Comments

1. 

   Paul

   May 13, 2005

   E M: Interesting as always.

   First off – how did you know I worked at the National Trust? I think you’re referring to: “Dick” (Richard Moe) and “Mass Ave” (1785 Mass Ave, NW) right? For the record, I enjoy working a the Trust – it’s the commute that bugs me. Plus I miss Richmond…no traffic there…and it’s more like the South.

   Anyway – I think the most interesting thing in this post is the following:

   “Some say AOL cratered because it could not attract enough Creative Class people to fill key jobs all the way out at the Wal*Mart in the Weeds” site.”

   Who is saying that? It makes sense…I’ve read about the creative class and businesses’ interest in locating near them…but are people really tying the collapse of AOL stock to poor office location choices?

   Another point – there aren’t any functional communities? What would you see most closely resembles one? Portland? Something in Europe? Just curious…

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2. 

   Fredrik Nyman

   May 13, 2005

   EMR —

   Interesting, thanks!

   As a service to your lazy readers, would you please consider hyperlinking to the earlier articles you reference to make it easier to find them?

   Also, I notice that you refer a lot to Richard Florida’s concept of the Creative Class. Why are you so convinced that Florida is right? Personally, I am unconvinced; City Journal ran a pretty persuative article last year, arguing that Florida’s theories don’t seem to be based on reality.

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3. 

   Paul

   May 13, 2005

   One other avenue of discussion:

   What are you looking for from politicians at this time? I understand that your strategic plan first involves informing the public – but what kind of first steps can politicians and policy makers take to begin this process?

   If you’ve outlined it in a previous article, if you would be so kind as to link me over to it. I’d be very interested in reading it!

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4. 

   E M Risse

   May 13, 2005

   Paul and Fredrik:

   Good questions! I will get you some thoughts as soon as time premits.

   EMR

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5. 

   Ray Hyde

   May 14, 2005

   I don’t know what to say about meaningful employment, if it’s your job, its meaningful, whatever it is. It’s also not clear that meaningful jobs (if I understand your meaning) contribute more to the economy than menial jobs or even jobs that produce no real value.

   I’ll agree there is no evidence that job sprawl will continue: how do you get evidence for a forecast? There is, however, plenty of evidence that it has been happening historically. “Decentralisation from cities into their surrounding areas is thus, overwhelmingly, the dominant spatial process with respect to the location of jobs over the past fifteen or so years.” Professor Andrew Gillespie, Executive Director of the Centre for Urban and Regional Development Studies, University of Newcastle upon Tyne.

   He goes on to describe a number of features about increased auto travel we have not discussed here. Chief among them is an enormous increase in job related travel in connection with the growth of service industries. And he points out a number of reasons jobs in the service industries are not amenable to central city locations. Business travel requires good access to airports, which is driving growth not only at Dulles, but at Manassas airport as well.

   In 1973 I was living and working in close proximity in Alexandria. One of my office mates had just bought a townhouse in one of the first developments in Centreville. I distinctly remembering asking her “Where in God’s name is Centreville, I’ve never heard of it.” At the time Centreville was still farm country. ( I know, not according to your definition.) Today there are major job centers and world class operations far west of Centreville. One of them is the company I formerly worked for in Alexandria, which moved out with the result that I became a “reverse commuter”. There are now several world class, high tech Aerospace companies in the Manassas area, and one of them has constructed a new facility – in West Virginia. It is not just retail that is moving out.

   If you have scattered housing, then by definition, you will not have jobs nearby. But you can have jobs a lot closer than Downtown DC. Any job (or the ability to conduct that job by telecommuting) closer to Warrenton or Front Royal (may) result in one less person commuting and clogging up the roads where everyone converges. If you don’t call the congestion that currently results an indication of a critical mass of demand for jobs elsewhere, then what is?

   I don’t know about moving to Bangalore, but Boeing outsourced 1600 engineering jobs to Russia, and outsourcing programming to Romania and India is commonplace. Americans travel to Mexico for dentistry and to South Africa or India for surgery. Eliminating jobs is one way to reduce congestion, but probably not a preferred way. But what is the real issue here? Is it jobs, reducing congestion, cutting down on pollution, or saving the countryside? The answers are different and probably contraindicated.

