Accident-Prone Design

I started my Monday this week with a hit-and-run accident.  I was rear-ended at a red light and by choosing to get out of the way of oncoming traffic (before being hit again) I allowed the person to hit me to leave the scene before I could get any of their information.  I’ve already paid for one hit-and-run accident in this car – and I’m not all that keen on paying off my deductible because someone else wasn’t paying attention to the road.  Yet I had little rational choice in the matter.  And the reason?  Street design. 

My neighborhood was bisected by Highway 99 in the late 50’s.  Among the various deleterious impacts on the neighborhood resulting from being cut off from the rest of the area, was the mis-use of the existing surface streets.  The streets in my neighborhood were never intended to be thoroughfares.  Originally the neighborhoods were connected at almost every block.  The more active streets featured two painted lanes of traffic and shoulders wide enough for parking, but these were supplemented by numerous single lane residential streets that netted the neighborhood.  When the highway was added all but a few of those connecting streets were blocked, and one of the larger active streets was, with some modification, turned into a highway exit/onramp – the only nearby exit/onramp for the highway, servicing a law school, two factories, a large community college, and three residential neighborhoods.  Traffic in this area gets very complex during peak periods – with the streets often backing up for a half-mile or more with a combination of buses, big-rigs, and all sorts of personal autos.  The onramps are metered, which, while it helps reduce highway traffic, causes snarls of cars and buses on the surface streets. 

In part due to the traffic situation, and in part because of the design, accidents are very common in this area – everything from cars going off the bridge to crash on the highway below to collisions between cars to pedestrian and bicyclist accidents.  I will not ride my bicycle on this section of road – and after a handful of close calls, I’m even reluctant to walk.  Additionally, the sheer number of accidents means that the streets and fences are almost always undergoing repairs with lanes blocked off and sidewalks closed. 

Honestly, I’m amazed there aren’t more accidents then there are.

Today was my turn.  I was waiting at a red light when I was rear-ended and my car was bumped out into the intersection.  It was the beginning of morning rush-hour and I know from experience that people coming into that intersection from the freeway seldom have limited visibility, yet are reluctant to slow down if their light is green – which it was.  My car was still running – still mobile – and I chose to pull forward until I could get out of the way.  That meant driving across the bridge and pulling to the side of the road after the freeway.  The fellow in the black late 70’s El Camino who hit me had no obligation to follow me – after all, his way was clear the moment I crossed out of the intersection – and he took the opportunity to make an illegal u-turn and hightail it out of there before I could get his license plate number.

Nowhere to pull off to the side, no choice but to get out of the way.

Intersections like this abound in areas where we’ve taken low-capacity street infrastructure intended to handle a few cars at a time and tried to force-fit it to meet the needs of freeway culture.  Yet the costs are much higher than the infrastructure retro-fit.  A dozen motorists witnessed my accident this morning.  They all had to face the same choice I did – stop in a place where it was not only going to block traffic, but where it was patently unsafe, or continue to a safer place and… and what?  Reconvene?  Assume that everyone involved would live up to their obligations and accept responsibility for their actions? 

Reality says I’ll be paying my deductible.  Again. 

There is a lot of concern about improving this neighborhood and helping it to stabilize economically and socially.  Yet that is impossible as long as the most basic infrastructure – the streets – are fundamentally unsafe and over-capacity.  What if I had been on a motorcycle or a scooter or a bicycle or if I had been walking across the street?  What happens when there is no safe way to stop and assist in an accident? 

Road safety must go beyond lights and lines – lanes and timings.  It must include buffers and space to both prevent and address accidents.  And if the street cannot both be safe and manage the desired capacity, then maybe it is time to take a serious look at the design and start to figure out just how many lives the cheap ad-hoc solution will need to cost before it becomes too expensive.

The Problem with Growth

One of the biggest challenges with understanding the impacts of development, sprawl, and urban planning is that it is a fairly academic topic.  To really understand how things are now, it is necessary to understand how they got this way, which means understanding the history and the economics of urban and suburban development.  It means recognizing the role that government policies and subsidies have played in land use choices, as well as the corporate and business influences that have directly and indirectly shaped both the way we use our land, and the way we relate to it as humans.  

Coming across an article that successfully distills the necessary components of development into a potent and meaningful discussion of the long-term impacts of modern development patterns is a great boon.  Moreso when that article is so clear as to be accesible to people with little or no background in urban land use.  And even better when the information is so well written as to actually inspire a lively dinner conversation.  Over the second beer no less. 

That is exactly what this article by Charles Marohn over at the Strong Towns Blog does though.  Building on the growth machine theory, this article takes the theory and applies it to the actual process – with the results that we see all around us.  And for those of us who work in local government, the long-term impacts of prolonged and exponential growth are daunting at best, and more often crippling.  And woe to anyone who dares argue that maybe, just maybe, exponential growth is not the best plan for long-term sustainability as they get steamrolled by the commercial interests of politically influential developers and land-holders.

