Eeek! Sprawlanta oozes this way!

Yikes! Should Charlotte be worried that Atlanta’s sprawl will ooze over it like a slime mold in the damp woods? Or more to the point, ooze over it the way Charlotte sprawled over Derita, Newell, Thrift, Sharon and other once rural hamlets?

Here’s a clever video about “Sprawlanta” which notes that if you add together all the miles driven in the Atlanta region daily, you could drive to the sun and back. And note the great visuals of some very courageous pedestrians trying to cross sprawl thoroughfares. As the video counts the number of pedestrian deaths in the region, it notes that iconic Atlanta author Margaret Mitchell died when she was struck while crossing the street.

The last section does seem a bit like a commercial for the Glenwood Park development, however lovely and worthwhile that development does look to be. Note developer Charles Brewer’s remarks at the end, pointing out he just wants government to get out of the way so he can develop in a way he believes people want. If you’re thinking this is of interest only to big-government commie pinko types, you might want to rethink that piece of it.

Commuter rail in Triangle? Study finds riders

The N.C. Railroad Co. commissioned a study that found up to 8,238 riders per weekday by 2022 projected for a possible commuter rail line between Durham and the Johnston County town of Wilson’s Mills. It looked at the whole Greensboro to Goldsboro stretch and concluded a 50-mile section in the Triangle had the highest possibility for ridership – up to 2 million riders per year.

Here’s the Raleigh N&O article. And here’s WRAL TV’s version.

Note the projected cost to construct the line $5 million to $7 million a mile. That’s eye-popping to be sure. But according to N.C. Department of Transportation Secretary Gene Conti, building a mile of interstate highway is $30 million to $50 million a mile. Makes the rail look awfully cost-effective, doesn’t it?

As the N&O article says,
If the forecast is accurate, the Triangle would have a busier rail line than the commuter trains that now serve such cities as San Diego and San Jose.
“Look at other high-growth areas around the country,” said Scott Saylor, the N.C. Railroad president. “There aren’t many that don’t have commuter rail.”

All together now: We know of a big one! We’re living in it.

Fear and loathing at City Hall, redux

I’ve had some VERY interesting reactions to my Saturday op-ed, reflecting on the Warren Turner non-censure vote. I told of a couple of instances long ago in which male colleagues had been inappropriate, either to me or others. I never reported them, I wrote, in part because that was an era when people really didn’t talk about “sexual harassment” as something you should complain about.

I also wrote, “Not reporting things is not unusual. Why didn’t I report Mr. Trashmouth Reporter? Why didn’t I speak up, years later, when a male politician casually and briefly dropped a hand on my thigh at a dinner? I guess I didn’t want to make a scene. I told a friend. She revealed that the same fellow had, in the guise of a hug, groped her. (For the record, it was not Warren Turner.)”

As you’d expect, I got some e-mails and phone calls in response. Most of the ones from women recounted experiences they’d had in which male co-workers, bosses or colleagues made their workplace uncomfortable.

Two off-the-record accounts came from women whom I’ve always thought of as taking no guff – the kind you’d think would have told the men to knock it off or they’d be missing key body parts. They told of thoroughly inappropriate remarks or even fending off men whose names you’d recognize. Neither ever reported it, or directly confronted the men. Why not? They just didn’t want to make a scene, they said.

The e-mails were interesting as well. Several from men expressed skepticism that the harassment truly occurred or was really anything more than clumsy attempts at flirtation. Here’s what one man wrote:
“Women in the workplace are exposing themselves more and more. … skirts with high, high slits; leg crossings exposing panties and/or the upper thigh. At the water cooler or in the elevator, an attractive man might get a really hard unmistakable breast buried in his … triceps. Or a woman will bend over facing him, showing how loose her bra fits and a whole lot of her anatomy. I can understand how some men interpret that conduct as an invitation … . Sexual harassment is a two-way street. Women should hold their exposure and their pressing of breasts on men for their husbands at home, etc., not at work.” (Never mind that neither I nor the women I knew whom I wrote about had dressed in those ways.)

The women’s e-mails were more sobering. Here’s one: “I’ve been in the same job for 21 yrs and always “1 rung below” in the pecking order of the same guy all these years. I’ve put up with exactly what you talked about – for 20 yrs. Nothing has changed for women really today. The same guy has been in trouble numerous times. Nothing ever happens to him. Most who did dare to come forward & complain, found themselves laid off or transferred to a lesser paying job. Why come forward if you’ll not be validated or supported by management but rather only made to look like a fool? Certainly, it was never worth it to me.”

