SUNDAY READING

Peter G. wonders how EMR can stand to read WaPo, the flagship of Enterprise-owned MainStream Media in the Washington-Baltimore NUR.

Well, today’s edition provides plenty of reasons. Start with the front page:

“Federal oversight of subways proposed, Federal safety oversight of subways, light-rial systems proposed, METRO CRASH HELPED SPUR SAFETY PLAN, Obama administration to push for Congress to change law.”

This story documents that the current administration is light years from understanding the path to a sustainable future which includes Fundamental Transformation of governance structure.

No one thinks shared-vehicle systems should be unsafe. Few question the fact that METRO could be more safe and more efficient.

The major governance Agencies in the National Capital SubRegion – the federal district, Virginia, Maryland and their political subdivisions (aka, municipalities) – have done a shoddy job of insuring safe efficient operation or of providing a stable source of revenue.

Credit where credit is due – WaPo has done its share to make those shortcomings clear.

But what is the nation-state role in Regional and SubRegional shared-vehicle system safety?

Given the continental and intercontinental impact of aircraft operation it makes sense to have a strong federal role in the air. The same in true, but to a lesser extent, for interRegional and interMegaRegional rail.

Putting the federal government in the middle of safety on Regional and SubRegional shared-vehicle systems is short and long term foolishness. Beyond a requirement to keep statistics and some performance guidelines a strong federal role just removes another of the ‘sticks’ that could constitute the ‘bundle of sticks’ (aka, Critical Mass) of responsibilities that are needed to make Regional governance relevant.

Level of control at level of impact.

Fundamental Transformation of governance.

Also in today’s WaPo:

Neil Irwin does a wonderful job of identifying the real ‘freak’ in SuperFreakonomics – write books that sell Business-As-Usual because that is what uninformed citizens what to believe.

Also right on target in the Outlook section is the latest in the WaPo Five Myths series: “Myths about home sweet homeowership.” The Affordable and Accessible Shelter Crisis – and to a large part The Great Recession – is driven by these Myths and the misguided role of federal Agencies in promoting home ownership.

In the pre-canned Business section the front page has two nice items. One on the worlds largest gambling venue – “That upward stock market ...” Did everyone notice the latest jump is based on the promise by The Fed to keep interest low and pump more cheap money into the economy to prolong the new bubble?

The second is a tongue-in-cheek guide to selecting a broker. Ask those 8 questions and THAT broker will not be YOUR broker.

Finally on the back page of Business, Warren Brown, does a nice job of comparing the new Mercedes S400 Hybrid ($87,950) with the Mercedes Smart Fortwo ($11,900).

And on that topic, anyone have a guess as to how many negative comments at ‘advertiser appreciation dinners and seminars’ it took to kill Warren’s (or someone with his knowledge) column on the Autonomobile industry?

Happy reading.

EMR

Warner "Gets It" on Health Care Reform

As Congress lurches forward in its campaign to "reform" a deeply flawed health care system by making it a grievously flawed system, moderate "blue dog" Democrats are emerging as a key swing constituency that can make or break any deal. In the Senate, that puts the spotlight on Mark Warner and Jim Webb.

While Virginia's two senators support expanding coverage to more Americans, they share a common concern, according to Olympia Meola with the Richmond Times-Dispatch: the cost of health care.

Webb has focused on the expense of individuals' insurance premiums. Ever the populist, he spoken out against insurance companies and their "off the charts" profit margins. His ideal approach would be a system of not-for-profit insurance companies, Meoloa says. Insurance companies, of course, are a favorite target of national Democrats, mainly because of their high administrative costs. It is not clear, however, how converting the for-profit insurance system into a not-for-profit system would do anything to bring down those costs. Stripping the industry of its profits wouldn't accomplish much either. According to Yahoo Finance data, industry profits amount to only 3.3% of revenue.

In contrast to the bureaucratic monstrosity emerging from the Senate, however, Webb stresses the need to create incentives that would value the quality rather than the quality of care. He does not want an "overly cumbersome, bureaucratic system." While that mindset makes him preferable to the geniuses who want to foist layers of new bureaucracy onto the health care system via 2,000 pages of mind-numbing verbiage, I don't sense from Meola's article that Webb puts the emphasis fully where it really belongs.

To my mind, Warner does. According to spokesman Kevin Hall, "The cost curve is his priority in health-care reform." The senator has introduced amendments that would target better use of data to drive down costs and increase transparency. Says Hall: "We have a health-care system right now that rewards bad practices. We have a health-care system that rewards hospitals for multiple readmissions rather than a low admission rate. We have a health care system that rewards volume of care rather than quality of care." Bingo.