The one component absent from Marohn’s article is the part where growth is a relative term.  Study after study has shown that most growth is not so much actual growth as regional reshuffling.  The suburbs were the reshuffling of population from the central city to the outer rings.  Commercial development has now been shown to be the regional reshuffling of businesses from one jurisdiction to another – usually accompanied by a tax break or some other economic incentive.  This only underlines the illusory profitabiliy of “growth”.

The problem has so many facets that it can be overwhelming to try to get a handle on it all – but Marohn provides a fantastic foundation.  I’m looking forward to following along as we try to work out some solutions.

On Urban Parks

The park near my house used to have the reputation as one of the best places to get drugs, a cheap prostitute, or knifed.  The funny thing is that the facilities immediately adjacent to the park didn’t match that image at all.  One side is bordered by a law school – one that offers extensive evening programs for working professionals.  Another corner shares a property line with a church.  Granted, it is sort of an esoteric church, but the building is well maintained and there is regular activity.  There is a library on the corner diagonal from the park.  It is one of the earliest libraries in the city and was preserved for its architectural and cultural contribution to the community when many of the other public buildings in the area were either sold or removed from public service.  A bread factory is diagonal from another corner of the park, and the back is lined with single family homes.  The park features basket ball courts, horseshoe pits, a pool, a baseball diamond, children’s play areas, lots of trees and tables, and a lovely pavilion for entertainment.

And it is totally underutilized.  I’ve never seen the horseshoe pits being used.  The children’s play area is almost always empty.  The pool was only open a handful of days last summer.  The baseball diamond is set back near the residential area and invisible from the street, so who knows when it gets used.  Despite the fact that there are numerous bands and theatre groups in the area, the pavilion is always empty.  Only the basketball court and the picnic tables get regular use.

Another nearby park, with a mile long perimeter trail, a couple of tennis courts, a basketball court, a children’s play area, and a baseball diamond, on the other hand, has almost constant traffic.  This despite the fact that one edge of the park is lined by a very busy and dangerous street and that the rest of the park is accessible only by narrow residential streets with severe speed control tables all over the place.  This park is a narrow oval of grass and trees.  Yet go out at any time of day – from 5 am to 10 pm and there are people out using the park – and not to sell drugs or sex.  They’re walking their dogs and running the trail and playing with their kids and their office softball leagues.

I’ve spent some time considering the differences between these parks – I’m a big fan of urban parks and visit one or another almost daily.  But I almost never go to the park near my house.  It isn’t the reputation – that was before I moved to the area, and the park has been cleaned up a lot since then.  Strict no-alcohol and drug-free zone enforcement has helped, as well as improved lighting, and more family friendly facilities.  And while there are often people camped out at the picnic tables in the middle of the day – their presence is generally not threatening.  My neighborhood has one of the highest unemployment rates in the city.  That means a lot of people with a lot of time.  Hanging out at the park is not a bad way to spend the day, and while there are some obvious gang affiliations, gang violence in the area is really not that common.  Or more specifically, it is less common there than at some of the other places I frequently find myself. 

So why don’t I use the park?  Why doesn’t it have the same kinds of utilization as other nearby parks?  There are 2 reasons that I have identified so far.

1.  There is no perimeter trail.  All of the parks I frequent have perimeter running trails of crushed granite.  Most of my park visits are to run or walk my dog, and I’m not a fan of concrete for either.  The crushed granite drains water well (most of the time), provides a slightly softer running surface, and isn’t hard on the dog’s paws during the hot summer months. 

2.  A large section of the park’s perimeter is backed up against homes.  This makes that section of the park feel secluded and lacks visibility from the street.  Like many determined runners with jobs and life responsibilities, I frequently run in the pre-dawn and post-dusk hours.  Running along a stretch of park that has limited or no visibility from the street gives me the heebies.  So if there was a perimeter trail at this park, it would have to be designed in a way that mitigated for the lack of street access along the back.  It wouldn’t be cheap.

The result is a marginalized park.  Parks are expensive amenities.  And urban neighborhoods, like mine, with a lack of open space and safe places for children to play, low-income residents, and high-unemployment rates that impact the economic health of the area both need and value their parks.  These neighborhoods cannot afford marginalized parks.

So how can we help a marginalized park meet its full potential?

Journalistic Bias

My New Year’s resolution this year is to get up before 5 am so I can get some work done before I have to go to work.  This is not an easy thing for me, however, I have found a secret for success – an alarm clock that turns on the radio – specifically NPR.  Because nothing will get me irritated enough to get out of bed and to work as another story about Repealing the new Healthcare bill or the latest Tea-Party extravaganza or the criminal neglect of the safety systems of our energy extraction enterprises.  Irritation is a wonderful motivator.

