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Denver Rail Still on Track — Barely

By | | News commentary, Planning Disasters, Transportation
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The latest estimates say that Denver’s FasTracks rail projects are only $1.5 billion overbudget, not the $1.8 billion originally reported. The $300 million savings comes from such things as single-tracking light-rail lines that were originally planned to be double tracked.

Denver’s Regional Transit District (RTD) plans to make up the $1.5 billion by selling $800 million more bonds (thus making for a longer pay-back period), and asking the federal government for more money. But officials still expect a $400 million or so shortfall.

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Antiplanner in San Jose

By | | Housekeeping
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I am flying to San Jose this afternoon for lectures and research. I expect to be there through the end of the week, so may not be able to get on line to moderate your comments. Remember, if you are making your first comment, it won’t appear until I approve it. Possible side effects: The side effects that are levitra canadian pharmacy likely to occur due to the condition of stress or anxiety. Erectile dysfunction healing starts with formative the levitra prescription cost factors that are responsible for such dysfunction. Cyclic GMP causes the blood vessels in the penis to widen by relaxing a thin layer of muscle found in 100mg viagra online the blood and response positively. It relieves you from discount viagra anxiety and stress. After your first comment, all your comments should appear right away.

Fellow antiplanners (or loyal opponents) in the San Jose area are welcome to join me in a discussion of BART and transportation planning at 6:30 pm on Wednesday, May 23, at Santa Clara University. For more particulars, email Patrick Peterson.

The Market Works

By | | Follow up, News commentary, Wildfire
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In my previous post on wildfire, D4P argued that government should require the use of nonflammable roofs and other firesafe practices on homes near wildfire-prone lands. I responded that this should be left to insurance companies.

It looks like the insurance companies are taking care of the problem. “Spooked by devastating wildfire seasons, the nation’s top insurers are inspecting homes in high-risk areas throughout the West and threatening to cancel coverage if owners don’t clear brush or take other precautions,” says the Associated Press.

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What is changing? Katrina, 9-11, and other disasters have forced the insurance industry to sharpen its pencils and insist that people make more effort to reduce risks.

Portland Needs a Dose of Reality, Not Another Vision

By | | News commentary, Transportation, Urban areas
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Randy Gragg, the architecture critic for the Portland Oregonian, thinks that Portland “lacks a coordinated transportation plan” and needs a “grand vision” to deal with transportation in the future. In fact, what Portland needs is to deal with the reality of how people really live, not a vision for how some people think everyone else ought to live.

In 1992, Portland-area voters decided to create Metro, a regional planning agency that would create a vision for Portland’s future and implement that vision through land-use and transportation planning. Now, after fifteen years of expensive planning and increasing congestion, Gragg is effectively saying that Metro has failed.

Portland light rail and mid-rise development. Flickr photo by ahockley.

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Lakewood Gets Ripped Off

By | | City planning
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Deals like this always make you suspicious. Someone bought some land in Lakewood Colorado for $650,000, and eight days later sold it to the city of Lakewood for $1.1 million.

The city, which thinks it got a good deal, plans to use the land for “affordable housing” next to a projected light-rail station. But why didn’t the city buy it eight days earlier when it could have saved almost half the cost? Does the previous landowner feel ripped off when they could have made $1.1 million if they had sold to the city instead of the middle-man?

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Measure 37 and Forest Fire

By | | Regional planning, Wildfire
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“No one should be permitted to construct homes in the ‘fire plain’ any more than we permit home construction in a flood plain,” says my friend, George Wuerthner. Wuerthner recently edited a book on wildfire policy which included a contribution by me about wildfire budgets.

Now Wuerthner contributes an op ed to the Eugene Register-Guard arguing that “measure 37 exacerbates fire hazards” because it allows people to build homes on their own land in places where Oregon’s land-use laws had previously forbidden such construction.

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The Skeptical Planning Professor

By | | News commentary
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Many of things written in this blog in 2007 are mere echoes of statements made by Melvin Webber thirty to forty years ago. Webber, who died last November, was a professor of city planning at the University of California at Berkeley.

The latest issue of Access magazine, which Webber founded fifteen years ago, is a tribute to Webber, with articles by Martin Wachs, Robert Cervero, Peter Hall, Jonathan Richmond, and other researchers who are themselves legendary in the urban and transportation planning fields.

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How Green Can Greensburg Get?

By | | City planning, News commentary
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Last week, I wondered “how many planners today are salivating at the chance to plan the reconstruction of Greensburg, Kansas.” The answer was not long in coming.

The governor of Kansas has announced that she wants to make the reconstructed community “the greenest town in rural America.” She says she wants to “rebuild a better footprint.”

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Urban-Growth Boundaries Are Just Plain Stupid

By | | News commentary, Urban areas
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Originally conceived as a way of preventing “leapfrog development,” i.e, development of land some distance away from urban fringes, urban-growth boundaries are now used to prevent any development at the urban fringe at all. This pleases planners, who think we should all live in “compact developments,” and who ally themselves with property owners along the boundaries who want to preserve their scenic views.

The last effort to expand Portland’s boundary required lengthy political battles as landowners who wanted to develop their land fought those who wanted to benefit from someone else’s land remaining undeveloped. In about 1999, Portland’s Metro finally expanded boundary. But very little development has taken place because planners are too busy “planning” the expanded areas to allow anyone to do anything in them. The time between expansion and any actual development seems to be at least a decade.

Meanwhile, Metro is under the gun to meet housing goals and is asking the legislature for two more years before it considers any more expansions. Planners say they are too busy planning the previous expansions to think about doing any more.

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Anti-Town Planning #5: The Woodlands Is the Way It Ought to Be

By | | City planning
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If I had to live in a major urban area, I would like to live in a place like the Woodlands, a master-planned community north of Houston. The difference between the Woodlands and the town plans I’ve critiqued earlier this week is that the Woodlands was planned by a developer, while the other town plans were written by government planners.

Flickr photo by HJPotter.

The Woodlands is a 28,000-acre development that began in 1974. Like other “master-planned communities,” it differs from smaller subdivisions in that it was designed as a complete community, with offices, stores, hotels, schools, parks, and residential areas. Although it includes a mix of uses, it is not, for the most part, “mixed use.” That is, the nine “villages” that make up the residential areas are separate from the retail and commercial areas. But the employment areas provide more jobs than the number of workers living in its residential areas.

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