Archive for August 25, 2008

What the Olympics teach us about urban health

August 25, 2008 / Wendy Waters / 2 comments

During the 1996 Atlanta Olympic Games, incidents of hospitalization for asthma declined by 41% according to an article in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

The air quality in Beijing over the past two weeks has apparently been better than it has in decades.  One day had an index reading of 12, down from an all time high in December of last year of 500 (according to this report on Price Tags)

In Atlanta, the city dramatically curtailed private automobile use.  In Beijing both private automobiles and manufacturing were shut down in order to improve the air quality.

What all this suggests to me is that irrespective of concerns about global warming, our urbanizing planet needs to cut pollution now simply to look after the health of its citizens.  Or, if you want to think about the economy, consider the lost productivity from people unable to breathe.

Category: catastrophe management, ecological issues /

Is Costco really a threat to Manhattan?

August 24, 2008 / Wendy Waters / 5 comments

Or is Manhattan more of a threat to Costco?

For years the discount warehouse retailer Costco has been looking for a site in Manhattan. According to the New York Sun, they may have found one. But there is vocal opposition from residents, politicians and even some unions.

Much of the rationale behind opposing it seems to be that a Costco-type store won’t work: That Manhattan doesn’t offer the types of shoppers or the automotive access that Costco requires. This may be true, but shouldn’t that be Costco’s problem? Presumably, they’ve done their research and think there is a way to survive.

Let’s look at a few of the other reasons why some New Yorkers are opposed to Costco:

1. That it may challenge local family-owned businesses supported by the walkable nature of most neighbourhoods. I have a hard time believing that the opening of one Costco will transform the way New Yorkers live and shop.  This argument doesn’t work for me:

  • People choose Manhattan because of the densely packed variety of amenities that you can walk to.
  •  If you live in such a neighbourhood, getting in a car to go to Costco is inconvenient. You’ll only go (if you are a Costco shopper) every month or two to stock up on a few bulky things like toilet paper, paper towels or diapers.
  • Most people in Manhattan live in small apartments.  A lack of much home storage space means that buying in bulk is not practical. It’s easier to shop daily or every few days and leave the storage of most food and other products to your local small supermarket rather than finding space in your own 900 s.f. apartment that you share with 3 other people.
  • Perhaps Costco’s target market is businesses stocking free snacks for kitchens in the office towers rather than people buying personal items?

2. Costco will generate more traffic and make the area even more congested and slow. Again, this may be true but Costco must believe that its shoppers will come at off-peak times or would be driving by anyway.  If it’s that hard to shop there, no one will do it.

As some North American cities welcome more people and higher densities into certain areas, more “big box” retailers like Costco will attempt to enter these captive markets.  Some will face considerable opposition; others will be welcomed or enter more quietly.  I predict, all will need to adapt their styles and even philosophies in order to thrive.

Category: resident attitudes, Uncategorized, urban lifestyles, urban retail trends /

Telecommuting is so ex-urban

August 16, 2008 / Wendy Waters / 6 comments

Sure, working from home occasionally can offer a productivity boost. Getting away from the phone and co-workers is sometimes necessary to accomplish large, solitary projects or catch up on a dozen loose ends.

But everyone working from home, connecting via the internet and VOIP or video conference to each other is not going to happen.  As suburbanization and then ex-urbanization became the trend, there were workplace gurus who insisted that the office building would soon be a dinosaur.  This hasn’t happened.  Office space is more expensive than ever in most cities and globally.

In the modern economy, far too much productive economic activity requires collaboration. Companies ranging from banks to software companies, law firms and financial advisory companies need bright people working together. Many brains thinking about an issue differently — but together — solve problems faster and innovate better than individuals working alone.

That’s one reason why cities are spikes of economic activity, to use a Richard Florida term. That’s why industries cluster together — they take advantage of many brains thinking about interconnected subjects.

Few companies that require creativity — that earn their revenue or stock value from the collective brain power of their people — can afford to have them working in silos at home.  Working independently, thousands of wheels will be continually reinvented, and won’t get around to creating an automobile.

But, many people when given a choice do not telecommute very often. I can’t find the source right now, but I recall a recent UK study in which only about 10% of people who could do so telecommuted regularly, and most of them only did so only 1 or 2 days per week.
There are a variety of reasons why people don’t telecommute most of the time.