Today, though, I had to pause.  Respected journalist Ginger Rutland, whose stories I usually enjoy, had an editorial on the Governor’s plans for redevelopment that made me cringe.  Yes, the editorial pages is where journalistic objectivity is tossed out the window, but that assumes that there is some sort of journalistic objectivity to toss.  Take the Sacramento Bee, for instance.  While their news stories have been well written and researched, the editorials are decidedly one-sided.  And it isn’t hard to see why.  Redevelopment proponents are not a generally compelling group – a bunch of guys in suits who speak in legalese is not a totally inaccurate description of the folks who lobby for redevelopment interests.  Put them in a popularity contest with a lineup of school children and firefighters, and redevelopment doesn’t have a chance.  After all, as Ms. Rutland ends her editorial, if forced to choose between a ritzy mermaid bar and school funding, the vast majority of people will choose to fund the schools.

But that is a false dichotomy – a staged choice, if you will.  It is essentially the “Cake or Death” scenario.  A no brainer.

That is because redevelopment is not about golf courses or expensive lofts or mermaid bars.  It is about Blight.  It’s fascinating that the one concept that is central to the whole legal identity of redevelopment is totally absent from the political discussion of redevelopment.  Redevelopment is not about subsidizing [insert project here], it is about removing and improving conditions in neighborhoods that create health and safety risks and that prevent areas from being economically viable.  Have you walked down K st alone at night?  How about downtown?  Oak Park?  Del Paso Heights?  If Ms. Rutland thinks that the current condition of Oak Park does not pose a health and safety risk to the average citizen who happens to stumble into the area after dark, then she is delusional, and I have the police report to prove it. 

I am sympathetic to the public perception of redevelopment as a tool to siphon public funds to wealthy private developers.  I will never go to the mermaid bar because pretentious places like that make me uncomfortable, and I’ll never be able to afford a loft at the Elliot building despite the fact that I think it is one of the most interesting structures in Sacramento.  It would be great to see redevelopment that focused a little less on catering to the wealthy and provided more housing and recreation opportunities for the rest of us.  But that isn’t the point either.  The point is blight.

There are three other vital components missing from the redevelopment conversation. 

1.  Affordable housing.  Private developers have no incentive to build affordable housing because it does not pencil at a profit.  Without public subsidy – whether it comes from the feds or redevelopment or private grantors – protection and production of affordable housing would grind to a halt.  Now there is a rumor going around that now that housing prices have dropped back down into the realm of reality that those houses are now “affordable” and therefore “accessible” to lower-income groups.  Let’s dispel that right now.  Pretend you are a bank.  Now ask yourself, would you loan $150,000 to a single parent of 2 with no savings account making $13 an hour at a retail job?  Yeah.  Enough said.  Redevelopment is a critical component of affordable housing production, and that fact should not be ignored.

2.   The numbers regarding the amount of money available from redevelopment are squishy at best.  We’re talking jello squishy.  Ms. Rutland suggests that the state had to backfill $5 billion to schools due to the taxes siphoned off by redevelopment.  That is fascinating considering that in 07/08 (which was a good fiscal year compared to more recent times) the total that redevelopment agencies brought in from tax increment was $5,401,275.  Even if that money had remained in the tax stream, only a fraction of it would have gone to schools – the rest would have gone to counties and fire districts and public utilities districts and a wide assortment of other taxing entities.  Which suggests that if there really is a $5 billion shortfall in school funding, then there is more than redevelopment’s claim to tax increment at fault. 

3.  Finally, redevelopment funds projects that would not otherwise be funded.  Now yesterday I had to listen to some suburbanite rant about how the money has moved out of downtown and how government needs to go where the money is.  Ignorance is bliss, I suppose, but it is also often very painful to recover from.  Energy prices will go up.  Sprawl is unsustainable.  Infill and densification will happen.  They are happening.  They need to happen.  But as long as greenfield development is cheaper and easier than infill and redevelopment, then there will need to be subsidies to balance the playing field.  Waiting until the market will actually support redevelopment means waiting until fuel prices reach $7 a gallon and low and moderate income families are commuted into poverty.  So yeah, a mermaid bar seems like an excess right now, but if it can help draw private capital into an area prime for rehabilitation into affordable and accessible housing and employment, then it is a pretentious excess that just might be tolerable.

Unfortunately I don’t expect to hear much balance from the media on this issue.  It is too easy to play to the emotions – especially after years of perpetual financial crisis.  But I would like to issue this concern to Sacramento journalists and pundits alike.  There is a baby there in that bath water.  You might want to consider that when advocating tossing the whole mess.

