Free Republic

SACRAMENTO -- Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signed first-in-the-nation legislation Tuesday that takes the campaign to curb global warming to the streets. The complex measure includes a series of incentives and penalties aimed at encouraging cities and counties to be more aggressive in enacting land use policies that reduce greenhouse gas emissions linked to global warming. Sen. Darrell Steinberg, a Sacramento Democrat who carried SB 375, said the measure "will be used as the national framework for fighting sprawl and transforming inevitable growth to smart growth. This is a historic day for California." The legislation would use up to $12 billion in...

VANCOUVER, Wash. -- It may soon be illegal for Vancouver residents to wash their cars in the driveway, according to a local newspaper report. The Oregonian article reports that the state of Washington wants Clark County to come up with laws that control what water goes into storm drains, including banning the soapy water from car washes at private homes. “Well it seems kind of strange forcing people to go through a car wash… Some people can’t afford to do that and would prefer to wash at home,” a woman told KGW as she waited in line for a professional...

Got Gas? You'll need it for the 10 worst commutes in the U.S. (LifeWire) - Lost time and endless aggravation are two of the biggest drawbacks of a grueling commute by car. But gridlock on the way to work also harms the environment by pumping extra pollution into the air and wasting precious fuel. How wasteful and time-consuming a commute becomes depends in part on how slowly traffic moves and how long it is stalled, says David Schrank, an associate research scientist at the Texas Transportation Institute, part of Texas A&M University in College Station. Things start to get...

SACRAMENTO – California is on the verge of initiating a historic rewrite of local planning laws, fusing for the first time the issues of urban growth and global warming. Unprecedented nationally, the complex legislation would steer communities toward land-use policies to contain sprawl, using as much as $12 billion a year in state-controlled transportation funds as an incentive. “This bill will change the way California grows,” said state Sen. Darrell Steinberg, D-Sacramento, its author. Under the measure, the state Air Resources Board would establish targets for 17 regions to reduce greenhouse gas emissions as part of a broader campaign to...

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — For decades, California cities and counties knew one way to grow — by sprawling outward. That approach, which has led to ever longer commutes, jammed freeways and worsening air quality, is being challenged under a bill that was approved Saturday in the state Legislature. If signed by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who has not yet indicated whether he would do so, the bill would require local governments to plan their growth so that homes, businesses and public transit systems are clustered together. The goal is to help California meet the emission mandates spelled out in a wide-ranging...

Shorter commutes. Less sprawl. Cleaner air. Denser housing closer to downtown near transportation hubs. "Smart growth" it's called. California policy makers have been yakking about this -- dreaming about it -- for decades. But too many interests have been prospering from dumb growth or have merely been skittish of a future they can't quite visualize. Enter a tenacious policy wonk with roots in local government: state Sen. Darrell Steinberg (D-Sacramento). He has just managed to finesse to the verge of legislative passage a visionary smart growth bill that, by its nature, also fights global warming. ... (snip) The measure (SB...

(KCPW News) Utah lawmakers took tips on highway funding from a Texas legislator this morning. Texas Republican Representative Mike Krusee joined them on Capitol Hill. He told the Revenue and Taxation Interim Committee that with federal money drying up, the only way to pay for new highways is to make them toll roads. "Guess how many roads pay for themselves in taxes? Zero. Not a one. Most of them are less than 50 percent," said Krusee. "Imagine if you're a grocery a store owner, and you decide, I'm gonna sell sirloin at a buck a pound, and I'm gonna sell...

Which gets better gas mileage, a Hummer or a scooter? No contest. But which is more polluting? It may not be what you think. "It's true. The cleanest scooter is still dirtier than a car," said John Swanton, air pollution specialist with the California Air Resources Board.

Former Calif. Gov. Jerry Brown is waging war on California suburbs because of global warming, says Joel Kotkin, a presidential fellow in urban futures at Chapman University. Brown is concerned about the alleged environmental damage caused by the suburbs. He wants to compel residents to move to city centers or to high-density developments clustered near mass transit lines: • Brown has threatened to file suit against municipalities that shun high-density housing in favor of building new suburban single-family homes, on the grounds that they will pollute the environment. • He is also backing controversial legislation -- Senate bill 375 --...

