The Shape of the Future

E M Risse

Looking for Mr. Goodgrowth

The time is ripe for a gubernatorial candidate to defy the Business As Usual special interests and take the case for Fundamental Change to the voters. 

Information provided by Barnie Day in his recent Bacon's Rebellion column ("Memo to Kaine and Kilgore," August 23, 2004) prove beyond the shadow of a doubt that:

If there was ever a year for an independent candidate or a dark horse from one of the two dominant political parties to take the governor's mansion, 2005 is the year to do it.

Day demonstrates that the two presumptive party candidates are determined to weasel out of addressing transport, the most critical issue on the minds of voters about which a Virginia governor could make a difference.

The 2005 election is pivotal for another reason: By 2009 it may be too late to salvage anything like the current levels of prosperity, stability and sustainability if the 2005 election results result in four more years of Business As Usual. 

Over the past four decades of the 20th century, winning elections has grown more and more to be a function of raising money. After the current national election process is over, voters may be so fed up with politics as usual that raising a lot of money could be a bad thing.  2005 may be a year when intelligent ideas come back into vogue. For anyone who wants to take on politics as usual and make Virginia a better place, here are a few suggestions:

The most critical issue impacting every Virginian is traffic congestion. It makes daily life miserable for many of the 85 percent of the Commonwealth’s citizens who live in the three largest New Urban Regions. Congestion is projected to grow dramatically worse. Already it impacts all Virginians with added costs for goods and services. Now a “moderate” coalition reportedly is lining up to elect delegates committed to saddling citizens with higher taxes to pay for more facilities that will make traffic congestion even worse.

As candidate of integrity and vision, you should run on a platform of improving access and mobility. Transportation dysfunction impacts every citizen and, unlike a lot of feel-good issues, transport is a state responsibility. In fact, the Commonwealth has worked diligently for 80 years to preempt any attempt by regional or municipal levels of government to play a meaningful role in mobility. The agencies under the secretary of transportation control all federal funds for mobility in Virginia. Further, the state has incentivized municipal actions that exacerbate immobility.

Virginia’s current immobility and lack of functional access is clearly documented. The inability of VDOT and its younger sister agencies to provide mobility and access is widely acknowledged. 

Don't just blame today’s VDOT and its siblings for transport dysfunction. Blame every governor and legislator as well as every VDH, VDH&T and VDOT Commissioner since Harry F. Byrd was elected governor in 1925 for politicizing the Commonwealth’s transportation planning and implementation. A special ring of hell should be reserved for former governors Allen and Gilmore who took advantage of this politicization to emasculate VDOT and the rest of Virginia’s transport agencies and push them over the edge for their personal short-term gain.   

Barnie Day suggested that transportation is so important that both presumptive candidates for governor should agree on a solution long before the election. There is a certain cache to the idea of getting the two leading gubernatorial campaign fund raisers to agree on a transportation strategy for the Commonwealth and take it off the 2005 campaign agenda. Barnie, however, is thinking that finding a way to raise money is a “solution.” Do not jump to the conclusion that a transportation solution means just agreeing on how to raise money. Recall that:

Spending money without Fundamental Change in human settlement patterns just makes transport dysfunction worse.

Citizens already realize that money is not the answer.  They proved that in last years elections in the Hampton Roads New Urban Region and in the Virginia portion of the Washington-Baltimore New Urban Region. You can review past columns for details of a comprehensive mobility strategy. (See “Tax Deform,” 15 March 2004 and the references cited therein.) 

The simple solution to achieve mobility and access which every voter can understand is to scrap the current state transportation planning process and start over. As governor, the reform candidate and, upon his election, his appointees, must make it clear that:

Until there are region-by-region plans that balance municipal land use plans with state, regional and municipal transportation plans, there will be no state or federal money for improvements.  

Who can argue with a balance between demand and supply? If you win big, no one will even try. Once there are balanced plans, finding money will not be a problem -- the cost of a rational transportation policy would be so much lower because it would not try to cure congestion with congestion-causing projects.

There are many community, subregional, regional and corridor Non-Governmental Organizations that are pushing alternatives to building more roads. Support is building for better use of rail in the Shenandoah Valley (I-81 Corridor), and between the core of the National Capital Subregion and the Middle North Carolina New Urban Region (Raleigh/Greensboro/Charlotte) via both Richmond (I-95/I-85 Corridor) and Charlottesville (US Route 29/"I-85 Relocated" Corridor).

There also is interest in creating more efficient use of air travel and better interfaces between transport modes. All these ideas depend on the creation of Balanced Communities served by shared-vehicle mobility systems in every New Urban Region. Grass roots organizations will provide support for your campaign in exchange for a place at the table in the process to create new, comprehensive, balanced transporatation/land use plans at the Alpha Community and New Urban Region scales as well as Commonwealth-wide.

Of course, as the Business as Unusual candidate, you cannot run on transportation alone. You will need to take positions on many other issues related to state and local governance. Be aware, however that many of the so-called “other” issues are, in fact, related to a functional balance of transport and land use.

As dumb as the recent changes in human settlement pattern are, and as much as these patterns contribute to dysfunction in transport, do not run as a “smart growth” advocate. As noted in "The Trap of Great Examples," August 23, 2004) smart growth has shown little ability to make a real difference.

The Business-As-Usual (aka, dumb growth) apologists have had nearly a decade to come up with way to discredit and obfuscate smart growth initiatives. 

