The Unbuildable Land

A very interesting point in the midst of Gary Leff's post about air travel delays:

The existing array of airports serving US cities couldn’t possibly be built as-is today. With far greater environmental scrutiny and NIMBY opposition, it’s incredibly difficult to expand airport infrastructure. Similar to the US experience, the London-Heathrow terminal 5 project spent more time in its public comment phase than the entire much-larger Beijing terminal 3 took to go from proposal to completion. I’m not saying I prefer the Chinese model, but the difference illustrates how cumbersome infrastructure issues are in the modern Western political context.

Of course, this goes far beyond airports (imagine if the rights-of-way that constitute Amtrak's northeast corridor didn't already exist and you tried to put that rail corridor together, or if you proposed something like the subway tunnels beneath Manhattan) and, indeed, beyond infrastructure. Many of DC's historic neighborhoods, like Georgetown, couldn't pass muster under current parking and lot-size regulations and much the same is true of neighborhoods in cities and close-in "streetcar suburbs" all across the country. And yet nobody regrets that we have this infrastructure or these neighborhoods -- indeed, they're often the very most expensive places to live in the country because they're (a) nice and (b) the supply is artificially constrained by regulations and NIMBYism.

It really wouldn't be better to become a technocratic oligarchy like China, but liberal democracy is compatible with any number of institutional schemes. Putting a lot of power over land-use decisions in the hands of bite-sized units (each ANC commissioner in DC represents just a handful of blocks in my neighborhood) makes it impossible for the political process to reflect anything but the most narrow and parochial of interests.

Comments

I didn't read the linked piece, but the basic point was made long ago, in detail and with endless charm, in Rem Koolhaas's book Delirious New York. Worth reading if one hasn't already.

Posted by James Gary | April 25, 2008 2:36 PM

Regional mergers, ala Louisville, are all the rage these days. I know Pittsburgh and Allegheny County are working toward the same thing, with infrastructure issues as part of the equation. Expanding a light rail system, for example, in a region like Louisville or Pittsburgh would be a lot easier with one set of rules.

Posted by Roboticghost | April 25, 2008 2:42 PM

Whatever the problems of UK planning decisions, it's wildly unlikely that the power of bite-sized units is the central feature - Britain is perhaps the most centralised national political unit on the planet.

Posted by otto | April 25, 2008 2:44 PM

Several years ago in your magazine, Matt, they had an article suggesting using closed former USAF bases as airports solely for making connections. It would cut down on some of the traffic in other locations and provide jobs for those who lost theirs when the bases closed.

Posted by Randy Paul | April 25, 2008 2:52 PM

One of the reasons for why New York City is like it is was the power exercised by Robert Moses who steamrollered over opposition to his schemes. Given todays' NIMBYism, Moses wouldn't cut it today.

Posted by SLC | April 25, 2008 2:54 PM

Several years ago in your magazine, Matt, they had an article suggesting using closed former USAF bases as airports solely for making connections. It would cut down on some of the traffic in other locations and provide jobs for those who lost theirs when the bases closed.

Posted by Randy Paul | April 25, 2008 2:55 PM

In an age when anyone can go to Blogger and get a megaphone, it's hard to tell people to sit down, shut up, and deal with eminent domain.

Posted by Daniel | April 25, 2008 3:05 PM

One of the reasons for why New York City is like it is was the power exercised by Robert Moses who steamrollered over opposition to his schemes. Given todays' NIMBYism, Moses wouldn't cut it today.

And thank god he didn't cut it in Greenwich Village.
I think a better summation would start with "One of the reasons for why New York City needs a congestion tax is because Robert Moses..."

Posted by Curly | April 25, 2008 3:08 PM

One thing about "technocratic oligarchy": even when they are competent, their priorities can stink.

For example, according to The Economist, much poorer Vietnam has better healthcare than China. China's oligarch are narrowly bent on quick economic growth with atrocious labor rights, pollution, etc.

I mean, economic growth is not a bad thing to have, but if you have to live in Beijing haze to have a somewhat faster growth, it looks less appealing.