Another: “Thank you so much for writing the article regarding sexual harassment. I am a retired teacher who was harassed by a principal along with several other teachers. My reaction was interesting when it first happened. You wonder, was it something I said; was he only kidding; maybe I was overreacting. When it happened again, I began to feel very uncomfortable and threatened. I then made it a point of avoiding his presence whenever possible. Eventually I along with a group of other teachers went before the school board attorney to express our feelings. I was wise enough to take my own attorney along and get in writing that I would not receive any repercussions due to my action. There was never any action taken against the principle but he eventually did lose his job for another infraction not related to the harassment. … I have two daughters in the work force now and they tell me that they have never had a boss who did not harass them in some way. ”

And this, with an interesting suggestion at the end: “You told the situation just like it really is. I know from sad experience. I worked for many years at one of our hospitals as an RN. I was groped by one of the doctors, and then later when I complained to the RN in charge, I was told “this is Dr. M, and we don’t want to upset him, do we?” Several years later, that same doctor made inappropriate remarks when we were on an elevator. I was so dumbfounded that I just looked harshly at him, and got off the elevator at the next stop. I did tell a superior, and she said basically the same thing that the first one had said, that is, leave it alone. I was supporting my family, and needed my job. You can be assured that I stayed far away from that doctor. … Perhaps we need a place where women (and/or men) can go to report inappropriate happenings. It would be ideal if there could be some sort of a committee which could listen, and then weigh the situation to see what could be done about it.”

So fellas, here’s a lesson for you. You may not be making smarmy remarks about body parts or your sexual prowess to your female co-workers, but some men do. You may not be groping your female colleagues, but some other men are. Most men behave themselves. A few don’t. When the women try to report these things, please try to believe them. A small percentage may be making things up, but it’s more likely that they are telling the truth. Even if it’s about your fraternity brother – or your fellow City Council member.

The sad secret behind Charlotte plans

Just got back from a City Council committee meeting where that darn Michael Barnes – the District 4 representative who is running for district attorney – kept asking some impertinent questions.

The topic at hand was a draft of the Catawba Area Plan, which the planners are working on to address an area in the west of part of Charlotte-Mecklenburg, up next to the Catawba River and north of I-85. Part of the plan’s aim, it says, is to encourage “developments that are compatible with the surrounding natural environment” and to “integrate environmentally sensitive design elements” by incorporating natural features, minimizing paved surfaces, “preserving and creating open space and greenways” and using green design to try to reduce storm water runoff. Excellent goals, to be sure.

Barnes asked the planner, Alberto Gonzalez, to describe what the city’s doing to encourage developers to save more trees and for open space protection. Gonzalez replied that they’d encourage cluster development, where a developer puts houses closer together than usual in order to leave a bigger chunk of undeveloped land in a subdivision.

Barnes: Are we doing anything to increase the tree save on the interior of a development?
Gonzalez: The plan encourages developers to save more trees. … “There’s only so much we can go in terms of requirements.”

After some more back and forth about the proposed revisions to the city’s tree ordinance (the revisions are for commercial, not residential development) and the tree canopy study the council heard about last week (see report here, starting on page 72, see my recent posting here, and see editorial here) Barnes pointed out, ” ‘encouraging’ clearly doesn’t work.”

What he was getting at what this simple reality that many people don’t understand. Charlotte’s plans and policies talk a lot about the need to be environmentally sensitive, or pedestrian-friendly, or any of a number of other laudable goals. They have absolutely no teeth.

What has the teeth are the ordinances – the subdivision ordinance, the tree ordinance, the zoning ordinance, and so on. Until those ordinances require what the planners say they are “encouraging” then we don’t get much of it.

Yes, the planners “encourage” developers to do things during the rezoning process. But remember, approximately 75 percent of residential development here doesn’t go through any rezoning. And remember, too, that every rezoning, even those that are in direct conflict with any area plan, automatically “update” the plan. Sweet, eh?

Even the Catawba Area Plan PowerPoint presentation itself noted that in the “summary of citizen concerns” was this: “Need strong tools (regulations) to implement environmental recommendations.” (To see the PowerPoint presentation of the Catawba Area Plan that was given at the meeting, follow this link. To read the draft plan, follow this one.)

“I suggest we should start demanding more, so this city looks the way we want it to in 20 years,” Barnes said.

Spoken like a guy running for countywide office … But that said, he certainly hit on a good point.

Charlotte meets EPA ozone rules. Sort of.

