Addressing Food Deserts

Here is a link to a post that I wrote today for RenewLV's Crossroads blog:

http://renewlv.wordpress.com/2009/10/31/smart-food-access-the-key-to-healthy-weight/

I'd like to answer my own question that I posed at the end of the post. I asked:
“What are your suggestions for improved (food) access?” There are likely many ways of effectively answering this question, but the most comprehensive answers, in my view, must contain the following two principles:

1) Incentives to bring grocery stores into retrofitted buildings. The Weis’, Giant’s, and Wegman’s of the world currently have a real financial incentive to build on large plots of land far, far away from the city. Land is cheaper, the building can be much larger (therefore capturing economies of scale), its customer base in the suburbs has more disposable incomes, and parking regulations can be easily satisfied. Cities and Counties could offer subsidized retrofits and building costs, distribution partnerships with other area stores (thereby capturing economies of scale), and reducing or eliminating parking requirements (which would save on construction costs; remember, more than half of construction costs of standard commercial buildings go into the parking lot).

2) Development of mixed-income, mixed-use communities. The root problem with food access for all income levels is the economic segregation of our communities. Historically, problems of food access and obesity (as well as high rates of inner city poverty and crime) did not exist on large scales until cities began funneling the majority of municipal investments away from city centers. The way to fix this is to do the exact opposite of what is currently being done: economic integration and central investment. Central cities and inner-ring suburbs should be redeveloped to lift the skills and provide opportunities for people of low-incomes, attract people of middle- and high-incomes, and build communities around both groups with necessities and amenities at their cores. At the same time, outer-ring suburbs must densify to various extents (the closer to the city, the denser) and offer housing and employment options for people of lower-incomes, while also offering convenient amenities and opportunities for alternative modes of transportation (walking, biking, light rail, etc.). These types of economically-integrated communities will better attract food establishments.

Implementing the first principle without the second requires an increase in taxes and many significant political fights that can tear a community and city apart. Yet, if the second principle does not garner any support, incentives alone are worth it and can work if done properly and with public input and buy-in. Implementing the second principle, however, makes the first largely unnecessary. Although distribution partnerships and property tax incentives may be used to further encourage food development in comprehensive communities, the already extant customer base and relaxed parking requirements of a mixed-use community might be incentive enough.

My Beef with Climate Change

The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania recently submitted a Climate Change Action Plan to the public for comments. This plan contains 52 action items that the State intends to implement to save 36% of Green House Gas emissions between now and 2020. As some of you may know, I have a significant image problem concerning the Climate Change debate. I am a student of science, and therefore I know that the entire scientific community now concurs that climate change is occurring according to a warming trend (thus the term “Global Warming”). What very few scientists, and a good chunk of the American public, disagree on is the cause of this change. Most scientists attribute the change in climate to human use of fossil fuels for transportation, home and office climate control, and industrial production. Very few scientists disagree with this assessment, and those that do have the ears of a significantly forceful segment of the media, who in turn have the ears of about 30 percent of Americans. As a result, the terms “Climate Change” and “Global Warming” have become overly politicized to the point that it is very difficult to solve any local environmental problems without the divisive issue wedging a divide.

I believe that consumer excesses, backed by a culture of “Me”, are causing local environmental problems, which all combine together to create the global problem of climate change. If you ask any supporter of the climate change agenda, he or she would likely agree with that assessment, yet the way the issue and its solutions is presented makes it seem as if individual consumer behaviors on the local level are largely irrelevant. The problem with the Climate Change issue is one of marketing, and reflects a complete misunderstanding of human psychology. By and large, people are driven to act locally, because they live and breathe and think locally. There’s a reason why it is said that, “All politics is local.” As much as polar bears look cute and cuddly and most of us feel sorry that they are losing their home, it is difficult to understand that that is connected with my driving habits. If the presenters of climate change information and solutions understood this at all, they would realize that their efforts are working against their goals.

