Category Archives: 2013

Botanical Barges

Posted on May 23, 2013 by James A. Bacon| 2 Comments
floating_wetland2

Photo credit: Lewis Ginter Botanical Park

The Chesapeake Bay Foundation has a new idea for saving the bay: Install floating, fertilizer-sipping wetlands in Virginia’s small lakes and storm water ponds.

by James A. Bacon

The Lewis Ginter Botanical Garden is well known in the Richmond region for its Fountain Garden, its Rose Garden, its East Asia Garden and its Wetlands Garden. Its newest addition could well be referred to as its Floating Garden.

Working in conjunction with the Chesapeake Bay Foundation (CFB) last week, 20 volunteers loaded a large, plastic-mesh raft with perennial plants, lugged it down to Lewis Ginter’s Lake Sydnor, maneuvered it into open water and anchored it into place with cinderblocks.

A small crowd gathered to observe the proceedings. “When we launched the island,” says Ann Jurczyk, outreach and advocacy manager for the CFB, “people standing on the bridges started applauding when they saw it wasn’t going to sink!”

The floating garden, which measures a mere 120-square-feet, may qualify as the smallest attraction in Lewis Ginter’s 50-acre park of exquisitely tended trees, shrubs and flowers. But the plant-laden ark fulfills a critical function: removing fertilizer from the lake.

“The island functions like marsh plants,” explains Grace Chapman, Lewis Ginter’s director of horticulture. Roots grow through the mesh and dangle a foot or so into the water, where they absorb run-off nitrogen and phosphorous that feed the algae blooms and create oxygen dead zones. But treating the scourge of Virginia’s waterways is not the only thing the island does, she says. “It makes a great turtle barge.” At last count, the island had eight turtles.

Lewis Ginter’s floating wetland is one of two launched May 15 as part of a larger initiative to clean up Upham Brook. Restoration of the badly impared urban stream, which feeds into the Chickahominy River, is a top priority for the CFB. The same day saw the launch of a second floating wetland at the nearby Belmont Golf Course. A grant from a statewide restoration fund, financed by the purchase of Chesapeake Bay license plates, paid for the installations.

The idea for floating wetlands originated about a decade ago out West and has drifted east. Floating Island Southeast, based in Chapel Hill, N.C., is the exclusive provider of “BioHaven Islands” in Virginia and the Carolinas. The purchase price runs under $4,000 per island, including plants and shipping, says Jurczyk.

The Environmental Protection Agency has not yet vouched for the efficacy of the floating islands but a number of small-scale studies, including one conducted by Virginia Tech, has shown positive results. Floating Island Southeast claims that one square foot of its buoyant botanicals will suck up 10 grams of nitrate, 15 grams of ammonia and 0.5 grams of phosphate per day.

Lewis Ginter’s floating wetland is doubly important to CFB, says Jurczyk, because many people will see it, learn about it and hopefully grasp the potential to install one in their own neighborhood. Especially well suited for storm water retention ponds, the floating islands are readily installed and easily maintained. “The nitrogen and phosphorous [removed] is pretty remarkable on a cost-per-pound basis,” she says.

The CFB is looking for a home for two more islands, which it is willing to install at no cost. The main commitment it seeks from a partner like a golf course or homeowners association is to pull in the island once a year and weed out invasive species. Says Jurczyk: “This is a pretty good investment to keep pond health where it should be.”

This article was made possible by a Bon Secours of Virginia Health System sponsorship.

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Posted in 2013, Environment

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City of Richmond Leads Regional Population Growth

Posted on May 23, 2013 by James A. Bacon| 7 Comments
The Lofts at Canal Walk in Richmond's Shockoe Bottom

The Lofts at Canal Walk in Richmond’s Shockoe Bottom

It’s only one year’s worth of data, so I don’t want to make too much of it, but new U.S. Census numbers confirm my argument that the center of gravity of population growth and development is shifting back toward the urban core — at least in the Richmond region. Between July 2011 and July 2012, reports Graham Moomaw with the Times-Dispatch, the population of the City of Richmond grew faster than Henrico, Chesterfield or Hanover Counties.

