Reason Foundation - Authors > Chris Fiscelli

New Approaches to Affordable Housing

info@reason.org (Chris Fiscelli) — Sun, 01 May 2005 00:00:00 EDT

...

Taking a Lesson in Math to Limit Urban Sprawl

info@reason.org (Chris Fiscelli) — Mon, 15 Nov 2004 00:00:00 EST

Planetizen.com

Order of operations matters. In math, we know the correct solution to several numeric figures hinges on doing your multiplication before subtraction, for example. Screw up the order and you get the wrong answer and a lot of wasted effort. In matters of urban development, there is an analogous situation. But in the real world, you can't just erase the answer if you've miscalculated your order of operations.

The current planning wisdom holds that subsidizing light rail transit systems and downtown redevelopment projects will spur more dense development near transit stations and infill locations thereby reducing urban sprawl, auto use and related congestion and pollution. Another favored intervention, especially in the West, is the urban growth boundary sometimes euphemistically referred to as a greenbelt. Simultaneously, there are dozens of other policies which are in fact, increasing sprawl. But, aggressively attacking one component of urban development without consideration of its causes can lead to poor results and unintended consequences.

Consider that urban growth boundaries do not really preserve open space as much as transfer it to other areas and then by restricting developable land in urban areas, housing prices are artificially inflated. Possibly even worse, development sometimes leapfrogs (a favorite planning term) further outside the growth perimeter into more remote open space. Light rail systems compete, to some extent, with existing bus routes and have done little to solve traffic congestion in many of the nation's cities. Despite the best intentions, there are good reasons why this two-pronged strategy fails.

A host of policies contribute to our sprawling urban regions such as zoning, revenue-raising land use decisions by cities, poor and inadequate pricing of infrastructure and natural resources, corporate welfare-like economic development by some suburban local governments, and lack of school choice. Without first addressing these fundamental policy flaws in our urban regions, building big shiny, new public works projects and drawing arbitrary lines around cities is likely to have little positive effect.

A better order of operations would be as follows. First, preserve open space in the most remote, pristine areas where there is little development pressure as of yet. The land is cheaper and there would be less political upheaval. Second, start pricing infrastructure such as roads, water/sewer, and other "public services" like utilities, according to use. Third, stop using local land use regulation to swell city coffers and stop pandering to NIMBY activists to limit innovative and high density developments. Fourth, eliminate barriers to downtown or city living by reducing crime, offering school choice, and cleaning up toxic sites known as brownfields. Allowing markets to respond to these new policies and conditions will likely create a more compact region, one desired by planners and environmentalists. Finally, allow private transit companies to offer a transit product that makes the most sense given the emerging land use pattern.

The current conventional wisdom tells us that the order does not matter and that enacting growth boundaries, building fixed-route transit systems, and promoting high density development near transit stations will reshape America's metropolitan regions and provide environmental benefits. It tells us that an overhaul of zoning can occur later and that infrastructure pricing is not a prerequisite for the shifting of urban form. It tells us that local economic development is in fact, desirable. Unfortunately, this conventional wisdom ignores the underlying economic forces of land development and simply discards the unintended adverse effects of the strategy on the environment, home buyers, commuters, and taxpayers. By acting out of order, we risk large public expenditures with little return and unintended consequences. If roads, autos, and low density development do not pay the full costs associated with their development and use, transit and high density development will have difficulty competing and subsidies will exist in vain. If Euclidian zoning and its sprawl-like requirements are not changed first, what large-scale competitive chance does compact or new urbanist style development have? They will simply be the exceptions in a sea of conventional development with many projects requiring direct public spending to succeed.

Without a fundamental shift by state and local governments to address the fundamental policies that exacerbate urban sprawl, building new light rail systems and subsidizing select projects alone will have no major impact on urban growth patterns or environmental preservation. Let's learn a lesson from math, get the order right, and alleviate the negatives of urban sprawl the right way.

Chris Fiscelli is a senior fellow in urban and land use policy at Reason Foundation

San Diego's Growth Future Is Up For Grabs

info@reason.org (Chris Fiscelli) — Thu, 18 Dec 2003 00:00:00 EST

San Diego Union-Tribune

It has been said that you could line up all the economists in the world, and they would still never reach a conclusion. The same could be said for pundits of San Diego's growth policies.

We've always had the stereotypical polarizing possibilities: builders who want unbridled capitalism and environmentalists who would be happier if we never "broke ground" again. However, as the debate evolves and the issues become more complex, the politics begin to blur. Such has become the case regarding the San Diego Rural Lands Initiative and the General Plan 2020.

The Rural Lands Initiative proposes to downzone backcountry land allowing only 80-and 160-acre subdivisions, effectively preventing development in these areas. This would place the emphasis for growth squarely in existing developed areas.

Such infill development sounds great, and growth is often planned that way. However, these plans rarely come to fruition. This is because while many people want to preserve open space, they and others often don't want to live in the densities that infill development creates.

Noted urban planning guru Robert Lang, a leading spokesman for infill development, acknowledges that San Diego's density is already high compared to other cities, but should be even higher to accommodate expected growth. San Diego County's newly updated general plan proposes to increase densities by channeling all development in the western portion of the county, thus preserving the backcountry.

This sounds like the environmental mantra, but here is where the politics blur. The environmentalists are supporting the Rural Lands Initiative and in doing so, rejecting GP 2020, San Diego County's newly updated general plan.

Deciding between the county general plan and the Rural Lands Initiative is almost like choosing the lesser of two evils. The Rural Lands Initiative is simply ballot box zoning at its worst, appealing to the emotions of voters who abide more by political allegiance than what is best for San Diego. The general plan, which essentially wins by default if the Rural Lands Initiative fails, was carefully thought out, but has the failing of all general plans in that it attempts to plan a future that is unknowable and relies on policies and a political process that do not effectively implement them.

San Diegans must decide which pain point to accept. If population grows as expected, we will either have less open space, higher densities, or an increasing housing shortage and affordability problem. There is no win-win-win in this scenario.

But, there is a choice. We could have these scenarios play out in the political arena, dominated by activists and special interests, which is typically the case, or we could allow market forces to allocate land resources most effectively. Markets have a way of determining what people want and what they are willing to pay for.

Aside from the few citizens that actually involve themselves in local growth matters, most San Diegans will be on the political sideline unaware of how these decisions will affect them. I am not advocating apathy, but surely the interests of the "masses" must be accounted for at some point as well as those future San Diegans who have no opportunity to participate in the planning process.

Here's a summary of what a market-based strategy would look like. First and most important, "free rides" must come to an end. Infrastructure, like roads, sewers, water mains, utility extensions and treatment facilities, needs to be paid for by users.

If certain locations or development styles cost more to service, they will be automatically penalized by the market, thereby decreasing the likelihood of those potential developments getting built. Since it stands to reason that virgin backcountry would be expensive to service, in terms of infrastructure, we can expect development opportunities to reduce there dramatically.

Second, rigid zoning controls that control land use and density must be relaxed or modified. Many times, zoning actually works to decrease density and increase parking areas. The market for denser environments may exist, but may be currently unnecessarily restricted by zoning.

