Category: ULI

Highways, canals and how we spend our money

ULI report predicts future U.S. freeways will be tolled. Above: I-77 and Brookshire Freeway. Photo: Nancy Pierce
With some 3,000 Urban Land Institute members at the nonprofit group’s national conference in Charlotte this week, several ULI-related articles have come out taking a most rosy view of the Queen City. Links are below. 
And in a timely release, the Washington-based group of developers, planners, architects and others today issued its annual report on infrastructure, Infrastructure 2012: Spotlight on leadership. It describes the Triangle’s transit situation, and makes some important points:

– “Although governments may have greater success in finding efficiencies by doing more with less, the overall state of the nation’s infrastructure will continue to deteriorate unless the political will and funding to make the needed investments materializes”

– “Unfortunately, the United States is one of the few major economic powers lacking a national infrastructure policy direction: initiatives are left to percolate from local and state levels, often competing for resources.”

– “Freeways have seen their day – any new highway or added expressway lane will almost certainly be tolled.”

On Page 43 is a wrap-up of the Triangle area’s transit situation.  

 
And note the photo on Page 39, of Oklahoma City’s Bricktown Canal. I ran into former Oklahoma City Mayor Kirk Humphreys at Tom Low’s Civic By Design session Tuesday night – I spoke to a small but enthusiastic group – and Humphreys briefly described the capital city’s new canals, filled with city water.

The report explains: “Oklahoma City has developed an innovative way of funding civic projects – bundle them into short-term, focused packages, and subject them to a vote.” The third in the city’s Metropolitan Area Projects series of votes passed in late 2009 and is generating $777 million for downtown parks and other civic infrastructure. In December 2009, 54 percent of Oklahoma City voters OK’d a one-cent sales tax increase to pay for an ambitious parks and open-space agenda. The scheduled projects include a 5- to 6-mile streetcar system.
Unfortunately, a bout with the flu has kept me from attending Tuesday’s and today’s sessions. I hope to make it tomorrow. But in advance of the conference, several articles about Charlotte by ULI-affiliated writers have appeared. 
Here’s one from AtlanticCities.com, the online publication about cities from The Atlantic Monthly. It dubs Charlotte a “city of sidewalks.”  I think that may be a bit rosy for the current situation.
And the Charlotte Business Journal published “Charlotte’s on the right path” by Edward McMahon, a senior resident fellow at ULI. (Warning, article may be for subscribers only.)  He calls Charlotte the nation’s “most improved city,” and justly lauds the newly lively downtown and some praiseworthy areas such as Dilworth, Baxter in Fort Mill, and the town of Davidson. Then he maybe goes too far. Unlike cities that had to recover from disinvestment, McMahon writes, “It has recovered from fast growth, sprawl and suburbanization.” 
Recovered from sprawl and suburbanization? Er, not yet.

Whatever do we do with Independence Boulevard?

Charlotte’s “hell highway” is never referred to by that term at public meetings. But that’s what it is. Tonight, the Metropolitan Transit Commission is chewing over some recommendations from a group of officials and citizens over what, really, needs to happen to the now-vintage plans for light rail down Independence.

(Here’s UNCC Professor David Walters’ recent essay on the same topic.)

A panel from the nonprofit Urban Land Institute last winter recommended rethinking the earlier idea to put a light rail line down the median of Indy Blvd.  The ULI panel pointed out the obvious: Putting a transit station in the middle of a huge multilane freeway would be about as pedestrian-unfriendly as you could be, and other cities have found you don’t get much transit-oriented development at light rail stops along freeways. Turn the median into a high-occupancy-toll lane for buses and cars, and put the rail transit along Central Avenue (as in the planned streetcar) and along Monroe Road.

For the past six months a task force of transit, transportation and East Charlotte representatives has been meeting to see what, if any, of the ULI recommendations should be pursued. Tonight, the MTC heard its recommendations. In a nutshell: Do what the ULI said, only be more flexible in where, exactly, the rail transit along Monroe Road should go.

“The Metropolitan Transit Commission should rescind the special provision in the 2006 Transit System Plan that calls for preserving the ability to construct light rail transit or bus rapid transit in the center of Independence Boulevard,” the task force says in a letter to Charlotte Mayor Anthony Foxx, who chairs the MTC.

