Bacon's Rebellion

Democracy Thrives in Sunlight

Bad Planning Tricks

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by

James A. Bacon
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In case you missed the headline’s wordplay on “Bad Pet Tricks,” let me hammer it home. Many shopping center developers are one-trick ponies. They know how to do one thing — plop a long, one-story building in the middle of a big parking lot — and they do it over and over. Sometimes, they seem so bored by it all that they don’t even do that one trick very well.

Waldo Jaquith has a great example in his critique (with photos) of a new shopping center going up off U.S. 29 north of Charlottesville. The shopping center has moved enormous quantities of dirt in order to elevate itself from the main drag. The interesting result is that, between the escarpment separating the road and shopping center, and the vast parking lot that pushes the buildings away from the road, it is nearly impossible for motorists to even see what’s in the shopping center! What merchant would want to locate a store there?

Was anybody in the developer’s office paying attention here?

Waldo also offers some sound observations on the importance of streetscapes and the decline of Albemarle County’s inner ring of suburban development. Go get ’em, Waldo!

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29 responses to “Bad Planning Tricks”

  1. Ray Hyde Avatar
    Ray Hyde

    I doubt if they moved all that dirt for nothing. I’d be willing to bet that it had something to do with required drainage standards.

    “…planning guidelines should be modified to encourage — or better yet, require — such developments to conform….”

    Whatever happened to reducing regulations so that merchants and developers could build what the market deems most valuable?

    Why are such lousy developments inevitably going to mean the destruction of the inner circle?

  2. Waldo Jaquith Avatar
    Waldo Jaquith

    I doubt if they moved all that dirt for nothing. I’d be willing to bet that it had something to do with required drainage standards.

    I’m sure it did. But I suspect that’s got more to do with making the whole affair level than raising the thing up 10′ in the air.

    Whatever happened to reducing regulations so that merchants and developers could build what the market deems most valuable?

    Nothing happened — I never believed that. 🙂

    Why are such lousy developments inevitably going to mean the destruction of the inner circle?

    Not lousy developments — these developments. It’s because of the location of Charlottesville’s growing population and the existing state of those shopping centers.

    This is inside baseball, but the Albemarle Square shopping center is already on its way out. Their anchor is a gym. Most of their storefronts are cheap, and there are always a few that are empty. Barracks Road Shopping Center was on a serious decline about five years ago, so they aggressively courted some hipper retail outlets and spent a great deal of money on promotion. It’s worked, briefly.

    On top of all of this, a great deal of Albemarle County’s population growth is coming in suburban developments on 29N. For those people, Barracks Road and Albemarle Square are too far away, if not in miles than in traffic lights and delays. They’ll stay out in the suburbs and not bother to venture into town, where the older shopping centers are located.

    This pattern has been repeated hundreds of times in cities across the nation. It’s a basic part of the suburban/exurban demographic transition, such as it is.

  3. Ray Hyde Avatar
    Ray Hyde

    So you think planners should have regulations that allow them to tell the developers how to build?

    Or is it that you don’t believe the builders will build what the market deems is most valuable?

    OK so we have an old central shopping area and it is supported by X number of people.

    Now we have Y new people moving into suburban developments on 29N, and they want new shopping areas near home.

    Why isn’t X people still sufficient and properly located to support the old central area?

    Is it because X+Y will support a larger center with more selection? Is it because now that y is established it can draw from two directions where X could draw from only one?

  4. Waldo Jaquith Avatar
    Waldo Jaquith

    The problem is that Charlottesville is on the verge of overbuilding shopping centers. Right now we have about the right number, in terms of square feet, to be supported by the region. The four new shopping centers going in are gambling on a) major population increases in the next decade immediately around their locations and b) their stores being more attractive than the existing stores.

    Charlottesville is an urban area in a rural sea. We draw people from a tremendous area. Building a new shopping center farther north or south on 29, or farther east or west on 250/64 serves those individuals that live farther out in Central Virginia, so they never get into the suburban core to those existing stores. That’s the bet of these new shopping center developers, anyhow.

    And so those shopping centers within Charlottesville, created on the premise that people will patronize it from an area of several thousand square miles, will wither when their supply of traffic gets cut off by the new shopping centers located five minutes farther from town along one of the major corridors.