You can read the plan, or at least the parts you are interested in, at the following link:

http://www.depweb.state.pa.us/energy/cwp/view.asp?a=1532&q=539829

You may also comment on the plan by sending an email to epclimatereportcomments@state.pa.us. I thought some of you might be interested in a comment that I sent earlier today:

Thank you for your work in creating this Climate Change Action Plan. I am glad to see that Pennsylvania emits 4% of US GHGs (we are 4% of the population) and that our population growth is greater than our GHG emission growth, but it is disheartening, yet not particularly surprising, to know that we are emitting 1% of the world's GHGs (we are .2% of the world's population). I have been educated as a Smart Growth urban planner, so I will make a couple of comments about the Land Use and Transportation section of the plan.

First, I think we would be doing ourselves a disservice by relying on fuel efficiency standard increases without coupling it with increasing state gas tax rates. There is a phenomenon known as the "rebound effect" in which the consumer cost savings of better fuel efficiency encourages drivers to drive more. Unless CAFE standards are drastically increased from what they are currently, the gains we will make in fuel efficiency will be quickly lost in increased VMT. Thus, our GHG emissions from fuel efficiency will be cancelled out and, likely, increased. The evidence for this phenomenon is not conclusive, yet it is intuitive and well known. One goal that could be used in concert with higher CAFÉ standards to counteract the rebound effect is an increase in the amount of state tax added to gasoline purchases. This approach has worked well in many areas of Europe to discourage people from driving unnecessarily and encouraging them to use public transit and other low-energy transportation options, as well as encouraging municipalities to invest in Smart Growth options. The point here is that fuel efficiency in the absence of higher gas prices and other disincentives for driving will not only counteract your Smart Growth plans but will also nullify GHG emission savings in the long run.

My fear with this document, and the climate change debate as a whole, is that it encourages decision-makers to think of reducing GHGs as the end-goal and not as a byproduct of the end-goal. Personally, I believe the end-goal should be to create vibrant, inclusive, and healthy (economically, environmentally, and human-centered) cities and communities. Gasoline consumption is largely dependent on the design of our cities. Diesel consumption is largely dependent on how much of our materials can be produced and obtained locally. Electricity consumption is largely dependent on the size and efficiency of our buildings. Climate Change is a local problem that has global consequences, and focusing on the global consequences encourages us to take one of two flawed actions: 1) treat the symptoms and not the causes; or 2) completely dismiss the validity of Climate Change because it is presented as too large of an issue to fathom. Overall, you have done a decent job of presenting locally-based solutions, yet the fact that these solutions are presented as Climate Change solutions (no matter how much evidence exists to support those solutions) will largely work against you politically.

Thank you for the opportunity to submit my comments to your plan. I wish you well in passing and especially implementing these actions. For questions or return comments, you may contact me at the address below:

Analyzing the Fat Tax

There has been a lot of controversy recently about a so-called “fat tax” that would essentially discourage people from buying products, such as soft drinks (with generally consist of more than 99% high fructose corn syrup), that are known to be high in empty calories and low in nutritional benefits. One of the main proposals right now would place a penny per ounce tax on soft drinks, which would raise about $15 billion per year for obesity prevention programs. Check out the following video for the full story:

http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2009/10/23/weighing-the-fat-tax/

I like the idea. Raising $15 billion for obesity and physical education, as well as physical environmental improvements that would encourage exercise, would go a long way in improving Americans’ quality of life. And that’s just from soft drinks. Imagine how much more money could be raised from candy, chips, sugary cereals, frozen dinners, high-fat restaurant foods, and (as much as it pains me to suggest) desserts. This is not the most popular idea, however. Many people are against adding any more taxes on American consumers, even ones that would likely be of significant benefit to us. It is seen as interfering with the market and making our current economic hardships even tougher.

