Asymmetrical Information

Jane -

those old, pre-WWII "suburban" neighborhoods where everyone walked or took the trolley are actually reasonably nice places to live - I just bought a (very small) house in the Laurel District of Oakland. My lot is 1750 sq. ft., and most of the neighboring lots are less than twice that size, except where they've been combined to put up a two-story apartment building.

But they work because there's usually enough room to park one's car(s), and there's a price - the traffic congestion on the relatively narrow streets is pretty bad compared to newer suburbs, and is comparable to denser urban areas.

As for "too poor to drive", perhaps New York has sane insurance laws. In California, there are plenty of people who are "too poor to drive", because of the cost of driving and the cost of insurance. There are plenty more who have cars, but can't commute long distances in them reliably, because the cars they can afford are old and one step ahead of "gross polluter" status.

As someone who lives in San Francisco and commutes by bus I think one of the main problems with the new urbanism is that the citizens of the cities do not want more people living in the town. Virtually any middling structure (3 stories or more) that is proposed is shot down by neighborhood activists (many of them claiming to be left wing). I have heard similar arguments in Berkeley where many have said that "Berkeley is full up and cannot have any more homes" a quote from the local paper. Although I do not think new urbanism is the panacea that its proponents make out I do think a lot more people would like to live more densely. Unfortunately, many of the cities current residents do not want those people near them.

Dear Jane:
I was born and raised in New York, and lived in the same apartment as my parents, at 71st street between 5th and Madison, until I moved to DC in 1981.

Without going into detail, life in the big city, even under such essentially optimal conditions, was no joke. It's hard to remember now, but in those days even such things as *air conditioning* weren't readily available: I remember during the summer, we used to go to the movies on weekends as much to benefit from the A/C as to see the movie.

And of course, with the "shopping every day" gig, it's just *sooo* much fun shlepping a couple bags of groceries home through that pitiless sun and humidity.

Truth is, "sprawl" *was* the "smart growth" of its day: the only reason my parents didn't move out to the 'burbs themselves was...neither one could drive!

Anyhow...I liked your initial post and passed it to some others. Hang in there! :-)

I'm just curious - do they have these problems in China? My wife is from China, and she says very few people there drive. All her friends that I have met did not learn to drive until they came to the US. No one in her family drives. Everyone takes the train, walks or rides a bike. At the same time, their cities are growing like mad. Beijing is something like 14 million people. Shanghai has even more. There are many cities you and I never heard of that have over 1 million people. Surely sprawl is taking place, but are they building more trains, running more buses?

It seems like Europe doesn't have sprawl problems either, but then again their population is not growing. What about Tokyo? I think their population is pretty stable too.

I agree with the analysis. I would propose increasing mileage standards is a more direct solution with more benefits. many people will keep driving anyhow with higher gas taxes. some will stop due to higher costs. similarly, higher mileage standards will raise the cost of cars leading many people to keep driving and exluding a minority due to higher cost burden. the second alternative 1. reduces the gas consumed by persistent drivers 2. forces US car industry into the inevitable market (which is important industry for taxpayers to babysit due to the huge poetential unfunded pension liability that they'll drop on the taxpayer if the car companies go bankrupt). the reasonable counterpoint is that higher gas prices will indirectly raise fuel standards through market forces, but only a look at continuing truck sales in the face of sharp rise in gasoline prices shows how inefficient this link is.

Did you say your lot was 1750 sqft. Thats not bigger that the first floor in my house. I guess things have gotten larger since your house was built. I grew up a farmboy in Colorado on a section of land, the nearest neighbor was over a mile away. I wanted out BAD, real BAD, so I moved to Boston, lived off of the Green Line, and left my car on the farm. I was miserable within weeks. Carrying groceries, going to laundermats, commuting in the very crowded trains was hell. I moved back to Denver, into a townhouse with a garage, and a washer and dryer. Lost all interest in ever riding public transportation ever again.

--Stephen

WHAT I want to know is:
Who is smart enough to know what the proper "smart" growth is?

If there are indeed smart people who know what the "smart" growth is, can we trust them not to have the growth be "smart" to their benefit and not ours?

How will we dummies know if the growth is "smart" or not?

I say, when it comes to growth, put your money where your mouth is-that way if your growth is not smart, you loose your money, not ours.

Zoning is is the playground of that pompous species the "Community Planner". None of them is worth a seive full of warm water. (i didn't want to be vulgar)

"To me, 'smart growth' means more people can get to more places in more than one way (i.e. not just by driving)."

Well, as driving would seem to include cars, taxis and buses, the "other ways" would seem to have to be by foot, rail or helicopter.

Helicopters not being practical, and rail being useful only within walking distance of rail lines -- walking when carrying things &/or with children, elderly relatives, etc. -- most of the usable pleasant living space in the US seems to be unavailable via this option.

"My ideal is that you should be able to get the schools you want WITHOUT having to move a zillion miles out to an automobile-dependent suburb; this was the norm in America for the first half of the 20th century, and I don't know why it cannot be that way again."

It was the "norm" only for as long as people had *no alternatives*. As soon as people had alternatives -- cheap cars and servicable roads -- they rushed to use them as quickly as possible, to make their lives better.

Today people do have those alternatives, THAT's the reason "why it cannot be that way again."

I live in Manhattan, two blocks away from a central subway hub that connects to everything. I've got maybe the most useful public transport setup in the world from practically my front door. And I use it all the time.

But I also have a car. It is an alternative that makes my life *much much* better than being dependent on public transport.

Supppose, as one tiny example, I want to take my kids to to a beach or amusement park. Where am I supposed to take them from here on the subway? A couple hours on the subway to and back from Coney Island, *carrying* gobs of stuff by hand all the way?

With a car I can take them to *any* park, lake or beach within 75 miles -- countless more options -- in the same amount of transport time, in comfort, with music, with the kids not going to run out of their seats and get lost, and as many pounds of goodies as I want to carry packed conveniently in the rear. And I am free to take spur-of-the-moment side trips to Grandma's house or the ice cream stand or wherever, as the mood strikes.

IOW, I do not "have" to have a car and drive all over, I am *better off* because I have a car and *can* drive all over. The norm for the first half of the last century was for people to be deprived of this option -- and they were worse off for it.

It's simple geometry -- are you better off having your movement constrained to within walking distance of a line (subject to the conditions imposed by those who operate the line) or having free movement according to your own wishes anywhere on a plane? If the latter, then auto enabled "sprawl" is *good*.

The irony about all those who believe new transit lines should be used to promote denser living is that they don't realize the historical reality that the NYC subways -- their model from the first 50 years of the last century that will never be matched -- were explicity created to *promote sprawl*.

Everybody *was* packed in within walking distance of work in southern Manhattan and it was just plain awful -- unpleasant, unhealthy, and dangerous.

The subways were created expressly to enable people to move out into the countryside -- to *sprawl* out into the wildlands of upper Manhattan ("The Dakota" was called that because 72nd St seemed that far away) and Queens, and into the far country of the Bronx. And the same for the commuter rail lines such as up through Yonkers, their function was to *spread people out* of the city -- people could still work in the city but sprawl out into owning country homes in country communities, and have the *better* lives that went with them and with commuting.

All these rail lines in the first half of the last century served the exact same purpose in their time as the auto did later -- only after WWII the auto was better at serving that purpose.

Imagining that new urban rail lines are going to somehow get people to move *closer together* -- that's just never been reality, it's some strange ahistorical fantasy. Which is why the attempt never works.

And what's so "smart" about ignoring all history and experience, the choices millions of people have made and why they made them?

The proponents of 'smart growth' need to focus their attention on what is happening on the ground. In New York City's other boroughs, it seems that every residential community is trying to reduce the legal densities to keep out any more growth and any more people, just as in Berkely. The folks already in these communities just want to pull up the drawbridge and maintain the status quo. Any effort for ' smarter growth' in New York City is focused on the rezoning of industrial areas along the water front to accommodate the luxury high rise development beloved of the smart growth folks. Unfortunately, very few of these areas have the mass transit access that is found in similar areas in the older built up sections of Manhattan and Brooklyn. It's not yet clear how well these ' new neighborhoods' will fare with a bus ride to the subway as the minimum commuting option.

Similar efforts to control growth seem to be occurring in Boston. And very few of the areas that have been blessed by the federal transit new starts largesse over the last two decades seem to have any interest in creating the density model that is common to the trolley-served areas that are found in Boston, Toronto, and San Francisco. So what has been the point of making the investment?