The Diametrics of Redevelopment

It is fascinating how an issue can be truly bi-partisan in nature, but still trigger both partisan stereotyping and ill-informed posturing.  It looks like California Governor Jerry Brown’s budget plan to eliminate redevelopment agencies has managed to do something that almost never happens in U.S. government – it has united the left and the right in agreement.  Of course, this alignment is possible because the State has a new opponent – Local Governments – a veritable army of Davids standing up to the California State Goliath – er, Government.

This is not to cast aspersions on either side – history may favor the victor, but reality is that each side – each participant feels like they are doing the right thing – the best thing that they can do.  ‘Course, one glance at current events makes it painfully clear just how dangerous righteous justification can be. 

It’s amazing how righteous a $26 Billion budget gap can make folks.

As predicted, Gov. Brown’s plan to tap into redevelopment money to fill that gap has not gone over well with local governments.  There have been the assorted rumors followed by the assorted emergency midnight resolutions followed by the assorted commentary and political gesturing.  The problem is that nowhere in this adventure has there been any bilateral dialogue.  Gov. Brown has been telling (albeit respectfully) local governments what needs to happen, and local governments and been nodding and then turning around and doing whatever they think necessary to protect their funds.

Maybe it’s time for a little understanding.

Yes, the State budget cannot be fixed without local jurisdictions deciding to be part of that solution.  At the same time, though, the State needs to recognize the limitations that many of those jurisdictions are facing.  Most of the newer and often smaller cities already pay huge amounts in revenue neutrality payments to counties and other governing agencies.  Revenue neutrality is where, in order for a new city to incorporate, it must make payments to the entities that would be impacted by their incorporation to ensure that those entities do not suffer huge fiscal losses.  The result of this policy is that places that would like to become cities must have massive financial resources before they can even consider incorporation.  The incorporation of new cities in California has slowed to a trickle since revenue neutrality was passed, as new cities pay to prop up struggling county governments. 

The irony is that most new cities incorporate because they want to have more control over their own resources.  In California, most mew cities incorporate because their parent counties struggle so much with providing adequate services that many neighborhoods feel neglected and ignored and powerless.

Older cities, of course, are exempt from the revenue neutrality clause.  So, as with Prop 13’s property tax limits, revenue neutrality puts excessive financial burden on newcomers – without recognizing that newcomers are a critical component of economic growth.

What does this have to do with redevelopment?  Well for cities like L.A. (from which the majority of claims of redevelopment funded public-private shenanigans orient) or San Francisco, it means nothing.  But for the Citrus Heights and Rancho Cordova’s of the State, it means a lot.  These cities start their budget process with a payment to the county, and then try to fill in the gaps from there.  They rely heavily on redevelopment tax increment money to fund the sort of development projects that older cities can throw general fund money towards.  And since these newer cities were formed based on decades of perceived poor services and neglect, there is often a serious need for public investment in their communities. 

If you are in doubt, take a drive down Folsom Blvd. – which used to be Highway 50 before the freeway was built. 

In other states, states without the severe limits posed by Prop 13, states without revenue neutrality laws, states that allow for cities to incorporate and give communities more control over their property taxes, it is common for several new cities to form each year.  These new cities are a refection of different communities priorities and perceived needs, and allow for improved services, community development, and community engagement.  Whether that is better than California’s determination to keep their counties on life-support – even it means eliminating the best way (total incorporation and the shifting of all metro area services onto cities) to make them healthy. 

The point here is that nothing is cut and dried when it comes to the relationship between state and local governments.  The state budget is a problem, yes, but many local governments are also facing budget shortfalls, and asking them to solve the state’s problem is tantamount to shifting the debt around – and may well push some local governments to the brink of bankruptcy – which is never good.  Equally, not all redevelopment projects are cash cows for private developers, not all redevelopment agencies are corrupt, and not all redevelopment areas are prosperous subdivisions.  In fact, the majority are just the opposite.

Which is to say that maybe it is time to dial down the editorials and the finger-pointing and the accusations of political one-ups-man-ship, and have a real two-way discussion – maybe even a workshop or charrette or some other interactive involvement.  Who knows, we might even come up with some real workable solutions.

Signs of the Times

This article in my twitter feed this morning hit a particular chord with me.  Every day on my way to the park I pass through what is a pretty standard intersection in my neighborhood.  On one corner there is a Hispanic grocery store, Mercado Loco (Crazy Market – though it looks an awful lot like your basic Safeway – I love Hispanic place names!) which has the standard sea of parking front the streets.  Across the way is the typically difficult-to-enter-and-exit Shell station, which I use only in the most dire of emergencies.  Across from that is a 24 hour Yum-Yum donut shop which sits in the corner spot of the local strip mall (which also features a laundromat, Chinese restaurant, Mexican restaurant, Pawn shop, and several vacant storefronts) adjacent to another sea of street front parking.  The last corner, though, is the official start of a traditional first-ring suburb residential neighborhood.  Granted, that block is pretty transitional – not in use, it is all housing – but in quality.  The neighborhood to the east is rough.  But the neighborhood to the west is thoroughly upper-class.  Like many neighborhoods in Northern California the transition is abrupt – about one block long – and in the case of this neighborhood, it starts on this corner.  Except this is what actually exists on this corner:

Currently it is a garish yellow and green soft drink ad.