Visible air pollution shows in 2002 photo of Charlotte skyline

(Update 6:30 p.m. Thursday: I’ve edited and tinkered in several spots below, after a conversation with Steinman)
On my calendar for May 4, just above where I had scrawled “Primary,” was the note, “conformity deadline.” “Conformity” is bureaucrat-ese for whether the Charlotte region’s long-range transportation plans meet federal requirements for clamping down on ozone.
If the plans don’t pass muster, we lose a huge chunk of federal transportation money.
The plans don’t have to actually reduce on ozone, mind you. They just have to follow the right formulas and use computer modeling to show that ozone will go down.
I called Norm Steinman of the Charlotte Department of Transportation. (Dare I call him the conformity czar? He protests the term, which I just made up, but he’s in charge of the city of Charlotte’s measuring of the regional conformity models.)
Charlotte has passed, Steinman told me. The city was notified just a few days before. The letter, he said, was in the mail.
Almost 60 percent of the Charlotte region’s ozone comes from vehicle exhaust, including off-road vehicles. If you’re skeptical that it really will go down so much, given the projected population growth, join the crowd. It’s true, cars are getting cleaner and emissions are sinking. But in a growing city, the increasing number of vehicles on the road and the increasing number of miles they’re driving will partly counterbalance cleaner cars, especially as EPA standards keep getting tougher, as more and more evidence shows how bad for use zone and air pollution are.
But with the city’s high unemployment rate, fewer people are driving to jobs, Steinman said. It isn’t good for our economy but at least it helped with that conformity requirement. An even more important factor was that last summer was unusually cool and damp, with far fewer high-ozone days than usual.
Next up: 2016. That’s when Charlotte has to show that it can meet some even stricter ozone rules.

Charlotte’s huge tree loss

A report to be given to the City Council on Monday shows that the city has lost half its tree cover since 1985. Read the report here – it starts on page 70 of the pdf.

The county as a whole has lost 33 percent of the tree cover it had in 1985, the report found.
The study is an Urban Ecosystem Analysis, performed with satellite imagery, GIS technology and American Forests’ software. A major grant from The Women’s Impact Fund made it possible, with help from digital imagery provided by Mecklenburg County, and additional funding from the City of Charlotte and the Blumenthal Foundation.

The report notes: “Charlotte Mecklenburg’s tree cover has declined for the last 23 years and new policies and practices will need to emerge to reverse this trend. Based upon this latest data,
tree canopy in Mecklenburg County has reached the point where further decline will cause the County to fall below levels recommended by American Forests. Charlotte Mecklenburg is now at a crossroads that will set the course for environmental quality for decades to come.”

The city and the county must begin counting trees as part of the essential urban infrastructure. Today they don’t.

Yes, any time a city grows into greenfield areas it will lose large tracts of previously undeveloped woods. The problem isn’t that the city has grown, but that it hasn’t grown smartly – meaning that while plenty of land was targeted for development, no land was set aside for non-development. Other cities have done this routinely, through strategic use of water/sewer service and roads/no-roads policies. Many require parkland to be set aside (or a fee in lieu) with each development. This helps make up for the inevitable tree loss when greenfields get developed.

Not here.

BofA-sponsored report raps sprawl

A new article in Harvard Business Review “Back to the City” predicts a major cultural and demographic shift away from suburbia and back toward central cities.
It cites United Air Lines’ plan to move its operational center to downtown Chicago from the suburb of Elk Grove, and Walgreens buying New York drugstore chain Duane Reade, “signaling a deliberate decision to improve its capabilities in urban settings.”

Interestingly, it says:

“A recent report sponsored by Bank of America, the Greenbelt Alliance and the Low Income Housing Fund examines the inefficiencies of the current “geographical mismatch between workers and jobs.” Focusing on California, it says that sprawl “reduc[es] the quality of life,” “increase[s] the attractiveness of neighboring states,” and yields “higher direct business costs and taxes to offset the side-effects of sprawl”— which include transportation, health care, and environmental costs.”

“To put it simply,” the HBR article says, “the suburbs have lost their sheen: Both young workers and retiring Boomers are actively seeking to live in densely packed, mixed-use communities that don’t require cars—that is, cities or revitalized outskirts in which residences, shops, schools, parks, and other amenities exist close together. “

A cities-vs.-states smackdown

Blogging from “The Reinvented City,” in Cambridge, Mass., a conference sponsored by the Nieman Foundation, the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, and the Harvard Graduate School of Design.

Ex-Miami Mayor Manny Diaz and Ex-Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels, (both recent president of the U.S. Conference of Mayors) and both spending the semester at Harvard’s Institute of Politics, had finished their talks about how each had made changes and improvements to their respective cities. (Note, I’ve corrected an earlier version of this which didn’t show Nickels also headed the mayors’ group. Mary, 3:30 p.m. 4-25-10)

For instance, Miami 21 is a new form-based code for the city of Miami that throws out the old Euclidean zoning traditions (planners will know what that’s about) in favor of an approach focused not on separating all uses but on the relationship between streets and buildings, pedestrians and streets, all the buildings in a neighborhood, etc.

