Bacon's Rebellion

In his 9 July post “Downtown Plans and Balanced Communities,” Jim Bacon mentioned that we are working on a book (TRILO-G) to be published “in the near future.” That is “near future” in book writing time, not in blog time. Do not expect to see a copy of this three Volume set in your in box soon.

We will soon, however, be putting on line a revised “Brief Summary of TRILO-G” as well as two items on the Vocabulary used in the three Volumes of the book.

In the meantime Jim’s post and comments on this and other settlement pattern related posts prompt a note of clarification and update on Balanced Community.

Larry:

In the string “New Urbanism Comes to an Old Downtown” you raised a question about the Bureau of Census’ “Metropolitan Division” and its relationship to New Urban Regions.

Long ago we gave up looking for guidance on human settlement pattern issues from mid-20th century authority figures like the Bureau of Census (BS) and Brookings. One can learn much more about human settlement pattern by examining how those who have a choice choose to spend their time and money.

Since it had not yet come to my attention, I was happy to see your mention of “Metropolitan Division.” (BS also added “Micropolitan Area” about the same time which we have noted on this blog and in columns.)

In general, BS is far too beholden to the political pressures of Business-As-Usual and Government-As-Usual. In general for the big picture they look through the wrong end of the telescope (seeking smaller agglomerations) and for data agglomeration they rely far too much on municipal borders – especially counties that vary in function from state to state.

BS is also institutionally blind to the organic components of human settlement patterns.

All this suits their political employers very well. They think in terms of wards, precincts, and gerrymandered election districts that have little or nothing to do with the organic components of settlement be they council, magisterial, delegate, senate, representative and senate districts.

There are others who have tried to draw a bigger picture of urban structure:

Jean Gottmann with Megalopolis (aka, “BoWash” that now stretches into North Carolina with the inclusion of the Richmond and Hampton Roads NURs). Lewis Mumford by the way, points out that to suggest that Megalopolis is a single urban agglomeration is pure fantasy.

C. A. Doxiadis with his Small megalopolis, Megalopolis, Small eperopolis and Eperopolis did not attract many supporters.

Joel Garreau with Nine Nations of America pointed out a number of important multi NUR and USR patterns.

Most recently, Robert Lang suggested the emergence of Megapolitian Areas. (That is so much better than “regional cities.”) Megapolitian Area by in large follow NURs but over-aggregate based on tenuous Interstate highway corridors. (I-35 links Dallas-Fort Worth with Oklahoma City and Kansas City as a single component of human settlement?) Lang also seems to play down important differences between coterminous NURs.

The New Urban Region Conceptual Framework is anchored by the New Urban Region (NUR), the smallest organic component of human settlement that is “sustainable” based on 1990 to 2000 data. It turns out that NURs are larger than BS’s MSA or CMSA but smaller than Megalopolis (or Megapolitian Areas in some cases).

Now back to your question:

We spent the whole day on the 4th of July refining the definitions of “region,” “Region,” “subregion” and “Subregion.” BS’s “Metropolitan Division” is a Subregion made up of all or part of several Beta Communities. As you know from our past posts, Beta Communities are places that have the potential to become Alpha / Balanced Communities. Metropolitan Division is far smaller than a New Urban Region (NUR).

The NUR in which we both live in is called the Washington-Baltimore New Urban Region. You live in it because, as you noted recently, the vast majority of the commuters from Greater Fredericksburg go north, not south. The boundary between Wash-Balto NUR and Richmond NUR is closer to the North Anna River than the Rappahannock River. That is logical if you consider the NUR economic pull to be similar to gravitational pull in celestial mechanics.

Now back to the Jim’s “Downtown Plans and Balanced Communities.” The “Downtown” of a Richmond-scale NUR is not a Beta (potential Balanced) Community. We call this place a “Zentrum” and it is most likely of Beta Village-scale.

In the post, Jim’s description of a Balanced Community is solid except that our Aloha / Balanced Community has a relative Balance J / H / Services / Recreation / A. The elements are not J / H / retail (or as suggested in a previous note by Jim “shopping”) / A. There is a big difference.

“Services” includes both public and private services – everything from water and sewer and communications to retail, repair, health … it includes all the services that urban individuals and households need and want to be happy and safe. There are about 40 of these Services for which the cost varies with location and thus the importance of fair allocation of location variable costs.

“Well!” you say there are a lot of ways to divide up human settlement patterns to establish Balance.
For example, “I am in the textile business and I see the world through the eyes of industrial processes: Mining / Growing Fiber / Pumping Oil / Refining / Manufacturing / Milling / Fabrication / Assembly / Distribution / Warehousing / Wholesale / Retail and my friend is in pharmaceuticals and she ….”

All true, but… Human settlement patterns are driven by residential activity (80 percent of the urban land area) and it is what individuals and households need, want and use that makes up the third of the Big Five determinants of settlement patterns.

All those categories of Jobs noted above are important in establishing Balance at the NUR scale to achieve sustainability but are not critical in establishing relative Balance and the Community scale.

With the exception of shorting the five basic elements of Balance, Jim’s description and discussion of Balanced Community is on target.

