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Category Archives: Regional planning

Back in the Air Again

By | | Housekeeping, Regional planning
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The Antiplanner will be in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho today speaking at a conference that seeks to find a balance between property rights and clean water. Golf courses, waterfront homes, and other developments along Lake Coeur d’Alene spill nitrogen, phosphorous, and other nutrients into the lake, leading to algal blooms that can cause serious problems.

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To prevent this, some propose that the county regulate or limit new development. But the Antiplanner argues that any regulations should apply equally to existing developments. Instead of regulation, I propose a system of tradable pollution rights, in which every waterfront property owner starts out with a right to a tiny amount of pollution. Those who don’t pollute could sell to those who do, and those who pollute in excess of their rights would be severely fined.

Living in the Fourth-Most Economically Repressive State

By | | Regional planning
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According to the index of economic freedom, only California (of course), New Jersey, and New York are more repressive than Hawaii. Much of Hawaii’s (and California’s) repression comes from the land-use regulation, which makes building a home or starting or expanding a business very expensive.

The Antiplanner has told this story before, but briefly, most of Hawaii’s land is controlled by a few corporations and families. For the first half of the 20th century, these landowners argued that they could not sell their land for homes or other uses because it was too valuable as farms. They sometimes leased land to people who built houses on it, but people could lose their right to use the land at any time.

In 1954, the Democrats took control of the state legislature promising land reform, such as by taking land from the large landowners by eminent domain and selling to more people or at least forcing the landowners to sell land to leaseholders. Instead of keeping that promise, when they took office, the Democrats joined with the large landowners so that anyone who wanted to develop land had to make key members of the legislature one of their partners.

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Indianapolis Presentation

By | | Regional planning, Transportation
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Indygo, Indianapolis’ transit agency, offers one of the lowest levels of transit service of any urban area of its size in the Midwest–only Omaha’s is lower. The proposed Indy Connect plan calls for changing this by making a $1.3 billion capital investment and more than tripling Indygo’s operating from about $50 million to $175 million a year. A key feature of the plan is to have communities outside of Marion County–which is the current limit of Indygo’s services–join in a regional transit district.

Proponents say the plan will make Indianapolis more competitive, relieve congestion, and reduce air pollution. Yesterday, I gave a presentation arguing that the plan wouldn’t accomplish any of those goals. Instead, I urged the region and state to save money by contracting out existing transit services; legalizing private transit operations; and encouraging cities outside Marion County to start their own cross-county transit service, which would probably offer better service at a lower cost than a regional transit district could provide.
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My presentation can be downloaded as a 16-MB PDF. Feel free to use this shows or any of the shows downloadable by clicking on the new “presentations” link above.

Portland’s Latest Planning Failures

By | | Housing, Regional planning
4 Comments

Recently the Antiplanner recounted some of the consequences of Portland’s race to become the nation’s best-planned city: failing schools; crumbling streets; lack of funding for building maintenance; and declining transit service. Now we have more information on the street situation plus one more example of mismanagement.

Portland’s city auditor has released two new reports showing that the city’s priorities are screwed up. A January report found that, even though the city’s transportation budget has been growing, spending on street maintenance, traffic signals, and structural maintenance” has been declining. A more recent report specifically criticized the city for neglecting its streets, saying nearly half need “significant rehabilitation or reconstruction” to put them in acceptable condition. “Despite knowing the inevitable and costly consequences of failing to maintain streets,” the city “limited street maintenance work in recent years, choosing instead to focus on other priorities.”

This is underscored by the city’s own report card showing that maintenance of pavement, traffic signals, bridges, and street signs fail to meet the city’s own standards.

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Land-Use Manifesto 2013

By | | Housing, Mission, Regional planning
6 Comments

Here is the second of my statements of principles for the New Year.

1. The Property-Rights Principle: Government should not regulate land uses except to prevent trespasses or nuisances.

People should be allowed to use their land in any way they see fit provided their use does not harm others (such as through air, water, or noise pollution) or violate contracts they have voluntarily agreed to. Any regulation beyond this “for the greater good” puts someone’s subjective notion of social values above individual rights.

Even if it could be proven that such regulations would benefit society more than they would harm individual property owners, government should not have this power because it invites abuse. If the social benefits are truly greater than the individual costs, then society should be willing to compensate the property owners.