MTC discussion was lively and enthusiastic – more so, really, than for the Red Line task force report earlier. Matthews Mayor Jim Taylor noted that “Union County [just southeast of Charlotte] seems to be the most interested I’ve ever seen them to be in the past 10 years.” Getting tax-averse Union County interested in anything involving light rail transit would be a sea change in the local transit landscape.

And one tidbit: The state highway project to turn Indy Boulevard into a freeway has been nicknamed a “one mile per decade” project.

U.S. lags other nations on infrastructure

While I was taking a few days off, an interesting report came out from the national Urban Land Institute  and Ernst & Young. “Infrastructure 2011: A strategic priority” details how the U.S. is falling farther and farther behind other countries. [Sorry, but it looks as if blogger is refusing to embed links today. Visit uli.org; the report is on its homepage.] It also analyzes Charlotte’s situation (on Page 51), saying, “But the grand plan hit the skids in late 2010 when the regional transit agency tabled two projects — a BRT [bus rapid transit] corridor and a $450 million airport streetcar line — while sending two others, a $1.2 billion extension of the existing light-rail route and a new $375 million commuter-rail corridor, into underfunded limbo.”

Looking globally, the report says that “Canada and Australia have leapfrogged the United States in confronting aging and crumbling networks, as well as employing public/private partnerships.”  Here’s a quote from from the Executive Summary: “The United States notably continues to lag its global competition – laboring without a national infrastructure plan, lacking political consensus, and contending with severe federal, state, and local budget deficits that limit options. Some metropolitan areas appear better positioned when they can forge plans and pool resources for new transit lines and road systems across multiple jurisdictions.”

The Washington Post report on the study includes this tidbit: “The report envisions a time when, like Detroit, U.S. cities may opt to abandon services in some districts and when lightly used blacktopped rural roads would be allowed to return to nature.”

Urban acupuncture and the American Dream

We now live in the Century of the City, so called because last year the global human population counter rolled over the 50 percent mark – More than half the world’s people now live in urban areas.

But in the U.S., the 21st century will also have to be the Century of the Suburb – the re-imagined suburb. That’s particularly true in Sun Belt cities such as Charlotte, Raleigh, Atlanta, Orlando, etc., where such a large proportion of land is given over to postwar suburban development. In coming years we’ll have to decide how to, as Georgia Tech architect and author Ellen Dunham-Jones puts it, re-inhabit, retrofit and re-green those areas.

The imperatives are economic, environmental and demographic.

1. Carbon and greenhouse gases. If we’re to avoid creating even more damaging and destructive changes in the world’s climate (increasing droughts, floods, snow or burning heat, depending on where you are) for our kids and grandkids to deal with, then an excellent way to shrink U.S. production of greenhouse gases is to reduce how much people drive.

Even for people who insist on believing that all the world’s climate scientists (who compete with one another and back-bite as avidly as any other professionals) have joined to perpetuate a worldwide hoax, there are other excellent reasons to reduce the U.S. driving habits: the cost to households and businesses of higher fuel prices, not to mention driving itself, with transportation taking an average 19 percent of U.S. household income; depending on other countries for our fuel; air pollution; the vast cost of building and maintaining roads and streets to accommodate ever-more driving.

2. Demographics. Population realities are converging to favor urban/multifamily/higher density development. Gen Y (aka the Millennials) have a clear preference, at least at this stage in their lives, for urban environments. Meantime, many aging boomers will be selling their houses and moving into condos or apartments. Many of them will also have to give up driving due to infirmity, illness or eyesight, so they’ll be looking for neighborhoods where they can walk to stores and medical offices.

3. The emerging obesity epidemic. Driving more means exercising less. Human beings haven’t suddenly lost their ability to have will power. We have structural issues that are making us fat. One of them is that we don’t walk much anymore, because we have to drive.

4. Suburbs on the brink. Many of the postwar suburban neighborhoods (and by “suburban” I mean low-density, auto-oriented neighborhoods or towns carved up into single-use zones) are fading. To be sure, many thrive and will continue to, even as the market for single-family houses stagnates through oversupply (see item 2, above). But already, many cities including Charlotte are puzzling over fixes for dead or dying enclosed malls, derelict strip centers and big box stores, and neighborhoods with dwindling property values and rising crime and social problems.

I was privileged to spend Saturday moderating a conference in Raleigh, sponsored by the N.C. State College of Design, looking at the problem of, and opportunities for, inner-ring suburbs – which generally means those built in the late 1940s through the 1960s.

