Sometimes I read references to "cookie-cutter" housing - the implication being that if houses (or apartments or whatever) look too similar this is a bad thing.  But after visiting Little Rock and Dallas, I wonder if this is the case.

Where (as in Dallas' M Streets) there is a kind of unifying design, a neighborhood really stands out in my memory- I think about the M Streets and say to myself "Yes, this is what that place looks like! And I actually kind of like it!" (or don't).

By contrast, every house and block and street are very different in Little Rock's otherwise comparable intown areas- as a result, they all seem kind of vague and undefined and yes, kind of boring. 

Posted by lewyn at 10:06 AM EDT

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This Friday I saw a great deal of affluent Little Rock (though not the most affluent areas at the city's northern and western edges).  I stayed at a hotel in West Little Rock (boring sprawl) but took a bus to an area closer in, and walked through parts of three intown neighborhoods: Capitol View, Hillcrest and the Heights.

Capitol View is a socially mixed, slightly gentrified area about a mile and a half west of downtown, mostly built in the early 20th century. The housing fabric is mostly small, unadorned single-family homes as you might expect from such a neighborhood: not as adorned as the Quapaw Quarter's Victorians.  Though lots of things are within a long walk of Capitol View, it seems to be basically a single-use area.  The worst thing about the neighborhood (and about all the neighborhoods I visited): you can't count on sidewalks.  One street will have them, the next street won't, and so on down the line.  By contrast, in Atlanta the overall number of sidewalks may well be fewer than in Little Rock, but there is more of a clear pattern: pre WW-2 intown areas (Morningside, Virginia-Highlands, Midtown) tend to have sidewalks on every block, and areas built between 1940 and 1980 tend to have sidewalks only on commercial streets.  (Newer sprawl is more likely to have sidewalks).

The Heights (about 5 miles from downtown) and Hillcrest (about 3-4 miles from downtown) are similar to Capitol View in many ways, but are far more affluent, have bigger houses (though not always much bigger) and a more clearly identifiable commercial strip (Kavanaugh).  The residential areas struck me as notably prewar but not that distinctive: no dominant architectural pattern (unlike Dallas's M Streets), and sidewalks were normal but not consistently present.

What I liked the most about these areas: a walkable, small-shop-oriented commercial street (around the 3000 block of Kavanaugh for Hillcrest, around the 5000 block for the Heights).  In this area, the main street is only two or three lanes wide, and parking (especially in Hillcrest, less consistently in the Heights) usually fronts the street rather than being set back behind yards of parking.

Also, an abomination separates the two Kavanaugh commercial districts: about a half mile where there is no sidewalk nor even grass to walk on, so pedestrians must walk in the shoulder of the road. (See https://www.youtube.com/user/mlewyn#play/all/uploads-all/0/SsjHK-3AAwI for details).  

Posted by lewyn at 5:01 PM EDT

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SUNDAY 

Sunday morning I checked out of my hotel and took a bus, then a train downtown - and there my long walk through intown Dallas began (according to Mapquest I walked about 9 miles).

I began (and ended at night) by walking through downtown Dallas.  17 years ago I had a job interview in downtown Dallas and thought it was the worst place on Earth: I remember that at 7 PM there was no place to eat but a Wendy's that was about to close.  But today things are greatly improved in the commercial core: there are apartments and condos here and there (mostly on Main Street), there are a few bars and convenience stores, and there's a downtown CVS that's open all the way till 9 PM!  Compared to Chicago or Philadelphia, not much to brag about.  But compared to Dallas in 1992 or Little Rock today, a big improvement.  I would say that downtown Dallas is even a little better than downtown Jacksonville or Atlanta (though only marginally so).  I didn't walk around after dark so I can't vouch for that experience; however, at sunset it did not seem totally lifeless- there were some bars/restaurants open, and there were a few people about as long as you stayed in the core of the core and didn't wander too far off in the wrong direction.

Then (after a stop at Dealey Plaza and a snack on the infamous grassy knoll) I started walking around the new neighborhoods at the fringes of downtown Dallas, going northwest to West End, which I thought would be a thriving historic/entertainment district like Larimer Square in Denver.   I was partially right: the physical look was a bit like Larimer Square (old red brick buildings, mostly restaurants etc but a little residential) but it was definitely smaller, more tourist-oriented and less prosperous- a shopping mall there, West End Marketplace, had just closed.  Maybe the revitalization of the downtown core (and of some other areas) has removed West End's reason for existence.

Then I walked a bit north to Victory Park, a very different kind of new development: new high- and mid-rises, both residential and commercial.  Nothing quaint about it, but very utilitarian if you work at one of the commercial high-rises and can afford to live in one of the residential ones.  It reminded me a bit of Midtown Atlanta around 14th Street, sterile but convenient.

Then I decided to make my way to Uptown, Dallas' urban satellite downtown (kind of like Atlanta's Midtown).  I expected to see something like Victory Park- lots of skyscrapers.  There were a few here and there, but it resembled Midtown Atlanta more than anything else- some tall commercial buildings, but lots of small late 19th-c and early 20th-c. houses (about half of which seemed to have been converted into professional offices), lots of restaurants and small shops with small parking lots or parking in back. 