There is still, however, a concerted effort to change the options available to Americans. When was the last time that one saw an open discussion of transit pricing? Ask that transit services be fully priced to accommodate both capital and operating costs and one runs the risk of being tarmpled in the rush to say that transit is different from everything else that we consume. There's so much public good developed that it should be subsidized. Of course, very few transit advocates can get beyond that point to defend logically their position. Why should we have to pay full prices for everything but transit in the urban area? Why should we all be subsidizing the affluent in New York by taking money from the poor who drive in upstate New York because they have to?

By the way,Europe does have sprawl, as anyone who have lived in Dublin can attest to.

" 'Smart growth is great if your family members are all affluent enough to take care of themselves; it is not so fulfilling when you have to shove your ailing mother into the kids room when her resources fail.' "

"Response: I really don't see what this has to do with smart growth, except that your ailing mother is a lot more helpless if you can't reach her, or she you, without a car - especially once she's so ailing that she can't drive."
~~~

How is mom supposed to be so darn helpless if you can't reach her without a car if you have a car? And if she's so ailing that she can't drive, she's going to walk out and hop on the subway for a ride?? The exericse will be good for her?

Seeking to translate the above into coherent English I get: If one's mother takes ill things certainly are much better if she is reachable on short notice at any hour by car, rather than if you or she must take a train and/or bus (that might not be running) to reach each other.

So if you have a train or bus available a car is still much the best. And if a car is available you don't need train or bus, of course. Hurrah for cars! Cars rule for mom!
=======

"My response: Since when is the only alternative to sprawl lugging up three flights of stairs?? Were there no one-story houses in pre-sprawl America? Were there no elevators?"

As noted, one-story houses = sprawl. Imagine everyone in NYC living in one-story buildings! ;-)

As to 'were there no elevators?', basically *no* there weren't. E.g. I live in a Manhattan building from just the period, built before the car and even the subway created "sprawl". It's really very nice. Duplex apartment, historic neighborhood, etc.

Of course back *before* sprawl my one apartment was *six* apartments with the bathroom for them down the hall. And elevator? No, it's a five-story walk-up. Still. Fortunately I live on the ground floor. The upstairs people still lug things upward (five flights, not three) even in the 21st Century.

God I hate fisking. I had a boss once who if you wrote an 11 word sentence would fisk every friggin word in it. Fisking is a sign of having a large SUV, er, I mean small p----. Alternatively, one can debate smarter by fairly and reasonably summing up the idiot's, er, I mean opponent's, argument, picking out one or two eggregious points, and addressing those.

Jane, I couldn't even read your post fisking back. It was longer than the average chapter of Connecticut Yankee on your other site. I did catch a note about LA being hell on earth. It is heaven. But I also love NYC, David Letterman, etc. And, did you know that the largest concentration of New Yorkers outside of Los Angeles is indeed in NYC?

Stephen - my house is a 1.5 bedroom house, 613 sq.ft., built in 1924. It was the "starter home" of its day - built for young families (the 0.5 bedroom was a nursery, originally opening into the main bedroom, but rebuild to open into the hallway.)

Oakland was the "urban sprawl" of the 1920s - most of the houses in Oakland were built between 1920 and 1929, with some neighborhoods filling in during WW2, and some of the hills being developed in the 1950s and 60s. Most of the apartment buildings not in downtown were built in the 1960s, on land that had been previously built up with houses in the 1920s. The housing growth of the 1920s went hand-in-hand with enormous manufacturing growth, as Oakland was 60 miles closer to the rest of the US than San Francisco by rail, and had those wide open spaces, for the Kaiser Shipyards, Kaiser Steel mills, and much else besides.

Before WW2, and into the 1950s, there was a public transit rail system which connected Oakland, Berkeley, and nearby areas, and which crossed into San Francisco once the Bay Bridge was built.

The post and comment are excellent. One point of the few points that no one has yet commented on is the following passage of Lewyn:

First of all, you can have a "detached house with a yard" without having the status quo; just look at anyplace in America (outside NYC) built in the first half of the 20th century- Shaker Heights near Cleveland, Winnetka near Chicago, city neighborhoods outside downtown in most Rust Belt cities. These are places that are, in their own way, smart growth- places with sidewalks and train stations nearby, even though densities and transit ridership are certainly not at Manhattan-type levels.

> By the way,Europe does have sprawl, as anyone who have lived in Dublin can attest to.

No kidding. Take London for another example. How do you suppose they get all those people in w/o zillions of high-rises? It sure seemed like a right sprawley place to me last time I was there.

the reasonable counterpoint is that higher gas prices will indirectly raise fuel standards through market forces

Another reasonable counterpoint is that elevated gas prices will be directly passed on to consumers because pretty much every consumer good in this country is shipped by truck at some point, including basic groceries and dry-good needs, so you're flat-taxing everyone (including the low-income segment) in the process.

If you make a special tax exemption for diesel fuel, a la Europe, the inevitable result is to create a market for diesel-powered consumer vehicles. Modern TDIs have pretty much solved the soot problems traditionally associated with diesel engines, but the exhaust odor can still be downright unpleasant, especially in a confined area such as a city.

The thing that interests me is that the people who favor "Smart Growth" and high density population are often also the same people who regard human population growth as A Bad Thing. I can't help but feel that this implies an inability to see incongruity on their part. ^_^;

I'll take a swat at the China question. I'm living in Shenzhen, the original Special Economic Zone. The whole city has been expanding like you wouldn't believe for twenty years, from nothing to (estimates vary - let's call it five million).

I live in an apartment at the primary school where I work - which beats the two block commute I had in LA some time ago. The nearest bodega-equivalent was four blocks away; those were bricked up recently (urban renewal preparation), and now I have to walk an extra four blocks - or cross the overpass, which is a two-story climb each way, plus another block, to get beer and smokes. The nearest supermarkets are about a mile away, I think. This limits my grocery carrying capacity, as does the relatively small size of refridgerators here. My location (aside from being work-close) is sub-optimal; my collegues live further from school, but closer to conveniences.

I can eat at school - it's not that good, but it's subsidized by the school. Other than that, dining is readily available, ranging from street vendors at the nearby factory during shift-change to nice restaurants. The Colonel is next to the market, McDonald's twice as far. I can get dumplings for much less, closer.

I'm not in the city center. The bus downtown is crowded and slow, but cheap, taxis are faster and about ten times the cost. There's a beach area I can reach by bus (twenty minutes). Have yet to find the ideal bar in my 'neighborhood' (within two miles or so), and it takes two hours by bus, or 3% of my monthly pay by cab, to get to the 'westerner bar area'.

It's not hell, even for a lazy, car-driving Californian. I'm rich enough, here, to afford eating out, taking the occasional cab, etc. If I wanted to go out and "do things", like see movies or a band, go bowling, or go clubbing (as opposed to karaoke, which is everywhere) I'd be on the bus a lot more (the internet fills much free time). Once I start cooking more, I'll be schlepping to the market at least every other day.

Some points: Even in Shenzhen, there aren't nearly as many cars as the US - gut they're getting there. Congestion is building up. The bus system is pretty good, but I have no idea how the subway works - it's only just opened, and not near me. There's no zoning. Urban renewal consists of "that building has to go" and a wrecking ball, followed by rapid rebuilding or conversion to parks. Worker housing here is close - on-site for construction, factory workers within a mile or so, and every structure at least six stories, much of it housing.

It's changing rapidly, as I may have mentioned. This section of the city is currently mixed industrial/residential/retail, but it's near the water, so it's moving to mixed residential/retail (with that including individual industrial efforts, if that makes sense), as they realize that waterfront factories waste property value. In five years, it'll probably be a tony government/middle-and-upper-class center, with a scattering of shops and shopkeepers.

So what's my point? China doesn't have enough cars yet to have "sprawl" - housing developments here are ten-to-twenty stories of flats (with underground parking - take that San Francisco!), with services and restaurants on the ground floor. This may change, I have seen a single-family detatched dwelling development here. I think. I get the feeling that high-density living is not as unpopular here as it is in the US. Could be cultural, could be that the personal vehicle hasn't made itself felt yet. China also has more control over its population than the US does. There doesn't seem to be much crime, but I'm clearly not from around here, and at 6'7", I'm not an optimal target for street crime anywhere.

Derek-- Japan does have a pretty stagnant population. They also have a much higher population density as a whole. While many Japanese do wish that they could live in detached houses, there's not that much land, and those are incredibly expensive, with long commutes. And as we all know, Tokyo is an expensive place to live.

Megan's point, in any case, is that while people will live in close quarters if they have to, they certainly don't prefer to to the extent that the Smarth-Growthers imagine. In Japan people would love to spread out if they only had room. Considering all the empty space that the USA has, sprawl is only to be expected.

