Category Archives: Regional planning

Homeowners do a better job of maintaining their homes, are more likely to vote and participate in civic life, and work harder to improve their neighborhoods, admits Clive Crook in the current issue of The Atlantic Monthly. But he still believes that homeownership is “bad for America.”

Homeownership: Good or bad for America?

What is his case against homeownership? He really has just two points. First, a study in Britain “found that homeownership makes workers less mobile, which brakes economic growth and worsens unemployment.” What Crook doesn’t say is that British housing has that problem because anti-sprawl planners made housing so unaffordable that no one who already owns a home can afford to move.

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“Public policy that reinforces autarky only makes matters worse,” economist William Bogart told the Preserving the American Dream conference. Which, naturally, provoked the question, “What is autarky?”

The answer is that autarky means self-sufficiency, as in an economy that does not participate in international trade. So what did Dr. Bogart mean by this statement in his presentation (which can also be found on p. 182 of his book, Don’t Call It Sprawl, which the Antiplanner reviewed here last July)?

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In addition to talking about sprawl and urban-growth boundaries, Owen McShane raised a few other issues at the Preserving the American Dream conference: namely, the role sustainability and climate change play in the anti-sprawl movement.

The most sustainable city?

Many planning advocates take it for granted that sprawl and auto driving are inherently unsustainable. McShane shows just how this attitude can go when he describes Halle Neustadt, which some Swedish urban planners once described as “the most sustainable city in the world.”

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Smart growth isn’t the solution to sprawl, says Owen McShane of the Centre for Resource Management Studies; it is merely just one more form of “carpet sprawl,” i.e., “urban expansion across the countryside in an endlessly and seamless repeated pattern.” McShane thinks that ordinary sprawl can be better because it creates a more diverse landscape.

Which has more biodiversity: this . . .

At the Preserving the American Dream conference, Owen extolled the virtues of low-density exurban development, which in the U.S. is often called “rural residential.” The area in which Owen lives, north of Auckland, is made up of 5 to 10 acre lots. Since the climate is similar to that of southern California, many of the residents grow olives and other Mediterranean crops.

. . . this . . .

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Houston famously has no zoning, but most American cities have some kind of planning and zoning. The Antiplanner’s faithful ally, Wendell Cox, divides these cities into two kinds: those with responsive planning and those with prescriptive planning.

Responsive planning, said Cox in his presentation (3.8MB PowerPoint show) to the Preserving the American Dream conference in San Jose, is planning that zones land in response to market needs as expressed by developer’s plans. Prescriptive planning, such as smart growth, tries to impose planners’ visions on the cities and surrounding countrysides.

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A new report from the Fraser Institute — Canada’s free-market think tank — says that Vancouver, BC’s growth-management plan is making Vancouver less, not more, livable. And you know the report must be right, because it was written by your very own Antiplanner.

Nice views. But how many people would really prefer to live in these high-priced condos if affordable single-family homes were available in the suburbs?

Vancouver has been practicing growth-management planning at least since 1966, when the Lower Mainland Regional Planning Board published a plan that set aside large amounts of land from development. That board was soon replaced by the Greater Vancouver Regional District (GVRD), a backdoor effort to create a consolidated metropolitan regional government.

In the early 1970s, one of the members of the GVRD board coined the term “livable region” to cover up the fact that they were writing a plan that made the region less livable. From then on, just about every planning document prepared by the GVRD made liberal use of the term livable, making good use of the Big Lie theory: repeat a lie often enough and people will believe it.

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Thirty to one hundred years ago, Coos Bay was a thriving port, shipping coal, timber, fish, dairy products, and other natural resources to Asia and other seaports all over the world. Today, most of those resources are gone or are no longer being mined or harvested.

The most valuable resource in Coos County now is the scenic beauty of its coastline, forests, rivers, and mountains. This beauty attracts vacationers, retirees, and long-distance telecommuters (like the Antiplanner). But the Port of Coos Bay, which exists for shipping, doesn’t want to accept this.

Is Coos County’s best hope for the future as a scenic wonderland. . .

If Coos County becomes a vacation/retirement/knowledge worker paradise, there isn’t any reason for the Port of Coos Bay to exist. So the Port has come up with one crazy scheme after another to spend other people’s money to try to restore its former glory.

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For nearly two decades, Vancouver Washington has been an escape valve for the Portland area. Growth management has made Portland housing unaffordable, so families have fled to Vancouver. Transportation planning has made Portland congested, but Vancouver traffic is far better.

Now, the Portland Oregonian suggests that Vancouver should voluntarily come under the umbrella of Portland’s growth management. Metro, Portland’s regional dictator planning agency, is in charge of growth management, transportation planning, and greenspace administration. “We can’t envisage three more critical, and more connected, responsibilities,” says the Oregonian, without admitting that Metro has screwed up all three of them.

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The director of Metro, Portland’s regional dictator planning agency, offers some insight into how government planners view such concepts as profits, losses, and sales. It is not a lot different from the way soviet managers looked at the same ideas.

Phil Stanford, a columnist for the Portland Tribune, recently commented that Metro’s Oregon Convention Center “has been losing money by the bucketload.” Two years ago, this convention center was the centerpiece of a Forbes magazine article about how cities are losing millions overbuilding their convention centers.

The pretentiously named Oregon Convention Center.
Flickr photo by Premshree Pillai.

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