    And so the suburban ring moves ever farther out. Again, we’ve seen this pattern repeated hundreds of times across the nation. This isn’t anything novel, I’m afraid.

  5. Ray Hyde Avatar
    Ray Hyde

    Exactly. We agree on what is happening.

    1. People near the new centers have no incentive to enjoy the traffic lights and delays to get down town.
    2. People farther out get shortstopped by the new centers that are closer to them.
    3. People downtown drive out to the new centers because they are more attractive, larger, more variety, cheaper. (Ten feet up in the air?, Oh Well, no accounting for taste.)

    This brings us to the last statement which I will paraphrase as “The suburban ring moves ever further out, I’m afraid.”

    Why are you afraid? Is it a given that this is a “bad” process? A lot of people think it is but where is the evidence? Based on what we’ve said here, everyone gets a new and better shopping center that is closer to where they live, except the people downtown, and they now have more choices. What is wrong with that?

    OK, we ate up some land, but as you point out, Charlottesville is an urban area in a rural sea. And there are more people living there. Who will volunteer to give up on children?

    Why is it a problem that Charlottesville is overbuilding shopping centers? The bad or poorly located ones will fail and they will be redeveloped as something else, meanwhile we can skateboard where it won’t bother anybody. They made an investment decision that worked for a long time, and then conditions changed. The best and most convenient ones will succeed. (That might not be the same as the nicest looking ones.)

    Let’s assume that it is a given that these three items ARE in fact bad and that we can somehow measure the badness, and put a price on it. What would we do then?

    By fiat, we could say, nope no more shopping centers, everyone has to go downtown and fight the traffic lights and delays to buy anything. Those “speculators” who might have been interested in doing that can go elsewhere, and they probably will. That badness has a price, too.

    We could draw a ring around the city and say, no building outside this line. How will we mollify the people on the other side of the line? How do you justify that instantaneous transfer of wealth?

    It is one thing if your community or shopping center or home gets old and decrepit with age, we expect this. It is something else entirely for the government to establish two classes of people. We just spent the last hundred years trying to undo that problem, now we are going to start over based on geography instead of color? So, you could pay those people outside the line to mollify them, or you could pay the people inside the line so they wont object to the smaller lots and the traffic lights and delays. Either way, that badness has a price, too.

    You could say, no more shopping malls. We are going to have hundreds and hundreds of small shops and put them on every corner and under our homes like Boston’s Old North End. We all know the convenience store is more expensive and lacks a little in variety, so there is price topay for this idea, too.

    So, I don’t think the new malls are a bad thing, ineffective, or overly expensive, or that they will cause the demise of our society, obesity, poor helath and loneliness.

    I just think it is too bad they are ugly. We should put the park back in parking lots.

  6. Anonymous Avatar
    Anonymous

    Just a few random thoughts.

    Barracks Road Shopping Center is currently more upscale and busier – in fact, thriving actively – than it was twenty some years ago when I was going to school in C’ville.

    It is not declining, and it seems quite unlikely to decline, because many of the folks going to it are coming down Garth Road/Barracks Road from the other direction. Those are not cheap houses or developments out that way.

    I don’t recall it being in a serious decline five years ago, either, as it was still a heck of alot nicer then than when I lived in C’ville in the 80’s.

    Every time I go to BRSS with my various friends and family who live nearby, the place is jammed full of people spending large amounts of money.

    A good smattering of the people I know who shop there are well-to-do retired folks and independently wealthy yuppies who live nearby. A lot more than students shop and eat there.

    Albemarle Square is IMHO not a very nice shopping center. I remember when it was the only choice. I enjoy shopping in C’ville a whole lot more now than I did then. Back in the 80’s, we shopped in DC and Richmond. Now, when I visit, I enjoy shopping in town.

    As far as the new mall goes – many, many people are living between C’ville and Fredericksburg or between C’ville and Culpeper. Many of the folks in Albemarle County have little mini estates with horses and such – and those who can’t afford one close in go to the outlying counties. If a shopping mall is further out, more people who were previously driving to Culpeper and Fredericksburg will drive to the areas outlying Charlottesville.

    It may be a zero sum game, but Barracks Road Shopping Center is not withering and is unlikely to wither. It’s more likely IMHO that Central Park Shopping Center in F’burg will be affected, and perhaps Culpeper.