I havent read enough on this topic to debate anyone. But I have a few uninformed observations. I dont think real estate developers consider "smart growth", they are concerned only with profit margins. It seems to me a common American goal for urban families that have children is to flee to the suburbs as soon as they can get financing. Theres a public perception(and its likely a correct perception) that while urban areas have the advantage of easier commutes to work, more diverse cultural expieriences, more entertainment oppurtunities, etc, these advantages are more than offset by the higher crime rate in the more population dense areas, and people that have children view the higher crime rate as reason enough to move to the suburbs.

As I stated at the start, Ive done little reading in this area. But I dont think theres much influence on government by those who endorse smart growth in the US. Real estate developers move there projects further and further away from the urban core, because thats where the largest profits are. When people try to influence zoning laws with public transportation and other smart growth arguments they are immediately labled socialist, or if the accusation is leveled by someone over 50, the accusation is communist. I think with the huge amount of undeveloped land in the US, the greater profits in developing that land when compared to the cost involved in making places with high population density more family friendly, the concepts of smart growth cant get any traction.

I dont think smart growth can be given much consideration in a capitalist society. Because smart growth is easily spun into government interferance by those with profits at stake.

>I am unfamiliar with the notion that someone can be "too poor to drive"...
Due to the fine state of our economy, I spent 12 months out of work in 2003/2004. Paying for car insurance was far less important to me than finding a new job, getting food or keeping a roof over my head. I had the foresight to get the car insurance that makes the payments if you are unemployed or disabled (losing a car because I was unemployed for 7 months in 2001 inspired me to cough up for that insurance). I do not drink alcohol. I do not take drugs. I merely got caught in the recession.

If your car insurance expires, is cancelled, is not renewed, the state of Florida will suspend your driving license. Even if you do not own a car. It costs $150 to get it reinstated. Sell your car? SR22 + $150 plz. Got it repo'd? SR22 + $150 plz. Move to another state and take public transport? SR22 + $150 plz.

It has taken me over 6 months to get through the bureacracy of driver license hassle departments to get my license reinstated. I still don't have enought to buy even a junker, even though I am compelled to purchase car insurance without having a car. It took 2 months to find a company willing to sell liability insurance without owning a car. The insurance agent said "when you finally do get a car, your premiums will go down." So I get to subsidize the insurance industry to the tune of $140/month because they managed to purchase laws requiring insurance: whether you own a car or not.

I am making about half as much as I was making 18 months ago. I am a programmer.

I picked the apartment I currently stay at because of its proximity to public tranport routes.

I will never borrow money from any company again as long as I live. If I cannot pay cash for something, I will not purchase it. I don't care if you think "what if everyone felt that way, the economy would collapse." Too f*ing bad.

So, I am taking public transport because I am too poor to afford a car. I estimate it will be summer 2005 before I have enough to buy something that won't get stuck in the snow (some months, I can put up to $200 into the jar, and yes it is a jar). Does this answer sufficiently explain how someone can be "too poor to drive?"

I live in Houston and I don't want higher population density. I like the spread out, park-like city. If you look out the window of a tall building, you generally see nothing but trees and 10-20 story buildigs as far as the eye can see. We have a couple of areas of tall buildings, including Downtown, Uptown-Galleria, Greenspoint, the Medical Center, etc... but they are spread apart. Many people live in houses and most apartment buildings are 2-3 stories. Newer apartment buildings may be 4-5 stories and we are seeing a rise in the number of 2-3 story townhouses (generally 3 together on a single or double lot) inside the city.

My concern is that population densities will grow and Houston will become more crowded and unpleasant. Traffic is already bad enough. We have busses and are slowly building light rail, though the only existing line shares the road with cars and has had an extraordinary number of accidents. I don't know what the ridership numbers are or how much it costs, but I doubt it's very cost effective. It was primarily built to connect downtown to a sports complex for Superbowl/Olympic bids.

I have two kids and my wife and I both work and I have no desire to do any shopping on foot. Houston is hot and humid (or cold and rainy) and the less time spent outside the better. I don't mind going to the mall (as long as it's enclosed and air-conditioned), but I'll drive from store to store in the same shopping center if it's hot enough. I really don't want to take 2 kids (one 18 month old) on a bus or train anywhere and I'd hate not having the ability to quickly change my mind and destination.

I wouldn't mind commuting to work, I suppose, but even then I might need to rush home or to my children's school in an emergency and public transportation doesn't "rush".

Bolie IV

Leaving New York aside, the place for real, market-driven "smart growth" in your average American large city is close to downtown--the closer, the better.

In many cities, these are great gray areas (to borrow from Jane Jacobs) of under-utilized land, the result of a 50+ year abandonment by industry, business and residents. You can take your pick of reasons, but here are a few: industrial modernization, the mortgage tax deduction, failing schools, "white flight" (these days it's "green flight"), freeway construction, zoning...

Zoning is a problem in the city as well as the suburbs because it tends to freeze land uses in place where they otherwise might be redeveloped or transformed into something viable. Large cities are thankfully beginning to recognize this (with the conversion of old industrial or office space to residences, for example), but all too often zoning is being used to preserve stuff that's not worth preserving.

Building up near downtown I think offers the best hope for offering more choices to people who would like a more stimulating environment that higher densities can provide. It's also the only way that mass transit makes any sense: the further away from the hub you get, transit becomes less frequent & convenient and more expensive. Think of it like tree brances, the closer to the trunk the thicker they are.

All that said, in a city like mine (Cincinnati), I think the best you can do with "multi-modal transport" is a situation where a family would be satisfied having one car instead of two or three or four. Anyone of even modest means will still want to have a car, for all of the reasons stated so well already.

Of course there are some real obstacles to this, especially the quality of the public schools in most large cities, and the complexity of trying to redirect growth from the suburbs back into the city.

To sum up, the thing that really bugs me about smart growth and new urbanism is that it's being prescribed for the wrong places (i.e. the outer suburbs) where it's bound to fail in the goal of getting people out of their cars. A more strategic promotion of smart growth where it can build on some already extant density is the only way I can see it working, and even then on a more modest scale than is being promoted.

I would agree that it is naive to expect that "If You Zone it They Will Come." If we want there to be a less car-dependent and land-intensive alternative to suburban sprawl, it is going to take more than simply permitting higher density development. I think people will choose to use trains and live in townhouses if you make it a viable choice, which requires government investment in transit/schools/parks/etc.

The problem with our present system is that our individual choices lead to a collective mess. In other words, given the options available to us, most of us will choose to live in the suburbs, but the collective consequences are ruining our country--traffic, sprawl, limited mobility for the poor/young/elderly, etc. This is no way to run a society.

"If your car insurance expires, is cancelled, is not renewed, the state of Florida will suspend your driving license. Even if you do not own a car. It costs $150 to get it reinstated. Sell your car? SR22 + $150 plz. Got it repo'd? SR22 + $150 plz. Move to another state and take public transport? SR22 + $150 plz."

Sounds like you need smarter government.

"I estimate it will be summer 2005 before I have enough to buy something that won't get stuck in the snow..."

It snows in Florida? A lot? So much that you actually have to worry about getting stuck in a drift? Man, I learn all kinds off cool stuff on the Internet.

"If your car insurance expires, is cancelled, is not renewed, the state of Florida will suspend your driving license. Even if you do not own a car."

If you don't own a car, why do you care if your driver's license is suspended?

"I will never borrow money from any company again as long as I live. If I cannot pay cash for something, I will not purchase it. I don't care if you think 'what if everyone felt that way, the economy would collapse.' Too f*ing bad. [...] Does this answer sufficiently explain how someone can be 'too poor to drive?'"

Actually, no. This answer explains how if someone perversely refuses to take out a car loan like a normal person it may in fact be difficult to drive. But I wouldn't call this "too poor to drive." It's too *something*, but definitely not "too poor".

"The problem with our present system is that our individual choices lead to a collective mess. In other words, given the options available to us, most of us will choose to live in the suburbs, but the collective consequences are ruining our country--traffic, sprawl, limited mobility for the poor/young/elderly, etc. This is no way to run a society."

And who would "run" a society? Bklyner you have hit the nail on the head. The advocates of "smart growth" would have us believe that all things are possible. Ususally they believe that someone (usually in goverment), is smart enough to figure it out.

But the fundamental problem of population density vs overhead cost of transportation systems is a "natural" problem of supply and demand. Different people look at the advantages in different ways and react accordingly.