Rather than hobble the system with more bureaucracy and more mandates -- a "solution" guaranteed to ruin productivity and quality -- Warner looks for examples of what works. As one example, he cites a Virginia Commonwealth University program that assigns a primary care physician to oversee the health of uninsured patients with the goal of increasing coordination between doctors and hospitals. The program increases accountability, reduces costs and improves quality. One metric of progress: Between 2000 and 2005, emergency room visits have dropped 14%.

Warner has emerged as a champion of the kind of win-win reform initiatives that I've advocated in Bacon's Rebellion. Measures that redistribute the wealth, the obsession of most Democrats, creates losers for every winner. That zero-sum thinking may well end up sinking reform. As a former businessman, Warner understands that greater productivity and improve quality will improve the system for everyone and, in the process, make it more affordable and accessible to all.

Whatever Happened to Smart Growth in Chesterfield?

For years, Marleen Durfee, a peppy Pennsylvanian who talks a mile a minute, has been the point woman in Chesterfield County when it comes to Smart Growth.

For years, she was the lone voice in the desert crying for a stop to the wild, thoughtless development that Chesterfield's Good Ole Boys and Girls Board of Supervisors had been fostering for three decades. Finally, in 2007, she was elected to the board with high hopes of finally bringing some sanity to county planning.

And it seemed not a moment too soon since Chesterfield's two big growth areas -- Midlothian Turnpike and Hull Street Road -- were abortions of traffic congestion, overcrowded schools and too many big boxes that had a tendency to go dark.

Now, Ms. Durfee is in a tizzy. The reason is the "Green Monster," a zombie-like project that keeps coming back to life no matter how many stakes are thrust into its heart. Back in the heyday of go-go growth in 1991, the Board approved plans for Magnolia Green with 4,886 homes that never seemed to get built.

The project was split into Upper and Lower Magnolia Green and then the big recession hit. The brakes came on in an instant, sending such megaprojects into a crash. Last spring, owners tried to auction off Lower Magnolia Green but there were no bidders. It seemed that a clearly-defined border for sprawl had finally been established at approximately Woodlake along U.S. 360 and Watkins Centre along U.S. 60 in western Chesterfield County.

Well, maybe not. It turns out that a series of developers, including Salvatore Cangiano of Leesburg who still owns Upper Magnolia Green, are considering unsolicited requests to somehow build (pick one) a new shopping mall, a research park with a D.C. university taking the lead (I hear either Georgetown or George Washington, but I have my doubts), some kind of mega mixed-use project and even a gigantic sports and concert hall on the order of Verizon Center in Washington.

To get any of these ideas done, however, the county and private developers would have to extend the toll Powhite Parkway from where it terminates at Route 288 nine miles to U.S. 360 at a tiny crossroads called Skinquarter that consist basically of a gas station that sells fried chicken and is a place you can take your deer to get it tagged after you have shot it.

In a story I did for Style Weekly, Cangiano said that the investors have come to him with the idea and that he has met with the county about it. He says the area that would be penetrated by the extended Powhite would be "strategically located" and that he doesn't have typical development in mind, He is dismissive of what has been built around 360 as "small boxes." Nor is he worried about finding financing in this incredibly difficult market. " We have our own banks," he told me.

County officials won't say what might happen but that they are just talking. As Jim Stegmaier, county administrator, told me, Chesterfield has to keep looking because badly imbalanced growth means that the county exports 30 percent of its workforce every day.

So what's Marleen's role in all of this? Smart Growthers in Richmond were stunned to hear her say that she's "excited" by the project and extending the Powhite, as she was reported as saying in Richmond's metro daily. She told me that her idea is to remake some very bad policies that have plagued Chesterfield for years and that doing Upper Magnolia Green the right way could push the ball forward.

But she's taking the heat. The Chesterfield Observer notes that the local Responsible Growth Alliance, an activist group headed by Durfee for two years, doesn't really function any more. And John Moeser, a University of Richmond fellow and planning expert, says that extending the Powhite is anything but smart growth.

There are lots of arguments against doing so. For one thing, there are plenty of other spots to locate an office mark, a mall or an amphitheater, such as the troubled Cloverleaf Mall or the new but largely vacant Watkins Centre. Pushing the Powhite would stretch into virgin territory, although it could offer an alternative commuter route than crowded Hull Street (360).

Any new extension would have to be a public-private deal since the state has no money. Some firms such as Australia's TransUrban, which runs the Pocahantos Parkway, are said to be interested in it.

The weirdest part of this strange tale is the timing. With the real estate meltdown and subprime mortgage mess having culled many weak residential projects and the commercial market taking its toll, it would seem that now is the time to start rethinking suburban sprawl. Chesterfield promised to do so since it is reconsidering its comprehensive plan at this very moment.

Where, however, do these ideas to push highways farther and farther away from urban centers into the piney woods keep coming from? Doesn't that violate Rule One of Smart Growth? Whatever happened to Smart Growth in Chesterfield?