Michael Munger of Duke University talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about Munger's recent trip to Chile and the changes Chile has made to Santiago's bus system. What was once a private decentralized system with differing levels of quality and price has been transformed into a system of uniform quality designed from the top down. How has the new system fared? Not particularly well according to Munger. Commuting times are up and the President of Chile has apologized to the Chilean people for the failures of the new system. Munger talks about why such changes take place and why they...

While millions of American families struggle with falling house prices, soaring gasoline costs and tightening credit, some environmentalists, urban planners and urban real estate speculators are welcoming the bad news as signaling what they have long dreamed of -- the demise of suburbia. In a March Atlantic article, Christopher B. Leinberger, a visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution and a professor of urban planning, contended that yesterday's new suburbs will become "the slums" of tomorrow because high gas prices and the housing meltdown will force Americans back to the urban core. Leinberger is not alone. Other pundits, among them author...

WEBSITE Overview What is a Vanpool? With gas prices rising, traffic congestion increasing, and energy resources dwindling, smart long-distance commuters are seizing the opportunity to turn an often costly and frustrating daily commute into a more pleasant experience. It’s called vanpooling. Vanpools are similar to carpools, except they generally involve more people. A vanpool is a group of 5 to 15 people who regularly travel together to work 30 miles or more (roundtrip) in a comfortable van. Typically, riders pay a monthly fare and maintenance fee, while drivers ride at a discounted rate in exchange for driving and maintaining...

For three days, members of the U.S. Conference of Mayors meeting in Miami this weekend shared their problems and successes, heard experts discuss challenges facing them and compiled a list of issues their representatives will take to Washington, D.C., and to state capitols. It so happens that the top representative for the coming year is Miami Mayor Manny Diaz, newly installed as the group's president. As such, he'll be pushing the mayors' agenda in Congress, at the White House and in the federal agencies that interact with city governments. Greener cities It is an ambitious agenda. The Mayors Conference, for...

Gordon Brown's futuristic eco-towns to fine residents for driving out of city limits Jill Sherman, Whitehall Editor Motorists living in Gordon Brown's futuristic green communities face fines for driving their cars out of town, under radical proposals being drawn up by ministers, The Times has learnt. Residents of the largely pedestrianised eco-towns may also be expected to park their cars at the outskirts and walk or cycle to their homes, up to ten minutes away. These are among possible ways being discussed with ministers to meet a government target to cut car use in eco-towns by half. Detailed planning proposals...

The City of Long Beach is advertising for planning consultants to carry out their plans. Will they be hired if there is some danger that the consultant will say "We have studied the situation carefully and we believe the city should not impose zoning restrictions on property owners and their uses of the land. Nor do we believe that eminent domain is justified." Would such a consultant be considered or hired?...

Taking the advice of Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa's top planning appointee, a Valley Village woman has sued the city over a new rule that allows developers to build taller, bulkier buildings if they include affordable units. Last month, city Planning Commission President Jane Ellison Usher sent an e-mail to community groups, criticizing the recently adopted density bonus ordinance and laying out a legal strategy to challenge it. On Thursday, homeowner Sandy Hubbard filed the first lawsuit using Usher's suggestions. A group of home and business owners is also considering a lawsuit. Usher and community groups have complained that the density bonus...

Thursday, March 27, 2008 By Elizabeth Hovde Portland Mayor Tom Potter joked Monday that to get to Vancouver, he gets to “cross the I-5 Bridge that apparently was built by the Lewis and Clark expedition.” The bridge isn’t that old, but it is outdated in size, form and function. Ask almost anyone if we need a new Interstate 5 bridge and they should nod in agreement. For heads that don’t bob, tell them the northbound span was built in 1917 and the southbound in 1958. Remind people that the bridge is seismically unfit and that it offers the only red...

