Category Archives: Land use &amp; development

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Posted in 2012, Housing, Land use & development, Transportation

Tagged James A. Bacon

Zoning Laws, Housing Segregation and Educational Inequality

Posted on April 23, 2012 by James A. Bacon| 4 Comments

Test score gaps by MSA. Map credit: Brookings Institution.

by James A. Bacon

Following the lead of the book, “Why Nations Fail,” Brookings Institution scholar Jonathan Rothwell classifies national institutions into two categories: “open” institutions that diffuse power and opportunity and “extractive” institutions that concentrate power and limit opportunity. Among the extractive institutions he espies in the United States is zoning. As he writes for the New Republic:

Anti-density zoning — embodied in lot-size and density regulations — is an extractive institution par excellence. Through the political power of affluent homeowners and their zoning boards, it restricts private property rights — the civic privilege to freely buy, sell, or develop property — for narrow non-public gains. Property owners in a jurisdiction benefit from zoning through higher home prices (because supply is artificially low) and lower tax rates (because population density is kept down, as school age children are kept out), while everyone else loses.

In a new report for the Brookings Institution, Rothwell endeavors to measure the impact of restrictive zoning policies upon the ability of lower-income Americans, in particular African-Americans and Hispanics, to access higher quality schools. In a ranking of the 100 largest metro areas, he finds that zoning restrictions lead to higher housing costs, more economic segregation and greater gaps in test scores between poor and affluent neighborhoods.

The proxy measure Rothwell uses to rank zoning restrictiveness seems to be a bit of a stretch: the prevalence of land-use law firms. Other than that, his methodology seems reasonable enough. Here’s how Virginia’s three main Metropolitan Statistical Areas (MSAs) ranked nationally:

You can view his snapshots of Virginia’s major metro areas here:

Interestingly, on a national level the MSAs with the strongest zoning restrictions, greatest gaps in housing costs, economic segregation and test score gaps between rich and poor tend to be the most liberal. As seen in the map above, the greatest gaps exist in large, Northeastern MSAs. The most egalitarian metros are clustered in central Florida.

Do liberal Northeastern elites deliberately pursue policies that foster racial segregation and inequality? To put it more bluntly, are liberal elites closet racists? As tempted as I am to make that argument because I’m so sick of liberals labeling conservatives as racist on the basis of flimsy data, I just can’t justify it. I’m more inclined to chalk up the segregation to the law of unintended consequences. Liberals pass laws and enact policies with the purest of intentions — and remain oblivious to the outcomes.

When it comes to zoning restrictions (or the prevalence of land-use attorneys), Virginia’s metros rank in the middle nationally. Richmond is more segregated than the national average, Hampton Roads less so. Richmond’s housing cost gap is 14th highest in the nation, Washington’s 20th lowest. Consistent with Rothwell’s thesis, Richmond schools show higher test score gaps than Washington and Hampton Roads schools — though the gap is considerably lower than predicted by the level of economic and housing segregation.

It’s interesting data. Make of it what you will.

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Posted in 2012, Demographics, Education (K-12), Land use & development, Poverty & income gap, Race and race relations

Tagged James A. Bacon

Fairfax County’s Incredible Shrinking Growth Forecast

Posted on April 16, 2012 by James A. Bacon| 19 Comments

Click on graph for more legible image. Credit: Terry Maynard.

More great analysis from Terry Maynard! In a memorandum to fellow members of the Reston Master Plan Special Study Task Force, he tracks the incredible deflating population growth projections for Fairfax County and explores what it means for transportation and land use planning.

As recently as 2008, the sky was the limit. As the federal government had grown and prospered over the decades, so had Fairfax County. Northern Virginia, and Fairfax in particular, had boomed without let-up through the Reagan defense build-up, the S&L fiasco, the Internet boom and 9/11. The region even seemed resistant to the 2007-2008 recession.

But economic recovery has been more sluggish than predicted, and the future for government spending — especially the defense, intelligence and homeland security spending that fueled Northern Virginia’s growth — is looking grim. While population and employment are still expected to expand, they will not do so at the torrid pace expected only a few years ago. The existing 17% vacant office space in Reston, suggests Maynard, could accommodate two-thirds of all forecast non-residential growth through the year 2030. He concludes: “We need to discuss what to do about adapting to the region’s new economic reality.”

Sadly, that discussion is not taking place.

