Bacon's Rebellion

This comes from the University of Virginia website, Top News Daily:

Don’t Stereotype:
What You See is NOT What You Get

Students in a Sustained Dialogue group handed out 1,000 T-shirts to their peers, and everyone who wore them on April 26 wrote their own statements on the back to shatter stereotypes. Students from left to right and part of their sayings: Casandra Bruce, “I’m graduating from the Comm School and I’m going to work in a kitchen;” Muslim student Alaa “Lulu” Buhisi, “I have Jewish friends;” Reem Ghoneim, “I am Egyptian and I don’t read hieroglyphics;” Nneoma Amadi-Obi, “I am Nigerian and I speak proper English.”

I’m all in favor of busting unfairly negative stereotypes. Here’s one more t-shirt I’d love to see: “I’m a Southern White Male — and I’m Not Prejudiced against Minorities!”

The Virginia Department of Transportation is way ahead of the public and the politicos in dealing with traffic congestion. For all the grief it gets, VDOT is one of the more technologically progressive transportation departments in the Country. In the latest example, the department has hired Open Roads Consulting Inc., of Richmond, to help the Virginia State Police respond more quickly to traffic accidents. (See press release.)

Open Roads’ computer-aided dispatch system (CAD) distributes information to all the regional Smart Traffic Centers, the 511 Virginia Clearinghouse, the Transportation Emergency Operations Center and local 911 dispatch centers. Explains David Sutton, a VDOT project manager: “One of the critical needs of traffic operations is to discover incidents quickly. The operators receiving real-time CAD data have significantly improved their ability to detect and respond to incidents. This enables the incident to be cleared sooner, traveler information is provided quicker, and traffic gets moving again faster.

Makes a lot more sense than punishing speeders and reckless drivers with excessive fines that they’ll fight to the death in court.

The National Park Service has ranked Virginia second among the 50 states in the use of federal tax incentives to rehabilitate historic buildings. The Service’s annual report lists Virginia with 140 approved approved proposals and 74 completed projects, second only to Missouri in both categories. The City of Richmond is second only to St. Louis, Missouri, of all cities in the nation for the number of rehabilitation tax projects using federal tax credits during the past five years.

The total private investment in Virginia leveraged through rehabilitation projects completed and certified by the Park Service during fiscal year 2005 was $128,603,161, making Virginia seventh in the nation for money spent. “The Commonwealth’s ranking highlights the power of historic preservation as an economic and community revitalization tool,” commented Gov. Timothy M. Kaine in a press release. “Historic rehabilitation through public-private partnerships, combined with state and federal tax credits, has the added benefit of supporting smart growth and helping to stem sprawl in our urban and suburban areas throughout Virginia.”

That’s the Tim Kaine I knew — back before he went over to the dark side, favoring tax hikes to support sprawl-inducing transportation projects. I remember chatting with him during the early days of his campaign — back when he was still spending time in Richmond — and discussing his ideas about economic and community development. Kaine, a former Richmond mayor, cited the historic tax credits and Richmond’s tax abatement program for restored properties as an engine in the city’s resurgence.

It’s good to see that the Governor is still thinking in these terms, even if he hasn’t taken any tangible action yet. Maybe we’ll see an urban renewal initiative next year. It would be cool if we could bump Missouri off its perch.

I am posting this passage for Jim Bowden who encountered technical difficulties and could not add it himself. — Jim Bacon

My state senator, Marty Williams (R), has another op ed in the Daily Press ( “Ball is in House’s court now,” May 2, 2006). Apparently, according to Marty, the ball is a ‘regional plan’ for Hampton Roads passed by the Senate last week.

Marty concludes with his conditions for a Transportation Plan:

“Provide meaningful support for transportation needs for the foreseeable future.

Do not raid the general fund ensuring that roads do not compete with schools, public safety or health care.

Do not pay for road construction by saddling other parts of the budget with additional debt that will have to be paid back later with interest.

We’ve heard enough criticism from House Republicans. What Virginians deserve from them now are constructive contributions. That means taking action on the Hampton Roads regional plan now.”

I agree. The House should reject the regional plan if includes another unelected government with taxing authority. Marty pushed this before and the voters in his own district have decisively beaten it – twice – at the polls.

Marty never gives us a number on how much money is needed each year for meaningful support. We need a number, not an adjective.

Marty was happy to raid the Transportation Trust Fund to move money to the General Fund. Either he has a principled reason to raid funds one way only – from Transportation – or he is just being a politician.

Marty was thrilled to support saddling Virginians with huge debts a few years ago. Again, has he has discovered, recently, a principle that forever more he will fight bond issues, or he is just being a politician?