HEMPSTEAD -- The Trans Texas Corridor may be the most controversial highway ever built in Texas. That is, if it ever gets built. All month, there have been public hearings throughout the area where people have been showing up in droves to oppose it. People don’t drive very fast on Odis Styers’ family ranch near Hempstead, but TxDOT wants that to change. “It’s quiet, it’s peaceful,” Styers said. “It’s a shame a road is gonna mess it up.” The road is the Trans Texas Corridor. The plans call for it to come through here, and with it: separate lanes for...

BALTIMORE (AP) -- In a new tactic against urban crime, the mayors of several East Coast cities, including New York, plan to launch a database that will allow them to share information on known gun offenders. The database, expected to be operational later this year, will pool data from the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives with information collected by local agencies, including ballistics information and intelligence gathered from debriefings of gun offenders. New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Baltimore Mayor Sheila Dixon and other urban leaders said Wednesday that the first-of-its-kind database will make it more difficult for...

WASHINGTON — Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton on Tuesday challenged Sen. Barack Obama to meet in four separate Democratic debates before the March 4 primaries in Texas and Ohio — including an event scheduled for Feb. 28 in Houston. But Obama, of Illinois, did not immediately commit to travel to Houston to take on Clinton just five days before what could be a crucial Texas primary. As voters in 22 states went to polls in the primary avalanche known as Super Tuesday, Clinton, of New York, called on her Democratic rival to agree to several debates. "Senator Clinton has enjoyed the...

Former Mayor Bob Lanier has joined prominent home builders and developers campaigning to limit new development regulations they believe could threaten Houston's growth. Lanier's comments are part of a nascent effort to respond to recent city laws and policies, including a high-density development ordinance now being written, that affect the politically powerful real estate industry. A new organization, Houstonians for Responsible Growth, which has begun the process of registering as a political action committee, is coordinating the campaign, said Ken Hoagland, a political consultant working with the group. Lanier's involvement came in a letter delivered Dec. 27 to all 14...

There are encouraging signs that New Urbanism is beginning to take root in American design. The U.S. Green Building Council has begun using a pilot system called LEED Neighborhood Design, which will include location and transportation use in its green ratings. Duany and his peers in the movement are helping city and town planners to dismantle the postwar zoning regulations that helped make the car king, and you can find New Urbanist projects sprouting across the country. Americans may say they hate their long commute, but there's little evidence that they're eager to abandon a lifestyle built around the car....

French Prime Minister Georges Clemenceau is credited with the famous remark, "La guerre! C'est une chose trop grave pour la confier à des militaries" -- war is too serious a matter to be entrusted to the military. The idea that Clemenceau was trying to project through these words is that experts are often incapable of seeing beyond their profession and understanding the greater domains of necessity. Here in Hawaii, we are facing a transportation infrastructure crisis of the highest degree of peril. I assert to every single man, woman, and child of these Hawaiian Islands that our future is too...

California has more than 36 million residents and is expected by some projections to have 60 million by 2050. People keep moving here, and yet the state government is doing everything it can to make it harder to build the homes necessary to house everyone. It's already incredibly costly and difficult to get government approvals to build housing developments, as cities micromanage pretty much everything a builder does. People will need to live somewhere. If other counties embrace Marin's overall approach toward development, the newcomers will have nowhere to live – even as Marin officials bask in their moral superiority....

Is Los Angeles ready for the 250-square-foot apartment? That's what city planning officials have in mind with a series of sweeping new zoning proposals that would allow developers to build smaller condos and apartments than ever before. The tiny units — studios that officials hope would be as small as 250 square feet — are part of a package of proposed zoning changes aimed at significantly increasing density in downtown L.A. The rules would apply to the roughly five miles around downtown but could eventually be extended elsewhere in the city. The idea is to encourage developers to continue to...

As bloated homes and McMansions continue to sprout up across the country, Boulder, Colorado, may have come up with a lucrative approach to contain what detractors call the plague of Garage Mahals and Big-Hair Houses. At a July 10 meeting, where more than 70 citizens spoke, Boulder county commissioners preliminarily approved a system of development rights transfers that would extract mega-bucks from builders of mega-homes. It is a process that has been used for historic, agricultural and natural resource preservation in other parts of the country. Michelle Krezek, Boulder County land use manager, said the commissioners "want to allow property...

