Archive for development conflicts

Rapid transit and democracy

November 20, 2007 / Wendy Waters / 5 comments

As Winston Churchill said, “Democracy is the worst system in the world, save all the others.” However, he wasn’t trying to get a new metro system built.

As many US cities may be proving, there can be too much of a good thing — voters keep vetoing bills to build or expand transit systems and roads. As a result cities and their economies are becoming stifled by congestion and pollution with no solutions in sight.

Seattle and Milwaukee are two recent nay-saying regions. Some Los Angelinos are also fighting a light rail system on the basis that people might get hit by trains (whereas apparently the existing vehicular traffic is not seen as a threat).

One problem, of course, is no one wants to vote for new taxes. Another problem is that many of these bills contain a variety of projects – transit and road construction packaged together — such that it’s easy to find a reason to vote no.

In Vancouver, by contrast, elected politicians made a decision to build a new metro line; they claim sufficient funds exist (so lets hope they’re right), and construction is now half done. One could argue this is undemocratic because citizens didn’t get to vote on it. On the other hand, a metro line is being built that the city desperately needs. Now that the other two lines exist, few people argue that they are a bad thing.

In Toronto, new subway lines are under construction, and again, it was the elected politicians who made the decision and found the money. It should be noted that in both cities, significant federal government funding is helping the projects to proceed.

Many people in Toronto and Vancouver continue to protest the transit expansions currently underway — whether because they dislike the destinations (feeling other routes should have come first) or the specific route and locations of stations or the construction mess and mayhem.

But perhaps the only thing worse than not having much of a say, is giving the electorate a direct say. If that happened, Toronto and Vancouver metro areas might not be building the transit infrastructure required to support growing populations.

Category: development conflicts, national politics, planning policy, resident attitudes, sprawl, transportation /

Do schools and condos mix?

November 15, 2007 / Wendy Waters / One comment

As more families move to dense urban areas in places like New York, Toronto or Vancouver, the question of fitting schools into an already dense urban landscape emerges.   The traditional and suburban model of a large one-story building surrounded by proprietary sports fields won’t work.

As reported in the NY Times this week (pointer Planetizen), a school in New York city launched an innovative plan to pay for a new school through building 18 storeys of luxury condominiums on top of the eight-storey school.  Many are opposed to the project for various reasons.

While there might be legitimate reasons to deny this specific project (and I don’t know the neighborhood issues involved), the overall concept is one I expect we’ll see with increasing frequency for several reasons:

1. It allows private organizations to afford to build or expand a school (as in the NY case above).

2. The only way to make downtown living family friendly is to offer more space in schools — whether private or public.  And the only affordable way for a city school board (or private school operator) to acquire land (or space for a school) is to partner with a developer who would be asked to give up the school space in return for other concessions such as a taller tower or another form of higher density.

In Vancouver there is a pending university-and-condo development.  Why not an elementary or high school?

Category: development conflicts, downtowns, real estate, residential development, urban families /

New lens on New York (Warhol Economy Reviewed)

November 14, 2007 / Wendy Waters / 6 comments

Elizabeth Currid, The Warhol Economy: How Fashion, Art and Music Drive New York City (Princeton University Press, 2007). See also the earlier post, “Top Three Reasons to Read the Warhol Economy.”

Elizabeth Currid seeks to turn our assumptions about New York‘s economy upside down. Most people assume that New York‘s economic core and global pull comes from its financial core — from Wall Street. Currid argues that its true global importance comes from its artistic and creative cluster — artists, musicians, fashion designers and writers and the activities that surround them. An assistant professor of urban planning, Currid also wants to make planners recognize the importance of the cultural economy as well as show how this cluster is intricately intertwined within the city — almost any policy or action that affects New York, affects the culture cluster.