Marty never tells us how much the professional staff will cost for this unelected regional government. How many persons will be hired for what jobs? How much will they be paid?

Marty never explains why VDOT can’t manage the tolls across the James River – and maybe on I-64.

Marty has failed to offer a plan to fund the first priority for Hampton Roads since he was elected in 1995. Eleven years without any leadership, except to demand a new, unelected government with taxing authority and no oversight, means the ball really is in the House. Clearly, the Virginia Senate, especially the ruling majority of Republican senators, isn’t up to setting priorities, making decisions and providing leadership.

What is the url for this Senate plan for unelected regional government for Hampton Roads?

One of the persistent themes of Bacon’s Rebellion is that human settlement patterns influence the demand for new roads. Some of us have argued that scattered, disconnected, low-density development patterns force motorists to make more car trips and drive greater distances — thus putting more stress on the transportation system — than their counterparts living in more compact, more balanced and better designed communities.

While most people commenting in this blog accept the idea that the pattern and density of development has some impact on travel, some disagree that it’s a significant factor. In the end, everybody’s arguments go around in circles because no one can produce “conclusive” evidence one way or the other.

Maybe it’s time to start gathering “conclusive” evidence. Building upon an idea suggested by Chris Miller, president of the Piedmont Environmental Council, I would propose a two-part initiative.

(1) Categorize every census block in Virginia by its dominant development pattern, accounting for variables such as population density, building type, street pattern (grid street, cul de sac, whatever), presence of mass transit and other salient characteristics. (I’m open to ideas on which key variables should be considered.)

(2) Then append to the list of census blocks these two data sets: (a) Census commuting data, and (b) Division of Motor Vehicle data on vehicle miles driven by every licensed driver residing in the census tract.

That relatively simple exercise should provide the data to answer once and for all the question whether certain settlement patterns generate more automobile traffic than others — and by how much.

Given the General Assembly’s new-found interest in measuring the impact of new development upon traffic, the findings of such a study would prove extremely useful to everyone from academic researchers to local planning offices, from metropolitan planning organizations to VDOT.

Virginia industry released 3.2 percent fewer toxic chemicals into the environment in 2004 than the previous year, according to the latest Toxics Release Inventory produced by the Department of Environmental Quality.

Even more significant was the progress made in a group of chemicals known as “persistent bioaccumulative toxics,” which remain in the environment for long periods of time and can build up in living tissue. Releases of these persistent chemicals in 2004 declined 20.6 percent from the year before.

Virginia is moving in the right direction. If industry can maintain these gains year after year — through on-plant recycling, incineration, chemical substitution and other strategies — we can look forward to 30 percent improvement in toxic chemicals and truly dramatic reductions in the persistent, bioaccumulative toxins over the next decade.

I would have expected more press coverage of this good news, but the Fredericksburg Free Lance-Star is the only newspaper that I’ve noticed has picked it up.

The most recent issue of the Bacon’s Rebellion e-magazine included a new feature column called Blogology. Blogology is an attempt to chronicle the developments in Virginia’s vibrant political blogosphere by getting to know the bloggers and blogs one-at-a-time. With the continue emergence of the medium as a political force and alternative to the traditional media, it seems like the right time to do this.

The choice of the first subject of the profile – Waldo Jaquith – was timely. As one of the veterans of Virginia’s blogging community, Waldo is among its more innovative practitioners. His latest creation – the Virginia Political Blogs aggregator – is striking in both its simplicity and potential reach. As such, it seemed fitting that a new column focused on the life and times of blogs would start with him.

Blogology will cover Virginia’s entire political blogosphere from all ideological and partisan persuasions. Hopefully, the new column will showcase a different side of the profiled bloggers, not just inside blogdom, but more purposefully to the larger political, policy and media arenas beyond. At the very least, Blogology may reflect another stage in the maturation in the sometimes rambunctious land that is the blogosphere.

In his most recent column, “The One Object Rule,” Philip Rodokanakis broaches a fundamental issue in the General Assembly maneuvering over taxes and transportation. The “one object rule” in the Virginia Constitution, he argues, prohibits the General Assembly from passing a budget with yet-to-be-enacted taxes embedded in it. Patrick McSweeney raised a similar alarum in a column a month ago, and House Speaker William J. Howell has raised the issue as well.

Of course, the state Senate insists that passing a budget with taxes baked in, which gives it considerable leverage in negotiating with the House, is perfectly legal. I’m no lawyer. I don’t know. My question is this: Does the “one object rule” prohibit the Senate budget?

