Connecticut Senator Chris Dodd has introduced a “Livable Communities Act” that promises more than $4 billion in federal grants to communities that promote smart-growth principles. The Senate held hearings on the bill last week, and a somewhat similar bill has been introduced in the House by Representative Albio Sires of New Jersey.
The Senate bill starts out with “findings” that repeat all the usual smart-growth crap that is mostly false and all highly debatable. Some of the findings imply that there is a growing demand for high-density, mixed-use housing. But if that is true, why does the federal government need to subsidize it?
The bill laments that “as much as 30 percent of current demand for housing is for housing in dense, walkable, mixed-use communities,” while “less than 2 percent of new housing is in this category.” Of course, that may be because many cities have a surplus of existing housing that fits this description, so they don’t need any new construction. (It may also be that “as much as 30 percent” is really more like “less than 20 percent.)
The findings also claim that people who live in compact developments drive 20 to 40 percent less than average. In fact, part of this difference is due to planners confusing “per household driving” with “per capita driving.” In other words, compact developments have smaller households, so there is less per household driving, but when measured on a per capita basis, the driving is about the same.
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Ironically, the findings mention the “need for affordable housing” when in fact smart-growth planners are the main cause of housing affordability problems. The bill claims that “one of the keys to revitalizing cities” is to deny property owners on urban fringes the right to develop their property, showing that Dodd has no regard for property rights. The bill notes that “demand for public transportation in rural and small town communities is growing,” by which it means that subsidies for such transit are growing.
After all of these inane and questionable findings, the bill creates an “Office of Sustainable Housing and Communities” which would dole out $300 million in planning grants followed by $3.75 billion in “implementation grants,” mainly subsidies to high-density, mixed-use housing. As usual, when the feds hand out money, we can expect that cities will reach out to take it. Then the planners will crow about how the willingness of the cities to take the money proves there is a huge pent-up demand for such housing.
This is all garbage. Even if it were valid, Congress hardly needs to start a new federal entitlement program when it has already built up a $13 trillion debt. Land use decisions should be made by landowners, not by regional planners or, worse, federal sustainability czars who don’t know what they are talking about.
I suspect that this bill will not pass as is. The danger is that it will be rolled into the transportation reauthorization bill that Congress will take up in 2011. That means the $4 billion will come out of the pockets of the very auto drivers that the bill demonizes.
“findings†that repeat all the usual smart-growth crap that is mostly false
Too bad every time I ask for evidence of falsitude, no one here can produce any.
Yet the false assertion gets repeated again and again, perhaps in hopes that repeating it often enough it becomes true, or at least truthy.
DS
“I suspect that this bill will not pass as is.”
Exactly. Just like everything else in the senate, this bill is a political football. Dodd’s aims are so lofty because he knows most of them will be crushed by opposition. I see this bill going nowhere, just like every idea brought before the senate.
As UC economist David Brownstone found, the relationship between urban form and driving is “too small to be useful†in trying to reduce driving.
Of course, Brownstone also says that a lower density of 1,000 housing units per square mile (roughly 40% of the weighted sample average) implies an increase of 1,200 miles driven per year (4.8%) and 65 more gallons of fuel used per household (5.5%) , and also We find that density directly influences vehicle usage, and both density and usage influence fuel consumption .
so I’m not sure how Randal thinks that he can honestly use Brownstone to support his assertions. We’ve been over Randal cherry-picking Brownstone before. Maybe he hopes if he cherry-picks enough times, no one will notice and the truthiness will come out.
DS
It seems to me that a 5% difference is too small to be useful for most purposes.
What Brownstone said in the referenced paper was that increasing housing density from 2,500 to 3,500 units per square mile (1,000 being a 40% increase over the average which works out to be 2,500) would reduce driving by 1,200 miles per year per household or approximately 5%. I’m not sure what effect reducing from 2,500 to 1,000 units per square mile would have.
Brownstone said this in the sentence after he said “One of the key conclusions from this review is that the magnitude of the link between the built environment and VMT is so small that feasible changes in the built environment will only have negligible impacts on VMT.”
I don’t see how what Randal said could in any way be cherry-picking because Randal was making the exact same point that Brownstone was making.
First, it is a value judgment of the author that several hundred dollars of savings a year per household is ‘negligible’. If one is basing their argument on the ‘fact’ that several hundred dollars/annum is ‘negligible’, then one will grasp at any straw for play.
Second, several of the pet fringe dwellers here swear that there is little-no relationship between density and VMT, yet here we have Randal approvingly quoting a paper that refutes the notion, yet where are they in shouting down this paper??
DS
It’s not a value judgment — it is pure rationality. Changing urban densities for a public policy reason costs billions of dollars in every city and takes many decades. Do the math. Saving several hundred dollars in several decades is very close to negligible, especially if you factor in the odds that this study is just wrong. Not to mention the huge imposition on freedom and liberty that such a drastic regulatory scheme would require.
Dan, can you name a public policy issue where a 5% decrease in gasoline use several decades in the future would make any meaningful contribution, and that the many billions of dollars it entails to change urban landscapes couldn’t be better spent?
Urban landscapes are already changing. They change every year regardless. There is an average 2% turnover in building envelope stock in any given year (pre-economic reordering, of course).
No one – zero people – is saying raze and build stuff people don’t want. Developers are taking parcels where the appraised value is less than the land value, aggregating them, and re-building with much more energy-efficient envelopes. There is no ‘billions of dollars’ in taxpayer money on the horizon to be spent in some soshulizt yoo-topia. The fear is bullsh–.
DS