On 3 February, WaPo published Eric M. Weiss’s story: “A Dubious Distinction: The Longest Ride in U.S. – Prince William Enclave Has Longest Commute In Nation; Three Others in Area [the National Capital Subregion] Make Top 12.”
If you have not read the story, it is a classic. This story is a poster child for why citizens have debilitating Geographic Illiteracy and why far too many struggle with long commutes and sub-optimum lifestyles that spell financial disaster for Agencies, Enterprises, Institutions and Households.
At first glance this is a story about earnest, well-intended citizens doing what they believe to be in their best interest. There are also concerned governance practitioners and sage transport experts facing an intractable problem laid out in award winning journalistic form. But look under the hood, and there is a different story.
The featured citizens are trapped in terrible Jobs / Housing / Services juxtapositions but they believe they have done the best they can. These citizens are in this position because they inhabit dysfunctional settlement patterns but they do not yet know what those words mean.
What citizens in these enclaves DO know, (although it is not reported) that they have rapidly deteriorating home equity but they do not yet know how their location decisions contributed to this condition.
And the “journalism”: The primary source of information is very badly informed citizens. “Human Condition” reporting (which IS much better than “He said / She said” reporting) provides no historical context, there is no reference to an overarching strategy to achieve functional settlement patterns or less onerous living conditions. Even worse, the “experts” avoid reality and toss up their hands. The politicians spin away with what they hope will get them elected one more time.
This review focuses on the two low-density urban enclaves that are located in the Virginia part of the National Capital Subregion. These enclaves are the “Census Designated Places” of Bristow and Dale City, Virginia. A similar story could be told about the two enclaves in Maryland noted in the story.
IT DID NOT NEED TO TURN OUT THIS WAY
Decades ago there were adopted Agency polices and plans that incorporated excellent strategies to guide the evolution of human settlement patterns and to match transport facility capacity with the travel demand generated by the settlement patterns.
Decades ago there were good examples of far better settlement patterns that were actually built in the Subregion.
There could have been better reporting had WaPo not Lancastered those who were starting to understand human settlement patterns out of the Region.
There could have been well informed, prosperous happy citizens living in functional human settlement patterns, but NO…
THE TRAGEDY OF MISSED OPPORTUNITIES
Here are just a few of the critical historical mile posts avoided by the story and by the experts:
1. In the mid-50s the Fairfax County Comprehensive Plan called for four Balanced Communities with Clear Edges in the R=10 to R=20 Radius Band and Compact urban fabric supported by a shared-vehicle system inside a Clear Edge (near R=10) around the Core of the National Capital Subregion. (Fairfax County and the Commonwealth of Virginia would be the villains in this story if naming villains was a productive approach to evolving a sustainable future.)
2. “The Year 2000 Plan for the National Capital Area” published in 1960 laid out in detail the basics of functional settlement pattern on the Alpha Neighborhood-, Alpha Village- and Alpha Community-scales. This plan also introduced a famous sketch that outlined the distribution of Alpha Community-scale components in what has evolve to be the Washington-Baltimore New Urban Region.
3. In the mid-60s a composite of municipal comprehensive plans for the northern Part of Virginia – as well as a similar one for much of the National Capital Subregion – presented a functional settlement pattern for the Subregion.
Had these plans been followed and had Balanced Communities evolved following these plans, policies, programs and strategies, then less than half the area now devoted to urban development would have been cleared and subdivided. Much of the vacant and underutilized land within 100 miles of the Centroids of the Washington-Baltimore New Urban Region would be in active nonUrban production and serve as a the green lungs of the Region. The Chesapeake Bay would not be on life support.
4. In the late 60s the federal government committed to fund 90 percent of METRO, and over the next three decades built, a world class “heavy rail” shared-vehicle system serving the Core of the National Capital Subregion. Contrary to a written agreement with the federal Agency, municipal Agencies did not uphold their end of the bargain. They did not plan and encourage station-area development with land uses that would support the METRO system.
To this day – over 40 years after construction on METRO started – the majority of the land in METRO station-areas is vacant and / or underutilized. There is no Balance between the METRO system capacity and the station-area travel demand. This is why most of the METRO trains leave most of the METRO stations essentially empty most of the time.