Last, but not least, land that is particularly environmentally fragile, scenic, or wild must be protected, but not by downzoning. In fact, one GP2020 participant introduced a grand idea where land "winners" could compensate land "losers." Certain landowners will surely benefit from a market-based growth policy, or any other growth policy for that matter, because their land will essentially be upzoned. These winning landowners could use their paper windfalls to purchase development rights from landowners who own land that is to be protected. In this way, land gets protected forever and the losing landowners receive compensation for their loss.

The pro-growth, no-growth labels do not apply anymore. Some mix of increased density, loss of open space and housing supply will be determined. How it is determined is up to you. It can occur by the hands of election-driven politicians, ballot-box zoning, special interests and activists, or by all residents in the market choices they make. My choice is markets.

Chris Fiscelli is a senior fellow in urban and land use policy at Reason Foundation

It's Not About the Sprawl

info@reason.org (Chris Fiscelli) — Sat, 13 Dec 2003 00:00:00 EST

Riverside Press-Enterprise

Urban sprawl, the widespread phenomenon that defies definition, has been the target of critics unsatisfied with suburbia and growth patterns of the past 50 years.

Sprawl is an easy target. What better to blame for society's evils like traffic, crime, city decline, expensive housing, pollution, social isolation, government deficits, or lack of community than a nebulous concept that is faceless, has few, if any, true supporters, and is popular to criticize?

But behind this illusion, there's a simple truth. The assault on sprawl has little to do with quantifiable measures like population density. It's about the distaste for modern America and the lifestyle choices we make freely. For many years, sprawl has been bemoaned by environmentalists, planners, smart-growth advocates and transit evangelists. But most people have little information when it comes to accurately defining urban sprawl or dispersion of land. Nor do they care about such measures.

Population and employment densities are the only true measures of sprawl that exist, but this definition is incomplete when you discover that the Los Angeles basin is the densest metropolitan area in the nation, yet it is always the area named when someone speaks of sprawl's harmful effects.

Some critics even decry sprawl as the "Los Angelesation" of America, but obviously they are not talking about its higher densities. In fact, in defining sprawl we are left with something on the order of the Supreme Court's definition of pornography — "we know it when we see it."

The reality is that population densities and the percentage of developed land area mean little to people who are disturbed by what they see each day — lots of cars crowding their streets, new cookie-cutter subdivisions, ugly streetscapes, and buildings that were once open space.

Combine that with discount superstores, auto dealerships, strip malls, fast-food restaurants, wide streets, SUVs and the ubiquitous cell phones, and you get a visual that doesn't measure up to the quaint village atmosphere of the past. This might better represent the common person's description of sprawl — the catch-all term for just about everything we don't like about the built environment.

While some view sprawl as a mere annoyance, others have gone much further, and blame urban sprawl for the school shootings in Columbine and the nation's obesity problems. It is even being blamed for the magnitude of damage caused by Southern California's recent fires.

Smart growth, the self-proclaimed sprawl-busting solution, calls for higher density housing, narrower streets and fewer of them, more transit use and walking, mixed-use town centers, and a boundary around cities where no development would occur.

It's not that all of these things are necessarily bad; actually some may be good. It's just that there are limits to the benefits of a well-designed community. Crime will not magically go away, congested cities will still exist, some people will still be overweight, the discount superstore or some variation of it will still be packed on weekends, and some annoying people will still drive SUVs while carrying on life-and-death conversations on their cell phones.

Changing the way we develop communities is probably long overdue, but don't hold your breath waiting for a silver bullet.

We might all start choosing to live in traditional neighborhood developments that make us feel nostalgic about the 1920s, but there is no going back, horse and buggy or not.

You can redesign Middle America's suburbia all you want, but you can't redesign suburban Middle Americans. You can't make them stop from wanting suburban-style living.

We'll soon realize all of the things we might despise today - the ugly American, laziness, obesity, pop culture, the occasional annoying neighbor - and growth will still be around. Then we'll figure out that it wasn't about sprawl at all.

Chris Fiscelli is a senior fellow in urban and land use policy at Reason Foundation

Private Property Rights and Local Control: Can We Have Both?

info@reason.org (Chris Fiscelli) — Mon, 15 Sep 2003 00:00:00 EDT

Private property rights and local land use control have been linchpins of American society for many years but it seems these ideals, sometimes viewed as complementary, have become unlikely adversaries. At least part of the reason is that these concepts have changed over time. Property rights groups seem to be well aware of their own rights, but sometimes lose sight of others' property rights and oppose development project they don't like. Local land use control, in principle a process that allows local residents to be involved in planning their cities' future, has become a forum for outside activists to block new development. The dilemma is that local control can certainly infringe upon property rights, but pure property rights leaves few options for local land use control.

A key local land use control issue these days is the public approval process of housing and commercial developments. Opposition to growth and development has grown, with resistance to growth in various forms sometimes so severe that it has prompted such monikers as NIMBYs (not in my backyard), LULUs (locally unwanted land use), and BANANAs (build absolutely nothing anywhere near anything). The forces behind this resistance range from concerned local citizens worried about property values and neighborhood changes to environmental groups worried about air quality and ecosystem preservation. Regardless of the motive, the outcome of their opposition is often to deny property owners their preferred use of their land and thus diminish their property rights.

Public officials, recognizing voter concerns about growth, have resisted high-density housing, particularly apartments or low cost housing. Developers are forced to go elsewhere usually further to the urban perimeter where growth opposition is less intense. The result is more sprawl and often housing supply that doesn't keep pace with demand.

So, how might we sustain people's property rights and still exercise reasonable local control that sometimes restricts property rights? Local control must move from the project approval and debate level to a more strategic level. Instead of hashing out each development project in public hearings dominated by activists and lobbyists, cities should provide guidance in broader specific area plans that provide a general direction for the local area. Cities should seek out input from only local neighborhood residents on broad directions for the community, not ballot box zoning or decisions on individual projects. Necessary project level decisions could be left to appointed planning commissions to depoliticize project approvals. Citizens and city councils would get involved when plans are periodically reviewed and changed.

At the same time, property rights activists must understand that rights can be strong, but only up to the point where exercising them does not have a substantial external effect on the community. Residents in a democracy must have some means to chart their communities' course to ensure it reflects some common needs and desires such as valuable community open spaces or parks, public squares, historic buildings or landmarks, and community infrastructure. And when the community wants certain land used a certain way, then the community must purchase that land, its development rights, or an easement for public use.

In many places "local control" has become a euphemism for no or slow growth, and "property rights" a euphemism for no planning. Getting back to reasonable definitions of those terms, and shifting the local approval processes from the tactical to the strategic, will help us retain local control and strong private property rights.

Chris Fiscelli is a senior fellow in urban and land use policy at Reason Foundation

Zoning Needs An Overhaul

info@reason.org (Chris Fiscelli) — Tue, 02 Sep 2003 00:00:00 EDT

Planetizen.com

Zoning has a long history in the US dating back to the landmark Supreme Court case of 1926� the Village of Euclid, OH vs. the Amber Realty Company when the Court upheld zoning as a proper exercise of police power. Zoning proved to be an excellent tool throughout a good portion of the 20th Century by separating residential areas from polluting, noisy industrial plants, for example. Zoning became the primary land use regulation by which cities sought to achieve their land use visions. However, technology and economic restructuring, among other things, has led to many changes in the United States leaving traditional zoning as an outmoded land use policy that is sorely in need of change.

