Category Archives: City planning

If anyone still doesn’t believe that the whole idea of tax-increment financing, or TIF, is morally bankrupt, they only have to look at the latest shenanigans in Portland. The city took TIF money from the downtown Pearl District and used it to build a school at the opposite end of town.

What’s wrong with this? TIF is a California invention designed to kick-start development in blighted areas that otherwise might not attract private investors. Planners like to claim that TIF pays for itself, but in fact, new developments impose costs on fire, police, schools, and other public services, yet the taxes that would cover those costs are used to subsidize the development instead. This means everyone else in the city either has to pay higher taxes or accept lower services.

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Portland needs more high rises and other high-density housing developments to protect neighborhoods of single-family homes, says Portland city councilor and leading mayoral candidate Sam Adams. Adams admits that Portland’s major high-rise development, the South Waterfront or “SoWhat” District, is floundering despite having received close to $300 million subsidies, so he proposes that Portland lobby the state and federal governments to provide even more subsidies.

The Antiplanner’s friend, Jim Karlock, videotapes Portland-area political events and, in this case, taped himself asking Adams about the financial future of the SoWhat District. You can read some of the reactions of Portland residents to Adams’ reply at Jack Bogdanski’s blog.

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Someone sent me an email last week about “craziness,” that is, rapid growth and development, in Dubai, a city (and emerite, or what we would call a state) in the United Arab Emerites. Dubai has been doubling in population every decade and construction in the city has been phenomenal.

The Burj Dubai, soon to be the world’s tallest building.
Flickr photo by Pete the Painter.

Dubai features some of the world’s tallest buildings, dozens of artificial islands, the world’s largest artificial port, an indoor ski resort, and the world’s most luxurious hotel. Developments planned or under construction include the world’s largest amusement park, the world’s first undersea hotel, and a building that is expected to be 40 percent taller than what is now the world’s tallest skyscraper. Its airport, which currently moves as many people as the one in the Twin Cities and as much cargo as Chicago O’Hare, is expected to eventually be the biggest in the world.

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The notion that real cities have big downtowns is firmly ingrained in the minds of many urban planners and city officials. As Joel Garreau points out in Edge City, this ignores the fact that such downtowns were only built for about a century, from roughly 1820 to 1920.

Modern cities, which planners deride by calling them “sprawl,” have job centers spread out all over the place. San Jose, Phoenix, and Los Angeles are all typical examples. Planners and officials try to re-create obsolete downtowns by building pork-barrel projects such as convention centers and giving developers huge subsidies for hotels and office buildings. This enriches developers and contractors, but it never really creates a “real” downtown.

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Former Houston mayor Bob Lanier joined a group of realtors and developers in opposing new ordinances that would impose more standards on new developments, says the Houston Chronicle. Because of Lanier’s popularity — he had an 78 percent approval rating when he was term-limited from office — and reputation as a “kingmaker,” What is Kamagra? It is an effective, reliable, functional and pocket-friendly medicine available in three different forms of consumption which includes* Kamagra levitra no prescription tablets * Kamagra jellies * Kamagra soft tablets Any of these forms can be obtained through any of authorized pharmacy. This is because tadalafil soft tabs is known to lead to depression in certain individuals, as well. – Neurotransmitter Imbalances & Abnormalities in Brain Physiology Neurotransmitters are chemical “messengers” in the brain that regulate mood, thought, and memory. Fortunately, the advanced ayurvedic treatment to eliminate PE is there to solve your problems, aid you best levitra price in forgetting your past traumas and help you lead a better and healthy life that you deserve. If any medicine affects your sex life, then you can take 100mg of kamagra jelly within a day. look at this now cialis tab his endorsement is likely to have a lot of influence.

The Chronicle also reports that the developer group, which calls itself Houstonians for Responsible Growth, gave each member of the city council a copy of the Ultimate Antiplanning book. While this is flattering, it probably won’t have quite as much impact as Lanier’s endorsement.

The Portland suburb of Wilsonville wants to see a mobile home park redeveloped into “workforce housing.” A buyer made an offer on the park, but the deal fell through when the city’s prescriptive plans proved to expensive for the developer.

The city wanted “five- to eight-story buildings with structured parking underneath,” says the developer. Such construction “requires concrete and steel construction,” which is expensive. As a result, “affordability goes out the window.”

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“The built environment really does matter to health,” says Lawrence Frank, the author of several reports that find that people who live in walkable neighborhoods are less obese than people who live in neighborhoods that lack sidewalks and other walkable amenities. Frank was “the first one to make a connection between land use and obesity,” says an admirer.

Walkable or not, the photographer who lives in this neighborhood is “in love with living in Atlanta.”
Flickr photo by rhagans.

So reports of his latest study are particularly revealing. Looking at Atlanta neighborhoods, he found that people who prefer to exercise have similar obesity rates whether they live in walkable neighborhoods or not. Meanwhile, people who prefer to drive have somewhat higher obesity rates, but they too are similar whether they live in walkable neighborhoods or not.

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