According to Phil, someone filed a lawsuit after the enactment of the 2004 budget and built-in tax increase on the same grounds. The case was dismissed on the grounds that it was not “ripe,” meaning that all other avenues for determining the case had not been exhausted. Here’s Phil’s interpretation:

The courts seem to be saying that no one should be held accountable for a possible violation of constitutional prohibitions until after the actual violation has occurred. This absurd legal thinking is akin to saying that the police cannot arrest a person who attempts to murder his victim — until after the murder has been committed.

Phil’s argument make sense to me. But, then, I’m not a legal scholar. Can anyone shed some light?

Henrico County thoughtfully puts curb cuts in its sidewalks for the convenience of handicapped people like Buddy Besette. Yet Buddy prefers to ride his wheel chair to the mall on county roads where traffic flies past at 40 miles per hour. Clearly, something is seriously awry. I explore the nonsensical placement of sidewalks in sububurban development in this week’s Bacon’s Rebellion column, “Suburbia Absurdia.”

An important larger point is buried near the end of the story.

Protestations to the contrary, there’s no shortage of paved surface in Virginia’s suburbs. The scandal is that these assets are so poorly arranged, that parkways destroy real estate value rather than enhance it, that so much investment is wasted on sidewalks leading nowhere, and that so much roadway is tucked away in cul de sacs where no one but a handful of families ever touch tire to asphalt.

I plan to explore these themes in future columns and blog posts.

The May 1, 2006, edition of Bacon’s Rebellion has been posted online. Columns include:

Suburbia Absurdia
Suburbs are full of sidewalks that go nowhere and nobody uses. What are people thinking? Why do we persist in building this schlock?
by James A. Bacon

Take a Piece of Transportation
Since being named to the Commonwealth Transportation Board, this e-zine columnist is trying to stay on time and on budget.
by Doug Koelemay

“I Don’t Give a Rip”
Editorial pundits are blaming Bill Howell for Virginia’s budget impasse. But John Chichester is the one who’s repeatedly used the threat of a government shut down to get his way.
by Patrick McSweeney

Discord in the Axis of Taxes
Tim Kaine has split with the state Senate over increasing the gas tax. That gives the House of Delegates a chance to seize the initiative in the taxes-and-transportation debate.
by Patrick McSweeney

Let’s Make a Budget Deal
The General Assembly can make big improvements to the transportation budget even without a special session and new taxes. Here are some ideas to get budget negotiators started.
by Michael Thompson

The One Object Rule
Determined to raise taxes, the State Senate is trampling the “one object rule” of the Virginia Constitution. Thankfully, House Speaker Bill Howell appears determined to hold the line.
by Philip Rodokanakis

Economic Law and Order
One law the politicians can’t repeal is the law of supply and demand. If legislators want lower gasoline prices, they must increase supply or moderate demand. Nothing else works.
by Jim Bowden

Teaching our Teachers
Virginia seems ill-prepared to deal with a looming teacher shortage. One solution might be to re-think the policies of its education schools.
by Conaway Haskins

Where’s Waldo?
Waldo Jaquith, a pioneer of Virginia political blogdom, has just launched an aggregator. Now you can get Virginia political commentary around the clock.
by Conaway Haskins

A Community in Formation
The UVa students who got arrested for their sit-in last month may not have won the battle over a living wage, but they did help build a movement.
by Barbara Ehrenreich

The RTD reports today that:

“Sen. George Allen, under fire for wearing a Confederate flag pin as a teenager, said yesterday he will pursue a proposal for a congressional resolution for slavery.

“We want this to be a meaningful resolution that is adopted,” Allen said in an interview.

He stopped short of saying he would support an apology resolution. (Huh?)

Ken Woodley, editor of the Farmville Herald, had challenged Allen and Georgia Congressman Lewis to spearhead a congressional resolution apologizing for slavery and to provide some type of reparations for the losses suffered by blacks. By reparations, Woodley said he envisions a sort of domestic Marshall Plan that would address education, health-care and economic development issues for blacks.”

Follow the money. When politicians who never owned slaves apologize to politicians who never were slaves, follow the money – and the votes. It is perfect feel good politics. I thought Bill Clinton had a patent on this guiltless guilt exorcism.

On whose behalf would the U.S. Congress be apologizing?

Apologize on behalf of Western Civilization for having human bondage when every civilization that ever existed practiced slavery and then getting rid of it voluntarily – while Muslims still enslave Black Africans today?

Apologize on behalf of the United Kingdom for having race-based slavery among other forms of involuntary servitude from 1619 to 1833 when Parliament outlawed slavery throughout the Empire?

