Though they put a good face on it, advocates of smart growth will find little to cheer about in a new report from the National Academy of Sciences on using compact development to reduce driving and greenhouse gas emissions. The report says that, if three-quarters of all new and replacement housing is built at twice current densities, it would reduce driving and related CO2 emissions by only 8 to 11 percent by 2050.
Hardly anyone thinks that even the most restrictive government planning can double the density of 75 percent of new development. As a summary of the report given at a congressional hearing this week noted, the committee that wrote the report (most of whom are fairly objective people) “disagreed about the plausibility of extent of compact development and policies needed to achieve high end estimates.”
If a more reasonable figure of 25 percent is used, then CO2 emissions from driving would be just 2 percent less. Since driving autos accounts for only about 20 percent of greenhouse gas emissions, a 2 percent reduction from that is pretty small.
If you believe we need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, every little bit helps. But the National Academy report said little about the costs of trying to impose such densities on people. It claimed that it would reduce road construction costs, but in fact it would probably increase them because higher densities lead to more driving per square mile, even if less per capita, and it costs more to build roads in higher density areas. The report claimed that densities would reduce infrastructure costs, but even if true that would hardly make up for the added land costs that comes from trying to cram people into tighter areas.
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Everyone points to Portland, but Downs notes that Portland is an exception. “Portland is only one out of 350 metropolitan centers in the country that has strong transportation and housing policies directed at increasing population density. It’s not exactly a groundswell movement.”
He should also have pointed out that, despite Portland’s policies, it is not coming close to building 75 percent, and probably not even 25 percent, of its new development at double its average density. It is, however, suffering some of the nation’s highest unemployment rates, at least partly due to the heavy hand of planning and its tendency to push potential employers to other, more affordable regions.
Technology Review says that Portland’s per-capita driving is 17 percent less than the national average “because of boundaries set on urban growth and a light rail system.” Hardly. Portland’s driving was less than the national average even before those boundaries and light-rail lines were put in place. What counts is the change, and according to the most recent data published by the Texas Transportation Institute, per-capita driving in the Portland area increased by 74 percent since 1982, when the urban-growth boundary had just been drawn and Portland’s first light-rail line was under construction.
Portland’s per-capita driving did decline slightly in the past two years. But this is more likely due to the region’s high unemployment than to any land-use policies.
Saving the planet goes beyond climate change. I think environmentalists have missed some key environmental issues by focusing only on climate change.
ROT:“He should also have pointed out that, despite Portland’s policies, it is not coming close to building 75 percent, and probably not even 25 percent, of its new development at double its average density. It is, however, suffering some of the nation’s highest unemployment rates, at least partly due to the heavy hand of planning and its tendency to push potential employers to other, more affordable regions.”
ws:Completely unfounded. So called “affordable” Clark County (Vancouver, WA) has a much higher unemployment rate than Portland. Pray tell, where are these people being pushed to?
One waits for our favorite pet crazy to send ululating e-mails to Cervero and Pendall et al, explaining to them how their paper is fatally flawed.
Nonetheless, I don’t see the document being anywhere close to supporting anyone’s wish for using the document to argue agin’ the dreaded high density.
DS
Venice has a very high density, but no cars at all, except at the area near the railway station. Hence there is no basis for the conjecture that “if three-quarters of all new and replacement housing is built at twice current densities, it would reduce driving and related CO2 emissions by only 8 to 11 percent by 2050.” The authors seem to assume, bizarrely, that it is impossible to reduce car ownership and use by means of policy, and Venice shows otherwise. And strangely, people go on holiday to Venice despite the absence of any cars.
You can set whatever system of transportation you want by planning the residential area, particularly before it is built. If you pedestrianise whole chunks, then these places will have no cars by definition. As long as people can get to where they want to, nobody (apart from a handful of petrolheads) will miss cars. I cannot think of any place that I have ever been to that was improved in usability or aesthetics by having lots of brightly painted metal boxes in the neighbourhood, some stationary, some slowly trundling about in long queues.