   I’m not in a position to judge AOL’s land deal, but I understand they overspent and there is vacant office space there. AOL’s troubles are bigger than land deals; they have an overcomplicated, ugly product that is overpriced, just like urban real estate. They never had a clear plan of where they were going or how to get there, other than promoting lofty ideals based on tripe. They sent me hundreds of CD disks that I find make very good scarecrows. But for every AOL there are dozens of other outfits that are thriving in the midst of what was once pristine ecosystem. Just because AOL is in financial trouble doesn’t mean their location decision was either bad, or not indicative of what I see as an obvious and well-documented trend.

   You are correct in saying the % increase in PW is high because the base is low. That is a common feature among all successful enterprises. The trick is to correctly locate them and get in early. That is true whether you are buying stock in the company, or whether the company is “buying stock” in a community by locating there.

   At least we agree on the U shaped curve. And that it applies to any transport system. My conclusion is that no matter what you do, you are going to have to do a lot more of it, and the closer you do it to the city, the more it costs. If there is a sweet spot in city size above which transport costs rise, then it would seem to imply we need more and smaller cities, which we have some hope of balancing.

   When I Google Five Natural Laws of Human Settlement, the only references I find are to your own works. I’m not convinced, yet, that they are either laws or natural. I think we already talked about the 40+ services and decided it was really only 12, or maybe less, and they are not all location dependent, or only partly so. Until I see more evidence, more particulars, and some supporting source, I’ll put those ideas in the same category as Richard Florida’s ideas – not real.

   What I hear you saying about the U shaped curve is that, if I’m willing to live with 200 people per acre, then I can afford to enjoy the pleasure of riding the New York subway system, which still only carries a fraction of the daily trips. But if the sweet spot for roadways is only 10 to fifteen people per acre, why do we build at higher densities or prevent building where the density is lower?

   If we have to rely on shared vehicle systems, which we know are slower, less convenient, more uncomfortable, sometimes unsafe, and more expensive, just so we can live in places that are crowded, dirty, and expensive, then why would we ever build urban agglomerations of over 20,000 people? Isn’t that why people are trying to get out of town? Isn’t that why small cities are so popular? To me, your argument supports the idea that we need to spread out more, unless we invent and construct an entire new system of transport. That will take money.

   The 20% figure I came up with came from several different sources. If you can show me a source other than your own for a 200% figure, I’ll be happy to read it. But if your 200% number is correct, what do you propose to replace the auto industry jobs with, jitney drivers?

   Fundamental Change IS hard to imagine because it involves ripping everything we have done for the past two hundred years apart, institutions and all, and putting it back together according to a plan that has not one example of success, so far. Even if you think that is possible or desirable, it’s not going to be cheap, so the question is, without those short term profits you seem to denigrate, how do you get to the long term ones necessary to rebuild an entire society from the ground up?

   In Britain, development rights were nationalized in 1947. Therefore, they have far more control over development, and in a centralized way than we have here. They also have much better information in the form of data and statistics than we, and better forecasting models, as a result of central planning. here is what they have to say.

   “The Government does not regard the role of the planning system as a determinant of overall amounts of housing or employment. Rather the system is viewed as the ‘servant’ of market forces (or however these forces are moderated by national economic or social policy). Its function is therefore to facilitate the delivery in particular areas of the amount and type of development which society and the economy require overall.” In other words, it is not the role of planning to influence change.

   “By limiting the sites released for new development the planning system is often charged with restricting overall housing supply and increasing house prices. However, of much greater significance for travel patterns is that the supply of housing is restricted in particular areas – typically the more ‘desirable’ ones. Over time market processes then lead to a progressive polarisation in the distribution of households (by socio-economic group). This is one of the sources of crosscommuting between tow
   ns and of the growth in commuting distances generally.” In other words, the planning process itself drives more commuting, and screws up the market, same as here in the U.S.

   “As a matter of principle it is seen as desirable that new housing areas should be close to sources of employment and other services so as to utilise social and economic capital, reduce the need to travel and minimise social exclusion. This does not necessarily correspond with the direction of market forces.” So there we have it, as a matter of unproven principle, we are going to screw around with people’s lives in the quest for some nirvana of which not a single example yet exists.