And Nickels – who spearheaded the U.S. Conference of Mayors’ Climate Protection Agreement campaign – talked about his efforts to push U.S.. cities to tackle climate change, since the federal government stalled on Kyoto, etc. As he talked about his lengthy, and probably successful effort to get rid of a highway along the Seattle waterfront and replace it with a tunnel. As he recounted a lengthy process fraught with legislative and gubernatorial political maneuvering, he said, “If you want to get us [him and Diaz] going, get us to talk about our relationship with states.”

So I did.

What, I asked, might be some mechanisms that could improve those relationships?

“Abolish the states!” Nickels barked.

He and Diaz pretty much went off on a tear about their anger and frustration with state legislatures. Legislators, Diaz said, don’t know or care about cities. “If he’s a state elected official he should stay the hell away from what’s going to affect mayors,” he said. The federal government hardly gives cities any money – they funnel it to states. And states don’t give it equitably to cities. “We get peanuts,” Diaz said.

States should realize the importance of investing in their cities, Nickels said, since cities are where the vast majority of any state’s jobs are. (Bev Perdue, are you listening?)

I buttonholed them after their talk, and they were even more outspoken. Rural legislators get elected by basically dumping on metro areas, Nickels said. He told of one well-respected legislator in Washington who was defeated when his opponent linked him to the Seattle skyline.
I asked if they knew of any state-city relationships that were working. They couldn’t list one.

“You create the new American economy in cities,” Diaz said. He and Nickels – and, I imagine, multiple other mayors – are enormously frustrated that state elected officials don’t recognize that the nation’s economy, and by extension the states’ economies, are created in the nation’s cities. The Miami economy, Diaz noted, is the 11th largest economy in the nation and bigger than most state economies.

They both believe changes are needed at the federal level, so more federal money – for transportation, economic development, energy block grants, etc. – goes directly to cities and urban areas and doesn’t need to be divvied up by state governments.

How Detroit is reinventing itself

Rick Tetzeli of Time Inc. runs the company’s multi-platform, multi-publication effort to cover the transformation of Detroit. They have bought a house in Detroit and reporters are covering the city’s transformation for Time mag, Fortune, even Sports Illustrated, as well as blogging, et al. He just talked to “The Reinvented City” conference I’m attending in Cambridge, Mass.

Here’s his quick rundown of how Detroit is having to and is reinventing itself:
-The city is shrinking. The population is down from 2 million to 800,000. Within the confines of the city of Detroit you could put the footprint of Manhattan, Boston AND San Francisco.
-The school system is such a disaster that they’re considering “all different kinds of things.” Example: public boarding schools.
-They’re considering light rail between the city and the suburbs, to help connect both geographically and socially.
-Urban farming is, er, taking root.
– “A huge psychic change – nobody expects the car industry to save them anymore.”

Housing: Will we escape a second dip?

Blogging from “The Reinvented City,” in Cambridge, Mass., a conference sponsored by the Nieman Foundation, the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, and the Harvard Graduate School of Design.

Wellesley economist Chip Case, who studies housing bubbles (and who founded the Case-Shiller real estate report) says this downtown is odd because typically a housing oversupply means production slows, and the supply gets soaked up as new households form. But new household formation is lagging – it’s going away almost as fast as production is going away. Rental vacancies are up to 11%. This is odd. If people are getting kicked out of their houses (foreclosures, etc.) you’d think they’d be turning to rental housing. But they aren’t. (I’ll get to the why in a minute but it partly involves immigration.)

So the lack of household formation is disrupting the traditional pattern of how a downturn turns around. His verdict: “Jobs have to start coming back.”

There are positive omens: New housing starts are up. The existing inventory is down – a year ago the estimate was the housing inventory was an 11.5-month supply and now it’s 6.7 months. Sales of existing housing (which he thinks is a better gauge) are up to 5.35 million, up from 4 million of recent years/months. But 27 percent of those sales are auction sales (i.e. foreclosed houses).

His conclusion: There’s a greater than 50 percent chance we’ll get out of this recession without a second dip (the so-called W-shaped recession, as in the 1980s). But not as high as an 80 percent chance.

And immigration? I asked what was the cause for the lack of household formation. His reply: He thought it was people doubling up, as in college graduates without jobs moving back in with parents, families moving in together, etc. That’s some of it, he says, but a demographer he talked with recently told him that immigration is turning around.

And that doesn’t mean that there’s just less of an increase. People are going home, he said. “And that’s bad for us – despite what the talk show guys say.” The reason is that the shrinking number of households is keeping the recovery from, well, recovering.