If a person was worried about the limited mobility of the the poor/young/elderly, etc they have the ability to set up a company (if profitable) or foundation (if not profitable) to handle that problem. Otherwise, why should I spend my tax dollars so that Aunt Sophie can get to church on Sunday?

Hmm...After reading the long threads related to this topic, several things come to mind:

Everyone should make an effort to read Joel Garreau's masterful book, Edge City, written about 13 years ago. It opened my eyes to perspective often not considered in urban planning and development in general. It also tries to understand why sprawl happens, and that it is a far more rational phenomena than its critics are willing to admit.
I have a hard time believing that there ever was a time when urban life was better than it is now. The choices regarding the kind of density and convenience we choose are more accessible to more people than ever before. Want to use the train and live in a small apartment over a ground-level store? You can find that in practically any city. Want to isolate yourself from everybody, while still being close enough to conviences? You can find that as well. I'm often skeptical of any "school" or "movement" concerned with urban planning, since they often envision one way of living. Whether it's "urban renewal" of the fifties and sixities or the "new urbanism" of today, they both prescribe a set of rules, design guidelines based on narrow theories. I love my cities to show diversity, but I do not want this 'diversity' to be uniform in one city. I like to be able to drive to different areas within a metropolitan area that evoke the evolution of urban theories in history. My wife and I currently live in a suburban neighborhood developed in the early seventies, a look and a landscape we specifically wanted. Our realtor could not understand this at first, since everybody else seems to want those neo-victorian/french chateau mcmansions. She failed to realize that my wife and I grew up in these "Brady Bunch" homes, and enjoyed the low density and open but low ceilinged architecture.
With everybody on the thread qualifying themselves by listing where they have lived, here's mine (in chronologic order):

Paris, France; Singapore; Toulon, France; Shreveport, LA; New Orleans, LA; Baton Rouge, LA; Dallas, TX; San Jose, Costa Rica; Chemnitz, Eastern Germany; Georgetown, TX; Angers, France; Austin, TX; Chicago, IL; Denver, CO; and now Rockwall, TX (Dallas suburb).

It's a rather large assortment of sizes and communities, and I'm only 28 years old. Somehow, I'm attached to the Sun-belt sprawled cities, since like the previous post on Houston, you're left alone, it's quiet and green, and you've got a reasonable selection of retail and employers. Also, having lived in large dense cities for a while, I realized I didn't much like "the masses". Call me misanthropic or even bigoted, but being crowded in by people who are very different in culture and class does not stimulate in me to embrace them and revel in solidarity. Toleration is not the same thing as approving. Living in Chicago, I had to tolerate the noisy L-train every ten minutes, tolerate noisy kids on the street playing until 10 pm at night, tolerate noisy radios and tvs from next door neighbors, and ice cream trucks that came around the block well into midnight. Tolerate litter on the sidewalks, as well as certain silly statuary on the front lawn, as well as large dogs greeting you from behind the front gate. Obviously, I approve of none of that. Maybe I'm restating what's been said already but the reason people move out to less dense settlements is the fact that they yearn to live a life they approve for themselves, not to simply tolerate.

Having worked in architecture firms that design according to new urbanist and smart growth guidelines, I do not envy at all those who choose to live in such developments. They have to deal with restricitions on space, parking, and extra expenditures I will never have to worry about in my post-Vietnam neighborhood.
Downtown city living is great if you're young and single, and everyone should give themselves the chance to do it at least once in their life. Likewise, although this is a bit harder to do, one should live in a veritable rural setting. These two experiences will help a person define what their tolerances as well as their desires are.

Average Joe is wrong about Shaker Heights (where I live) as it exists now. Back in the 1940s and 1950s, it was the peer of Grosse Pointe. Even then it had mixed income levels. Now it is a high property tax middle class suburb with a 40% minority population. While the 10% of the houses that are mansions are still there and it has its share of rich people, the real rich have moved to Hunting Valley or Gates Mills. These are further out from Cleveland and do not have train access or sidewalks.

Here in Chicago, to buy a single family home in an area with good schools and nice houses (Lincoln Park neighborhood) equivalent to the current new home in Aurora (cost $250,000) will cost about $1M. While I don’t doubt the supply of these homes in Chicago is much less than out in the burbs, it seems that people are willing to pay 4 about times as much to live in the city and get the equivalent in house and schools of the burbs. I live in a neighborhood where the schools are not as good, the homes about as nice as in the burbs, the commute 2X as far as Lincoln Park, and the cost here is $500,000 for a home. In other words, this city style living is in far, far larger demand than Jane thinks. You can tell from simple price comparison.

She doesn’t even bother to ask or assess why apartments in manhattan are going for a million dollars. Here’s a hint – extremely high demand relative to supply.

Her point that ‘only rich people can afford to live like this’ seems to undercut her other and primary point that ‘most people prefer sprawl’. Rich people can buy things that other people really want but cannot afford, like nice cars, and live in areas where they don’t have to drive.

Any remotely safe place within walking distance of a train stop in Chicago is in massive demand. You can tell from housing prices.

Winetteka is part of the north shore here in Chicagoland, another place where people who can afford it, live in the manner they choose.

As for the other argument that Public Transportation needs to pay for itself, well, most roads are not toll roads, and there are millions of miles of roads here in the states that almost literally go nowhere. Take out a map of any state, and look at those ribbons of concrete that crisscross the land. Most roads simply do not pay for themselves. Maybe we should not maintain these roads that ‘don’t pay for themselves like everything else in America’ and let the people that use them pay for the upkeep. Also, we should stop the building of any new road that does not immediately pay for itself.

Sorry to make such a negative argument, but this ‘pay for itself’ mentality simply doesn’t make sense. Of course we should build new roads, but we need to build trains – and loads of them – too.

A problem with transportation is that there is only a weak and indirect market mechanism that impacts the construction of infrastructure. By relying solely on the demand of new home building to determine the placement and style of infrastructure, we are ignoring how people are voting with their wallets!!

I find it difficult to understand statements like,

“I think people will choose to use trains and live in townhouses if you make it a viable choice, which requires government investment in transit/schools/parks/etc.”

when the cost of these townhomes are double what you would pay in the burbs for the same thing. ‘I think’??? It’s pretty obvious, people will choose to use trains and live in townhomes, so much so they are willing to pay double or more to do so!! Naïve to think ‘Zone it and they will come’, when every time we zone it like this, people are paying double to live in areas like this?

Here is an interesting question, I think. Assume that housing costs in the Burbs are the national baseline? How much ‘smart growth’ and train infrastructure would we have to build so that housing costs in the City would match that in the Burbs? Where would we build it? We could easily double train PT infrastructure in this country. We could easily double the amount of ‘smart growth’ we have.

Change the question mark to a period in the second sentence of the last paragraph

'Assume that housing costs in the Burbs are the national baseline. '

That's a nice sentiment, not borrowing. How's that working out in the real world?

After posting my little rant, I realised its a little harsh and I should have 'fisked' my own statement for basic civility. I apologize for this lack of manners.

"And who would "run" a society? Bklyner you have hit the nail on the head. The advocates of "smart growth" would have us believe that all things are possible. Ususally they believe that someone (usually in goverment), is smart enough to figure it out."

We the people 'run' our society...it's called democracy. And certainly many things are possible with governmental action. How do you think it is that we have freeways, bridges, subways, airports, parks, water supply, sewers, landfills,...etc? These things did not just happen with the magic of the free market.

in re winnetka...

ain't middle class...

its the home of new trier high school, which was the muse of john hughes and the set for the breakfast club, and houses the outside shots for ferris bueller's day off and home alone.

beautfiul, have friends there, know real estate prices... we're easily talking 7 figures (you've seen the home alone house right?) for a house and it isn't really walkable.. you drive to the train station, or take the long drive along lakeshore drive to downtown

as to china... they are as sprawled as their per capita GDP allows... all of china's cities are currently sprawling as fast as they can evict farmers and get the bulldozers and backhoes moving... when you live in a totalitarian communist country that doesn't allow you to own a car, you don't... when things open up, you buy a car as soon as bloody possible... remember that people in china still don't have the freedom to choose how many children they would like, never mind if they bike/walk/drive to work... people up until recently (and frequently even now) don't choose where they live or work...

if the USA were run along Maoist lines, I'm sure it would be easy to have the vast majority bike... but then, you'd have to be willing to kill millions to have people bike to work... not that I'd put anything past town planners

>It snows in Florida?
