Wisconsin then beats WVU to advance to the Final Four.

Midwest

Kansas beats Maryland, Georgetown beats Ohio State. Georgetown then beats Kansas to advance to the Final Four.

South

This is by far the weakest bracket for urbanism (and probably for basketball, too). Purdue beats Duke, Baylor edges Villanova. Purdue then beats Baylor to advance.

West

Vanderbilt beats Syracuse, Pitt squeaks by Kansas State. Vanderbilt beats Pitt to advance.

Final Four

Georgetown beats Vanderbilt easily, Wisconsin trounces Purdue. Your national championship then features the Hoyas versus the Badgers. Georgetown has the stronger arena for smart growth, but Wisconsin has slightly more urban destinations close to its campus. In a game for the ages, your urbanist winner is Georgetown – the arena is downtown on top of several Metro lines, walkable from my office and many others, and the main campus is in DC’s oldest and most walkable neighborhood. Hoyas win!

But wait, where’s North Carolina? Seriously, I must have made a mistake . How could I leave out the Heels? I’ve looked all over the NCAA brackets and can’t find them anywhere. I don’t understand, is it a typo? Must be in here somewhere . . .

Incidentally, if you’re curious (I was), here’s how the top 16 seeded teams stack up by the NCAA’s official graduation success rate, based on the most recent official data:

Duke 92%
Villanova 92%
Vanderbilt 85%
Georgetown 82%
Wisconsin 78%
Pittsburgh 75%
Kansas 73%
Kansas State 62%
Purdue 64%
Ohio State 60%
Syracuse 55%
West Virginia 44%
New Mexico 43%
Baylor 36%
Kentucky 31%
Maryland 08% (not a typo)

UNC, had their team been good enough to make the tournament this year, would have ranked decently (75%) on graduation success, by the way. At least they have that to go with their trophy from last year. The Walk Score for the DeanDome, though, is only 38. The admissions office scores a much better 78, bringing the average up to 58. Not good enough to advance against stronger competition, just like real life this year.

Kaid Benfield writes (almost) daily about community, development, and the environment. For more posts, see his blog's home page.

A true conservative takes aim at pretenders who defend sprawl

2010-03-12T17:40:37Z

Several years ago, I was asked to do a panel presentation in Minneapolis with, among others, Sam Staley of the Reason Foundation. I pretty much hate these point/counterpoint forums where the organizers try to paint me as a raving liberal who wants to debate people for conference-goers’ entertainment. So I called Sam, who is a nice guy, and suggested that we blow their minds by seeing what we could agree on, including the folly of land use regulations designed to perpetuate sprawl. We still had our areas of disagreement, but we also had a much more constructive session than mere entertainment.

Today I am pleased to see another principled conservative, Austin Bramwell, who used to be a stalwart at the National Review, take the same approach. Writing in The American Conservative, Bramwell tells it like it is:

“For the 101st time: sprawl — an umbrella term for the pattern of development seen virtually everywhere in the United States — is not caused by the free market. It is, rather, mandated by a vast and seemingly intractable network of government regulations, from zoning laws and building codes to street design regulations. If [nominally libertarian newsman John] Stossel wants to expand Americans’ lifestyle choices, he should attack the very thing he was defending, namely, suburban sprawl.

“It’s odd that self-described libertarians such as Stossel are so slow to grasp that government planning makes sprawl ubiquitous. You would think that libertarians would instinctively grasp the deeply statist nature of suburban development. First of all, with a depressingly few exceptions, virtually every town in America looks the same. That is, it has the same landscape of arterial roads, strip malls, and residential subdivisions, accessibly only by car. Surely, given America’s celebrated diversity, you would also see a diversity of places. As it turns out, all but a few people live the same suburban lifestyle. Government, as libertarian assumptions would predict, is the culprit.”

Bramwell goes on to point out that, if walkable neighborhoods in downtowns are so repudiated by Americans, as Stossel apparently suggested, why are they so in demand that their prices are sky-high? Excellent point.

In The Atlantic Wire, Heather Horn goes on to quote from two more writers who are taking on Stossel:

Agreed: 'Walkable Urbanism Is Illegal in Most of the Country' Matthew Yglesias takes as his text the zoning regulations of a Phoenix suburb:

“If you want to build a multi-family structure in those places, you can't. If you find yourself in an R2 zone you can, but it can only be a two family structure. Also your building can't be taller than 40 feet, "There shall be a front yard having a depth of not less than 20 feet," the year yard needs to be 25 feet, and the side yard needs to be at least 5 feet. On average, buildings can only occupy at most 50 percent of the lot. And there have to be two parking spaces per dwelling unit. And you can go on and so forth throughout the whole thing. The point, however, is that walkable urbanism is illegal in most of the county.”

This Isn't Really a Libertarian Objection "John Stossel, like a lot of self-described libertarians, isn't so much 'libertarian' as he is an anti-liberal," theorizes blogger Jamelle at United States of Jamerica. Across the blogosphere at Unqualified Offerings, Jim Henley agrees, though phrases it differently: "anti-anti-sprawl libertarianism will exist so long as there are libertarians who hate hippies more than they hate central planning--which is to say, it will exist for a long time."