Much of the massive infrastructure investment occurring in Northern Virginia was predicated on pre-2008 growth forecasts. I’m not as worried about the Capital Beltway HOT lanes project, in which private-sector investors will share the financial pain if forecast traffic does not materialize, as I am about the Rail-to-Dulles project, which has no private equity investment to cushion any shortfall in traffic and revenue.

Rail-to-Dulles is essentially a bubble project. The economics of it worked only as long as Northern Virginia’s economy continued to boom. There are three levels of analysis that need scrutiny. The first and most obvious need is to re-examine the traffic and revenue forecasts for the Silver Line itself, which is already projected to lose money on an operational basis. If population and business growth forecasts fail to materialize, will revenue fall short? Will operational deficits increase? And what impact will that have on Fairfax and Loudoun budgets?

A second set of questions arises about the Dulles Toll Road, the toll revenues of which will be siphoned to pay for roughly half of the up-front capital costs for Phase 2 of the heavy rail line. What will lower population growth mean for traffic and revenues? If toll fares fall short, who gets first dibs on the revenue– bond holders or the construction/maintenance needs of the toll road?

Thirdly, what does this mean for the re-development of Tysons Corner? The Fairfax County Board of Supervisors approved massive increases in density around four Tysons station stops under the expectation that the resulting increase in property values would enable landowners to finance a transformation of the hodge-podge business district into a walkable, mixed-use urban center — Fairfax’s answer to Arlington’s Metro corridor. But if office vacancies remain stubbornly high and if population and employment projections are wilting, property owners will be in no hurry to re-develop their assets. If the higher densities and walkable streets take decades longer to materialize than originally thought, there could be a lot of half-empty trains rumbling through Tysons Metro stations.

The Fairfax County board has done its best Hear No Evil imitation, voting to confirm its financial commitment to Phase 2. If the federal spending machine slows, if 2008 population and economic growth forecasts prove too optimistic, if Silver line revenues fall short of projections and operating deficits exceed them, and if Dulles Toll Road revenues fall short and if the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority defaults on its bonds, the county — indeed, the whole region — will be in a world of hurt.

Of course, I am looking at worst possible outcomes. But that’s what intelligent deal makers do — they examine worst-case scenarios to see if they can live with the results. They certainly don’t base multibillion-dollar investments on years-old economic and demographic forecasts that are known to be outdated. Not one dime should be sunk into Phase 2 until the implications of slower growth for Silver Line and Dulles Toll Road revenues are fully understood. Failure to perform that fundamental analysis is not simple folly. It’s not mere blindness. As far as I’m concerned, it’s criminal negligence.

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Posted in 2012, Demographics, Land use & development, Transportation

Tagged James A. Bacon

Closely Watched Trains

Posted on April 10, 2012 by Peter Galuszka| 4 Comments

By Peter Galuszka

A few weeks ago, I was making another trip to the area near Matewan, W.Va., a small, historic town of red brick buildings a stone’s throw across the Tug Fork River from Kentucky. Matewan is noted for its coalfield labor strife caught dramatically in John Sayles superb 1987 movie of the same name and is the locus for part of a book I’ve been researching for the past 18 months.

There isn’t much hotel space available in the Tug Fork Valley. At times, I’ve had to stay dozens of miles away in Eastern Kentucky. When available, I prefer a bed and breakfast right in the middle of Matewan and just steps from where Sid Hatfield, the town police chief, shot it out with rent-a-thugs from the Baldwin-Felts Detective Agency in 1920 (yes, Big Money was into privatization even then).

Aside from seasonal all-terrain vehicle enthusiasts, the only big noise in Matewan is the Norfolk Southern. The original mainline of the old Norfolk & Western runs just behind the bed and breakfast. First you hear an odd whir, then a diesel horn blast and then your world shakes. Trains run anytime, day and night. It was the route of the fancy red and black Powhatan Arrow passenger train from Norfolk to Cincinnati. Now what you see are endless coal trains and hot shot containers racing their East Coast to Midwest route. Most recently, I have seen jumbo-sized, extra-tall coal hoppers whip past.

What’s the point of this travelogue? The extra-sized cars are the point. Nearly two years ago, Norfolk Southern completed a $321 million project using private and public money to raise tunnels in West Virginia and southwestern Virginia. The low ceilings had forced east-west,double-stack trains to spend an extra day going through Pennsylvania or Tennessee. Not anymore.