It snows here in Colorado. I live in Denver and work in a suburb-ish bump in the road about 8500 feet above sea level. At the office, we got our first snow of the fall/winter 2 weeks ago (it melted later that day, but one can see snow in the surrounding mountains). We had our last snowfall of the spring season back in May.

When I lived in South Florida, the last time it snowed in Palm Beach County was in 1976. But that snow melted when it got within 6 inches of the ground. The last frost in PBC was back in early 1990.

>This answer explains how if someone perversely refuses to take out a car loan like a normal person...
My credit score is currently in the mid 400s. And has 2 car repos. Any car loan will have an interest rate over 30%. My co-workers tried to get one of those heavily advertised 0% financing for a new car, even with credit scores over 700, they could not get 0%. If you check out the "discount" that buy-here-pay-here places offer for "cash" versus the alleged "loan" you will find that their APR is over 50%.

Please explain how, or why, a "normal" person would be willing to pay 50% interest?

Mike, supply and demand both have to be taken into account when making assessments like you're making. Given equal demand, you'd expect Lincoln Park to be much more expensive than Aurora because the supply is so much greater.

Indeed, I imagine that there's more than 4x the supply in Aurora, which (simplisticly) would indicate that there's a lot more demand for Aurora than Lincoln Park to support such a high price.

And it's that "supply" problem that is at the heart of the argument. You can't build any more Lincoln Parks, short of a Netherlands-like dike project in Lake Michigan. So where do you put all the people that are supposed to live in places like Lincoln Park?

And roads are not like trains. There are little-used roads near me whose yearly maintenance costs are near or at zero. Tell me how many operating but little used train systems have a maintenance cost near zero.

Bob, thanks for the correction. I have lived in Chicago and in the Detroit area, but I have never lived in the Cleveland area. My knowledge of Shaker Heights is from its reputation, which is obviously somewhat out of date.

The quality of comments on this thread is unusally high so I am learning alot from reading it.

You can't tell much about supply and demand from looking at housing prices. The fact is that what buyers are willing to pay has more to do with incomes and mortgage rates. The reason a townhouse in Lincoln Park is more expensive than a house in Aurora is because wealthier people are buying in Lincoln Park, and therefore can afford (and are willing to) pay more. That may say something about the quantity of demand for townhouses in the city, but not necessarily.

Peter, if what you're saying is true, you're not a "normal" person. You're not even a normal poor person. Your credit score puts you in the bottom 1% of potential borrowers nationwide. I don't think the argument that we should institute "smart growth" so we can accommodate people who have had their cars repossessed twice will get a lot of traction politically.

I acknowledge more people probably to live in the bubs. However, this is not an all or nothing proposition, where if more people want to live in the low-density burbs, well then we all have to live there. Or if some people like to live in the city, everyone does. Housing prices indicate that many more people want to live in the city than are given the chance. It’s about choice or lack of choices.

I agree, there is no way the demand for homes in the city is 4X that for the burbs. However, there must be a huge unaddressed demand, as housing prices are so much higher in the city. Even taking into consideration a potential housing bubble, these prices are huge compared to the burbs.

I agree with Licquia, supply must be taken into account when making this assessment. One easy way to measure demand relative to supply for an item is price. I disagree with Bklyner about prices not being impacted by supply and demand. I am making an assumption that is not very controversial, that there is greater demand relative to supply for something that costs $1M than for something that costs $250,000 assuming that these are roughly the same item. There is no way that income differences account for this massive difference in housing costs. I am trying to compare ‘apples to apples’ here by limiting the price to $1M, as I think the average selling price for houses in Lincoln Park last year was like $1.4M. A decent place comparable to the burbs was probably $800K - $1M. I will admit these are really nice places, but that’s because only rich people can afford to buy the land there, and why not spend the extra $200K to get all of the nice stuff inside.

The neighborhood I live in is very comparable to the burbs in terms of house size and quality of life. Houses here are like $300 K for a very small home. You could buy a place of similar size in Whiting, Ind, for $80-100K, which has the roughly the same standard of living in terms of schools and safety as my general neighborhood.

Looking at housing prices in the city, there is simply not enough supply. It means the same thing to me, prices are high. That’s why I suggested using housing prices in the burbs as a national baseline – if you want to live there, there is plenty of safe supply available.

I just want people to have a real choice. They are not getting it now, because they simply cannot afford it. When housing prices and living conditions are the roughly similar in both areas( and I don’t want the burbs to go down!! They are great places to live if you like that sort of living.), and the only difference is between wanting to drive most places or walk most places, the middle class will have a real choice.

Should only rich people get to live safely and comfortably in the city? The U.S. is all about the ‘American Dream’ which is not a static dream, but must constantly improve to remain a dream. Lots of people are ‘dreaming’ right now about affordable places to live in the city, near trains and safe parks, and they are not getting what they want because of a lack of supply.

Licquia, look over my posts, you won’t see the words ‘little used trains’ anywhere. I don’t want to build a train nobody rides – why the hell would I want something like that? Why would anyone? It’s a totally cheap shot for you to say something like that. I want to build trains that people will ride, and it is pretty obvious that there is a big demand for this. I don’t recommend randomly building trains across the states, how about doing some studies and determining where they might be the most effective, like in areas of cities that are not served by trains. How about doing studies like they do with new roads where they determine where there is likely to be growth and rezone areas as appropriate?

Jane-

I think much of what makes trains work is the high density of jobs in lower manhattan or the 'loop' in chicago. the job side of things might be more important than where people live. to get such high density of jobs, it has to be a field that thrives on the co-location of many people. financial markets are a great example. so are lawyers, accountants, consultants that support such financial hubs. being financial hubs, they are necessarily limited to only a few cities. if the local jobs are dispersed throughout the region than mass transit is useless. LA has plenty of residential density, just no region of high job-density

when a company is trying to find a spot to put a factory.... build on expensive, congested city site or cheap, vacant land in a suburb? easy business decision.

and by this line of reasoning, mass transit where it's not already working is pointless without first addressing the job-density issue which would almost require communism.

Mike, lots of people are dreaming lots of things. That doesn't make any of them possible. Jane has put forth an argument that these things are not practical; your job is to tell me how she's wrong, and how smart growth policies really have worked.

Take trains. No one plans to build trains that are underused. But they do, in fact, build such trains, if Jane is to be believed; indeed, nearly all such trains are underused. So when you tell me you want to build more, you have to tell me what's going to be different about your trains to make sure they're not just tax money sinks, like the others seem to have become.

And I get that you're trying to justify their cost by pointing to the high prices of places like Lincoln Park as evidence that there's demand. But you can only alleviate the demand by building more Lincoln Parks, and you haven't told me yet how you plan to do that. There's no more room in Chicago short of some massive and highly unlikely schemes (raze the Near West Side or the South Side, build dikes in Lake Michigan, etc.), and building outside of Chicago means increasing the supply of Aurora-like areas, not Lincoln Park-like ones.

And even if you do manage to build the DuPage County Lincoln Park, you still have to show me how the finances will work for the mass transit systems that will substitute for cars between the various city centers.

In short: I want to live on the moon, but I don't reasonably expect the government to subsidize my wish. If smart growth isn't "living on the moon" impractical, tell me how.

Over at ChicagoBoyz Shannon Love has a terrific post that should be read by annyone who is going to respond to this post: The McGuffin Delusion:

The McGuffin Delusion arises when someone argues that an instance of technology, and not the individual who controls the technology, represents the source of a problem. I think this delusion shows up in a lot of technology-related political discussions.

I named it after Alfred Hitchock's description of his plot device, a McGuffin, that every character in the story searches for believing it will solve their problem. In Hitchock's movies, however, the real issues are the relationships between people, not the physical objects they seek.

A good example of the McGuffin Delusion can be found in the "Mad Bomber" movie. The intrepid hero spends 90% of the movie running around finding and disarming the increasingly clever bombs created by the villain. Superficially the movie is about the bombs but the resolution of the plot only occurs when the bomb maker is caught.

The McGuffin Delusion is at the heart of the "gun control" movement. Advocates of "gun control" speak as if the guns, the technology, are the problem, and more importantly, are what is being "controlled." In actuality, the problem is not the weapons themselves but the people who misuse them. Whether an individual has a felony conviction is a far more powerful predictor of whether they will either shoot someone or get shot themselves than whether they have immediate access to a firearm or not. By placing the focus on the guns, the gun-control movement obscures the fact that the thing that gets "controlled" is people.

