|
|
From time to time, a land owner, developer or builder who is
inspired to create a special place –
typically, a place that adheres to the tenets of
“smart growth” – suggests that if they
just get support for this project, then:
-
Buyers will flock to it,
-
Builders will see how successful it is and build places
like it,
-
Bankers will change their lending criteria,
-
Municipal governments will rush to change the regulations
that prevent many better settlement patterns,
and
-
The general public will come to regard row houses and a
neat village center over McMansions on five-acre
lots as the American Dream.
This has not happened and, in all likelihood, never will.
Tragically, good examples have failed to change
the course of consumptive, winner-take-all,
dysfunctional settlement patterns that have been
agglomerating over the past 80 years.
There are some willing buyers.
There are a few builders and bankers
who have taken notice.
Some municipalities have provided
alternative controls at the unit, dooryard and
cluster scale. But
these isolated examples don't come close to
offsetting the vision of the American Dream perpetuated by
billions of dollars in automobile, housing and
lawn advertising.
Civilization is sliding towards entropy and chaos while
many well-intended professionals and advocates
champion “smart growth” projects.
New Urban News lists hundreds of
"good" projects -- Transit Oriented
Developments Traditional Neighborhood
Developments, etc. -- as evidence of the growing
popularity of “doing it right.”
Sadly, these projects represent a small
percentage of the current development pipeline.
They cover an infinitesimally small
percentage of the land consumed by scattered
urban land uses in the Countryside and redeveloped into “more of the same”
in the Urbanside.
As “good” as they may be
individually, they do not contribute to the
creation of Balanced Communities, and the
shared-vehicle projects have station areas that
are not balanced with system capacity.
Many of the projects deemed to be "good"
cluster-scale and neighborhood-scale projects
are in dysfunctional locations. Look no farther than Haymount in
Caroline
County
for a good example. Even village-scale,
Kentlands, Md. is
located just inside Radius = 20 miles. Scattered projects suffer the market
consequences of bad location and never achieve
the goals set by the initial plans or
advertisements. This
is especially true in the areas of unit
diversity, usable common open space and the
supporting services necessary to create viable
components of Balanced Communities.
Badly located projects go through
bankruptcy or are purchased at fire sales and
morph into more of the same Business As Usual. Even in the fastest growing municipality
in the
United
States,
Loudoun County, there are many examples such as Belmont
Forest,
Cascades and South Riding.
There is a great need for good projects, but first there
must be an understanding of the basics.
The imperative is aggregating Balanced
(Alpha) Communities in sustainable New Urban
Regions. Alpha
communities will offer billions of opportunities for good
projects, new shared-vehicle systems and even a
road or two.
This
will happen once there is an understanding of
the importance of balance (balance of
land-use/transportation, shared-vehicle system
capacity/station-area land uses, personal
rights/community responsibilities, et. al.) and
a fair allocation of total location-variable
costs.
Without an understanding of the need for balance and a fair allocation
of location-variable costs, every step forward
is really one of a thousand steps going in the
wrong direction.
These understandings must also be
supported by a comprehensive conceptual
framework, an agreed-to vocabulary and
quantification based on science.
The issue of scale is critical here.
As Daniel Burnham noted: “... little
plans (or small projects) have no magic to stir
men’s (sic) blood.”
Ironically, really great small projects
which meet the needs of the owners are often not
a “success” in the market.
Great places at the dooryard and cluster
scale do not turn over because the owners do not
want to sell these places.
For this reason, there are no sales and
thus no “comparables.”
As a consequence, the price does not
reflect the true desirability of the place
because the assessment/
appraisal does not rise as fast as the very same unit in a
less desirable context.
While this may seem like a small matter,
it factors into the advice real estate agents
give all clients and thus dampens the market for
both innovative new units and for re-sales.
At the other end of the scale, examples of how to “do it
right” that are of notable scale take a long
time to build and cost a lot of money.
It turns out that the best of the
large-scale Planned New Communities (potentially
Balanced or Alpha Communities) have not been
good investments for
the original developers, and they have not
become influential examples, even in the
subregions where they are located. They have
even become excuses for dysfunctional
scatteration: "If you want to live in that kind of place, go live in
Columbia/Reston/The Woodlands. We want our
five-acre lot.”
This position is reinforced by landowners who understand that
even if the counties where these projects are
located were developed for twice the current
population following Planned New Community
principles, most of the county would remain
vacant. This
would mean they could not sell their land for
scattered urban housing. When SYNERGY/ Planning started using this
metric in the mid-80s, almost 3/4th of Fairfax
County
would be have been vacant if Planned New
Community principles were applied.
Look at Columbia/Howard County, Md.; Reston/Fairfax County,
VA; St. Charles/Charles County, Md.; or The
Woodlands/Montgomery County, Texas. The land outside these four Planned New
Communities looks like similarly located land in
any New Urban Region.
When Peter Whoriskey needed an example of
least-common-
denominator development for the recent The Washington
Post
series on “sprawl,” he found a
perfect example in Howard County, Md.
Even the four Planned New Communities
have drifted away from their original
principles. The
Woodlands has managed to stay the course better
than the others, but even there, some drift is
evident. Chapter
18 of The Shape of the Future
provides a summary of all the things one could
(and still can) learn in these places, but the
lessons have not been absorbed.
There is a very good reason for what is built: The players
believe they can make more money.
Economic competition is the default
setting for contemporary civilization.
The tragedy is that if the total costs of
human settlement patterns were fairly allocated,
the settlement patterns would be much different,
and they would be much more functional and
closer to being sustainable.
(For a summary of the driving forces
behind least-common-denominator settlement
patterns, see “Wild
Abandonment,”
8
September 2003
.)
Last Friday’s announcement that the Rouse Company, the
developer of Columbia, Md., will be sold to a
Chicago real estate investment trust, and two
books about Rouse Company founder Jim Rouse
reviewed recently in the Wall Street Journal
provide a timely opportunity to look at the
legacy and impact of major private sector
attempts to shape the future since World War II.
A future column will look at three of the
large Planned New Communities: Columbia,
Md.,
Reston,
and The Woodlands, Texas.
The bottom line is that without citizen
understanding of the need for Fundamental
Change, great examples, big or small, have not
made a difference except for a few archeologists
of contemporary settlement patterns.
Advocates waving pictures and leading
walking tours for converted New Urbanists do not
faze those who make money from dysfunctional
land development – land owners, speculators,
developers, builders, bankers, lawyers and other
agents – or harried citizens who are trying to
make the right location decisions for their
family, enterprise or organization.
--
August 23, 2004
|