The main evidence for the cultural economy’s importance to New York‘s economy is in chapter three. Until then, I was skeptical of her assertions that the arts community mattered that much — (a better organizational flow for the book might have been to have made this the first chapter). Using a methodology called location quotient, Currid illustrates that arts and culture workers and the media sector are more concentrated in New York than employees of any other industry when compared to other cities. Among the other evidence Currid cites, she found that New York has been steadily losing its share of US corporate head offices, from holding 31% in 1955, today the entire metro region (which includes parts of New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Connecticut) only holds 14%.

Currid provides a focused lens into how the arts and culture community is intricately intertwined with New York‘s history as well as its present. In chapter one she illustrates how, during the late 1960s though early 1980s, when New York’s economy was struggling and crime was high, the arts flourished. Artists, musicians and related creative types found cheap housing and inexpensive studio space in particular neighborhoods like SoHo. Inexpensive rent also allowed night clubs to flourish in these areas. Since that time, rents have gradually increased, pushing out artists as well as their haunts (the closing of CBGB being the most notable).

The dense concentration of artistic types allowed them to meet, socialize, and cross pollinate ideas as well as promote each other’s works. Currid has many great stories about how well known artists and musicians got their breaks. Clap Your Hands and Say Yeah was a local indie band until David Bowie and Talking Heads’ David Byrne heard a buzz on the street, went to a show, loved the music, and started telling their friends. Soon Clap Your Hands had a record deal and a tour. Madonna became known, in part, through dating a famous (or infamous) New York graffiti artist. The artistic scene in New York allows this to happen.

The numerous formal and informal — and even messy — interactions that connect the people and companies within a cluster come alive under Currid’s direction. Currid offers a detailed, thorough account of how a cluster works at the micro level where people cross over related industries (graffiti artist and fashion designer, for example), cross-pollinate ideas, and work through word of mouth. Artists, musicians, fashion designers, and their media supporters and critics run in the same social circles, attending the same gallery openings or indie band concerts, and frequenting the same night clubs (like the famous CBGB). People and their ideas cross-pollinate in the social, informal milieu.  A cool part of the book is how Currid herself became part of her subject – the arts network — attending gala gallery openings and exclusive parties, talking to people who then introduced her to others. It really is all about “who you know.”

While she briefly acknowledges the social informal networks in other clusters, Currid downplays its importance outside the culture cluster. However, you can replace the gallery openings in Currid’s treatment with a golf course or the box suite at a hockey or football game and the process is remarkably similar. Because of the details, students interested in clusters generally should be able to glean some good insights and develop new theories into how they work.

The artistic and creative economy evolved organically in New York. The density of artists allowed them to support and inform each others work – and the density attracted more creative people. But how do you preserve the physical milieu in which the arts culture thrives — the night clubs, cheap artists studios and housing, galleries, etc. — in light of gentrification forces? (Assuming that you can stop or profoundly shape urban evolution and organic change, which Currid does seem to assume).

In her final chapter, Currid offers advice to public policy makers and urban planners. While I commend her for offering ideas to this challenging issue, I found some of Currid’s suggestions problematic or contradictory. On the one hand, Currid illustrates how the artistic cluster evolved and thrived when more chaos reigned in the 1970s and 1980s. Government wasn’t doing much; the city was almost being let go. But later she calls for government intervention.

One solution she suggests is subsidized artist housing. But she also mentioned this exists now, and bankers, lawyers etc. end up living in it. She suggests finding a way to stop “non artists” from using it. Somehow I don’t think most American people — especially the free thinking creative types portrayed in the book — would accept the level of surveillance on their lives that would be required to make such a policy work.

Something notably absent from Currid’s otherwise thorough work was what she believed the impact of Guiliani’s crime-reduction and disorder-reduction policies were on the arts scene. Everywhere in the book she connects the disorder to creativity, and the higher crime to lower rents and the flourishing of the artistic scene.