  7. Waldo Jaquith Avatar
    Waldo Jaquith

    Why are you afraid? Is it a given that this is a “bad” process? A lot of people think it is but where is the evidence? Based on what we’ve said here, everyone gets a new and better shopping center that is closer to where they live, except the people downtown, and they now have more choices. What is wrong with that?

    Because we end up with urban decay — huge swaths of empty real estate, which often presages dying downtowns. Just look at Lynchburg, even big swaths of Roanoke and Lynchburg. That means that development is far less compact, making mass transit infeasible and increasing reliance on automobiles.

    Compact, urban development is better than sprawled suburban development by just about any metric.

    I don’t recall it being in a serious decline five years ago, either, as it was still a heck of alot nicer then than when I lived in C’ville in the 80’s.

    Two separate friends own two separate stores in Barracks Road, and I heard all about the troubles in 2000-2001. It was not a decline in the sense of many dying shopping malls, but things were not looking good for them. You’ll remember they had three grocery stores (followed by two grocery stores and a huge empty space) and B&N was the closest thing to an anchor. Clearly things have picked up since then, but there’s no telling whether that will continue to be so.

  8. Not exactly an economic developer Avatar
    Not exactly an economic developer

    I’m still not sure who is really getting served if the infrastructure costs get counted all the way from development, to a period of decline/vaccancy, to redevlopment. The public spends a lot to keep the market model Ray explains so cogently greased and rolling.

  9. Anonymous Avatar
    Anonymous

    Waldo, think for a sec. Independent retail stores often have problems. Retail is a tough, tough business. A certain percentage of failure is normal and expected.

    The grocery stores at BRSS have gone in and out multiple times over the past couple of decades – most strip-style malls do not support more than one grocery store. This is also not a sign of decline. I can’t, offhand, think of a Richmond strip mall that supports even 2 grocery stores, much less 3.

    I’m genuinely puzzled as to your identification as B&N as the closest thing to an anchor, as a number of the stores have been there since I was in college, nearly 30 years ago. This is a dynamic and thriving mall with a large number of upscale stores that draws from a large area. I know people (including myself) who make a point of shopping there instead of Richmond.

    There is no reason to think that the mall will not continue to thrive and prosper. Again, it is a lot nicer, has more stores, and is FAR more upscale than it was nearly 30 years ago. I’ve seen it since the late 70’s – and it’s grown and prospered, not declined.

    How many strip malls are currently in better shape, more upscale, and more popular than they were 30 years ago?

    Success of the mall is not, however, a guarantee for any individual store to succeed.

    Out of curiosity, where exactly in C’ville is there urban decay and swaths of empty land? Seems to me, from the areas I’ve visited, it’s stuffed to bursting.

    Downtown is so stuffed, they’re talking about putting in 9 story buildings near the downtown mall. The city and county populations have just exploded, and the population of surrounding rural counties has grown even faster.

    Those folks have to shop somewhere. If you’d seen it in the late 70’s, when I first arrived in C’ville, I bet you’d have a bit less nostalgia. Having to drive 60 miles to buy stuff isn’t quaint when you’re actually living it. Having some selection and a choice of stores nearby is a blessing, not urban blight.

  10. Anonymous Avatar
    Anonymous

    “I’m still not sure who is really getting served if the infrastructure costs get counted all the way from development, to a period of decline/vaccancy, to redevlopment. The public spends a lot to keep the market model Ray explains so cogently greased and rolling.”

    The public doesn’t spend to keep the market model rolling. That’s the beauty of it.

    The investors take a chance on it. It either pays for itself, or it fails.

  11. Not exactly an economic developer Avatar
    Not exactly an economic developer

    Anon 1251

    The development market wouldn’t function without public investment in infrastructure.

  12. Anonymous Avatar
    Anonymous

    Public investment in infrastructure is sometimes a good argument. However, it’s used a whole lot more than it actually applies.

    If a building is taken from one use, revitalized, and put to another use, I don’t see any new investment in public infrastructure. This mall is not in central C’ville – it’s one strip mall in a sea of other strip malls, most of them doing pretty well.

    The airport already had roads prior to the new mall. The new mall is very likely to bring in business that otherwise might well have siphoned off to Culpeper and Fredericksburg – meaning Albemarle gets more tax dollars.