The clear consensus was that cities and metro areas will have to learn how to encourage more development closer to their core, and to build more transit lines. Some tidbits from some of the speakers:

• William Hudnut, former mayor of Indianapolis (he joked about “India-No-Place”) gave a definition of “sustainable” that I liked: “Stuff that endures.” He said the first-tier suburbs are “the place where blight can either be stopped or spread farther out.” He used a term I love: “urban acupuncture,” which he attributed to Brazil’s Jaime Lerner, a former mayor (Curitiba) and state (Parana) governor. The idea is to be strategic with well-placed interventions that help heal the surrounding area.

“Progress is not always new,” he reminded the crowd. Other advice: Eradicate ugliness, and “multiply picnics.” Finally, he offered a pertinent quote from Ernest Hemingway that I intend to repeat often: “making strong the broken places.”

• Patrick Condon of the University of British Columbia, author of “Seven Rules for Sustainable Communities,” showed how, when looked at based on 30-year amortization, streetcars are a cheaper form of mass transit than buses. “The cost of buying buses, this year, is cheaper,” he said. But long-term, building and operating streetcars is cheaper for transit systems. He showed slides of old streetcar rails popping out of the pavement (no, he didn’t have a photo of the one on North Tryon Street) “wanting so much to be used.”

• Ellen Dunham-Jones of Georgia Tech, co-author of “Retrofitting Suburbia,” noted that “nobody is plowing down existing neighborhoods” but instead there are opportunities to build infill, especially on what she called “underperforming asphalt.” It requires creativity and innovative ways of developing, she said.

Wrap-up speaker Patrick Phillips, CEO of the nonprofit Urban Land Institute, made the point that close-in neighborhoods can have a great appeal due to their proximity to employment centers and to transit options – unlike far-flung “exurbs,” he said, many of which are seeing high rates of foreclosures in the recession. And he used some research from the Center for Neighborhood Technology, looking at Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill, that showed that when transportation costs are figured in, exurban areas that look most “affordable” are, in fact, the least affordable. (See “Penny Wise, Pound Fuelish.”)

The wrapup? Marvin Malecha, dean of the NCSU College of Design, took aim at today’s use of “the American Dream” to mean a house in the suburbs. Come on, he said, isn’t there in fact a different dream that we all have? “The real American Dream,” he said, “is that our children will be OK.”

Urban acupuncture and the American Dream

We now live in the Century of the City, so called because last year the global human population counter rolled over the 50 percent mark – More than half the world’s people now live in urban areas.

But in the U.S., the 21st century will also have to be the Century of the Suburb – the re-imagined suburb. That’s particularly true in Sun Belt cities such as Charlotte, Raleigh, Atlanta, Orlando, etc., where such a large proportion of land is given over to postwar suburban development. In coming years we’ll have to decide how to, as Georgia Tech architect and author Ellen Dunham-Jones puts it, re-inhabit, retrofit and re-green those areas.

The imperatives are economic, environmental and demographic.

1. Carbon and greenhouse gases. If we’re to avoid creating even more damaging and destructive changes in the world’s climate (increasing droughts, floods, snow or burning heat, depending on where you are) for our kids and grandkids to deal with, then an excellent way to shrink U.S. production of greenhouse gases is to reduce how much people drive.

Even for people who insist on believing that all the world’s climate scientists (who compete with one another and back-bite as avidly as any other professionals) have joined to perpetuate a worldwide hoax, there are other excellent reasons to reduce the U.S. driving habits: the cost to households and businesses of higher fuel prices, not to mention driving itself, with transportation taking an average 19 percent of U.S. household income; depending on other countries for our fuel; air pollution; the vast cost of building and maintaining roads and streets to accommodate ever-more driving.

2. Demographics. Population realities are converging to favor urban/multifamily/higher density development. Gen Y (aka the Millennials) have a clear preference, at least at this stage in their lives, for urban environments. Meantime, many aging boomers will be selling their houses and moving into condos or apartments. Many of them will also have to give up driving due to infirmity, illness or eyesight, so they’ll be looking for neighborhoods where they can walk to stores and medical offices.

3. The emerging obesity epidemic. Driving more means exercising less. Human beings haven’t suddenly lost their ability to have will power. We have structural issues that are making us fat. One of them is that we don’t walk much anymore, because we have to drive.

