Streetsblog Capitol Hill

Though he was swept into office in the same class as Scott Walker, John Kasich and Rick Scott, Michigan Governor Rick Snyder has set himself apart in a couple of important ways.

While his Republican contemporaries were eschewing money for high-speed rail, Snyder welcomed the funds. Just last week, his state received an additional badly needed $200 million cash infusion.

Now, once again, Rick Snyder is displaying a level of pragmatism — and frankly, vision — that recalls a less acrimonious political era, at least with respect to transportation. Earlier this spring, Snyder issued a directive to state agencies on the importance of “placemaking” in economic development. The document — one in a series of statements that lays out his administration’s priorities — puts forward a plan for state agencies to cooperate to build a more livable, less car-dependent state, with strong urban centers.

“Neighborhoods, cities and regions are awakening to the importance of ‘place’ in economic development,” Snyder said in the document. “They are planning for a future that recognizes the critical importance of quality of life to attracting talent, entrepreneurship and encouraging local businesses.”

In March, Streetsblog featured a letter from a Detroit area business owner who said the region’s sprawl mania was making it impossible to attract talent. Letter-writer Andrew Basile said “There’s a simple reason why many people don’t want to live here: it’s an unpleasant place because most of it is visually unattractive and because it is lacking in quality living options other than tract suburbia. Some might call this poor ‘quality of life.’ A better term might be poor ‘quality of place.’”

Snyder’s directive seems to take a page directly from Basile’s recommendations. It calls on 10 state agencies, including MDOT and the state’s economic development agency, to collaborate and innovate with an eye toward making Michigan more livable. Although the document makes no direct reference to transportation reform, it stresses the importance of healthy cities.

“In this global economy, cities and urban areas are crucial to the economic vitality of any region or state,” said Snyder. “Michigan succeeds when Detroit succeeds.”

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Editor’s note: This week, we continue our 5-part series of excerpts from Peter Calthorpe’s book, “Urbanism in the Age of Climate Change.” This is installment number three. Thanks to Island Press, a few lucky Streetsblog readers will be selected to receive a free copy of the book. To enter the contest, fill out this form.

For many people, urban is a bad word that implies crime, congestion, poverty, and crowding. For them, it represents an environment that moves people away from a healthy connection with nature and the land. Its stereotype is the American ghetto, a crime-ridden concrete jungle that simultaneously destroys land, community, and human potential. The reaction to this stereotype has been a middle-class retreat into the closeted world of single-family lots and gated subdivisions in the suburbs. As a result, much of the last half century’s planning has been directed toward depopulating cities, whether through the satellite towns of Europe or the suburbs of America.

But, for many others, the word urban represents economic opportunity, culture, vitality, innovation, and community. This positive reading is now manifest in the revitalized centers of many of our historic cities. In these core areas, the public domain—with its parks, walkable streets, commercial centers, arts, and institutions—is once again becoming rich and vibrant, valued and desirable. There is new life in many city centers and their public places, from cafés and plazas to urban parks and museums—ultimately drawing people back to the city.

In fact, since 2000, many of our major cities have increased their share of new home construction while their region’s suburbs have declined. For example, in 2008, Portland issued 38 percent of all the building permits within its region, compared to an average of 9 percent in the early 1990s; Denver accounted for 32 percent, up from 5 percent; and Sacramento accounted for 27 percent, up from 9 percent. There is an even stronger trend toward urban redevelopment in the largest metropolitan regions. New York City accounted for 63 percent of the building permits issued within its region. By comparison, the city averaged about 15 percent of regional building permits during the early 1990s. Similarly, Chicago now accounts for 45 percent of the building permits within its region, up from just 7 percent in the early 1990s.¹³ This represents a dramatic turnaround as cities regain their roles as centers of innovation, social mobility, artistic creativity, and economic opportunity.

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Editor’s note: Today we are very pleased to begin a five-part series of excerpts from Peter Calthorpe’s book, “Urbanism in the Age of Climate Change.” Keep reading this week and next to learn how you can win a copy of the book from Island Press.

I take as a given that climate change is an imminent threat and potentially catastrophic—the science is now clear that we are day by day contributing to our own demise. In addition, I believe that an increase in fuel costs due to declining oil reserves is also inevitable. The combination of these two global threats presents an economic and environmental challenge of unparalleled proportions—and, lacking a response, the potential for dire consequences. These challenges will in turn bring into urgent focus the way our buildings, towns, cities, and regions shape our lives and our environmental footprint. Beyond a transition to clean energy sources, I believe that urbanism—compact, diverse, and walkable communities—will play a central role in addressing these twin threats. In fact, responding to climate change and our coming energy challenge without a more sustainable form of urbanism will be impossible.