The major difference between Uptown and Atlanta's Midtown is that everything seemed a little more jumbled: in Midtown Atlanta, the high-rises seem to be concentrated around subway stops, while in Dallas they seem to randomly crop up here and there.  It also seemed like more houses had been converted to offices in the Dallas version.

But otherwise lots of similarity: in both places, there isn't a uniform street wall, since some businesses front the street while others are behind a few yards of parking.   I'm not sure to what extent these differences are the result of different zoning policies, or whether something else is involved.   Atlanta's Midtown seems more coherent but also more sterile.

My original plan was to walk from Uptown to the DART light rail (dart.org), then make my way to the Deep Ellum neighborhood, then onward to the inner suburbs. But instead I saw some interesting-looking high rises in the distance.  So I walked from there to a very nice looking street called Turtle Creek, which is mostly residential high rises (by which I mean 10-20 stories, not real skyscapers) adjoining a very nice park.  After a few blocks of this, I looked at my map and noticed I was a lot closer to Highland Park (the suburb I was interested in) than I expected.

So I decided to walk north to Highland Park instead of east towards the light rail.  And I have one thing to say about Highland Park: WOW!  A super-rich, super-safe* suburb with sidewalks on every block!  And grid streets!  And bus routes (OK, not that many, and only north-south heading towards downtown as opposed to within the neighborhood)!  And even a light rail within walking distance (though only at the eastern edge of the town near SMU)!  And it is really, really beautiful- big houses a uniform 10 or 20 feet (i.e. not preposterously far) from the street, kind of like Rosedale in Toronto.  

Only downside from a new urbanist perspective (other than, of course, its high level of social homogenity and sheer expensiveness) is mixed use: most commercial uses are at the fringes of the town, so walkscore.com ratings (which measure mixed use) tend to be in the 50s, not horrible but not great either. 

There is no place in Atlanta which compares: Ansley Park is similar in that it is a well-off 20s neighborhood, but it isn't as large or as rich, has dreadfully complex curvilinear streets, and I suspect is closer to marginal neighborhoods (and of course does not have the advantage of being an independent municipality).  Buckhead is more comparable socio-economically, but you can't count on sidewalks in Buckhead, let alone grids or public transit or walkability in any way, shape or form. 

Then I walk to SMU at the edge of Highland Park, and cross a highway to get to Mockingbird light rail station- but I have one more neighborhood to go before I head south to Deep Ellum and downtown, the "M Streets" (aka Greenland Hills) near Greenville Avenue (so named becuase many of the east-west streets begin with the letter M).  These are like a Highland Park for people priced out of Highland Park : built in the 20s, grid streets, bungalows that scream "cute" in ways that I find hard to describe without photographs (lots of house photos at http://www.mstreetscd.org/database/tour.asp  - just click on any street to see the houses).   Only downside: narrower north-south streets didn't have sidewalks; since there are no houses fronting on the east-west streets, my guess is that the idiot who built the subdivision thought of them more as alleys than streets. So if you are in a situation where you really shouldn't be walking on grass (e.g. wheelchair user) you'd be well advised to go on the east-west streets to Greenville Avenue (the commercial north-south street which DOES have sidewalks) and then go back to your east-west destination. 

Like Uptown, the M Streets gave me a massive attack of deja vu: they really, really remind me of Atlanta's Morningside.  If you want to see the latter area, go on Google Street View and start looking around, oh, 1300 N. Highland and higher numbers, or maybe East Rock Springs. 

Similarly, Greenville Avenue reminds me of the commercial part of Highland Avenue (lower numbers if you are using Street View)- basically low-rise and pedestrian-friendly, but not an even street wall: some buildings front the street, others set back behind small parking lots, so it seems a little less orderly than either a purely urban commercial strip where everything fronts the street or a purely suburban area where every building is set back behind yards of parking. 

Then finally, I went back to Mockingbird station and I grabbed a bus that I hoped would take me to Deep Ellum, which I vaguely knew was a once-hot, entertainment- and bohemian-oriented area full of late 19th-c. buildings.  Though I had a regional bus map it wasn't very clear about where Deep Ellum was: the neighborhood was unfortunately a few blocks too far east to be in the map's "downtown inset" yet too close in to be easily locatable in the regionwide map- perhaps a sign of the trouble that lay ahead.  The bus dropped me off at around the 2000 block of Main, where downtown ended, and about six blocks from Deep Ellum.   Those six blocks were a serious urban wasteland; I don't think I saw a single human being between where I got off and about the 2500 or 2600 block of Main- and frankly I didn't want to.  There was an expressway overpass and vacant lots on either side of it. 