In fact, the so-called Heartland Corridor project means that Hampton Roads is uniquely qualified to take advantage of the larger, deeper-drawing container ships that are expected to boost trade when the Panama Canal expansion is completed in a couple of years.

That, at least, is the opinion of Alberto Aleman Zubieta, chief executive officer of the Panama Canal Authority. Zubieta worries, as many do, that U.S.East and Gulf Coast ports just aren’t ready for the new Panama Canal trade, except for Hampton Roads. “Norfolk is ready,” he was quoted as saying. “Rail has been modernized between Norfolk and Chicago; they understand the benefit of getting cargo to its destination.”

So, if Hampton Roads is already the beneficiary of a major rail improvement project that is now ready to handle Panamax cargo, then why all the hullabaloo over a $1.8 billion public-private project to expand U.S. 460? The expansion from Suffolk to Petersburg would relieve clogged Interstate 64 on the other side of the James River and would offer an extra emergency escape route should a major hurricane show up.

But the big reason for the project, enthusiastically backed by Gov. Robert F. McDonnell and his Transportation Secretary Sean Connaughton, is that Hampton Roads desperately needs transportation access to handle all the new trade coming with the Panama Canal is expanded.

Yet if you listen to Zubieta, the project is in place. Finito. Even if you wanted to expand distribution and manufacturing centers in Southeastern Virginia, why couldn’t you do it with rail spur lines coming from the NS mainland that neatly parallels the existing U.S. 460? A number of distribution centers already use the rail line, including a Food Lion warehouse near Petersburg.

The road project has lots of problems. Its backers admit that tolls won’t pay for it. Some kind of industrial authority would have to be created with new factory or warehouse owners kicking in payments to make it work.

What about the already existing rail line? Why doesn’t someone bring that up? Doesn’t it make the expensive road project unnecessary? Or is there some under-the-table log-rolling going on that we don’t know about?

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Posted in Economic development, Economy, Energy, Environment, Insurance, Land use & development, Money in politics, The Economy, Transportation

Tagged goozeviews

IG of the Day: Sprawl in Abeyance

Posted on April 5, 2012 by James A. Bacon| 9 Comments

Population growth 2006.

“America’s romance with sprawl may be over,” blares the headline of USA Today. “Five years ago, millions of Americans were streaming to new homes on the fringes of metropolitan areas. Then housing prices collapsed and the Great Recession slowed growth to levels not seen since the Great Depression in the 1930s. Growth remained slow last year, and largely confined to counties at the center of metropolitan areas.”

The maps at left (taken from USA Today) show just how much growth has slowed overall. What they don’t show very clearly is how growth has reoriented within metropolitan regions. Says the newspaper:

Population growth 2011.

Population growth in fringe counties nearly screeched to a halt in the year that ended July 1, 2011. By comparison, counties at the core of metro areas are growing faster than the nation as a whole.

“There’s a pall being cast on the outer edges,” says John McIlwain, senior fellow for housing at the Urban Land Institute, a non-profit development group that promotes sustainability. “The foreclosures, the vacancies, the uncompleted roads. It’s uncomfortable out there. The glitz is off.”

But never count sprawl out. “Sprawl is the Freddy Krueger of American development,” says Robert Lang, author of Megapolitan America. “It’s always pronounced dead and yet somehow springs back to life.”

– JAB

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Posted in 2012, Demographics, Land use & development

Tagged James A. Bacon

Veto Power for VDOT

Posted on March 29, 2012 by James A. Bacon| 25 Comments

: VDOT central office, Richmond

The Virginia Department of Transportation would gain extensive powers over local transportation planning under a bill awaiting the governor’s signature. That makes local governments and citizen groups very nervous.

by James A. Bacon

Gov. Bob McDonnell’s omnibus transportation bill is less far-reaching than when first submitted to the General Assembly in January, but important elements have survived the legislative meat grinder. Among its many provisions, the bill would dramatically increase the state’s control over local transportation planning and, by extension, land use planning.

Transportation Secretary Sean Connaughton describes the bill as an effort to address the fiscally ruinous practice of county boards making land use decisions and expecting the state to build the roads needed to serve the resulting growth. Counties and their sometime-allies in the Smart Growth movement view the bill as an momentous transfer of power over transportation and land use into the hands of an unresponsive Virginia Department of Transportation (VDOT) bureaucracy.