Jonathan Levine, who is chair of urban and regional planning at the University of Michigan (and who gave me some helpful advice long ago when I was just starting to address these issues), has long made the same points in a more understated and academic way. I bet he’s applauding, and so am I. I hope Sam is, too.

Kaid Benfield writes (almost) daily about community, development, and the environment. For more posts, see his blog's home page.

Taking revitalization to the next level: Denver’s Living City Block

2010-03-11T15:14:45Z

The Living City Block is an ambitious project in Denver’s LoDo (Lower Downtown) to demonstrate the potential of combining environmentally conscious business and economic development with revitalization and livability. In this writer’s humble opinion, it is a fantastic concept that points to one of the ways in which we might shape a more sustainable future.

The project’s ambition is important. While smart growth and particularly revitalization are absolutely necessary to achieving more environmentally responsible communities, increasingly I am drawn to the conclusion that they are not enough. First, a paradox of smart growth is that, to reduce environmental impacts, we must concentrate them in certain places: this creates an obligation to do much more to mitigate them in those places than our current mainstream advocacy suggests. (More on that in a future post.) Second, the environmental challenges of future growth are so daunting that we must use all the knowledge and ability we have to address them. Our solutions must begin with smart growth, revitalization, and urbanism but cannot not end there.

This is why, though I wish it were more ambitious and demanding, LEED for Neighborhood Development is so important: it attempts to encourage a combination of smart growth (where we build), urbanism (what we build), and green technology (how development will function environmentally).

I am pleased to say that these issues are becoming more important to my organization. NRDC has just adopted a strategic plan that, for the first time in our history, elevates the issue of sustainable communities to the level of an institutional priority. About time. Partly as a result, I’ve been spending a lot of time examining these issues – have our thinking and advocacy evolved sufficiently to address 21st-century realities and possibilities? – and I am particularly encouraged to see some emerging models that take a holistic approach to the future of our built environment.

The Living City Block, being pursued by a partnership of the Rocky Mountain Institute and the city of Denver, looks terrific. On the project’s website, its sponsors describe its ambition:

“Living City Block will create a leading demonstration of a regenerative urban center.

“Two prominent city blocks in lower downtown Denver will significantly reduce their energy consumption and environmental impact, while showing a continual transformation towards a thriving, sustainable community.”

The project ultimately seeks to generate more energy than it will consume.

In the images accompanying this post, you can see the conceptual vision for the project, its location and, thanks to the wonders of Google Earth’s street view feature, what a portion of the site currently looks like. It is fitting that it is placed in LoDo, Denver’s showcase neighborhood of walkable revitalization. Note on the location image that Denver’s historic Union Station is just to the north and that the project site is in between Coors Field, the city’s major league baseball stadium, and the Pepsi Center (gotta love these corporate names), a major indoor arena. The heart of Denver’s downtown is within easy walking distance to the southeast.

I absolutely love that RMI and the city are doing this in a walkable urban environment anchored by historic preservation (see photos just above of LoDo). Bravo. Writing in Cool Town Studios, Neil Takemoto lists the ways in which the project seeks to realize its vision:

Focusing on retrofitting and renovating existing buildings.
Having buy-in from 80% of the building owners to uphold the mission.
Benefitting from a diversity of active non-profit, educational, business and government partners.
Providing an opportunity to pioneer features such as buildings producing more energy than they use, “last mile’ mobility solutions, energy capturing sidewalks, green leases, charging stations for plug-in vehicles, large-scale solar installation, urban agriculture/living roofs, vertical gardens, onsite renewables, co-generation, home metering, IT-driven consumer behavioral change… all in one place, all on one block.
Attracting workers and entrepreneurs to such a progressive destination, spurring job creation.
Linking it with the inauguration of the Biennial of the Americas, a month long “cultural celebration of innovation, imagination and the artistic achievement of the Western Hemisphere,” starting July 2010.

Great stuff. Go here for a four-page summary of the details.

Kaid Benfield writes (almost) daily about community, development, and the environment. For more posts, see his blog's home page.

Rave on, Jim Kunstler

2010-03-10T13:40:21Z

James Howard Kunstler is not a man given to understatement. He makes Al Gore seem subtle. Heck, he almost makes Al Sharpton seem subtle, but that’s a closer call.

No, Kunstler is more the kind of guy who wants you to feel a little uncomfortable, a little agitated. And he’s been on a mission for at least two decades now to wake us up to the horrors we have created with suburban sprawl, making America “a nation of places not worth caring about.” He wants to motivate us to do something about it.

But he speaks a lot of truth, and he is wildly entertaining, which is why he is such a popular speaker on the urbanist circuit. The TED video below (more on TED in a bit) is from a 2004 lecture in Monterey and shows him in his full glory. The lighting in the video (unintentionally, I’m sure) makes him look particularly menacing; it’s the kind of visual portrayal you might see in a negative political ad trying to show an opponent unfavorably. But it’s a great talk.