Peter Galuszka

NOW MARYLAND IS PLANNING SOMETHING NEW

MARYLAND IS PLANNING A NEW SETTLEMENT PATTERN STRATEGY -- OR NOT

The AntiSmart Growthers (those who have consistently supported Business-As-Usual / dumb growth) are turning hand-springs of joy over the ‘news’ that, in spite of best intentions, the much ballyhooed Maryland ‘Smart Growth’ program has not panned out.

As noted in an earlier post, this is really OLD news. EMR and others suggested almost two decades before the legislation was enacted that there were not enough teeth in the ‘priority funding area’ ideas being explored to achieve success in the face of THE ROOTS OF THE HELTER SKELTER CRISIS. Of course, that was 30 years before EMR evolved a Vocabulary and Conceptual Framework to articulate his concerns.

Now a county in Maryland that prides itself on being at the cutting edge of intelligent settlement pattern evolution has taken a step that has more promise. Perhaps.

In the 11 November WaPo, a front page story trumpeted the passage of a new initiative: “Montgomery redraws its blueprint for development: Council approves plan that supports dense but car-free growth.”

The idea is a good one – intensive development in METRO station areas WITHOUT parking requirements. Just what Dr. Risse ordered (“A Picture is Worth a Thousand Lies” 8 September 2008). Right?

Well yes, BUT...

In the SAME issue of WaPo a second report by the SAME reporter tells a different story. In a Metro section there is a story titled “Montgomery officials back I-270 HOT lanes: Council also picks light rail over buses for transit way project.”

What is going on here? Well, for those in the dark, read David Owen’s new book Green Metropolis: Why Living Smaller, Driving Less Are the Keys to Sustainability.

While the METRO station-area strategy is a good one, the HOT lanes will provide an incentive for developing scattered Urban (primarily residential) developments in Frederick County, MD (and beyond). The residents will drive to jobs and services in the I-270 Corridor of Montgomery County and inside the Beltway.

Making things worse, the light rail line will open new opportunities for lower intensity land use which will compete for dwellings, jobs and services that might otherwise land in the METRO station areas, further leveraging scatteration.

Owen does a fine job of outlining why HOT lanes and light rail lines will not support sustainable settlement patterns at the SubRegional scale.

What is the fundamental problem here? It is a matter of quantification. Long ago EMR demonstrated that if the vacant and underutilized land at half the METRO stations was used to create Balanced development – just the sort of development that Montgomery County’s the new station-area strategy is intended to facilitate – this building envelope could accommodate all the ‘growth’ projected to 2030 in the entire National Capital SubRegion. And that was before The Great Recession put a big question mark on ALL ‘growth’ projections.

Will the bright shinny METRO station idea work? Time will tell but the initial indications are not encouraging.

EMR

Marking the Falling of the Berlin Wall

The Fall of the Berlin Wall on Nov. 9, 1989 is an enormous happening worthy of celebration. Last night, I marked the event in New York by attending a special discussion by four U.S. foreign correspondents and a photographer who recorded the historic day in person.

The reporters, including those from The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and Newsweek, described the sense of surprise, the total joy and the underlying fear of reprisal as events throughout Eastern Europe started gaining unstoppable momentum. Borders suddenly opened in one country letting people scrape up a few belongings and race to Austria and then West Berlin as guards who used to shoot to kill didn't seem to know what to do.

Unfortunately, what marked the unraveling of the Communist Bloc somehow got morphed into a "fantasy" that liberal democracy would churn forward unstopped, according to the participants of the event at the German Consulate sponsored by the Overseas Press Club of which I am a member.

Neo-cons twisted this tremendous victory, actually won by the guts and patience of millions of oppressed people, into some kind of laud for free market capitalism. Ronald Reagan got way too much credit for defeating Soviet Communism when his role was nothing compared to that of Lech Walesa or Pope John Paul II and plenty of others brave enough to demonstrate for freedom from Prague to Budapest to Gdansk.

As Roger Cohen of the New York Times and International Herald Tribune who moderated the discussion put it, can you have material prosperity and true political freedom? In some cases,yes, but look at Communist China where that very question is offering some inconvenient contradictions that the capitalism cheerleaders might find unsettling. There's more in terms of refrigerators but the government just shut down Twitter when participants talked about real political freedom

For the record, I am also a member of the World Affairs Council of Greater Richmond which has a speaker, a young Time magazine editor, tonight on the same topic. I'm going to give that one a pass and save $20 because (a) the speaker was in high school in California when the Wall came down and (b) his book lauding Reagan's role in the Wall was trashed by The Washington Post as being ridiculously simplistic.