  13. Anonymous Avatar
    Anonymous

    “Compact, urban development is better than sprawled suburban development by just about any metric.”

    Okay, I’ll bite. Why?

    I see that accepted here as a truism all the time, without question. The bottom line is, most people live in the suburbs for good reasons.

    Safer
    Better schools
    Your own yard where your kids can play safely and you can watch them
    Easier to get to the things that you actually want and need to do, which really do require driving

    Walking everywhere is good in theory. It works well when you’re a student and have few responsibilities. It does not work well to take Janie and her team to soccer practice, or Maggie to dance lessons, or to buy groceries for a family for a week, or when it’s very hot, or when it’s raining, or when it gets dark early, or …..

    I get very concerned here when I see happy urbanites not content to be happy in their urbanism, or even to try to encourage others to see what they like in it, but rather determined to actively force it on the unwilling. Yikes.

  14. Jim Bacon Avatar
    Jim Bacon

    Anonymous 8:47, Which is safer — the city or the suburbs? Most people would say the suburbs are safer. The city has higher rates of violent crime. And that’s true. But is crime the only component of being “safe”? If the concept of safety also includes the likelihood of being injured or killed in an automobile accident, the city is safer.

    As for schools, the fact that suburban schools tend to be better than city schools has nothing to do with the pattern of development. It merely reflects the fact that the poorest, most ill-educated sectors of the metropolitan population happen to reside in the cities for largely historical reasons.

    Big yards for kids to play. OK, you got me there. Suburbs do have bigger yards. Sometimes, you even see kids playing in them. Although most of the time, kids’ lives are getting so structured that they are usually carted from soccer to baseball to the swimming pool, and when they’re home they spend most of the time inside. So, the putative advantage of the Big Yard is less than meets the eye.

    Easier to get to thinks you want and need… I guess it depends upon what you want and need. Yeah, it’s easier to get to the movie theater and the Wal-Mart in the ‘burbs. But in the city, it’s easier to get to museums, art shows, concerts, street festivals and other cultural events.

    And I speak as one who has lived in a nice suburban community for four years.

  15. Ray Hyde Avatar
    Ray Hyde

    I see I’ve started a storm here.

    “Compact, urban development is better than sprawled suburban development by just about any metric.”

    Waldo, I *think* I agree with you. but I’m a scientist, and so when I see an experiment has the same result, over and over (as you have pointed out), then I have to ask why that is. Repeatable events usually have a reason behind them. If compact urban development is really better, then why doesn’t it happen and sustain on its own?

    Simply claiming that it is better won’t make it happen, and if we falsely claim it is better, as I believe EMR and others are prone to do, then we are just kidding ourselves.

    If we put a culture on an agar plate, we see the same result: it spreads out from the center nad then dies in the middle. Maybe we are not so diferent from amoeba.

    In the natural world such events are ALWAYS driven by an attempt to reach a lower energy state. Lower energy states are asoociated with greater disorder. Urban areas are highly ordered and require a lot of energy. In the human world energy and money are more or less interchangeable.

    Suppose we decide it is better and we choose to make it the way some think it “should” be. We need to recognize that we are promoting a higher enegy state. As such it is a Sysiphean task that will require continuous effort to maintain, and we should understand, and understand accurately, what that will require. Just fixing urban schools is a huge task.

    Maybe, when we understand what that costs, we decide it isn’t worth it after all, and the forces that cause the current situation are already the low energy solution: we don’t save enough by creating an urban atmosphere to make it worthwhile.

    We hear a lot about sustainability. One bottom line definition is that each area would have to be able to exist based solely on the energy that falls on it. (We can extend that somewhat by importing wind, solar, and hydropower from other areas.) If that was the case, no city could exist. At best, we could have thousands of hamlets surrounded by open spaces covered with equipment to supply them.

    I think there are plenty of wrong assumptions to go around on both sides of this. Bacon would argue with Anon 8:47 that suburbs are not safer, based on auto accident rates. On the other hand average longevity in the suburbs is much higher.

    But what really raises my hackles is what anon 8:47 points out, that more and more we are willing to force a certain outcome on the unwilling, as in your suggestion that we require the developers to conform. Even worse, we are frequently forcing a result on them at THEIR expense and then claiming the “savings” as a community benefit.