Many deny either the timing or the reality of these challenges. They argue that global demand for oil will not outstrip production and that climate change is overstated, nonexistent, or somehow not related to our actions. Setting aside such debates, my book, “Urbanism in the Age of Climate Change,” accepts the premise that both climate change and peak oil are pressing realities that need aggressive solutions.

Responding to climate change and our coming energy challenge without a more sustainable form of urbanism will be impossible.

The two challenges are deeply linked. The science tells us that if we are to arrest climate change, our goal for carbon emissions should be just 20 percent of our 1990 level by 2050. That, combined with a projected U.S. population increase of 130 million people,¹ means each person in 2050 would need to be emitting on average just 12 percent of his or her current greenhouse gases (GHG)—what I will call here the “12% Solution.”² If we can achieve the 12% Solution to offset climate change, we will simultaneously reduce our fossil-fuel dependence and demonstrate a sustainable model of prosperity. Such a low-carbon future will inherently reduce oil demands at rates that will allow a smoother transition to alternative fuels—and the next economy.

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Urbanists have won an important victory in their campaign to reverse Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac’s bias against mixed-use development, enlisting the National Association of Home Builders to help push for a critical reform to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac’s lending standards. The mortgage giants currently require that projects they finance be no more than 25 percent commercial (20 percent for Fannie and for multifamily HUD projects.)

The Congress for the New Urbanism has waged a battle against these mandates. “Every Main Street in America violates Fannie Mae’s and Freddie Mac’s rigid standards,” CNU President John Norquist has said.

According to CNU, Fannie and Freddie’s commercial-space maximums have had “a distorting effect on building types and development patterns,” especially disadvantaging low- to mid-rise buildings with retail on the first floor and apartments or condominiums above. “Before these regulations, low-mid rise mixed use buildings were common.”

But CNU has won over an important ally in its fight against Fannie and Freddie’s anti-urban lending practices. The board of the National Association of Home Builders has joined with CNU and the National Town Builders Association in asking the lenders to raise the commercial space cap to 45 percent. That would allow significantly more retail space to be built into residential developments, providing those residents and nearby neighbors with convenient services that they don’t have to drive to.

CNU has tailored its urbanist message to a more conservative audience, arguing that free enterprise demands these changes:

This change would allow market forces to better determine characteristics of development rather than federal mandates. It would allow the market to respond to recent consumer preferences for mixed use neighborhoods, as most recently reported in the Urban Land Institute/Pricewaterhouse Coopers Emerging Trends in Real Estate 2011. Government generated regulations that suppress development that responds to consumer demand can negatively effect growth and recovery. CNU and NTBA’s proposal is to remove or substantially ease these restrictions.

A few weeks ago in San Francisco, a number of urban farmers opened a gate in a chain-link fence at Laguna Street, between Oak and Fell Streets, and entered an overgrown lot that has been unused for nearly two decades. The farmers brought with them steaming piles of mulch, which they cast over the edge of the ramps formerly used by cars to enter and exit the elevated Central Freeway spur above Octavia Street, arranging the soil in rows for planting vegetables and filler crops.

Since the Loma Prieta earthquake made the Central Freeway unsafe for travel, leading to its eventual removal and the re-design of Octavia Boulevard, those ramps have been one of the more poignant reminders of a distant vision of San Francisco, with freeways crisscrossing the urban environment, whisking motorists above the unfortunate city dwellers below. 

The new Hayes Valley Farm (HVF) inverts the paradigm and reclaims the space for city dwellers, if only temporarily. "We call it 'freeway to food forest,'" explained Chris Burley, Project Director for HVF and former organizer of My Farm. Burley was joined by nearly fifty volunteers at a HVF work party Sunday. "We're trying to create a successful, sustainable urban farm in the heart of San Francisco."

Burley and several other organizers were approached by Mayor Gavin Newsom's Office of Economic and Workforce Development (MOEWD) last year with the idea to transform the unused lot into a farm. The HVF received a $50,000 grant from MOEWD for the first year of the project, money that comes from the operation of parking facilities along Octavia Boulevard. Burley expected to work the farm for between two and five years, depending on when the economy turns around and the land is developed.

While the city owns the property, the MOEWD has selected Build, Inc, to develop it when they secure their financing. According to Richard Hillis at MOEWD, the site will be broken into ten parcels and built as 50 percent affordable homes, 50 percent market rate.

Because the housing construction market is so bleak right now, said Hillis, the city worked with the neighborhood groups to develop a plan for activating under-utilized lots, starting with this very visible one. In addition to the community benefit of a farmers market and mobile food vending, the city benefits from having the lots used by the farmers.

"It helps us save money on cleaning them and maintaining them," Hillis said.