Then when I got to Deep Ellum it wasn't much better; I think I saw about 1 or 2 people per block.  There were a few tattoo parlors and a couple of restaurants open, but lots of vacant storefronts, or maybe just places open Friday and Saturday night and closed for the rest of the week.  Rather than trying to figure out when the nearest bus arrived, I decided I would walk back to downtown as soon as I could and hope for the best- I don't think I've ever felt as happy to be downtown in my life! 

Not being very knowledgeable about Dallas, I'm not sure what went wrong in Deep Ellum; my impression, based on what I have read and heard, is that at one time it was more popular.  My guess is that transportation might have had something to do with it: the fact that it was cut off from downtown by the expressway and no-man's land nearby was never an advantage, and the light rail (and McKinney Avenue trolley serving Uptown) may have meant that Deep Ellum suddenly had to compete with other intown entertainment districts that were more easily accessible.  At any rate, don't waste time going to Deep Ellum; its a hassle to get to without a car and its too yucky and vacant to be worth seeing.

On balance, Dallas reminds me more of Atlanta than I expected: a sprawling Sun Belt city, but with some OK intown and near-intown places.  Dallas's sidewalks and street grids make parts of Dallas more walkable than Atlanta; on the other hand, Dallas streets tend to be wider than those of Atlanta, which is a disadvantage for pedestrians. 

*At least for a suburb this close to downtown.  You can find data at city-data.com; basically, robberies per 10,000 residents (not to be confused with the actual number) range from 1-6 per year, while Decatur, GA, the closest-in Atlanta suburb, typically has between 10-20.

SATURDAY 

Since I'm shomer shabbat (which means that I don't drive or ride on Friday night or Saturday) I didn't have many travel adventures on Saturday; I walked to shul (Shaarey Tefilla, a modern Orthodox shul in suburban North Dallas) and hung around that neighborhood all day.  Without going into details that would be boring to non-religious readers, I was quite favorably impressed with Shaarey Tefilla.

I was not, however, impressed with its location.  One of the worst things about Dallas, from my point of view, is that there is no opportunity for an observant Jewish urban life- not only is there no synagogue in Dallas' intown neighborhoods, there isn't even a synagogue in the Park Cities (Dallas's elite close-in suburbs). 

The closest-in synagogue (Reform) is 6 miles from downtown, the closest-in Conservative is 7, the closest-in Orthodox 9 or 10.  By contrast, even in Atlanta, the Sprawl Capital of the World, you can find synagogues of all types 2 or 3 miles out (Chabad Intown is about 2 miles from downtown, and Reform, non-Chabad Orthodox and Conservative congregations can all be found about 3 miles away).*

By my "Jewish Urbanism" criteria (discussed in http://planetizen.com/node/39364 ) Dallas gets a C- :  you can walk to shul and take the bus to work - but its going to be a long ride, about 45 minutes to downtown from where I spent Shabbat) 

Posted by lewyn at 10:43 AM EDT

Updated: Monday, 6 July 2009 11:45 AM EDT

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Today was spent in Richardson and Plano: Richardson because I wanted to go to an Indian kosher restaurant there (Madras Pavillion, which I stronglyy recommend)- otherwise boring sprawl.

Then I went to downtown Plano, since I'd heard about a new urban development there.  Not very much to see; a big set of apartments with some (but not very much) ground floor retail.  There were a couple of gentrified-looking commercial blocks with brick sidewalks. 

However, the surrounding blocks were even more boring- road widenings, the substitution of garden apartments for houses, and parking lots apparently had erased much of the historic downtown.  But (unlike Richardson and N. Dallas) what was left wasn't rich enough or developed enough to look like typical suburban middle-class sprawl. 

Instead, the nearby blocks reminded me a bit of where I used to live in Fort Smith, Arkansas- not historic or as pedestrian-friendly as a real downtown, but still much more small-town like than typical suburbia.  

Then I went home for shabbos; I'll do Dallas' intown neighborhoods (Highland Park, the M Streets, Uptown, Dowtown to the extent I have time) on Sunday.

Posted by lewyn at 7:41 PM EDT

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Like: You can buy a daily bus pass on every bus, instead of having to go downtown to buy one.

Dislike: Nearly every commercial street I've seen (at least in the suburban area where I'm staying, in far N. Dallas near Richardson) is six to ten lanes wide.

Posted by lewyn at 2:52 PM EDT

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I decided to visit Dallas for the weekend, mainly to see examples of new (and old) urbanism.

Today I started off with the new.  I took a bus from Love Field to the Mockingbird light rail station, where there is a transit-oriented development named after the station.  In fact, the development's movie theatre was atop the rail station.  The development is what I would call "minimal new urbanism"- some lofts over some shops, but too small to include anything else (the Gulch in Nashville, which I visited a few weeks ago, is pretty similar). 

Mockingbird Station (mockingbirdstation.com) has some defects from a new urbanist perspective: too much space devoted to a surface parking lot blurs the difference between this development and neighboring strip malls (though even so the difference is, I think, visible).   Also, it is cut off from Highland Park and Southern Methodist University (just to the west) by an expressway- or more precisely, some weird hybrid of an expressway and a surface street. Finally, there wasn't all that much residential- looked to me like just one set of lofts, though maybe there was something else I did not notice.

