TRILO-G Chapter 15 – Learning From Delmarva – spells out what can be learned about THE USE AND MANAGEMENT OF LAND from the small Urban Support Region that occupies the DelMarVa Peninsula between the Chesapeake Bay and the Atlantic Ocean.
Following completion of Chapter 15, the prospect of contemporary economic and social changed dramatically. (See Introduction to Vol II, BRIDGES about books never being ‘completed.’) Urban Support Regions have existed since the emergence of New Urban Regions following World War II – but they may not exist for much longer.
What Happened?
By the start of the fourth quarter of 2008 it was clear that the shelter bubble had burst in the US of A and in other nation-states that allowed Autonomobile driven (aka, autocentric) human settlement patterns to become dominant. See THE PROBLEM WITH CARS.
The ‘housing bubble’ had actually been deflating for two years and many – including the Chairman of the Fed – thought (prayed) that it was just another “adjustment” in the “natural business cycle.”
But no! The ill-conceived strategy to ‘solve’ the Affordable and Accessible Housing Crisis by driving up ‘home ownership’ Collapsed.
Pumping billions of dollars into the shelter market (and in the process funding and exacerbating the Helter Skelter Crisis and the Mobility and Access Crisis) was never a good idea. Freddie, and Fannie’s tragically failed speculation scheme put hundreds of thousands of Wrong Size Houses in the Wrong Locations and when this became obvious to all, the house of cards (aka, house(es) with bad loans) Collapsed.
Fannie and Freddie’s Collapse exposed shockingly shoddy lending and banking practices – and criminally negligent Agency oversight – that resulted in lending the wrong amounts of money to the wrong borrowers.
Much more important, the shoddy practices resulted in lending the wrong amount of money secured by the Wrong Size Dwelling in the Wrong Location. If it were just a bad loan to a poor risk, someone would buy the property when the defaulted. Massive numbers of bad loans on badly located properties lead to Collapse.
The shelter tragedy is:
• Personal for those who were bilked
• A just reward for those who will go to jail for fraud, and
• Completely avoidable but for the those who claim to be guided by the ‘free market’ but ignored the re real market and failed to come to an understanding of human settlement patterns and the forces that drive dysfunctional settlement patterns.
There is tragic irony because:
• During the run up to Collapse, sane professionals had evolved a “Location Efficient Mortgage” strategy. LEM is driven by ‘smart growth’ advocates but is based on the most intelligent lessons – as opposed the greatest short-term pay out – of 75 years of housing policy experience.
• The market demonstrates that most citizens prefer non-Autonomobile dominated settlement patterns.
• New Urbanism has provided life size working models of places at the Alpha Cluster-scale and Alpha Neighborhood-scale that work. The market is responding to these places. All New Urbanists need to do is to learn about Critical Mass, Balance, real Regionalism and the need for a comprehensive Conceptual Framework.
• Since at least 1973, intelligent voices have been predicting exactly what happened – although most had no idea of the massive scale of Financial Enterprise greed and fraud. The last 35 years of predictions were based on warnings first articulated in the early 1920s.
As time passes the over-inflation of Wrong Size Dwellings in the Wrong Location – scatteration of urban land uses and dysfunctional human settlement patterns – drive more and more mortgages under water and the pain spreads. See 23 December report from Nat Ass of Realtors.
The ill-conceived shelter strategy and the shoddy lending and banking practices exposed the gross negligence of Agency regulators and Enterprise ‘valuation’ and underwriting services which allowed and facilitated the proliferation of collateralized debt obligation ‘securities’ and other Ponzi schemes – classic and freshly conceived – to deflate the entire Global financial structure.
These events exposed the frailty of an economic system primarily driven by consumer consumption without regard to finite physical limits of resources and the importance of settlement patterns.
When consumers are not happy and safe – aka, scared – they do not buy.
They do not by new Autonomobiles and the Autonomobile industry has to be bailed out. They do not buy things they do not really need and the retail and service sectors go down. Even “developers” want a bailout. The dropping oil prices are a barometer of “trust” and the cumulative result of individuals balancing Need and Desire (See Chapter 23).
For reasons spelled out in THE ESTATES MATRIX few believe what they read in MainStream Media. Soon they will not believe advertising of any kind and the source of revenue to provide information to citizens will disappear.
As noted in GENERATIONAL GENERALIZATION:
The emerging reality is Collapse of the Mass OverConsumption ‘civilization’ that has been driven by those at the top of the Ziggurat who are wasting Natural Capital to:
• Pay the total cost of a ‘driven-to-frenzy-by-technology’ society, and
• Subsidize the full cost of dysfunctional settlement patterns.
So what does this have to do with Urban Support Regions?
As Chapter 15 points out there is a great deal to be learned about the USE AND MANAGEMENT OF LAND – or rather the misuse and mismanagement of land – from Urban Support Regions. The Urban Support Regions have proven to be a bellwether and some of the most damaging aspects of dysfunctional human settlement patterns – scattered urban land uses and the proliferation of short grass pollution – are clearly demonstrated.
The bottom line is that Urban Support Regions depend economically, socially and physically on interRegional transfers of wealth, goods and services that are dependent on long-distance, high-energy consumption activities:
• Second homes
• Tourism
• Climate / topography delimited Recreation
• Colleges and Universities in Communities in the Countryside
• Export of food and fiber
• Export of energy and raw materials
The cost of everything that involves energy will go up, and up – unless no one has money to buy the good or services – see the gas price at the pump this week.
Exporting energy will be very costly because the energy will have to be ‘green.’ If the energy is converted to electricity there is line loss; and coal is heavy; and… there is no escape, PERIOD
Enjoying a cappuccino on a front porch along Talbot Street (‘main street’ in Saint Michaels, MD – a special place in DelMarVA that exists to support second homes and tourism), EMR noted trucks delivering building supplies from the Cores of the three primary New Urban Regions that make DelMarVa an Urban Support Region. (They are, of course, Washington-Baltimore NUR, Philadelphia NUR and Hampton Roads NUR. New York NUR and Richmond NUR also contribute, but not as much.)
Having three potential sources of doors and windows is “competition” in a Friedman Flat Earth economy. It is “unsustainable inefficiency” in a finite resource economy with high energy costs.
Where to from here?
There are three possible directions for all or parts of Urban Support Regions:
One. They may become small New Urban Regions through intelligent use of import replacement to reduce the Critical Mass necessary to support their Balanced Communities.
Two. The may becom
e SubRegions of the dominate NUR – Expand Philadelphia NUR down the DelMarVa Peninsula or expand the ties to Hampton Roads NUR through the bridge-tunnel or span the Chesapeake Bay to the Washington-Baltimore NUR. With high energy / transport costs for Autonomobility (and for trucks) one can easily figure out the probabilities.
Three. De-urbanize. Vast parts of Urban Support Regions will go the way of the proposed Buffalo Commons.
How to decide which way to go is sketched out in THE USE AND MANAGEMENT OF LAND. A Window on the process is provided by the discussion of MegaRegions – the expansion of the Los Angles NUR to Las Vegas and emergence of three ‘new’ MegaRegions based on the Denver NUR, the Salt Lake NUR, and parts of the Southern Rocky Mountain Urban Support Region morphing into a “New Mexico” Mega Region. See Chapter 13.
(Note: References to other part of TRILO-G are left in this post to indicate where additional resources can be found when TRILO-G is completed.)
EMR