The numbers:

population_gain

That’s all the more remarkable when you consider how many years the population of Richmond shrank. But the the city’s outstanding performance should come as no surprise to anyone who has visited downtown, Shockoe Bottom and Church Hill recently and seen the number of warehouse-to-condominium conversions that have taken place.  And there’s a lot more urban housing stock to come.

The picture really couldn’t be any clearer. The fastest population growth occurred in the walkable, mixed-use urban center, the slowest growth in auto-centric, low-density exurbia (Hanover County) and middling growth in the medium-density suburbs of Henrico and Chesterfield. The only thing likely to skew this trend, to my mind, is if the Innsbrook office park in Henrico successfully transforms itself into a second node of walkable urbanism.

Update: Clearly, this is a national trend, as reported by this Associated Press article, among others.

– JAB

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Posted in 2013, Demographics, Land use & development

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“How Can We Urbanize Where We Are?”

Posted on May 22, 2013 by James A. Bacon| 17 Comments
Innsbrook in 20 to 40 years?

Innsbrook in 20 to 40 years?

Around the country, local governments are proposing plans to re-develop aging office parks as urban-style, mixed-use complexes, reports the Wall Street Journal, which cited the Innsbrook office park in Henrico as a case in point.

“Suburban office buildings are passe,” said Burrell Saunders, a principal with Lyall Design and a prime mover behind the re-development of the Pembroke area of Virginia Beach. “We need to have office space integrated into daily life.”

Suburban office parks flourished in the 1980s as corporations moved their facilities closer to where Baby Boomers were living. But many decried them as boring places to work; workers relied upon their automobiles for running errands,going to lunch or attending business meetings. Urban geographer Richard Florida called the office parks “nerdistans.” Now the suburbs are experiencing a reconfiguration as walkable urbanism, even in the absence of mass transit. Innsbrook is a case study of the new thinking. Writes the Journal:

In the Innsbrook area, about 15 miles northwest of Richmond, Va., a plan allowing denser development on office parks met an initial resistance, said R.J. Emmerson, Jr.,, Henrico County planning director. Then the area lost major tenants including Lawyers Title Insurance Company and Circuit City. The need for change became clear, Mr. Emerson said.

Highwood Properties … has received approval to redevelop the first 40 acres of a site that will include 400,000 square feet of retail, 1,000 hotel rooms, some 6,000 apartment and condo units and 3.5 million square feet of office space.

“We’re not going to move our buildings in Innsbrook to the [Richmond central business district]. How can we urbanize where we are?” said Ed Fritsch, president and chief executive officer of Highwoods.

How can we urbanize where we are? We’ll be hearing that question more and more in Richmond, Northern Virginia and, indeed, every metro region across the country. That’s why I maintain that the center of gravity of growth and development is shifting from the periphery back toward the urban core — not necessarily to downtown areas but to existing employment centers. Mixed-use re-development of Innsbrook alone could absorb years and years of population and commercial growth in the Richmond region. And that’s just one candidate for re-development.

(For more info, see my previous post, “Innsbrook: The Future Urban Face of Henrico County.“)

– JAB

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Posted in 2013, Land use & development

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PW Supervisors Delay Endorsement of Bi-County Parkway

Posted on May 22, 2013 by James A. Bacon| 14 Comments
Traffic back-up on two-lane Sudley Road near the Stone House in Manassas battlefield park.

Traffic back-up on two-lane Sudley Road near the Stone House in Manassas battlefield park.

So much news today, I can’t keep up! … The Bi-County Parkway, the key missing link in the proposed North-South Corridor, took another hit yesterday when the Prince William County Board of Supervisors delayed a vote to reaffirm its support for the project.

The issue has pit Republican vs. Republican. PW Board Chairman Corey A. Stewart blasted legislators who oppose the road, saying that they need to propose their own solutions. “Everyone who is opposed to the road and not offering an alternative is a coward,” he said, as reported by the Washington Post.

Six Northern Virginia delegates, all Republican, had previously denounced the proposed highway, which would cut along the edge of the Manassas National Battlefield Park and potentially open up western Prince William to development.