Houston is at a turning point. With a boost from noted urbanist Joel Kotkin, our city has begun recasting its national reputation from "that ugly, sprawling, weird city without zoning" to the exemplar city for "Opportunity Urbanism," a compelling new paradigm for cities in the 21st century. This paradigm asserts that the fundamental (but recently forgotten) core mission of cities is to accelerate the upward social and economic mobility of its inhabitants. This may sound obvious to the average person, but in the wonkish world of urban policy and planning, the themes of the past decade have been environmentalism (smart...

Call your project “smart” — even when it isn't — and get millions in public funds, ___ Santa Monica real estate developer Dan Palmer faced a daunting task three years ago when he announced plans to build 5,800 homes in the Newhall Pass, a mountainous stretch that connects the northeast edge of the San Fernando Valley with the Santa Clarita Valley. After all, the project was certain to draw the ire of homeowner groups, open-space advocates and the city of Santa Clarita. Palmer, an experienced hand at subdividing land in Santa Clarita, sharpened his sales pitch for the project, dubbed...

. CARSON CITY - Not as though it happens every day, but sometimes listening to National Public Radio can cost your state $1 billion. In 2004 Chris Giunchigliani, then a state assemblywoman, was listening to NPR while working on "smart growth" bills to introduce the next year. "Suddenly, I heard someone on the radio talking about 'green building,' and I thought, 'Gee, that would be good to have here, too.' " Giunchigliani, now a Clark County commissioner, loves government policy the way some people love to breathe. She quickly searched online and found out what it means to go "green."...

<p>CHICAGO � Five passengers were shot while riding a Chicago Transit Authority bus on the city's South Side on Thursday, authorities said.</p> <p>Two teenage boys and one girl were transported in critical condition to Advocate Christ Medical Center in Oak Lawn, said fire department spokesman Larry Langford.</p>

Carpooling won't do much to reduce U.S. highway congestion in urban areas, and a better solution would be to build new highways and charge drivers fees to use them, the White House said on Monday. ADVERTISEMENT "It is increasingly appropriate to charge drivers for some roadway use in the same way the private market charges for other goods and services," the White House said in its annual report on the U.S. economy. While some urban areas have designated roads for vehicles with two or more passengers, those high-occupancy vehicle (HOV) lanes are often underused because carpooling is becoming less popular,...

Mayor Dave's trolley plan is an extremely weak idea. The trolley will make only a tiny difference in overall transit ridership, but cost tens of millions of dollars to build and operate. The feds won't help. Far less costly alternatives exist that can exceed the trolley's ridership, but these are being ignored by the politically stacked committee reviewing the issue. Building the trolley would also drain the bus company budget, hurting Metro bus riders over time. In almost every case, you can increase transit usage far more, per dollar of expenditure, with bus than with rail. Most trolley riders would...

The best-laid plans of mice and men often go awry, as the saying goes. Though Robert Burns may have had the vagaries of life in mind when he penned this line over two centuries ago, he probably didn't anticipate that this sentiment would hold equally true for cities and urban economies. However, modern urban planners have yet to realize this, and Houstonians could learn this lesson the hard way. Houston has recently begun to take significant steps down the road of urban planning by embarking on two major projects. In the first, a committee has recently released a "plan to...

City expands sidewalk law Sitting or lying banned in 3 more neighborhoods; citywide extension of the law debated Responding to residents' demands to reduce crime and clear out vagrants, the City Council on Wednesday added three neighborhoods to an ordinance that bans sitting or lying on sidewalks during most of the day, and some members said it should apply citywide. The ordinance, which also prohibits putting personal possessions on the sidewalk, already exists in downtown and Midtown, but now will apply to the Old Sixth Ward, Avondale and Hyde Park. Before the panel approved the measure, several council members sounded...