There’s something to the economic hardship argument, but not in the way most people who argue for it are thinking. These high-fat foods are, by and large, the cheapest foods one can find at the grocery store. They also do not require a lot of time and energy to prepare. These foods are priced and ready-made for people of low-incomes. This is the reason why so many people living in poverty are also over-weight, a paradox that draws criticism from many people who don’t live in poverty because of the false belief that those people in poverty remain so partly because they spend so much money on extraneous food. In reality, people of low-incomes lack the resources to obtain extraneous foods, but they have just enough to obtain foods with extraneous calories, such as the ones mentioned in the paragraph above. They do not, however, have the resources to purchase the healthier foods that are priced at a premium and require time (which comes at a premium to people of low-incomes) to prepare. So, placing a tax on high-fat foods would essentially price people of low-incomes completely out of the food market.

Here’s what I would suggest: tax the unnecessary food items, such as soft drinks, candy, and (cringe!) desserts, and give tax credits for purchasing healthier items, such as fruit, raw vegetables, and whole grains. There are already government and private programs to visually mark foods as healthy. We could add a process to the system which would allow people to sign up for “credit cards” which can be swiped after each food purchase to keep track of healthy food credits. Those credits could then be cashed in during tax season. For people of the lowest incomes that cannot afford to wait until a tax credit comes, we could use some of the money raised from the “fat tax” to add more nutritious items to the food stamps allowances, which are currently sorely lacking. The credits could also be paid for by the tax, which would, unfortunately, leave less money for obesity prevention programs, but at least it would be a sensible solution that would likely work and appeal to both conservatives and liberals.
But my proposal seems too simple for someone not to have thought of it (and dismissed it) before. Am I missing something? What do you think? I would like your critical feedback.

I Pay For Your Free Parking

I wanted to point out something related to my recent post on the Renew Lehigh Valley blog. I mentioned some numbers toward the end of the entry, and I want to discuss the implications of those numbers. I wrote:

“Though many of us recognize the benefits of TOD, it will probably take quite an epiphany for banks to begin to buck the industry standard of about 1 parking space for every 250 square feet of building space (which works out to about 15% more parking lot surface area than floor area at a cost of $30,000 per parking space [or about $50,000 per for structure parking], a cost that banks have no problem financing).”

As I said, this cost is financed as part of the overhead of the development. The new Walmart in your neighborhood must not only pay for the costs of its building, but it must also pay a great deal more to construct its massive parking lot. Now, since retailers, such as Walmart, see their profits as dependent on the customer’s convenience, parking (the ultimate convenience in suburbia) is most often “free.” Of course, when I say “free,” I mean that the costs of parking are added to the retail prices of the products that are sold. We pay for the parking one way or the other, and in the case of retail establishments that offer free parking, the cost is distributed evenly throughout their products.

This arrangement works out well for people who drive to these retailers. Motorists get the psychological benefit of thinking that they are parking for free. Plus, they are likely paying a lot less through the added prices of their food purchases than they would have if they had to insert coins into meters, because retailers who offer “free” parking pass on the costs to all consumers, even those who don’t drive. So, every time I walk to the Giant grocery store in Bethlehem to buy food, I am partially subsidizing the parking of almost everyone else in the store. And my reward for subsidizing those wealthy enough to afford a car? A few honks and several dirty looks as I inconveniently (for them and for me) walk across the parking lot that I am paying for them to use. I would rather they smile, wave, and say “thank you very much!” But most of them have no clue that their “free” parking has made my groceries more expensive than they should be, and that, through the wonders of trickle-up economics (which is more prevalent than we want to admit), they are benefiting from my car-lessness.

Many people would call this small and frivolous because, when the costs are spread out, the resulting price increases are small. But in light of the healthcare debate, why don’t people think about spreading the costs of covering the uninsured as small and frivolous? Despite the fact that healthcare premiums would likely decrease if everyone was covered, why are people not willing to pay a little extra so that everyone can be covered? I do it so that you can park at the store for “free,” so why can’t you do it so that Joe Uninsured can be healthy? Instead, healthcare for all is called “socialism.” Well, if that is your idea of socialism, then you better start screaming at town hall meetings about “free” parking too (along with Social Security, Medicare, the U.S. Postal Service, urban taxing for extraordinarily costly suburban infrastructure, etc.), because it is exactly the same thing.