While segregation of land uses was a crucial component of zoning in the past, it is now seen as a defunct procedure that fosters pods of detached, similar land uses limiting interaction among them. Much of today's zoning also legislates a specific allowable land use for most every parcel of a city and relies on general or master plans to make changes to the use. These plans attempt to look forward for as many as 30 years and predict the best use of all land, but it is impossible to forecast land use in the distant future as so many changes are possible. Think about the changes that have occurred in some of the nation's faster growing communities in the past 30 years. Zoning, the implementing tool of the general or master plan, does not respect land uses or communities as dynamic entities where land uses and neighborhoods change in response to technology, consumer preferences, and changes in society.

Most cities' zoning ordinances also specify a host of other land development regulations, sometimes known as height and bulk regulations. These include density minimums and maximums, floor area ratio (FAR) restrictions, minimum parking requirements, minimum and maximum lot size requirements, setback requirements, height restrictions, and building footprint coverage requirements. In addition, cities may further regulate architecture and landscape design as part of their overall land use regulation. The general purpose of these regulations is to define the nature of development in an area. But, the use and development of private land is very much of an economic process constantly evolving to meet the needs of consumers and businesses. By dictating a specific outcome for an area years in advance, zoning stifles this evolutionary process.

At a practical level, zoning tends to foster development patterns that conflict with smart growth objectives while using a process objectionable to free market advocates. It restricts densities of projects that may have a market for a greater density, it prevents mixed land uses even though that may be the preferred design, and it requires parking ratios that assume most residents or customers will drive most places. With this type of land use regulation, it should not be surprising that much of suburbia looks as it does.

At a more perverse level, cities abuse zoning to exclude whatever they are trying to keep out, in many cases, high density housing, or lower-priced housing. Much of this is done in response to community demands as residents move to an area for a reason and prefer to keep the neighborhood as they found it. Unfortunately, this exclusionary or snob zoning, as it is sometimes called, distorts real estate markets, contributes to income and racial segregation, and increases sprawl.

Recognizing the shortcomings of traditional zoning, some cities have been actively seeking alternatives. New urbanists have been advocating form-based codes and while they are certainly an upgrade over traditional codes, they carry the danger of over-regulation and defining specific outcomes. By limiting market forces, we will continually fall into the trap of being one step behind the times. In other words, consumer wants and needs will always change faster than governments' recognition of them.

Flexible zoning is a concept that embraces the notion that individual land uses, neighborhoods, and communities are dynamic and constantly evolving as society, technology, and preferences change. Flexible zoning simply sets the rules of the marketplace like not allowing an adult theatre within a certain distance of a school or requiring mitigation measures for certain uses. But it does not specify a specific land use or density or parking requirement for private land.

Flexible zoning also need not require a general or master plan. While the thought of not having a general plan is disturbing to some, consider that plans must constantly change to adapt to changing conditions so that it is usually the plan that tends to mirror reality instead of reality following a plan. William Fulton's recent study of Ventura County shows the pains associated with plans that do not reflect reality. In that case, actual densities were far less than planned densities creating a housing shortage and affordability problem. Cities can still take preemptive actions to affect their future in a positive manner by buying land for park development, open and public spaces, and infrastructure development. Instead of planning the private realm, cities can more productively plan the public realm essentially setting the guidelines for development by their actions.

It is clear that local government involvement in land use is required. However, it is also clear that we should not continue on the current path. Land use regulation is stifling innovation and distorting real estate markets by trying to determine specific outcomes and development patterns when those outcomes are best determined by the market discovery process. Just as modern machinery requires state-of-the-art tools, today's urban development problems require state-of-the-art land use regulations. Revamping zoning would be a great start.

Chris Fiscelli is a senior fellow in urban and land use policy at Reason Foundation

San Diego's Affordable Housing Dilemma

info@reason.org (Chris Fiscelli) — Wed, 30 Jul 2003 00:00:00 EDT

San Diego Union-Tribune

The median home price in San Diego is over $419,000 — just one of many areas in the state where the median price exceeds $400,000 and is out of reach for many hopeful home-buyers. In San Diego, and most of the state, lip service is outpacing reality when it comes to moving toward affordable housing. With the help of state and federal agencies, we are getting shortsighted, Band-Aid approaches that show a complete misunderstanding of the issues confronting home-buyers and the market.

One popular plan is the construction of "affordable housing." On the surface, it is hard to be opposed to anything in San Diego when that nomenclature, "affordable housing," is used. However, consider what affordable housing really means to government agencies — subsidized rental construction to income-qualified residents in some of the most expensive communities in the area. If a more accurate description were used, say, "Tax credits for large corporations to develop apartments where some residents pay less rent based on their incomes," — would the concept sound as desirable?

For most families or individuals, buying a house is about trade-offs. However, affordable housing rental projects create a system where some people don't have to confront these trade-offs and thus distort the housing market. It isn't realistic for everyone in society to expect to live next to Hollywood celebrities in Malibu, or even live exactly where they work. For example, a waiter working in the Gaslamp District should not necessarily expect to be able to afford high downtown prices. The government's goal of making rental housing affordable to everyone, in every community, allows many residents to avoid making trade-offs, and dramatically hurts those working toward the American dream of owning a home.

San Diego and the state need to shift away from affordable housing projects designed to help renters, and toward policies that encourage first-time home-buyers, and others, to enter the for-sale housing market.

To do that, we must evaluate regulations and policies, like so-called affordable housing, that are having negative and unintended consequences on potential home-buyers. Growth boundaries, project approval slowdowns, and Proposition 13 essentially provide incentives to cities to approve commercial uses over new housing projects — helping create shortages of affordable homes.

A recent Reason Foundation study showed growth boundaries were a principal force that caused housing prices in San Jose to increase by an astronomical 936 percent from 1976 to 2001. And a study commissioned by the New York Federal Reserve shows "zoning and other Byzantine land use regulations" are responsible for driving up housing prices in many areas like San Diego. Development impact fees levied by local governments average $20,000 to $30,000 per unit in California. These fees are passed on to the home-buyer.

California and San Diego should change their approaches to the housing affordability issue. We should abandon subsidies for income-restricted rental housing development because it hasn't solved the problem. Instead, we should focus on offering lower interest home purchase loans for qualified residents.

At the same time, government agencies should identify destructive growth control policies that have been primary barriers to constructing a natural supply of "for-sale" houses. "You can't freeze dry a city and think that a general plan written in 2003 provides an accurate picture of what that city will look like in 2020," said William Fulton, president of Solimar Research Group, a Ventura County-based land use research organization. The best way to lower housing prices is to increase the supply.

Instead of suffering through the harmful, inadvertent consequences of these growth regulations — like steep increases in home prices — we should spend more time planning on the local neighborhood level. It is important to gather input and buy-in from all interested parties — developers, politicians and various neighborhood groups.

With buy-in from these groups, we can take a larger look at the housing problems. For example, we often complain that teachers, police officers, firefighters and nurses can't afford houses in San Diego or California. But is it better to subsidize their home purchases or raise their salaries?