As his TED bio says, “his confrontational approach and propensity for doomsday scenarios make Kunstler a lightning rod for controversy and critics. But his magnificent rants are underscored with logic and his books are widely read, particularly by architectural critics and urban planners.” If your time is limited, watch at least a little of it anyway. Enjoy:

About TED:

“TED is a small nonprofit devoted to Ideas Worth Spreading. It started out (in 1984) as a conference bringing together people from three worlds: Technology, Entertainment, Design. Since then its scope has become ever broader. Along with the annual TED Conference in Long Beach, California, and the TEDGlobal conference in Oxford UK, TED includes the award-winning TEDTalks video site, the Open Translation Program, the new TEDx community program, this year's TEDIndia Conference and the annual TED Prize.” More than 500 TED Talks are on the web.

(Inspiration for today's title here. Likely inspiration for the inspiration here.)

Kaid Benfield writes (almost) daily about community, development, and the environment. For more posts, see his blog's home page.

Using urban density to support parks, and vice versa

2010-03-09T13:34:15Z

Today’s title sounds a little counterintuitive, doesn’t it? Using residential and commercial density to revitalize downtowns or bring people closer to rail transit stops makes sense. But aren’t parks and trails supposed to be bucolic, the antithesis of urbanity?

Not necessarily. Writing in the City Parks Blog, Ben Welle notes that parks and people need each other, and we need to bring them together:

“There is a symbiotic relationship between parks and population density. For those living in compact housing around a park’s borders, there is respite, a place to recreate, a back yard where little private outdoor space exists and an amenity that increases property values. For the park, there’s the “eyes” that make it safer, more property taxes to keep it maintained, nearby users to keep it vibrant and able to maximize its value as a public amenity.”

Ben is assistant director of the Trust for Public Land’s Center for City Park Excellence, so he knows a thing or two about what makes parks work best. In his post, Ben describes an initiative in Minneapolis that would upzone areas near a popular rail-trail as a revitalization strategy, which is of course part of the game plan in Indianapolis and Atlanta as well.

Ben made a similar point in a blog post from early last year, drawing from an article by Brad Broberg in the National Association of Realtors’ On Common Ground:

“Balancing the yin of green space against the yang of greater density is a cornerstone of smart growth.

“Smart growth encourages compact development as an antidote to sprawl. Preserving green space is part and parcel to that approach. The green space makes the density more palatable and the density makes the green space more desirable.”

While many of us – including myself – love remote wilderness and natural areas, few of us want our city parks to be empty. When Nos Quedamos was allowed to plan Melrose Commons in the South Bronx, for example, one of their most important changes from the unpopular original city plan was to eliminate a large centrally located park area and, instead, redistribute the green space in smaller parcels around the neighborhood, precisely so there would not be vast areas without frequent activity.

Props to Ben for bringing the topic back up. It's an important one.

Kaid Benfield writes (almost) daily about community, development, and the environment. For more posts, see his blog's home page.

A local lesson in transit orientation, walkability and supermarket economics

2010-03-08T13:33:51Z

Several weeks ago, I ran a post making the case that transit-oriented development requires more than just transit and development. As the phrase implies, it also requires orientation: the development must relate to and be convenient to the transit. There is also a body of practice and research on the closely linked subject of walkable neighborhoods, which require more than just sidewalks and places you might want to go within theoretical walking distance. This recently posted and very good presentation by the Washington, DC Office of Planning, for example, outlines (among other things) some of the elements of city fabric that make communities hospitable to walking.

Now the northeast DC neighborhood of Edgewood is experiencing some hard lessons about both transit orientation and walkability. First, it is losing its Safeway supermarket at least partly because of the store's failure to attract business from a nearby Metro rail transit station; second, residents literally on the wrong side of the tracks are being left with a difficult walking environment to reach what will now be their closest alternative market.

In particular, a competing Giant supermarket is a bit farther away from the Metro station than the Safeway site, but the Giant has succeeded while the Safeway hasn't. The Giant apparently has captured more business from Metro riders because it is on the same side of Rhode Island Avenue, a wide and busy thoroughfare that walkers are reluctant to cross if they don’t have to. Craig Muckle, an official for the Safeway chain, told Washington Post writer Hamil R. Harris that the Edgewood Safeway had been unprofitable for a decade: "While we are closer to the Metro, the Giant is more convenient for people coming off the Metro, and it is located in a plaza that is frankly more vibrant."

On the Google Earth image above, you can see the location of the Safeway in red, the Giant in yellow, and the Metro station in green. Looking at the image, the loss of the Safeway seems particularly unfortunate because it is the less automobile-oriented of the two stores and, were it not for the barriers of Rhode Island Avenue (running diagonally southwest to northeast) and the Metro tracks (running more north-south), within walking reach of more homes.

The loss of the store will be particularly hard for residents of affordably priced apartments at Edgewood Terrace, the complex outlined in fuchsia above (see also photos below), many of whom do not drive and some of whom are seniors. They have been the Safeway's nearest and most loyal customers. Walking to the Giant will not only be a longer distance (four blocks instead of next door) and involve crossing the busy street and Metro tracks; it will also entail walking up and down two steep hills (accessed with concrete steps) with their groceries on the round trip. Relative accessibility is about more than mere distance to shops and services.