Apologize on behalf the U.S.A. for having slavery from 1776 to 1865. Especially, for keeping slavery legal in the border states and occupied Southern counties from the Emancipation Proclamation (1863) until the 13th Amendment (1865)?

Once Sen. Allen figures out who is apologizing for, he should get serious about it. Don’t make a speech at a ceremony followed by light refreshments. Even if listening to the blather of pompous pandering is painful. Let’s see some crimson ‘A’ for long days and nights in the public pillory. How about some sack cloth and ashes? Or walking up steps on bare knees?

Who else gets an apology? Americans of Japanese ancestry interned by FDR got an apology and bucks – because they are still alive. Who else gets cash?

Honoring the victory of the Civil Rights Movement is a celebration of American values. Empty apologies are the antithesis of honor.

P.S. Sen. Allen sponsored a resoluton for Congress to apologize for not outlawing lynching. Outlawing lynching was up to the states, not the Feds. It’s that Constitutional division of powers thing. ‘Racist, Jim Crow, whites only’ Virginia passed the first anti-lynching law – and never had another lynching. Virginia leads and other states follow.

A headline on the meteorologist’s column in a weekly paper distributed in Greater Warrenton-Fauquier caught our eye: “Flash floods are the nation’s leading killer.”

Michael Eckert says that flash floods kill more people on an annual basis than slow floods, hurricanes, tornados and all other “disasters” we see on the evening news. That would also include the indirect weather related disasters like forest fires, etc. See “Fire and Flood” 3 November 2003 and “Down Memory Lane with Katrina,” 5 September 2005″ at db4.dev.baconsrebellion.com

What is even more startling is how most people die in flash floods. They drive their cars into flooded roadways going from where they are to where the need or want to be.

In “Dying Young in Traffic,” 1 November 2004 at https://www.baconsrebellion.com/ we profiled the fact that human settlement patterns have put large numbers of citizens into cars who have demonstrated that they are too young to drive safely. Everything we have seen since 2004 suggests the problem is getting worse.

Data suggests that the vast majority of the pedestrians who die in the act of walking do so because they are hit by an automobile. The last person killed by a bicycle, stroller or a Segway was … (research in ongoing on this question, we are sure it is possible, but you get the idea…).

Then there is Bill Lucy’s data on death at the hands of a stranger in the Countryside. It is automobiles that makes one living in the Countryside more likely to die at the hand of a stranger that those living in the Urbanside.

The other day we noted that in the United States 20 times as many citizens are killed in auto accidents every year as the total of US and British military and military contractors who have been killed in the Iraq War since the invasion.

In the United States we kill more of our own citizens each year than the total number of Iraq citizens that have been killed since the current war started. Those auto accidents totals do not include flash floods, pedestrians and many other indirect results of using and abusing automobiles.

Is it not ironic that in order to achieve a sustainable trajectory for civilization citizens will need to evolve settlement patterns where most of these “accidents” would not happen?

In spite of this fact, citizens and their governance practitioners embrace automobile advertising, video games and movies that glorify dangerous and illegal driving.

Legislators give mainly lip service to ways to reduce auto related deaths. They even prevent rational approaches to traffic safety like red light cameras. And none of what they do relates to the core cause of automobile deaths – dysfunctional human settlement patterns.

There are some who suggest that this is just post-industrial Darwinism. We know enough model citizens killed by the irrational acts of others to know auto deaths are not helping to evolve a higher order of human.

There is no question we need to do something about reversing current population trends regionally, nationally and globally in order to achieve a sustainable human burden on the planet.

What citizens do, however, needs to be something other than subsidizing settlement patterns that causes tens of thousands to kill themselves every year.

EMR

Many local governments in Virginia would like the authority to enact “Adequate Public Facilities Ordinances” (APFO) giving them more power to block undesired development projects. In theory, APFOs would ensure that roads, public schools, water, sewer, fire/police/rescue stations and other public facilities are “adequate” to support new development. The goal: no more overloaded connector roads, no more kids attending classes in school buses, no more slow response times for fire and police.

Now comes a report from The National Center for Smart Growth Research and Education, affiliated with the University of Maryland, which takes a close look at APFOs as applied in Maryland. Some 13 counties and 12 municipalities in Maryland have enacted APFOs. The result: Things didn’t always turn out as planned.

As it turns out, APFOs can accelerate the spread of the very dysfunctions they were designed to curb. Due to inappropriate applications and inconsistent uses, concludes the Smart Growth Research group: “APFOs are being applied in ways that often deflect development away from the very areas designated for growth in county plans to other counties, other states and often rural areas never intended for growth.”