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What’s Wrong With TIF

By | | Regional planning
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Many people see the problems with tax-increment financing and think that TIF laws need reform. But in fact, no reforms will work; tax-increment financing should simply be abolished. The Antiplanner attempted to explain why in Boise last week, and here is a summary what I said. (Click any of the charts for a larger view.)

Suppose there is a school district, fire district, sewer district, or some other agency that gets its revenues from property taxes. Then suppose that a city proposes to establish a TIF zone within that taxing district.

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State & Local Corporate Welfare

By | | News commentary, Regional planning
10 Comments

State and local governments spend $80 billion a year trying to attract businesses away from each other, reports the New York Times. This is a giant zero-sum game, the paper suggests, and in fact may even slow growth in some areas by increasing the tax burden. The Times even admits that it has received $24 million in subsidies from the city and state of New York over the past 12 years.

Coincidentally, the Antiplanner is back in the air today to Boise, where I’ll be speaking to legislators about the follies of tax-increment financing (TIF), which is one of the main ways local governments subsidize corporations. Idaho cities and counties spend more than $50 million a year on TIF, which is a lot for a small state: nearly 20 percent of the property taxes collected in at least one county goes to TIF subsidies.
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When Jerry Brown was mayor of Oakland, 10 percent of his salary came from TIF. Rather than be seduced by the money, he realized the folly of giving cities the power to effectively steal money from other tax entities. In 2011, he persuaded the California legislature to abolish TIF in California, the state that had invented it in 1952 and which up to that time was doing more TIF than all other states combined. Other states should follow suit.

Playing the Numbers Game

By | | Regional planning, Transportation, Urban areas
21 Comments

Planners for Metro, Portland’s regional planning agency, are playing an interesting game. They did a travel survey in 1994, when gas prices were low and the economy was booming. Then they did another survey in 2011, when gas prices were high and the economy was in recession. They found that Portland travelers in 2011 are more likely to bicycle or ride transit and less likely to drive. Naturally, they credit their land-use policies with the change.

The Oregonian is rightly skeptical of the “spin” Metro planners are putting on the numbers. There are several reasons justifying such skepticism.

First, the sample size was small–4,800 people for a region of well over a million people. Second, the numbers do not tally well with the results of the Census Bureau’s American Community survey. The Metro survey found that 81 percent of Portland-area commuters rode in cars and 11 percent took transit to work in 2011. The Census Bureau, however, found that more than 84 percent drove and only 8 percent took transit in 2008. Since the census data are based on a larger sample–more than 25,000 households in Oregon, of which about a third are from the Portland area–it is probably more reliable.

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Cities Growing Faster Than Suburbs–NOT!

By | | News commentary, Regional planning
21 Comments

A few months ago, several news outlets reported that new census data showed that the cities were growing faster than the suburbs. This brought comfort to those urban planners who believe that inner cities are better than suburbs and that most people would prefer to live in them if only they understood all the benefits.

It turns out that, as a writer for NewGeography discovered, the reports are pure bunkum. A Census Bureau document specifies that city-suburb population estimates were based solely on “the extrapolated county estimates down to each subcounty area within a county based on 2010 Census proportions.” In other words, if a central city held 40 percent of the people in a county in 2010, the Census Bureau presumed that 40 percent of the region’s growth would be in the city.
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Maybe next year the Census Bureau can just turn over the counts to urban planners who will assign population growth to politically correct areas such as Portland and record population declines in politically incorrect areas such as Houston. After all, why bother doing a census if the numbers are simply going to be extrapolated from the previous census?

Reviving TIF in California

By | | Regional planning
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Last year, California Governor Jerry Brown persuaded the state legislature to shut down redevelopment districts whose use of tax-increment financing was eating into school and other local budgets and, by turn, into the state budget which was forced to make up for school losses to redevelopment. This year, the legislature has quietly been sneaking TIF back into the law.

Recall that TIF works by capturing all the growth in tax collections–whether that growth is due to new development or simply to inflation–and using that money to subsidize developers. Schools and other property-tax funded agencies lose because their costs increase, but their revenues within the TIF districts do not.

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Fortunately, at least a few writers are urging Brown to veto any bill that comes out of the legislature. I hope he does.