Hamil interviewed longtime DC city council member Harry Thomas, who believes the Safeway didn’t do enough to stay competitive:

"’Rhode Island Avenue is a great location. It has tremendous opportunities and is adjacent to the Metro,’ Thomas said. ‘But Safeway didn't rise to the challenge. They really didn't make enough investments to that store, and residents deserved better.’

“On Monday night, Thomas and Ward 5 community leaders met to discuss long-term development plans for the Rhode Island Avenue corridor. Thomas said the sentiment among members of the group is that a store in the order of a Giant or Whole Foods should fill the site once Safeway is gone.

"’We want a quality business in there," he said.”

I hope they get it. The paucity of convenient access to healthy food, particularly fresh produce, in less affluent and working-class neighborhoods like Edgewood is a matter of both local and national concern.

It may be, however, that the area around the Metro station just doesn't contain enough potential customers to support two full-service supermarkets, particularly in such close proximity to each other. The Safeway site may be more suited to a specialty market than a supermarket, which still could allow residents on the northwest side of Rhode Island Avenue and the Metro tracks to meet at least some of their shopping needs without the difficult walk to the Giant. Streetscape improvements to calm traffic and make crossing the Avenue and tracks more convenient for pedestrians would bring additional help.

Both supermarket sites are within a zone that is under study "to transform the land uses along the [Rhose Island Avenue] corridor into a series of well-defined, pedestrian-friendly neighborhood centers while preserving and enhancing the quality of life of the diverse, existing neighborhoods abutting it."

This is a good thing. Even the Giant, though apparently more popular with Metro riders, is certainly not what any urbanist would call "transit-oriented." I believe that, over time, the large parking lots adjacent to and around the Giant and Metro (see photos) - which now serve a number of suburban-style commercial outlets as well as the Metro station - will develop in a more urban and transit-oriented way. Those sites would seem ideal for multifamily homes and mixed-use commercial development, perhaps moving an appropriate amount of parking underground. This will put more residents close to the Metro station and allow the supermarket and other commercial businesses on the southeast side of Metro to serve more customers on foot.

For now, unfortunately, there remains unfulfilled potential on both sides of the transit station. Here’s a short video on the Safeway’s closing that accompanied the Post story:

Kaid Benfield writes (almost) daily about community, development, and the environment. For more posts, see his blog's home page.

Constructing a city around the concept of happiness

2010-03-05T13:30:00Z

“With our limited resources, we have to invent other ways to measure success. This might mean that all kids have access to sports facilities, libraries, parks, schools, nurseries.” These are the words of Enrique Peñalosa, who served as mayor of Bogotá, Colombia, for three years, and who has become an evangelist for improving the quality of life for city dwellers everywhere.

Jay Walljasper profiles Penalosa in Shareable, “a nonprofit online magazine that tells the story of sharing. We cover the people, places, and projects that are bringing a shareable world to life. And we share tools and tips to help you make a shareable world real in your life.” Walljasper writes that, under Penalosa’s leadership during three years as mayor, the city of 7 million accomplished the following:

Created the TransMilenio, a bus rapid transit system (BRT) that carries a half million passengers daily in dedicated bus lanes.
Built 52 new schools and refurbished 150 others while increasing student enrollment by 34 percent.
Established or improved 1200 parks and playgrounds.
Built three central and 10 neighborhood libraries.
Built 100 nurseries for children under five.
Expanded city water service to reach all of Bogotá’s households.
Bought land for development as affordable housing, parks, schools, and greenways.
Established 180 miles of bikeways, the largest network in the developing world.
Created a 10.5-mile pedestrian street, and a 28-mile greenway in a corridor that had been originally slated for an eight-lane highway.
Inaugurated an annual car-free day, when all Bogota residents commute to work in some way other than a private automobile.
Planted 100,000 trees.

Not bad.

David Burwell, who founded the Rails to Trails Conservancy and co-founded the Surface Transportation Policy Project in the US, refers to Penalosa as “one of the great public servants of our time. He views cities as being planned for a purpose—to create human well-being. He’s got a great sense of what a leader should do—to promote human happiness.”

Walljasper, himself clearly an admirer of Penalosa’s work, also gives credit to others in the mayor’s administration, as well as to his civic-minded predecessor (and, as it happens, successor) as mayor, Antanas Mockus. At the core of their many achievements is an understanding that, as a city with great poverty in the developing world, Bogota has a responsibility to provide an especially rich public realm for its citizens. American cities would do well to take note.

Perhaps the greatest of these accomplishments is the Colombian capital's world-class transit system:

“Peñalosa’s proudest achievement is TransMilenio, the bus rapid transit (BRT) system that enables buses to zoom on special lanes that make mass transit faster and more convenient than driving. There are now eight TransMilenio routes criss-crossing Bogotá. The BRT idea was pioneered in Curitiba, Brazil, in the 1970s but Bogotá’s success shows it can work in a larger city.

“Oscar Edmundo Diaz, senior program director for the Institute for Transportation and Development Policy (ITDP), who was Peñalosa’s chief mayoral aide, proudly notes that even wealthy people who own cars are now enthusiastic users of the BRT. ‘You don’t want to build a transit system just for the poor,’ he counsels. ‘Otherwise it will be stigmatized, and even poor people will look down on it. If everyone uses it, it will help the poor more.’”