When Walking is Illegal

Childhood obesity is a major problem in our country, and the planning of where we place our schools is a major cause of this problem. Most, if not all, of our newly-built schools are purposely located on large tracts of land far from the neighborhoods which they serve. Of course, it is easy to see that this type of planning makes it almost impossible for children to get to school without being driven there, whether by bus (which is infrequent) or by car. What is frightening, though, is when this is taken even further. Even after reading it, I still can’t believe that this is happening:

http://www.timesunion.com/AspStories/story.asp?storyID=847190

That’s right! Some school districts are actually making it against the rules (or in the case of Saratoga Springs, NY, against the law) for children to walk or bike to school. This leads me to the question: do we want our children to be unhealthy? In this case, it sure seems that way. Schools have sold out to fast food and other low-quality food vendors for lunch, have taken away most recess and physical education, and now some have made possibly the only daily physical activity these kids can get illegal.

Of course, the point of this rule is that the school doesn’t want to be held responsible for the deaths of children hit by cars traveling the only path to the school (a major suburban arterial). This is understandable, but it brings up an important issue that lies behind this fear. Neighborhood-based schools do not fear how their children get to and from school, and if they do, they certainly do not make rules about it and call on the police to enforce it. Why? Because neighborhood schools are located within safe walking and biking distance from most of the households they serve. Bethlehem is full of these schools, and I see children on a daily basis as I take my own walks. So, the choice for our school boards becomes this: Do we build smaller neighborhood schools more frequently in order to allow kids to get to school however they and their parents see fit (not to mention the benefits of higher teacher-to-student ratios and the ability to effectively involve the students in their home communities as part of the curriculum); or do we continue to build massive, regional schools out where it is unsafe for children to get there and back home outside of a vehicle, and, if we deem necessary, make laws prohibiting walking and biking? If you ask me, this is a no-brainer, yet somehow we have made the wrong choice.

Although it is good to see people fighting this and civilly disobeying a rule that doesn’t make any sense, in the end, it all comes down to money. Big surprise! It is cheaper to build big schools out in the middle of nowhere. The land is cheaper, less teachers need to be hired, and neighborhoods can use the land that would have been devoted to the school for more housing, thus increasing the tax base. Oh yeah, and municipalities can justify paying less taxes for school support. Anything to pay less in taxes! But I have to wonder: what is worth paying for these days? Obviously nothing that a stupid law against walking can’t fix.

Getting the Word Out: Community Design and Health

Today, I am cross-posting a column I wrote for Crossroads, the blog for RenewLV, a Smart Growth advocacy organization in the Lehigh Valley. Check out their website if you are interested:

Almost 50 years ago, Jane Jacobs made the following diagnosis:

“Decaying cities, declining economies, and mounting social troubles travel together. The combination is not coincidental.”

The diagnosis is as true today as it was then, but there are other issues in the “city ecology” (as she called it) that have come to light since the early 1960s, one of which is the health of the city’s inhabitants. This link between city design and human health is not exactly an obvious one, but it is one that is growing in recognition as the obesity crisis worsens. In 1950, 30% of Americans were overweight or obese. 50 years later, the CDC reported that the percentage of overweight or obese Americans had risen to 64.5%. Click on the following link to see a fantastic graphic that shows these drastic changes by state from 1985 until 2008 (http://www.cdc.gov/obesity/data/trends.html).

According to Dr. Jeffry Weiss, this massive weight gain cannot be attributed too heavily to genetics (genes do not evolve that quickly), and it cannot be attributed to lack of nutrition knowledge, since, during the same 50 year period, the amount of nutrition information made publicly available doubled every 7 years. Clearly, there are larger forces at work than those dealing with the body and knowledge of individuals. Food economics are biased toward getting more food for less money. Portion sizes at restaurants and packaged foods have ballooned between 50% and 400% in the last 40 years (National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute). Our work and recreation activities have become more sedentary with the continued loss of physical labor and rise of the technology economy, as well as the proliferation of televisions, computers, and video games. And our cities have de-intensified densities and segregated land-uses, resulting in increasing dependence on the use of automobiles to get around.