The Cold War-era debate over nuclear weapons also exhibited the McGuffin Delusion. The nukes themselves were portrayed as being the basic problem. We had "nuclear freeze" and "ban the bomb" movements. Yet the problem of extinction-level nuclear warfare disappeared not because the weapons themselves went away but because a particular group of people with a particular ideology lost political power. The world lived under Damocles's sword for forty years because of communism. When communism disappeared, so did the threat of massive nuclear annihilation. Yet most of the debate revolved around the weapons and
what to do about them.

George Tobia's lighting epiphany came 13 years ago when, sitting in his office as the setting sun cast a rosy glow, it occurred to him to turn off the 12 fluorescent bulbs over his head. Suddenly awash in natural light, he said to himself, "This feels so good." . . .

The fax machine may be maddening and the computer may promote hostility, but no office gear can put you in a funk as quickly as fluorescent lighting. At best, it provides the light of a cloudy sky. At worst, it's the source of physical maladies, and a creepy and synthetic downer. Far from the come-hither glow of candlelight, fluorescent bulbs cast a hell-and-back pall over everyone. . .

Commercial builders love fluorescent lights because they're so efficient. They run on about a quarter of the electricity that incandescent bulbs require, and they last roughly 10 times as long. The problem is, most office workers end up getting a lot more fluorescent light than they need, pretty much canceling out that efficiency. Many companies also leave their lights on all night long, probably because no one can find the switch. It's an example of how corporations, as they attempt to maximize efficiency, often minimize it instead.

"The lighting in most offices is much brighter than it needs to be, especially with computers," producing glare and eyestrain, says James LaMotte, a professor of optometry at the Southern California College of Optometry.

"People apply efficient lighting stupidly," adds Naomi Miller, who runs her own design firm and formerly worked at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute's Lighting Research Center. "There are a heck of a lot of offices that are very badly lit."

Robert:

You are correct in your observation that technology is a tool, not deus ex machina. IMO, you are alco correct in observing that the fundamental problem is abuse of tools vice the tools themselves.

Many of us here know that already (though some obviously don't).

The argument some of us make in general - and which I have consistently made regarding nuclear power and hydrogen's potential - is that suitable tools are in fact available, but that we as a nation lack the common sense and/or political will to use them.

The "alco" in the second sentence of my last post should read "also".

I interpret this debate as follows. "Smart Growth" refers to the idea of "democracy", "reason" and "one person, one vote."

The opposing position appears to refer to the idea of "one dollar, one vote" and "let the market decide."

Taken to an extreme both of these positions are immoral and absurd.... (even pure democracy which fails to enable and incentivize wealth creation has its perils.)

However, currently, obviously, in the U.S. we have an almost purely "one dollar, one vote" system, in which those with access to wealth and power control the process of development to support their own wealth and power. The middle class (like me), residing in bank owned mortgaged property, is encouraged to think of itself as "property owners", and to support the interests of those with real property and wealth. There is SOME truth in that, although there is also SOME truth in the reality that their equity positions in the property they imagine they own are often tenuous.

The alternative to the basic American model of (predatory) corporate capitalism shaping urban development and transportation is to attempt to tilt the scale slightly back in the direction (slightly... we'll never get there completely) of considering the needs and interests of each individual, independent of wealth and income. In short "taking democracy seriously" at home, since we like to talk about exporting it.

"Smart Growth" if it means anything, surely means applying "reason" to a process that is otherwise driven simply by "self interest" in a society in which some interests have vastly greater weight than others.

What else is there to be smart about? Those who believe that the current distribution of wealth already reflects "Justice" and "Reason" will of course be happy to see the pattern of growth reflect the interests of wealth holders. If you believe that the market is just and reasonable then the collective decisions of people in the market place ARE smart.... "smart growth" appears to be an obviously redundant (or dangerous) layering of some other process of thinking on top of the basically reasonable and just outcomes that the market produces.

If you sense that there might be some marginal, or severe, injustices in the existing market system that shapes urban growth, well then of course you will want to be "smart" about correcting them.

You will want to apply reason to address the suboptimal outcomes produced by the market.

To suggest that applying a democratically controlled process of applying notions of reason, justice and health to public policy is unreasonable is, to my mind, to place yourself on the far looney right.

It seems so patently obvious to me that the unfettered market, the one dollar one vote world of American capitalism, produces suboptimal urban environments that I have difficulty fathoming what the principled (as opposed to self interested) objection to some form of "smart growth" is.

The interesting question is whether the public transportation, higher density ideas associated with smart growth are in fact that best corrective to the social distortions created by one dollar one vote capitalism. There is room for argument about what really is smart, but surely there can be no argument about the need to be smarter about urban growth than the market, as influenced by those with the greatest wealth, is capable of being.

I'm not familiar with Jane Galt, prior to encountering the current contratemps on Planetzen, so perhaps she has clarified whether she is advocating purely crony capitalist based growth, or whether she agrees that reason and a public, democratic planning process is a good thing and is merely disagreeing with the specific conclusions that this process has tended to reach in recent years in the U.S. I apologize for not have researched her views more fully.

I'd appreciate further clarification of the underlying political argument.

I do know this. I live in Portland, Oregon. We have an urban growth boundary. There are a lot of struggles over density, affordability. We have pretty darn good public transportation for a place that isn't New York New York. We have our discontents, but I think there is still a public consensus that "we planned, it worked" is true. There are people on the margins who are fighting the urban consensus tooth and nail. They have wealth and power and they want to use it. As I perceive it, they want to use it often to do things that are opposed to my desire to have a walkable livable urban environment.

I don't see (yet) any argument against the idea of trying to be democratically smarter than the market is capable of being (particularly since the market is not a free one, but one in which wealthy power players already use the political process to tilt the market in their own interests.)

I think, even including all the tensions and problems, that Portland Oregon is doing a pretty good job at being smarter than the (broken) market can be.

Miles
Portland, Oregon

I'd like to add just one specific response/comment.

"Now imagine how many people you would voluntarily attract to a new development by telling them it was just a short bus ride to their shopping. I fear I repeat myself, but let me say again: I am not claiming that you can't force people to live in dense housing area. I am claiming that you will have to force them, and that forcing them will be unpleasant for people who can't afford to have things delivered to the maid."

I find this claim almost incomprehensible, and indicative of a kind of far-right wing extremist rhetoric that calls into question the political/philosophical underpinnings of Ms. Galt's comments.

People are paying premiums to live in high density urban environments like... downtown San Francisco, Portland's Pearl district.

Am I part of some obscure sub-culture? I doubt it. We bought our house for many reasons including walking distance to stores, biking distance to many more, and proximity to a Max light rail line.

Lots of people find these features to be compelling attractants to an area. Features like these led us to pay a premiumh for the house we bought in Portland. We are excited every time we realize we have an opportunity to accomplish a shopping trip by bike or a night out on the town by light rail without getting in our one car.

Nobody forced us.... and I believe that many more people would make similar choices if given the opportunity.

My two cents.

Miles
PDX

"It seems so patently obvious to me that the unfettered market, the one dollar one vote world of American capitalism, produces suboptimal urban environments that I have difficulty fathoming what the principled (as opposed to self interested) objection to some form of "smart growth" is."

We have a suboptimal urban environment, but it ain't because of capitalism. One factor that plays a huge part is that cheap neighborhoods are infested with predators, and I ain't talking about "predatory capitalism", I'm talking about real live two-legged predatory vermin that our authorities never seem to get around to cleaning out. This in turn causes people to (a) work their asses off to get into more expensive neighborhoods and (b) use every ounce of political pull they can get their hands on to keep cheap neighborhoods and the people that live in them the hell away from their own homes, lest their own homes come under attack and the authorities write them off as apparently not worth properly protecting.

That's where a lot of your distortions are coming from. It ain't the fault of capitalism - it's the government failing to fulfill its main purpose.

Ken, I wonder what purpose it is you feel the government is not fulfilling? Is it locking up (and throwing away the key) every person of an unfortunate economic disposition so you never have the displeasure of rubbing shoulders with a brown skinned person?

By vermin you probably are thinking in your mind a number of derogatory racial slurs you liberally refer to the poor folk you see shooting up their neighborhoods on the 11 o'clock news.