Raising incomes in these professions is a better use of public money than manipulating the housing market by offering rental property discounts or other gimmicks. If your rent is subsidized when you make $45,000 per year and not at $55,000 per year, your disposable income may actually be higher at the lower compensation, thereby reducing your incentive to get out of subsidy-free housing.

Housing prices and incomes are a complex relationship about trade-offs that people make. Some people choose a central location, sell their car and get a roommate, and still others may move out of the area altogether to a less expensive region.

Housing has always been, and should be, about trade-offs. San Diego needs to make sure that individual and market responses to those trade-offs are allowed to happen.

Chris Fiscelli is a senior fellow in urban and land use policy at Reason Foundation

Smart Growth Dream Will Give You Nightmares

info@reason.org (Chris Fiscelli) — Mon, 30 Jun 2003 00:00:00 EDT

Planetizen.com

The Greenbelt Alliance, a left leaning, San Francisco area land conservation group, recently offered their version of a development dream for Contra Costa County. Contra Costa is the quintessential suburban county, and like many of its brethren across the nation, is urbanizing and struggling to find its way to balancing growth with concerns for open space, traffic, and environmental quality.

But the Greenbelt Alliance's dream proposal is more like a nightmare for the average citizen. Their draconian anti-sprawl approach is "smart growth" gone dumb. Its basis is making us all feel guilty for living in a detached home in the suburbs, driving our cars, and not using public transit enough. But this is precisely the American Dream.

The Greenbelt Alliance claims sprawl is responsible for traffic congestion, racial segregation, unaffordable housing, disappearing open space and agricultural lands, and rising infrastructure costs. But like many smart growth advocates, they do not, or more accurately, cannot explain how sprawl is responsible. Their proposed "solutions" are heavy-handed government interventions that ignore what people really want, and not only do little to solve actual problems, but actually make a lot of them worse.

Housing costs are about supply and demand and since anti-growth initiatives have blocked much new housing development, supply is limited and costs have risen. Suburban development has made us the best-housed nation in the world opening affordable homeownership opportunities for millions of Americans. Meanwhile, smart growth policies have consistently been shown to make housing less affordable, creating regressive housing markets and leading to ridiculous backfill policies like subsidized rental housing on expensive land near transit stations.

The Greenbelt Alliance focuses on open space, but most suburban counties have plenty of open space. Only 6% of the nation's land is developed, and even in typical suburban counties the majority of available land is still undeveloped. At the same time, suburban development offers open space mixed in where we live as opposed to dense smart growth urban jungles where you have to ride transit to open space beyond some arbitrary urban growth boundary. Urban growth boundaries have a miserable history of increasing housing costs and causing leapfrog development like that seen in California's Central Valley.

The Greenbelt Alliance points an accusing finger at rising infrastructure costs, but maybe they should do a cost study of rail transit. Most transit systems' revenue covers about 30% of what they spend for their operations and this doesn't even include the monumental capital costs. The rest of the costs are subsidized through the gas tax and local sales taxes, diverting money from the road and highway systems that actually carry most travelers. And for that tremendous expenditure transit accounts for about 4% of all trips in the United States. Hardly a recipe for congestion relief.

As for racial integration, the Greenbelt Alliance seems to offer no solution. Short of telling people exactly where to live, how exactly would they accomplish this?

All this is not to say that there are no pains and issues associated with growth, but the standard litany of harsh interventions and trampling of people's choices that the Greenbelt Alliance offers are futile and burdensome to all. There are a number of effective, market-oriented measures to accommodate growth while retaining consumer choice and private property rights. Smart growth advocates tend to ignore these because they don't involve subsidizing high-density housing, light rail construction, and heavily urbanizing suburban areas.

The market forces at work in the decentralization of our nation's population are simply too strong to reverse without restrictive government intervention. This probably means more sprawl. But don't knock sprawl just because we are made to feel guilty for it. Gregg Easterbrook of the New Republic once wrote "sprawl is caused by affluence and population growth, which of these, exactly, do we propose to prohibit?" My guess is that we would not care to give up either. In the end, the smart growth flame will likely burn out much like other great planning experiments such as urban renewal and public housing projects. Then we'll think back and remember this smart growth vision was just another bad dream.

Chris Fiscelli is a senior fellow in urban and land use policy at Reason Foundation

Growth Boundaries Sound Good, but Lack Substance

info@reason.org (Chris Fiscelli) — Mon, 23 Jun 2003 00:00:00 EDT

Staring at traffic gridlock, strip malls, and the ever-multiplying red tile roofs, it's easy to understand how local residents can view growth as a four-letter word. Responding emotionally in true ballot box fashion, Contra Costa County voters created an urban growth boundary in 1990 to combat the effects of rapid urban growth with little knowledge of the unintended consequences. The County Board of Supervisors, who constricted the boundary in 2000, has now decided to put the urban growth boundary expansion proposal on the ballot. The purpose of the boundary is to reign in haphazard urban sprawl, but growth boundaries' track record around the nation have been less than stellar and their existence tends to create serious unintended consequences.

Proponents, planners, no-growth advocates, and especially environmentalists, will tell you that growth boundaries will preserve open space, make your commute better because you'll live closer to work, and improve our environment. But, they won't tell you that growth boundaries drive up housing prices by artificially restricting the county land supply or slow economic growth by deflecting it to neighboring growth hot spots like Solano County or even the Central Valley. The real kicker is that once the boundary is locked in, the hope is that densities will increase to the point where driving becomes miserable and we will want to walk and use transit.

The bad news doesn't stop there. By focusing growth in selected areas, most development will occur in infill locations which means that open space won't necessarily be preserved as much as transferred. So, instead of open spaces within your neighborhood, they will be confined to outside of town.

And don't be duped by the density arguments. Environmentalists and planners will argue that higher density will be a "win-win" until that high-density development proposal goes to your local city council vote. High density housing, like taking the BART or bus, always sounds great - for everybody else like most of your neighbors or those sitting in traffic in front of you on Interstate 680 or Highway 24.

Because planners typically overestimate the demand for high-density housing and underestimate the community resistance to it, the plans and realities of density usually diverge. The result: less concentrated development. When low density persists with growth boundaries, the results could be disastrous - lots of traffic and housing shortages and unaffordability.

The cities, for their part, want more control over the process. Land use has historically been the turf of local governments as they are best fit to deal with new development and its impacts. Many of Contra Costa County's municipalities aren't thrilled that the Board of Supervisors could create such a housing and development quandary for them and then play politics by pushing the boundary expansion to the voters.

What growth control supporters don't seem to understand is that growth will occur, it is just a matter of where. And you can't just focus all of the growth in high-rise condos and apartments because everyone doesn't move to Contra Costa County to live that way. The result: sprawling houses with yards and the nearby mall to do your shopping. We would do well to seek out policies that address traffic congestion and loss of open space without creating a host of other worse problems. But you won't see things like road pricing on the ballot or financial incentives to protect environmentally fragile lands. While the easy gut reaction is to always oppose growth through some sort of limit or boundary, we should avoid kneejerk responses, think clearly about the issues, and look to other cities' failures with growth boundaries for guidance.