In a deal hashed on the last day of the General Assembly session, Republican lawmakers stripped out many parts of the bill that the McDonnell administration had pushed for, most notably two controversial provisions for siphoning revenue from the General Fund to the Transportation Trust Fund. (The bill still provides for the transfer of a portion of General Fund surpluses to the transportation fund.) But they stuck with measures that (1) would require local transportation improvement plans to be consistent with the Commonwealth Transportation Board’s State Transportation Plan and Six Year Improvement Program and (2) require counties to pay back any state and federal funds spent on canceled projects at the counties’ request.

Under the bill, local governments would have to submit their transportation plans to VDOT for review and comment. If VDOT determined that a plan was not consistent with the state plans, it would refer to plan to the Commonwealth Transportation Board, which approves all state-funded transportation projects, for appropriate action.

“This basically gives the state veto power over transportation improvements in a locality,” says Ted McCormack, director of government affairs for the Virginia Association of Counties. “We’re working on a plan of response. We’re very concerned about these land use provisions in the bill and would like to see some changes.”

The bill goes “completely against community vision,” says Dan Holmes, director of state policy for the Piedmont Environmental Council. “The new law will make it impossible to deny projects put into place by VDOT.”

The aim of the bill is to bring transportation and land use planning into closer alignment, an abstract goal that all parties agree is desirable. One way to accomplish that goal would be “devolution” — shifting responsibility for building and maintaining secondary roads from VDOT to the counties. (Cities already have that responsibility.) But local governments reject that option on the grounds that the state would saddle them with major obligations without sufficient means to pay for them.

The counties may not like devolution but the status quo is unacceptable, says Connaughton. Counties are making land use decisions and transportation plans that impact state finances. While proffers from developers might cover some of the cost of making road improvements, counties sometimes assume that the state will take up the slack. The state incurs additional, ongoing expense for maintaining the roads. Read more.

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Posted in 2012, Land use & development, Transportation

Tagged James A. Bacon

Murals on My Mind

Posted on March 23, 2012 by James A. Bacon| 13 Comments

I love giant murals painted on the vacant walls of buildings. They add so much life to the building — and the urban area all around. My favorite is the immense picture of two humpback whales on the side of the Dominion Towers parking deck in Norfolk. But the whales will have plenty of competition in downtown Richmond.

Artists from around the world have begun painting murals on buildings in the Broad Street corridor for a month-long art show, G40 Art Summit-Richmond, reports the Times-Dispatch. The art exhibit coincides with a city proposal to convert the Broad Street corridor into an arts and culture district. (See “Richmond’s Wine and Brie Path to Economic Development.”)

Photo credit: Times-Dispatch

“We can help an artists district create a great identity,” said Shane Pomajambo, the G40 organizer. “If you drive by Broad Street after we’re done, you’re going to know it’s the arts district.”

Italian artist Pixel Pancho has already gotten to work, completing a mural of two weightless retro-astronauts kissing. Organizers expect to splash some 20 works of art on downtown buildings, including one that will be five-stories tall.

I can hardly wait to move from the sterile ‘burbs back to downtown!

– JAB

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Posted in 2012, Land use & development

Tagged James A. Bacon

The “Agenda 21″ Nutbars

Posted on March 19, 2012 by Peter Galuszka| 12 Comments

By Peter Galuszka

A half a century ago in rural places like the tobacco and corn fields of Eastern North Carolina, there used to be billboards with strong and aggressive messages. One said: “This Is Klan Country.” Another advocated: “U.S. Out of the United Nations.”

Both represented frightening, hard-right elements. The source of the first sign was obvious. Another, slightly more presentable group had put up the second sign. That was the John Birch Society, an ultra-conservative organization founded in 1958 that hated communists, pushed U.S. unilateralism, and purported to uphold so-called “American” values, which, at the time, were codes words for Anglo Saxon “Christians” upset about everything from growing globalism to integrating the races at home.

Now, people of the same ilk, Tea Partiers and other hard-right types, are extending decades-old U.N. paranoia to down-in-the-weeds smart growth policies that set up limits such as lot size, where growth should go and how services can be matched to growth.

In an intriguing article in this Sunday’s Richmond Times Dispatch, reporter Rex Springston outlines how this cabal apparently based in the Richmond area and in the watery Middle Neck has targeted the smart growth campaign. They have helped delay comprehensive plans in Henrico and Chesterfield Counties, oppose the use of electricity meters, bike paths, and cleaning up the Chesapeake Bay.

