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Melbourne to Relieve Housing Shortage

By | | News commentary, Regional planning
19 Comments

Australia has some of the least-affordable housing in the English-speaking world. But the premier of Victoria has announced that his state’s government will make 90,000 new home sites available for housing by rezoning land in the Melbourne urban area.

Housing in Melbourne.Flickr photo by Mark Larrimore.

As near as I can tell from the stories, he is not proposing to expand Melbourne’s urban-growth boundary, but to immediately reclassify lands in what American planners would call the “urban reserve” for housing. He also promises to streamline the approval process so as to take a full year off the time it takes to get a permit to build. Of course, once the 90,000 home sites are taken up, the government may have to expand the boundary for real if it wants to keep housing affordable.

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Back in the Air Again

By | | Housekeeping
14 Comments

The Antiplanner will be speaking in Golden, Colorado tonight at the Independence Institute. I’ll be presenting an updated version of my analysis of rail transit’s impact on energy consumption and greenhouse gases. I’ll be joined by Jessica Corry, who will talk about eminent domain issues involving transit in the Denver area. The reception begins at 5:30 and our presentations begin at 6 pm.

Tomorrow, the Antiplanner will be in Bismarck, North Dakota, speaking about smart growth on behalf of the North Dakota Policy Center. The session begins at 7 am at the Best Western Doublewood Inn.

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Anyway, if you are in the Denver or Bismarck areas, I hope to see you at one of these events.

Americans Buy Less Gasoline — Everybody Panic! (Not)

By | | News commentary
22 Comments

The Wall Street Journal reports that the nation’s gasoline consumption has dropped by 1.1 percent from the previous year’s levels. No doubt the end-of-the-suburbs crowd will use this to justify their claims.

Are Americans ready for $4 a gallon gas?
Flickr photo by slworking2.

The problem is that, though people may be buying less gasoline, they aren’t driving any less. According to the latest report from the U.S. Department of Transportation, driving through October of 2007 was almost exactly the same as in 2006, which was a little more than in 2005.

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Research Database

By | | Mission
6 Comments

As if I don’t have enough to do, I’ve started an Antiplanning Database. Since a blog is really just a database, I thought that we could have a blog that had nothing but research papers, data, and other useful information.

As long as we can agree on a standard format, I would be glad to allow anyone, planner or antiplanner, who asked to post to this database. This would give everyone access to all the latest on-line research and reports on planning and antiplanning issues. As long as there are no copyright problems, I also want to upload all documents to the Thoreau Institute’s or American Dream Coalition’s web sites so we won’t have to worry about addresses changing and/or documents disappearing.
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So far I have only added a half-dozen documents to the database. But take a look at it, give me your comments on the format, and let me know if you would like to be added to the list of people who can post to the site.

$82 Million Per Mile Is Cost Effective?

By | | News commentary, Planning Disasters, Transportation
21 Comments

Last week, the Twin Cities’ Metropolitan Council approved a new light-rail line between downtown Minneapolis and downtown St. Paul. As approved, the 11-mile line will cost $909 million, or more than $82 million per mile.

Socialist light-railism in Minneapolis.

The Met Council’s original proposal, which was projected to cost $990 million, was rejected two years ago by the Federal Transit Administration. Under cost-effectiveness criteria that the FTA established in 2005, any project that cost $24 or more “per hour of transportation system user benefits” would be ineligible for federal funding. The $990 million Central Corridor line was projected to cost $26.05 per hour; cutting the cost to $909 million would improve this to a mere $23.80 per hour.

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Agricultural Planning Disasters

By | | News commentary, Planning Disasters
12 Comments

A great op ed in Saturday’s New York Times illustrates some of the dangers of government planning with a story about farming. The author of the article, a Minnesota farmer, made the naive mistake of responding to the market demand for local fruits and vegetables by converting 25 acres of corn fields into watermelons, tomatoes, and other vegetables.

Don’t try to grow watermelons here.
Flickr photo by Beggs.

It turns out that the U.S. Department of Agriculture forbids farmers from growing most fruits and vegetables on “corn base” lands. The farmer had to pay a stiff fine, equal to all his profits, for daring to grow watermelons instead.

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Where Will We Find the Next Slums?

By | | News commentary
24 Comments

The Atlantic has joined the chorus of those who say that suburbs are declining as everyone who is anyone will soon move back to the cities. In The Next Slum, New Urbanist Christopher Leinberger predicts that many of our suburbs will turn into slums as people of wealth and income return to high-density, mixed-use developments.

The Antiplanner has addressed this issue at least once before. To make sure there isn’t any confusion, I don’t really care whether people move back to the cities or not. I just think it is foolish, wasteful, and intrusive for state and local governments to base their land-use policies on the assumption that Leinberger is right.

Belmar row houses “from the mid 300s.”
Photo taken by Jennifer Lang in January 2007.

For example, Leinberger extolls Belmar, a mixed-use development in Lakewood Colorado “built on the site of a razed mall.” Housing there, he says, “commands a 60 percent premium per square foot over the single-family homes in the neighborhoods around it.”

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Built Environment and Walking

By | | City planning
21 Comments

Contrary to the claims of many New Urbanists, the “built environment” — such things as density and street connectivity — has almost no effect on the amount of walking people do. At least, that is the finding of a new study by planners and epidemiologists from the University of Minnesota, Cornell, and the University of Pennsylvania.

The study scrutinized the behavior of 716 adults in 36 neighborhoods with varying densities and connectivities in the Twin Cities. “neither density nor street connectivity are meaningfully related to overall mean miles walked per day or increased total physical activity.” The paper concludes “that the effects of density and block size on total walking and physical activity are modest to non-existent, if not contrapositive.”

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Rail Transit: Pay Now, Pay Later

By | | News commentary, Planning Disasters, Transportation
15 Comments

Denver’s 119-mile FasTracks rail transit project, approved by voters in 2004, will cost at least $1.4 billion more than voters were told, according to the project’s 2007 annual report. Moreover, a revenue shortfall means that Denver’s Regional Transit District’s (RTD) ability to sell bonds to pay for construction will fall $400 million short of expectations.

Although RTD blames rising steel prices for the overrun, in fact a large share of the additional cost is due to RTD’s own inane decisions. The original plan called for running Diesel-powered trains from downtown to the airport, but RTD decided to spend another $400 million electrifying the route. RTD also changed routes on the North Metro line, adding at least $100 million to its costs.

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The Ship Is Sinking, So Stay the Course

By | | Transportation, Why Planning Fails
25 Comments

In his 1989 book, The New Realities, Peter Drucker wrote,

Above all, any government activity almost at once becomes “moral.” No longer is it viewed as “economic,” as one alternative use of scarce resources of people and money. It becomes an “absolute.” It is in the nature of government activities that they come to be seen as symbols and sacred rather than as utilities and means to an end. The absence of results does not raise the question, Shouldn’t we rather do something different? Instead, it leads to a doubling of effort; it only indicates how strong the forces of evil are.

“Despite a focus on luring drivers out of their autos,” Sacramento transit mainly carries people who “do not have access to an auto.”
Flickr photo by paulkimo9.

I thought of this quote when reading Sacramento’s 2006 Metropolitan Transportation Plan. In a remarkably candid review of the region’s previous transportation plans, this document states:

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