But we have a tendency to forget or ignore this final, and perhaps most important, reason for obesity, perhaps because most really just don’t see it until it is presented to them; and we do a poor job of getting the word out. An Atlanta, GA resident, featured in a video promoting the next Congress for The New Urbanism conference, expressed just such a problem: “I never saw the connection: how community design can affect your health” (http://www.cnu.org/cnu18). This person was definitely not alone in his lack of awareness, but there are plenty of people – influential people – who are not so ignorant. So why are there not more public campaigns geared toward influencing consumer housing decisions toward more compact and mixed-use urban areas? Why do we continue to encourage suburban sprawl through lopsided mortgage subsidies, unbalanced tax structures, and new highway and road funding? How can public health departments address this issue in a meaningful and effective way?

A new bi-county Lehigh Valley Health Department would be a terrific start to addressing the our local obesity problem. At present, a campaign hoping to really make a difference would be difficult to achieve because it would lack significant funding due to the geographical size of its service area. A joint department would also serve as a model for regional governance of land-use, transportation, and tax-sharing, the absence of which has been a significant reason why suburban sprawl remains unchecked and obesity has increased exponentially.

What are some other ways in which we can begin to help people make the connection between community design and health? What partnerships could a regional health department in the Lehigh Valley enter into to ensure the greatest effectiveness of its campaigns? I encourage you to comment with your ideas on the Crossroads blog or on my personal blog, Bethlehem By Foot.

The Limits of Sustainability

I spent a nice long weekend with my cousins near Lancaster, Pennsylvania, the de facto center of the Amish world. Having never before experienced anything of the sort, I was fascinated by their chosen style of life: partially because it is so foreign to a good portion of the rest of America, but also because, in a lot of ways, it is exactly what the rest of America needs to emulate. They pool their resources for the good of the community, help their own who have fallen on tough times, pay cash for everything, and they have a long (and recently publicly displayed) history of forgiving completely in response to being horribly wronged. These are all wonderful things, and if I were authoring a different type of blog I would certainly do these qualities more justice. But what I want to commend them for is the way they think about their relationship with their environments. In fact, this way of thinking may be so important that it lies at the root of the other qualities that I mentioned above.

When I think of the most basic difference between the Amish and the rest of Americans, I cannot help but think that the great disparities boil down to the fact that the Amish have set limitations and boundaries on themselves and have recognized those boundaries as good, while the rest of us often fail to recognize any limitations whatsoever. Take, for instance, our opposing transportation preferences. The Amish choices of transportation are limited to walking, biking, and riding in horse-drawn carriages. From what I saw this past weekend, they make ample use of all three of these modes. For the rest of America, the choices are much wider, and seem to be growing and getting faster by the decade. We can still walk and bike and ride horses (though the carriages have gone by the wayside), but we can also attach a motor to the bike or scooter, step onto a Segway, ride a bus or train, drive our own personal high-speed vehicle, or (very soon, hopefully) sit in a bullet train that goes 200 miles per hour. None of these, mind you, are inherently bad, and, in fact, some of them are a vital part of a sustainable city, yet we have to consider what the impacts are of such variety, speed, and general “no boundaries” outlook on ourselves, our cities, and our world.

An Amish community, by choice, must confine itself to a fairly small geographical area. The work that a family and a community takes on must be limited to what they can physically handle with their own bodies. The products that they consume must be kept within the bounds of what they can really afford. The by-products of one portion of life must by the sustenance for another. Thus, they have no use for wastefulness or excess in any form, including landfills, fossil fuels, agricultural chemical inputs, soil nitrogen replenishments, payday lending, credit cards, mortgage-backed securities, state budget disagreements, and especially not suburban sprawl. We, on the other hand, are slaves to all of these things, because we don’t know when to say no.