   And finally, “Trying to exert locational pressure on workplace location through influencing residential location, or vice versa, would seem to offer little prospect of success, …… Nor does locating jobs near to residences, or residences near to jobs, seem likely to reduce journey lengths….., Stemming the process of decentralisation of people and jobs from such areas by planning controls has, clearly, proved difficult, though it could be argued that in the case of employment it has hardly been attempted. The adoption of non-metropolitan lifestyles and ways of working are completely under-pinned by car-based mobility, so if serious attempts were to be made to stem or even reverse the decentralisation of people and jobs, the most effective means of doing so would be to substantially curtail (whether by regulation or price) car usage. In the absence of the political will to enact such a policy, it is difficult to see how spatial planning could on its own make much difference.”

   He goes on to say that the reason this is so, is because of what happened to Fredrik, myself, and thousands of others. Situations change faster than plans or the landscape does. In particular he describes a major development, which was planned with the idea most owners would work locally. Five years later fewer than one in five still did so.

   Those are not my words, but come from an assortment of professional planners, from a meeting on housing and job location drivers. They pretty well match my opinion, uneducated and illiterate as it is. If we are going to educate the people, lets do it with something that resembles observable and measurable facts.

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6. 

   E M Risse

   May 14, 2005

   Thoughts on the questions raised by Paul and Fredrik not in the same order as raised:

   Paul:

   Re AOL and Locational Dysfunction: I have worked professionally in Fairfax since 1972, lived there from 1980 to 2002 – Reston and Fairfax Center. I was active in a number of conservation and community organizations, had professional and ownership interests in Planned New Community development, community management and media and was chair of a regional telework organization. In addition I had ties to old hands at Source Telecomputing, Compuserve etc. When AOL moved from Westwood to Loudoun we knew a number of AOL staff. After AOL moved to Loudoun I met with several senior staffers about location related issues as part of our Loudoun education program. From this I was able to ascertain the level of understanding up to the Sr. VP level.

   I would say of the 30 +/- contacts who would be in a position to know, the majority believed the move was wrong from AOL’s long term interest for a variety of reasons related to locational dysfunction beyond personal inconvenience. A number bailed because of the move or used it as a reason to look elsewhere, start their own business, etc. A lot of the recruits that replaced them and were willing to work in Wal*Mart in the Weeds now live in McMansions in West Prince William…. I used the Creative Class as shorthand. The locational dysfunction brain drain was broader than Florida’s core concerns. There was a Wired story to which we contributed that made these points well. The story quoted one executive to whom the author read our views. He said “What does Risse know about our business? We are perfectly located!” Within a short time he was sacked and his company gone, in part due to issues related to dysfunctional location.

   Geographic Illiteracy when combined with arrogance and economic clout is a terrible thing.

   Fredrik:

   The AOL comment ties to your question about the Creative Class: You are right, Florida is not a saint or correct on everything. When you are as far ahead of the curve as we tend to be on settlement pattern issues, you rely on images that get the message across. (See note to Paul above.) Florida is far more correct than the Business-As-Usual types and so it is handy to cite him. I tend to agree with much of what he says although I have little in common with those he describes. I have not seen anything that would suggest he is really off base with his core observations. I recall a dialogue in The Next American City and I thought his critics were further off base than he was. Do you have a cite for the City Journal item?

   Paul:

   Re functional (Balanced) communities? Not Portland. (See comments on Portland in “Land Speculators 2, Citizens 0”) For larger New Urban Regions that work well I cite Toronto, Stockholm and Wien. I have never had a problem getting where I wanted to go in a timely manner in Paris, London, Munchen, Madrid, Kobenhavn, etc., which is a litmus test. I hear Berlin is better now better stitched back together. (We have not been there since 2000.) Roma is a different story.

   (By the way I forgot to note in the original post that if one wants a lesson on settlement pattern scale take a map of Wien and overlay it at the same scale over any New Urban Region in the United States of similar population. Stockholm does not work as well because of the Planned New Communities that are outside a ring of regional parks/openspace. Also on Wien, you might not mind a commute on the street cars that follows the RingStrasse or the trolley that goes to small wine villages in the foothills to your liking.

   For smaller places I cite Goteborg, Sweden and Freiburg, Germany. They are big enough to be balanced but small enough to function as a single community. The concept of individually Balanced Communities making up the core of a New Urban Region is harder to grasp.