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The connection between walkable development and grocery shopping may not seem immediately apparent -- until you consider studies conducted in cities from Austin to Seattle that showed the share of trips taken by foot or by transit rises as local food outlets move closer to residential areas.

Even in transit-rich New York, a highly touted new Costco is laying off employees as shoppers avoid its not-too-walkable location. On the flip side, farmers' markets are seeing new growth and serving more lower-income shoppers in Milwaukee, Oakland, and other areas.

Now the White House is getting in on the action, with $400 million included in its fiscal year 2011 budget to support development of new food outlets in urban communities where the nearest grocery store is often a half-mile or more away -- the neighborhoods that policymakers call "food deserts."

The White House proposal is modeled after a Pennsylvania effort that has steered more than $57 million in grants and loans to develop 74 local food markets in lower-income areas of the state. The Obama administration's version would be anchored by $250 million in New Market Tax Credits, which give developers incentive to launch new projects in economically distressed areas.

While the $400 million budget plan is not being directed through the U.S. DOT, it could have a significant upside for urban transportation officials looking to improve access to transit and create new opportunities for walkability.

Architect Leon Krier has been dubbed the godfather of new urbanism. His work on the U.K.'s Poundbury development project, spearheaded by Prince Charles, has made the Luxembourg-born Krier one of the world's most talked-about urban planners.

When Krier won the University of Notre Dame's inaugural Driehaus Prize for classical architecture, Congress for the New Urbanism co-founder Andres Duany's was quoted describing a Krier lecture that changed the course of his career.

"I realized I couldn’t go on designing these fashionable tall buildings, which were fascinating visually, but didn’t produce any healthy urban effect. They wouldn’t affect society in a positive way," Duany said.

“The prospect of instead creating traditional communities where our plans could actually make someone’s daily life better really excited me."

Krier will be delivering a lecture at Washington D.C.'s Corcoran Gallery of Art tonight on the themes of his work and his latest book, The Architecture of Community. He sat down to speak with Streetsblog Capitol Hill about America, its transportation infrastructure, and his call for cities to consider the "human scale" as they develop.

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She may be experiencing an intellectual reconsideration in some corners, but Jane Jacobs is still a beloved figure for the urban planners and designers of Planetizen.

After a month-long online poll that saw more than 14,000 votes cast, the site released its list of the "Top 100 Urban Thinkers" today -- and Jane was at the top. Her longtime antagonist Robert Moses came in at No. 23, nine spots ahead of current New York City Transportation Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan.

Other notables singled out by Planetizen readers include Frederick Law Olmsted, designer of New York's Central Park (No. 4), Enrique Penalosa, Bogota's former mayor and a dedicated proponent of bus rapid transit (No. 14), and Kaid Benfield, director of the Natural Resources Defense Council's smart growth program (No. 42).

Check out the complete top 100 right here. Is anyone missing, or should anyone be ranked higher than they are?

As livable streets advocates work to make headway in breaking the cycle of American auto dependence, the folks at Planetizen have put together a video narrative that explains how we got here. "The Story of Sprawl," a double DVD set produced by Managing Editor Tim Halbur, is a compilation of historical films dating from 1939 to 1965, documenting the confluence of factors that fostered the quintessential land use motif of the 20th century: far-flung, low-density, driving-intensive residential and commercial development. The discs include commentary from planning notables including Andrés Duany, Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk, John Norquist, Neal Peirce, James Howard Kunstler and Robert Cervero, featured in the clip above.

"The Story of Sprawl" is available now. Check the Planetizen promo page for more clips and ordering info.

At a groundbreaking ceremony for the long-awaited Transbay Transit Center in San Francisco yesterday, Mayor Gavin Newsom asserted the project will be "so much more extraordinary than Grand Central Station."

Pointing to the renderings on a projection screen behind him, with a 5.4 acre park atop the terminal, 2600 units of housing (with a pledge of 35% affordable homes), the construction of the tallest building in the West, and a terminal expected to serve 100,000 daily riders, Mayor Newsom added: "Eat your heart out, New York City."

If the city manages to find the $2 billion necessary to complete the project, San Francisco's transit hub would be finished in 2014, 101 years after Cornelius Vanderbilt opened the doors to New York's Grand Central Terminal.

The Transbay Transit Center, a public-private partnership headed by the Transbay Joint Powers Authority (TJPA), will replace the existing Transbay Terminal with a multi-modal transportation hub that would serve nine transportation systems in the same complex, including the potential California High Speed Rail route through San Francisco.  

Mayor Newsom and several other speakers stressed the economic significance of a large-scale construction project as the overall economy sours and the city makes budget cuts.  

Nathaniel Ford, Sr., Chairman of the TJPA and head of MUNI, argued that "without projects like this, we will not be able to provide mobility for the growing population of California, and bring together the fractured public transportation system in San Francisco."  

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