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The Metro section of
WaPo for June 21, 2006, brings the news that yet another group is planning an exercise to “envision” the future shape of the National Capital Subregion. Is this good news, old news, bad news or no news?
Was it not just yesterday that the leaders of the National Capital Subregion gathered for a “Reality Check” sponsored by the Smart Growth Alliance? Did not many of the characters who are planning this exercise participate
in discussions of the best location for future jobs and housing and services and recreation and amenity in the Subregion? Was
that Reality Check not such a success that it is being repeated in Maryland (Reality Check Plus: Imagine Maryland).
There have been at least a dozen efforts with
similar goals since the "Plan for Year 2000 for
the National Capital Area" was prepared in the early
1960s. That Kennedy-era sketch outlined still-sound parameters for functional human settlement patterns in the National Capital
Subregion, as documented by “Reality Check,” “Blueprint for a Better Region” and the COG “Activity Center
Analysis,” to name just the last three efforts aimed at getting a handle on future settlement patterns in the National Capital Subregion.
We have often noted that the last comprehensive plan to balance land use and transportation in what is now the National Capital Subregion was the 1791 “Plan of the City, Intended for the Permanent Seat of Government of the United States” – aka, The L’Enfant Plan. Even with these solid resources, the efforts of the past two decades have failed to ignite progress towards a functional National Capital Subregion. What is missing? What needs to be done to improve the prospects of success with the next attempt?
Threshold
Questions
For starters one must ask:
1.
Is there now a collective will among the three states and the Federal District to work together, or will competition for tax base and prestige again trump any process?
2.
Is there now an
understanding that the three states and the Federal District must hang together or they will continue to hang separately, strangling on the growing Affordable and Accessible Housing Crisis, the Mobility and Access Crisis, deterioration of the regional ecosystem including the Chesapeake Bay and an eroding Countryside?
In the National Capital Subregion there are three
governors, none of whom have effective control over the land use and transport parameters in their own states.
There is an even more dysfunctional Federal District that has an anti-governance structure made up of Neighborhood Advisory Councils, a “City” Council and
mayor and countless federal committees, agencies and both houses of Congress
with hands in the pot. The fact is, only
president of United States holds enough of the reins of power and can call on enough resources to be the National Capital Subregions “Chief Planner.” John Kennedy recognized that fact. No one since has dared to mention it.
3. Is the study area a viable geographic entity. Is the
territory rational? The study cited as a model for success is Envision Utah. It is not “Envision Salt Lake City.” Salt Lake City is the
capital of the state, the largest urban agglomeration within 375 miles and it is still Envision Utah. That was a very smart move on the part of the organizers of Envision Utah. A valid question is: In 2006 can one undertake a successful effort to plan a Subregion or does one need to address the entire Washington-Baltimore New Urban
Region? That logical geographic agglomeration falls in four states and the Federal District.
The
Great Void
The larger question is: Does success of a new project just require a better “process” or
is there a need for realistic criteria for determining functional vs dysfunctional human settlement pattern at all scales from the Dooryard to the New Urban Region? We suggest
that without the latter, no process will generate anything beyond
a gathering like so many others in the past.
Yes, any new effort requires a
will to work together, the understanding
that there is no alternative and a relevant territory.
But there is something much more fundamental needed.
As noted above,
not since the 1791 L’Enfant plan has there been
a plan based on widely accepted standards, science-based criteria and experience-derived guidelines to sort out the differences between functional and dysfunctional settlement patterns at the Alpha Cluster, Alpha Neighborhood or Alpha Village scales, much less at the Alpha Community and Alpha New Urban Region scales.
We are not talking about theoretical guidelines by “experts” or from “visionaries” but rather standards, criteria and guidelines based on what the market has judged to be functional settlement patterns among those actually built over the last 50 years. An example of such standards, criteria and guidelines can be found in Part Three (Chapters 15 to 22) of
"The Shape of the Future." A sketch of the process to apply these parameters can be found in
“The Shape of Richmond’s
Future,” Feb. 16, 2004.
Where
to Look for Help
One will find no help in the misleadingly titled book “Planning and Urban Design Standards” published by the American Planning Association earlier this year. This and other books will be reviewed in depth in a forthcoming column.
One will find little help in the work of New Urbanists. This is one of the few sources that those concerned about the future can turn for guidance. New
Urbanists’ work focuses on creating nice places at the dooryard, neighborhood and village scales
but does not focus sufficient attention on the issue of Balance even at those scales. The “Transect” generated by New Urbanists is a generic cross-section through an urban agglomeration with no standards, criteria or guidelines.
There is some real help available from the three recent efforts listed above: “Reality Check,” “Blueprint for a Better Region” and “COG Activity Center Analysis.”
Without exception they document that there is already far more land devoted to and held for urban development than is needed if this land is developed at densities the market will support. [See
End Note One.]
The relevant parameters are examined in
“Five Critical Realities that Shape the
Future,” One of the problems raised by these parameters and the numbers cited in End Note One is that projects like Rail to Dulles, if there are functional station-area patterns and densities, much of the
Subregion's potential growth is adsorbed in a single jurisdiction. It would appear
that a lot of questions need to be answered before a new process is
undertaken.
--
June 26, 2006
End Notes
(1) Two million new residents and 1.6 million new jobs sounds like a lot but those numbers are not much higher than those predicted for the 2005-to-2030 time frame in past planning efforts. The
two million residents and 1.6 million jobs represents an imbalance that needs to be sorted out. 1.6 million jobs should generate around 1.1 million households and thus 2.7 million
persons. In this case 0.7 million people are assumed to live “outside” the planning area. Thus the concern for
territory in the study area noted above. The future population and job numbers are generated by excluding territory that should be in the study area and/or suggests jurisdictions near the core of the Subregion do not intend to meet the needs of those holding jobs (aka, tax base) in the jurisdictions. One of the basic criteria for a functional region must be to achieve a relative balance of Jobs/Housing/Services/ Recreation/Amenity at the Alpha Community Scale and an absolute balance at the Alpha New Urban Region scale.
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