Archive for October 16, 2007

Infrastructure and human capital needed

October 16, 2007 / Wendy Waters / No comments

CEOs for cities has a post this week entitled “Can Bass Pro Shops Really Save Troubled Cities.” In it, the author challenges the planners of Buffalo for inviting a large Bass Pro Shop to open on the waterfront as part of a revitalization scheme, citing Ed Glaeser:

Harvard economist Ed Glaeser questioned the strategy. “It’s crazy to think you can solve the problems of declining cities by building lots of infrastructure,” he told the New York Times. “While all of the colder, older cities in America looked troubled 30 years ago, the turnaround of some cities has been sharply linked to high levels of human capital, or a higher share of the population having college degrees….

To a point, I agree: if a city struggles to attract and retain talented people, then focusing only on infrastructure and making nice waterfronts will not help much. But if a city does have some creative and knowledge clusters — but needs more — then attention to infrastructure and ambiance is crucial.

Without quality infrastructure — whether parks, roads, utilities or shopping and entertainment — cities will struggle to attract and retain talented people. In the 21st century, the economic development of cities requires efforts to create home grown talent through good education and inspiration. But infrastructure is equally necessary for the city to function — and that is cultural infrastructure (and shopping is part of our culture) as well as transportation arteries.

While I’m not sure a Bass Pro Shop is the key, as is being tried in Buffalo, creating lively bustling retail districts is important.

Category: attracting talent, city hall, economic development, planning policy, public spaces, revitalization, urban retail trends /

The health of cities (Blog Action Day post)

October 15, 2007 / Wendy Waters / 7 comments

On the Where Blog, I just learned about Blog Action Day — where bloggers are posting about the environment today, October 15 2007. I thought I’d re-state an argument that I’ve previously made.

First, the urban atmosphere is damaging our health now, and has been for decades or centuries. At yet it has taken a worry about global warming to bring real widespread efforts to change urban habits. From March 2007:

Pollution that some scientists blame for global warming also causes elevated rates of cancer as well as asthma and other breathing difficulties. Eye irritation, throat soreness and general malaise also comes from pollution — all of this impacts the quality of urban life.

Therefore we need to reduce pollution — now. Especially as the planet becomes more urban.

Want science? As reported in the Journal of American Medical Society, during the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta, the city forced local residents to use transit and this greatly reduced the number of polluting vehicles on the roads. Hospitalizations for breathing difficulties declined 41% during the Olympics.

Not only do we need to reduce pollution, but we need to help the ecology of cities. Planting more trees helps to clean the air for our breathing and makes a city more livable. Whether they help with global warming or not, we should be doing this.

What I hope is that the current belief in global warming will convince more people to make choices to reduce pollution and thereby improve the quality of life in cities. Politicians might enact new policies to increase density and transit use; businesses might encourage employees to use transit, car pool, telecommute occasionally; individuals might find ways to reduce automobile use and live in smaller houses (that don’t require so much energy to heat and cool).

Such changes will improve the quality of life for cities and citizens.

And benefits for the planet will be a welcome side-effect.

Category: ecological issues, urban lifestyles /

Airports and transit

October 15, 2007 / Wendy Waters / 2 comments

Airports are public infrastructure.  Even if run by private organizations, they are typically on government owned land.  Their purpose is to facilitate the flow of people and goods to and from a city.  Thus, they are similar to roads as well as transit systems.

Baffling is how many airports — particularly in North America — are poorly served by public transit.  You need to use a private car or taxi to reach most airports — or an expensive shuttle service.

For many business people and tourists hauling luggage, a taxi is the easiest option.   Those traveling for work can “expense” the cost.  Many tourists simply consider it part of the upfront costs of reaching a destination along with the airfare.  Many of these people will still use shuttles and taxis even if public transit exists.

But airports are more than conduits that allow business people and tourists to travel — they are work places.  Thousands
of people work at the major airports of big cities.  Many have no choice but to drive to work.  Some can take transit if they work day shifts and don’t mind long waits.   But often, transit doesn’t serve airport destinations easily.

The Greater Toronto Airport Authority is now appealing for better transit to serve it’s employees.   As Toby Lennox, VP of Public Affairs for Pearson International Airport recently stated to the Toronto Star newspaper:

“We do not have good enough TTC access for employees.”

“As Pearson airport will be expanding, we need to draw on new pools of employees.” 

“It is simply not good enough to have every single one of these employees jump into a car.”

The taxi-driver and shuttle lobby is often a contributor.  In some cities the airport serves as the largest source of taxi revenue.  Moreover, the airports themselves make money on parking.  If workers and travellers could get their easily on a metro or frequent bus service, many would use it.

But the airports don’t belong to airport authorities or to taxi companies.  They belong to the citizens whose taxes built it and who elect governments to regulate them.   They need to be connected to the urban transit system.