At night the lights along the bottom of the billboard are so bright that they illuminate the whole side of the adjacent house – shining through the windows all night long.  It might be one thing if this was a strictly urban neighborhood with the density and mixed use inherent in that setting.  But it isn’t.  It’s residential all the way.  And it’s ugly.  It’s a waste of land, and it contributes significantly to what is already a very unappealing intersection.  Now granted, I don’t think that corner lot would be a very good place for another house.  It would be as difficult to access as the gas station diagonal.  But there is a wide range of potential uses between eyesore and residence that could improve the appearance and usability of that intersection – not the least of which is a community garden for the Children’s Home just down the street, for instance.

This is not to say that I am against all urban advertising.  As this post clarifies, there is a definite, and I would even say critical, place for advertising in cities.  This doesn’t just include the new advertising that many companies and municipalities are developing, but a certain amount of preservation of the old advertising – the bits of history that contribute to urban character.  Specifically I’m thinking of many of the traditional signs still hanging in San Francisco’s Chinatown, for example, which have moved past advertisement and into the realm of public art.  Another example is this sign located in my neighborhood:

The original location of Esther's Bakery in Oak Park Sacramento - a neighborhood with a complex, but fascinating history.

I have sincere hope that when (if) Mayor Johnson’s St. Hope Development enterprise actually moves on the redevelopment of this property (which they own) that they preserve at least the exterior character of that side of the building.  This photo is unimpressive, but the typography in the actual sign is lovely and it gives the otherwise abandoned section of that block an old-tyme and almost homey feel.  The difference between this and the billboard a few blocks over is striking.  While Esther’s Pastries is long gone, the sign contributes to the character of the neighborhood.  The billboard is always current, but it’s presence detracts from the liveability of the neighborhood. 

Finally, there is the billboard that I pass every day on my way to work that features this photo:

I hate this ad so much that I gag a little every time I pass it. Which is every day.

I cannot express how horrible the billboard featuring this ad is.  Apart from the social context – the fact that it preys on the superficial insecurities of people (mostly women), and the fact that it is ugly, and in very bad taste – there is the fact that it is HUGE and perched along the freeway in such a position that it is impossible to avoid.  It ads nothing of value to the community, it doesn’t provide useful information, and it isn’t even benign in its design (like the ads on the neighborhood billboard generally are).  It is intrusive in its proportions, glaring in its prominence, and even assaulting in its subject matter – seriously who wants to be forced to look at that before they’ve even had their morning coffee?  And unlike the weight-loss ads that show up on the various websites I visit, I can’t click off or close the window or shrink the frame until it disappears.  I can’t even look away, for fear of rear-ending the person in front of me.  I have to endure it. 

I’ve dabbled in marketing enough to know that there is a lot of support – both from the capitalist nature of our economy and the free speech provisions of our politics – for advertising.  Yet if a community is going to be able to have a real impact on the character and quality of its neighborhoods, then it has to have some control over the kind of signage allowed.  Smart marketers would recognize that the last thing they want is required community approval of their designs.  Smart marketers would notice that well designed and visually appealing signage is not only tolerated but embraced by neighborhoods.  Smart marketers would figure out how to make that work for their clients. 

From what I see on the streets and signs along the freeways I travel, there aren’t a lot of smart marketers out there.

Hasta la Vista Redevelopment

My urban romance started with redevelopment.  Every city I’ve been to has an underutilized sector or two – often with historical ties to industry or transportation infrastructure.  Sacramento is no exception.  The R St. corridor is one of the oldest industrial corridors on the West Coast, and the currently stalled Rail Yards redevelopment project has had national press.  As they are, these areas – I have a hard time calling them neighborhoods because there is a dearth of neighbors – are architecturally and historically fascinating.  But as they could be?  The potential for beautiful, walkable, usable, livable neighborhoods with character and history and truly unique features is almost tangible.  You can just look at the brick buildings with their many-paned windows and clean architectural details (what a time when even factories and warehouses had architectural details), and even in their current state of decay, you can see their promise.  Yet it is a promise that hinges on redevelopment, and in the current economic climate in California, on publicly subsidized redevelopment – i.e. the very redevelopment that our new/old governor is planning to eliminate.