4. Suburbs on the brink. Many of the postwar suburban neighborhoods (and by “suburban” I mean low-density, auto-oriented neighborhoods or towns carved up into single-use zones) are fading. To be sure, many thrive and will continue to, even as the market for single-family houses stagnates through oversupply (see item 2, above). But already, many cities including Charlotte are puzzling over fixes for dead or dying enclosed malls, derelict strip centers and big box stores, and neighborhoods with dwindling property values and rising crime and social problems.

I was privileged to spend Saturday moderating a conference in Raleigh, sponsored by the N.C. State College of Design, looking at the problem of, and opportunities for, inner-ring suburbs – which generally means those built in the late 1940s through the 1960s.

The clear consensus was that cities and metro areas will have to learn how to encourage more development closer to their core, and to build more transit lines. Some tidbits from some of the speakers:

• William Hudnut, former mayor of Indianapolis (he joked about “India-No-Place”) gave a definition of “sustainable” that I liked: “Stuff that endures.” He said the first-tier suburbs are “the place where blight can either be stopped or spread farther out.” He used a term I love: “urban acupuncture,” which he attributed to Brazil’s Jaime Lerner, a former mayor (Curitiba) and state (Parana) governor. The idea is to be strategic with well-placed interventions that help heal the surrounding area.

“Progress is not always new,” he reminded the crowd. Other advice: Eradicate ugliness, and “multiply picnics.” Finally, he offered a pertinent quote from Ernest Hemingway that I intend to repeat often: “making strong the broken places.”

• Patrick Condon of the University of British Columbia, author of “Seven Rules for Sustainable Communities,” showed how, when looked at based on 30-year amortization, streetcars are a cheaper form of mass transit than buses. “The cost of buying buses, this year, is cheaper,” he said. But long-term, building and operating streetcars is cheaper for transit systems. He showed slides of old streetcar rails popping out of the pavement (no, he didn’t have a photo of the one on North Tryon Street) “wanting so much to be used.”

• Ellen Dunham-Jones of Georgia Tech, co-author of “Retrofitting Suburbia,” noted that “nobody is plowing down existing neighborhoods” but instead there are opportunities to build infill, especially on what she called “underperforming asphalt.” It requires creativity and innovative ways of developing, she said.

Wrap-up speaker Patrick Phillips, CEO of the nonprofit Urban Land Institute, made the point that close-in neighborhoods can have a great appeal due to their proximity to employment centers and to transit options – unlike far-flung “exurbs,” he said, many of which are seeing high rates of foreclosures in the recession. And he used some research from the Center for Neighborhood Technology, looking at Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill, that showed that when transportation costs are figured in, exurban areas that look most “affordable” are, in fact, the least affordable. (See “Penny Wise, Pound Fuelish.”)

The wrapup? Marvin Malecha, dean of the NCSU College of Design, took aim at today’s use of “the American Dream” to mean a house in the suburbs. Come on, he said, isn’t there in fact a different dream that we all have? “The real American Dream,” he said, “is that our children will be OK.”

“Green” developers council?

Got an e-mail from developer David Smoots in response to the recent Citistates Report.

He proposes that developers, city officials and residents collaborate to find alternatives to sprawl.

He writes:

Our community must be prepared for a paradigm shift. It will require the collaboration of developers (I am one), city officials and citizenry to consider alternatives to the sprawling kind of development we’ve had in Charlotte for so long. In one recent national study, “Measuring the Market for Green Residential Development,” homebuyers admit we have to face the issue of environmental responsibility head-on. Nearly 38% strongly agree, and 41.2% somewhat agree, that “in order to protect the environment we will need big changes in the way we live.”

While New Urbanism has caught on over the past two decades, Charlotte should now prepare for the next step. One idea: Motivate the Urban Land Institute to implement a strategy among local members and push for the creation of a Sustainable Stewardship Council.

This council would work with citizenry, government and private entities on environmentally friendly development issues within our community. An involved SSC Council could help promote water strategies, energy strategies, transportation, health strategies, recycling and reuse of materials in rezoning, and permit-related activities. The upshot? Local real estate developers would become better community leaders.

Several things are notable about his suggestion. First, it sounds like a good idea. I mean, it couldn’t possibly hurt and it might help educate developers. Second, it’s further proof that at least some developers think (know?) that building “green” is a market niche that they can exploit. More and more customers are looking for “green.”

Is there a role for city and state regulations? Should city standards and zoning rules be changed to make them more environmentally sound? Note, this might not mean ADDING regulations so much as changing the ones we already have.