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Again
this year WaPo is running an incessant,
annoying ad on cable television touting its job
search resources. The ad opens with a
caged green parrot squawking, “I can’t take
this, I can’t take this. Not another day, not
another day.” The parrot’s owner then
returns home and repeats the, "I must have
a new job," mantra.
That
is exactly how we have felt each day as the 2007
Virginia legislative session approaches. In past
years politicians have squawked about who can
deliver the most benefits for the least taxes
while preserving the most personal freedoms.
This year the incessant yammering is overlaid
with meaningless sound bites that include the
words “land use.”
In
terms of understanding the importance of human
settlement pattern and finding solutions to
the mobility and access crisis – and the
companion accessible and affordable housing
crisis – the upcoming Virginia General
Assembly session may be the worst in memory.
Politicians,
MainStream Media – it seems like everyone –
is talking about "land use" as if they
know something about it, however:
-
No
one is discussing the need to evolve
functional settlement patterns so that it is
possible to balance the travel demand
generated by the settlement patterns with
the capacity of the transport system.
The current settlement pattern is untransportable,
regardless of how much money or how many new
and expanded transport facilities are built.
See "Regional
Rigor Mortis” (June 6, 2005).
The
pre-session bombast is carried out as if just
mentioning "land use" and
"transportation" in the same sentence
will cure all the ills and allow
politics-as-usual to proceed focused on how
money will solve the mobility and access crisis.
(See End Note
One.)
Suggesting
that more money is a “solution” to the
mobility and access crisis is an insidious
subterfuge. It will be ten years before any
“improvements” are completed and it becomes
obvious that these new projects do not solve any
known problem -- other than filling the business
pipeline for contractors and getting politicians
off the hook until they can retire.
A
Place to Start
WaPo
and other MainStream Media’s reporting and
editorials set the context for the tragic
cover-up of the real issues. A good place to
start is the 28 December WaPo headline
for a story on the “land use/transportation”
issue:
“Va
House Puts Onus on Counties for Road Crisis.”
After
50 years of negligent failure to provide a
constitutionally mandated framework to preserve
the health, safety and welfare of the
Commonwealth’s citizens, some members of the
General Assembly want to cover their tracks by
giving the elected and appointed leadership of
municipal and county governments a lump of coal.
The
only thing that is sillier than the
“solutions” on the table is that WaPo
follows up its Page One story with an editorial
suggesting that what is needed to solve the
mobility and access crisis is more money.
Further, WaPo says that some of the
General Assembly’s Elephant Clan members are
villains for withholding the money. (“The
Snooker Strategy: Don’t be fooled: Virginia
Republicans are the ones starving the state’s
transportation network.”)
Three
Opening Points
Let
us give all the credit that is due to the
drafters of the current House proposals for
acknowledging that there is, after all, a
relationship between land use and
transportation. The Governor has again jumped on
this bandwagon after having given only lip
service to the relationship once the 2005
election was over.
Welcome
to the party! Recognition of the fact that land
use and transportation are joined at the hip by
Politics As Usual is about 50 years late. Sadly,
the cake is now all gone.
During
the period from 1958 to 1967, strategies to
relate transport systems and land use-generated
travel demand were part of the official strategy
for the evolution of the National Capital
Subregion’s human settlement patterns. Action
on this issue was needed then.
Modest
proposals such as those being discussed today as
“solutions” would have helped 50 years ago.
Now only Fundamental Change will create a
sustainable trajectory for contemporary society.
Second:
The crisis is a “mobility and access
crisis,” not a “roads crisis.” While the
“leadership” dithers, the “access and
mobility crisis” – and the companion
“affordable and accessible housing crisis”
– are morphing into an “economic
prosperity/social stability/environmental
sustainability crisis.”
Third:
All the Better-late-than-never and
This-is-a-first-step rhetoric by well-meaning
observers just provides and excuse for past
action/inaction. Such talk encourages further
delay in a general recognition that:
Fundamental
Change in governance structure and Fundamental
Change in settlement patterns is a
prerequisite to prosperity, stability and
sustainability in the Commonwealth and in the
US of A.