What would it mean to recognize limits? Would cities exist without these limits? I’m sure they would, though probably in much different forms than what we currently have. Limited cities would be more walkable and equitable, just as unlimited cities have become car-dependent and discriminatory. David Orr, a professor of environmental studies, makes a strong case that we cannot live in healthy environments, or be healthy ourselves, as long as we do not recognize the boundaries that exist. And this is precisely the point: the boundaries exist, whether we acknowledge them or not. There is a limit to which life and community can sustain itself, and if that limit is exceeded, systems will begin to fail. Orr argues that in order to recognize this, we must be taught to think in systems or ecologies (in which one part is a component as well as a product of many other related parts); and in order to recognize that we must think in systems, we have to recognize that there are natural limits to the actions that we can take in order to maintain sustainability. Until we accomplish this unlikely feat, we are unlikely to solve our environmental, social, or economic problems.

The Paradox of Prosperous Suburbs

In the previous post, I briefly mentioned the relationship between cities and their suburbs as one of, essentially, predator and prey. More specifically, I made the claim that suburbs suck the life and the money out of cities. There are several reasons why this is so. The most important reason is that the people that move out to the suburbs are a group of people that are more likely to have money and influence, are more likely to know people that have money and influence, and are more likely to feel as if their voice matters when dealing with policy and planning issues. Consequently, this group, though they don’t outnumber city folk, votes at much higher rates, has a penchant for fighting growth and development that are not in their perceived best interest (“Not in my backyard!”), and produces a great demand for suburban economic development that would otherwise occur in the city. Suburbs drain cities of economic development.

A second reason why suburbs drain cities is because of the way city taxes that support infrastructure are collected and distributed. Since cities already have their infrastructure, such as sewers and streets, in place, the cost for maintaining it is minimal, and the people utilizing the infrastructure are, in general, more than paying for it; and although suburban dweller taxes are also funding city infrastructure, it is at a very low rate, and they are likely to use that infrastructure to travel to work. As suburbs continue to pop up, however, new infrastructure must be built to support those areas at a cost that is far beyond the maintenance of already existing infrastructure. Guess who funds a good majority of those costs? Sure, suburban dwellers pay taxes, and a good portion of those taxes supports their municipalities, but this is as it should be since those people are the users of that infrastructure. But a good portion of city-dweller taxes (in fact, probably a greater portion of a person’s annual income, based on per capita incomes in center cities being generally lower than those of suburbs) also support the suburban infrastructure that they hardly ever or never use. Suburbs drain cities of their tax funding for basic services and require city dwellers to pay for services not even rendered to them.

A final reason why suburbs drain cities has to do with the means of transporting suburbanites to their work places, the majority of which are either in the city or nearer to the city than the suburb from which workers are traveling from. Public transit is inherently inefficient in these suburban areas because of lack of density (as well as other reasons), and other alternative modes are not possible, so that leaves expressways; and we have plenty of those to speak of. But expressways in and of themselves are not necessarily bad. When done right, they provide a decent option for traveling quickly within a region. The main problem is that they are hardly ever done right. Freeways were never meant to be constructed through the hearts of cities, as they have been; they were originally intended to exist on the edges of cities. When entire downtown city neighborhoods were demolished to make way for expressways so that residents of the suburbs could reach their places of work more quickly, those parts of the cities were quickly and quietly destroyed. And since a city is a sum (or more like a sum of squares) of its parts, when one part languishes, the rest suffer as well.

So, there are three good reasons to reach the conclusion that in order for suburbs to flourish, cities must, in turn, fail. This couldn’t be more of a true assessment, but there is an unexpected twist to it: suburbs that border failing or failed cities, though they appear to be strong for a little while, all eventually fail as well. The suburbs of Phoenix, Detroit, and Los Angeles, just to name a few, have learned this lesson well. In order to get the best quality of life from those metropolitan areas, one must keep buying homes further and further away from the ever-more-failing main cities. So the paradox is this: suburbs cannot thrive without the failure of cities, yet they cannot continue to thrive with those failed cities either. The only way to fix the problem is to purposely invest most of the region’s resources into the cities, and the prosperity of the cities will actually spill over into the suburbs, at least those close enough to be beneficiaries of the economic and cultural success. For the system to work properly, we must accept that our suburbs will never be as prosperous as our cities can be; though, I suspect, this is not something that most of us are willing to accept.