Chris Fiscelli is a senior fellow in urban and land use policy at Reason Foundation

An Interview with Dr. Barton Smith on Urban Decentralization

info@reason.org (Chris Fiscelli) — Wed, 11 Jun 2003 00:00:00 EDT

Dr. Barton Smith is an economics professor at the University of Houston and the Director for the Institute for Regional Studies. He has authored numerous urban economic and real estate papers in various publications including the Journal of Real Estate Research, Regional Science and Urban Economics, and the Journal of Urban Economics. He is also a frequent and highly sought after speaker on the topics of urban growth and real estate. He is considered one of, if not the leading economist in Houston.

Dr. Smith recently spoke at the Houston Real Estate Symposium about the Houston real estate markets and the effect transportation and specifically, light rail, might have on real estate values in Houston. I had a chance to speak with Dr. Smith about his presentation and other thoughts about urban decentralization, the impacts of light rail in today's cities, prospects for mass transit, walkable communities, and location rationale, among other things. Here are some of the important points of his presentation and my discussion with him.

The Economic Impact of Light Rail in Houston

Dr. Smith believes the economic impact directly related to light rail will be negligible. In other comparable cities he studied like Denver, the economic spillover was miniscule. Although he believes rail service may help redevelop some areas that already have redevelopment potential on other merits, he does not believe it will be a primary factor in economic growth. In terms of ridership, Dr. Smith has an even grimmer view of light rail. While the current bus system captures 3% of all current trips in the Houston area, (an amount Smith believes is high by most cities' standards) he believes light rail will capture even less, possibly 1% of possible trips. One reason for this is the increase in suburb-to-suburb commuting, which is not well accommodated by rail systems.

Patterns of Metropolitan Growth

The Houston area, like many others in the US and increasingly around the world, is decentralizing. In fact, Dr. Smith noted that 92% of Houston's population is located outside what is commonly referred to as the inner city. In addition, he says that most employment is located outside the city as well. Only a mere 7% of the Houston area workforce is located in the Central Business District. In terms of spatial structure, Dr. Smith believes Houston exhibits a multiple-nuclei pattern of development common to many North American cities. He believes these work centers (or edge cities) have developed and are still developing around the metropolitan area. Typically, residents will locate in and around these work centers and have a 30-minute or less commute. One of the reasons this is occurring is the fact that CBD location is not as important as it used to be.

Also of note is the fact that these edge cities appear to reach critical mass and then stabilize. Smith says the Galleria area around Houston is one such edge city that is reaching that stage. In the book, "Edge City" Joel Garreau discovered that once edge cities reached a congested state and density level that made driving nearly unbearable, they stabilized while other edge cities in the region grew. What is most interesting is that the density level reached was never high enough to make mass transit work. In other words, these work centers or edge cities increase in density right up until the point that driving is painful, but possible but before mass transit is desirable. Smith concurs with Garreau's logic in Houston as more edge cities continue to blossom around the metropolitan perimeter.

Policy Implications

There are numerous policy implications ranging from downtown redevelopment to transportation to smart growth that I discussed with Dr. Smith. In regards to redevelopment in Houston, Smith believes approximately two-thirds of downtown redevelopment involves public dollars while the remaining one-third is private dollars. This, obviously, is not a positive leverage equation for central city redevelopment. Smith says the story is similar for places like Denver that have poured public money into their downtowns with little private investment.

In terms of transportation and smart growth, Smith describes a dichotomous situation where rail supporters battle road supporters by latching on to smart growth ideals in hopes of attaining light rail political victories. Smith offers little hope for proponents of walkable communities as well citing factors such as the local culture and weather in deterring walking as a legitimate means of travel.

Road building policy is also a big issue. Smith says Houston did little road building in the 1990's while experiencing explosive growth, a situation created by overly pessimistic growth forecasts. Consequently, Houston is an extremely congested city and traffic is a major local issue. Although Smith acknowledges that congestion pricing may have some positive effects, he sees few alternatives except capacity improvements. One factor blocking these improvements may be the gas tax revenue allocation in Texas. He says that while the Houston area contributes about 26%-27% of all Texas gas tax revenues, they get only 11%-12% in return for road construction.

Conclusion

Although Houston is an extreme example of decentralization given its size, the trends observed here can be seen in almost any American metropolitan area. Location, still is and will likely always be important for businesses and individuals, but the location decisions of these individuals and firms is much more flexible than ever before and not tied to downtowns or restricted by fixed route public transportation.

Despite many cities' attempts at redistributing growth to accommodate transit use and strong downtowns, decentralization will likely continue. Although urban downtowns/CBDs and suburban centers will evolve, they are not likely to achieve the residential and employment densities needed for widespread walking and transit use. In light of these continuing trends in urban spatial structure and transportation, we should question as a society whether rail investments or smart growth efforts are ill-fated. It appears the market forces that are favoring decentralization are too strong to simply reverse by spending public money in downtown redevelopment projects or building light rail systems that won't attract most commuters. Instead of cursing societal trends such as decentralization and driving, we would be wise to embrace them and focus on how to best address traffic congestion and growth issues through market mechanisms.

Chris Fiscelli is a senior fellow in urban and land use policy at Reason Foundation

A New Sense of Community - Master Planned

info@reason.org (Chris Fiscelli) — Thu, 05 Jun 2003 00:00:00 EDT

There has been a good deal of hand-wringing lately about our society's loss of community. Gone are the days where you might walk your children to a nearby school, chat frequently with your neighbors, go to the end of the street to pick up milk from the dairy, and enjoy a good ol' neighborhood block party. This, we are told by planning experts is what community is all about. And the only way to get it back is to move into that prototypical neotraditional neighborhood. So, planners have spent countless hours and public money trying to figure out how to do just that.

Despite their most fervent efforts, these old style neighborhoods aren't likely to return, even in manufactured form. Consumerism has taken over and it seems people were quick to drop the old urbanist neighborhood for a newer, bigger house, a bigger lot, a nature path, access to Walmart, and shiny, new roads and parks. But while the old definition of community is disappearing, a new one has emerged in the form of master-planned communities (MPCs). MPCs are doing their part to offer their version of the good life.

Master-planned communities are suburbia's response to the boring, cookie-cutter, detached globs of housing that still make up much of America's suburban nation. They offer numerous amenities without losing the lower-density, suburban feel that attracted so many people to the suburbs in the first place. Residents get quality infrastructure like parks, schools, and new roads, shopping close to home, community services, a "city inside a city" feel, and neighbors that genuinely feel connected in some fashion.

Maybe the best thing about master-planned communities is that they are not some government version of utopia, but rather a private sector innovation. As planners, environmentalists, and smart growth advocates have been bemoaning suburban development for many years, developers have been doing something about it. Planners have interpreted growing frustration with suburbia as a desire for selling your car, taking the bus, and moving downtown. All the while, developers have learned that it is something less dramatic. It is the convenience of suburbia with the most cherished benefits of city life like sense of place and belonging, and nearby services.

Master-planned communities are not new concepts. They have been around for a while. Maybe the grandest vision for a MPC was the Rouse Company's building of Columbia, MD, a new community, in the 1970's. Columbia has a mix of housing, shopping, dining, recreation, and almost every conceivable service. It was revolutionary for its time as it provided residents a self-sustaining community located in an urban fringe location. While the town of Columbia still thrives, today's MPC developers continue to learn from their predecessors and innovate. They have recognized a growing distaste for traditional suburbia and are improving upon it.