I’m not going to get into how much of Governor Brown’s success as Mayor of Oakland relied on redevelopment activities.  Nor am going to suggest that redevelopment is the most efficient use of funds.  However what I am going suggest is that redevelopment, or something that looks very much like redevelopment, is critical to the necessary transition from greenfield sprawl development to infill and densified urban development.  There are dozens of legitimate and well-defined reasons that extensive greenfield development as a long-term solution to population growth is untenable.  Polution, sprawl, increased reliance on automobiles and fossil fuels, suburban isolation, and wasted land are just a handful of the problems inherent in sprawl oriented greenfield development.  Yet there is no argument that greenfield development is cheaper than infill or urban redevelopment.  Greenfields don’t have potential hazardous wastes on site.  There’s no demolition necessary.  The overall requirements for building are reduced.  But mostly, the land is much cheaper.  So that even if building the infrastructure and paying the development fees adds to the cost of the project, developers still make money on greenfield developments because the initial cost is so much lower.

From a pure market perspective, greenfield development has the advantage over most infill and urban redevelopment.  Yet we need to focus on infill and urban redevelopment, as well as higher density greenfield development, if we are going to have any chance of improving our air quality and our water quality and of protecting our open space and improving our overall efficiency.  So the market, at least for now, needs help.  For many communities that help has come in the form of redevelopment subsidies provided by creating a redevelopment area managed by a redevelopment agency.  Without those efforts so many of the newly refurbished neighborhoods that urban dwellers most appreciate and enjoy would be impossible to build.  Instead those properties would have continued to decay and would have remained under-used – or worse, would have attracted crime and encouraged neglect that impacted the values and uses of nearby properties.

This is not to say that redevelopment is always good.  A lot of it has been bad.  A lot of the money has been misused.  A lot of land has been declared a redevelopment area simply to provide the redevelopment agency access to the tax increment. California redevelopment law has been almost constantly evolving in response to these abuses, and as recently as 2006 changes were made that were designed to ensure that redevelopment was being used for its intended purpose – the elimination of blight. 

Yet for all of that, redevelopment has been integral in changing not only the urban fabric one project at a time, but has acted as a catalyst in altering the perception of the city from a crime-ridden cesspool to a place where interesting and cool and educational and worthwhile things happen.  That perception is going to be a fundamental component of urban change as we start to really address energy policy and transportation availability and land use in more environmentally responsible and responsive ways.

Which is to say that one shouldn’t attempt surgery with a machete.  Sure, cut out the bad bits – call to account the redevelopment agencies with areas that do not meet the current definitions of blight – the areas with large amounts of open undeveloped land, the areas with little or no physical or economic blight, the areas that abused loopholes in early versions of redevelopment law.  But preserve the redevelopment agencies and areas that take redevelopment seriously – that work to improve long neglected neighborhoods and to preserve city character and that understand their role in the future of the city itself – a role that is going to be key in protecting our greenfields from wasteful development by providing infill and restoration and renewal opportunities.

This is going to be an ongoing theme here, I’m sure, as this round of California budget drama unfolds.  Hopefully some of that potential that ignited my original urban romance will survive.

Re-Imagining Vacancy

Like many US cities, Sacramento has the traditional downtown business district.  There are highrises and vertical parking structures, wide one-way streets, and multiple points of freeway access.  And there are even a smattering of lofts, restaurants, and night-clubs.  Then there is midtown.  If someone is looking for urban life in Sacramento, they generally skip downtown and go straight to midtown.  Midtown has the artists studios, galleries, numerous cafes and restaurants, bars, clubs of all sorts, boutiques, and all of it on an easily walkable grid.  The one thing midtown doesn’t really have a lot of is parking.  But catch the crowd at the monthly Second Saturday art gallery exhibits and even the parking issue seems easily overcome. 

Midtown is thriving, and has been for quite a while now.  At the same time, downtown seems to be even more desolate that ever.  The handful of large-scale redevelopment projects appear to be on indefinite hiatus, and vacant lots (or lots in various phases of vacancy – from post-demolition to pre-construction) wrapped in temporary chain link fences are common.  Some of those fences are decorated with long printed banners, as though an attempt to distract passers-by from the gaping holes in the urban fabric.  They are a less-than-elegant solution, and bring nothing of value to the area.  Furthermore, rents are astronomical, and whole blocks of two-story storefronts sit vacant and boarded up against vagrants and vandals. 

Back in the day – when the suburbs were still all shiny and new (ideologically as well as physically) midtown too suffered from high commercial vacancies and general neglect.  Rents came down, artists and Bohemians moved in.  The revitalization of midtown didn’t happen overnight, however, as the art and entertainment scene grew, so did the desirability of the neighborhood.  Now there are few empty storefronts, despite the ongoing recession, apartments rent fast, homes are still priced fairly close to pre real-estate crash values, and the neighborhood draws young educated creative-class types from the entire Sacramento Metro Area. 

