The 28 December WaPo headline on the “land use / transportation” issue in Virginia reads:
“Va House Puts Onus on Counties for Road Crisis.”
After 50 years of negligent failure to provide the constitutionally required framework to preserve the health, safety and welfare of the Commonwealth’s citizens, some members of the General Assembly want to cover their tracks by giving the elected and appointed leadership of municipal and County governments a Winter Solstice Holiday lump of coal.
The only thing sillier than this “solution” to the mobility and access crisis is that WaPo follows up its Page One story with an editorial suggesting that what is needed to solve the is more money. Further WaPo says that some of the General Assembly’s Elephant Clan members are villains for withholding the money. (“The Snooker Strategy: Don’t be fooled: Virginia Republicans are the ones starving the state’s transportation network.”)
First:
Let us give all the credit that is due to the drafters of the current House package for finally acknowledging that there is, after all, a relationship between land use and transportation.
Welcome to the party! You are about fifty years late and, sadly, the cake is gone.
During the period from 1958 to 1967 such ideas to relate transport systems and land use pattern travel demand were part of the official strategy for the evolution of the National Capital Subregion’s human settlement patterns. Action on this issue was needed then. Modest proposals would have helped 50 years ago. Now Fundamental Change is necessary.
Second:
The crisis is an “access and mobility crisis,” not a “roads crisis.” While the “leadership” dithers, the “access and mobility crisis” is morphing into “an economic prosperity / social stability / environmental sustainability crisis.”
Third:
All the “Better late than never” and “This is a first step” rhetoric just excuses past action / inaction and encourages further delay in a general recognition that Fundamental Change in governance structure and Fundamental Change in settlement patterns is a prerequisite to prosperity, stability and sustainability in the Commonwealth and in the US of A.
Beating on the electeds and the appointeds in municipalities and Counties in 2007 is a useless exercise which will not even achieve the “hidden” agenda of putting off any action on reals solutions until after the Fall 2007 elections.
Why is beating on the municipal and County “leadership” a counterproductive idea?
For starters, the mobility and access crisis is a New Urban Region-scale and in some cases a subregional-scale problem, not a municipal / County one. Any effective legislation must include a new, elected subregional and regional governance structure. See “The Shape of Richmond’s Future” at db4.dev.baconsrebellion.com for a step by step sketch of how to start the process.
Using the northern part of Virginia as a point of reference, even if beating on Loudoun and Prince William County has an impact it would only induce these jurisdictions to work harder to displace the location of change and growth. The changes in settlement patterns that should evolve mainly inside R=20 and totally inside R=30 will be forced out beyond R=40.
That means more scattered urban land uses in Clarke, Fauquier, Warren, Rappahannock, Page, Culpeper, Madison, Stafford, Spotsylvania, Caroline, Orange, and – you get the idea. At S/PI we have no problem with new urban development in these places or in the Shenandoah so long as all new urban development evolves into new Balanced (Alpha) Communities whether inside the Clear Edge around New Urban Region Cores or in Balanced (but disaggregated) Communities in the Countryside.
If the General Assembly wants to beat on council members and supervisors, they should start with Arlington County which covers most of the territory of two Beta Communities in the Core of the National Capital Subregion. These Beta Communities are not Balanced (Alpha) Communities because they have a gross imbalance of jobs over housing, services, recreation and amenity.
If the General Assembly really wants to address the problem of dysfunctional human settlement patterns which underlies the mobility and access crisis in the northern part of Virginia, they need to look to Fairfax County. [Similar locational dysfunction can be found in the other two New Urban Regions that fall (all or in part) in the Commonwealth.]
Fairfax County occupies most of the R=6 to R=20 Radius Band in the Virginia portion of the National Capital Subregion. Fairfax County covers part or all of 10 Beta Communities. If the projected 2020 population of Fairfax County were distributed in Balanced (Alpha) Communities there would be 100,000 plus acres of open space in the County.
Further the pattern and density of land use in these Alpha Communities would be exactly what the market demonstrates throughout the First World (including the market in the Commonwealth and in Fairfax County) to be the places which are the most desirable to live, work and play for the full spectrum of citizens.
The reasons why the “the American Dream” / “suburban” landscape is in fact the cumulative American Nightmare is the subject of The Shape of the Future and the forthcoming book TRILO-G. The market documents that only a small percentage of citizens really prefer this settlement pattern if they have a choice. It is also clear that “suburban patterns” (what Jim Bacons calls the home of the Pod People) it would not exist if those who benefit from these patterns were required to pay the full cost of their location decisions.
There was a strategy for creating a sustainable, efficient, functional settlement pattern in the National Capital Subregion in the late 50s and it was still an easily obtainable option in the mid-60s. Functional settlement patterns are still the only viable option for the future but it will cost $ billions more to retrofit human habitation now than it would have cost to do it right in the first place.
Instead of preserving 100,000 acres plus of openspace, Fairfax County has created:
Two large preserves of subsidized, 5 / 10 / 20 acre, pseudo “rural” life-style residential areas,
Vast areas of dysfunctionally scattered urban land uses,
And no Balanced (Alpha) Communities.
Had Arlington and Fairfax created Balanced (Alpha) Communities from 1955 to 2005 there would have been little need for Loudoun and Prince William to approve any “subdivisions.”
These jurisdictions could have focused on helping the private sector evolve six Balanced Communities between R=20 (about the Fairfax County border) and R=30. These new places would have also been great places to live, work and play (aka, Balanced (Alpha) Communities).
The data to support these settlement pattern distributions can be found in “Five Critical Realities That Shape the Future,” a Backgrounder at db4.dev.baconsrebellion.com.
Why has the settlement pattern that has evolved over the past 50 years been the antithesis of what was needed and desired if the long-term collective self-interest citizens were understood?
Functional human settlement patterns help everyone in the long term from the perspective of economic prosperity, social stability and environmental sustainability.
Dysfunctional human settlement patterns make a few very rich in the short term and it also causes a large number to fantasize that they will get richer at some point if the current trends continue.
From a broader perspective, very few make small profits from conservation, a great many make a lot of money from consumption and over-consumption.
In a society with short term economic profit in the driver’s seat, it is clear what settlement pattern will evolve without aggressive, effective citizen participation in governance. It is also clear why conservation loses out to over-consumption.
The current political process runs on political contributions. Those who make profit from dysfunction human settlement patterns make sure that politics, parties, governance and conservation does not get in the way of their profit personal and corporate motives.
The best use citizens can make of the current “land use / transportation debate” and of the discussion of the mobility and access issue is to point out the moral and ideological bankruptcy of the current proposals and as, we suggest in our recent columns and Backgrounder, vote all incumbents in both parties out of office come November.
That is the only language that they understand.
EMR