Then I went on the DART rail station to the Forest Lane station in North Dallas (where I was staying).  I was really surprised by how crowded the trains was.  I was expecting more or less empty trains, but instead it was jam packed- not just standing room only, but standing shoulder to shoulder.  And this was 2:00 or so, not even rush hour.  Normally I would have walked the mile or so to the hotel, but the weather was over 100 and I was carrying a pretty big bag so I took a bus.  

After decompressing at the hotel for a few minutes, I took a DART bus to Addison Circle, a much more well-known new urbanist development.* Addison is much bigger, maybe half a mile wide - amazing in some ways, less so in others.  What I really liked:

*Lots and lots of public space - one really neat, heavily forested mini-park, a couple of less exciting ones, plus one big park at the edge of the development. 

*Incredibly quiet residential streets.  I heard doves coo, and was able to make a cell phone call with ease (by contrast, I tried on the bus but it was too noisy).

Downside: a little monotonous, since it was all the same height and all multifamily.  No high rises (unlike Atlantic Station in Atlanta), and no single family (unlike Celebration).  Not the best I've seen but still nice.  I'd live there if it was convenient.

Then I went grocery shopping for Shabbat (in sprawl halfway between Addison Circle and my hotel) and walked down a truly dreadful street, Forest Lane between Preston and Coit.  Most of the houses and subdivisions were surrounded by walls; I felt like I was in some Third World country where walls protected the mansions from the riffraff.

*There doesn't seem to be just one web page for this development, so just google "addison circle" for more info.

Posted by lewyn at 11:20 PM EDT

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Over the past few days I've finally managed to do some sightseeing here in Little Rock (where I've been teaching for the summer). 

I saw Central High School, site of a desegregation crisis in 1957 (when black students sought to enter, were kept out by a mob, and reentered after President Eisenhower sent federal troops).  What an amazing building! (Here's an image- http://www.igougo.com/journal-j24270-Little_Rock-Little_Rock_Central_High_School_Historic_Site.html 

Or if you really like photos, just go to google images and type in "Little Rock Central High").  And from what I've heard its still a good school- at least one professor at UALR Law has kids there. 

The neighborhood itself, alas, needs work.  Like most of Southwest Little Rock it combines poverty and single-use zoning.  There is minimal retail within a short walk, but at the same time there's lots of rundown single-family housing.  The Walkscore is 52, but that's misleading since the school itself adds to the walkability score, and most of the retail is gas stations and mini-marts rather than restaurants and real grocery stores.

I also saw another interesting area that needs work: the West 9th Street corridor near the Mosaic Templars (once a fraternal lodge, now a museum of Arkansas African-American history).  Half a century ago, W. 9th near Broadway was Little Rock's African-American downtown, kind of like Harlem in NYC or Sweet Auburn in Atlanta.  Now, it is mostly vacant lots; where there are businesses, they are warehouse-type businesses surrounding by barbed-wire fences.  What went wrong?

Part of it, of course, was movement of the black middle class to suburbia and to white neighborhoods.  But that was true everywhere; however, the devastation on 9th St. is far more complete than in Harlem or Sweet Auburn.  Those places became bad neighborhoods, but still have restaurants and similar retail.  W. 9th looks downright rural.

A little reading reveals the real villian: highway departments.  By running an expressway just south of 9th St., the government cut off this street from its customer base.  And by turning nearby streets one-way, the city government discouraged motorists from stopping at 9th St.

Posted by lewyn at 10:21 AM EDT

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I didn't do as much on the last day as on the first three, partially due to Shabbat restrictions (I prayed a little and lounged around, thus causing me to miss the first session) and partially because I went to two "Open Source" sessions where we talked more about CNU business than about public policy.

I spent most of the afternoon at sessions on the new transportation bill which Congress is likely to consider this year or next.  I learned:

*That roads don't always pay for themselves even if the gas tax as a whole pays for itself, due to cross-subsidies.  Suppose you are a suburbanite who travels heavily on a new road.  Are you paying for that road? Not necessarily- most of the road's construction was paid for before it was built, by all the nation's drivers.    By contrast, if you live in the city and drive on non-federally financed municipal roads, you pay the same gas taxes as suburbanites but don't really benefit.  

*That compact urban development need not be promoted solely through transit.   Highway spending could be focused on interconnected, intimate streets rather than on widening sprawl-generating speedways.

I also spent a little time at a session on fire codes; the International Fire Code may be amended to provide fire chiefs with more discretion, thus making it easier for narrower streets to be built.  However, its not clear how much impact this will have at the municipal level, since every city has different types of fire trucks (and thus different problems in insuring that they can fit on streets) and different types of hazards.

Posted by lewyn at 1:03 AM EDT

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Heard lots of speakers.  Not as much fun as the tours but still some good stuff.