You have probably never stepped foot in a poor neighborhood, (the ghetto) have you?

Guess what? These people are in poor and desperate situation because all the jobs have either
A.) fled to the suburbs, out of reach for those do actually have to rely on public transport (GASP!)
B.) been shipped overseas to countries like China so you can get your "every day low price" junk at sprawl mart for 3 dollars and 12 cents cheaper than the competition.

So you want to the government to "clean out" these cheap neighborhoods?
Let's try this:

STOP GIVING TAX BREAKS TO GREEDY CORPORATIONS THAT SHIP OUT JOBS TO THIRD WORLD COUNTRIES!
How more Un-American can you get than our government sanctioning the wholesale selling-out of its own population?

Think about this the next time you run out to the mall to grab a pair or two of dockers made by an 11 year-old girl in Bangledesh, working 16 hours a day, making 20 cents an hour.

Meanwhile A FEW of these American urban-dwelling "vermin" (most poor people are not predatory criminals, despite what the local news likes to spin in order to sell cheap entertaining stories to couch-borne lardasses munching popcorn from the safety of their wonderful cul-de-sac on a golf course) you have utmost contempt for are killing
one another because all the old-school manufacturing jobs traditionally held by working class people making all the things ordinary people use, are all gone now. Thanks to people like you who probably support the crony capitialists that push these policies.

BTW, I have lived most of my life in Buffalo, NY, a city with nearly half of its population near or below the poverty line, and have yet to be physically assualted by these so called "vermin" that dwell in the many cheap neighborhoods found in this city.

Miles,
"I interpret this debate as follows. "Smart Growth" refers to the idea of "democracy", "reason" and "one person, one vote.""

Right there is where you first prove your position to be morally and intellectually bankrupt. Anytime someone sees their own faction as having a monopoly on "reason" then the odds are good that their faction is in fact entirely bereft of sanity.

The fact that you imply that only your side favors democracy also renders your position suspect. More on this later.

"The opposing position appears to refer to the idea of "one dollar, one vote" and "let the market decide."

So you are saying that the planet has been invaded by a wave of sentient pieces of paper who have somehow taken out citizenship papers? o_O

Hmmmm! Note to self, in the future "Smart Growth" advocates should be kept away newspapers that discuss things like Bigfoot, UFOs, and the disembodied brain of Elvis. ^_^;

"Taken to an extreme both of these positions are immoral and absurd.... (even pure democracy which fails to enable and incentivize wealth creation has its perils.)"

Not necessarily. A civil society may take both democracy *and* the civil liberty that is a perequisite for "Let the dollar decide" to the extreme at the same time and doubtless should. Implying that they are opposites presented a false dichotomy.

"However, currently, obviously, in the U.S. we have an almost purely "one dollar, one vote" system, in which those with access to wealth and power control the process of development to support their own wealth and power."

Darn! I knew I should have kept you away from the Steve Jackson Games as well. Now you're assuming the existence of the Gnomes of Zurich! Oh well, At least you didn't find out about the Servents of Cthulhu yet. [Quickly hides the Golden Goblin Press edition of "Nameless Cults"! ^_^;].

Seriously? If you want a place where "those with access to wealth and power control the process of development to support their own wealth and power." then I suggest you move to Europe where the local power elite really does pass laws to discourage upward mobility so as to maintain a monopoly on privilege. It's not as blatent as it used to be in the 18th Century, but the elements are still there and they really do seem to be the sort of elements that "Smart Growth" types would help encourage whether they know it or not.

"The middle class (like me), residing in bank owned mortgaged property, is encouraged to think of itself as "property owners", and to support the interests of those with real property and wealth."

At this point I should remind you that quite a few of us middle class types did retire our mortgage a long time ago and have owned our homes ever since.

"There is SOME truth in that, although there is also SOME truth in the reality that their equity positions in the property they imagine they own are often tenuous."

Oooo, philosophy! ^_^ Is the glass half-empty or half-full? My personal answer is that if you really need to ask the question then you should go and pour yourself a refill.

"The alternative to the basic American model of (predatory) corporate capitalism shaping urban development and transportation is to attempt to tilt the scale slightly back in the direction (slightly... we'll never get there completely) of considering the needs and interests of each individual, independent of wealth and income."

Ever stop to think that these individuals are better judges of their own needs and interests then this "we" of yours would be? o_O

"In short "taking democracy seriously" at home, since we like to talk about exporting it."

Once again, civil liberty and democracy are not opposites however much you may wish to present them as being so. Therefore taking democracy seriously also involves the wisdom not to intrude on people's lives just because you fancy yourself a better judge of their needs and interests than they are.

" "Smart Growth" if it means anything, surely means applying "reason" to a process that is otherwise driven simply by "self interest" in a society in which some interests have vastly greater weight than others."

So if you chant about "reason" long enough you think your position will make better sense? And the "Smart Growth" desire for power over the decisions that people make to further their blameless private lives is so lacking in self-interest that we aren't supposed to notice that granting them such power would give their interest a greater weight than everybody else? Hmmmm! @_@

"What else is there to be smart about? Those who believe that the current distribution of wealth already reflects "Justice" and "Reason" will of course be happy to see the pattern of growth reflect the interests of wealth holders. If you believe that the market is just and reasonable then the collective decisions of people in the market place ARE smart.... "smart growth" appears to be an obviously redundant (or dangerous) layering of some other process of thinking on top of the basically reasonable and just outcomes that the market produces."

A reasonable summation of my position. But note that the pattern of growth actually is more favorable to those who are earning wealth than to those who merely hold it. The interests of the former are actually better served by the various forms of Socialism and Malthusism that seek to limit growth in one form or another. Hence the reason that "Old money" families like the Kennedies, the Rockefellers, and the Gores tend to favor the left as does "Old Europe".

"If you sense that there might be some marginal, or severe, injustices in the existing market system that shapes urban growth, well then of course you will want to be "smart" about correcting them."

I guess those involved in "Smart Growth" have never heard of such concepts as "Tradeoffs", "Cost-Benefit Analysis", or "System Analysis"? Correcting a flaw is worthwhile only if you are certain that the correction will not cause a greater flaw. As the environmentalists would say, "You can't do just one thing!". Kinda a shame that Smart Growth people don't understand ecology, ain't it? ;P

"You will want to apply reason to address the suboptimal outcomes produced by the market."

And never intuition? Tsk! Smart Growth people need to study Chaos Theory.

"To suggest that applying a democratically controlled process of applying notions of reason, justice and health to public policy is unreasonable is, to my mind, to place yourself on the far looney right."

Oh dear. And you were doing so well up to this point! >_

Everybody is in favor of "reason, justice and health" but a mere *notion* of those things is not at all the same thing as the things themselves. If only "the far looney right" can see this then you have just denied your own faction the ability to gather facts, analyze, and weigh evidence. Of what use is your "reason" without that ability? o_O

" "It seems so patently obvious to me that the unfettered market, the one dollar one vote world of American capitalism, produces suboptimal urban environments that I have difficulty fathoming what the principled (as opposed to self interested) objection to some form of "smart growth" is." "

A good place to begin might be with Jane Jacobs. In particular the books of hers that I would recommend are "The Death and Life of American Cities", "The Economic History of Cities", and "Cities and the Wealth of Nations". In those 3 books she outlines quite nicely why central urban planning tends to be a greater cause of disaster than trusting people to be able to sort out things by themselves and your "Smart Growth" is merely one of many urban planning movements that came before it that correspond to this sort of planning, In truth your movement's rhetoric is quite similar to theirs which is one reason why my trust is lacking. The fact that you guys *are* a descendent of the Malthusian movement is a second.

In additon there is 2 things I should point out here. The first is that the burden of proof is upon those who propose a change rather than upon those who resist it and belongs there. The 2nd is that a "principled" approach is not necessarily morally superior to a self-interested one. A may have formed the principle that all redheaded lefthanded Lithuanians should be killed on sight. He has come to this conclusion disinterestedly, altruistically and is willing to act upon his beliefs and die for them. B is a redhead, lefthanded Lithuanian who doesn't want to be killed. He is obviously motivated by self-interest in defending himself but would you say that this makes him wrong? Pol Pot was principled when he murdered his countrymen and Thomas Edison self-interested when he invented the lightbulb but who would you rather hang out with? ^_^

"...but surely there can be no argument about the need to be smarter about urban growth than the market, as influenced by those with the greatest wealth, is capable of being."