   Paul:

   What am I looking for from politicians and policy makers at this point? The short answer is: Not much.

   If they are now serving they were elected/appointed in a system that needs Fundamental Change. They believe their perspectives and positions are supported by those who elected/appointed them. Fundamental Change requires something more.

   In a democracy you cannot stick your neck out if you do not have at least a threshold citizen understanding or have spun your perspective so it seems to respond to what citizens have asked for.

   We find some former politicians willing to pitch in. We hope to involve former statewide office holders in PROPERTY DYNAMICS.

   We respond to inquiries by candidates who want to run on Fundamental Change platforms or planks or that want to avoid the larger land mines in the human settlement pattern field. We provide them with ideas, positions and responses. We do have regular contact with office holders at the federal state, county and town levels. They recognize we are still ahead of what they can sell on the street. Thus the need for citizen education and PROPERTY DYNAMICS. See Joe Freeman’s “Rain Dance.”

   Fredrik:

   Concerning links: As you can tell I am a pre-internet type. Jim Bacon does all the links in our columns. From our profile page under “Wonks” on the BaconsRebellion home page there is has a link to all our columns and backgrounders. There is also a subtext: I find those who take the time to look things up (and especially if they print them out) tend to read with as much care as we put into the writing.

   Paul:

   How do I know where you work? You sent me an e-mail. I was oblique with the reference in the event you did not want to make the connection on the Blog. I would love to see organizations like The National Trust make a contribution to Balanced Communities. I was a frequent participant in the early 70s to Trust programs. (Authored New York State’s first state historic preservation plan, drafted innovative historic district controls, Chaired historic district commission, etc.) I was an advocate of moving beyond the house museum at a time when that was not popular. Bernd Forerster (RPI and K State) later a trustee got me involved in the 60s. I know Dick from work on Disney’s America. From time to time I contribute on things like school locations, etc. The Trust has done a lot, could do more and you could make it happen by pushing for an end to commuting…

   Keep up the good work. Abandon the rest, no one can do it all.

   EMR

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7. 

   El Equipo Progresivo

   May 15, 2005

   Gentlemen,

   Thank you for this very worthy discussion.

   So refreshing to see direction and solution being the topic as opposed to the usual stale arguments that keep being rehashed to the point of numbness.

   Reshaping the paradigm regarding people’s idea of community structure will be hard, but it must be done. And it can be done.

   This is a two part process.

   People of our generation came through a time of realization that resources are finite, and that earth has only so much capacity to regenerate after abuse.

   We sat in gas lines on odd and even days and remember when the Renault Le Car and the Volkswagen Diesel were the auto of the day and car pooling was in vogue and everyone was turning their thermostat back at night and people understood that the single most dramatic impact on national fuel consumption that the government could effect was the 55 mph national speed limit.

   This was when the “rail solution” to more efficiently move freight was showing signs of perhaps and maybe getting off the ground.

   Foxfire books and recycling were the discussion topic at many gatherings.
   There was a rush on wood stoves in many areas. Indeed many made small fortunes building and selling the “airtight” model.

   So in my mind at least we must begin to reawaken that sense of real “conservatism” that existed in the 70s among those of us who lived and believed in the values of not wasting and of being frugal and forward thinking.

   This is part one. And it can be done. I’ve got a process and even the marketing concept in development and it’s looking very promising so far.

   Part two is education of those whose paradigm is in the development stage. I have worked to good effect with young people in catching their imagination with responsible practice regarding community development, energy, society’s waste etc…

   This is the type of vision we need from our elected leaders.

   Think about how we have gone from leadership of vision and shared goals to the politics of live for today and accusing investment of being socialism.

   Thank you again for your thoughts and discussion. I have benefited much and am heartened to see folks who are willing to get beyond the usual arguements to speak of solutions.

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8. 

   Ray Hyde

   May 16, 2005

   It might be instructive if you would describe for us some of the differences between the Vienna subway system and Metro, including it’s relationship to the bus system, highways, and suburban rail systems.

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9. 

   Ray Hyde

   May 16, 2005

   El Jefe: I’m with you. I owned the first rabbit diesel I could get my hands on and drove it until the wheels fell off. Nearly got killed by a mob when I rolled to the front of a gas line to get to the diesel pump, during the 70’s….