  • Some don’t want to be forgotten about at the office. The best projects may go to people who are physically there when they are dreamed up.
  • Most people enjoy being part of a group — some would argue that it’s human nature to want to belong and the workplace provides an avenue for that expression. For many, going to work has become especially important given how many more years people are now single and often living alone. People all crowd into expensive “superstar” cities in order to be around other people (why else would you pay the rent, tolerate the traffic, and accept the noise? it comes with great creative and inspirational benefits.
  • Collaborating with smart co-workers to solve complex problems can be exhilarating.

In some cases today, people don’t have the room at home to telecommute much. For families living in urban spaces rather than suburban ones, there isn’t a separate “study”.

For decades, people have been predicting the end of the office building and the end of downtowns. The suburbanization trend lead many to dream of living in the mountains or by the beach or lake and away from a city altogether. Some did this in the ex-urbs. Why can’t I just telecommute rather than drive was the plea.

Noting that occasional telecommuting was highly productive, many blamed inflexible employers for chaining them to their desks. However, as employers have brought in increasingly flexible work policies at many companies, regular telecommuting has not caught on. Most of the time, people want to be near people to stay in the know, hear the latest industry news, and collaborate.

Working from the ex-urban mansion is not efficient for participating in a collaborative world.

Category: "back to the center", clusters, economic development, resident attitudes, sprawl, urban lifestyles /

US “citistates” and the election

August 12, 2008 / Wendy Waters / One comment

During the presidential primaries, few candidates spoke much about urban issues. No one seemed to acknowledge how reliant the US economy is on its cities. Although a few blogs attempted to bark about this, the mainstream media and therefore most American voters largely ignored this omission.

The Brookings Institution is hoping to raise the profile of metropolitan areas in this election year. According to Peter Harkness at Governing Magazine:

Now, as the general election contest gets under way, the Brookings Institution’s Metropolitan Policy Program has embarked on an ambitious and clearly well-funded bid to change the way we look at the country and its economy, with the hope of influencing the debate during the campaign and then policy making by the new administration and Congress.

The message goes like this: The top 100 metropolitan areas cover only 12 percent of the national land mass but are home to about two-thirds of its population and its jobs — and even larger shares of “innovative activity”: 78 percent of its patents, 75 percent of those with graduate degrees, 79 percent of air cargo, 94 percent of venture capital funding, and so on. In all, they generate three-quarters of the gross domestic product.

Add in more than 200 other smaller metro areas, and we truly are looking at a metropolitan nation. Peirce puts it in context: “As economic actors, major U.S. citistates compete in size with major world nations. In gross product, the New York region ranks 13th among the world’s top economies, just ahead of Australia, Argentina and Russia. The Los Angeles citistate is bigger than Korea, Chicago greater than Taiwan or Switzerland.” And so, he says, citistates are how “our world is now organizing itself” away from an old way of thinking (federal, state, local) to a new way: global, regional and neighborhood.

…

Brookings concludes, we are ignoring the economic engines that give us the prosperity we now enjoy: our metro areas.

Harkness notes that currently too many politicians and policy developers in Washington DC do not seem to grasp how important America’s urban spaces are to it’s economic present, not to mention future.

Some challenges are state and local as much as national responsibilities.  K-12 education is the prime example.  Without offering every child a chance to gain a good educational start in life, the US and its cities place a significant drag on the country’s ability to compete in the future with all the developing and developed countries world wide that are able to offer this to young citizens.

Looking at education as a metropolitan or “citistate” issue is important, as is noting the infrastructure deficit along with the tendency for federal politics to support automotive transport and not transit (or walkability.)

Harkness is rightly skeptical about how much success they will have.  However, we can only hope the Brookings Institution’s efforts will put urban issues — broadly defined — on the national and state level agendas. The American economic recovery and national future depends upon it.

If they fail, my social science fiction from last year may not be so far fetched.

Category: national politics, resident attitudes, urban history /

Back to the future

August 10, 2008 / Wendy Waters / 3 comments

In the Philadelphia area (link via Planetizen), city officials representing older neighbourhoods and inner ring, older suburbs are now working together to promote these communities as great alternatives to far flung, distant suburbs:

They are places that have been long suffering as homebuyers the past few decades have opted for more spacious homes on large lots in new subdivisions on the suburban fringe….