First heard Peter Calthorpe talk about the environmental benefits of more compact development- lots of statistics about greenhouse gases emitted by compact vs. not-so-compact development.  The most astonishing thing I heard, though, was a statistic not particularly related to his main topic: the "housing shortfall" (that is, the gap between likely housing demand and likely housing supply).  According to some planning agency's regional projections, there will be 1.75 million new jobs in the San Francisco Bay Area by 2035, 1.25 new housing units demanded- and only 0.7 million housing units built.  No wonder housing prices are so high!

The next speaker, James Howard Kunstler, took a very different perspective, arguing that because of energy shortages there won't be many new jobs or new housing over the next century or so.  (A lot of his argument can be found at his blog, www.kunstler.com, or in his book, The Long Emergency).   He argued that as a result, population is likely to either drop or to be redistributed away from major metro areas (both city and suburb) to small cities (100,000 or below) and agriculture.

His most interesting point was his rebuttal of the argument that lower household sizes will help cities.  He pointed out that household sizes have been declining for a century (due to a decline in extended families, and later from lower birth rates) with no discernible effect on sprawl.  Moreover, economic austerity may lead to bigger households as more unrelated people live together.

Then came an academic paper by Wes Marshall (a Ph.D candidate at the University of Connecticut), pointing out the variety of ways of measuring street connectivity, and discussing his study asserting that areas with grid street patterns tended to have higher levels of transit/bike/walking, and equally good safety records.

Billy Hattaway, a traffic engineer in Florida also spoke about street design, pointing out that the most accident-prone intersections were high-speed, high-traffic streets - precisely the streets that engineers now build under sprawl.  Solution: more compact, slower intersections.  He also suggested that street standards be based on the speed that you want people to travel on rather than on geometric standards; a street with a 35 mph speed limit should not be designed for people driving 50 mph.  He is working on a "traditional neighborhood traffic manual" for Fla DOT, which should incorporate some of these ideas.

Andres Duany spoke about a regional visioning exercise he ran in rural England.  He suggested that people be given clear alternatives, with some discussion of the subjective (and if possible objective) pros and cons of each.  For example, in his exercise people were presented with several alternatives: continuing existing trends, greyfield/brownfield development (nice but usually not enough such land is around to meet population needs), transit-oriented development (massively densifying areas near rail lines), settlement extensions (building adjacent to existing urbanism- popular only if there's some separation between settlements to protect views of current village residents), and stand-alone new cities (OK if designed right, but had bad reputation due to disaster of English "New Towns", which were basically ugly sprawl).

Duany pointed out that participants were also shown the difference between 1900-30 development and postwar development.  He also mentioned retrofitting by eliminating front setbacks; the advantage of this was that people can have a chance to improve their houses in ways visible to the public, thus making property more valuable.

Then I went to a discussion of the Stapleton trip (see yesterday's blog post); a couple of participants ran a survey of CNU members who went on the tour, and compared their responses to residents' responses to the same questions.  Not surprisingly, residents were pretty happy with Stapleton; CNU members less so, mostly citing the considerations I mentioned (and also expressing concern that streets might be too wide, and that there wasn't enough non-park public space like libraries etc).  I ran a Stapleton residential address on walkscore.com; the result was 60, OK but not great.

Then I listened to Brent Toderian, Vancouver (Canada) director of planning, talking about the "Vancouver miracle:" over the past 15 yrs or so, downtown population increased from an already healthy 45,000 to 100,000.  How did he do it?

*Putting pedestrians first, then transit, then cars.  No new car-oriented infrastructure or freeways. Why is this important?  From an environmental perspective, walking is of course the least polluting mode of travel.  Also, the major advantage of downtown living is walking, so anything that favors walking makes downtown more desirable. (In fact, he said Vancouver has no freeways).

He pointed out that walking infrastructure is "vertical as well as horizontal"- Vancouver strongly discourages blank walls, so street walls might be more appealing to pedestrians.

*Design quality.  To ensure good design, all zoning is essentially discretionary; there is no entitlement to build.  This strikes me as the sort of rule that might work in Vancouver, but would be incredibly toxic in a place with pro-sprawl planners and zoning boards.  I also wonder how this policy would affect housing prices; I would think that it would create delay, which in turn creates expense.

*Getting families by building schools downtown.  (Of course, this might not work in the USA due to issues of class, race etc).  He quoted one line in a newspaper article: "When we have more than 3 kids we might have to leave downtown."  Even in healthy American cities, one child is enough to move people to suburbia.

He mentioned Vancouver's "Ecodensity" plan for increasing density citywide - not through high-rises but through rowhouses, adding invisible units here and there in a variety of ways.

Finally, I listened to Gideon Berger of Denver's planning dept. talk about street design.  A couple of his more interesting points:

*One downside of cul-de-sacs: arterials are intended to move regional traffic, but if there are no alternative streets to move local traffic, the local trips clog up the arterial.  (Having lived half a block off an arterial and been one of the "cloggers" I can vouch for this point).