    New Ubanism.org maintains a website that has a list of actions it believes we should take immediately:
    1)An immediate and permanent moratorium on road construction.
    2)An immediate and permanet moratorium on airport construction
    3)Mandatory tripling of the CAFE standards
    4)Huge increases of amtrak funding and train service to every community and neighborhood.
    5)mandatory moratorium on sprawl
    6) immediate installation of full roof solar panels on every building in America

    Etc. Etc.

    Aside from being wholly impractical, uneconomic and probably wasteful of energy, such suggestions would mean that we no longer live in America. Some would say these people are dangerous. At the very least, if they seriously want to promote these goals, then they need much better PR and much better arguments.

    New Urbanism has its roots in the failed communal utopias of the past. It supporters will say that planning works: it just hasn’t been fully implemented yet. And yet we have just spent our adult lives watching the most highly planned societies fail.

    New Urbanism uses many environmental arguments to support their positions. I’m not convinced that all of them are correct arguments, and some of them appear to be a smoke screen for their real agendas.

    Yet, their ideas might prove to be correct, someday. If so, it will take hundreds of years and billions of dolars to implement, and we still have to deal with our current problems and our current lives to live in the meantime.

  16. Ray Hyde Avatar
    Ray Hyde

    “Easier to get to thinks you want and need… I guess it depends upon what you want and need. Yeah, it’s easier to get to the movie theater and the Wal-Mart in the ‘burbs. But in the city, it’s easier to get to museums, art shows, concerts, street festivals and other cultural events.”

    Businesses evaluate this as a matter of probable cost. What is the probablility that you need to go to WalMart today for inexpensive toothpaste and other daily items? What is the probability that you need to go to a museum? Now take the cost of each trip and multiply them by the probability. Sum the costs over several years and then decide what the optimum location is.

    Safety is the same kind of evaluation. I’m not sure cities are safer over all: the average life span is lower there. If you have an auto accident, well, you made your choice as to how to travel and you knew the risks. If you get mugged, that is a situation that is imposed on you. Most people have an instinctive and visceral reaction against being imposed upon. Hence the objection voiced by anonymous 8:47, and the obvious problems with the proposals listed by New Urbanism.Org and Waldo’s suggestion that we impose regulations on developers.

  17. Not Exactly an E.D. Avatar
    Not Exactly an E.D.

    Anon 841,

    I know this started as a C’ville thread and in that context you may be right, however I’d put it to you that what you say below…

    “…business that otherwise might well have siphoned off to Culpeper and Fredericksburg – meaning Albemarle gets more tax dollars.”

    …is exactly the wrong place to measure infrastructure costs and benefits no matter what Tiebout said.

  18. Jim Bacon Avatar
    Jim Bacon

    Ray said, “If you have an auto accident, well, you made your choice as to how to travel and you knew the risks. If you get mugged, that is a situation that is imposed on you.”

    I could easily turn your logic around: If you get mugged, you knew the risks before you walked down the street. If you have an auto accident, you have no control over some other driver who slams into the side of your car.

  19. Ray Hyde Avatar
    Ray Hyde

    Touche. I thought of that, too.

    There are some auto accidents that are not accidents at all, but the unintended result of actions deliberately taken. If you get involved in one of those, then you have the right to be thoroughly ticked off, just as you would be if you were mugged.

    In such a case, you can probably sue and get compensation, even if it winds up coming from your own insurance company through uninsured driver coverage. If you get mugged, good luck.

    There is an element of randomness in both cases, but randomness we can tolerate, premeditation we can’t. In a situation of high density population you increase the risk that you will confront someone with premeditated antisocial tendencies. If you have a thousand neighbors vs two, then there is a greater likeliehood one of them will be on the sexual predators list.

    Many people are not willing to pay higher rents and higher taxes for that privilege.

    I have been mugged, and the injuries I sustained were a couple of weeks of bruised ribs. Call it the equivalent of a fifteen mile an hour bicycle crash as far as injuries go. But the sense of physical violation and emotional upset was huge. All I wanted was to get even. I never felt that way towards my bike.

  20. Jim Bacon Avatar
    Jim Bacon

    Ray, I will concede that getting mugged carries a lot more emotional wallop than getting rear-ended. Undoubtedly, that’s why tVs and newspapers give so much more weight to their coverage of murders than car fatalities.