Mixed-Uses: The Anatomy of a City

Since I’m reading the incomparable Jane Jacobs, whose lay-person’s analysis of the way cities work 50 years ago is recognized as the single most important reason why we planners and urban thinkers today are cleaning up the messes of the planners and urban thinkers of yesterday (and, actually, today as well), it makes sense for me to address one of the four most important ingredients to a successful city: the mixing of land-uses. For those of you who don’t speak Planner, mixed land-uses refers to zoning codes that allow a variety of building uses in a single area. For example, many old city centers and small downtowns are rich with two- or three-story buildings in which commercial shops, such as restaurants and retail stores, attract people on the bottom floors while offices and residential living spaces occupy the top floors. This is an example of vertical mixing. Horizontal mixing is also possible and can be just as effective. This often occurs in old inner-ring (just outside of the center city) suburban neighborhoods which contain single-family or multi-family detached homes right next to shops, offices, restaurants, and other commercial and business uses.

Bethlehem has a great variety of vertical and horizontal mixed-use neighborhoods. Both downtowns (north and south) have a good selection of vertical mixed-use areas of restored old buildings that are charming, attractive, and (most importantly) still functional. West Bethlehem and the eastern portion of the Southside present excellent (though not perfect) examples of horizontal mixing, with residential units separated from but within easy walking distance to daily needs and entertainment. These types of developments stand in stark contrast to most modern city designs, which have a penchant for isolating residential areas from commercial areas, and separating both of those from office areas. What we get from such segregated uses are bedroom communities, strip malls, office parks, and a stagnant local economy that increasingly depends on (yet sucks the life out of) nearby central cities.

Mixing uses, however, does not automatically determine a successful neighborhood. Jacobs points out that most older cities are full of mixed-use communities, but most of them have spectacularly failed as lively and vibrant places. The key to a successful mixed-use neighborhood (indeed, any neighborhood) is its ability to be in a constant state of dynamic use. Take, for instance, West Bethlehem’s Broad Street (west of 8th Avenue). Although a very nice area, this part of the city is beginning to lag. Residents attribute this downward trend to “riff-raff” moving in, which couldn’t be a more prejudiced and incorrect assessment. According to Jacobs, the reason West Bethlehem is lagging is because its mix (which gives it an edge over most modern neighborhoods) is not optimal. First, very few of businesses operate out of buildings that are designed to allow the employees and business-owners to keep an eye on what’s going on outside. There are some, such as Denny’s Barber Shop, run out of a retrofitted old house, but they are significantly lacking. Second, even if there were more “eyes on the street”, so to speak, the actual street is too wide to allow much life in the area anyway. In order for a neighborhood or district to have life, pedestrians must be able to safely and easily cross from one side of the street to the other (see 4th Street South Bethlehem and Main Street North Bethlehem for good examples of this). Third, there are no restaurants or grocery stores. This is a very important absence because it means that those who work in the area must go somewhere else to eat around lunchtime and after work. So, even if there is life in the mornings and afternoons as people are going to work and others are patronizing the businesses, lunch hours and evenings are dead. Finally, as a tag-on to the last sentence, there is nothing in West Bethlehem to sustain life after 5pm. Shops close, workers go home, and bars, clubs, and restaurants are not there to attract anyone else.

When an ineffective mix of land-uses is present, two things begin to happen. The most important occurrence is a decline in safety and a rise in “incivilities.” When the neighborhood cannot sustain life and people are not able to keep an eye on what’s going on, bad things tend to happen. Even something as small as graffiti can play with people’s perceptions of their own security. While I have not felt unsafe in West Bethlehem, neighbors that I have talked to who have lived here for years say they can see it going downhill. Along with perceptions of insecurity goes economic vitality. Without a good, effective mix of activities (5 hair-cutters are too many for such a short distance), and without a crossable road, West Bethlehem will struggle to compete with the more lively, interesting, and effective mixed-use downtown, where there is life going on almost 24/7.