4. In the 70s full-scale, examples of much more functional settlement patterns were planed at the Alpha Community- and Alpha Village-scales. Several of these projects were built and while there were glitches, they were and ARE far more successful from economic social and physical perspectives than the vast majority of the land developed for urban land uses since 1973 in the National Capital Subregion.
These places proved that:
• A far higher percentage of the residents could live “on or near the water” and / or “in or near the woods,”
• Have better schools,
• Have far stronger identity and social cohesiveness,
• Serve a far wider range of housing needs,
• Achieve a far greater Balance of J / H / S / R / A,
• Have far more useable Openspace,
• Achieve higher and more stable home values per square foot
• And still take up less than one quarter of the total land at the Alpha Community-scale when compared to the land devoted to scattered subdivisions such as those in the enclaves (Census Designated Places) noted in the WaPo story
5. In the mid 80s a 54 member citizen task force drafted a plan that took the best of the 60s and 70s ideas for evolving Balanced Communities and created a plan for Fairfax Center. Fairfax Center was planned to be 5,500 acres where 55,000 citizen could work, live and seek services. Almost immediately the plan was nickled and dimed (least common denominatored) but today it is still far more functional than the other places of similar scale and intensity of use.
6. In the late 80s and into the 90s Wash COG carried out a process that could have guided the location of new jobs and dwellings to evolve Balanced Communities from the then existing “Activity Centers.”
While this was going on, in October 1973 OPEC, issued a wake up call that should have gotten every citizen and every governance practitioner on the board strategies to evolve functional and sustainable settlement patterns that did not rely on importing foreign oil and did not depend on Large, Private Vehicles for Mobility and Access.
Based on the strategies that existed from the mid 50s Agencies, Enterprises and Institutions could have leveraged the booming SubRegional economic activity that lasted from the late 50s until mid-2007 to build and rebuild functional and sustainable human settlement patterns.
The 3 February WaPo story did not refer to any of this context. It is as if the current result was inev
itable and no one had ever given thought to a different outcome. In fact, clear, concise arguments in favor of alternatives to the current result have been published in every decade since 1920.
LOCATIONAL OBLIVIOUSNESS
The 3 February WaPo story also did not establish the Subregional Context of the featured enclaves.
These enclaves are NOT in the middle of nowhere. These enclaves are outside the location for the Clear Edges shown on the 50s and 60s plans. However, they are INSIDE the logical location for the Clear Edge around the Core of the Subregion based on the late 90 and early 00s work of Wash COG, the employer of one of the experts quoted.
It would have been very useful to point out that each of the enclaves are served by major limited access radial roadway corridors paid for by federal government – I-66 and I-95.
Both these corridors have HOV lanes and both have public AND private bus and van service using the HOV lanes.
Further, both of these corridors are also served by commuter rail – the Virginia Railway Express.
In addition both corridors are served by radial lines of the METRO system.
And there is icing on the cake: For over four decades the I-95 corridor has had the Shirley Express Lanes. By many measures these are the most effective applications of asphalt used by Autonomobiles on the planet.
It would have been informative for the experts cited in the story to point out that these two enclaves have access to every type of facility that federal, state and municipal jurisdictions have relied on to provide Mobility and Access to low-density, monocultures of auto-dominated settlement patterns.
Would it have been too much to ask these experts why all these billions of dollars in public facilities obviously do not work? It turns out relying of these facilities to support dysfunctional settlement patterns will never work for reasons spelled out in THE PROBLEM WITH CARS. But that is getting ahead of the story.
AND THEN THERE IS THE COST
Of course the CAPACITY of the radial and circumferential roadways could be increased and more vans, busses and trains could be added to the shared-vehicle services.
However if the COST of these facilities were allocated to those who would use them in the target enclaves, most of these citizens could not afford the fares / tolls / taxes to pay for the new facilities.
It is also clear that the bottom line result adding very expensive new capacity would be to shave a few minutes off of the record setting AVERAGE commute times but it would not “solve” the problem.
AND WHILE WE ARE TALKING ABOUT A FAIR ALLOCATION OF COSTS:
If all the current costs of the location decisions that resulted in putting these dwellings in these enclaves were fairly allocated many, if not most, of the present residents could not afford the FULL cost of living there.
What drives up the cost? The mix of dwelling types and the Regional and Subregional location of Jobs and Services result in settlement patterns that do not function. These patterns violate the basic laws of economics and physics. It is not a matter of policy or preference.