The business wing of the Republican Party, including Stewart and Governor Bob McDonnell, tout the North-South Corridor as an economic boon to Washington Dulles International Airport. But the populist wing, including legislators representing the affected districts,  sides with local residents who worry about the impact on their way of life. Del. Bob Marshal, R-Manassas, and others have argued that the $1 billion-or-more cost of developing the North-South Corridor should be reallocated to eliminate current traffic bottlenecks, not to alleviate anticipated future growth that may or may not occur.

– JAB

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Posted in 2013, Transportation

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Virginia Poverty: Better and Worse than We Thought

Posted on May 22, 2013 by James A. Bacon| 1 Comment
Source: Weldon Cooper Center. Updated poverty measures suggest that regional disparities in poverty aren't as wide as commonly thought.

Source: Weldon Cooper Center. Updated poverty measures suggest that regional disparities in poverty aren’t as wide as commonly thought.

Motivated by the many drawbacks of the official U.S. measure of poverty, the Weldon Cooper Center for Public Service has introduced a “Virginia Poverty Measure” (VPM) to account for regional differences in the cost of living, the impact of government assistance and other factors.

The more nuanced statistical analysis does not alter the overall poverty measure very much. In contrast to the official measure of 11.6% of Virginians living in poverty in 2011,  the VPM finds that 11.9% do. But digging deeper into the data, author Dustin Cable draws some interesting conclusions:

  1. Although Northern Virginia counties and cities enjoy some of the highest median incomes in the nation, the VPM shows that the extent of economic deprivation in the region is significantly greater than what official poverty statistics suggest. For example, by capturing the impact of the region’s high cost of housing, the VPM finds many more Northern Virginia residents in or near poverty, particularly those living inside the Beltway.

  2. The VPM poverty rate for children is dramatically lower than the official rate. Official statistics do not account for the impact of many government programs targeted favorably towards families with young children. By including these tax code provisions and in-kind benefit, the VPM recognizes the full range of resources available for families with young children.

  3. By including calculations for taxes and adjustments for cost of living, the VPM classifies a greater number of people as “near poor.” However, by including more government programs and subsidies for the poor, the VPM finds fewer Virginians in “deep poverty.”

– JAB

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Posted in 2013, Demographics, Poverty & income gap

IG of the Day: Teen Birth Rate

Posted on May 22, 2013 by James A. Bacon| 10 Comments
Source: Atlantic Cities Blog

Source: Atlantic Cities Blog

This map, posted by Richard Florida to the Atlantic Cities blog, shows state-by-state variations in the teen birth rate. Florida makes an unconvincing case that ties higher teen birth rates to the practice of religion, posture on birth control and red state governance, confusing correlation with causality. “Despite all the hectoring and moralizing,” he writes, “teen births are higher in red states and more religious states.”

Toward the end of his post, he does observe that, yes, there might also be a connection between teen birth rates and socio-economic status, and there might be a connection between teen birth rates and pockets of concentrated poverty. The culture of class is a key variable, as sociologist Charles Murray has demonstrated vividly. Florida is a brilliant guy in many ways, but it disheartens me to see him conduct such superficial analysis that tries to score cheap partisan points. Frankly, it casts a shadow over his good and valuable work.

On the other hand…. It’s good to see that Virginia has one of the lower teen birth rates in the country, a standing that I would attribute largely to the fact that it also has one of the lowest poverty rates in the country.

– JAB

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Posted in 2013, Abortion, Children and families, Demographics, Health care, Poverty & income gap

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The Republicans Pick their Team

Posted on May 21, 2013 by Les Schreiber| 20 Comments

Over the weekend the Republican Party picked its slate for the fall campaign to replace the Governor, Lieutenant Governor and Attorney General. The outcome is a group of candidates that defies conventional political wisdom.

Following Mitt Romney’s defeat in November, most believed that his campaign had been weakened by a primary process that had driven the party so far to the right that the Republican brand had become unacceptable to a large section of a demographically changing America. To become competitive, the Republicans must appear more tolerant of ethnic, sexual, and religious diversity. The delegates to the recent Virginia convention never got the memo.