One characteristic of a good book is that it inspires further thought and research – and this book had me thinking about myriad issues on every page. A few bigger questions that come to mind:

  • How do the arts and culture clusters work in other cities?
  • How have other clusters risen and fallen with the economic history and cycles of New York and other cities?
  • She hints that the artistic cluster actually ties in other clusters as well – the accountants who know indie music, the lawyer who attends gallery openings. In other cities is there a cluster that connects accountants, lawyers, doctors etc? maybe a sports cluster for example?
  • Can government policy really stop urban evolution? Or shape it?
  • What is the relationship between crime, disorder, and a flourishing arts scene?

Currid’s evidence leads to a question she doesn’t directly address: if we want a thriving artistic economy, should we be wary of policies to bring more order to a city (such as by reducing graffiti, crimes, drug use, etc. ) That might be a tough one to sell to voters.

Category: book reviews, clusters, commercial development, development conflicts, economic development, planning policy, public spaces, real estate, revitalization, urban history, urban lifestyles /

New McMansions and Historic Neighborhoods

October 1, 2007 / Wendy Waters / 11 comments

Who should decide what size and style of new home is appropriate in an existing neighborhood?

Should the residents have a say? Should the planning department?  Or, should developers be allowed to build according to (their perception of) market demands?

A recent article by Erica Noonan in the Boston Globe raises a myriad of issues surrounding new development in historic communities.  Her article centers around a controversy in the affluent Boston suburb of Wellesley.   There, many residents are mortified by a 5900 square foot house built in an historic neighborhood of 1700-2800 square foot homes.  The developer claims he was responding to market demand (although the house hasn’t sold in 2 years on the market), while some residents claim that it is out of place with the neighborhood’s character and historic charm.  Others in the community see bigger houses as inevitable and necessary for more families to move in.

These and other issues raised in the article are being seen– or will be — in metropolitan areas around North America in the coming years as certain cities grow and from generational change, particularly baby boomer retirement and relocation.

One key issue is who should decide on what new housing is appropriate in an existing neighborhood.  Some in Wellesley are pushing for a “review board of residents” that would have a say regarding any proposed home above a certain floor area ratio (to property size).

This idea has some merits, but also some dangers.  The merits are that developers knowing the community will need to approve the project, will likely need to make a bigger home match the existing character in order to have a chance of approval.   Communities attract people in part because of their authenticity – a tie to a historic past and that includes in the housing architecture.  It’s often worth preserving that character.

The danger emerges from the overall precedent.  NIMBYism and CAVE people could take over residential boards, stopping change, with detrimental consequences for overall metro area planning.  For example, what if the controversy was not over a 5900 square foot mcmansion, but over allowing duplexes or townhomes in an area of single family houses — increasing density.  If metro area planners want to limit sprawl, many communities in the future will have to embrace more dwelling units in the same amount of space.  Citizens review boards could prevent this change, which will have the result of increasing sprawl, and reducing housing affordability in their existing neighborhood.

Balancing new housing development, metropolitan planning demands, and existing resident concerns will be important as cities and communities evolve going forward.

Category: communities, development conflicts, planning policy, real estate, resident attitudes, urban history /

Race, Class and Sprawl

September 12, 2007 / Wendy Waters / 3 comments

Is there a link between race, class and an insistence on urban sprawl in the US? Historically, probably yes. Today, some African American advocates imply that continuing sprawl is required for African Americans to catch up on home ownership rates. I question whether this would actually be best for equalizing the economic playing field.

The National Urban League, an organization dedicated to empowering economic development for African Americans, is concerned about “Smart Growth” policies in many US cities. They worry that the result of restricting sprawl will be higher house prices, which will push home ownership beyond the reach of many African Americans.

If “Smart Growth” means simply reducing the amount of land available and only allowing single family housing on 1/2 acre lots to be built — then yes, they would be right. And, this would be a tragedy for anyone of any ethnic background trying to establish themselves financially through real estate ownership.

Indeed, some cities and suburbs (notably the Washington DC and Boston area) are not introducing new types of housing to coincide with smart growth, according to this article.