*He pointed out that the effects of mixed use depend on the corridor.  He cited a study by Profs. Wachter and Gillen of Penn; in Philadelphia commercial corridors in "bad" condition, housing values are 13% lower for housing 1/4 of a mile from the commercial street, but in corridors in "excellent" condition, housing values are actually 36% higher for housing within 1/4 mile from the street (compared to housing further from the commercial street).  But after looking up the study I couldn't figure out how the authors defined "good" and "bad" corridors. (The study is at www.upenn.edu/penniur/pdf/Public%20Investment%20Strategies.pdf)

Posted by lewyn at 8:12 PM EDT

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Spent today, like yesterday, mostly touring Denver rather than listening to speakers.

Spent morning at Stapleton, a giant development built on the site of the former Denver airport, a few miles north of downtown.  Stapleton may be the largest infill project anywhere- about 3300 housing units so far (with around 10,000 residents) and the developer's eventual goal is to have 12,000 housing units.  

Stapleton certainly has some elements of new urbanism: a more-or-less grid street system, some mix of incomes and housing types- but multifamily and rentals look like single-family homes rather than being segregated in apartment pods.  Also, Stapleton is a little more dense than typical sprawl (i.e. small or nonexistent back yards, houses closer together- though still dominated by single family homes), and two of the commercial areas are within walking distance of the homes. 

What I liked the most: some NU developments aren't that kid-friendly, but this one seem to have a park or playground on almost every block.  As a result, Stapleton seems to be very popular with families.  One resident said he knew of 22 kids under 6 nearby. 

What I didn't: only transit is bus service.  So most people probably drive everywhere outside the development.  Also, in one of the two commercial areas, parking was aboveground in a typical sprawl parking lot.*  A representative of the developer (Forest City) said that when all this was being planned, the retailers insisted on this format.  Today, of course, this is not the case; for example, a Target in Buckhead (an Atlanta neighborhood) has an aboveground parking deck.  The Forest City representative suggested that this may be due to the spread of big boxes- when there's a Target every 5 miles or so, each Target has fewer customers, so the retailers are less obsessive about parking.

Also, commerce seemed to be at edge of development so for most people stores would be a fairly long walk away.  A Forest City representative said that this was because Denver was "overretailed" and that more retail and office would be built if the market for nonresidential stuff came back.  

In Jacksonville, Stapleton would look pretty good- certainly more walkable than anything besides the Holy Trinity of San Marco/Riverside/Springfield.  But in Denver (where downtown and Capitol Hill are chock full of high rise and midrise apartments) Stapleton looks pretty suburban to me.

After Stapleton I walked around downtown Denver, seeing the LoDo (Lower Downtown) neighborhood, where the city was founded in 1858.  Very nice- lots of old three (?) story buildings fronting the street, and newer buildings made up to look like same.   

Then I took Denver's light rail to the University of Denver.  The light rail was OK- not extensive stations, more like the Shaker Heights rapid in Cleveland than like Atlanta's subway system.  Negative: riders more exposed to outdoors.  Positive: you don't have to spend 10 minutes walking through tunnels to get to your train.

One thing I hated about Denver's system: on most transit vehicles in other cities, riders sit in two-person rows; but in Denver each two-person row faces another.   So unless you are riding with a group of two or three friends, you always have to face a stranger (instead of sitting in back of the stranger's head).  To me this feels not quite private enough.

U. Denver area nice but kind of blah: sidewalks, small single family homes, not quite as compact as Stapleton, nonresidential streets (University Avenue, Evans Ave.) wider and faster than in typical urban environment, but still a big improvement over hardcore suburban sprawl. 

*Though to be fair, even this parking lot had one feature different from most: sidewalks throughout the parking lot, to make the pedestrian's plight easier.  And the existence of sidewalks means that if parking ever was reduced, it would be easier to build a full-fledged street grid on the site of the parking lots.

Posted by lewyn at 10:19 PM EDT

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I spent most of today visiting Boulder, touring parts of the city and listening to speeches from developers, architects and planners.

The physical setting of Boulder is amazing.  You can see the mountains from anywhere in downtown.   Downtown is a classic small-town downtown- low-rise and walkable (and to a much greater extent than most such downtowns, fabulously affluent).  No building is over three or four stories, and there is a very popular pedestrian mall.

The most interesting speakers focused on the rise of residential housing in downtown Boulder.  Before 2000, there were only 34 housing units downtown.  (I thought I heard someone say that there were only 4 before 1997, but I don't have this on paper).  Today there are 147 housing units, and 124 units are under construction.

What went right?  As far as I could tell, two things:

1.  The city granted "density bonuses" for residential housing, allowing more generous floor area ratios if buildings included a residential component.

2.  The city relaxed minimum parking requirements, requiring only one space per unit.

In other words, all the city had to do is regulate density a little less, and blammo- massive housing boom! (To be sure, not every place is as desirable as Boulder, and less desirable places won't have quite as much pent-up demand).

