Posted on 11/8/2001, 4:14:32 PM by Dog Gone
Perhaps you've heard about "smart growth?" It's an attractive concept.
Who doesn't like to be smart? And smart growth's aims are apple pie -- boosting mass transit ridership, decreasing automobile use, improving air quality and cutting the cost of city services.
For smart-growth supporters, the enemy is the suburb. It's urban sprawl. Sprawl should go, replaced by more people living in the inner city in multifamily dwellings and putting severe limits on driving.
Portland, Ore., stands out as the poster child for smart growth. What has happened there? Credit the magazine Regulation by the Cato Institute in Washington, D.C., for assembling the following facts.
In Portland, state and local officials, along with the federally funded Metropolitan Planning Organization, regulate everything from the number and location of parking spaces for retailers to the maximum size of churches and the number of people they can accommodate on a given Sunday.
There's a ring on the map drawn around every city in Oregon. Outside that ring, you can only build a single-family home if you own at least 160 acres that generated $40,000 to $80,000 in revenue from agriculture in two of the last three years. That's a limit, by the way, that less than one-fifth of existing farms could meet. Small wonder that only about 100 landowners each year meet that that test.
Is life in Portland different today? You betcha. Is it better? You decide.
· Zoning codes in some areas forbid single-family homes. You must build at least a six-unit complex. The metro government in Portland buys land and resells it to developers at a loss to support high-density construction. Despite being the hottest real estate market in the country, most of the high-density housing sites along the city's light rail line, which opened in 1986, are still vacant.
As a result of these land use controls, prices of single-family homes have doubled. In 1989, more than two-thirds of Portland's residents could afford to buy homes. Today, only 30 percent can. Despite the housing shortage, in 1999 vacancy rates in the high-density apartments Metro has encouraged were at 7 percent.
·Portland is intent on getting people out of their cars. While those who take public transportation amount to less than 3 percent of passenger traffic, mass transit for two decades has gotten two-thirds of all transportation funds.
The local government says it won't add capacity to most freeways and highways. And it is busy closing auxiliary right turn and left turn lanes. Retail stores are forbidden to put parking spaces in front of their doors. The city of Portland recently changed its design code to discourage homes with garages in front and changed its ordinances to require any new street to be built so narrow that parking is possible only on one side.
Are fewer people driving? The Federal Highway Administration said that per capita driving in Portland is 20 percent higher today than in 1990. Even the Metro planning agency predicts that the time Portland area residents spend sitting in traffic will quintuple by 2020.
Smart-growth proponents say people would really prefer to live in high-density cities. They claim suburbs are there because of federal subsidies, white flight, inner-city crime and poor schools.
Yet over the past 50 years, the great majority of federal subsidies have gone to central cities. And suburbs have grown just as fast in parts of the country that aren't afflicted by poor schools, racial strife or crime. The move to the suburbs started when transportation made it possible. Today, about half of all Americans live in the burbs, a fourth beyond the suburbs and a fourth in central cities.
Those who favor smart growth say cities can't afford to spend money for roads and sewers and the like for new suburban growth. Well, it turns out that the cost of building or improving infrastructure for high-density housing is actually higher than for suburbs. And besides, business property taxes actually subsidize both.
Now, I personally like to live the way the smart-growth people push. I live in the central city in high-density housing and really like to walk whenever possible. But most people think otherwise.
Smart-growth people believe they know best how other people should live. I'm not that smart.
I don't know if Portland has all the answers (in fact, it looks like they don't). It seems that limiting development will only serve to drive up the cost of existing homes. If nothing else, Portland will become a test case to determine if their methods are sound.
There is lots of available high density housing. I find it vaguely depressing and terrifyingly expensive for what you get. As an example, I could get a two-bedroom apartment in an impersonal complex with about 1,000 units for $1,200 a month. I didn't like that, so I rented a two-bedroom house in a better part of Woodland Hills ("South of the Boulevard" instead of north) for $1,325. True, I got an exceptional deal, but comparable housing would rent in the $1,500 range.
I have to say the difference is worth it. I find it a great deal pleasanter to live in a suburban home instead of a concrete jungle. Multifamily housing is rarely developed with any kind of charm or attention to aesthetics.
I like the idea of being close to shops and restaurants, but suburbia doesn't necessarily preclude that. In my case, I'm about five blocks from Ventura Blvd, the major shopping street, and my commute to work is two miles. I could walk to Ventura Blvd shopping if I wanted to. This is the virtue of Edge City, where suburban and commercial development is intermixed.
I think sprawl exists because it's more appealing than density. Gigantic rabbit warren complexes, where each individual tenant feels like an ant buried in a hill, is not the way most people want to live.
Yes, there were some government subsidies, but people won't take even subsidized deals if they don't like the product being sold. Otherwise, those Portland apartments and condos would be full to the brim.
D
There are a lot of cities around the country that are more sub-urb than urb.
Truthfully (no axe, no Barbara Streisand) allocate all public infrastructure costs to the actual users of the infrastructure and let me decide how much I am willing to pay for my "three acres and a fireplace."
(I said simple, not easy).
Shifting costs can only go so far; if the whole thing was truly unsustainable, the whole nation would be bankrupt.
D
It tries to document the world of the "city/suburb", introduces you to its denizens, and so on. I found it fascinating.
D
That said, I do think it would be smart to require developers to foot the bill for sewers, roads, sidewalks, etc. and thus pass those costs on to the homebuyers.
This way there might be some tax relief to existing residents.
-The Thoreau Institute Urban Growth and Transportation Studies--
has a lot of info & opinion refuting the "urban sprawl," "Lite rail/mass transit" and related items...
And more here:
How much do sewers and the like cost, anyway? Do you know?
I think this is very often used as an excuse to prevent development, as you say. In many communities, the policy you desire is already in place, and developers are paying.
D
Here is an absolutely definitive website on the subject, with lots of emphasis on Portland, OR.
I'm acquainted with Randal O'Toole, have heard him speak several times, have a copy of his The Vanishing Automobile and Other Urban Myths (read it or keep it handy as a reference for the full scoop) and know that he's totally steeped in and expert on this subject.
Portland is a socialist paradise. You will find very few places outside of China and Cuba with as many overbearing laws as that place.
I do have a problem with a government telling me what I can or can't do with my property by imposing new rules after I've purchased it. That happens far too much, and it's a "taking" by the government without any compensation. Anytime the government intervenes into the free market process and dictates what can or can't be done there is a huge potential for unintended consequences. Rent control leads to housing shortages, for example. Rationing or excessive taxes lead to the development of a black market.
Portland runs the real risk of creating problems which cause people and businesses to decide against living or doing business there.
Or they may get it right. That's the beauty of experimentation.
For me, I don't want to live in the big city. It's chock full of people who love Al Gore and Barney Frank. And I don't apologize for that and adamantly oppose any government attempt to force me to change my lifestyle.
But that's my preference. Anyone who disagrees will probably be very happy in Portland. (If the plan there actually works.)
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