At CNU XV, Barney Frank argued that smart growth supporters should support liberal Democrats, because Republican support for tax cuts and military spending leaves no room for smart-growth oriented programs such as public transit, HOPE VI, etc. I think this story provides some ammunition on both sides of the argument:

But see the following story from the LA Times (full story at
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-budget20jul20,0,5439437.story )

"State lawmakers appeared to be closing in on a spending plan late Thursday that would divert roughly $1 billion away from mass transit, forcing Los Angeles to put off plans for extending parts of the Expo light rail line and widening some freeways.

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Democrats said they agreed to the big cut to transit funding in an effort to avoid having to take money away from schools and healthcare programs. Republicans justified the cut by noting that state transportation funding will continue to increase overall."

What grabbed me was the last paragraph: the Democrats wanted to cut transportation to fund public education and health.

This is why I don't think left-wingers are necessarily better than right-wingers on urbanism issues: just as the Right will always pick tax cuts and wars over smart growth-type programs when money is tight, the Left will always pick public education and health care.

Of course, if you think public education is a better use of money than tax cuts, you will probably vote for liberals anyhow: but you shouldn't be doing it because of their superior commitment to urbanism.  

For what its worth, I do think there are differences among candidates- but I think the issue cuts across left/right lines.  From what I've learned of the candidates, some are more oriented towards transit and urbanism than others: Richardson on the Democratic side has said some good things, and Romney on the Republican side has a good record.  Bloomberg is very pro-transit but isn't likely to win as an independent.

I don't know enough about the candidates to know if any are really hostile to smart growth.  However, I suspect most of the candidates just don't care much about these issues one way or the other.  For example, I don't know of any evidence that these issues take up a single brain cell in the brains of Fred Thompson or John Edwards. 

Obama and Giuliani SHOULD be good because they live in cities: but your zip code doesn't necessarily dictate your thought processes on these kind of issues.  

On Saturday morning at CNU, there was a great panel on expressways, focusing on the removal of riverfront expressways that cut off downtowns from rivers.

Ingrid Reed spoke about her experience in Trenton, where she was able to challenge the status quo on two grounds. First, removing the expressway would create jobs, housing and prosperity, by freeing up riverfront land for commercial and residential development. By contrast, today riverfront land is cut off from downtown by the expressway, essentially blighting such land. Second, Trenton suffers from minimal traffic congestion, so the arguments against removing the expressway are weaker than they would be in a bigger, more congested city.

Cary Moon spoke about her experience in Seattle, where the city is trying to decide whether to build a new expressway to substitute for one damaged in a 2001 earthquake. Again, the argument against a new highway is based on downtown development: a riverfront connected with downtown is a prosperous riverfront bustling with parks, people and businesses, a riverfront cut off from downtown is Blight-O-Rama. Moreover, the experience of San Francisco (where earthquake-damaged expressways were removed without drastically harmful results) shows that highway removal need not result in gridlock.

Moon pointed out that the anti-highway case is stronger in Seattle than in other cities, because even if the city plans to build a new expressway, it will have a one-year transition between the end of the old road and the birth of the new: so Seattleites will already have had a year to adjust to a status quo without a riverfront expressway. Moreover, Seattle has another expressway running through its very narrow downtown.

Moon argued that the downtown expressway was not necessary to facilitate freight traffic, because only 4% of the expressway traffic was freight; most of the traffic was just local trips seeing a shortcut through downtown. Moreover, recreating the pre-expressway street grid might actually reduce congestion, because drivers idle in traffic waiting to get on and off congestion instead of being able to use the new streets that would emerge from the ruins of the highway. She also suggested building freight-only lanes for freight traffic and bus rapid transit to soak up commute traffic.

The ultimate result: in a recent referendum, voters voted against two expressway proposals (one above ground and one that is 1/3 underground)- partially because of anti-highway efforts, but partially because supporters of each freeway alternative eviscerated each other's proposals.

Norm Marshall (of smartmobility.com) disucussed the use and misuse of traffic models. Often, state DOTs use misleading interpretations of models to justify more roads. For example, the Washington DOT stated that downtown Seattle traffic would grow from 110,000 vehicles today to 130,000 in 2030. But buried in an appendix to a DOT report are statements suggesting the contrary.

Even when DOT claims about traffic are not completely false, their data projects are flawed in a variety of ways. Their pretensions of precision overlook the possible adjustments that could take place when a freeway is torn down or not built: in addition to changing routes or using public transit, drivers could take trips at different times of day or forego them entirely. Also, freeways (or their absence) create land use changes that increase or decrease vehicle trips- for example, by facilitating downtown development (if a freeway is torn down) or sprawl (if a new freeway is built). Even if a model could accurately forecast such adjustments, transportation models can't possibly forecast broader social changes such as energy prices or social changes such as telecommuting.

Marshall's bottom line: models might be useful to test different scenarios- but any model that pretends to tell you how many cars will be in downtown Seattle in 2030 is just a pile of rubbish.