Ken Cuccilooney is clearly not a middle of the road candidate. He is a climate change denier, a practitioner of Joe McCarthy-style politics, a supporter of legislation to depress African-American political participation and a firm cheerleader of invasive trans-vaginal examinations in order to deny women access to a guaranteed right to an abortion. He claims to be against special give- aways to the wealthy but was significantly silent as the cash-strapped state of Virginia and city of Richmond showered millions on billionaire Dan Snyder and his for-profit football team.

Cooch’s running mates were virtual political unknowns until Saturday night. Their nominations brought forth a flood of information on various sites. Many such as Huffington Post and Salon might be considered progressive but their background research is solid.

It seems that the AG nominee, like so many Republicans, never met a female reproductive function he doesn’t think the state should monitor. In 2009 , this “believer in individual freedom” introduced legislation requiring women who have suffered a miscarriage to report the event to the police. This is one of the most bizarre and disgusting legislative efforts on record. What’s next, a tax on tampons for transportation? But Mr. Obenshain is not the most offensive hen in this house. Mr. E W. “Bishop”  Jackson is far and away the most offensive pol nominated in a long time.

The Huffington Post reports that Jackson asserts that Planned Parenthood has done more harm to African-Americans than the KKK.  His other sited reported against gays term them “sick” and “perverted”.  This classification of American society is horrifyingly reminiscent of propaganda used against the Jews in Germany.

A visit to Bishop Jackson’s website, Staying True to America’s Destiny or, Stand is instructive.  Democrats are not only wrong on policy to Jackson they are affiliated with the anti-Christ.  According to Jackson,  the Democratic Party “holds Christians in bondage to everything they hold dear.” E.W. states that black Democrats should abandon their party because of its “increasingly secular stands.”

By nominating E.W. Jackson, the G.O.P. has fulfilled the dreams of Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson: It supports a theocracy.  It has become a dangerous engine seeking to undermine basic Constitutional rights of all Americans, no matter their religions, gender, or sexual orientations.  For a party that claims to have Jeffersonian roots, Republicans have become antithetical to the ideals of separation of church and state that Jefferson so eloquently stated in his famous “letters to the Danbury Baptists.”

– Leslie Schreiber

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Posted in 2013, Abortion, Politics

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The Fiscal Benefits of Smart Growth

Posted on May 21, 2013 by James A. Bacon| 16 Comments

better_budgetsby James A. Bacon

Compared to conventional suburban development, smart growth development can save 38% in up-front infrastructure costs and 10% of the cost of supporting police, ambulance, fire and other public services, according to a new report by Smart Growth America (SGA). At the same time, concludes “Building Better Budgets,” smart growth generates 10 times more tax revenue per acre.

In 2010, state and local governments spent $1.6 trillion, including $525 billion on projects and activities heavily influenced by human settlement patterns and another $250 billion on capital projects. Apply the SGA findings to those numbers and the implication is that adopting smart-growth strategies could save state and local governments $100 billion or more per year while simultaneously bolstering revenues.

Smart growth advocates have long claimed that compact, walkable, mixed-use neighborhoods are more fiscally efficient for local government than conventional suburban development characterized by low-density and segregated land uses. While anecdotal evidence is abundant, it has been difficult to back up smart growth claims with comprehensive data. For this report, the SGA conducted a meta-analysis of 17 case studies comparing smart-growth to conventional surburban scenarios over the past 10 to 15 years.

“In case after case, localities determined that smart growth reduces costs,” the report concludes. “In some cases the savings were modest, in some cases the savings were significant.”

The reason for the savings in capital cost is straightforward, explained Bill Fulton, SGA vice president and director of policy, in a Tuesday conference call. Smart growth consumes less land. Because smart growth is more compact, it requires fewer lane-miles of roads and fewer linear-feet of water and sewer line.