All the Classic Towns – the boroughs of Ambler, Bristol, Collingswood, Doylestown, Haddon Heights, Lansdowne, Media, Riverton and West Chester, along with Philadelphia’s Manayunk and Overbrook Farms neighborhoods – have made significant comeback strides with a variety of revitalization efforts….

Organizers already have worked up a sales pitch that plays off the budget-busting gas situation: If you live in these walkable mixed-use communities with convenient access to public transit, you probably can get rid of at least one car in your driveway.

While planners have been advocating for years a return to older communities as a way to curb suburban sprawl, Seymour said, “I think now with gas prices, the market is finally catching up to those policy objectives.”

And this is happening not just in Philadelphia. Communities around North America with rich and sometimes forgotten histories are now seeking to restore and revitalize boarded up or otherwise dilapidated former-downtowns or industrial areas. Many are creating higher density housing in the process, such as loft apartments in restored older brick warehouses.

Many older neighborhoods in the core cities and suburbs of North America were built around transit 100 years ago. In Vancouver Gordon Price famously calls them the “street car neighbourhoods.” Where the street cars stopped, family-owned retail thrived. Many North American cities have similar histories. As the automobile took over, and suburbanization thrived, street cars disappeared and street car communities often fell on hard times, even becoming rough “inner city” spaces.

But the old spaces are often still there and offer an authenticity as well as an opportunity to return to higher density and walkable living. Apartments can be built above retail if they are not already there from 100 years ago. Neighboring single family housing is often on much smaller lots than in a more recently laid out suburb. This allows people craving even a small backyard along with walkability and transit accessibility the possibility of finding that (see the recent blogosphere discussion on this between Avent, Atrios, and McArdle.)

As in Metro Philadelphia, it may be important for certain civic leaders to promote what these communities offer to families and individuals struggling to deal with the challenges facing the automobile-based sprawl model as gasoline becomes less affordable.

Category: "back to the center", communities, resident attitudes, residential development, revitalization, urban history /

From Suburb to Satellite City

August 7, 2008 / Wendy Waters / 2 comments

Writing in the Globe and Mail, John Bently Mays insists that some suburbs are thriving:

If pundits are going to discuss the future of North American suburbs — and this is surely an excellent time to do so — then they should have in mind a clear picture of the very dynamic phenomenon they are talking about. If the upmarket suburbs of Sacramento are lapsing into desolation, the exurban communities around Toronto appear to be doing everything but.

Although Mays was challenging something Richard Florida wrote about the increased demand for urban core living, Florida responded by clarifying his message:

I do not think we are seeing a decline of the suburbs. What is happening is a move back toward the core by certain affluent groups for whom time, costs, and location matter. This is what Alan Enerhalt calls the “demographic inversion.” … This demographic inversion is but a part – an important part, but just a part – of a much bigger spatial shift, I call the great intensification.

What we’re also seeing is certain suburbs and even some exurbs reviving or creating a more urban core. Municipalities with their own historical districts are seeing demand from residents to live and/or work in these authentic, inspiring places.

While most suburbs by definition export people to jobs in the urban core, some are doing well at generating employment opportunities.  Corporations and governments have generated jobs in the suburbs, and not just back office, service industry positions (although these have been common).  In addition, residents of many suburbs — including immigrants in places like Toronto and Vancouver — have over time been creating their own businesses and have supported others as consumers or workers.

Assuming fuel prices remain high, and individuals continue to value time more than in the past, then some suburbs whether close to urban cores or more distant may evolve into self-contained satellite cities with weaker links to the region’s major metro area.

Some who currently commute will find a similar job closer to home.  Others will move to the evolving satellite city to be closer to their work.  And some will keep their urban core jobs, but be able to tele-commute one or two days per week, or perhaps work in a local branch office occasionally.  All of this will contribute to creating a more self-contained place — not just a space in which to live — where people will be able to reach jobs, schools and amenities on food, bicycle, bus or in less than a 10 minute drive. This will keep them supporting local businesses as well interacting more in their community, building social cohesion, which many suburban spaces lack.

Category: communities, economic development, revitalization, satellite cities, sprawl, Uncategorized, urban history /