It is a shame that more people don't realize what the Berlin event meant. Why, for instance, didn't Barack Obama attend the Berlin celebrations (Hillary went) while the heads of all Europe's states were there. Maybe is too young to remember what I do -- the "duck and cover" exercises I practiced as a grade school kid in suburban DC as we waited for the Soviets to nuke us. My dad was a Navy doctor in the late 1950s and 1960s and I learned years later that if the Big One came, he had orders to some Appalachian mountain cave while my mother, sister and I got to fry in Bethesda.

The Wall marked the end of billions of money wasted on nuclear bombers, missiles and warheads and one a two and a half war strategy by the Pentagon. The Soviets simply could not bear the cost of such expenditures which is why their empire collapsed. It didn't have much to do with Reagan although he did help by getting religion about nukes after watching the made-for-tv movie "The Day After" in which Kansas City is destroyed. Being a Hollywood type, Reagan could learn more from movies than from briefing papers and the movie gave him the idea of ending nukes once and for all.

What always amazed me is that the Soviets did little to stop the Wall from coming down. They had intervened forcefully in East Germany in 1953, in Hungary in 1956 and in Prague in 1968. They had massed troops but didn't use them in Poland in the late 50s and again in the Solidarity heyday of 1980-81. Their henchmen, the East German Stasi, the Hungarian AVO and the Polish SB, did it for them.

One reason for the weak Soviet response is that Mikhail Gorbachev still believed he could reform, not destroy, the Communist structure by being peaceful and reasonable. Another is that the Communist Chinese had just had their massacre at Tienanmen a few months before. To be sure, Gorbachev shifted to the right in 1990 and 1991 as reactionaries in the Party and KGB started rolling crackdowns in the Baltics which wanted to be free, too. Using new security troops called "OMONs" they held dress rehearsal for a coup against Gorbachev in Vilnius and Riga. Lucky for us that when the coup came against Gorbachev in 1991, it failed.

I missed that one but was one hand for the second, much bloodier coup against Boris Yeltsin in 1993. When the Wall came down, I was in New York, working as a new editor on the international desk of Business Week. I had just returned from a three-year tour in Moscow and my wife had delivered our first child. We were working day and night trying to coordinate coverage. I don't remember much about those months. I was too tired.

Peter Galuszka

FRINGE ISSUES

In comments on Jim Bacon’s 7 November post “ Stupid Growth in Maryland” a frequent commentor makes a common error concerning the fundamental causes of human settlement pattern dysfunction.

In the US of A, states are constrained by the federal constitution, however, within that framework states are free to ‘centrally plan’ or ‘delegate’ most powers that impact human settlement patterns – shelter, transport, utilities and distribution of land uses to list a few.

The Home Rule and Dillon Rule debates concerns what municipal Agencies (counties, cities, districts, townships, villages, et. al.) can do, ABSENT specific guidance from the state.

There are 50 variations of state control / delegation of powers but NONE of them result in functional settlement patterns at the Regional or SubRegional scales. (A second commentor did not read the original WaPo story which demonstrated that Montgomery County, MD was the site of stupid growth.)

If one understands what they are looking at and takes into consideration the existence of specific infrastructure investments and some superficial municipal variations – e.g. five acre lifestyle zoning in Fairfax County, VA and a hobby farm / McMansion zone in Montgomery County, MD – from 50,000 feet:

THERE IS NOT ONE WHIT OF DIFFERENCE IN SETTLEMENT PATTERNS.

At the Cluster, Neighborhood and Village scales there are some differences(the Zentrum of Annapolis is Alpha Village scale). There are some components that MAY be a large as Community scale (the Zentrum of Savannah for example)but those are historical artifacts, not the result of intelligent settlement pattern guidance since Euclidean Zoning was embraced by the Supreme Court. (Every one of the Planned New Communities designed since 1965 has been disaggregated by the forces noted below.)

The reason there is not one whit of difference between the settlement patterns in Maryland, Virginian, West Virginia, Pennsylvania, el. al. is that human settlement pattern is driven by far more profound forces than federal / state / municipal controls or politics.

EMR wrote a book about those forces: The Shape of the Future. EMR is about to publish a second book titled TRILO-G that opens with a PART titled ROOTS OF THE HELTER SKELTER CRISIS.

Thrashing around on the fridges of the central issues will only put off the time when citizens can start the process to establish a sustainable trajectory for civilization.

Look for the light at the end of the tunnel.

EMR

T.J. Becomes Governor

In his victory speech, Virginia's new governor-elect Bob McDonnell spoke of his pride at holding the same post as so many awe-inspiring political figures and symbols of American Freedom and Rights of Man such as Thomas Jefferson.

As a non-Virginian who happens to live here, I am constantly amused by the mythology that white and mostly Virginian historians lay down about Jefferson and many others of his era. These folks are real warriors for rights, they claim, yet they were slaveholders. And when it is pointed out that many of the White Supremacy types, including Jefferson, crossed the sexual line with African-Americans, they shake their heads in disbelief.