The savings in operating costs are almost as direct. The cost of delivering services such as fire, police, rescue, snow plowing and school busing varies in proportion to how much driving is required. The fewer the number of miles that vehicles drive, the lower the cost of services, Fulton says. There is a second layer of savings as well. More compact development can reduce the number of cars, trucks and even the number of stations needed to serve a given population.

For instance, a Charlotte, N.C., study found that fire stations could maintain their five-minute response times for more households in areas with compact development and strong street connectivity than in low-density suburbs with cul de sacs. The initial cost of building a fire station is about $6.5 million and the annual cost to operate it is about $2.5 million. The number of households served by each of the city’s fire stations ranged from 6,000 to 27,000 and the annual operating cost varied from $159 to $750 per household. If Charlotte were built out according to smart growth standards, the city could eliminate the need for two fire stations at a savings of  $13 million per year and $8.4 million in annual operating expenses.

Chris Zimmerman, a member of the Arlington County board, credited the county’s steady pursuit of smart growth (even before it was called smart growth) over the past 40 years for the lowest property tax rate of any Northern Virginia county. Eleven percent of the land built around Metro stations contributes about half the county’s tax revenue. The resulting revenue gusher since the 1990s has allowed Arlington to spend more freely than its neighbors on public services.

“In tax terms,” said Zimmerman, “we’re eating their lunch. We’re known as the People’s Republic of Arlington — not shy about spending public dollars. We spend more on our schools than anyone in sight, pay more for teachers and principals, and yet we have the lowest tax rate in Northern Virginia.”

A Nashville, Tenn., study conducted for the “Building Better Budgets” report compared three developments in Davidson County: Lenox Village, a greenfield New Urbanist project; Bradford Hills, a conventional suburban development; and The Gulch, a downtown infill development. The New Urbanist development was the most cost efficient at $1,300 per year per unit to provide government services, followed closely by The Gulch at $1,400 per unit. Bradford Hills, the suburban project, cost $1,600 per year.

A fiscal analysis conducted by the Strategic Economics consulting firm determined that at full build-out, The Gulch would have a net positive impact on the Nashville-Davidson metropolitan general fund of $116,000 per acre. Lenox Village would have a positive impact of only $780 per acre, and Bradford Hills was essentially break-even at $100 per acre.

To facilitate walkable, mixed-use development, Nashville has implemented form-based zoning codes downtown and along major corridors, said Rick Bernhardt, executive director of the Metro Nashville Planning Department. “If you compare over the last eight years, the value of appraised property in Davidson County is up 30% — 115% in areas where we put new codes in place.”

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Posted in 2013, Budget, Infrastructure, Land use & development, Taxes, Transportation

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Role Reversal: Poverty Increasingly a Suburban Phenomenon

Posted on May 21, 2013 by James A. Bacon| 8 Comments
Houses with boarded-up windows in Henrico County

Houses with boarded-up windows in Henrico County

by James A. Bacon

Mirroring national trends, poverty in Richmond region suburbs has grown far more rapidly since 2000 in suburban counties than in the City of Richmond, according to the Richmond Times-Dispatch, reporting numbers published in a new book, “Confronting Suburban Poverty in America.”

Writes the T-D’s Graham Moomaw: “From 2000 to 2011, the number of poor people in Richmond-area cities grew by 30.5 percent, while the number of poor in the suburbs grew by 69.8 percent, according to the study.”

The poverty rate still remains roughly three times higher in the city compared to outlying counties (which the T-D did not identify, but presumably include Henrico, Chesterfield and Hanover). But the shift marks a dramatic change since the 1970s and 80s when poverty was a negligible problem in the Richmond region’s fast-growth counties.

Here’s the larger and more significant point, which the T-D did not make: There is no evidence that the shift in poverty from city to suburbs is slowing. Indeed, I would go so far as to suggest that there is a tipping point at which the shift will accelerate, and that it is possible that the poverty rate — and all the drawbacks associated with it, such as crime, social dysfunction, problems in schools, higher tax burdens — will be worse in the suburbs than the city 20 to 30 years from now.