A final thought: there has been much talk lately about the ecological footprint of air travel.  While this won’t reduce jet fuel consumption, airports could be much more environmentally responsible if everyone — workers and travelers — had the option to use transit.

Category: aerotropolis, ecological issues, transportation, urban technologies /

Olympics and obselete notions

October 12, 2007 / Wendy Waters / 2 comments

Cities and metropolitan regions are fast becoming the hubs of the global economy (or economies) and society (or societies).  More people now live in cities than rural areas, worldwide.  World cultural trends are defined in particular cities, such as New York.  And certain industries and the talented people behind them cluster in particular cities and metropolitan mega regions.

This is the 21st century.  In past centuries, some historians say since the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648, nation-states were the main organizing unit of economies and societies.  This became particularly prevalent in the 20th century when colonialism ended and virtually the entire globe was divided into independent countries.

The Olympics is an example of a 20th century system.  Nations compete athletically.  And only one nation (and city within it) can host the Games.

Does this continue to make sense?  In the 1990s Vancouver and Seattle leaders attempted to launch a joint bid to host the 2008 Summer Games.  The International Olympic Committee said that this was impossible.  Only one country could bid.  In 2006, Vancouver and Seattle representatives again raised the prospect of hosting the Games, this time in 2028.

The IOC would have to change its bylaws to allow this, which is unlikely but I hope happens to make the Olympic movement more reflective of the 21st century.

The organizing groups for the 2028 Vancouver-Seattle bid make good arguments for why two neighboring countries should be able to co-host the games.  Primarily, there is the financial burden.  This could be shared by the United States and Canadian governments, as well as the regional governments in Washington and British Columbia and the city governments of municipalities from Whistler to Olympia down the Highway 99 / I-5 corridor.

Other arguments include boosting the economy of the Pacific North West (or Cascadia) through investments in communications and transportation technology, and putting the region on the world stage as a region.

Indeed, the successful Vancouver bid for the 2010 Olympics was as much celebrated in Washington State and the Seattle area as British Columbia.  Winter athletes from Washington state generally know Whistler and Vancouver well, having competed at events in these places their whole lives, so feel a home-field advantage.  Businesses in Washington saw opportunities to be suppliers to the Games.  And tourism officials view an opportunity to attract more visitors to Washington state attractions.

So, in a way, mega regions already do host the games, even if the IOC won’t acknowledge it.

Many athletes competing at the 2010 Games will be from Washington and Oregon and will have a lot of people cheering for them.  In fact, there could be as many US athletes who grew up within 500 miles of Vancouver as Canadian athletes at the 2010 games.  So, does organizing athletes along national lines continue to make sense?

Maybe in the future mega metro-regions will be the way athletes identify themselves at the Olympics and other major sporting events.  And mega-metro regions that often cross national boundaries will host the Games.

Category: economic development, national politics, transportation /

Public transit — performance versus image

October 11, 2007 / Wendy Waters / No comments

I’ve always been impressed with how easy it is to get around –without a car — in certain world cities. In places like Mexico City, the metro combined with a dizzying network of private micro-bus operators makes it easy to get anywhere. Transit of some sort is going where you want to go, when you want to go there. Because so few people have private cars, there is high passenger demand. In many cities, private owner-operators are able to offer transit service legally and easily. Market forces often work well in matching supply and demand.

For riders, taking transit can be exhilerating as well as efficient.

When I first visited Santiago, Chile in 1993, this was the case. A single-line metro ran through north-south down the middle of the metro area. Feeding it were thousands of pollution-spitting yellow vehicles that looked like post-apocalyptic school buses. They were run by thousands of private operators, competing for passengers and for who could reach bus stops and the metro station first. Horns blaring, un-muffled engines roaring they passed each other repeatedly, cutting each other off whenever possible. (There is a great description here at the blog Chile From Within.)

Although this system got people to work, school, and elsewhere effectively, to most residents and politicians it hardly seemed modern nor environmentally friendly. So a new public transit system was developed, built, and recently implemented.

Known as Transantiago, it has been a disaster, according to most reports. Over the past two years the city has phased in a new system of bus and metro routes. In theory the system sounds brilliant. With one pre-paid multi-fare card, people can ride the buses or metros, transferring between the two for free (or nearly free) with a smart system recognizing that they already paid a fare when they first entered the transit system. New environmentally friendly articulated buses and an expanded metro are significantly reducing pollution.

Great ideas, good technology, but there are some severe problems that never existed before. The commutes for some have jumped from 40 minutes to over two hours. Thousands of people can no longer get where they need to go, including to work. Many have had to change jobs. Indeed according to NPR (via Planetizen) 800 transit users are now suing the city in a class action suit, seeking $38,000 worth of damages each.