Downtown could be more of the same.  This Seattle Times article about different temporary uses of stalled projects and developments offers a great entry point for the conversion that could breath  new life into the downtown area.  Temporary parks and gardens are great, but even better would be the opening of vacant and boarded storefronts to artists and non-profit groups – even if on a temporary basis.  Low-rent studio cooperatives and temporary galleries could help bridge the gap between the dead downtown and the lively midtown.  Allowing for live-work lofts – real lofts, not the over-priced condominium-ized versions – and encouraging businesses that operate on a variety of time schedules could also help put some eyes on the street – improving neighborhood safety and lending the area some vitality.

The key is occupancy, and in this market, the key to occupancy is affordability.  Sure, the rents might just barely cover the liability insurance, but the long-run advantage to the area could be immeasurable.  And in this market, we have got to be in it for the long-run.

The Property Value Illusion

“For our own property values,” he said, “we need the illusion.”

This was the comment made by a homeowner in the Disney Master Planned suburb of Celebration in response to the murder and standoff/suicide this week.  The illusion he’s referring to is the community’s image as a residential haven exempt from the crime – or at least violent crime – that affects urban and most suburban neighborhoods.  A major part of that illusion has come from the fact that the only people who afford to live in Celebration were those who could plunk down $1 mil for a home.

Which only underscores the priorities involved.

It is telling that the resident quoted in the article is more concerned with property values than the safety or wellbeing of the community’s residents.  And the commentary isn’t isolated to Celebration.  For the last few decades, as suburban sprawl fostered the fantasy that growth was destined to continue indefinitely, the role of property – and especially houses – in our lives has dramatically changed.

I remember cleaning out the home of my deceased great grandmother when I was a teenager.  She had lived in that house in Portland Oregon since her family moved there from North Dakota during the depression.  My grandmother had spent much of her childhood in that house, and it was “grandma’s house” for my mother and aunt.  Despite the changes in the family as members married and moved away, that house remained a constant.  That was because it was more than a house or a piece of property.  It was a home.

Houses play a decidedly different role in our lives now.  Instead of picking a house to be a home, where we will settle down and live for the rest of our lives, we pick houses based on their resale values.  We make lay estimates about the future of the neighborhood, we prognosticate property prices in five or ten years, we run rough calculations about the value of a new roof or a kitchen remodel, and then we decide if it is a house we want to live in.  For now.  Because who knows where we’ll be in five or ten years.

The result is a radical adjustment in our perception of our own properties.  Houses are not homes, like they were for our grandparents or great grandparents, houses are investments.  And the primary concern for an investment is not the role it plays in the community or its importance to residents, but its value – the best price it could fetch on the market.  There are three (well more than three, but three that I want to talk about) major problems with this.

First, the commodification of property – houses in particular – relies on a mobile and constantly shifting population.  This dependency is almost completely at odds with the original purpose of home ownership.  Originally, people bought homes where they wanted to settle, where they planned on living for a long time – the rest of their lives even.  That was why the 30-year mortgage was ever conceived as a possible financial tool.  It was the fact that people would stay in their homes for 30 years, pay them off, and have a place to live rent-free that made a mortgage like that feasible.

Yet the commodification of property disrupts this process.  It encourages people to trade up and to view their current house as a big piggy bank that can be busted open for equity as soon as that better house is available or possible.  This means that instead of paying off a house, homeowners spend decades swapping one mortgage for another as they try to get the best “investment” property they can.  The reality is that they are gambling on property prices always increasing, and they are hinging their future on their ability to sell that best “investment” house and live their final years on the equity.  Recent adventures in real estate have shown just how risky that gamble is.

So the commodification of houses is antithesis to the original intention of homeownership.

At the same time, demographic changes are starting to show as a shift in preferences.  Family sizes are shrinking, people change jobs every few years, and fluctuation energy prices have put transportation in the spotlight.  Which brings me to my second problem, homeownership is becoming obsolete – at least in the traditional suburban sense.

A superficial evaluation of the demographic changes in this nation beg the question, Who will be purchasing those three and four bedroom homes out in the suburban hinterlands?  The X and Y generations have been raised on trade-up economics.  Yet they also have dramatically different employment and community expectations from the boomer generation.  Their communities are as much virtual as physical, and they have no delusions about working for the same company, or even in the same field for their entire career.  These alphabetical generations cannot afford to stay put for 30 years until they can outright own their home.  Yet the current economic and social conventions push them into homeownership – even though most know it will only be short term.  This short-term ownership means that these homeowners are especially vulnerable to housing price adjustments.  A drop in house prices followed by a 10-year recovery is much less of a financial crisis to someone planning to stay in their home for the 30-year long haul.  But that same drop is devastating to a homeowner who will need to move across the country for their next job in five years.