Reading about Penalosa, I couldn’t help but recall The Architecture of Happiness, a book by one of my very favorite writers and thinkers, Alain de Botton. Here’s an on-point passage about the book from de Botton’s website:

“One of the great, but often unmentioned, causes of both happiness and misery is the quality of our environment: the kind of walls, chairs, buildings and streets we’re surrounded by.

“And yet a concern for architecture and design is too often described as frivolous, even self-indulgent. The Architecture of Happiness starts from the idea that where we are heavily influences who we can be - and argues that it is architecture’s task to stand as an eloquent reminder of our full potential.

“Whereas many architects are wary of openly discussing the word beauty, the book has at its centre the large and naïve question: ‘What is a beautiful building?’ It amounts to a tour through the philosophy and psychology of architecture, which aims to change the way we think about our homes, streets and ourselves.”

Penalosa’s chief concern, of course, has not been architecture per se, but rather the setting and infrastructure that supports it, and thereby supports our lives and well-being. But the same principles apply, and I bet the two of them would make fascinating conversants over a dinner of bandeja paisa.

Here's a neat video from the ever-terrific Streetfilms that puts Bogota's civic achievements into context. It was filmed on location:

Read Walljasper’s article on Penalosa here.

Kaid Benfield writes (almost) daily about community, development, and the environment. For more posts, see his blog's home page.

Lessons from the Sun Belt: replacing sprawl with smart growth requires sustained commitment

2010-03-04T16:25:02Z

For smart urbanism to be more than a boutique product, it must become not an experiment but standard practice in jurisdictions across the county. When Parris Glendening was governor in the late 1990s and early 2000s, for example, the state of Maryland had real leadership on progressive land use; it was just beginning to make progress. But Glendening’s work was unfinished, and his successor quickly dismantled the state’s smart growth office and gave lip service at best to the state’s pioneering land use laws. As a result, instead of being strengthened, those programs soon lapsed into not-so-benign neglect, and the state’s landscape shows the unfortunate results.

Writing for Citiwire, Charlotte Observer columnist Mary Newsom now reports that something similar is happening in that North Carolina city’s affluent suburbs. Huntersville, Cornelius, and Davidson are all once-rural small towns that have now essentially become commuter suburbs for Charlotte. Each of them has attempted to grapple with growth pressures:

“A little more than a dozen years ago, a collection of three adjacent suburban towns in the sprawling Sun Belt region of Charlotte did something extraordinary. After months of public workshops, lectures and community discussions, months of looking at slide shows to choose what kinds of streets, stores, houses and apartments they wanted for their towns, they revamped their town codes. They aimed to discourage conventional suburbia and encourage traditional neighborhood development, transit-oriented projects and farmland preservation . . .

“’The torch didn’t get well passed,’ says Bill Coxe, transportation planner in Huntersville, a one-time mill-town and railroad hamlet that has grown from less than 3,000 people in 1988 to an estimated 39,000 in 2006. In both Huntersville and the next-door town of Cornelius, early enthusiasm for concentrating development into higher density nodes and for pushing more growth into the towns’ tiny, historic downtowns has faltered, victim of elections and the departures of some key planners, mayors and town managers. It hasn’t helped that a long-wished-for commuter rail line remains in funding limbo.”

Newsom cites a city-owned property in Huntersville at a planned commuter rail stop that is ideal for mixed-use, walkable development. That was once the plan. But now it seems destined to become a single-use police station instead. Not mincing words, Bill Coxe told Newsom that “The cadre who believed in it moved on. Now you just have a bunch of suburbanites. And they just don’t get it.”

Newsom interviewed David Walters, who teaches at UNC-Charlotte and consulted on the revamping of town ordinances in favor of smart growth in Huntersville, Cornelius, and nearby Davidson:

“Walters . . . thinks the inability to stick to community plans is likely a continual problem, especially rapidly growing suburban areas such as Huntersville. He’s right. People move away. They forget. They elect new politicians. Time changes everything.

“Even if 15 years ago hundreds of people devoted hundreds of hours to learn a better way to grow, Walters reminds us, you need ‘constant vigilance, constant education, constant programming of public events to keep the issues alive.’”

One of the more ambitious projects near Huntersville has been Vermillion, a 400-acre development designed by new urbanist firm Duany Plater-Zyberk. But, as reported by Doug Smith in his “Next Big Thing” column, Vermillion’s developers took stock of their market after completion of the project’s first phase and decided to cut its planned density in half. The project’s next phase includes executive-styled, 4000-square-foot homes on large lots with curving streets and a 2.5-mile linear park, advertised as convenient to Interstate 77. One might as well add, “otherwise known as conventional, high-end suburbia.” While DPZ architect Tom Low maintains that the development’s commitment to new urbanism remains intact, it’s apparent to this writer that the definition is being stretched beyond what most people would consider “urban” or even “new.”

In the project’s defense, Newsom wrote in 2007 on her blog The Naked City (great title; in the Citiwire piece, she also invokes Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys, so she’s earned some credibility with me) that “the new phase of Vermillion will also include more townhomes and three-level dwellings, and [developer] Bowman is planning to add more retail. It’s within walking distance of a planned transit stop and the core of old, downtown Huntersville.”