As an indication of the level of success of the disinformation campaign among myth-besotted voters see the Fall 2003 supervisory elections in Loudoun County. Those who favor more intelligent patterns and densities of land use, including more efficient transport, lost the Loudoun election because they had done nothing to provide a robust vocabulary and conceptual framework with which to frame the issues. Without these tools they could not discredit dumb growth’s feel-good, unfounded polemics. The smart growthers also did nothing to provide a clear alternative to Business As Usual or address the canard that smart growth leaves many out of work and/or without an affordable house. If t" smart growth" could not be sold retail in Loudoun County, the fastest-growing jurisdiction in the United States, do not expect it to get a leg up statewide.

There is another problem with jumping on the smart growth bandwagon. As currently practiced, smart growth is about doing better job at dooryard-scale, cluster-scale and neighborhood-scale. Smart growth advocates have done a poor job of informing citizens about regional and multi-regional ramifications of more intelligent human settlement patterns. It may be obvious but it is often overlooked that a person seeking the governor's office is running for state-wide, not municipal office. You need to stick to things the governor and state government can really do.

There are ways to get the smart growth vote without exposing yourself to the slings and arrows of the dumb growth advocates.  Favoring a balanced land-use/transportation plan is the place to start.

Express concern for the pattern of recent development but never use the word “sprawl.” Again, the Business As Usual forces have become experts at subverting sprawl bashing. They turn it into a debate over property rights, affordable housing and “in the eyes of the beholder” aesthetics. 

“Sprawl” is “subjective.” Call the problem what it is “Dysfunctional Human Settlement Patterns (DHSP).” DHSP can be measured objectively. Dysfunction can be measured in the number of vehicle trips generated per dwelling, the amount of water consumed per unit and the total cost of services required per dwelling unit. The percentage of students who have to ride a school bus and the seat miles per student are meaningful measures. The length of the average commute and the distance to weekly retail and service needs are also good metrics.  The list goes on. The creation of Balanced Communities minimize all these measures. 

Express concern for the environment but do not pledge to “protect the Countryside.” Again, the Business As Usual crowd will hit beat you over the head with “property rights” (aka, the value of my land for scattered urban land uses that do not pay their fair share of location variable costs). They also will accuse you of harboring elitist aesthetics. 

Those who have been trying to save the Countryside have been using the wrong strategies. As I will document in future columns, most “save the Countryside” strategies have made matters worse. Fixing transportation will help the Countryside, as will the rational and equitable distribution of location-dependent costs of goods and services.

Express your concern for the environment not with broadsides about “sprawl ruining the Countryside.” Focus on water quality and the quantity of water for future generations. The effluent from municipal and private sewer plants and from septic tanks is contaminating both groundwater and surface water supplies as well as the Chesapeake Bay. Get the data and drive the point home.

After you capture attention with transportation, Balanced Communities and the environment, you can ease into the major overarching issue:

The absolute imperative of establishing a fair and equitable allocation of 40 +/- location dependent costs that make contemporary urban life possible, convenient and safe. 

Establishing a fair and equitable distribution of location variable costs will not be easy. It will, however, shift the argument away from command & control ("This is what the government wants you to do") to an equitable economic formula ("you pay the full cost of your location decisions"). In a civilization with a default setting for economic competition and governance structure that is democratic, “pay what you owe” is a powerful position from which to work.

“Strip development” is ugly but the most damaging form of Dysfunctional Human Settlement Patterns may be big houses on widely scattered lots. Do not attack the owners of those houses, just suggest that they need to pay their fair share of all the location dependent costs and let the market determine the outcome. Some big donors live in those McMansions but the vast majority of voters do not.   

We all know that under the current governance structure many things are not fair and equitable – sugar, automobile and drug industry subsidies come to mind.  That is why we need Fundamental Change in Governance Structure as well as Fundamental Change in Human Settlement Patterns.  However, even under the current system, when an unfairness or an inequity impacts enough citizens (and traffic congestion meets that criteria) and citizens know the facts, there is the potential for intelligent change.

Fair and equitable distribution of location-variable costs will not solve all the problems. There are five other overarching strategies listed in The Shape of The Future. But it is the place to start.

Beyond fair and equitable allocation of location dependent costs the next step is quantification. This depends on having a comprehensive conceptual framework and an agreed-to vocabulary. Then there must be science based research so that:  

• There is the data necessary to establish a fair allocation of location-dependent costs

• There is data to ensure that the settlement pattern and the transportation, communication and other infrastructure to serve this pattern is functional, balanced and sustainable.

Back to transportation. Transport is so critical that Barnie Day wants to take it off the political agenda for 2005.

While we are at it why not take public safety, education, health care and all the other major issues out of the political equation? Just take politics out of running the Commonwealth altogether! That may be hard to do even in a pure a democracy but at a minimum citizens need Fundamental Change in Governance Structure as well as Human Settlement Patterns. This can be the capstone of your campaign: Fundamental Change in Governance. 

Virginians love history. You can round out your platform by championing the governance reforms outlined by the Gov. Charles Robb's Commission on Virginia’s Future which presented its findings in 1984. Those ideas are now old enough to vote and they get more critical each year.

Good luck!

-- September 1, 2004

Ed Risse, and his wife Linda live inside the "Clear Edge" of the "urban enclave" known as Warrenton, a municipality in the Countryside near the edge of the Washington-Baltimore "New Urban Region."

Mr. Risse, the principal of

SYNERGY/Planning, Inc., can be contacted at spirisse@aol.com.

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