There’s a lesson here for Virginia. The solution to our disastrous land use policies isn’t giving local government more regulatory authority, it’s reforming the sprawl-inducing complex of zoning codes, subdivision ordinances, comprehensive plans so as to give developers more freedom to devise creative solutions. We need more balanced communities, more mixed-use development, more transit-friendly design, more bike/pedestrian-friendly design. As Pulte Homes and KSI Services have demonstrated, developers want to build these kinds of communities, and the biggest obstacles are NIMBYs backed up by the power of local government. Giving NIMBYs more power through APFOs will not help build Smart Growth communities.

On 24 April we posted a review of Gov. Kaine’s commitment to “conserve” 400,000 acres of land over the next four years. Our comment on a history of inappropriate locations of “conservation” actions was based on a survey we did for a client several years ago. Jim Bacon gets to work early in the day and at 6:01 AM on 25 April he asked for examples of land conservation initiatives in the wrong locations.

Jim’s question is very relevant but not easy to respond to quickly. The list needed to be up dated. We started but soon found the list growing very long. In addition, just a listing of examples without context raises more questions than it answers. The following is an attempt to put in perspective the locational dysfunction of “conservation” efforts since 1972 in the northern part of Virginia.

First some caveats:

In reviewing these examples recall that what happened in Radius Band R = 6 to R = 12 (about 70,000 acres of land in Virginia) in the 1970s is now happening to land in R = 20 to R = 50 (about 1,500,000 acres of land in Virginia).

Second, there is profound difference between “conservation” inside the Clear Edge and “conservation” outside the Clear Edge. This is the difference between “Openspace” and “Countryside.” We will not try to sort out all the differences at this time. We have chosen examples that do not turn on the definitions. (Yes, we are working on the Glossary.) We have divided our note into two sections one discussing conditions inside the logical location for the Clear Edge, the second addressing land outside the Clear Edge.

Third, what happens inside the Clear Edge around any urban enclave determines the need to add to or remove land from within a Clear Edge. Also recall that dysfunction within the Clear Edge drives families, enterprises and institutions to scatter urban land uses across the Countryside outside the Clear Edge.

If you are familiar with examples cited below, you may recall some were couched by MainStream Media in terms of lowering density to protect the “character” of the “neighborhood.” Even if not on the front burner, each had a strong conservation rationale.

We were directly or indirectly involved in each of these examples. Each case has a long, complex history. In the real world there are no short stories. These examples are brief summaries from memory and we may have omitted some important details.

INSIDE THE CLEAR EDGE

We address the examples in three categories concerning Balanced Communities, Shared-Vehicle System Station-Areas and Large-Acreage Initiatives.

Conservation Initiatives Thumping the Evolution of Balanced Communities

Huntley Meadows Park was a surplus World War II Navy radio antenna field that was used by Federal Highway Administration to test asphalt paving after the war. Beavers started to dam up Barnyard Run on the site, recreating wetlands that pre-revolutionary farmers had drained to make the land useable for agriculture.

Residents with lots that backed up to the site lobbied for the surplus federal property to become a park to thwart planned roadways from being extended through the site.

Huntley Meadows Park is now a nice place for bird watching and nature education. There is a need for parks and useable Openspace throughout the urban fabric, but …

There is was (and is) no plan for the Balanced Community that should (and eventually will have to) evolve in southeastern Fairfax County. This asphalt test site along with the surplus Belvoir Proving Grounds, the recycled Lorton Reformatory site and Ft. Belvoir itself together with the gravel pits that became Kingstowne and the existing development along US Route 1 plus major parts of ‘Greater Springfield / Franconia’ should have been viewed as an opportunity to create a Balanced Community and not be chopped up into what Jim Bacon correctly called “pods” in his 3 April column “Pod People” at db4.dev.baconsrebellion.com

Why bother to reconsider this conservation decision?

You may recall the Pentagon is planning to move 20,000 or more military jobs to Ft. Belvoir. It is widely agreed that lack of mobility and access will be a result of this shift in jobs.

It would help considerably if Fairfax County Parkway and Van Dorn Street had been extended to US Route 1. That was thwarted for the time being in large part by creating Huntley Meadows Park.

It would be even better to evolve a settlement pattern that supported more fuel efficient mobility systems than private-vehicles to citizens to the those new jobs as well as to services and recreation including places to birdwatch.

It would have been much better to have a Balanced Community in southeastern Fairfax so there would be housing, services, recreation and amenity to balance with the relocated military jobs and other jobs that would be a natural fit in the community but for congestion and high prices due to imbalance.