This is a fascinating issue since I am finally reading Annette Gordon-Reed's brilliant history "The Hemingses of Monticello, an American Family," which details the forbidden fruit of T.J.'s sexual relationship with a favored slave.

Here's one citation from the book about what was involved when T.J. was appointed governor of Virginia in 1779. He brought along quite a gathering of slave-servants:

"Seventeen-year-old Robert Hemings drove the phaeton that brought Jefferson and his family the the capital in Williamsburg in 1779. His brothers Martin and James rode alongside on horseback. All three men were there to perform the same
services they performed at Monticello -- Martin, to be the butler for the governor's household, and Robert and James to be Jefferson's personal servants. Their half sisters Mary Hemings and Betty Brown were brought along as well. Mary was twenty-six by then the mother of Elizabeth Hemings's first two grandchildren. Daniel Farley, who waseseven, and Molly, who was two. The Hemingses were joined by at least six other slaves; Jupiter and his wife Suckey, the cook John, and George and Ursula Granger and their son Isaac, who went by the name Jefferson."

I wonder how many McDonnell will be bringing along when he moves to Richmond?

Peter Galuszka

Stupid Growth in Maryland

I had the pleasure of visiting Annapolis, Md., a couple of weekends ago, a city I had not seen in maybe 20 years. After watching Navy trounce Wake Forest in football, my family and I spent the night at the Governor Calvert House across the street from the state capitol (see pic) and spent several hours the next morning wandering the streets of the historic district.

Historic Annapolis is a place that "works." The historic houses are beautiful. The streetscapes are eminently walkable and visually appealing: At the terminus of many streets there are grand structures such as churches or government buildings like the magnificent capitol building. The street layout, arrayed around two main circles, are narrow but not excessively congested. The zoning code evidently permits the construction of new buildings, easily spotted by their drab, utilitarian architecture, but they are are built to scale with the surrounding buildings so they do not offend. And, then, of course, there is the waterfront with its marinas, boats and dockside restaurants.

I was envious. There's really nowhere like it in Virginia. What an exquisite spot to inspire the smart growth legislation that Maryland has enacted into law!

If you read Ed Risse's latest post, "Light at the End of the Tunnel," however, you might guess where I'm heading. Especially if you took note of this quote, as I did, having recently seen the vivid truth of it:

EMR is often quoted as having pointed out for 20 years that from 50,000 feet there is not a whit of real difference between the human settlement patterns in Maryland, vs in Virginia (or West Virginia) or North Carolina or Pennsylvania.

My father, an old Navy grad, had warned us to take the U.S. 58/I-95 route home, even though it was a longer route as measured by miles. But fool that I was, I decided to take the "scenic" route back to Richmond along U.S. 301, bypassing the Washington Beltway with all of its hazards. It was Sunday afternoon -- no rush hour. How bad could it be?

Well, I can tell you that from a ground-level perspective, there's not a whit of real difference either. U.S. 301 is a monstrosity. It suffers from every evil of "suburban sprawl" (by which I mean scattered, low-density, auto-centric human settlement patterns) that you can find in Virginia. Is this what Smart Growth hath wrought?

A four-lane highway that once served as a useful inter-regional road connecting two state capitals has been transformed into a conduit for cul de sac neighborhoods, innumerable stop lights and endless expanses of strip shopping malls. All traffic in the disaggregated non-places such as Waldorf, Upper Marlboro and La Plata seemed to empty onto U.S. 301. What should have been an hour drive took at least two hours. I shudder to think what the road looks like in rush hour.

Annapolis was founded in 1649 -- 360 years ago. The downtown core remains a beautiful, vibrant place because successive generations of inhabitants have fallen in love with it, preserved it and invested in it. That's what happens with places that "work." The communities along U.S. 301 do not "work." They are livable only as long as gasoline remains cheap. They appeal to no aesthetic sense. They will inspire no one to reinvest in them, they will run down, and they will become the slums of the late 21st century.

I don't call that Smart Growth. I suspect that most Smart Growth advocates themselves would disown U.S. 301. But whatever Maryland has done to create such a blight, we need to make sure we don't copy it here in Virginia.

LIGHT AT THE END OF THE TUNNEL

Now that Bacon’s Rebellion Blog has resolved the ‘Collapse of Agencies (aka, governments going broke’ problem) and solved the liberal vs conservative conundrum (as reflected in the off-year elections) let us return to the REAL determinant of the economic, social and physical future of civilization – functional and dysfunctional human settlement patterns.

THERE IS A LIGHT AT THE END OF THE TUNNEL!

But first notes on some back issues:

EMR apologies that he did not have time to post on the Maryland Land use law (WaPo 2 November 2009 “Study call MD. Smart growth a flop.” This resulted in some off - topic posts in the “Could American Go Broke” post by Jim Bacon. More on that below.