THE ROLE OF EXPERTS
In addition to not mentioning – or not mentioning forcefully enough to make it into the story – any of the history or context of the enclaves, the experts did not provide any insight on a path to sustainability.
They did not point out the necessity of evolving Balanced Communities in sustainable New Urban Regions – using what ever Vocabulary they might choose.
They did not point out that the Beta Communities in the municipal jurisdictions inside R=5 (primarily Alexandria and Arlington) have job to dwelling ratios on the order of 5 to 1. They did not point out that while one of the largest municipalities in the US of A occupies most of the territory within the R=5 to R=20 Radius Band (Fairfax County) has a ratio closer to 1 to 1, there is a gigantic imBalance of housing affordability to wages for the jobs in the jurisdiction due to exclusionary zoning.
Only two of the nine Beta Communities that fall all or part in Fairfax County have achieved anything like a Balance of Jobs / Housing / Services / Recreation / Amenity.
In explaining the difference between Fairfax County and Prince William County where the two enclaves are located, one of the experts demonstrated a complete lack of knowledge of the physical relationships that control human settlement patterns. By suggesting that Fairfax County once had “the same situation” he demonstrated ignorance of A= pi R sq. He further implied that Fairfax County is OK because there are now more jobs in the municipality than in past decades without regard to location or Balance.
It would have been useful to point out that the two Virginia enclaves (Bristow /Linton Hall in Greater West Prince William and Dale City in East Greater Prince William) were low-density, imbalanced enclaves in badly unbalanced Beta Communities.
Road scholar and congestion guru, Tony Downs famously pointed out that congestion is not the problem, it is the solution. Tony correctly noted that when congestion gets bad enough, citizens, Households, Agencies, Enterprises and Institutions make different location and settlement pattern decisions.
Tony correctly identified the political (SMALL “p”) and the unenlightened citizen self-interest that has prevented intelligent changes that have been advocated for 90 years.
Downs had two solutions:
First: Buy a big comfortable car (Large, Private Vehicle) with a great sound system to enjoy the ride. Addiction to this formula is EXACTLY why the Autonomobile Enterprises, supported by Agencies and “freedom” oriented Institutions have driven to the brink of Collapse.
Second: Drive to work with someone you REALLY like (wink, wink). According to domestic and divorce court records that “solution” is a major cause of divorce and social instability in the Household and at all other scales of human settlement.
Tragically, Tony did not take into consideration was that at some point, the total cost of Regional-scale settlement pattern dysfunction would leave citizens and their Organizations without the resources necessary to change the settlement patterns to more functional and less congestion generating configurations.
To his credit, Tony was first an economist and had no way to know that the incredible BOOM of the 80s, 90s and 00s would exterminate “rational man” / “wisdom of the crowd” / invisible hand economics and replace it with “behavioral economics.” See Column # 124 “Riding the Tiger,” 2 June 2008 and the two recent post on the Tragedy of Trickle Down.
THE ROLE OF THE MEDIA
For reasons spelled out in THE ESTATES MATRIX, MainStream Media has abandoned its responsibility to create informed citizens. Sadly, citizens are left to sort out advertisements for Autonomobiles and Wrong Size Houses in the Wrong locations that promise the American Dream without the facts or an overarching conceptual framework with which to organize their thinking. They believe the decisions they make are in their best interest and once made they defend them in the face of 46.3 minute AVERAGE commutes.
To his credit, WaPo reporter, Weiss only used one Core Confusing Word (suburban / suburb) and only used it three times. The use of “enclave” is very effective in this context and is a good choice. However, he used interchangeably two generic settlement pattern descriptors (neighborhood and community with no capital) seven times. Of course, it would have been helpful to point out that “political subdivisions” of the Commonwealth and “Census Designated Places” do not reflect the organic components of human settlement patterns.
THE BOTTOM LINE
Now, with a deepening recession,
citizens and their elected representatives will support throwing more money at ‘infrastructure’ to remove fundamental drivers of dysfunction that cannot be solved except by evolving Balanced Communities.
There is no way to help commuters except to help them become noncommuters by building Balanced Communities.
See Column # 41“The Commuting Problem,” 17 January 2005, Column # 65 “Balanced Communities,” 23 August 2005 and Column # 92 “Solving the Commuter Problem,” 5 February 2007.
EMR