Yet, “Smart Growth” need not be so restrictive. If it coincides with introducing a wider variety of housing options, then it could generate more opportunities for home ownership to people with lower incomes (of all races). For example, duplexes, town-homes, and mid-rise condominiums can all ofter less expensive ownership options. They also put more people into a smaller space which makes transit more efficient (which could mean giving up one family car to own a home would not be a hardship). Adding more homes further from jobs makes automobile ownership a requirement — and this is becoming every more costly in terms of purchase price and gasoline costs, taking income away from being used toward housing affordability and life enjoyment.

However, adopting and embracing a multi-faceted, plurality of housing as part of Smart Growth will require a cultural shift in many US cities — by everyone, black, white and all colors of the rainbow.  Update: There was an interesting discussion on anti-townhome biases at Houston Strategies last month.

Currently, often the “life game” is to be able to afford a 4000 square foot home in the suburbs, as a status symbol. And more whites than blacks can afford this. Thus race and class and sprawl are interlinked — and this is probably one less spoken reason why it’s proving more difficult to bring about a changed mindset in US urban areas than other world cities.

Hmmm… would a shift toward embracing smarter housing not only help the environment, but also perhaps the race climate in the US?

Category: communities, development conflicts, diversity, ecological issues, economic development, planning policy, poverty, real estate, resident attitudes, residential development, sprawl /

Pedestrian – Vehicle Conflicts

July 24, 2007 / Wendy Waters / No comments
Many people are attempting to walk more, whether for their own health or to help the environment. Others are sending their children outside to play. City planners are trying to insist that new developments and the refinement of existing communities encourage people to walk, cycle and/or take transit.
The problem is, the North American economy and society is still heavily reliant on the automobile.

Conflicts can result. Collisions and fatal encounters are obviously the most serious resulting problem. For example, 170 pedestrians were killed in New York last year – 48% of all motor vehicle collision deaths (by comparison only 12% of motor vehicle deaths nationally are of pedestrians). In Boston, 3 pedestrians are injured each day in collisions with automobiles.

But conflicts between neighbors and among citizens over automobile use in certain neighborhoods is another source of tension. Those trying to give up automobile use often resent drivers speeding through their neighborhoods — others just want their children to be safer.

In greater Boston, residents concerned about speeding traffic through communities began a campaign a few years ago, placing fluorescent yellow plastic figures along side the roads with the message to slow down. According to Peter DeMarco in the Boston Globe, only some drivers took these warnings seriously. Most found the plastic figures amusing or annoying, but not as reasons to slow down.
Indeed, they have almost become a joke to many drivers:

One by one, the figures met an unkind fate. Pranksters stood them on their
heads, buried their red warning flags in the flower bed, and dumped them in the
garbage. Others were run over by passing cars.

… Cox, of Tir Na Nog Childcare in Natick, said that while drivers definitely noticed the little men, they also kept smashing them to pieces.

Parents, neighbors, schools and daycares all purchased these figures and tried to slow traffic. Didn’t work. Clearly, as many North Americans and city planners attempt to bring more people to the streets, reducing driver-pedestrian conflict is essential.

Passive little yellow plastic men won’t do it.

I expect that in the coming years there will be calls from citizens for higher speeding fines in pedestrian-oriented communities and near schools and daycares. there will also be opposition from drivers and their lobby groups. There will be calls for more speed bumps, traffic lights and other calming measures from residents — and frustration from drivers who will attempt to evade them.

The conflict between automobiles and pedestrians in North America is only in its infancy.

Category: development conflicts, ecological issues, planning policy, resident attitudes, transportation, urban lifestyles /

Losing vibrant, long-standing street markets.

June 20, 2007 / Wendy Waters / 2 comments

When I go travelling to places in Latin America or Asia or even parts of Europe, I’m always drawn to the open air markets. These are places where the chaos and creativity of the city meet — where commerce and multiple cultures collide. Anywhere in the world at these markets you can hear diverse languages being spoken, watch improvised sign language negotiations, and buy amazing things.