While the prototypical MPC has higher than average home prices, there are numerous MPCs throughout California and indeed, the country, catering to a variety of lifestyles and clientele. Del Webb has developed several active-adult retirement communities in Arizona and California serving seniors and empty nesters that may not want to move into a city apartment or take care of that big yard. Serrano, an upscale MPC in El Dorado Hills, east of Sacramento, provides larger homes, foothill living, mountain views, and access to recreation and jobs in Folsom. Conversely, Ladera Ranch in Orange County conveys a more traditional neighborhood concept by offering a series of interconnected villages including some smaller, more affordable homes on smaller lots with a town center.

The benefits of MPCs don't stop with the residents' housing options. Recognizing that infrastructure development and financing has long been an issue, developers routinely include public infrastructure in their developments such as schools, parks, roads, water and sewer service, and even police and fire protection in some cases. The service provision and quality typically far exceeds what you could expect from other developments.

Although MPCs offer numerous benefits, many in the smart growth and planning community are not convinced. A consultant summed up a recent smart growth and development conference stating the consensus was that "master-planned communities are bad and infill development is good." Unfortunately for smart growth advocates, consumers aren't listening. While public subsidies such as downtown development, rail transit, and infrastructure financing skyrocket to move us back into older city centers and out of our cars, MPCs continue to grow and prosper. Maybe we've understood a sense of community is a good thing, as long as its common sense.

Chris Fiscelli is a senior fellow in urban and land use policy at Reason Foundation

Smart Growth Types' Dumb Rhetoric

info@reason.org (Chris Fiscelli) — Mon, 19 May 2003 00:00:00 EDT

Orange County Register

Is moving to the suburbs bad for your health? The American Dream of owning a home where you can raise a family is under attack because it doesn't mesh with new "smart growth" plans for dense cities where everyone lives downtown and walks or rides light rail.

The dream house that we work so hard for is being blamed for everything from obesity to air pollution. Now, instead of parents blaming fast-food restaurants for their kids' weight problems, "smart growth" groups are blaming the suburbs for our nation's obesity and health woes. Some of the anti-suburb sentiment is downright ridiculous, not to mention highly unscientific.

The Sierra Club's "10 Reasons Sprawl is Hazardous to Your Health" include, "It's Fattening" (because commuting limits exercise); "It Can Kill You" (because if you have to drive, you are more likely to die in a car accident); and "It's Treacherous" (because subdivisions might be far from hospitals).

But the Sierra Club isn't alone. Howard Frumkin, a pediatrician at Emory University's Rollins School of Public Health, is urging the Environmental Protection Agency to use taxpayer money to study the purported damage suburbs are causing. He claims planned communities are making children fat because they don't force, or allow, kids to walk to school. Meanwhile, the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is studying 8,000 Atlanta residents to establish whether there's a link between where we live and the amount of physical exercise we get.

Most doctors will tell you the biggest factors in obesity are diet, exercise and genetic makeup. Since "smart growth" activists can't effectively legislate how we eat or where we get our genes, they've targeted exercise. They figure if everyone is crammed into downtown areas of Orange County cities or Los Angeles, we will walk everywhere and be in better shape. Never mind that we are all free to walk and exercise as much as we choose now, or that many suburbs feature walking trails and bike paths. Let's also ignore the health and fitness clubs on almost every corner.

Access to exercise is not the problem, motivation is. Some of us won't exercise if you strap us to a treadmill. Some of us always choose to drive, not walk, to that minimart just one block away to buy a bag of potato chips. We don't make those decisions because we live in the suburbs. We make those decisions out of convenience and personal preference.

As for pollution, we would all be better off if air quality improved. However, we can't blame the suburbs for air-quality problems. Despite the mass exodus to the suburbs, and despite people spending more time in their cars than ever, air quality has actually improved in most of America's metropolitan areas since the 1980s. As Reason Foundation air-quality analyst Joel Schwartz notes, "Southern California, the region with the worst air in the country, reduced its annual violations of the EPA's one-hour ozone standard by about 80 percent between 1980 and 2001." That's because today's cars pollute significantly less than older models. And as the fleet turns over to newer cars, pollution will continue to decrease.

Most of us aren't foolish enough to believe that a particular community design is the answer to complex pollution or health problems. And we work long and hard so that we can afford to choose how, and where, we want to live. For some of us, that means living it up in Newport Beach. For others, that means life in a planned community in Brea or Irvine. And for a lot of us, it simply means getting away from downtown and having a house with a small yard. It's what we've dreamed of.

Instead of spending money trying to portray suburbs as the evil of society, "smart growth" advocates should use that money to pass out gym memberships or educate people on the benefits of trading in their old clunker for a new car. And while they are at it, they should stop trying to kill the American Dream.

Chris Fiscelli is a senior fellow in urban and land use policy at Reason Foundation

Preserving California's Farmland and Open Space Through PDRs

info@reason.org (Chris Fiscelli) — Wed, 14 May 2003 00:00:00 EDT

In response to California's budget crisis, Governor Davis' budget proposes to eliminate the property tax breaks given to farmers and other landowners for not developing their land in accordance with the Williamson Act. This law, officially referred to as the California Land Conservation Act, was enacted to stop encroaching, sprawling development from swallowing valuable farmland and open space by reducing the financial temptation of farmers to develop their land. The law accomplishes this by reducing property taxes on property used for agriculture.

City planners, farmers, and environmentalists are opposed to the Davis proposal because they fear it will accelerate urban sprawl. But, California may be wise to replace the Williamson Act with a better policy that will assure valuable farmland and open space remain undeveloped forever. This can be done through a purchase of development rights (PDR) program.

PDRs offer cash to landowners and farmers who wish to continue to farm or keep their land undeveloped in exchange for the development rights. The formula works like this. Let's say the value of your land as agricultural use is $1,000 per acre and the market value of your land (at a developed use) is $5,000 per acre. The state or local government pays you the difference, $4,000 per acre in this case, for the development rights. This sale of rights effectively places a conservation easement on the property meaning the land will remain undeveloped forever even upon transfer. In addition, the property remains in private hands and the government can still collect property tax revenue.

PDRs are superior to property tax subsidies for a variety of reasons. The first reason being the situation we are in right now - a budget crisis. Granting a permanent conservation easement on a property will not subject it to the whims of state and local politicians who may deem it appropriate to eliminate the tax benefit during times of economic stagnation. The easement is a one-time cost. The second reason is that the value of development rights vary and on some open space and agricultural land, farming may be the most profitable use, therefore it is wasteful to offer tax benefits for landowners who can not profit in the market by developing their land. By definition, PDRs will cost just enough to entice the landowner out of development.

Finally, PDRs may prove to be more flexible. Land need not be agricultural in use or part of large tracts for its development rights to be sold. PDRs can be used for open spaces or environmentally-sensitive lands that communities deem valuable as undeveloped, whether they be in urban or rural areas.

Of course, many will argue that PDRs are great, but they are more costly up-front to the government and with state and local budget crunches, funding such programs will be difficult. But, consider what the State of California and local governments are proposing to spend to curb urban sprawl through costly development subsidy programs, ineffective rail transit subsidies, and other programs designed to reshape urban development patterns. The San Diego Association of Governments, for example, is planning to spend $25 million alone to promote a "smart growth linkage" between transportation and land use. This does not even consider more costly transit expenditures in the name of curbing urban sprawl and protecting open space. There are other California agencies as well spending millions to get people out of their cars and into transit in order to reduce sprawl and improve the environment.