More encouraging, perhaps, is the continuing commitment to progressive land use principles in the town of Davidson, not far from Huntersville and Cornelius. Newsom reports that Davidson continues “religiously” to pursue a vision that directs most growth into already developed areas, protects its historic downtown, and conserves open land in the nearby countryside.

My friend Victor Dover and his colleagues at Dover Kohl town planners have been helping guide Davidson’s concept. From the Dover Kohl web site:

“Home to Davidson College, the town enacted sweeping reforms to its land development regulations based on the principles of new urbanism. This neighborhood [see images above] is the first sizable project permitted under the new rules. Veteran developer Doug Boone collaborated with Dover, Kohl & Partners to create the concept plan, refine the mix of building types, review architects' plans, and define a marketing strategy. A variety of housing options, generous green space, and a mixture of uses combine to create a memorable extension of the historic town.”

As always with Victor’s projects, it certainly looks fabulous.

But Davidson may be a special case, “enamored of itself,” in Newsom’s words. She quotes David Walters as saying that the town’s long-time mayor, Randy Kincaid, “got it,” and there has been relatively little turnover on the Davidson’s governing board. Walters says the town’s “sense of specialness” has helped it maintain a commitment that has been more fleeting elsewhere.

So, what’s the lesson in all this? Mecklenburg County, where these communities are located, is as good a poster child as any for the challenges associated with Sun Belt sprawl. It’s a part of the “real” America in a way that, I submit, Washington, New York and San Francisco are not. I think the lesson is that, to borrow an overworked cliché, we are in a marathon rather than a sprint. There are going to be setbacks, variations, and imperfections even in projects and policies that are mostly good. We must keep our eyes on the prize, hold on, and work not just for political advances that disappear with political changes, but for deeper, cultural progress as well.

Kaid Benfield writes (almost) daily about community, development, and the environment. For more posts, see his blog's home page.

Amazing, animated film clip showing a city's evolution

2010-03-03T13:36:18Z

Via a post by Patrick James on the GOOD blog, I came across this amazing video (actually the 3-minute finish to a 9-minute film). The technique is "stop-motion paper animation," and the creator is Rob Carter.

We don't see the beginning, when the film shows Charlotte's very first house, but we do see it from about late 20th century to the present and into the future, and eventually to a rather startling reclamation by nature. Here's part of the description from the Vimeo site:

Charlotte is one of the fastest growing cities in the country, primarily due to the continuing influx of the banking community, resulting in an unusually fast architectural and population expansion that shows no sign of faltering despite the current economic climate. However, this new downtown Metropolis is therefore subject to the whim of the market and the interest of the giant corporations that choose to do business there. Made entirely from images printed on paper, the animation literally represents this sped up urban planners dream, but suggests the frailty of that dream, however concrete it may feel on the ground today. Ultimately the video continues the city development into an imagined hubristic future, of more and more skyscrapers and sports arenas and into a bleak environmental future. It is an extreme representation of the already serious water shortages that face many expanding American cities today; but this is less a warning, as much as a statement of our paper thin significance no matter how many monuments of steel, glass and concrete we build.

I highly recommend watching in full-screen mode with the sound on:

Metropolis by Rob Carter - Last 3 minutes from Rob Carter on Vimeo.

I also higly recommend the entire film, which you can view on Rob Carter's own site.

Kaid Benfield writes (almost) daily about community, development, and the environment. For more posts, see his blog's home page.

Haiti update: Mourning, builder, architects donate emergency homes, work for more

2010-03-02T13:27:46Z

Former Georgetown University and Miami Heat basketball star Alonzo Mourning has always acted with intensity and purpose, as anyone on the receiving end of one of the nearly 3000 shots he blocked during his playing career can attest. Now those attributes are being channeled into helping others, especially the people of Haiti, where over 200,000 people lost their lives and at least twice that number lost their homes in the January earthquake.

In the face of such an enormous scale of tragedy, any one person’s – or one group’s – contribution seems miniscule. But it is nonetheless significant when someone of stature steps up. In ‘Zo’s case, that meant more or less immediate fundraising through his foundation and its progeny, the Athletes Relief Fund for Haiti, co-founded with former teammate and current Heat star Dwayne Wade. Their effort has already raised some $800,000 from NBA and NFL players and alums.

Some of those funds are being applied to an effort with Miami-based prefab construction builder InnoVida and architect Andres Duany to get emergency homes on the ground, quickly. As I wrote two weeks ago, Duany has designed homes that can be manufactured offsite, easily shipped in flat-pack form, and then assembled locally in a day or less. They are made of durable materials that can withstand severe weather events and may be configured in a variety of ways to suit families’ and communities’ needs (see illustrations). The group is donating 1000 of the homes immediately, and InnoVida is also moving to establish a manufacturing facility in Haiti that can build 10,000 more while providing job opportunity and training to Haitians.