Now a few of the families that could be living in Southeastern Fairfax Balanced Community are living in pods like Jim Bacon’s pod. Some are really nice pods, some not so nice, but all are pods. The rest are living in eastern Prince William, Stafford, Spotsylvania Counties and are now spreading to Caroline County and beyond.

As documented by the 87 ½ Percent Rule, almost all the scattered urban residents are now living in exactly the same pattern at the Unit-scale and the Dooryard-scale as they would if their home was in the sustainable pattern of a Balanced Community. The difference is that the Units and Dooryards of which the Clusters, Neighborhoods and Villages of the Balanced Community would be composed are scattered over half a million acres.

The Southeastern Fairfax Balanced Community of 60,000 +/- acres could be home to over 600,000 people with nearly every family having access to the 40% of the land in the Community that could be openspace if intelligently planned. Now openspace is available to some pod residents – primarily those who live on lots that back up to a park – and those who drive there in their car to a park. Did someone say gas prices are going up? Take another look at Jim’s column on the Pod People.

Think about the traffic in the I-95 Corridor south of the Occquan River if 400,000 fewer people who derive their livelihood north of the Occquan River were not scattered in Prince William, Stafford, Spotsylvania, and beyond.

Think about the 500,000 acres of land south of the Occquan that would have been naturally “conserved” because there would be no need to develop it in the first place.

Think about the billions of dollars it will take to retrofit settlement patterns to evolve a Southeastern Fairfax Balanced Community.

Think of the angst of having to run new roads, rails and sewer lines through all those nice backyard parks. We did that through Rocky Run Stream Valle Park and it is not easy or cheap.

Think about what may happen due to the cost of rebuilding places like Greater New Orleans and all the other Beta components where Pod People now live. It may mean there is no resources for retrofitting southeastern Fairfax. You may have heard about the prospect of Bangladesh on Potomac in 20 years.

This is not hindsight. As a member of the Southeast Fairfax Redevelopment Authority we told politicians they were selling the future down the river.

This is also not a unique case. Jim and others may recall the map showing the location of the Core’s of 16 potential Balanced Communities inside the Clear Edge in the northern part of Virginia. We presented this map at the Spring of 2003 “Shaping the Future” certificate program. There is a “conservation” story in every one of those potential Balanced Communities, not all as clear as Southeast Fairfax but all bad.

Shared-Vehicle System Station-Areas

No land is more important in the evolution of functional human settlement patterns than the 500 to 1,000 acres nearest the station platform of any high-capacity shared-vehicle systems. Shared-vehicle systems like METRO are very expensive and must have a balance of ridership and system capacity to work efficiently.

We briefly reviewed the history of the Vienna-Fairfax-GMU station area in our 28 March posting “METRO WEST – 22 Years Too Late.” Nottoway Park and Oakton High School were carved out of the 800 acres of vacant land near station. The existence of vacant and underutilized land was the reason the METRO station was located there and not in Tysons Corner.

However, as soon as the station location decision was made, the Fairfax supervisors moved to take as much land as possible out of play. East Blake Lane Park came along later and was a trade-off to secure approval of a pod of townhouses off of US Route 29 in the station-area.

With intelligent planning in the station-area nearly all the 50,000 to 80,000 residents could have had access to openspace, not just those who back up to a park or get in a car to drive there. They could have walked to jobs and services as well.

You may have heard that gas prices are going up and METRO costing more and more each year because of unbalanced ridership?

From 1973 through 1990 we worked on five projects in the Vienna-Fairfax-GMU station-area. “Conservation” was a theme in both governance practitioner and resident opposition to functional settlement patterns in the station-area. This has been the case in many other station-areas. METRO – West is a step in the right direction but think how much better the Vienna-Fairfax-GMU station area and all the other station areas might have been with a more intelligent view of “conservation.”

Large-Acreage Conservation Initiatives

The “preservation” of part of the watershed on the Fairfax (north) side of the Occquan Reservoir (a potable water resource) was sold as a “conservation” measure. This is what we called the 83,000 Acre Occquan 5-Acre Lot Lifestyle Strategy. We documented the context and foolishness of this action at the time but will spare you the details. It really helped a lot of speculative land owners who could sell off 5 acre lots rather than having to wait for the market to develop for functional components of settlement.

In summary there would have been less polluting runoff into the water supply and a place for 800,000 citizens to call home and find work, services and recreation if planned and developed in an intelligent, balanced and more sustainable manor. That is more citizens than the total now living in Loudoun and Prince William Counties combined. We will address the issue of 5 and 10 acre horse farms in our forthcoming “Use and Management of Land.”