There we will have to agree to disagree because when it comes to the best interests of a community I distrust wardheelers a lot more than I distrust ordinary people going about their business. And if you honestly think City Hall isn't as a general rule more easily manipulated by "those with the greatest wealth" than the market is then I think you are being naive. As Ken noted more ably than I up above, the true distortions come from government itself. All the same, yours was a good post and a good articulation of your position. I hope to encounter you again sometime. ^_~

- S.P.M.

Peter, if what you're saying is true, you're not a "normal" person. You're not even a normal poor person. Your credit score puts you in the bottom 1% of potential borrowers nationwide. I don't think the argument that we should institute "smart growth" so we can accommodate people who have had their cars repossessed twice will get a lot of traction politically.

All he has argued for, from what I see in the thread, is that there IS a reasonable definition of 'too poor to drive.' The rest seems to be something that was read into it.

In fact I may find myself that same position shortly, since my present car is failing mechanically and also needs some electrical work, at a combined cost that far outstrip anything I can afford to invest in a high-mileage vehicle that is starting to develop its first severe rust spots.

Unlike Peter, I could go to my local bank and aquire a $7500/6%@36mo personal loan secured against another vehicle, for a monthly payment under $200. (Plus, of course, all of the nagging maintenance needs used vehicles inevitably require.) Nice thought, but I can't even justify THAT over and above all my other monthly expenses (which includes one of the lowest rent costs in the area and no cell phone) unless my job prospects becomes more certain than present, which could yet be a while since it's a bad time to be trained as an Electrical Engineer. So, I may get stranded in the near future, but for now I don't have many options except to deal with it.

BTW, at my last consulting job earlier this year (the wages of which are now just paying my expenses as I continue the search for employment), the IT guy was a relatively recent hire who was laid off in early 2002. He then spent the next 2.5 years putting out over 1500 resumes in a six-state area (and accumulating a mountain of credit card debt to finance living expenses) before finally getting another job. Welcome to flavor country; borrower percentile statistics notwithstanding, the definition of a 'normal' person's financial status isn't quite what you seem to think it is.

Miles, I have friends in Portland, and I'm typically in the area across each New Years holiday. Aside from my snarky desire to premptively discount the intelligence of any voting population that bans self-serve gas pumping on a premise of job creation, I've seen Portland's light-rail project and discussed it with a local resident. The understanding I got is that it is indeed nicely placed, but its operation is heavily subsidized by necessity. This conversation was a couple years ago though; do you have better info?

Also, my understanding is that growth-limitation initiatives have, among other things, pushed a lot of would-be new-home builders into buying large plots of land and establishing orchards or vineyards in order to fall within the agricultural clause. Nice from an aesthetic standpoint, sure, and certainly some generator of economic activity, but it would seem to me this is fundamentally a variant example the kind of zoning-for-the-rich criticism Jane Galt made in her post?

"Ken, I wonder what purpose it is you feel the government is not fulfilling? Is it locking up (and throwing away the key) every person of an unfortunate economic disposition so you never have the displeasure of rubbing shoulders with a brown skinned person?"

No, it's locking up (and throwing away the key) every person that preys on the people of unfortunate economic disposition. They shouldn't have the (dis)pleasure of rubbing shoulders with a person pointing a gun at them any more than the rest of us.

"By vermin you probably are thinking in your mind a number of derogatory racial slurs you liberally refer to the poor folk you see shooting up their neighborhoods on the 11 o'clock news. "

Well, if by "derogatory racial slurs" you mean that I am denying that the thugs shooting up their neighborhoods have a right to count themselves as part of the human race, then yes. The poor folk getting shot at shouldn't have to live with that no matter what color they are or how cheap their houses are.

"Guess what? These people are in poor and desperate situation because all the jobs have either
A.) fled to the suburbs, out of reach for those do actually have to rely on public transport (GASP!)
B.) been shipped overseas to countries like China so you can get your "every day low price" junk at sprawl mart for 3 dollars and 12 cents cheaper than the competition."

And (C), people keep robbing them and shooting at them.

"Meanwhile A FEW of these American urban-dwelling "vermin" (most poor people are not predatory criminals, despite what the local news likes to spin in order to sell cheap entertaining stories to couch-borne lardasses munching popcorn from the safety of their wonderful cul-de-sac on a golf course) "

No, most poor people have to live in fear of the predatory criminals, who are the only ones I am referring to by the derogatory term "vermin". And those FEW that are doing that are the ones that need to be cleaned out so the rest can live in peace and safety.

I can't believe that people have the unmitigated gall to call us racists when we advocate that law-abiding minorities ought to be protected from criminals the way that more affluent people are. Or are law-abiding poor people beneath contempt because they're not "rising up" and looting and pillaging the way our friends on the left keep telling us they will (or should)?

"you have utmost contempt for are killing
one another because all the old-school manufacturing jobs traditionally held by working class people making all the things ordinary people use, are all gone now. Thanks to people like you who probably support the crony capitialists that push these policies."

No, they're killing one another (and innocent bystanders) for spite, or for profit (especially the thugs enjoying a monopoly on recreational pharmaceuticals), or just for fun. They're not killing and looting to avoid starvation, but because they flat-out refuse to behave like civilized human beings. And the rest of the innocent people that can't afford a "good" neighborhood shouldn't have to live with that. You want to talk about social justice, that's by far the biggest example of it right there, the fact that living in a cheap neighborhood exposes you to so much lawlessness while those who can afford better neighborhoods don't have so much of a problem with uncivilized animals being allowed to flourish near them.

Ken, I don't have fact papers. I assume Portland MAX is heavily subsidized, like busses and like car transportation (roadway infrastructure). I was just relating my persoal experience that we paid a housing premium (I suspect) for a house in a walkable Portland neighborhood near a MAX station. Studies show that people do that, and that MAX stations are good for home values.

I am sure that there are people who game the urban growth boundary and any set of regulations. I don't see that as an argument against regulations.

I look at the big picture in Portland and I see that it has not metastisized out into the entire Willamette Valley (partly because the economy has never been that strong, even in the late 90s and population growth hasn't been that great... but surely partly because of the Urban Growth Boundary).

So I think Portland deserves credit. Certainly I moved here a few years ago because I saw it as the kind of place that is willing to enact things like an Urban Growth Boundary and preserve nonurban land around a city.

...

SPM, I can't respond to everything but...

The argument about reason pretty much stands.... market capitalism assumes that individual reasoning about self interest, amalgamated in a market, will produce rational and just outcomes, without the application of "reasoning" to the process... set the rules, and let the system produce the outcomes.

The alternative position is to apply reason to a consideration of the actual outcome: "Smart Growth" and the many variants of urban planning.

No implication that reason is not involved in both positions, just that in the Smart Growth and Planning position, reason is applied to the problem of the desired outcomes, while, (surely you must agree) a committed free marketeer must be committed to reason and rationality by individual market players ("rational self interest")... but also almost always abhors the idea that anyone could have a rational preference about the consequence of the interaction of everybody's "rational self interests".

You say:"Wardheelers versus Ordinary People Going About Their Business?"

How about "Democratically Elected and Accountable Public Officers versus Crony Capitalists Asserting their Private Business Interests in Disregard for the Public Interest?"

Both are distortions. But you commit the error of identifying the economic self interests of "ordinary middle class folk" with real estate developers and large wealthy interests.... it's a classic right wing rhetorical trope. "We're all just rational economic actors, no matter whether we have a bank owned house or a few thousand bank owned houses. But as the old saying goes, when you owe the bank $200,000 the bank owns you, when you owe the bank $200 million dollars, you own the bank.

The right wing goes a long way in this country by keeping people confused about that difference!

Whoops. Didn't realize what kind of animal I was dealing with here. I just noticed this comment by Ken which I somehow missed on first read through.

"I'm talking about real live two-legged predatory vermin that our authorities never seem to get around to cleaning out."

I would not have dignified anything Ken said with so polite and friendly response if I had noticed this racist statement.

We've been slimed. I have nothing more to say to this creep.

Let me point out one more time:

"real live two-legged predatory vermin" refers to criminals! Thugs. Predators (hence the adjective "predatory"). Not the law abiding citizens that have to live in the neighborhoods terrorized by these creatures.

How in the Hell could anyone call me a fucking racist for saying that the residents of cheap neighborhoods (many of whom are minorities) ought to have the same level of protection from criminials, thugs, predators, and yes "predatory vermin" that the more affluent have? Have we fallen so far that it's beyond the pale for me to use derogatory terms to describe criminals?

Good Lord, what the Hell is wrong with people?

I have a couple of comments. First, no mas