Several factors are driving this reversal. First is continued gentrification in Richmond, similar to the trends we see in Washington, D.C., and other major cities, in which more affluent households move back into the city to be closer to job centers, cultural amenities and walkable neighborhoods. (Gaining proximity to mass transit is not, in my estimation, much of a motivator for affluent Richmonders.) The dramatic decline in the crime rate makes people far more comfortable living in the city than they once did. The poor quality of schools, especially middle schools,  and higher tax rate still remain deterrents — but that could change in time.

Meanwhile, poor people are leaking into the suburbs — typically into  unwalkable, lower-density neighborhoods that the middle and professional classes no longer find desirable. Unlike older city neighborhoods, with houses set on smaller lots within walking distance of retail, these older suburban tracts offer nothing to the affluent home buyer. Because their owners have been unwilling to reinvest in them, they have deteriorated and lost value. The poor are the only people willing to move into them now.

So, Henrico and Chesterfield now find themselves dealing with the problems associated with poverty — higher levels of crime (though down from the peak), social dysfunction and disruptive kids in school. Now, just like in the city, there are dicey districts in the counties where public safety is an issue. Now there are schools in the county to which  affluent households avoid sending their kids. Now counties have to share in the fiscal burden of dealing with poverty.

As I have argued elsewhere, human settlement patterns in the City of Richmond are inherently more fiscally efficient to maintain and replace than the scattered, disconnected, low-density settlement patterns of the outlying counties. That differential was masked while Richmond was coping with a 19th-century sewer-storm water system and the counties were basking in the newness of their infrastructure. But now, counties have aging infrastructure, too. At some point, a strengthening tax base in the city and an eroding tax base in the counties will be reflected in a shrinking tax differential between the two. When city taxes are no higher than county taxes, poof, there goes another reason to live in the counties.

When it comes to the distribution of poverty, the Richmond metropolitan area will be barely recognizable 20 to 30 years from now. The authors of “Confronting Suburban Poverty in America” fret that suburban counties are not prepared. They lack the soft infrastructure of governmental and not-for-profit social services, and poor households residing in the auto-dependent suburbs will be even more isolated than their counterparts in the city, who at least have access to mass transit.

To some people, the year 2043 might sound like the far-distant future. But the far-distant future has a way of arriving with frightening speed.

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Posted in 2013, Crime and corrections, Demographics, Infrastructure, Taxes

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A Whole Lot of Commuting Going On

Posted on May 20, 2013 by James A. Bacon| 7 Comments
Source: Governing Magazine

Source: Governing Magazine (Click for more legible image.)

The Governing magazine blog has published some fascinating U.S. census data on commuting patterns in the U.S., and though the author did not pick up on this particular angle, the data shows Virginia as a real outlier.

The chart above, extracted from the census data, shows Virginia counties with populations of 60,000 or more. There are 796 such counties in the United States. Arlington County ranks at the very top of the list, higher even than Washington, D.C., as measured by the percentage of the county workforce that commutes from outside the country. York County, Va., ranks No. 4 in the country — just behind New York County, N.Y. Five other Virginia counties make the Top 50. And Montgomery County (where the town of Blacksburg is located), the bottom-listed county in Virginia, still makes it into the top half for all U.S. counties.

This is remarkable: Virginia’s most populous counties appear to lead the nation in the extent to which workers drive to work from other jurisdictions.

What does it mean? I’m not sure. The phenomenon is conceivably an artifact of the fact that Virginia is the only state in the country in which cities and counties are separate jurisdictional entities, not overlapping entities — although I cannot readily see how that would make any difference.

Another possibility is that there is an extraordinary amount of sprawl going on — Arlington residents commuting to D.C.; Fairfax residents commuting to Arlington; Loudoun and Prince William residents commuting to Fairfax; and residents of outlying counties commuting to Loudoun and Prince William.

Conversely, it’s conceivable (though, based on anecdotal observation, not likely) that a tremendous amount of reverse commuting occurring.

If anyone has any thoughts as to what is going on please submit your observations in the comments. (Hat tip: Rob Whitfield.)

– JAB

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Posted in 2013, Demographics, Labor & workforce, Land use & development, Transportation

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