It seems that instead of squandering taxpayer money on ineffective programs that try to reshape our sprawling landscape, we could institute a voluntary, market-based program like PDRs that protects valuable open space, agricultural and ranch lands.

Chris Fiscelli is a senior fellow in urban and land use policy at Reason Foundation

Should We Subsidize "Smart Growth"?

info@reason.org (Chris Fiscelli) — Mon, 12 May 2003 00:00:00 EDT

Despite a widespread mantra for development to "pay its own way," one new trend in the effort to alter current land development patterns is for cities to offer developers a variety of subsidies to build communities that discourage driving. These communities would be transit-oriented, mixed-use, and pedestrian-friendly. Developers of these projects receive various forms of assistance including infrastructure provision, aiding land assembly, financial assistance, a possible reduction in impact fees, and entitlement streamlining. Developers of projects considered undesirable or those that allegedly encourage driving are subject to full (and sometimes questionably high) impact fees, a lengthier, more tangled entitlement process, and no financial subsidies.

The Sacramento Area Council of Governments, for example, will allocate the first $12 million of a $500 million traffic mitigation fund to development projects that are mixed-use, high-density, and pedestrian-friendly. Not surprisingly, the policy has met well with developers who build these types of projects. The financial subsidies alone will allow them to compete at a distinct advantage with their counterparts who must bear the full cost of their development projects.

This approach for reducing traffic congestion poses several interesting policy questions:

Is this process fair?
Will the policy goal of reducing traffic congestion be accomplished?
Are consumers getting the types of neighborhoods and communities they want?

The answer to the first question depends, of course, on how one defines fair. Planners believe this is fair because they think that these new projects will result in more efficient land development patterns in terms of infrastructure use, lower costs to society, and improved social capital. A developer of residential communities, however, may see the issue quite differently. He might see it as a penalty for providing development the markets want rather than what the planners want. After all, if a particular style of development requires subsidies to be built, then clearly consumers are not demanding and/or willing to pay for it at the market cost of its production.

The most important question may regard traffic congestion. It is clear that fewer drivers on the road will mean less traffic congestion, however it is not clear that building more pedestrian-friendly communities will result in fewer drivers, particularly during commute time. These new communities may have more bus stops, a slightly higher density, narrower streets, more retail space, and more sidewalks, but they will not exist in isolation as a self-sustaining community. The residents will be forced to coexist with the surrounding area that will likely require plenty of driving to work, to shop at larger centers, and recreation. Consequently, a few auto trips may be reduced by a walk to the neighboring dry cleaner, but the bulk of driving will continue.

Whether or not consumers get the kind of communities they want is a difficult question to answer. Consumers vote for what they want by what they consumers purchase, but consumers can only purchase from that which is produced. Obviously, planners and some developers believe that there is a strong, untapped market for higher-density, mixed-use, walkable neighborhoods. They believe that people only choose suburbia because they are unaware of better places that are possible. But, if there is an untapped market, one has to wonder why so few of these other neighborhoods get built. The answer may lie in the fact that cities have, in fact, deterred the development of these neighborhoods through outdated zoning codes, poor design review, and onerous subdivision regulations. So, instead of remedying the problem by modifying local zoning ordinances, local governments are now trying to fix their own collective mess by subsidizing the very developments they may have inadvertently discouraged in the past.

Attempts to modify land use patterns to reduce traffic congestion have not met with much success, primarily since cities that try to do this have been largely developed after the advent of widespread automobile use. As such, one has to question the efficacy of such policies that try to reshape land use patterns. If cities want to truly mitigate traffic congestion without preference for a specific land use pattern, they should focus on congestion pricing where drivers will pay the full costs of road provision.

Subsidizing development that embraces "smart growth" principles will probably not significantly ease traffic congestion. It also places local governments in the precarious position of favoring some developers over others, advancing the probability of corruption. Furthermore, most taxpayers are stuck subsidizing the development of communities they don't choose to live in.

Chris Fiscelli is a senior fellow in urban and land use policy at Reason Foundation

Market-Oriented New Urbanism

info@reason.org (Chris Fiscelli) — Mon, 21 Apr 2003 00:00:00 EDT

Planetizen.com

New urbanists may be better off if they distanced themselves from the ever-expanding smart growth political agenda. Most growth experts equate the new urbanist movement with smart growth or at least consider it part of the smart growth movement. However, the smart growth movement has been severely diluted by slow growth advocates, no-growth extremists, NIMBYism, the transit lobby, and downtown development advocates. Each of these groups has an agenda too distinct to be grouped together. Consequently for new urbanists, they will bear criticism aimed at other facets of smart growth and we may end up throwing the baby out with the bath water.

For new urbanists, it is not simply the actual dispersion or sprawl of land development that is disturbing, but rather the character or style of that development. In other words, it's as much about look and feel as it is about density. But the problem with smart growth is not its critique of contemporary subdivision design, but rather the rigid and ineffective policy choices they advocate. Contrary to popular belief, smart growth critics do not necessarily have a distaste for the new urbanism and its design, but rather the promise (or threat) of a neatly packaged set of voluminous design specifications that will dictate all development in every city. As long as developers voluntarily choose the design and believe it will make their project more marketable and consumers respond favorably, free market advocates would applaud such design.

Despite images of heavy-handed, restrictive land use controls that legislate urban design and land use (concepts supported by many smart growth advocates), new urbanism can be viewed as a concept that relaxes traditional local government land use and zoning controls to provide neighborhoods as the market demands. The last part is key. Even Andres Duany, founder of the Congress of the New Urbanism, recently admitted that he supports new urbanist communities only if there is demand for them. New urbanism at the neighborhood level is a development innovation, one that is stifled by current restrictive land use controls. We should strive to encourage development innovation whether it be new urbanist or some other form.

New urbanists should avoid being aligned with the all-encompassing smart growth agenda by offering a more targeted, market-oriented message. The following concepts illustrate how new urbanism designs can be perceived by the general public as market-oriented without restrictive government controls that don't respect personal freedoms.

Focus on the neighborhood level, not the region. Regional redistribution attempts are almost always exposed as social engineering of which we need less.
Emphasize new urbanism as an innovation that can occur in suburbs, urban villages, central cities, and exurbs. Kentlands, MD and Seaside, FL, two of the most popular new urbanist communities are hardly central city areas. This is precisely why they work so well - urban-like and suburban-like amenities.
Understand that while walkable and transit accessible may be nice, most people will drive most of the time. Consumers may love the quaint village atmosphere, walkable main streets, and picturesque streetscapes, but they will also want the convenience of the suburbs. Traffic congestion will not be alleviated by the occasional walk to the store or bus trip downtown.
Realize that the concept of new urbanism can succeed only if it is perceived as an improved development innovation from the average suburb, not a mandated government design. New designs can be marketed, but some people may still choose a homes-only subdivision on a cul-de sac and regulation should not force them into a government pre-agreed upon design.
Understand that new urbanism is not a policy cure for all growth ills, but rather one alternative neighborhood design that may improve the attractiveness, functioning, and aesthetics of a neighborhood.