Had the 1965 plan for the distribution of land uses for the northern part of Virginia been followed, all the urban development supporting the National Capital Subregion in Virginia would have been inside Radius=20-Miles. There would also have been Countryside supporting urban enclaves which we call Disaggregated But Balanced Communities inside their own Clear Edges. See Regional Rigor Mortis,” 6 June 2005 and “Reality Based Regionalism,” 17 October 2005 at db4.dev.baconsrebellion.com

Had the National Capital Subregion expanded in a rational manner there would be no need for other large-acreage “conservation” initiatives such as the “Rural Crescent” in Prince William County. The “Rural Crescent” is well on the way to becoming 80,000 acres of 10 acres lots with a generous scattering of 1-, 3- and 5-acre subdivisions and 7-11s (aka, low density pods). In twenty years it will be closer to “lunar crescent” than “rural crescent.” Or perhaps lunatic crescent?

On both sides of the logical location of the Clear Edge around the Core of the National Capital Subregion there are both large and small conservation-excused inappropriate actions taking place. One of our favorites is the attempt to “save” an former farmstead that the recently deceased owner explicitly wanted developed. The site is next to the RV sales lot not far from Wal*Mart and Home Depot in the southwest quadrant of I-66 and VA 234 Business in Greater Manassas.

The site in question is right across I-66 from a new million-foot-square-foot +/- big box center. This new center backs up to Manassas National Battlefield Park. The vast majority of those who go to the new big box center has to 1.) drive through Manassas National Battlefield Park, 2.) drive under I-66 and take a left turn against two lanes of traffic or 3) use the constrained I-66 / VA Business 234 interchange.

If Greater Manassas / western Prince William County needed another big box center (most would suggest the answer is “no”) the “conservation” site behind the RV sales lot would make a lot more sense than the site that was developed. A better idea would be to redevelopment of the entire Greater Manassas urbanized area into a West Prince William / Greater Manassas Balanced Community.

This vignette suggests that Greater Manassas / western Prince William is well on the way to becoming another Southeastern Fairfax. (For a view of the other end of the 15,000 acre West Prince William triangle See “Anatomy of Bottleneck: The US route 29/Interstate 66 Interchange at Gainesville” at db4.dev.baconsrebellion.com )

In summary, these inside the Clear Edge examples are not unique cases. They are the norm. See “The Role of Municipal Planning in Creating Dysfunctional Human Settlement Patterns” at db4.dev.baconsrebellion.com .

OUTSIDE THE CLEAR EDGE

This brief review documents the growing dysfunction inside the logical location for a Clear Edge around the Core of the National Capital Subregion. Much of the dysfunction is rooted in misunderstandings concerning the role of “conservation.” The facts also document why “conserving” a parcel here and a parcel there outside the Clear Edge is Foolishness – or worse.

An overview of how to understand this reality starts with the First Natural Law of Human Settlement Pattern:

A= PiR2.

Recall that, as noted above, “what happened in Radius Band R = 6 to 12 (about 70,000 acres in Virginia) in the 1970s is now happening in R = 20 to 50 (about 1,500,000 acres in Virginia).”

While the logical location of the Clear Edge around the Core of the National Capital Subregion has now moved out to between R=22 to R=25, most of the 1,500,000 acres between R = 20 and R = 50 is land that should not be devoted to urban land uses.

Preventing urban scatteration and thus dysfunctional human settlement patterns in this area is critical if citizens are to achieve functional, sustainable places to live, work and play. All of the 1,500,000 acres outside the Clear Edges around the components of the Balanced But Disaggregated Communities in the Countryside needs to be “conserved” in order to:

1) Provide a market to evolve a viable Urbanside inside the Clear Edge around the National Capital Subregion’s Core, and

2) Provide the context for viable components of Countryside throughout the Washington-Baltimore New Urban Region.

We noted in the original post on the 400,000 Acre Foolishness (24 April 2006) that “preserved / conserved acres can:

1) Raise the speculative value of adjacent land for urban use (“no one can build next to your five acre lot”),

2) Cause urban development to leapfrog to unprotected land in even more dysfunctional locations and,

3) Waste the public investment that has already been made to serve urban land uses on the newly “conserved” land.”

At this point the parcels that are candidates for “conservation” are awash in a vast area that is a checkerboard of interests and expectations. There are 1,500,000 acres inside R = 50 in Virginia alone. There are up to 10,000,000 acres in Virginia, West Virginia, Maryland and Pennsylvania around the Washington-Baltimore New Urban Region. There are at least 14,000,000 acres Commonwealth-wide in Virginia outside the three New Urban Regions and the other urban enclaves where over 85 percent of the population resides.