When conservationists talk about "saving" this and "protecting" that, a logical question might be: Saving it from whom? Protecting it from whom? And why should the government force what you want on someone else who obviously wants something different, or there would not be an issue in the first place? After all, the Constitution says that all citizens are entitled to the "equal protection of the laws." Such questions almost never get asked. Nor do evidence or logic play much of a role in most conservation issues. Instead, we hear rhapsodies about "open space," sneers at "urban sprawl" and self-congratulatory...

BOSTON (Reuters) - Boston's $15 billion "Big Dig" was meant to inspire awe, an engineering marvel on scale with the Panama Canal that would thrust U.S. cities into a new era. ADVERTISEMENT Instead, it faces a crisis of public confidence after a fatal tunnel collapse that could derail plans for other U.S. urban mega-projects. With 7.5 miles of underground highway and a 183-foot (56 meter) wide cable-stayed bridge, the Big Dig replaced an ailing elevated expressway to fix chronic congestion and reunite downtown Boston with its historic waterfront neighborhoods. But cost overruns, leaks, delays, falling debris, criminal probes and charges...

On June 29, 1956, President Eisenhower signed a bill to build the Interstate Highway System - a dream of his since he crossed the US in 1919 and, later, after he saw Hitler's autobahn. Little did he know what 46,876 miles of expressways would do. Fifty years on, the nation is still taking stock of the impact of high-speed roads connecting big cities. The system was finished only last year with the completion of Boston's "Big Dig" project. Instead of taking 10 years and $50 billion to build as envisioned, the 62 routes took nearly a halfcentury to finish and,...

I remember when I first drove through Collin County several years ago and thought, "Why do all these people live so far away?" It took me a while to realize that these crazy people out in the sticks didn't live far away – not far away from the things that mattered to them: their churches, their shopping centers, their favorite restaurants and even their jobs. Now that I live in East Dallas and work downtown, I run into the very kind of naïve, shallow thinking I was guilty of when I first experienced Collin County. Can you believe they are...

HOUSTON -- Counties that were saddled with chaos and traffic-choked highways before Hurricane Rita are defying an order from Gov. Rick Perry to empower one person to make evacuation decisions during a disaster. Instead, a group of elected Gulf Coast leaders adopted a different plan Tuesday that puts the authority in the hands of a 15-person committee _ even though the ultimate power to evacuate still rests with individual counties.

SAN FRANCISCO (AFP) - As California recalls the catastrophic earthquake that struck San Francisco 100 years ago, seismologists warn that the golden state's love of cars could turn into a fatal attraction in the quake-prone state. Elevated freeways, highway overpasses, and garages built under homes are vulnerable to crashing down when the earth shudders, said seismologist Jack Boatwright of the US Geological Survey. "The automobile culture is really a knife in the heart of earthquake preparedness," Boatwright told AFP. "We are only as strong as our weakest overpass." Another key weakness is structural, including building code oversights exposed by the...

March 21, 2006, 2:37PM Richmond rail plan draws a crowd Most of the 500 at town hall talk oppose Metro idea By RAD SALLEE Copyright 2006 Houston Chronicle More than 500 people attended a town hall meeting Monday night on the controversial choice of a route for the Metropolitan Transit Authority's next light rail line, most opposing plans to build on Richmond Avenue. Those who spoke at the meeting, at St. Luke's United Methodist Church, 3471 Westheimer, were each given one minute to talk, and most said they favored a line on nearby Westpark. Some, like Christina Campbell, said construction...

Dallas Highway is a straight shot west heading away from Marietta Square, taking dead aim at the Paulding County line. It follows the same path through historic old homes and stately oak trees as two-laned Whitlock Avenue in Marietta; it opens up briefly to four lanes around the new high school and then shrinks again to two lanes through a sliver of the Kennesaw Mountain National Battlefield Park. But beyond that point, Dallas Highway is open for business — four big lanes with narrow, grassy medians tracking through "Big Box" power centers, housing the likes of Home Depot, Lowe's, Target,...