About airports: ground transportation could make a dent in demand shorter flights, and integrated rail/air system can remove the need for connections. Also, if airports are connected with bullet trains, it does not matter much if you start, say, in London or, say, Manchester.. My dream: trains connecting to metropolitan airports with security control on board, so you exit the train directly to the gates. We live in crazy times when you spend hours in various queues to proceed for an hour or two at a jet speed.

Back to London. Something is out of whack in European pricing. To get to London by plane from Cologne, it costs ca. 200 dollars, and by plane, 80 (the last time I was buying tickets, the prices vary, but the lowest are almost always on planes). And the train is slower (actually, it is a combination of two fast trains with a bad connection). I bet that a much larger part of traffic would be on trains if the prices were reversed. And we are in a situation that the tracks for rapid trains are in place, no American problems here, and a lot of frequent destinations are pretty close to London. And security experience at London airports is such that several extra hours by train can be justified. But not extra 120 dollars one way AND extra hours.

Posted by piotr | April 25, 2008 3:13 PM

Sticking to airports, shouldn't this mean that we should be doing some serious advance planning with respect to future airports, so we don't wind up being handcuffed by a shortage of takeoff/landing slots near the places where people actually live?

The D.C. area, for instance, will eventually need a fourth airport, and maybe even a fifth and a sixth, if we define the DC megalopolis expansively. In 2025, we might thank our lucky stars that in 2009, Maryland or Virginia decided to condemn land off US-301 in southern P.G. County, or off I-95 near Fredericksburg, for an airport.

If they had the foresight to do that, which I'm sure they don't.

Posted by low-tech cyclist | April 25, 2008 3:18 PM

"imagine if the rights-of-way that constitute Amtrak's northeast corridor didn't already exist and you tried to put that rail corridor together, or if you proposed something like the subway tunnels beneath Manhattan"

Which is exactly why your dreams of "real" high speed rail between DC and NYC will remain dreams. French/Japanese style high speed rail would require "dedicated" (that is, no freight trains)lines with straight, level tracks. Yeah, it could be done, for a $100 billion, if you wanted to spend 10 to 20 years hassling with every local government that didn't want 200 mph trains running through its backyard, etc.

Posted by Alan Vanneman | April 25, 2008 3:25 PM

Don't look now, but one block from my apartment the city is working on the tunnel for the Second Ave subway line.

Posted by jayackroyd | April 25, 2008 3:34 PM

When I'm mayor, the first thing I will do is disband the ANCs. They're basically just a vehicle for the asshole on your block with greater ambitions of fuckery.

Posted by Cain | April 25, 2008 3:35 PM

And the Chinese haven't let those "cumbersome infrastructure" issues curtail their rape of Tibet:

1. Burn the monasteries.
2. Beat up the monks, then kill them.
3. Put in the superhighway from Beijing to Lhasa.

Why can't the West learn from China?

Posted by Garuda | April 25, 2008 3:37 PM

Has something changed, that the ANC actually has any authority now? I know it was a couple years ago, but when I was at Georgetown (and trying to get a couple students on ours) they were only an advisory council. They reported to the Zoning Board, which was free to disregard any ANC resolutions.

Posted by Tel | April 25, 2008 3:48 PM

One of the reasons for why New York City is like it is was the power exercised by Robert Moses who steamrollered over opposition to his schemes. Given todays' NIMBYism, Moses wouldn't cut it today.

I'd question that - Moses faced plenty of NIMBYs in his day, it's just he usually outmaneuvered them. You can still do it today - the California legislature recently, under an "affordable housing" cover, created a mechanism to allow developers to trump local zoning/density designations, pretty much everything but the EIR (which has been getting more straightforward recently, as the political functions it had been ghettoed together to perform were offloaded onto now-trumpable side permit programs).

Posted by Senescent | April 25, 2008 4:07 PM

What Cain said -- DC's ANC's are the place where damaged people can act out their petty authority to hold back progress. A group of people, in Ward 3 at least, who have a hard time grasping that we live in a city.

If you want to see an excellent example of this, Matt, check out this week's Northwest Current and the description of Comet Pizza trying to get a permit for an outdoor eating space. It would by Hy-sterical if it were not so frustrating.