The video I embedded in my previous post – made only two weeks into their work -- reveals the thoughtful approach that the Duany and InnoVida have taken, and all of us must wish them every possible success. You can learn all about the Haitian cabins, their technology, types, assembly and application in this well-illustrated publication. Sample from the opening pages, delineating some of their key characteristics:

Are built fast. Structures that are 160 sq ft (like the Starter Cabin) can be built in 12 hours. This is nearly 70% faster than traditional construction.
Are high-quality, durable, non-flammable, waterproof and do not provide a food source for algae or mold growth.
Are strong enough to withstand earthquakes, floods, tornados, hurricanes, fires and other natural disasters.
Promote a healthier global environment by producing very little construction-site waste, air pollution and natural-resource consumption.
Can be built with no heavy equipment and unskilled labor.
Significantly reduces the amount of energy needed to heat and/or cool the structure and provides excellent noise reduction.
Can furnish built-in platform beds, table, desk, closets, cabinets, and water and septic tanks.
Can be covered with any desired finish (paint, stone, stucco, wallpaper, etc.), but it is not required to do so.

The basic cabin (there is a range of types) can sleep up to eight people.

As promising as this effort is, no one person or company has “the” idea that can put Haiti back on some kind of path towards humanity, to say nothing of sustainability. We will also need many other efforts to succeed. The “Haiti House” built by Harbor Homes, for example, uses a similar flat-pack, prefab and assembly concept, but with aluminum and steel rather than composite fiber:

Cameron Sinclair of Architecture for Humanity emphasizes on The Huffington Post that no one should be naïve about the amount of time rebuilding will take:

“When we are rebuilding, do not let the media set the time line and expectations for reconstruction. I remember vividly well known news personalities standing on the rubble of homes in the lower ninth proclaiming that 'this time next year we will see families back home.' Some well meaning NGOs, who usually have little building experience, are even worse -- 'we'll have 25,000 Haitians back home if you donate today.' In reality, here is what it really looks like;

Pre-Planning Assessments and Damage Analysis (underway, will run for a year)

Establish Community Resource Center and Reconstruction Studio (Week 6 to Month 3)

Sorting Out Land Tenure and Building Ownership (Month 6 to Year 5)

Transitional Shelters, Health Clinics and Community Structures (Month 6 to Year 2)

Schools, Hospitals and Civic Structures (Month 9 to Year 3)

Permanent Housing (Year 1 to Year 5)”

Stefanos Polyzoides, like Duany a co-founder of the Congress for the New Urbanism, also has some thoughtful suggestions that stress the importance of using local labor.

What has been sad to read, unfortunately, has been a surprising amount of sniping in the comments sections of web postings (for example, here and here), with various proponents of particular approaches stressing why one or the other of these efforts is misplaced. In my humble opinion Haiti needs all ideas and as much effort from talented people as possible. Sinclair said it best:

“There is no 'ownership' in rebuilding lives. It sickens me when I hear agencies say their processes are proprietary. If you like what we are doing either support us or steal this plan. We need dozens of tug boat NGOs working together to build back Haiti better. Let's not waste donor dollars on working in silos. Haiti has suffered enough.”

This 97-second news clip from a Miami TV station (that has not enabled embedding, unfortunately, so the link takes you offsite) gives a great mini-tour of the Mourning/InnoVida/Duany effort. Check it out. 'Zo looks like he could still play, and heaven knows my Georgetown Hoyas could use him right now if that were possible.

Kaid Benfield writes (almost) daily about community, development, and the environment. For more posts, see his blog's home page.

Outstanding walkability/livability presentation by DC planning staff

2010-02-28T18:45:54Z

As you can see from the Walk Score map above, Washington, DC is a city blessed with highly walkable neighborhoods. And it’s going to get even better: When he took office in 2007, DC mayor Adrian Fenty hit a home run by appointing national smart growth icon (and great friend to many of us) Harriet Tregoning to be director of the city’s planning office. Harriet in turn assembled a great staff and has been doing terrific work ever since.

This brief presentation (only 18 slides, but every one contains well-illustrated points of substance) shows some of that work, including plans for several walkable city neighborhoods. It is one of the best of its kind that I’ve seen. The last half illustrates how the ever-fascinating Walk Score tool can be used to guide planning goals. (All images in this post are from the presentation, courtesy of DC Office of Planning.) Enjoy:

Getting To Walkability

Kaid Benfield writes (almost) daily about community, development, and the environment. For more posts, see his blog's home page.

Zoning reform, libertarianism, and the nature of community

2010-02-26T13:39:45Z

The city planners of Anchorage, Alaska, are attempting to bring that city’s land-use regulations into the 21st century. In particular, they are proposing a variation on form-based zoning that would encourage mixed uses, orientation of development to the street, and pedestrian- and people-friendly building design. This has been a massive undertaking, in the works for the better part of a decade. And it is running into opposition.

Note: Today’s post is co-authored with my good friend Lee Epstein, a seasoned and very policy-savvy environmental lawyer and land-use planner.

Longtime Anchorage planning director Tom Nelson articulated the rationale in 2006 in the Alaska Business Monthly:

“Like most cities, Anchorage's land-use regulations have encouraged single-use districts, and reliance on a single mode of transportation to connect them--the automobile. This has led to a more sprawling land-use pattern and greater consumption of energy resources than would otherwise be the case . . . as one looks ahead, there is a need to create other viable, attractive and less energy-consumptive choices for transportation--be it walking, biking or transit--as well as to shorten distances to destinations . . .