Last year was another instrumental year in the advance of world government. While most commentators will concentrate on popularized events, many will not discuss the latest steps taken to cement the final touches to a world governmental structure, that has been in the making for the last 150 years or so. In order to understand the importance of 2005's global achievements in the march towards global governance, which is the integration of the world's peoples, countries, and philosophies, we must briefly visit the past. Let us recount the 1913 birth of the U.S. tax code. Over the past 92 years,...

Across the United States, an unprecedented acceleration in suburban sprawl is prompting concerns about the environment, traffic, health and damage to rural communities, but opponents appear powerless to stop the process because of the economic development and profits it generates. Sprawl, defined as the unplanned, uncontrolled expansion of urban areas beyond their fringes, has greatly accelerated over the past 25 years, spurred by low mortgage interest rates and aggressive developers. According to the National Resources Inventory, about 34 million acres -- an area the size of Illinois -- were converted to developed uses between 1982 and 2001. Development in the...

As optimism poured into their hearts and knowledge crammed into their brains, more than 100 local residents peered with a wan smile into their collective future Friday during the first official smart growth educational workshop. Four erudite speakers presented a path toward a near-utopian life for Ukiahans -- full of walkable communities, slower traffic and more prominent greenscaping. But it was the far-reaching, more intimate impacts of smart growth that produced a series of gasps from the audience. A cross-sectional crowd of elected officials, public and private planners, contractors, builders and other concerned citizens took part of the workshop, co-sponsored...

WASHINGTON — Talk about stirring a state, and perhaps a nation, to rein in sprawl and ease congestion. Last Monday, the newly-elected centrist Democrat Timothy M. Kaine marched into the General Assembly and told lawmakers that his first priority as Virginia’s governor is giving local leaders the authority to block new housing and business construction if roads cannot handle the increased traffic. What’s most important is not just what Mr. Kaine proposed, but where these Smart Growth ideas could take effect. Virginia lies right next to Washington. From one end of Pennsylvania Avenue to the other, politicians in search of...

Bossman Chip forwarded me an interesting piece from the Michigan Land Use Institute: "Could Smart Growth Tip the Next Presidential Election?" Having read through it, the headline seems rather, uh, optimistic. But there's some interesting stuff about the role smart-growth proposals played in the victory of Tim Kaine (D) in the Virginia governor's race, and the general lay of the political land in fast-growing exurbs: The basic electoral math is simple. The last two presidential elections were decided in the fastest growing counties of a select group of states, including Virginia, Florida, Colorado, North Carolina, and Ohio. In 2004, half...

Over the next 30 years, most of Harris County's remaining open space will succumb to subdivisions, office buildings and shopping centers where millions of new residents will live and work, projections by local planners show. The spread of development, particularly west and northwest of Houston, is among the more striking trends shown in preliminary population and job growth projections developed by the Houston-Gal- veston Area Council for the eight-county Houston region. The potential loss of open space alarms conservationists and others concerned about suburban sprawl. It is among the factors driving an effort by business and civic leaders to find...

RATHDRUM, Idaho (AP) -- A developer has threatened to make a big stink after the Kootenai County Commission denied his request to rezone property he owns at the edge of town for a professional building. Specifically, Steve Nagel plans to park a pig farm on the site, with hundreds of squealing porkers greeting visitors to the northern Idaho town. (snip) Nagel doesn't want to be in the city because he would have to pay an estimated $300,000 to extend a sewer line a half-mile and a water line a mile under railroad tracks to the property. (snip)Nagel, a Rathdrum native,...

Mississippi government officials are asking prominent New Urbanist city planners for help in rebuilding their communities following the destruction wrought by Hurricane Katrina. The results will obviously differ from one community to another, but one thing is certain: New Urbanism will not be good for Mississippi. Why bring in the New Urbanists? “We got (new urbanists) because they were good task leaders in getting large groups of people together, not for new urbanism. These (local) people don't need anybody to come and tell them how to do their jobs.” So says Jim Barksdale, the former Netscape CEO appointed by Mississippi...