Even
discussing elements which would be a part of any
comprehensive solution only gives those who do
not want to face Fundamental Change an excuse to
avoid reality. As my father used to say: “You
cannot get from Atascadero to Honolulu by
planning a trip to Pismo Beach.”
Beating
on the electeds and the appointeds in
municipalities and Counties in 2007 is a useless
exercise which will not even achieve the
“hidden” agenda of putting off action on
real solutions until after the Fall 2007
elections.
Reality
101
Why
is beating on the municipal and County
“leadership” a counterproductive idea?
For
starters, the mobility and access crisis is a
New Urban Region-scale – and in some cases a
subregional-scale – problem, not a municipal /
County one. Any effective legislation must
include a new, elected subregional and regional
governance structure. See “The
Shape of Richmond’s Future” at Bacon’s
Rebellion for a step-by-step sketch of how
to start the process.
Second,
beating on the electeds will not work. Using the
northern part of Virginia as a point of
reference, if beating on Loudoun and Prince
William County has any impact, it will only
induce these jurisdictions to work harder to
displace the location of change and growth. The
changes in settlement patterns that should
evolve mainly inside R=20 (and totally inside
R=30) will be forced out beyond R=40.
That
means more scattered urban land uses in Clarke,
Fauquier, Warren, Rappahannock, Page, Culpeper,
Madison, Stafford, Spotsylvania, Caroline,
Orange, which just makes the regional and
subregional mobility and access problem worse.
(See End
Note Two.)
Grasping
the Big Picture and the Real Lynchpins
If
the General Assembly wants to beat on municipal
council members and county supervisors, they
could start with Arlington County which covers
most of the territory of two Beta Communities in
the Core of the National Capital Subregion.
These two Beta Communities are not Balanced
(Alpha) Communities because they have a gross
imbalance of jobs over housing, services,
recreation and amenity.
If
the General Assembly really wants to address the
problem of dysfunctional human settlement
patterns, which underlies the mobility and
access crisis and the affordable and accessible
housing crisis in the northern part of Virginia,
they need to look to Fairfax County. (Similar
locational dysfunction can be found in the other
two New Urban Regions that fall, all or in part,
in the Commonwealth.)
Fairfax
County occupies most of the R=6 to R=20 Radius
Band in the Virginia portion of the National
Capital Subregion. Fairfax County now covers
part or all of 10 Beta Communities. If the
projected 2020 population of Fairfax County were
distributed in Balanced (Alpha) Communities,
there would be 100,000-plus acres of subregional
open space within the County borders and 40
percent of the land in each of the Alpha
Communities would be Dooryard-, Cluster-,
Neighborhood-, Village-, and Community-scale
open space.
Further,
the pattern and density of land use in these
Alpha Communities would be exactly what the
market demonstrates throughout the First World
(including the market in the Commonwealth and
in Fairfax County) to be the places which are
the most desirable to live, work and play.
These would be places for the full spectrum of
citizens, not just those at the top of the
economic food chain. (See End
Note Three.)
The
market documents that only a small percentage of
citizens really prefer the dominant settlement
pattern if they have a choice. It is also clear
that “suburban patterns” (what Jim Bacons
calls the home of the Pod People) would not
exist if those who benefit from these patterns
were required to pay the full cost of their
location decisions.
There
was a strategy for creating a sustainable,
efficient, functional settlement pattern in the
National Capital Subregion in the late 50s and
it was still an easily obtainable option in the
mid-60s. Functional settlement patterns are
still the only viable option for the future but
it will cost $ billions more to retrofit human
habitation now than it would have cost to do it
right in the first place.
Instead
of preserving 100,000 acres-plus of subregional
open space, Fairfax County has created:
-
Two
large preserves of subsidized, five-, ten-,
20-acre, pseudo “rural” life-style
residential areas
Had
Arlington and Fairfax created Balanced (Alpha)
Communities from 1955 to 2005 there would have
been little need for Loudoun and Prince William
to approve any “subdivisions.” These
jurisdictions could have focused on helping the
private sector evolve six Balanced (Alpha)
Communities in the Radius Band between R=20
(about the Fairfax County border) and R=30.