The Virginia Outdoors Foundation (VOF) uses municipal “comprehensive” plans to determine the appropriateness of parcels for conservation. Other groups, especially land trusts set up to preserve a specific parcel or interest, are said not to follow such criteria. The municipal “comprehensive” plan may not be a useful guide. See “The Role of Municipal Planning in Creating Dysfunctional Human Settlement Patterns” at db4.dev.baconsrebellion.com

Note that every one of the problems listed in the Inside the Clear Edge review above was done in conformance with a municipal comprehensive plan – although in some cases the “comprehensive” plans were amended to “conform” after the political decision was made. VOF leadership is aware of the issues outlined here and are doing as much as they can without broader public understanding and therefore political support.

Are there threshold criteria that can be applied? Of course.

New conserved land should be next to existing protected land or be of a scale and in a location that the land can become the anchor for a major new agglomeration of conserved land. It is, however, the holes in the donut near these preserved places where the greatest negative impact from raising the value for scattered urban land use comes home to roost. Our experience as a member of the Maryland Environmental Trust (MDET plays the role of the Virginia Outdoors Foundation in the Commonwealth) suggests that only when the three major issues noted in our original post (and rephrased below) are addressed can sound and rational principles and criteria be articulated.

Major Countryside resources such as the Appalachian Trail or a major viewshed can be anchors of land conservation efforts. Our experience as the Vice Chair for Stewardship of the Maryland chapter of the Nature Conservancy when the chapter Board was faced with finding a context for 11 “ecological gems” that had been donated to the Conservancy over the prior 30 years sharpened our appreciation for the problems encountered.

In this discussion we leave aside the entire issue of who benefits from actions to conserve land and who pays the ultimate costs. See Jim Bacon’s 24 April post on purchase of development rights and easements.

A recent study by Resources for the Future (RRF) titled “The Value of Open Space: Evidence From Studies of Nonmarket Benefits” documents how far the “state-of-the-art” is from establishing a fair value for “open space.”

The first paragraph of the Executive Summary of the RRF report includes this sentence. “And in rapidly growing urban and suburban area, any preserved land can offer relief from congestion and other negative effects of development.” That sort of misinformation is the cause of the Huntley Meadows Park problem.

Conservation of land a few acres here and a few acres there in the 1,500,000 acres within R=50, or within the 14,000,000 acres of land Commonwealth-wide that need protection will not solve any known problem until there is recognition of:

1) The scale and scope of the problem and the difference between and the role of “Openspace” and “Countryside”

2) The reality that there is already far more land committed to urban land use than will be needed in the foreseeable future

3) The need to establish a fair and equitable ways to transition to functional human settlement patterns

A first step is to develop a “Wright Plan” for Virginia that provides a rational basis for defining Clear Edges for the urban development in the New Urban Regions and the Urban Support Regions of the Commonwealth. This will help citizens understand the difference between Openspace and Countryside.

It is not just “open space.” Conserving 400,000 acres of “open space” could do more harm than good if it is scattered in THE WRONG LOCATIONS.

Note:

The entire first paragraph of the Conclusion in the RRF study noted above is a dictionary of error with respect to understanding human settlement patterns. It will be the subject of further review in our forthcoming report on “Use and Management of Land.” Also see our three columns on Vocabulary starting with “The Foundation of Babble” 28 November 2005.

EMR

State senators are sticking by their proposal to impose a 6-cent-per-gallon surcharge on gasoline companies, which, according to the Washington Post, “they characterized as a populist effort to make big oil corporations share the cost of improving state roads and transit systems.”

Gas companies “don’t mind sticking it to me and sticking it to every person in Virginia when we come up to that pump, and I don’t mind repaying the favor,” said Sen. R. Edward Houck (D-Spotsylvania). Majority Leader Walter A. Stosch (R-Henrico) said the tax is aimed directly at “profiteering” by the gasoline giants.

I would like to ask Sen. Houck what evidence he has that oil companies are “sticking it to him,” and I would ask Sen. Stosch what, exactly, does he mean by “profiteering”? Do they base their charges upon anything more than a casual observation of rising prices at the gas pump? What proof do they have that gasoline retailers — BP, Hess, Exxon, Shell, Marathon, Amoco, Chevron, Texaco and too many convenience stores to count — are circumventing the normal workings of a free market, in which prices fluctuate according to supply and demand? If they have evidence, they have not presented it.

One of two things would come of this legislation. First possibility: The oil companies pass on the tax to consumers, and the consumers get hosed. Second possibility: The oil companies cannot pass on the tax to consumers, their Virginia operations become less profitable, they are more reluctant to expand gasoline distribution and retailing capacity in Virginia in the face of ever-escalating demand… and the consumers get hosed.