These market streets are often a combination of actual stores (with roofs and walls) and temporary street vendors who roll out their wares on blankets or set up their table each day.

Many cities around the world have been redeveloping these street market zones, removing the randomness. Too often, they are being replaced with a more sterile warehouse-like building filled with generic, identical stalls. Sure, the vendors each have their own personality in these new structures, but it’s not he same as when they’ve carved their own niche into the landscape of the city.

The International Hearld Tribune ran a great article this week by Patrick L. Smith about Hong Kong’s Graham Street district, which is slated for redevelopment.

There is a twist to the redevelopment plan in Hong Kong. The city is arguing that market forces and gentrification are pushing street vendors and other ad hoc vendors out. As rents and prices go up for store fronts on Graham Street, new national/global tenants insist on removing street vendors from in front of their shops. Therefore, the redevelopment will, they say, offer space for these smaller independent vendors.

It seems that whether through government urban renewal projects or the informal process of gentrification, the world is losing its urban, spontaneous street markets — at least in the larger, cosmopolitan cities.

To me, this feels like a sad era in human history and urban history — the end of long standing, open air markets in big cities.

But perhaps it’s not for me to judge; I live in a city and country without many informal, open air market zones.

When I lived in Mexico City in the mid 1990s, the government was trying to remove street vendors from the Zocalo (main plaza). This was one of my favourite places to hang out on the weekend because of the energy as well as all the cool stuff they had for sale that often mixed commerce with politics (the Zapatistas and Sub Comandante Marcos in Chiapas were big then).

A Mexican friend (born and raised in Ciudad Neza, a shanty town on the edge of Mexico City) saw it differently. He saw cleaning up the street vendors as modernizing his city and country and contributing to economic and social development.

If he’s right, maybe there is a silver lining… certainly, the not all the vendors in Smith’s article on Hong Kong seemed upset. It was the ex-pat shoppers who appeared to be voicing the most opposition.

Category: development conflicts, economic development, planning policy, public spaces, revitalization, urban retail trends /

City Dwellers – Biting the Container that Feeds Them?

June 14, 2007 / Wendy Waters / 2 comments

On May 23, 2007 the world became more urban than rural, according to the United Nations and thousands of news sites that reported it. So, what does this really mean?

For now, rather than making some great philosophical pronouncement, I’ll discuss one feature of cities in this urbanized world. Cities need logistics facilities — ports, airports, rail intermodal yards, transload facilities, distribution centers, warehouses, container storage, train and truck maintenance yards.

Indeed, every major city now has hundreds or thousands of acres of land dedicated to the movement of goods. Many growing regions desperately need more serviced industrial land for logistics use.

The majority of people living in cities do not produce the majority of things they need to live. They buy food, clothing and material goods. All of this has to come from somewhere and then be made available to city residents. While rural farmers coming to cities to sell their own produce is widespread in many developing countries — and in quaint weekend distractions in North American cities — the food, clothing and other consumables are now more typically handled in professionally run, highly complex supply chains.

It’s nice to think of cities as places for the “creative class” to build the knowledge economy, enjoy cultural amenities, hang out at hip cafes, and buy funky furniture.

But in an urban world, cities also need to be seen as complex logistics machines for supplying over 3 billion people with food, clothing, shelter and consumer goods — including that funky furniture for the loft condo.

To do this requires vast tracks of land for logistics. Often, however, the companies that provide logistics must fight to be able to open and operate facilities. For example, a municipality in Greater Vancouver — with one of North America’s busiest container ports attached to it — is trying to ban shipping containers from being loaded, unloaded or stored (typically for less than 48 hours) on its territory. In Charleston, residents have attempted to block a new container terminal there.

Inland cities also require vast amounts of logistics lands, for rail intermodal yards as well as distribution centres. And similar opposition can emerge.