Larry:

Later on in the comments you discuss the need for “Regional Comp Plans.”

You are right but municipal planners have so tainted the use of “Comprehensive Plan” that we avoid those words and refer to Regional strategies to create Balanced Communities. In a number of places you rely on “Comp Plan” to solve problems. It is now a weak reed. The 1926 ideal of the Comp Plan (especially as embellished by Jack Kent) is far better than the 2007 practice. (See “The Role of Municipal Planning in the Creation of Dysfunctional Human Settlement Patterns” a Backgrounder at https://www.baconsrebellion.com/)

We agree with you that whatever it is called, without a Regional framework there is no validity of “plans” of any scale.

As Roger points out, places such as Arlington County and others have done a much better job of “planning” than most but all are hampered by a fixation on municipal borders.

Portland, a favorite of Roger’s, is indeed a leader. But by refusing to cross the river (to embrace Vancouver, Washington) Portland Metro demonstrates a failure to recognize that their policies and programs have scattered Portland NUR urban land uses beyond their territory.

Also the Portland approach to regionalism fails to recognize the importance of subregional organic components and thus the need to evolve
Balanced Communities and other Balanced components. This is a critical problem inside the Clear Edge (the Urban Growth Boundary in Oregon terminology).

By the way in the “Downtown Plans and Balanced Communities” string there was a comment by Glenn Weiss about New Urbanism. His comments, and Jim’s response contain a lot of truth. I hope to get to a post on New Urbanism called “Shooting Themselves in the Foot” soon. The long and short of it is that having never grasped the importance of a Comprehensive Conceptual Framework and a robust Vocabulary, they are plagued by Geographical Illiteracy and as a result often shoot themselves in the foot.

Jim put his finger on the biggest problem: Jack Legs who try to steal a few good ideas from the New Urbanism pattern book and then call the project “New Urbanist” when it is not. That is especially true with respect to locational dysfunction and scale blindness.

EMR

Yes, that would be me. Right now, I feel head-smackingly stupid.

I had every intention of attending the Blogs United conference in Newport News today. I registered, sent in my check, lined up a hotel room at the Marriott and entered the date into my calendar. I got up early this morning, hit the road and made it to Christopher Newport University in time for the 8 a.m. conference check-in. But when I found my way to the student center ballroom, instead of a mob of bloggers, there was some Virginia teen leadership confab.

Whoops. The conference begins this evening. The program starts 8 a.m. tomorrow. Alas, I had too many things to get done to hang around Newport News all day with nothing to do. I headed home, very much regretting my dysfunctional scheduling skills. I’d been looking forward to the conference so much: partly for the great line-up of topics but mostly to meet my fellow spirits in the blogging community.

Hey, guys, have a great conference. Maybe next year.

Prince William County’s crackdown on illegal immigrants may spawn imitators around the state, reports the Times-Dispatch. Chesterfield County, which is studying the illegal-alien issue, might consider proposals similar to Prince William’s actions. Said Supervisor Chair Kelly E. Miller:

“I don’t know until we get back the report what kind of options exist for us legally, but I want to aggressively go at it. I think we need to be aggressive in attempting to identify these illegals,” he said. “I don’t want to be crazy about this thing. I don’t want to be out on a witch hunt. But at the same time, we need to . . . get more aggressive in identifying illegals, get a handle on what our tax resources are being used for and limit them to those who are legally entitled.”

The Prince William County Board of Supervisors grabbed center stage yesterday with its resolution, one of the toughest local ordinances in the country, designed to curtail illegal immigration. But the PWC supervisors weren’t acting in a vacuum. The House of Delegates had laid much of the intellectual groundwork this spring, passing a number of bills — some by broad margins, incidentally, suggesting a measure of bipartisan support — that got killed in the Senate Courts of Justice Committee.

These bills received very little press coverage at the time. I’ve extracted these descriptions from an old press release issued by the Speaker of the House’s office:

HB 1618
Patron: Jeffrey M. Frederick, R-Prince William.
Passed House 69-31, killed in Senate Courts of Justice 11-3.
Provides for the Governor to enter into an agreement with federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement that would allow the Department of State Police to enforce civil immigration laws.

HB 1970
Patron: David B. Albo, R-Fairfax.
Passed House 70-28, killed in Senate Courts of Justice.
Provides that any alien who is present in the United States illegally and is removable, as verified by the federal Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, is guilty of a Class 1 misdemeanor.

HB 2687
Patron: John S. Reid, R-Henrico.
Passed House 62-37, killed in Senate Courts of Justice 11-4.
Discourages businesses from knowingly hiring illegal aliens by making it an unfair employment practice to knowingly employ an unauthorized alien within the Commonwealth.

HB 2926
Patron: Thomas Davis Rust, R-Fairfax/Loudoun.
Passed House 92-6, killed in Senate Courts of Justice 11-4.
Expands the powers of state and local law-enforcement officials to include immigration powers conferred upon the law-enforcement agency by agreement with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.

HB 3130
Patron: Kathy J. Byron, R-Bedford/Campbell.
Passed House 71-28, killed in Senate Finance.
Prohibits the issuance of a business license to any individual who cannot provide legal documents proving such individual is legally eligible to be employed or to work in the United States.

