Growing Cooler

For the urbanist in your family, Growing Cooler from Smart Growth America is all about how better urban planning and land use policies can help us reduce carbon emission. Relatedly, Brad Plumer observes that the needed changes can often be reasonable subtle:

Compare Vancouver and Seattle. Similar cities in similar areas with similar sorts of people. Yet the former has promoted downtown development and limited freeway expansion and, as a result, has considerably less sprawl. As that World Bank study suggests, that can really have a dramatic effect on emissions.

Food for thought.

Comments

I think this is an absolutely vital point to keep emphasizing over and over until it sticks in the public consciousness. Basically, it is not necessary to choose between Manhattan and modern suburban sprawl. Rather, there are lots of options in between, and cities can often realize some large energy and environmental efficiencies with just some relatively subtle differences in public planning and development. And all the available evidence suggests that people want more of the sorts of planning and development that would fall on the more efficient sides of these issues--even people who do not want to live in Manhattan.

Posted by DTM | April 26, 2008 8:46 AM

Urban engineering won't be a problem in the near term. City residents should soon start a mass exodus to the countryside in search of arable land. We'll all need to grow our own food to compensate for the inflationary ecosocialist programs to put groceries into our gas tanks.

You urbanites need to start taking courses on traditional farming practices:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5iFoSL62iFI&feature=related

The new promise for green Democrats should now become "40 acres and a mule."

Posted by MarkG | April 26, 2008 10:15 AM

No non-millionaire can buy a house in the Vancouver area unless they are willing to commute for two hours.

Posted by Pithlord | April 26, 2008 10:27 AM

Lots of little farms worked in traditional ways are grossly inefficient when compared to modern big farms. Hence, hordes of people heading out of cities to seize litle farms for themselves isn't going to solve anything.

A better idea would be for the government to stop paying people to turn food into fuel. Which I think a short period of artificially high food prices might well accomplish, particularly once people figure out that the alternatives are actually much better for the environment anyway. And it is certainly easier for nonfarmers to get their act together long enough to outvote the few people still living out in farm country, as opposed to heading to farm country to become farmers themselves.

Posted by DTM | April 26, 2008 10:32 AM

Pithlord, Seattle's sprawl has not insulated it from housing inflation over the years. In real terms, Seattle housing tripled from 1990 to 2006. See here

http://seattlebubble.com/blog/2008/02/19/king-county-home-prices-1946-2007/

Vancouver has been obscene for a long time. But Seattle was fast catching up until the US subprime crisis hit. King County's $450,000 (2006) average was not too far behind the city of Vancouver's CA$616,000 (March 2008 -- source; Canadian Real Estate Association) average.

The sprawl question however is very complicated. See here.

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/2004181704_eicher14.html

Basically, the good citizens of Washington decided they didn't like sprawl back about 1990. So they introduced things iike growth boundaries and rural land protection.

Note, the rather biased reporter wrote the article so as to blame those solely for the housing costs. But read on, because you'll see the real problem.

With a growth boundary, you want more available space to develop in Seattle, right? That means allowing bigger buildings, not being too fussy about tear-downs, letting more density happen.

But not in Seattle. Seattle itself has building regulations that would make you think they were still in the business of protecting rural area. THAT's the big problem. Key paragraphs from the article:

""Building in Seattle can be very time-consuming compared with nearby cities, because of Seattle's neighborhood-based design-review process, says Linda Stalzer, project development director for the Dwelling Company, an Eastside homebuilder.

Design-review committees, composed of citizens interested in architecture and development, are located throughout Seattle; their job is to review commercial and multifamily housing designs before they're approved.

"Depending on how complicated your project is, it might take you three or four times to get through it," Stalzer says.

Add together all the various review and comment periods, and it can take 12 to 18 months to get to the point of applying for a building permit, she says.

On a 25-unit Capitol Hill town-house project now under way, Stalzer estimated the various fees (including consulting and mitigation costs, but not building permits or land prices) have totaled about $650,000.""

So it takes forever to get new construction done; you can't put a big building on a small lot and so on. And everybody moves out not just to Bellevue or Redmond but clean out of King County.

And here's the final twist. The restrictions on new development are a county allocation, not by the metro area. So while King County can't develop any new land, Snohomish and Pierce go merrily on their way. And the leapfrog sprawl goes on and the long-distance commuting madness goes on.

If the regulations were by metro area rather than this peculiarly American local turf-war madness, Snohomish and Pierce would be the restricted ones, not King, the perimeter would be protected as it should be, and King would open up some closer-in space for development.

Posted by DBX | April 28, 2008 8:49 AM