To those who think that the car is the final word in transport technology, I would point out that the Red Flag Act of 1865 was written on this basis – or, rather, that the railways were the final word in transport technology.
Speaking from the inside, I have to say that while many urban planners and New Urbanists do cherish the environment and are actively looking for ways to reduce climate change, the correlation of high density and New Urban planning policies to enacting the desired changes is largely coincidental and is designed to further garner support for the movement amongst a group of people who ordinarily may not be prone to support New Urbanism and high-density development. The ends were created before the “link” was discovered.
TexanOkie,
Hear hear.
ROT:“Portland’s driving was less than the national average even before those boundaries and light-rail lines were put in place. What counts is the change, and according to the most recent data published by the Texas Transportation Institute, per-capita driving in the Portland area increased by 74 percent since 1982, when the urban-growth boundary had just been drawn and Portland’s first light-rail line was under construction.”
ws: I’d like some clarification on this. Aren’t these road statistics of people driving on Portland’s roads irrespective of their hometown? Is this really a conclusive statement of a typical Portland area-er’s transportation habits knowing that globalization and transportation of goods has also increased GREATLY since 1982? Hello, NAFTA…I-5?
Per-Capita driving miles may have increased, but not all Portland-area drivers are creating those miles on the roads in the first place. Many people outside of the metro area are creating those higher daily VMT.
The accuracy of DVMT/capita compared to a 1982 economy (pssst 30 years ago) is certainly something I question greatly.
1982 US GDP: $5,177.1 billion
2009 US GDP: $12,892.5 billion
For every intensive measure of Portland area’s travel habits compared to the rest of the US over the years, they have stayed quite low and any growth per capita is an extremely misleading statistic.
But hey, you’ve made a career out of such statistics.
TexanOkie:“Speaking from the inside, I have to say that while many urban planners and New Urbanists do cherish the environment and are actively looking for ways to reduce climate change, the correlation of high density and New Urban planning policies to enacting the desired changes is largely coincidental and is designed to further garner support for the movement amongst a group of people who ordinarily may not be prone to support New Urbanism and high-density development. The ends were created before the “link†was discovered.”
ws:Is that bad? NU is a bit older than today’s current climate change theory/arguments.
I’m with TO and not a strict NU either, and IMHO a number of the spatial arrangements actually inhibit what they are trying to achieve. It is a good guideline but like anything slavish adherence gets you nowhere. And their dang prices to attend a conference to listen to blowhards – sheesh. Much better work is being done at the margins.
DS
WS: Many people outside of the metro area are creating those higher daily VMT.
JK: Then why don’t you tell us why Vancouver people drive LESS than people in smart Portland?
Thanks
JK
JK:“Then why don’t you tell us why Vancouver people drive LESS than people in smart Portland?”
ws:Portland area includes Vancouver, not to mention, where are your facts that Vancouver people drive less than Portland people?
Remember, VMT on roads does not specify where those miles are originating from. The 60,000 commute workers from Vancouver drive relatively more miles on Portland roads vs. their own roads – but are actually from Vancouver.
Care to address a method that actually excludes this information?
The example of Venice is supposed to prove something? Nobody drives in Disneyland either, and they even have a monorail. I guess those two examples prove that a very dense tourist destination doesn’t have to have cars. Does that prove anything about productive modern cities?
Does that prove anything about productive modern cities?
I lived in Seattle without a vehicle.
I presume you would consider this a ‘productive modern city’. It is up to the reader whether the fraction of HHs living there with 1 or 0 cars proves anything; for some ideologues, of course nothing proves anything that causes cognitive dissonance or negates their ideology…
DS
Dan, you are just a troll. Go get a room (website) for yourself. Then you and your latte loving friends can signal to each other how superior you are, even though you have a carbon footprint exceeding 90% of people in the world.
But you will take comfort and pride in your signaling that your carbon footprint is less than many Americans who have cars. However, for some reason, even though your message is all over Hollywood and the media, it keeps you up at night that 99% of Americans totally reject it.
You can take comfort in the fact that many Europeans agree with you (which is of utmost importance to signalling snobs), and only 85% of them reject your life symbol of not having a car.