So the commodification of houses limits the mobility of the generations of wage earners who are most reliant on their mobility to adapt to economic changes.

And that leads to the third problem.  Neighborhood turnover is often perceived to lead to neighborhood instability.  This is part of the NIMBY attitude about apartments – that renters are so mobile and that their turnover is so high that they fail to form tight-knit communities – the kind of tight-knit communities that safeguard neighborhoods from things like neglect and blight – conditions that are often connected with increases in crime.  Yet the commodification of property is based on turnover – on buying, temporarily occupying, and then selling houses.  Which is kind of like renting, only with loan origination fees and a lot more paperwork.  While these temporary homeowners are more inclined to stay in a neighborhood a bit longer than renters, they are ultimately temporary residents.  And while they do have an interest in preserving the neighborhood character, it is because that neighborhood character impacts their property values, not because they are actually vested in the people, history, and future of the neighborhood.

So the commodification of houses contributes to neighborhood instability.

What does this mean?  Well, among other things, it suggests that the house as investment attitude is fundamentally flawed.  It also means that it might be time to start thinking about different ways to approach our relationship with property – especially houses.  And maybe it means that it is time to reconsider just what makes a residence a home – the bundle of goods and relationships we really need to become vested in a place, even a place that we know will be a temporary stop.  We just might find that bundle doesn’t include a mortgage.

And maybe then, when bad things happen to our neighbors, the last thing we worry about is the impact it will have on our property values.

 

The “Almost Perfect” Park

Sacramento is known for quite a few different things – contentious politics, intense summer heat, obnoxious cowbells – but seldom does anyone mention its parks.  Maybe that is because they aren’t located in the City’s heart, like so many of the showpiece parks of major cities.  Or maybe it is because parks no longer play the same role in our public lives that they once did.  Or maybe we just take them for granted.  Yet, they are deserving of mention – both praise and criticism.

Currently my favorite park in Sacramento is also one of the most popular and most heavily used parks in Sacramento.  It hosts the Zoo, has a golf course, two amusement parks (albeit tiny ones), three ponds, three baseball diamonds, a kiddie pool, basketball courts, a play area, lots of shaded picnic grounds, and a beautiful set of WPA Depression Era gardens and monuments.  But the feature that gets the most use is the crushed granite running trail that rims the perimeter of the park and bisects it across the middle along the main access road.  For 3/4 of the perimeter of the park, the trail is a pleasure to run (if you’re into running – my dog prefers strolling and sniffing, and it is a good trail for that too).  That remaining quarter though, can be downright hair-raising.  Something are best explained with pictures.

Two of the four sides of the park are bordered along fairly busy streets.  One of those streets is a two lane road with both bike lanes and parking spaces at the side of each lane.  The result looks like this:

Trail with Buffer

Even when the cars go speeding by (and lots of them do speed on this street) the impact is negligible because of the buffer provided by the parking and the bike lane.

Most of the other sections of the trail are either along very quiet residential streets or actually inset into the park like this:

Trail with Setback

Granted, this section of the trail gets a bit spooky after dark.  And the visibility can be less than perfect around some of the curves, but most of the time it feels peaceful and sheltered and shady – all of which are nice on a long run.

Then there is the truly scary section.  This part of the trail is right up against a 4 lane road with a center lane.  There is no parking along this road, and no bike lane along this section.  The result looks like this:

Trail with no Buffer

Cars along this section of road are usually moving at a pretty fast pace.  The speed limit is 35, but I’ve noticed people going much faster – wide roads tend to encourage speeding.  Runners on this part of the trail are often subject to backwash whenever a big truck goes speeding past, and dog-walkers keep their pets on a short leash as the average 6′ leash would put your dog out into the middle of traffic.  The proximity to the cars is particularly unnerving at night or on foggy mornings, the first because of the higher speeds possible when the traffic counts are low, and the second because the cars can sneak up on you before you even know they are there.

The solution seems pretty simple.  Move the trail away from the edge of the road.  Of course when the Parks District is so strapped for cash that they’ve had to cut way back on Park Maintenance – so much so that volunteers met all summer to help maintain the park, moving what is at worst dangerous and at best an uncomfortable stretch of trail is out of the question.  Course, there is the question of why the trail wasn’t inset at the get-go.  But that’s a question for another day.

I’ve been spending a lot of time lately noticing the different aspects of neighborhood, street, and public space design that makes places better and worse.  Narrow sidewalks right up next to a busy street is definitely one of the more prominent characteristics that make sidewalks feel unsafe and uninviting.

In the case of this trail, I’ve taken to substituting that section by cutting across the park along the service road.  It is much more peaceful, and I have far fewer cars to worry about, but there are no street lights and at night it can be intimidating.  It’s a trade off.  But should it have to be?