Their rallying cry is the so-called “Agenda 21” which is a policy established by the U.N. back in the early 1990s promoting the then-fashionable ideals of “sustainable development.” Given that the document came from an international group representing countries of all income and development levels, it pushes such guidelines as grouping housing for the sake of efficient resource use.

The anti-Agenda 21 crowd claims that the plan would strip away home ownership. It would end private farming and would apparently push people into Stalin-style collective farms or somesuch. Erecting smart electric meters in individuals’ houses for more efficient use of electricity is part of a plot for mass surveillance by Big Government. Naturally, George Soros, the billionaire, left-leaning financier, is behind this. Yet the Republican National Committee and Next Gingrich have embraced getting rid of Agenda 21.

Close to my home in Chesterfield County, anti- Agenda 21 types have helped delay adoption of a new comprehensive plan which had been designed more or less around smart growth policies. Growth would be concentrated around existing highway and commercial areas and not allowed to hopscotch hither and yon. A “green zone” in southwestern Chesterfield where I live would be kept green. Tea Party types threw wrench into that one, saying it would take property rights away from owners.

One wonders where these clowns were back 20 years ago when Chesterfield’s growth-happy board of supervisors gave into every idea any developer had. That is why schools are overcrowded and police and fire services are short-changed. My small subdivision has shifted school districts three times in 10 years to help the county rectify its disastrous planning.

The Tea Party people like bad planning because it represents “freedom,” I would guess. It seems extremely odd that they would drag in a sleepy, two-decades-old UN proposal as their whipping boy. Their claims that it is fostering global socialism is as nutty as the John Birch Society itself.

One wonders, with the global economy deciding where jobs go more and more, how these people deal with the 21^st century world. Their solution seems to be to dress up like Patrick Henry in colonial garb, wave their rattlesnake flags and tell the rest of the world where to go. The rest of us will be paying for the consequences.

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Posted in Agriculture & forestry, Demographics, Economic development, Environment, Infrastructure, Land use & development, Poverty & income gap, Property rights, Race and race relations, Uncategorized

Tagged Agenda 21, goozeviews

¡Viva la Revolución!

Posted on March 5, 2012 by Peter Galuszka| 2 Comments

Estimado Jefe!

Usted nunca debe salir de la ciudad, señor! Ahora que usted está ausente, la revolución comienza! Amados lectores de ya no ver los artículos que glorifican a los ricos y privilegiados. Vamos a ayudar a la tierra y los pobres y redistribuir los fondos de cobertura. ¡Viva la Revolución!

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Tagged goozeviews

An Awesomely Awesome Project for Richmond’s Haxall Canal

Posted on March 1, 2012 by James A. Bacon| 1 Comment

One day it'll all look like this.

Huge news for re-development of downtown Richmond’s Haxall Canal: A deal to convert five historic industrial buildings into retail and residential space is “about to materialize,” reports the Times-Dispatch.

Slowly but surely for the past 20 years, developers have been renovating the old industrial shells along the Haxall and Kanawha canals, building a vibrant urban district where people can live, work and play. The Canal Walk, a pedestrian path that parallels the 19th-century canals and locks, offers striking visuals, takes interesting twists and turns, meanders under shaded tunnels, and provides pedestrian links to the central business district. It will be an extraordinary asset when it has been developed end-to-end.

While both ends of the canal complex have been developing nicely, the hole in the doughnut has been the sprawling Reynolds Metals complex. Pedestrians strolling along the canal must walk past several hundred yards of hulking, empty buildings. Renovation of these buildings will create activity along the full length of the canal. It may not be the equal of San Antonio’s breath-taking River Walk, but it will be an urban jewel. It has the potential to become a truly special, memorable place, even better than the old C&O Canal in Washington, D.C.’s Georgetown district.

“This is the linchpin project we have been waiting for the last 15 years,” said Jack Berry, executive director of Venture Richmond. The first phase of construction will convert historic five historic buildings into 175 apartments and 8,000 square feet of retail space. A later phase calls for tearing down two buildings constructed in the 1970s to make way for more apartments, retail and office space. A high-rise building is planned at 10th and Byrd Streets.

Combine the canal-walk renovation with the vision for transforming Richmond’s riverfront, with its islands and rapids, into a regional recreational asset, and downtown Richmond will be one of the most awesomely awesome places to live live and work on the East Coast. It has been a long, long time coming. But very few cities will have anything to match it.

– JAB

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