Posted by Sir Charles | April 25, 2008 5:11 PM

You're not going to manufacture more high-mindedness among legislators by tweaking the rules of the game.

And Robert Moses deserves no credit for the subway system.

Posted by Marshall | April 25, 2008 5:25 PM

I think both those who lionize Robert Moses and who question the reasons why DC has ANCs should remember that into the 1960s and 1970s, it was considered perfectly acceptable, from the top down, to just decide to bulldoze entire neighborhoods using eminent domain, leaving the hundreds and hundreds of thousands of people affected absolutely no recourse. The Bronx, before the 1960s, was a solidly middle-class community that had virtually no input into seeing entire neighborhoods uprooted and destroyed and hundreds of thousdands of people having to move on little notice so as to facilitate communters driving in from Connecticut. Huge swaths of DC neighborhoods (including Shaw, which has such a fond place in MYs heart, likewise would have been torn up and leveled. And all from the top down with no input from those being affected. Easy for a footloose young professional in his 20s to up and leave - but what about a 70 year old widow in ill health and meager resources being not asked but told she must leave her home of decades?
And you guys complain that these people are a nuiscance and shouldn't have a voice?? I guess the true NIMBYism is that it's all right to be draconian and uproot peoples lives as long as it isn't yours, right?

Posted by Ethel-To-Tilly | April 25, 2008 5:29 PM

And yet nobody regrets that we have this infrastructure or these neighborhoods -- indeed, they're often the very most expensive places to live in the country because they're (a) nice and (b) the supply is artificially constrained by regulations and NIMBYism.

Yes, that's right, Matthew. If it weren't for those darned land-use regulations that have somehow been imposed upon the American people for half a century by unidentified forces, regulations that are mysteriously immune to change through democratic processes even though they are under the control of our elected representatives, we'd be building cities that look like DC and New York instead of Phoenix and Houston. How much longer are you going to keep pushing this nonsense?

Posted by Mixner | April 25, 2008 6:18 PM

On the local zoning level, I sometimes wonder if new zoning rules that cause most of the existing area to be noncompliant should not be allowed. If 90% of the existing housing stock has 5-10 foot setbacks, it makes no sense at all to mandate 30 foot setbacks for new construction. And yet this goes on, such that in most urban or near-urban settings nearly every building is grandfathered into the zoning in some way, and doing anything to it requires a special permit rather than being by right.

Posted by Nathan Williams | April 25, 2008 6:19 PM

On the local zoning level, I sometimes wonder if new zoning rules that cause most of the existing area to be noncompliant should not be allowed. If 90% of the existing housing stock has 5-10 foot setbacks, it makes no sense at all to mandate 30 foot setbacks for new construction. And yet this goes on, such that in most urban or near-urban settings nearly every building is grandfathered into the zoning in some way, and doing anything to it requires a special permit rather than being by right.

Posted by Nathan Williams | April 25, 2008 6:31 PM

Your commenters are kind of dicks.

Posted by Laertes | April 25, 2008 6:48 PM

Ethel to Tilly raises a good point about the travesty that was "urban renewal" in the 60s and 70s. I certainly am not opposed to popular input into these decisions and to preserving that which is worth preserving. I was simply observing that in Ward 3 in DC the tendency of the ANCs is to try and maintain extremely low density development that doesn't make a lot of sense - especially near Metro stations.

Laertes -- we're collectively invoking the "rubber glue" defense.

Posted by Sir Charles | April 25, 2008 8:34 PM

"
And the Chinese haven't let those "cumbersome infrastructure" issues curtail their rape of Tibet:
1. Burn the monasteries.
2. Beat up the monks, then kill them.
3. Put in the superhighway from Beijing to Lhasa.
Why can't the West learn from China?
"

While China's behavior in Tibet is deplorable, to link the one with the other seems somewhat pointless.
Plenty of countries have managed to screw over their minorities, with or without the capability to build efficient infrastructure. We can start with the US and Australia in the 19th century, move on to Turkey, Russia and Germany in the early 20th, to large parts of Africa in the later 20th, to Burma right now.

How about we stay on track with the subject, rather than veering off into irrelevant side topics?

Posted by Maynard Handley | April 25, 2008 8:55 PM