EMR also did not post responses to the comments on “THE EXACT COST OF DYSFUNCTION.”

It takes time to sort out:

A: Observations with which EMR agrees and for which there is not reason to respond,

B: Broadsides, smokescreens and diversions that have already been covered, and

C: The babbling of the 12.5 Percenters.

We will cover those later but first:

ABOUT THAT LIGHT:

The following are the first few pages of a draft book review:


READ IT NOW!!

David Owen’s new book Green Metropolis: Why living Smaller, Living Closer, and Driving Less Are the Keys to Sustainability is an important book.

It opens doors to information and understandings that citizens must embraces if they are to evolve functional and sustainable human settlement patterns.

Not since Jane Jacobs published The Death and Life of Great American Cities in 1961 has there been a more important, powerful and accessible new source of information and understanding concerning functional human settlement patterns. Given the enormous impact of Jacob’s work – a recent poll of planning and development professionals found Jacobs the number one ALL TIME urban thinker – those are big shoes to fill. See End Note One

There is no question of the importance of Owen’s work. Phil Langdon calls the book “riveting and fiercely intelligent. At the same time, Jonathan Yardley says the book is “cool, understated and witty” – in other words, NOT an EMR tome.

Owens overarching thesis is that human settlement patterns control the future course of civilization because per capita energy and goods consumption is directly related the pattern and density of land use at the Alpha Community and SubRegional scales. As you might guess Owen does not use those words but that is what he means. More on that later.

Owens examines both embedded energy and Embodied Efficiency, he documents the impact of fossil fuel consumption and the over dependence on Autonomobiles – as the book’s subtitle suggests. In the course of just 324 pages Owen touches on most of the topics that EMR covers in nearly 3,400 in The Shape of the Future and TRILO-G.

EMR agrees with almost all of Owen’s observations but EMR is not sure all of them can be supported as stated. Owen’s main thesis concerning per capital consumption was first published in the New Yorker five years ago much of his other work has appeared there as well. In that context his world SHOULD have been well fact checked. Only time will tell with a book as important as this. See End Note Two

What is most impressive is that Owen NAILS many misconceptions and stupidities that underlie Myths and conventional wisdom. These misconceptions and Myths are relied on by citizens when they make the decisions in the voting booth and in the marketplace. These decisions drive dysfunctional human settlement pattern. These are the Myths that perpetuate the Helter Skelter Crisis and result in an unsustainable trajectory of contemporary civilization by any rational measure.

The book documents clearly that it is not just ‘freeways,’ ByPasses, ‘free’ parking, strip centers, Big Boxes, subdivision monocultures, greedy speculators, inept or corrupt governance practitioners, monopoly Enterprises and subservient Enterprise owned MainStream Media that drive settlement pattern dysfunction. It is also not just the genetic proclivities underlying the human obsessions with physical separation and short grass that generate dysfunctional human settlement patterns.

Owen demonstrates that AS CURRENTLY DESIGNED AND IMPLEMENTED the drivers of dysfunction also include:

• Fuel efficient vehicles,
• Simple living and recycling,
• Green buildings in bad locations (especially those with LEED certifications)
• Many conservation initiatives such as conservation easements, agricultural and forestall districts and green infrastructure.
• Roadway improvements and congestion mitigation,
• Commuter rail, light rail, trolley and bus rapid transit systems (including even the BRT in Curitiba),
• Radial extensions of heavy rail such as METRO, and
• New Urbanist projects in dysfunctional locations

Owen is not saying these drivers of dysfunctional are inherently bad but that as currently implemented, these ‘solutions’ CREATE AND SUPPORT dysfunctional human settlement patterns that are unsustainable. He documents why these activities are bad for ‘the environment’ and why they stand in the way of achieving a sustainable trajectory for civilization.

In his review of Supercapitalism, EMR predicted the book would not be a runaway best seller and that the author, Robert Reich, would not be popular with most economists and governance practitioners. That prediction has clearly come to pass. The same fate is in store for Owen and Green Metropolis with those who have been plowing the fields that are explored in the book.

For example, Owen will not be popular with MainStream Environmental Institutions nor with the Green Washers who advertise in MainStream Media. He cooly dismantles common green myths and puts a bright light on Green Greed. For this reason citizens appreciation of the content of Owens book is even more important.

STOP

Stop yapping about not having time to read another book. Stop pounding the key board about why you disagree with this or that point in a review of the book. Do not bother to bop around the Internet looking for quotes that will turn out to be irrelevant. Just READ the BOOK.