  21. Ray Hyde Avatar
    Ray Hyde

    OK Waldo, try this one on for size.

    If everyone started out perfectly sprawled (meaning the earth was divided per capita with each person being as spread out as possible), we would gather to denser areas, forming cities. This is why cities grow. This means that immigrants come to cities, which often means they see better economies of scale, which means they usually come from more sprawled out areas! Even without immigration from foreign countries, cities would still be growing by more than the birth rate. This has been witnessed by the phenomenon of small towns disappearing as its citizens move to larger cities. This means that the city growth which is frequently criticized by is actually the result of a reduction in sprawl.

    That is not the same as saying that the peripheries of our cities won’t continue to expand. What you see depend on where you are standing and which way you look.

    Jim Bacon is correct in saying that more of this would occur without the regulations that prevent it. We need less regulation, not more. If you don’t believe it, consider Denver and Portland. Under Portland’s strict land use regulations urban density declined 6% in a decade while Denver’s increased 16% with no smart growth initiatives.

    The above argument is taken and adapted from Casey Hayes, a student of Urban Economics at the University of colorado.

  22. neaed Avatar
    neaed

    The problem with region to region comparisons on Portland’s density is that the key growth management tool isn’t inclusive of the whole MSA. If you look at studies of land inside the Portland UGB over time density increased.

  23. Anonymous Avatar
    Anonymous

    “Anonymous 8:47, Which is safer — the city or the suburbs? Most people would say the suburbs are safer. The city has higher rates of violent crime. And that’s true. But is crime the only component of being “safe”? If the concept of safety also includes the likelihood of being injured or killed in an automobile accident, the city is safer.”

    If I remember correctly, that is not exactly correct. I’m assuming you’re referring to Lucy’s work.

    If you compare only stranger homicides and deaths (not injuries) by car, that is correct.

    Lucy did not include all homicides. Other crimes were not included at all. Your chances of getting raped, mugged, assaulted, or robbed are far higher in the city.

    I’m not clear on how car deaths were measured – were they ONLY people who actually LIVED in that county, or deaths by car in that county? The actual metric is important here as many rural counties have interstates running through them. It’s not an accurate measure of risk if you’re counting vacationers from NJ who get rear ended by a semi.

    Also, the comparisons were not apples to apples, if one thinks about it just a second. The study does not attempt to measure, is John Doe safer in the city or the county?

    The study looks at all of the people already in the city, and all of the people in the county. I strongly suspect they are not an apples to apples comparison.

    People are interested in, will _I_ be safer in the suburbs than in the city?

    Not, will elderly retired people living in a fixed income in a city apartment be safer than a farmer driving a haytruck.

    Answering where I would be safer is a different study, and I suspect you would get rather different results.

  24. Anonymous Avatar
    Anonymous

    “So, the putative advantage of the Big Yard is less than meets the eye.”

    A kid with a big yard, even with a very scheduled day, is going to be able to play outside more than a kid with the same schedule who has to wait til his parents have free time to walk him down to the park.

    “Yeah, it’s easier to get to the movie theater and the Wal-Mart in the ‘burbs. But in the city, it’s easier to get to museums, art shows, concerts, street festivals and other cultural events.”

    That’s all well and good. It’s easier to get to the grocery store in the suburbs, and to get those groceries back into the house. Most families go to the grocery store a couple of times a week.

    It’s easier to get the kids to lessons and practices in the suburbs. Multiply the number of kids by the number of times per week.

    It’s easier to get the dog to the vet in the suburbs.

    All of those mundane, day to day necessities are actually easier. With today’s ultra busy schedules, easier is important.

    I love museums and events, but I don’t go to them all that often. I don’t have time. I’d have even less time for them if I was having to carry groceries back and forth from the store one bag at a time. I’d wear a path between my house and the grocery store.

  25. Ray Hyde Avatar
    Ray Hyde

    Neaed is correct, there are differences in how things are measured.

    So what if inside the UGB becme more dense? You are measuring a different thing. Most places are becoming more dense. It is just that the outer areas are getting both more dense and larger, which is an impossible condition for the ineer areas.