The dark side of Boulder's boom is exploding housing prices; we went to one condo development where even a 900 foot one bedroom cost $500,000, and the only real rental market in Boulder is apparently the student ghetto near the University of Colorado.  Not clear what the cause of this is; it is worth noting, however, that every significant downtown project has to go through at least three layers of review (landmark district, design review, planning board).

Posted by lewyn at 12:49 AM EDT

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Temple article on combining property rights and smart growth, at

http://works.bepress.com/lewyn/41/

and San Diego article on sprawl in Europe, at

http://works.bepress.com/lewyn/51/

Posted by lewyn at 3:55 PM EDT

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I spent last Thursday speaking at the Midwest Political Science Association (MPSA) conference.  (Due to a family commitment I could not spend the entire weekend).  I gave a presentation on my paper about ways to reconcile property rights and smart growth.  (Latest draft online at  http://works.bepress.com/lewyn/41/  )

Since the paper is online I'm not going to talk about that.  Instead I want to discuss a few of the other papers I heard.

*James Gimpel of Maryland spoke about the "Big Sort" theory (the idea that Democrats and Republicans tend to move into Democratic and Republican areas).  He monitored movement of registered Democrats and Republicans into different zip codes, and found that very few zip codes gained Ds and lost Rs, or vice versa.  Most gained both or lost both.  He also suggested that the most lopsidedly D or R areas tend to be population-losing city slums or rural areas, while growing suburbs tend to be more closely balanced.  I think this presentation would have been improved had Gimpel focused on movement within metro areas, since people have more choices in those areas and are thus more likely to "sort" themselves into living with like-minded neighbors.  Having said that, I do think he has a point: in the age of sprawl, the fastest-growing places (middle-class exurbs) had advantages that would appeal to people of all partisan stripes and are thus likely to gain both Ds and Rs.

*Lisa Blaydes of Stanford talked about the growth of anti-Americanism in the Islamic world.  She began by talking about her personal experience: when she rode in taxicabs in the late 1990s, most people liked Americans- now, not so much.  Then she focused on the Pew surveys of these countries, which asked a variety of questions about America and Americans.  Based on their responses she divided Muslim poll respondents into several categories: people who hated everything about America (culture, policies, business), people who hated only some things about America ("we hate Americans but we like their movies") and people who didn't hate America.  She noted that there was a huge variance among countries. In Pakistan, 61% are in the most anti-American category, only 3% were pro-American, and 34% sort of hate America.  At the other extreme, in Nigeria 73% are pro-American and only 4% are in the most anti-American category.  (Egypt, Jordan, Turkey and Indonesia are in the middle- the numbers being: Egypt 4 pro/54 anti, Jordan 10 pro/33 anti, Turkey 18 pro/33 anti, Indonesia 38 pro/4 anti, with the rest in the middle categories).  

She then focused on the "despair" thesis- the idea that people who hate America were dissatisfied with their lot.  Basically there was no correlation.

On the other hand, the perception that Islam was under attack made a huge difference.  And despair + paranoia made a huge difference.

Support for a greater political role for Islam made some difference but not as much, since there are secular nationalists who are anti-American as well as Islamists.

Bottom line: a lot of America-haters, but America hatred is based on paranoia not poverty.

*Jon Bond of Texas A&M spoke about the rise and fall of Congressional moderates (which he defined as people out of step with their parties).  Basically, the number of "moderates" began to rise in both parties in the 1920s and 1930s, starting to decline in the past 30 years.  He suggests that these changes correlated with the percentages of Southerners and northerners in the D and R caucuses respectively.  In 1910 the Solid South was the congressional Democratic party.  As the Democrats gained seats in the north, some southerners started to be out of step with the rest of their Party.  After the New Deal, this gap between southern Ds and other Ds accelerated.  Similarly, the Republicans began as a northern/midwestern party- but as Rs gained support in the West and later the South, some northerners were out of step.  In other words, a party becomes divided as it grows; its historic base has to share the caucus with other legislators with different priorities (northern D liberals during the New Deal era, sunbelt conservative Rs more recently).  Eventually, the party's base switches, and the moderate southern Ds and northern Rs were replaced by members of the other party, causing the number of moderates to decline. 

 *David Webber of Missouri spoke about school district consolidation; the number of school districts has decreased in recent decades as rural districts got consolidated.  Does this make a difference?  He suggests that larger districts have lower graduation rates and higher test scores- suggesting to me that larger districts allow bad students to drop out and get lost, while smaller districts focus on the weaker students more.

*Adam McGlynn of Texas/Pan American spoke about the mayoral takeover of the schools in NYC.  Points out that mayor ran the schools until 1960s, then control devolved to neighborhood school boards due to concerns by racial minorities.  Decentralization didn't work real well, but it was still difficult for mayors to regain control due to racial issues.  How did Bloomberg succeed while other mayors had failed?  By promising extra funding to gain the support of teachers' unions and state legislative Democrats, and by persuading business leaders that mayoral control meant better schools.  McGlynn says jury still out- elementary test scores have improved, higher levels not so much.