Does anyone have a different assessment as to why many cities and neighborhoods fail to thrive? Can anyone convince me that the great Jane Jacobs missed something?

The Demand-Induced Supply Fallacy and Why Fire Trucks Matter

In the midst of other things, I had forgotten that I gave a “24 hour challenge” that, unfortunately, only one person took me up on, and even that one was late. This is what happens when you have a mind that is constantly thinking of many different yet related things and you don’t write a note to remind yourself to stay on track. So, thanks Big Daddy for being brave enough to be the only one to venture a guess at the challenge.

The question was: “Moving cars quickly is an underlying purpose for wide streets, but can anyone tell me what the most significant reason for our wider-than-needed streets is?” (Read the entire post)

The answer that Big Daddy gave was “The [drivers] and their zig zagging, foot stomping, hair raising commuting events … are the reason for those wide streets, not to mention those rounded corners.”

Essentially, this answer reflects an interesting, but probably not uncommon, misconception that drivers have demanded such a road design, thus it was built. This may work in the marketplace to a certain extent, where a Furby craze will induce stores to devote entire isles to annoying little electronic creatures (the demand-induced supply model), but not when it comes to roads and other similar public investments. In the case of such large-scale public infrastructure investments, Shoeless Joe Jackson, as portrayed in Field of Dreams, had a perfect understanding of how things work: “If you build it, they will come.” More specifically, if we design streets to support wild driving, then wild driving will occur, but if we prevent “zig zagging, foot stomping, hair raising commuting events” by making it obviously unsafe for drivers to behave in such a manner (narrower streets, wide-turn corners, on-street parking), then streets will become much less unruly.

Incidentally, this concept of “supply-induced demand” also applies to suburban housing. We tend to think that we have so much suburban housing because that is what we the people want. In fact, we have an abundance of suburbia because that is what some people want, and that “some” includes politicians, developers, bankers, and, yes, planners. The demand for urban or inner-ring suburban housing is currently at around 51%, according to Chris Nelson, a premier housing demand researcher, meaning that the majority of people actually prefer to be closer to the city and all of its amenities and culture, not further away. Yet, we keep building the majority of our new housing as far from the city as possible while neglecting our decaying cities. Do we really think demand is inducing supply here?

Actually, the answer to my question above is so obscure that almost nobody outside of planning circles (and a good portion of this group has no clue) will have ever thought of it. The biggest reason why suburban streets are wider than urban streets (and why urban streets are under constant pressure to widen, to the outrage of their inhabitants) is because of fire department rules that changed several decades ago. The reason these rules changed: longer fire trucks. Fire chiefs wanted to make sure that new municipalities were built to support such beastly machines, so they began to “strongly suggest” (with political backing, making it a virtual requirement) that new suburban streets be wide enough for a fire truck to do a complete 180 degree turn in order to get back out of the neighborhood in which it was needed. Now, besides the ridiculousness of needing such a long fire truck (its length was meant to support longer ladders) in low-density neighborhoods where the tallest building is perhaps 3 stories, this is actually a reasonable request because suburban neighborhoods are built to impede through traffic. If the fire truck wants to get out of such a neighborhood, it must turn around and go back the way it came. But the pressure to widen urban neighborhood streets doesn’t make a whole heck of a lot of sense, because urban streets are laid in a grid pattern, meaning that the fire truck would need to simply make 3 right or left turns to get back to where it came from. The urban areas that have the tallest buildings to support the need for longer fire trucks already have the street structure to handle the vehicles without needing to widen, and the suburban areas do not need such long trucks, and therefore do not need the wider streets. This, of course, is to say nothing about the inefficiencies of suburban street patterns, which I have already addressed before.