But first readers need to be aware of the fact that between 40 and 60 percent of the citizens who have expressed concern with the impact of dysfunctional human settlement patterns will NOT agree with Owen on first reading. And of course, the 12.5 Percenters will be apoplectic. The same thing happened with Jane Jacobs. EMR knows this, he was there. See End Note 3

Many readers will be turned off by one or more of the four tragic flaws that cloud the book. That does not mean Owen is not right. Most WILL come to agree with Owen (as they now do with Jacobs) but only after they take the time to understood the book – its strengths and its limitations.
The question is: Will citizens understand the importance of the message and take action in the voting booth and in the marketplace before it is too late?

It is popular to publish rapid fire second editions – The Earth is Flat and The Earth is Flat Updated and Expanded, Freakonomics and SuperFrekonomics, etc. – and this book cries out for a second edition soon.

To guide and inform that second edition, Green Metropolis deserves immediate in-depth discussion and debate. It will be counterproductive to launch Blogesque broadsides such as: “Owen does not understand X” or “This is just another attack on Y.” Comments will be most productive if they are in a format such as: “On page X, Owen says Y, I believe he is wrong (or more constructively, it would be more productive to state this differently) because of Z.”

What are the four tragic flaws?

1. Inconsistent use of commonly misunderstood words (Vocabulary)

2. Lack of an overarching Conceptual Framework that leads to a failure to quantify or precisely describe impacts in term of recognizable and consistently defined components of human settlement

3. Failure to understand the power of a rational and fair allocation of location-variable costs – this in spite of Owen identifying and articulating many of those costs

4. Silence concerning alternative settlement patterns with which the majority of citizens – specifically, those who are not attracted to the Zentra of large New Urban Regions – would feel comfortable. There are building forms and settlement patterns that would achieve most of the benefits Owen outlines without scaring citizens with the “Manhattan” image. This is especially true for small urban enclaves in the Countryside and well as for nearly 95 percent of the land within the Clear Edges around the Cores of New Urban Regions.

Before further exploring Owens book, is useful to explore these tragic flaws:

To be continued...

BACK TO THOSE CLEAN-UP NOTES:

Thoughts on “THE EXACT COST OF DYSFUNCTION.”

At 3:03 PM on 39 Oct Larry Gross said:

“Well I thought the last sentence in the WaPo article was the $64 that I'm not sure that EMR answered.”

" The question is how do you accommodate that growth in a way that doesn't exacerbate the problems created by the way we've grown until now?"

Come on Larry, you know that is EXACTLY the ‘question’ EMR has been addressing for four decades. If you would just try to understand instead of trying to defend your own past location decisions. No one is not going to single you out and make you pay for your misunderstandings retroactively just because you admit them now. You will see how easy it is to understand the truth once you see that light at the end of the tunnel.

Let us turn the “$64 question” into the $64 Trillion answer:

"The answer is that citizens can accommodate all the rationally sustainable future urban growth in every New Urban Region by evolving functional patterns and densities AND reducing the total area of urban land uses.”

In the 2003 Shaping the Future Seminar it was demonstrated that most citizens would have better quality places to live and work on half the currently urbanized area in the National Capital Subregion by creating the patterns and densities of land use that the market documents are most desirable.

The REAL question is how do you keep speculation and excess profits from driving up the cost of shelter (aka, workforce housing), goods and services for those at the bottom of the Ziggurat who are needed to created a Balance and a Critical Mass of the organic components of human settlement both inside and outside the Clear Edge.

At 9:14 AM on 31 October 2009 Larry G said:

“on the wider scope... goods will continue to be made in far away places.. and moved by huge container ship to the US and stocked at giant distribution centers which will supply just-in-time inventory replenishment not only at Wal*Mart SuperStores but even smaller scale almost mom-pop stores - any store that uses a point-of-sale scanner tied to a computer network that in turn talks to that giant distribution center.”

EMR chuckled when he read this after having just seen the latest half a million pound E-coli recall of hamburger from ‘Fairbank Farms’ (nee, Industrial MegaFood). Community labs, Larry. Rational allocation of energy and location-variable costs will mean fewer huge container ships, fewer giant distribution centers and very little of it by truck. The future will not be an extrapolation of the past.

It is really easy to make fun of people if you misquote them. Like shooting fish in a rain barrel.
At 10:36 PM Groveton posted a comment which is annotated below:

“Dr. Risse's writings have a great deal of environmental, urban planning and macro architectural content.”

[Is ‘macro architecture’ a Grovetonism and does it mean the same thing as the commonly used term ‘urban design.’ If ‘macro architecture’ means ‘urban design’ EMR pleads guilty.]

“However, they are generally light on economics and political reality.”

[That depends on ones definition of economic and political “reality.” Most rational folk’s view will change when they see the light at the end of the tunnel.]

“The concept of small self-contained hamlets where people walk to work, live and shop is not realistic in the United States over the next 50 years.”