It’s truly an astonishing example of human ingenuity to be able to have everything urban residents want and need on a Wal-Mart or Whole Foods Market shelf when they want it, typically at affordable prices. That is the logistics process working — and it needs container terminals, logistics facilities, distribution centres, truck and train traffic to happen.

Ironically, many city residents are trying to cut off the hand that literally feeds them.

Cities are full of contradictions and tensions — that’s what makes them fascinating.

Category: development conflicts, real estate, resident attitudes, urban technologies /

Protecting employment lands

May 17, 2007 / Wendy Waters / 2 comments

Most cities with thriving economies and growing populations struggle to balance land use requirements. Cities need land for parks and public spaces, territory for housing, space for retail use, real estate for office buildings, and vast tracts for manufacturing and warehousing. Urban areas also need to set aside land for infrastructure — everything from roads to rapid transit to schools and airports.

In a thriving city, proponents of any of these uses typically lobby for more real estate.

Preserving employment lands has become a critical issue for many cities, especially those with finite land options. Core cities within a larger sprawling area — such as Toronto — can face similar problems to larger metro areas with geographic constraints such as Vancouver or San Diego.

The Toronto Star today ran a good editorial on the subject of threatened employment lands. Back-to-downtown strategies have succeeded, creating a growing market for residential condominums. Suddenly downtown and inner city industrial and commercial land becomes more valuable for condominium redevelopment.

This has already happened in Vancouver resulting in a city-council moratorium on residential development in the downtown area until a full land use plan can be re-drawn.

Another threat not mentioned in the Toronto Star article is that residents of cities and neighbourhoods are now often joining together to fight some of these necessary urban uses — to fight employment use of lands.

For example, in the Vancouver suburb of Delta, which has one of the larger container ports on the West Coast, many residents are fighting anciliary uses like warehouse-distribution and transloading containers (unloading and repacking shipping containers).

Elsewhere residents moving into a busy restaurant and pub district have been known to ask for restrictions on restaurant hours to limit noise (such that the city now has a zoning designation called “residential in a noisy area” that requires buyers of new homes to acknowledge this fact).

Successful cities in the 21st century will need every type of land use — and city planners, politicians and residents will need to find balance and compromise. Because people vote and shipping containers, warehouse space, and office towers do not, politicians often listen to the short-sighted concerns of residents over the economic needs of a city.

The cities to watch in the 21st century will be those with educated electorates and skilled planners and politicans who can successfully find ways to balance the needs of residents to great public amenities and neighbourhoods, while preserving employment lands. It won’t be easy.

Category: "back to the center", city hall, development conflicts, downtowns, economic development, urban lifestyles /

San Diego passes anti-Wal-Mart legislation

November 30, 2006 / Wendy Waters / 3 comments
Personally, I don’t like shopping at Wal-Mart for political and practical reasons. I’ve been in the stores a few times, but can’t remember having bought anything there — other than a coke at the in-store McDonalds. And, I prefer to buy local goods or from local stores whenever possible.

However, I support Wal-Mart’s right to exist. Millions of customers around the world support them — that’s the democracy of the marketplace. If those who oppose Wal-Mart (for often valid reasons in my book) want to stop them, they need to pursuade Wal-Mart customers not to shop there — not lobby governments to pass specifically anti-Wal-Mart legislation.

That’s quite specific language — targeted right at Wal-Mart. It sounds like a Home Depot, Lowes, Target, factory outlet or any other big box store would be exempt.

I have no problem with a city’s planning department and elected council restricting the location of big box, power-centre retail. They are entrusted to set boundaries on everything from the size of houses in a neighbourhood, to where office buildings go — and how high they can be — to the location of a new industrial park.

But they should not be dictating to the electorate which big box stores are okay, and which are not. This is dangerous to the health of the economy, business community and democracy. Let consumers make their own choices.

Fortunately, the Mayor is providing a chamber of sober second thought and plans to veto the motion in January.
Category: city hall, development conflicts, economic development, sprawl, urban retail trends /
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