Moreover, the multi-fare card failed to work. The new buses also run on new routes, but most transit users were not informed of the route changes nor given enough information to figure out how to reach their destinations under the new system. The new transit system was designed to funnel people toward the metro, however the metro does not appear to have the capacity to handle the increased ridership resulting from fewer people reaching their destination by bus alone.

According to one rider, Alejandro Gonzales:

“When the trains get here, everybody rushes and people hit each other, shoving and pushing,” Gonzales said. “So you get to work all stressed out. You leave all stressed out. I’m just waiting for someone to hit me. I’ll hit them back.”

Certainly, the new Santiago system sounds more modern than the old. A more centrally-planned transit system resembles the typical approach taken in North American cities where a government organization designs routes and either operates transit themselves, or contracts out to only one or two private providers to offer the service.

However, in most North American cities you have to wait a long time for a bus and the metros don’t reach everywhere. Private automobile use allows the system to be highly inefficient — residents accept the fact that transit doesn’t work from many areas of the city. So, in choosing to live there they also know they need a car, or that their bus commute will be lengthy.

Although the old system in Santiago had severe flaws, it ultimately performed. The new one looks better, but does not.

There are some good lessons here: For less automobile-oriented places, a less on may be that the centrally-planned North American style transit system does not work. For North American cities, something to note is that allowing multiple private operators to offer transit when and where people need it seems to work — perhaps opening this level of private enterprise might get more people out of their cars?

Category: city hall, ecological issues, planning policy, sprawl, transportation /

Cities and spiritual needs

October 9, 2007 / Wendy Waters / No comments

Centuries ago, churches, temples, mosques or other spiritual building anchored a city. For example, when the Spaniards founded cities and towns in the new world, they built a large church at the centre (along with a public plaza and a government building). Around the world people traveled to cities near and far in order to worship, as well as potentially to buy or sell in a market.

Today, visiting a religious edifice is not as likely to be the reason people visit or move to a city. Nevertheless, it may be that cities do still fulfill spiritual needs, but ones not attached to organized religion. At least, this is the suggestion in an Economist article from May 2007.

The article offers the hypothesis that cities today offer shrines to other cultural needs or passions that people have — and not all people will be attracted to the same urban places, even if they are attracted to the same city:

  • Shopping — consumer culture — is something that large cities offer in a much more grand style than smaller towns.
  • Special cultural opportunities are also offered in particular cities — such as unique museums (or museum collections), opera houses, and theater.
  • Finally, professional sporting events and venues offer a further “spiritual” option in cities. Based on the ways some sports fans worship their teams and heroes, the religious comparison seems appropriate.

Just as religious shrines used to form part of the city’s central core, today sports complexes, fashion forward retail streets, and cultural opportunities are flourishing downtown. Indeed, city planners today are often advocating building these venues downtown if they are not already there — fulfilling the new spiritual needs of residents.

Category: "back to the center", commercial development, economic development, planning policy, public spaces, urban lifestyles, urban retail trends /

Slow cities

October 8, 2007 / Wendy Waters / One comment

How do you make a city livable? City planners, development specialists and urban residents debate and struggle with this issue — particularly in North America. Meanwhile in Europe, a solution taken from the past is gaining momentum — slow cities.

A great article in Der Spiegel (found via Planetizen) details how the slow city movement works.

“Slow City” advocates argue that small cities should preserve their traditional structures by observing strict rules: cars should be banned from city centers; people should eat only local products and use sustainable energy. In these cities, there’s not much point in looking for a supermarket chain or McDonald’s.

For such a plan to work, citizens have to support it. In a large city, it would be difficult to ban automobiles in the downtown and still have a viable business and retail district — many people simply wouldn’t go there. Indeed, to belong to the official slow city movement in Europe, a city must have fewer than 50,000 residents. Most cities joining the slow city network have histories dating as far back as medieval times and residents are proud of this heritage.

No North American city dates back that far (even those few places with settlements dating to the 15th century or before like Mexico City or Santa Fe, Taos, etc. no longer have the same roads and buildings). Unlike in the European slow cities, downtowns in North American cities (whether large or small) were typically built either for automobiles or at least for a combination of streetcars and horse carriages which required wide roadways.

So could larger North American cities (or larger European cities) learn anything from the slow city movement in terms of livability. I think they could at the neighborhood level. Some neighborhoods have community spirit, and are small enough to continue fostering that camaraderie.

While banning automobiles might be challenging as a 24X7 policy, it might be doable in a busy pedestrian area on weekend afternoons, for example. Encouraging residents to support local family owned businesses can inherently discourage large chains from setting up (if the locals won’t shop there, they don’t last).

Could it work? Are there any “slow neighborhoods” in big cities? If you know of one, please leave a comment.