[If this was a comment addressed to Claude Lewenz, it would have some validity because of the parameters that Claude insists on in his Alternative Villages.” ‘Small self-contained hamlets’ does not describe something EMR advocates although there are already some that exist in special circumstances.]

“However, better development patterns in the suburbs with extensive mass transit between the suburbs and the urban center is realistic.”

[Use of the Core Confusing Word ‘suburbs’ makes this statement unintelligible.]

Now we turn to that story on Maryland’s smart growth (no caps deserved here) story noted above. This is a great case of “EMR told you so.” Back in the 70s when the outlines of the controls that were adopted in the 90s were first discussed, EMR, then a member of the Board of the Maryland Environmental Trust (similar function to Virginia’s Outdoors Foundation) said it would not work.

EMR is often quoted as having pointed out for 20 years that from 50,000 feet there is not a whit of real difference between the human settlement patterns in Maryland, vs in Virginia (or West Virginia) or North Carolina or Pennsylvania, or...

Larry G. reinforces this point with his reference to house seekers driving until they get past the jurisdictions that require smart growth.

In the “Could America Go Broke?” post Accurate tries to tie EMR’s work to Halle Neustadt. That is even more foolish that Groveton’s silly pigeonhole paragraph.

First, Accurate needs to stop believing everything Randal O’Tool tells him. The next thing he knows Randal will tell him that he will be free of oppressive government if he just walks out in front of that next light rail train ... It might be called Randal Koolade.

The book on Halle Neustadt that Accurate cited ( “The Ideal Communist City”) was written in 1968. At the time the general configuration of this Planned New Community was not that different from similar projects in Sweden and Great Britain.

EMR has not been to Halle Neustadt but he has stayed several nights in similar places behind the Iron Curtain and they were dreadful. But lets keep Halle Neustadt in perspective. The Halle Neustadt design process was started in 1958. Check out some projects, large and small that were started then in the US of A in that timeframe – some have been cleared, some are still driving dysfunction. See “Interstate Crime” and “Timberfence Truth or Consequences.”

Thanks to the Internet anyone can take a virtual tour of Halle Neustadt – you can also send a package from the FedEx / Kinkos store. The photo tour suggests that last week Halle Neustadt is a lot better place than, not just the places like housing developments and expressways that have been torn down in the US of A, but Halle Neustadt is a lot better place than where tens of thousands live and work in Detroit.

When designed, Halle Neustadt was a lot like many post WW II Planned New Communities in Sweden and Great Britain. It might have become something like Nordvest Zentrum in Frankfort AM but for the fact it was in East Germany, not West Germany. It would not have been perfect, but not an unmitigated disaster either. Had Halle Neustadt not been in East Germany it might have evolves so fewer would want to leave when they had the opportunity.

However, good or bad, EMR was not involved in the design or construction of Halle Neustadt and does not hold it out as a model.

Accurate is right about one thing: The reason there is a lot of dumb growth is that many citizens ‘prefer it’ – so long as they do not have to pay the full cost, there is cheap energy, etc.

Green Metropolis is place to start to learn what it would mean to pay the full cost.

Read the book.

More later.

EMR

BACON IS RIGHT

Jim Bacon is very right:

The nation-state scale Agencies – driven by the "leadership" of both political clans – are driving the US of A’s economy towards Collapse as defined by Jared Diamond.

The Great Recession was triggered by greed. The underlying problems are Wrong Size House in Wrong Location – thanks to Fanny and Freddie – dysfunctional settlement patterns – thanks to Autonomobiles – and burning through Natural Capital to pay the debt generated by Mass OverConsumption in this dysfunctional context.

NO ONE is willing to be honest and tell voters (citizens) that ‘policies’ to encourage hyper - growth and hyper - consumption including the subsidies to the US of A's global competitors to produce cheap goods – is the collective responsibility of all citizens and that the solution is for all citizens to change their behavior. Ride the Tiger one more turn around the election cycle.

Now we have the nation-state scale Agencies dumping more stimulus money on the underlying causes of The Great Recession – more money for Wrong Size House in Wrong Location, more bail-outs for Fanny and Freddie, more help for those who have seen their jobs shipped overseas and who have not been told they need to find something else to do and more help for auto makers who have insisted on making the wrong size vehicle to support (no, require) dysfunctional settlement patterns.

Steven Pearlstein in today’s WaPo says it best:

“... what they’re proposing to do is to spend a lot of money that they don’t have in ways that won’t work to help too many people who are neither desperate nor deserving.”

He is talking about jobs but it applies to shelter, transport, banks, and the economy in general. The WaPo editorial nails the shelter problem.

A "bonus question" al la Larry G:

After the last two weeks, is there ANYONE who now believes the NY Stock Exchange is not just a gambling venue?

There is a light at the end of the tunnel but will enough citizens see it before it is too late?

EMR