    What this shows is that despite the difficult and extra expense, distance, etc. more people still chose to defy the key growth management tool by going someplace else. Not only did the tool fail, but people repudiated it at the polls through measure 37.

    Inside the UGB also became less affordable, and there is a dearth of children in the area.

  26. neaed Avatar
    neaed

    But Ray aren’t you assuming the UGB never moves? It does. Also, most of the growth outside the UGB was beyond Oregon’s reach in WA state, which actually adopted its own growth management system in the 90’s. Of course that may have been the “safety valve” that allowed the syatem to work as long as it did. And let’s not overlook that preserving an economically viable ag industry, not density, was (at least intially) the driving force behind the adoption of growth management in Oregon.

    You’re right about children, but a little incomplete on housing. While housing costs certainly jumped why blame supply constraints alone? How about demand? The market was undervalued when the region’s economy was hanging low in the 80’s and all of a sudden population and jobs growth skyrockted in the 90’s. Demand has been linked to Portland’s price spike in a number of studies. Read Tony Downs “Growth Managenment and Affordabile Housing” (2004), parituclalry the chapter by Nelson et al, and Connie Ozawa’s “The Portland Edge” (2004), particualrly the chapters by Howe on housing costs (and by Chapman and Lund on density).

    And I can’t say much about M37 except the planners missed the boat on the politics. That outcome was all about messages and the planners overlooking the fact that there was a new electorate who had no idea who Tom McCall as the population had more than doubled since all the growth management stuff was enacted.

  27. Ray Hyde Avatar
    Ray Hyde

    Isn’t that exactly what I said? If the UGB is going to move anyway, what is the point, except to benefit some at the expense of many? managing the location of growth *may* provide some cost savings by avoiding providing infrastructure all over creation. But that “savings” comes at the expense of and is really rented from those outside the growth bondary because their land is held in abeyance for future growth when the UGB moves.

    But the UGB is designed for 20 years, and when it does move it is a huge political football. It is probably cheaper and more efficient to just let the growth happen where it can: where people need to sell and want to buy. The UGB isn’t getting you anything but grief.

    The planners definitely missed the boat if they couldn’t figure out that the population doubled. And the previously existing population was getting older, so their plans were simple going away, lost in the bureaucratic shuffle and conservation takings.

    Unlike Virginia, Oregon had a real Ag economy and still does. But part of the problem they had was similar to here: prime farmland was declared that was not farmable or became unfarmable over time, but the rules didn’t adapt. And, yes, Washington has growth controls, but they are not statewide as in Oregon – and they have their own initiative coming up to mimic measure 37.

    I’m aware of the studies you cite, but there is controversy. If you compare the affordability, the amount of payment you can make on the average income compared to the cost of the average home, then it doesn’t look so good. By that measurement the demand caused by employment should have made homes more affordable, but it didn’t happen.

    All of which just points out the difficulty of measuring what it is we *think* we are doing. If we cannot measure and agree on the success of a policy, what is the point of having it? How do we know if our policy succeeds.

    I’d suggest that a dearth of children in Portland is pretty strong evidence that the plan is not working, at least not now. Maybe it will someday as conditions change again, but that won’t prove the policy is a success, just that conditions changed.

  28. neaed Avatar
    neaed

    I would suggest with more people inside the UGB than without, you should reverse the direction in your second sentence. Especially given the passage of M5 capping property taxes just before the price spike in the 90s created a huge benefit for existing property owners.

    I would suggest that however you’ve worn me out. I take it all back. Pax,

  29. Ray Hyde Avatar
    Ray Hyde

    I do see what you mean. The many inside the UGB would otherwise be paying for the dispersed infrastructure (sooner).

    But we don’t really know, first of all, that the compact infrastructure really saves anything, and the evidence seems to be that it doesn’t. Urban areas are more expensive and have higher taxes, but if the argument was true, it would be the reverse. As I noted, at least some of the savings is really rented (usually at no cost, whichis what measure 37 was about).

    Secondly, all that bureaucracy has costs of its own. I’m not convinced that in the end there is any benefit other than preserving open space. That might be, and probably is, enough reason. What we need to do now is figure out what that costs, what it is worth, and how to pay for it.

    I think it is better to attack the problem directly than to create a bogus rationale for doing something else that is enormously complicated and expensive, and which evidently isn’t working.

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