These new places would have also been great
places to live, work and play (aka, Balanced
(Alpha) Communities).
The
data to support these settlement pattern
distributions can be found in “Five
Critical Realities That Shape the Future,”
a Backgrounder at Bacons Rebellion. (See
End Note Four.)
Back
to Basics
Functional
human settlement patterns help everyone in the
long term from the perspectives of economic
prosperity, social stability and environmental
sustainability.
Why
has the settlement pattern that has evolved over
the past 50 years been the antithesis of what
was needed and desired if the long-term,
collective self-interest citizens were
understood and implemented?
Dysfunctional
human settlement patterns make a few very rich
in the short term and it also causes speculators
to fantasize that they will get richer at some
point if the current trends continue. In a
society with short-term economic profit in the
driver’s seat, it is clear which settlement
pattern will evolve unless there is aggressive,
effective citizen participation in governance.
It is also clear why conservation loses out to
over-consumption. (See End
Note Five.)
The
current political process runs on party
contributions. Those who profit from
dysfunctional human settlement patterns make
sure that politics, parties, governance and
conservation does not get in the way of their
profit, either personal or corporate.
The
best use citizens can make of the current
“land use/ transportation debate” and of the
discussion of the mobility and access issue is
to point out the moral and ideological
bankruptcy of the current proposals and, as we
suggest in our recent columns and Backgrounder,
“A
New Metric for Citizen Well Being,” vote
all incumbents in both parties out of office
come November. That is the only language that
they understand.
There
is no hope for a democracy unless a large number
of citizens understand the root cause of
problems like the mobility-and-access crisis and
the affordable-and- accessible-housing crisis.
Creating this understanding is a goal worth
achieving. The complex understanding of the
impact of human settlement patterns is the
function of PROPERTY DYNAMICS. (PROPERTY
DYNAMICS is on hold while we complete TRILO-G.
See End Note
Six.)
As
we noted at the outset, we can not take this
“land use” charade another day, so we are
taking a sabbatical. We will be doing
occasional short columns on targets of
opportunity but focus on TRILO-G. Our next
Backgrounder will tie down just why
understanding human settlement pattern is so
important and why citizens must overcome
Geographic Illiteracy and Locational
Obliviousness.
--
January 8, 2007
End
notes
(1)
An earlier version of the following observations
appeared as “BAD,
BAD BOYS AND GIRLS” on the Bacon's
Rebellion Blog on 29 December, 2006.
(
2) At S/PI we have no problem with new
urban development in these places or in the
Shenandoah Valley as long as all new urban
development evolves into Balanced (Alpha)
Communities whether inside the Clear Edge around
New Urban Region Cores or in Balanced (but
disaggregated) Communities in the Countryside.
(
3) The reasons why the “the American
Dream” / “suburban” landscape is, in fact,
the cumulative American Nightmare is the subject
of The Shape of the Future and the forthcoming
book TRILO-G. Also see End Note Six.
(4)
The market analysis that supports our position
was carried out over three decades for public
agencies, developers, builders and conservation
institutions. “Same house, same builder,
different location analysis” and “per square
foot of comparable space analysis” are the key
to finding what people really want. It
turns out to be far different than what
prospective home buyers tell NAHB sponsored
surveys they want or what they say they are
pleased with concerning their home purchase
after they have made a purchase commitment.
This is especially true if their location
decisions are being heavily subsidized whether
they know or admit it or not. This research was
distilled and generalized into five fundamental
relationships we call Natural Laws of Human
Settlement Pattern. Anyone who wants to
can get out a map, a scale, a calculator and a
pad and with publicly available information –
but not much data from public agencies – can
replicate the these natural laws.
(5)
Over the long term, all citizens benefit from
conservation. In the short term, however, very
few make small profits from conservation, a
great many make a lot of money from consumption
and over-consumption.
(6)
A brief summary of TRILO-G can be found here.
--
January 8, 2007
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