Just checkin’ in; don’t bother responding. Ok, Dan, you can tell me how I live in my mom’s basement and tell me I “don’t get play”. I shore miss that banter.
Yeah, Andy, Dan’s a troll. He apparently has no life and enjoys wasting taxpayer money spewing his hate all over this blog during working hours. Yada, yada, yada…
Anyway, I say keep pumping CO2 into the atmosphere. NASA finally compared our deep solar minimum to the the Maunder Minimum. Another Little Ice Age seems far more detrimental than global warming. Crops don’t like ice and snow.
Oh, if you live in the Northwest, don’t go camping tomorrow night. The National Weather Service is calling for snow above 6,000 feet.
It’s gonna be another cold winter folks.
Andy wrote:
“The example of Venice is supposed to prove something?”
Yes, the authors put an upper limit on the reductions in traffic in a dense city compared to another city which isn’t so dense. I showed, using one example, that this is not necessarily true, which invalidates their arguments. It only takes one example to do this.
“But you will take comfort and pride in your signaling that your carbon footprint is less than many Americans who have cars. However, for some reason, even though your message is all over Hollywood and the media, it keeps you up at night that 99% of Americans totally reject it.
You can take comfort in the fact that many Europeans agree with you (which is of utmost importance to signalling snobs), and only 85% of them reject your life symbol of not having a car.”
But, as we saw with Antiplanner’s recent article on intercity coach services, once you provide car drivers with a decent alternative, many of them will take advantage. Perhaps the reason why so many people cling to their cars is a) because nobody’s allowed for anything else but cars and b) because people keep giving them grief over their ownership of use of cars. The UK government is quite determined to only provide for cars. Except when they decide to send ‘price signals’ via road pricing / congestion charging, because they decide there are now too many cars.
There is a difference between a troll and someone who uses snark and ridicule when pointing out flawed arguments. You should look it up Andy.
And look up ‘mischaracterization’ and ‘straw man’ while you are there. If there is a page at that reference site for ‘refuted global warming denialist talking points’, you’ll see some of Frank’s points there as well.
HTH.
DS
Dan, you must of thought I was calling you a troll from the Hobbit. When you grow up, take a look at http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/What_is_a_troll%3F
You will see that not only your inane and irrelevant comments make you a troll, but most definitively, your manic need to try to get someone to react to your comments. You often post first at 6:00 am, and then comment again after every other comment. And of course, you always have to post last.
And I apologize to all the readers of this website for violating the internet Commandment “Do Not Feed the Trolls.”
Andy, this isn’t a a place for serious discusion about land use or transportation and neither is Cox’s Transport Policy list.
Time to time there are a few interesting points, but most the time it’s just whole sale ranting against trains & mass transit.
If you base your agenda on hate & bullshit, it’s just going to come off as a joke.
Two interesting stories via SpaceWeather.com:
The most telling line from the story: “…the solar cycle could be out of whack; if solar minimum deepens and persists, no one is certain what will happen.”
Refuted? Right.
ws wrote:
> I’d like some clarification on this. Aren’t these road
> statistics of people driving on Portland’s roads irrespective
> of their hometown? Is this really a conclusive statement of
> a typical Portland area-er’s transportation habits knowing
> that globalization and transportation of goods has also
> increased GREATLY since 1982? Hello, NAFTA…I-5?
Typically, truck movements are broken-out in travel demand forecasting models such as those used by Portland Metro, so it should be easy to determine how much of the VMT is by trucks (and I do not mean SUVs and vans and panel trucks and pickup trucks). I do not have access to such data, but I suspect one or more readers of this blog does.
> Per-Capita driving miles may have increased, but not all
> Portland-area drivers are creating those miles on the roads
> in the first place. Many people outside of the metro area
> are creating those higher daily VMT.
“External” trips (and associated VMT) are likely broken-out by Portland Metro’s models as well.
> The accuracy of DVMT/capita compared to a 1982 economy (pssst
> 30 years ago) is certainly something I question greatly.