If new urbanists can successfully separate themselves from the rest of the smart growth crowd, they stand a better chance of getting their message accepted by the public and potential customers of new urbanist communities. In this way, maybe we can start viewing new urbanism as a market-oriented response to improve upon cookie-cutter subdivisions, not part of a coercive smart growth political agenda.

Chris Fiscelli is a senior fellow in urban and land use policy at Reason Foundation

Does California Really Need More Planning?

info@reason.org (Chris Fiscelli) — Wed, 26 Mar 2003 00:00:00 EST

Critics call some new suburban development "unplanned," a term that in their vocabulary goes right along with inefficient, unorderly, haphazard, cookie-cutter, and a host of other unflattering adjectives. Following suit, the California chapter of the American Planning Association (APA) recently stated that California has insufficient planning. They offer policies that will purportedly provide Californians with "smart" choices about where to live.

Unplanned development and insufficient planning conjure up visions of vast housing tracts and strip malls with no rhyme or reason in their design or location. It is as if some force randomly selected a spot on the map for houses without regard to the surroundings. Of course, after this illusion has been created, we are told that this is bad, that this unplanned growth is what is wrong with today's suburbia and it ought to be changed through more and better planning.

The California APA really wants more planning of its preferred developments, new urbanist model communities, which include much higher densities, narrower streets, and rental units and retail/office uses located in a town center. Of course, these types of communities can be, and are, planned and built if there is demand for them. However, it is inaccurate to characterize types of developments you disagree with as "unplanned" while portraying developments you prefer as "planned."

The inference here is that more planning will give us the kind of cities the planning and smart growth supporters desire. This, planners claim, will rid us of these pesky growth-related problems such as traffic congestion, environmental degradation, loss of community, and lack of infrastructure because people will begin walking to work, get involved in their communities, and conserve more natural resources. But, this assertion ignores realities about housing and real estate markets because these smart growth advocates have reversed the cause and effect. Land use patterns do not fundamentally affect human behavior, but are the result of consumer preferences. People don't drive because of our dispersed land use pattern so much as driving allowed them to live as they wanted in a lower density environment. The level of neighborhood involvement has little to do with the type of home one lives in or the density of the area, but rather the individuals themselves.

More traditional planning will do little to solve growth related problems in California except give us more of the same-single-use zoning, expensive transit systems with low ridership, HOV lanes that are rarely used, strict land use controls that limit development innovation, and urban growth boundaries that cause leapfrog development and drive up housing prices. This is the same planning that has given use what we have now - traffic congestion, numbing sameness in local malls and stale residential subdivisions, and exclusionary zoning practices that restrict housing choices for consumers.

What California needs are more market-based mechanisms that price development and public services according to consumers' usage patterns and allow real estate markets to function more effectively. We pay for our utility bills based on our use, we pay more for airline tickets and hotels during high travel periods, why not price roads, sewers, and water service much the same way? Highway 91 express lanes in southern California has used utility-type pricing and has been tremendously successful moving thousands of commuters every day nearly congestion free. To protect valuable open space and cropland, the state could use land trusts and transfers of development rights instead of restrictive growth boundaries that arbitrarily help some landowners and hurt others. Cities could use flexible zoning to stimulate mixed land uses so a sandwich shop, for example, could locate within a residential neighborhood or an industrial park instead of in a strip mall down the street.

Economic incentives will have more success in our market-oriented economy than top-down controls or propaganda about where and how to live. If planners are to have any success in preparing us for future growth, they should focus on planning and pricing infrastructure and removing barriers to private development innovation, not championing one style of development over another.

The nature of development does not drive human behavior, but rather is driven by it. Development should be a reaction to market demand, not a social engineering tool designed to manipulate human behavior.

Chris Fiscelli is a senior fellow in urban and land use policy at Reason Foundation

Efforts to Build Infill Housing in California Won't Solve Growth Woes

info@reason.org (Chris Fiscelli) — Mon, 17 Mar 2003 00:00:00 EST

Smart growth and the buzzwords that accompany it are swarming our neighborhoods — sustainable development, viable communities, healthy neighborhoods, and infill development are just some of the terms of choice for planners and politicians these days.

Infill housing, promoted by a new California law, is a process where vacant sites located closer to established, developed areas receive preferential treatment for development than sites not located as close to historical city centers. Infill housing is supposed to increase density, promote affordable housing closer to jobs, preserve open space, reduce traffic congestion, and improve the environment. It doesn't. An examination reveals this policy actually exacerbates many of the aforementioned problems and does very little to alleviate the others.

A typical infill site, by virtue of its central location, would usually command a very high price on the open market. However, in a strange combination of policies, smart growth advocates call for a significant percentage of the rental units built on these expensive locations to be reserved for low-income residents as part of the Low Income Housing Tax Credit program. So we would have housing built where land is the most expensive and then specifically allocated to lower income residents -meaning we have to subsidize residential rents for those living on some of the highest-priced real estate in a metropolitan area. Much of this is occurring in the San Francisco Bay Area, the priciest area in the state and perhaps, the nation. Expensive neighborhoods in San Francisco, San Jose, and even Carmel have apartment projects with a "low-income" component. The price tag for these tax credits statewide is nearly $65 million annually, not to mention an additional $50 million granted in federal tax credits.

Simultaneously, relatively cheap land on the urban fringe remains vacant-land that could be developed to allow subsidy-free homeownership opportunities for families with low to moderate incomes. It is clear that promoting infill rental housing over "for-sale" housing located on the urban perimeter is a more expensive alternative to society and hurts overall long-term housing affordability.

The traffic congestion and air quality benefits of infill housing, touted by smart growth advocates, are also based on misconceptions. The underlying assumption is that as densities increase, residents will reduce their driving and walk and use transit for their trips. This belief has little grounding in reality. With the exception of places with very high densities such as the downtowns of New York City, Boston, Chicago, and San Francisco, increased density does not force people out of their cars. Since most markets will not bear densities high enough to induce the switch to mass transit, it is unlikely people will be leaving their cars at home. Witness Los Angeles; it is the one of the densest metropolitan areas in the country, but has very low transit use.

Since infill housing won't increase transit use, the increased density will actually increase traffic congestion as more drivers use the same amount of roadway. And that also means increased air pollution since vehicles emit more gases when traveling at slow speeds in stop-and-go traffic.

Preserving open space is a worthy goal, particularly when focusing on environmentally sensitive lands. Land use policy should work to preserve fragile open space, but on the basis of environmental need, not its distance from an established city center. Advocates of infill development make a faulty assumption in today's society - that land closer to the historical city center is always less desirable to keep vacant than land on the urban fringe.

Of course, infill housing is really part of larger smart growth agenda to reshape development patterns to resemble older central cities. It is an elitist belief about what constitutes a good and proper city form instead of cities that function as residents demand, suited to modern technologies, amenities, and desires. Evidence suggests most families continue to prefer low density, suburban locations so instead of subsidizing construction of rental units in central cities, we should promote home ownership in areas where land is cheaper. This focus on infill development could ultimately lead to an even steeper housing shortfall and higher prices if growth opposition continues to prevent housing construction on the urban perimeter.

Chris Fiscelli is a senior fellow in urban and land use policy at Reason Foundation