Posted by lewyn at 10:06 AM EDT

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http://www.streetfilms.org/archives/meet-seattles-bus-chick/

http://carfreewithkids.blogspot.com/

Posted by lewyn at 11:13 PM EST

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10:24 Begins by discussing O's personal story- nice way of seguing into his own! 

10:26 "Amercans can do anything!" Yes, I'm afraid we did.

10:28 Begins substance with cliche about how greatness of America is not in our government.  Silly cliche- your job is to be the government!

10:29 Tax cut blather-we're for all the tax cuts O is for, only more of it.  Reminds me how non-transformational O. is.  40 years ago, Rs proposed new spending programs and Ds outbid them.  Now, a supposedly liberal D proposes tax cuts and Rs outbid them. Maybe O is to Bush as Nixon (may his memory be a blessing) is to Johnson- less an ideological transformation to a slight mid-course correction to an out of control Texan.

10:29 Ridicules spending, but picks bad examples.  I don't see how high-speed rail is so ridiculous.  

10:30 Tax cuts, spending cuts, blah blah blah.  Sounds shopworn, like Jindal running for Bush's third term.

10:31 Drill, baby drill! 

10:31 "Universal access to affordable health care coverage" without "universal government-run health care."  Nice if you can swing it!

10:33 "Now is no time to dismantle the defenses that have protected the country for hundreds of years."  I'm guessing that 100 years ago our defenses were a bit more modest that O. wants, or Jindal for that matter. 

10:34 Our party got away from its principles- can't deny that. 

"Our party is determined to regain your trust."  Good.  

10:35 More  optimism.

Mediocre- thought he would be better somehow.  (Then again, I'm always tougher on Rs- I expect mediocrity from Ds).

One thing about Jindal's speech: except for a line here and there, reveals almost no awareness of economic situation.  Almost every line in speech could have been given at this time in 2007 or 2008.   

Posted by lewyn at 10:40 PM EST

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Foreign affairs portion. 

9:57 Speaking of al-Qaeda terrorism, "We will not allow it."  Easier said than done.

9:58 Obama calls for more troops in the military!  Am feeling desire to invent time travel so I can go back in the polling booth to vote for Ron Paul.

Nothing else new on foreign policy.

10:03 Starts praising ordinary Americans, goes through ritual of naming a few.  I'm guessing this is like the announcements in shul- a sign that we're ending soon.  Maybe I should drink a little wine to make it feel like kiddush! 

So what do we get out of this substantively?  O. calling for more bailouts (no news there), moving to center with tax cuts, some cuts in spending.  Speech could have easily been given by President Clinton (Bill or Hillary)  - solidifies my impression that O. is basically a generic Democrat, not the Messiah that liberals hope for, not the Great Satan that his opponents fear. 

I also think that whether he succeeds or not, leftists will come to loathe him as much as movement conservatives do now- maybe more, because they will feel betrayed. 

NBC is talking about O's optimism- well gosh, what do you expect? After Jimmy Carter, it is conventional wisdom that a President must be optimistic.  

Posted by lewyn at 9:59 PM EST

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I'm going to try to live blog Obama's speech- maybe it will force me to pay attention!

9:19 "We will rebuild"- makes it sound like USA has been hit by a nuclear bomb or something.   He then praises our enterpreneurs- say, weren't they the same people who ruined the banks?  

9:21 Says he'll tell us what went wrong.  Then distracts with energy, education blah blah blah.   Then goes into a laundry list of blaming [starting with tax cuts for rich, burying housing in the middle of the list]- President O. has a bad habit of laundry listing when he is being programmatic, instead of focusing on what is/was really important. 

9:22 On stimulus: "Not because I believe in bigger government- I don't."  When even O. attacks Big Government, you know that the Left was pretty much lost the argument on the role of government. 

9:24 Lists good stuff about stimulus - mentions layoffs that were prevented, tax cut, etc.  (I can't help wondering: why not just a tax credit for state taxes instead of all these little programs?  States could raise taxes to avoid layoffs and get away with it, and consumers would be effectively taxed less and thus spend more).

9:25 Plugs recovery.gov to show how money will be spent.  Talks about efforts to prevent state and local waste and fraud- but won't federal scrutiny just impose more bureaucracy and delay on states?

9:28 Good explanation of crisis- that its basically about banking and lending, not about housing any more.  We've had housing recessions before (1991, 1992) but we've never had insolvent banks to this extent, at least not in the past 75 years. 

9:30 Comes out against bailouts "with no strings attached"- nice false dichotomy, justifying bailouts by posing choice between bailouts with "accountability" (whatever that means) and bailouts without same, as opposed to bailouts vs. no bailouts. 

9:32 Goes back to explaining why he needs to support banks- "its not about helping banks, its about helping people."  This sounds like trickle-down economics to me- give money to the banks and they'll lend to you.  (Though having said all this, its not like I have any better ideas!) 

9:35 Stops talking about bank $ (no real specifics, I notice) and starts talking about budget.

Posted by lewyn at 9:37 PM EST

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