Category: Land use & Development
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Running Out of Options
Declaring the the global economy is “highly vulnerable” to adverse shocks, the International Monetary Fund is urging the United States and other major governments to prepare contingency plans that could be rolled out quickly to boost growth. What options does the U.S. have? Traditionally, the federal government has two main policy levers: monetary and fiscal policy.…
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Econometric Studies at Fifty Paces!
by James A. Bacon From the perspective of theoretical economics, the debate over the proposed Atlantic Coast Pipeline (ACP) is getting quite interesting: To what extent do natural gas pipelines diminish the value of property they cross? A coalition of five community groups opposed to the pipeline contend that landowners along the proposed route will lose up…
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Great Inversion Update: CarMax Expands Downtown
CarMax Inc., the retailer of used (er, make that “pre-owned”) cars, was a national leader in 2005 when it built a LEED-certified headquarters building in the West Creek office park in Goochland County west of Richmond. Now, a decade later, the company is leasing space in the historic Lady Byrd Hat building downtown. The 26,000-foot facility…
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Map of the Day: Three Virginias
The statistical wonks with the StatChat blog love to depict data in interesting ways. Recently, Luke Juday divvied the Commonwealth into thirds divided by density. In the map above, the yellow mass shows the least densely populated census tracts (fewer than 736 people per square mile), accounting for 94.8% of the state’s land mass. The…
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Your Tax Breaks at Work
by James A. Bacon The Terraces at Manchester, a 148-unit luxury apartment across the river from downtown Richmond, opened in August. Its amenities include views of downtown and the river, an outdoor pool, a club room, a sky lounge, a rooftop dog park and, of course, an active urban lifestyle. Its cheapest apartment, with a…
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Putting a Price on the Priceless
How does the state put a dollar value on historic, cultural and environmental assets threatened by eminent domain? by James A. Bacon In its high-stakes effort to win regulatory approval to build a 500 kV electric transmission line to the Virginia Peninsula, Dominion Virginia Power proposed in December to spend $85 million to mitigate the project’s impact…
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The Great Inversion Continues Apace
by James A. Bacon The Richmond metropolitan economy has been an also-ran since the 2007-2008 recession, so it came as some surprise to see that Zillow, the online real estate marketplace, listed our burg as the expected 4th hottest housing market in 2016. The bizarre thing about the ranking is that forecast home value appreciation…
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What Virginia Millennials Are Looking For
by James A. Bacon Three out of four Virginia Millennials (belonging to the 18- to 36-year-old age cohort) are largely satisfied with the quality of life in their communities. But local quality-of-life indicators often fall short of what Millennials are looking for, and many are open to moving to other parts of Virginia or even to other states.…
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The New Virginia Way
In the cause of chronicling the endless pageantry of corruption and abuse of power in Virginia, we turn today to an article in the Virginian Pilot: [Virginia Beach] Mayor Will Sessoms pleaded no contest Monday to a single misdemeanor charge of violating the state’s Conflict of Interest Act. The remaining four charges against him were…
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Richmond Boldly Plotting a Post-19th Century Mass Transit System
by James A. Bacon The City of Richmond has procured funding for a study to see if GRTC Transit System bus routes can be organized more efficiently, reports the Richmond Times-Dispatch. The study will bring in the Jarrett Walker + Associates consulting firm that showed how rearranging the route structure could triple the frequency of bus service in Houston without requiring additional funding. “The…
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Tracking Virginia’s Quality of Life
by James A. Bacon Virginia’s economy, dependent upon federal spending, has under-performed the national economy since 2010, and will continue to do so in 2016, according to the Virginia Chamber of Commerce’s 2015 State of the Commonwealth Report. But lead author James V. Koch, president emeritus of Old Dominion University, does find a silver lining: Once…
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Cycling Rolls through Chesterfield, but Will it Reach the Finish Line?
By John Szczesny It’s official, maybe: 360 new miles of bike paths and trails in Chesterfield County. Whether the plan endorsed this week by the Board of Supervisors in a 3-2 vote ever gets funded (and built) remains to be seen, but there’s no doubt cycling advocates scored a big victory. Given county staff’s initial…
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NOT Every Muslim Is a Terrorist
by James A. Bacon Conservatives routinely call upon Muslim leaders in the United States to denounce Islamic-inspired terrorism — and overwhelming numbers of them have done so. Now it is time for conservatives to denounce bigotry against peaceful, law-abiding Muslims. I am ashamed that many have failed the test. Yesterday I posted a piece belittling…
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Increased Density, Increased Costs
By Carol J. Bova Jim Bacon’s post on November 12th, “Too Little Density, Too Much Road Surface,” concludes that if local zoning policies encouraged higher density population areas, there’d be fewer roads, resulting in lower road maintenance costs. This is urban-centered thinking that assumes only nearby residents use the roads and that none are privately…
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No Easy Route on the Jeff Davis Highway
by John Szczesny Kudos to the Richmond Times-Dispatch for putting a human face on Chesterfield County’s plan to revitalize the Jefferson Davis Highway corridor. The RTD’s Pathway to Poverty feature is a sobering look at how poverty and homelessness have made life a daily struggle for so many in the area. It also begs the…