“Mixed-use developments, winter-city design, energy-conserving buildings and transportation systems, creation of public spaces and retention of important open spaces are all increasing in usage. These trends in land development coincide with many of the solutions proposed in response to the changing economic circumstances and community aspirations in Anchorage. As developers, residents and local officials see the benefits of these attributes, Anchorage's land-use code needs to change in order to help accommodate and facilitate them.”

Writing last week in the Anchorage Daily News about changes the new code would bring to the commercial sector of Anchorage development, Rosemary Shinohara reports that “under the proposed new rules, a local builder no longer could put a windowless, blank side of a commercial building next to the street” but, instead, would be required to choose from a menu of options within each of three major design categories:

Windows, entrances and the building's orientation in reference to the sidewalk and street. Opening to the street rather than just to offstreet parking lots helps walkability, visual appeal, and a sense of community.
Building design. Shinohara: "Examples of choices are setting an upper story back from the lower stories; building a plaza; adding a second color, texture or material to the front of the building; or creating recesses or projections so the facade is not just a flat surface."
Northern climate considerations. The code's menu includes entrances protected from the weather, sheltered or ice-free walkways, sunlit atriums, and balconies or marquees that project out over a sidewalk or entrance, providing cover.

Seems sensible, no? But Shinohara also writes that “a group called the Building Owners and Managers Association has started a petition drive to get the city to kill the massive, seven-year-long, 14-chapter modernization of local zoning laws, of which commercial design standards are part. They want the city to stay with existing code,” which as far as we can tell has pretty much allowed commercial developers to do whatever they want. This is, after all, a notoriously independent part of the country that doesn’t warm to government involvement very easily (except, um, for those timber, oil, and gas subsidies, but that’s another matter).

The proposed code is scheduled to come before the city’s decision-making Assembly for adoption this spring.

Anchorage’s circumstances raise some important issues about how best to improve urban landscapes and urban livability – sometimes in the face of libertarian attitudes about government. More expansively, how best can citizens and their governments, organized by the consent of the governed into a constitutional system aimed at enforcing the responsibilities of citizenship toward the common good, better attain those ends? That’s a mouthful, but the query is aimed at those who will always say, “Not me, buddy. I know what’s best for me. And unless you’re calling to rescue me from my burning building, stay out of my hair, OK?” Such a response is too often engendered whenever new local requirements are proposed, whether necessary to clean up a community’s rivers and streams, keep children out of danger or, heaven forbid, keep truly ugly buildings from proliferating like dandelions in the spring.

But let’s face it: Blank walls running along a city street are ugly, and they’re even dangerous. They allow for no “eyes on the street,” crucial (by all professional law enforcement accounts) for keeping streets safe. And they’re the architectural equivalent of presenting your backside to the rest of the world – all the time. Lovely.

But how do you “legislate” them away? How can a local government best achieve the legitimate aims of enhancing public safety and securing for the benefit of all citizens a more functional, efficient and, yes, attractive community? After all, you can’t pass a law that requires “good taste,” whatever that is. (At least that’s the apparent complaint of some of our architect friends, who fear some draconian curb on their creativity. C’mon. Apart from the fact that form-based codes are themselves the work of gifted architects, maybe it’s that insistence on sculptural freedom and “creative” architecture that sometimes gets us into this fix in the first place. But don’t get us started.)

Regardless of what some might think, most of us do live in communities. And the constitution says that communities have the right – and the responsibility – to provide for the public good, and the general health, safety and welfare of all their citizens. Sometimes that is going to mean that, after a lot of open consideration, an ordinance will be passed that requires citizens to pony up to the mutual responsibilities bar: ‘We [insert name of community] pledge to keep you safe and keep our community livable and economically energetic, while you [insert name of citizen and business alike] pledge to uphold certain standards of behavior and action.’

That’s how we see attempts such as those that Anchorage is making, or similar ones elsewhere, to try to eploy reasonable new zoning standards to improve a city’s image and look, its functionality, walkability, and environmental quality. We elect representatives to make these decisions, and if the process is an honest and open one, we should honor our subsequent responsibilities as citizens.

With respect to Anchorage’s proposed new zoning, no, good taste cannot be legislated. But certain minimum standards and principles can be articulated that express qualitatively or quantitatively how a community wishes to present its face to the world – standards relative to proportionality, bulk and height, scale, location on a street, pedestrian functionality and yes, even how the street-level façade should function. A city might achieve this with a variety or menu of choices, or provide some incentives and disincentives to property owners and developers. (For an interesting presentation showing the issues Anchorage is trying to address, and some modest improvements the new code would encourage, go here. Most of the images in this post are from that presentation.)

The bottom line is that local communities can and should take on, through mechanisms like zoning, how they look, how they function, or how green they become – because the alternative is to succumb to the lowest common denominator, and (as Ian McHarg once said about failing to achieve environmental quality through good planning and zoning) to let the devil take the hindmost.

Kaid Benfield writes (almost) daily about community, development, and the environment. For more posts, see his blog's home page.