   I have never owned a car with over a hundred horsepower (OK, my current hybrid has 70 HP gas plus 50 HP electric) except for two vehicles I inherited. Even my commercial trucks are low HP sixes.

   Unfortunately we heat our home with oil, and I wouldn’t dare put high efficiency wood stoves in our hundred-year-old chimneys, neither is replacing the main plant in the budget, even if I could figure out a rational alternative. We keep the house cool for the most part and spend most of our time in a small library by the fire. At least our air conditioning consists of trees, try that in a new urban community.

   I have old photographs of the area before it was reforested, and I recognize that much of the reason it was tree-barren was because they were used for fuel. Another reason was that 75% of the land was used to support beasts of burden, a fact that we conveniently forget today.

   I never signed on to the recycling craze because I thought it was energy negative, and wrongly oriented. The beetle was a perfectly terrible car except that it was eminently recyclable. It makes me crazy to see complex equipment junked because it cannot be repaired. Meanwhile, we recycle soft drink bottles; this is nuts, in my opinion.

   Despite what Bacon and Risse think, I am not a business-as-usual ,tax-and-spend moron, nor do I wish to see the piedmont paved from pinnacle to plain. What I expect is a plan with basic fairness. To me a plan means to have an identifiable goal, with a schedule and a budget, with milestones that can be measured and checked off when achieved. That means we have to understand what we are working for and be able to measure our performance in a way we can agree on.

   The only way we can agree is when all parties sign on to a deal. A deal is defined as an exchange in which both parties come away a winner.

   I believe EMR’s proposed policies fail that test. “Balanced communities” is a goal that is not sufficiently defined to represent an achievable project. Educating the people is a first milestone we can never measure, and I don’t see that denigrating everyone as illiterate does much in the way of fostering improvement.

   For example, I still don’t buy the idea AOL’s problems are in any way related to location even after EMR’s explanation of his background information on the issue. After all, this is an outfit with a global customer base, how much better can one place be than another? How would choosing a place with higher rent help them? Writing HTML code is no longer a particularly creative job. As for attracting employees, AOL is famous for not responding to resumes. If HR is any reflection of the rest of the place, then it is very screwed up.

   Paul raises a good question with regard to what he would like to see from the politicians. EMR’s response of “not much” suggests to me that his agenda cannot succeed. Maybe EMR is so far ahead of the curve that he is like Einstein in the 50’s: expounding ideas the rest of yes can’t yet imagine, but saying politicians can do nothing because they are beholden to the powers at be suggests a fatal flaw in his approach to achieving balanced communities.

   I don’t think EMR is an Einstein, but if he is, then maybe we need someone to take the role of Neils Bohr and the famous gedanken experiments.

   EMR and I are not so far apart as our text might seem to imply, but I sincerely feel he is doing the environmental and social causes a great dis-service.

   I don’t know how big a human footprint is, but I suspect that it is much larger for Americans than it needs to be consistent with good health and happiness. I suspect it is larger for the very poor than it is for the moderately well off, and I suspect it is larger for one living in a very urban area, than in a rural area. It might even be larger in the far suburbs than in urban areas, but I’m not sure the verdict is in. Just as EMR has said, I get suspicious when there is too much of the same verbiage spouted by many special interest groups.

   Whatever we decide that footprint is, it means that the city has to be sustained by the countryside, and therefore, those that live in and manage the countryside deserve to be sustained at an equal level. They must be allowed to strike a deal that both sides are satisfied with. Comments EMR has made about farm to market travel and extensive use of the countryside suggest a complete disconnect with the realities and economics of farming today. Most farms would be better off as a gravel pit than as a farm: at least as a gravel pit it would still be extensive use of the land and its contributions to urban dwelling would be compensated.

   But EMR’s only suggestion seems to be that rural dwellers (I know, I know, they are not real rural dwellers) be taxed out of existence, that their place of abode should be artificially made more expensive than urban dwelling because new urbanism will solve all our problems. His suggestion seems to be that if we accept his strange methods of accounting, then social engineering will take care of itself.

   Fundamental Change for the purpose of social engineering is still social engineering – a concept we spent most of the last forty years defeating. If EMR hasn’t got any better ideas than that for the politicians, I’ve got enough for both of us.

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