Jeff Tumlin asserted that freeways export real estate value from cities to suburbs; their absence maximizes cities' property value. He used Vancouver as an example of life without freeways: while downtown vehicle trips increased in every other Canadian city since 1995, such trips decreased in Vancouver- even while total trips (including walking/transit/bike trips) increased by 22%!

Tumlin suggested that within a downtown, freeways may actually reduce capacity, because preexisting downtown streets are destroyed to build the freeway. In short, a freeway downtown is like a pig in a parlor- the right thing in the wrong place.

The CNU panel on comprehensive plans contained two very different perspectives: one on planning for a not-yet-built-out semirural area, and the other on planning for a big city.

Two panelists spoke on the latter, Matt Raimi (who discussed a mature Los Angeles suburb) and Steven Hammond (who discussed Sacramento). Both focused on mapping out existing neighborhood patterns and using visuals to show possible change. They emphasized that in a mature community, comprehensive plans will essentially reflect the status quo (a depressing possibility in many communities!). Raimi noted that his communities didn't react negatively to density as long as the city doesn't increase density in exisitng residential areas. Although Hammond was less blunt, he pointed out that the Sacramento plan will create numerous "neighborhood types" reflecting the status quo.

Given the planning system's bias in favor of the status quo, how can a plan promote more compact growth? Hammond emphasized (1) identifying "new" (that is, undeveloped) land within the city, and (2) allowing mixed use and higher intensity on streets that are already built for commerce and mixed use. (I wonder if such change would be enough to accommodate market demand for new housing, or whether people would still be forced into suburbia by housing shortages...)

More unusual was Marcela Camblor's presentation on planning in a 28-square mile area at the northern fringe in St. Lucie County- kind of the northern fringe of South Florida (since St Lucie is the county just north of suburbanized Palm Beach County). A few years ago, the county was stuck in an impossible situation due to the stupidity of prior generations of planners: the area in question was outside the urban service boundary, and was zoned for agriculture. So surely the comprehensive plan would be similarly phrased, right? WRONG! Instead, the comp plan provided for "business as usual" sprawl with one acre lots- a fact that incensed existing residents, who moved there precisely to get away from suburbia and to find a rural area.

So how could planners accommodate the collective desire for ruralness? Changing the comp plan to conform to existing zoning was out of the question for legal reasons; apparently, the county had already given developers reason to rely on the concept of SOMETHING being built, which means developers could challenge a "no build" comp plan in court. (I think the county's lawyers could have given a fascinating talk on the legal issues involved).

So the planners chose a smart growth plan as a remedy-allow developers to build, but only in "towns" and "villages" (500 acre parcels, with 60-75% of the land used for open space, and no maximum densities in the rest of the parcel). Camblor asserted that under this plan "sprawl is illegal"- no more 1 acre lots, just building within the towns and villages.

But how could such a plan respect developers' property rights? The plan provides for transferable development rights; if you don't own 500 acres of land, you can sell your right to develop smaller parcels to someone else who can aggregate those rights to build a town or village.

One concern: would this really be able to accommodate all market demand for housing? If density was truly unregulated, the plan might work. But the plan also contains height limits, which is kind of a hidden density regulatoin.

At CNU, I listened to Witold Rybczynski's keynote speech, which discussed his new book on real estate development (Last Harvest). A few interesting points:

1. He said: "For my generation, housing was architecture and architecture was housing." No wonder mixed use was taboo- if retail isn't "architecture", you're not going to push to put it near the houses!

2. He said that "We use words like 'sprawl' precisely to dehumanize the process." What is more dehumanizing (and less accurate) is sprawl advocates' use of generalities about "the American people" and "the American dream" to describe new sprawl development. How often have you heard the claim: "The people want sprawl! The people want the outer suburbs!" But when sprawl advocates say "The people" they really mean "The people who are now moving to the newest suburbs."

But those "people" are a small segment of the total population; most people are staying put at any given time. For example, when I lived in Buffalo, the newest "hot" outer suburbs, Clarence, Lancaster, and Orchard Park, had less than 10% of the region's population. About 30% still lived in the city of Buffalo, and at least that many lived in the first-ring suburbs adjoining the city (Amherst, Tonawanda, Cheektowaga, Lackawanna, and West Seneca). Are they not "people"? Are only new movers to new suburbs human beings?

And even these "people" don't necessarily want to live in sprawl. They may live in sprawl because they can't afford older suburbs (unlikely in a cheap region like Buffalo, but common in more prosperous regions). Or they may live in sprawl because their older suburb or city neighborhood is decaying (more likely in declining regions like Buffalo, less common in more prosperous regions).

3. He said that both NU and sprawl development are easier in the South than in the Northeast because people are more optimistic about the future, and thus about development. Is it really true that development is easier in the South? Or is development easier in smaller regions with more open land closer in? And is NIMBYism really less common in the South? I'm not sure - interesting avenue for further research, though.

4. He said that buyers in the project he researched (a greenfield NU project) were driven by "community" - that only the most social people were interested in living in this kind of project, and that people who thought they had enough friends were more interested in conventional big-lot suburbia. Is it community that drives people to NU or walkability? I would speculate that Rybczynksi is right in describing greenfield NU with not very much within walking distance, less right in describing more urban development. But that's just an educated guess.