In his 9 July post “Downtown Plans and Balanced Communities,” Jim Bacon mentioned that we are working on a book (TRILO-G) to be published “in the near future.” That is “near future” in book writing time, not in blog time. Do not expect to see a copy of this three Volume set in your in box soon.
We will soon, however, be putting on line a revised “Brief Summary of TRILO-G” as well as two items on the Vocabulary used in the three Volumes of the book.
In the meantime Jim’s post and comments on this and other settlement pattern related posts prompt a note of clarification and update on Balanced Community.
Larry:
In the string “New Urbanism Comes to an Old Downtown” you raised a question about the Bureau of Census’ “Metropolitan Division” and its relationship to New Urban Regions.
Long ago we gave up looking for guidance on human settlement pattern issues from mid-20th century authority figures like the Bureau of Census (BS) and Brookings. One can learn much more about human settlement pattern by examining how those who have a choice choose to spend their time and money.
Since it had not yet come to my attention, I was happy to see your mention of “Metropolitan Division.” (BS also added “Micropolitan Area” about the same time which we have noted on this blog and in columns.)
In general, BS is far too beholden to the political pressures of Business-As-Usual and Government-As-Usual. In general for the big picture they look through the wrong end of the telescope (seeking smaller agglomerations) and for data agglomeration they rely far too much on municipal borders – especially counties that vary in function from state to state.
BS is also institutionally blind to the organic components of human settlement patterns.
All this suits their political employers very well. They think in terms of wards, precincts, and gerrymandered election districts that have little or nothing to do with the organic components of settlement be they council, magisterial, delegate, senate, representative and senate districts.
There are others who have tried to draw a bigger picture of urban structure:
Jean Gottmann with Megalopolis (aka, “BoWash” that now stretches into North Carolina with the inclusion of the Richmond and Hampton Roads NURs). Lewis Mumford by the way, points out that to suggest that Megalopolis is a single urban agglomeration is pure fantasy.
C. A. Doxiadis with his Small megalopolis, Megalopolis, Small eperopolis and Eperopolis did not attract many supporters.
Joel Garreau with Nine Nations of America pointed out a number of important multi NUR and USR patterns.
Most recently, Robert Lang suggested the emergence of Megapolitian Areas. (That is so much better than “regional cities.”) Megapolitian Area by in large follow NURs but over-aggregate based on tenuous Interstate highway corridors. (I-35 links Dallas-Fort Worth with Oklahoma City and Kansas City as a single component of human settlement?) Lang also seems to play down important differences between coterminous NURs.
The New Urban Region Conceptual Framework is anchored by the New Urban Region (NUR), the smallest organic component of human settlement that is “sustainable” based on 1990 to 2000 data. It turns out that NURs are larger than BS’s MSA or CMSA but smaller than Megalopolis (or Megapolitian Areas in some cases).
Now back to your question:
We spent the whole day on the 4th of July refining the definitions of “region,” “Region,” “subregion” and “Subregion.” BS’s “Metropolitan Division” is a Subregion made up of all or part of several Beta Communities. As you know from our past posts, Beta Communities are places that have the potential to become Alpha / Balanced Communities. Metropolitan Division is far smaller than a New Urban Region (NUR).
The NUR in which we both live in is called the Washington-Baltimore New Urban Region. You live in it because, as you noted recently, the vast majority of the commuters from Greater Fredericksburg go north, not south. The boundary between Wash-Balto NUR and Richmond NUR is closer to the North Anna River than the Rappahannock River. That is logical if you consider the NUR economic pull to be similar to gravitational pull in celestial mechanics.
Now back to the Jim’s “Downtown Plans and Balanced Communities.” The “Downtown” of a Richmond-scale NUR is not a Beta (potential Balanced) Community. We call this place a “Zentrum” and it is most likely of Beta Village-scale.
In the post, Jim’s description of a Balanced Community is solid except that our Aloha / Balanced Community has a relative Balance J / H / Services / Recreation / A. The elements are not J / H / retail (or as suggested in a previous note by Jim “shopping”) / A. There is a big difference.
“Services” includes both public and private services – everything from water and sewer and communications to retail, repair, health … it includes all the services that urban individuals and households need and want to be happy and safe. There are about 40 of these Services for which the cost varies with location and thus the importance of fair allocation of location variable costs.
“Well!” you say there are a lot of ways to divide up human settlement patterns to establish Balance.
For example, “I am in the textile business and I see the world through the eyes of industrial processes: Mining / Growing Fiber / Pumping Oil / Refining / Manufacturing / Milling / Fabrication / Assembly / Distribution / Warehousing / Wholesale / Retail and my friend is in pharmaceuticals and she ….”
All true, but… Human settlement patterns are driven by residential activity (80 percent of the urban land area) and it is what individuals and households need, want and use that makes up the third of the Big Five determinants of settlement patterns.
All those categories of Jobs noted above are important in establishing Balance at the NUR scale to achieve sustainability but are not critical in establishing relative Balance and the Community scale.
With the exception of shorting the five basic elements of Balance, Jim’s description and discussion of Balanced Community is on target.
Larry:
Later on in the comments you discuss the need for “Regional Comp Plans.”
You are right but municipal planners have so tainted the use of “Comprehensive Plan” that we avoid those words and refer to Regional strategies to create Balanced Communities. In a number of places you rely on “Comp Plan” to solve problems. It is now a weak reed. The 1926 ideal of the Comp Plan (especially as embellished by Jack Kent) is far better than the 2007 practice. (See “The Role of Municipal Planning in the Creation of Dysfunctional Human Settlement Patterns” a Backgrounder at https://www.baconsrebellion.com/)
We agree with you that whatever it is called, without a Regional framework there is no validity of “plans” of any scale.
As Roger points out, places such as Arlington County and others have done a much better job of “planning” than most but all are hampered by a fixation on municipal borders.
Portland, a favorite of Roger’s, is indeed a leader. But by refusing to cross the river (to embrace Vancouver, Washington) Portland Metro demonstrates a failure to recognize that their policies and programs have scattered Portland NUR urban land uses beyond their territory.
Also the Portland approach to regionalism fails to recognize the importance of subregional organic components and thus the need to evolve
Balanced Communities and other Balanced components. This is a critical problem inside the Clear Edge (the Urban Growth Boundary in Oregon terminology).
By the way in the “Downtown Plans and Balanced Communities” string there was a comment by Glenn Weiss about New Urbanism. His comments, and Jim’s response contain a lot of truth. I hope to get to a post on New Urbanism called “Shooting Themselves in the Foot” soon. The long and short of it is that having never grasped the importance of a Comprehensive Conceptual Framework and a robust Vocabulary, they are plagued by Geographical Illiteracy and as a result often shoot themselves in the foot.
Jim put his finger on the biggest problem: Jack Legs who try to steal a few good ideas from the New Urbanism pattern book and then call the project “New Urbanist” when it is not. That is especially true with respect to locational dysfunction and scale blindness.
EMR