Category: communities, downtowns, public spaces, urban history, urban lifestyles /

Don’t judge a city by its nation

October 6, 2007 / Wendy Waters / One comment

 Daily we hear doom and gloom stories about the “US housing market” as if there were only one market.  Similarly, the news media, economic pundits, and others express concern about a “slowing American economy”.

Less frequently does anyone look beneath the surface to see if the generalization fits.  For the housing market, it does not.  Moreover, continued escalating real estate prices in certain cities indicate that the economy in some of those places is doing fine.

Take Seattle.  According to a new housing price index by Forbes magazine and Economy.com, prices have increased in the Emerald City for the past six quarters.  Hardly a sign of slow down or recession.   And they forecast continued increases over the next year.   Forbes and Economy.com also predict that Pittsburgh, Columbus and Dallas will see escalating real estate values.

The Forbes/Economy.com forecast index examined the 40 largest US cities based on: “the state of local economies, new construction contracts, foreclosure rates, local credit markets, sales rates, affordability and inventory. ”

In looking at better-performing cities in more detail, the authors note that some strong markets like Seattle and San Francisco have low inventory, which boosts their ranking.  Other cities like Dallas and San Antonio perform well in the index because they did not experience as significant price increases over the past few years, meaning that there is no bubble to burst.

What the Forbes article discussing the index fails to mention is that places like Seattle and Dallas also have strong, dynamic economies based increasingly around the knowledge economy (but also natural resources, which are doing well).

The Creativity Exchange this week did note that a Business Week report on stronger housing markets listed cities that also happened to perform well on Florida’s creativity index or are superstar cities.

It’s easy and even convenient to treat the US as one economy.  But the United States is huge.  California’s GDP alone would make it one of the world’s largest economies.   And each major city has its own economic dynamic that is unique– although tied to the nation and the world’s financial trends.  Housing prices are a reflection and a part of that unique economic and even social-cultural milieu.  You can’t judge a city’s housing market by national statistics.

Category: economic development, real estate /

Shrinking distances and global urban growth

October 4, 2007 / Wendy Waters / No comments

For centuries new communications technologies have been shrinking the distances between people and places. Most recently, the internet combined with easy, inexpensive transportation options allow people from different parts of the world to communicate, to meet, and to share and exchange cultural ideas.

One result: increasing numbers of people are introduced to experiences that reflect everyday life in dynamic world cities.  And, as a result they crave an opportunity to participate in this interactive milieu, encouraging them to relocate to multi-cultural, busy, urban areas.

This is my theory, or assertion.  But here is some historical evidence for it:

In Mexico in the 1930s and 1940s the government vastly expanded rural education programs as well as the country’s road and highway network.  As a result, the youth were introduced to a world vastly different from life in their village.  They became literate (and in the national and global language of Spanish rather than a local indigenous tongue), had access to consumer goods, and could travel to larger cities and towns (and meet people from those places who came to their community).  As a result, when these people grew up, they frequently left their villages for the cities (particularly Mexico City), and some even departed for the United States.  (Source: my doctoral dissertation – not available online).

The combination of education, literacy, and new, inexpensive and easy travel options is much like the phenomena of internet, telephones along with facilitated global travel today.  This exposes people to urban life, and allows them to relocate to urban areas (and often from educational programs they have some skills to work in the city).   Add in English education and literacy around the world and many people are also keen to relocate to places like London and New York (and maybe Toronto, which given 44% of its population is foreign born, can’t be overlooked here).

Put another way, it seems the internet, knowledge economy, instant communications has created contributed to a generation, or sub set of it (a creative class?) — who want that messy, unorganized mixing of global ideas and people that can be found in certain cities.

And major cities and urban living in general is growing rapidly worldwide.

Category: attracting talent, economic development, sprawl, urban history /

Community spirit and crime prevention

October 2, 2007 / Wendy Waters / No comments

“Build community spirit to fight crime”

I found this interesting quote from a municipal official in Barbados (the magic of the internet). He was talking about the role neighborhood watch could play in reversing an escalation in drug trafficking in a particular community. But the notion is intriguing.

Politicians and citizens in most major cities continually debate how best to fight crime, especially escalating problems. More police officers? Longer sentences? “three strikes” laws?

But maybe a key ingredient in stopping crime is community spirit: neighbors knowing each other and caring about one another is important. Once you know your neighbors, it’s easy to spot something unusual happening at their home and call police.

If you could measure community spirit, I wonder if we would see a correlation between rising crime rates and declining tendencies for neighbors to know each other. I think we would (and maybe someone has measured this).

Another question: what if growing up in a community with great spirit and camaraderie decreases the chance that children will drift into a life of drug dealing or stealing?

Perhaps as cities grow and evolve, we need to pay more attention (whether as residents, planners, economic development advocates, etc.) to finding ways to encourage community spirit. And then the crime stats will take care of themselves.

Category: communities, crime reduction, planning policy /
« Older Entries   Recent Entries »