ADC Blog

Technology Review discusses a new technology being developed known as V2V in the automotive industry.  Basically, vehicle-to-vehicle tech is the use of wireless technology so that car computers can know distances and velocity and collision risk of other cars.  This, combined with other technologies such as adaptive cruise control, are moving the industry that much closer to driverless cars.

And on the subject of driverless cars, or self-driving cars, there’s no blog better at keeping us up-to-date than the Antiplanner who has been talking about driverless cars for a long time.

Every year Wendell Cox of Demographia (United States) and Hugh Pavletich of Peformance Urban Planning (New Zealand) publish their International Housing Affordability Survey (IHAS).  This year’s survey is the eighth edition.

The IHAS includes a wealth of graphs and charts all structured to explain and illuminate the impact of land use policy on housing and homeownership.  This year’s survey is introduced Robert Bruegmann and he succinctly explains why this matters: “Nothing in the world today affects citizens more directly than the home in which they live.”

Bruegmann, who wrote the concise and critical book Sprawl: A Compact History, goes on to identify the tension surrounding housing policy.

“At one end of the political spectrum have been societies in which land is owned in common and is supposed to be allocated to individuals and families on the basis of merit or need.  Such has been the case with many Utopian and Socialist societies.  At the other end of the spectrum have been societies where individual ownership of land and homes is considered a bedrock condition of a democratic society, where ownership is widely dispersed, and individual rights and preferences have been zealously safeguarded from all but the most necessary intervention.”

Of course, housing policy is not at the extremes but somewhere within that continuum.  However, the International Housing Affordability Survey convincingly shows that the closer policy moves toward the Utopian/Socialist ideal, the less affordable housing becomes for people.  Smart Growth planning policies move the needle toward the Utopian/Socialist end while a less regulated housing market is championed by people who believe in property rights and individual freedom.

As Bruegmann concludes, “Whether [Smart Growth] policies were intended to enhance the environment or limit sprawl, they clearly had an effect on the price of housing,” adding that “land use policies in places like coastal California, Vancouver, Britain and Australia, have dramatically driven up the cost of housing, and that the less intrusive policies of places like Atlanta and Houston has kept prices down.”

I hope we’re entering a No Excuses era when local policymakers can no longer get away with claiming they simply had no idea that restrictive land use regulations artificially increase housing costs to the point that low and middle income Americans are priced out of homeownership.

At New Geography, Rob Sentz has an article that ranks the states by competitiveness.   If you follow the Smart Growth movement much, you’re familiar with the usual suspects – that is, the states that have enacted strong growth management laws.

States like California, Maryland, New Jersey, Minnesota and Oregon have created fewer jobs than expected whereas market-oriented states like Texas, Oklahoma, and the Dakotas have created more jobs than expected.

This is good news.

Travel & Leisure magazine is out with its annual survey of American cities, and one of the categories is “rudeness.”  So what do the rudest cities have in common?  They have some of the highest population densities (people per square mile) in the United States.  Here’s the Top Five:

1. New York     27,012 people per square mile
2. Miami           11,135 people per square mile
3. Washington, D.C.    9,856 people per square mile
4. Los Angeles          8,092 people per square mile
5. Boston          12,792 people per square mile

Of course, the Smart Growth planning doctrine thinks density levels like these lead to vibrant urbanism, and the Sierra Club classifies a mere 15,500 people per square mile as “suburban efficient.” (To be “urban efficient,” the Sierra Club recommends density at 155,000 people per square mile.)

Many communities adopting future land use plans are signing off on densities projected at or near levels of 10,000+ people per square mile.  For example, Maryland’s top-down, statewide growth management mandate known as PlanMaryland calls for high densities of 16,704 people per square mile, and my own Alachua County wants to cram 19,622 people per square mile for future developments.  But planning officials are never candid about these numbers, instead framing density issues in terms of dwelling units per acre to disguise the crowding that people will invariably reject.

Very, very few people actually want these high density levels (and most who do already live in high density cities).  In addition to crowded cities being rude cities, they also are gaining a reputation for being miserable places.

Hmm, cramming bunches of people together creates a less-than-genteel environment.  Who knew?

Faster, please.

Why Not? (I call this ‘thinking outside the bus.’)

KSTP in Minneapolis-St. Paul is reporting record transit ridership in 2011.  Of course, the way they calculate numbers makes it seems as if a quarter of the U.S. population moved to Minnesota just to take public transportation: “Customers climbed on board more than 80.8 million times last year.”

According to the 2010 Census, of the metro region’s 1.6 million people only 78,000 used public transportation – or just 4.9 percent.  Not exactly gangbusters!

But let’s salute them for being better performers than the vast majority of transit systems that have less than a 5-percent market share.  Elite opinion tells us that cities are not first tier unless they offer rail to attract middle income riders.  Metro Transit offers both rail and bus, yet it was the bus that pushed its transit system to record numbers.  “Rides on buses rose about four percent last year to 69.8 million” while “Light rail’s 10.4 million rides is a slight drop from 2010′s record numbers.”

We hear too often claims that light rail spurs development and creates that vibrant urbanism that attracts young creatives to central cities.  We don’t hear much about how light rail destroys homes and businesses (JOBS!) when it is put in place.

The Washington Post is reporting that “a 16-mile Purple Line through Montgomery and Prince George’s counties would require condemning 31 homes, 43 businesses, and parts of hundreds of yards and other parcels of land.”  According to a new state report:

“In total, building a light-rail line, Metro stations and two train storage and maintenance facilities would require the state to buy and condemn all or part of 342 properties along the east-west route between New Carrollton and Bethesda, the Maryland Transit Administration said.”

This is a dramatic upward revision in the original estimate from when the project was pitched and sold to the public.  (And, I would add, a classic example of “strategic misrepresentation.”)  Officials initially said that “the line would require condemning a dozen houses and apartment buildings and 16 to 19 businesses.”  Obviously now, the cost estimates will have to be dramatically revised upwards as well.  This is the steady, invariable pattern with rail transit.

Well, a small price for progress.  Eggs, omelets … you know.

Three Cheers for Urban Sprawl … says Martin Durkin in New Geography. With Britain – where 90 percent of the people live on 9 percent of the land – as his reference point, Durkin argues:

“Hemming people into towns and cities with ‘Green Belts’, has acted like a pressure-cooker on property prices. The planning system, by limiting the amount of land available to build on, has created an artificial shortage of living space, forcing up the prices of houses and flats to such astronomical heights that many young couples can only dream of affording one. The less affluent dare not get a job for fear of losing housing benefit. There are families in London where the children sleep three and four to a room – a tiny room in a dingy flat.”