One of the reasons for the increase in VMT nationwide that the anti-auto/anti-highway/anti-mobility industry routinely ignores is the rise of women in our workforce.
> 1982 US GDP: $5,177.1 billion
> 2009 US GDP: $12,892.5 billion
>
> For every intensive measure of Portland area’s travel habits
> compared to the rest of the US over the years, they have
> stayed quite low and any growth per capita is an
> extremely misleading statistic.
>
> But hey, you’ve made a career out of such statistics.
Did you say that just because you have (apparently) made a career out of disagreeing with Randal?
But back to my original point way upthread,
I don’t see the document being anywhere close to supporting anyone’s wish for using the document to argue agin’ the dreaded high density.
That is: it doesn’t say what the headline implies nor does it support the unsupportable anti-density assertions found so often here.
DS
C. P. Zilliacus said:…the anti-auto/anti-highway/anti-mobility industry…
THWM: You must be out of mind to think that there is some sort of a anti-auto/anti-highway/anti-mobility industry!
Though for that matter your anti-train/anti-transit politcal agenda is anti-mobility.
Venice doesn’t strike me as a shining example of life without a car. It’s a dieing city. It’s population has been sharply declining for decades. And with something like a 1/3 of it’s population being over the age of 60, the trend is likely to continue. At that it’s on a bunch of islands and is almost exclusively built long before the car came around. I fail to see how an economically dead series of old islands largely populated by geriatrics and that functions more or less like an Italian architectural Disneyland proves much of anything about what and can not be done in regards to auto policy. It’s an odd duck of sorts to say the least. It no more shows that a “city” can have people in it that live without cars parked outside their door than it goes to show that a city that bans cars dies.
And note that I say what can and can not be done…. it doesn’t change that how people behave can change in the future. Which is where I’m curious what the first studies assumptions are for various factors. Looking 40 years into the future tends to be a crap shoot. For example, how would their projections change if there was a shift with where employers locate such as downtown. So instead of downtowns tending to tread water when it comes to job growth, the last 40 years were reversed. Would more people be willing to live in density to reduce the amount of time they spend commuting? Or what if more and more employers allowed for telecommuting or even working remotely? Would that lead to even more people living in increasingly less dense areas?
Dan:“That is: it doesn’t say what the headline implies nor does it support the unsupportable anti-density assertions found so often here.”
ws:No, it doesn’t say that at all. Here’s the Oregonian’s headline of the same report:
http://www.oregonlive.com/environment/index.ssf/2009/09/density_and_mass_transit_can_f.html
“Density and mass transit can fight global warming, study says”
prk166 wrote:
“Venice doesn’t strike me as a shining example of life without a car. It’s a dieing city.”
The population of Venice is falling for two reasons. Firstly, the quality of life is superior to many other cities, and so wealthy outsiders are buying up property there. The natives are moving to Mestre with their new wealth. Secondly, the Italian government is still trying to get around to providing flood defences for Venice.
Not-withstanding the above, the fact is that it is possible to build cities without cars. High density can eliminate car driving altogether. This poses a real challenge for the people who believe that life is impossible without a car and the sprawl to enable space for cars to be provided. It also poses a challenge for smart-growthers who believe that merely increasing density will make anything better.
If the building density is increased, it requires a major rethink of trip generation.
Firstly, the quality of life is superior to many other cities, and so wealthy outsiders are buying up property there. The natives are moving to Mestre with their new wealth.
One of my best friends married a Venetian. They are in the Bay Area now. She refuses to live in the suburbs as she cannot stand a lifestyle where you can’t walk to a store.
Jus’ sayin’.
DS
So… remind me how many cities there are in the world? Tens of thousands? More? Right. How many are there like Venice? Just the one… roger that. Or perhaps there are two or three imitators; I’ll even credit that possibility without having researched it. It’s possible, I suppose.
I’ll stick with the 99.9999% scenarios for my analyses of what works and what doesn’t work in city development.
Good thing most people on the planet choose their cities by what they like and are willing to pay, not by adherence to a small-minority ideology!
DS