Then there was this bill, which protected immigrants — and passed unanimously in both the House and Senate:

HB 1921
Patron: H. Morgan Griffith, R-Salem.
Passed House 99-0, Passed Senate 40-0.
Protects immigrants by penalizing any person who exhorts anyone by knowingly destroying, concealing, removing, confiscating, or possessing a passport or other immigration document, or other government identification document of another person.

I think illegal immigration could be a sleeper issue in the fall elections.

The illegal immigration debate may have dialed back to a simmer in Congress but it’s heating back up locally. The Prince William County Board of Supervisors voted unanimously last night to curb access by illegal immigrants to public services and to step up immigration enforcement by local police.

The public hearing was Prince William’s largest in 20 years; manay in the overflow crowd of roughly 400 watched the proceedings on closed circuit television in the lobby. More than 100 people addressed the board.

It’s still not clear exactly which services would be restricted. The county would not curtail access to schools or emergency medical care. Presumably, the restrictions would apply to welfare-like public assistance benefits. The measure gives county workers 60 to 90 days, depending upon which newspaper you believe, to help board members determine which public services can be lawfully denied to illegal immigrants.

The measure issued a directive to require police to ask people about their immigration status, if they had probable cause to do so. The resolution also directed the police department to enter into an agreement with the Department of Homeland Security’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement to train officers who would enforce immigration laws under ICE supervision.

For details see:

The Washington Post
The Washington Examiner
The Manassas Journal-Messenger
The Washington Times
And, for the most colorful coverage, see Black Velvet Bruce Li, whose Greg Letiecq led a group called Help Save Manassas in support of the ordinance. (Use your Firefox browser to access the blog.)

Foes of the measure raised a number of practical objections, but the main rhetorical thrust was this: If you want to crack down on illegal immigration, you’re racist. I’m sorry, but the old canard of crying racism-racism-racism has been played so many times that it’s lost its power. There is no tradition or history of anti-Hispanic racism in Virginia, and no sense of guilt to appease. Indeed, Northern Virginia is a hotbed of Hispanic business enterprise, which suggests the very opposite, that Virginians are very hospitable to Hispanics who reside here legally.

(I would say this: Prince William could inoculate itself against such charges if it required police to check the immigration status of anyone convicted of a crime, not to rely upon the subjective judgment of probable cause. If you’ve been convicted of a crime and you reside here illegally, I don’t care if you’re Hispanic or if you’re a blond-haired, blue-eyed Eastern European, I don’t friggin’ want you in this country.)

Prince William’s action may be the forerunner of things to come. Clearly, the anti-illegal movement has legs, not just nationally but locally. House Republicans proposed a number of laws earlier this year pertaining to illegal immigration. With all the excitement over transportation and land use, I didn’t have time to delve into them. If I get a chance, I’ll resurrect some of that info.

Richmond Mayor Doug Wilder can be his own worst enemy: He’s picked a fight with just about everyone in the city there is to pick a fight with. But that doesn’t make him wrong. He is dead-on accurate with his criticism of the city’s woefully underperforming schools. And he’s the only one in recent memory who’s been willing to knock heads with an intractable educational bureaucracy.

As Wilder stated in his most recent edition of “Visions,” an electronic newsletter:

Today, if our students are ill-educated and ill-prepared to enter the world beyond secondary school, we cannot blame it on a lack of money. Richmond Public Schools spends almost 60 percent more per student annually than any of the surrounding jurisdictions, while lagging far behind in critical measures of student achievement. In Richmond, we spend $12,385 per pupil per year; in Chesterfield the amount is $7,467; Henrico spends $7,637; and Hanover spends $7,496 per student.

Richmond’s dropout rate in 2005 was four times that of Hanover and almost twice that of Chesterfield and Henrico. In fact, of school systems with 10,000 or more students, Richmond had the highest dropout rate statewide. We should all be concerned and involved, as it takes the whole city to improve our schools.

Who suffers from this lamentable performance? The predominantly African-American student body, which enters the workforce lacking the tools to prosper in a globally competitive, knowledge-based economy. Says Wilder:

One’s academic status … relates to criminal activity and incarceration. Nationally, about half of young black men who do not graduate from high school are either locked up or are on probation or parole, according to the Richmond Sheriff’s Department.

I, for one, applaud Wilder for demanding accountability and performance from city schools instead of taking the easy course of demanding “mo’ money.” Could the mayor handle his dispute with the school board more diplomatically? Undoubtedly. Would more tactful behavior do much to change a dysfunctional system? Probably not.

The decade of the 2000s has witnessed an extraordinary growth in spending and taxation at the local level in Virginia. Nowhere does this point emerge more clearly than a chart prepared by the Fairfax County Taxpayers Association that shows inflation-adjusted real estate taxes per household in Fairfax County. Comparable charts for neighboring jurisdictions, I am quite confident, would show similar spikes over the past few years.

Where’s the tax revolt? Nowhere in sight, from what I can tell. Maybe there are so many refugees from New York and New Jersey now living in Northern Virginia that many voters feel the tax burden is nothing to complain about.