Bethlehem By Foot

New Blog!

2011-03-02T10:32:00.002-05:00

New city (sort of)... new career... new blog! Check it out here. It's a little rough at the moment, but I'll be posting there from now on, so if you want to continue following me, that's where I'll be. Miss you all on the East Coast and hope you are doing well. Bethlehembyfoot left by car and is now SLCUrbanist.

Beginning with Social Security...

2011-01-24T20:28:00.005-05:00

So, after I've identified the problem, I feel as though I should at least present a plausible solution. Not that my solution should be THE solution, but maybe it will begin a conversation about the effectiveness of different policies toward reaching our goal of not only bringing down the deficit but also fostering sustainable (operative word) economic growth. And please don't think of me as a policy expert. I've studied social and economic policy, but the Ph.D. and a lifetime of experience are conspicuously absent from my resume, so I can't be starting from a much better position than anyone else reading this blog. But I hope you aren't looking to me for answers anyway... at least not exclusively. I hope you are looking to me and that guy, and that elderly lady over there, not to mention her 20-something grandson who is just beginning to make his way through this crazy world. We all have something to contribute, and the combination of our genuine efforts at working with each other toward a common goal cannot help but be greater than the sum of their individual parts. That's what democracy is all about; keep that in mind.

What should be done? I think the Deficit Commission report was a good start, but something has to come out of it, and it has to begin with the big boys: Medicare, Medicaid, and especially Social Security. There have been many suggestions for better efficiency with these programs, and all of them should be looked at. In the case of Social Security, age of eligibility changes should be looked at and, ultimately, enacted. 65 was a good age when the program began. Now it is a significant drain on the fund and should be increased to a graduated rate between 67 and 70 (25% benefit at 67, 50% at 68, 75% at 69, and full at 70). This will help to keep the fund from depleting as quickly as it is expected to. Also, a person's benefit should be tied to how much the person (or beneficiary) paid into the fund. For retirees who are in danger of running out of benefits, a separate safety net insurance fund will be set up, collected from a small companion tax that will be collected along with the Social Security tax from every worker. For example, a person's benefit would be determined by a 4% tax on wages, and an extra 1% will be collected as a broader safety net fund for those who outlive their benefits. Finally, a significant tax benefit should be set up for any retiree who denies the Social Security benefit. If you are well-off enough that you don't need the benefit and you have enough integrity to voluntarily give it up for the good of the system, you should be compensated in some significant way. A large tax break on your estate or other assets would be appropriate.

I'm not too familiar with the arguments for privatizing Social Security. I can imagine that it would be just like a 401(k) in the way that it would be a voluntary contribution rather than a mandatory tax. I don't see this as being a very sustainable solution. Except in times of economic pressure, we as a nation are not very good at saving money. A private retirement fund is no different. I can imagine that the structure that I proposed in the previous paragraph would be more conducive to a privatization than the way we currently do it, but I can't really imagine it having anywhere near the broad social benefit that it does now.

Well, it's obvious that this little experimental conversation starter of mine will end up taking several posts. I'm not about to overwhelm you (and myself) by trying to put all of my ideas here. We'll start with Social Security and move on to other policies soon. Now it's your turn to tell me what you think. Please take these as suggestions and not dictatorial decrees. Please give reasons why these policies would be beneficial and why they would be detrimental. Please stay away from cliches. And most of all, please be civil. I'll consider deleting any comment that doesn't follow these rules. Thanks.

Okay... give me your thoughts.

Entitlements, Politics, and Debt... Oh My!

2011-01-22T07:38:00.005-05:00

If you are not concerned about the national debt, you should be. A recent analysis by the Government Accountability Office shows exactly why. Scary stuff! 2020 is less than 10 short years away, and 2040 isn't that far off either. It's easy to become dismayed or, worse yet, complacent in the face of such staggering numbers and need for change. How do we reverse course?

It is pretty predictable how politicians on each side will react to this report. Those on the right will attack Medicaid and the reckless spending of the past 2 years. There will be no mention from them of the spending that has exceeded our willingness to tax since the early 1980s, and there will certainly be no willingness to add taxes now... or ever again! They will be less than vague when describing how to reduce that interest payment, and, of course, they wouldn't touch Social Security or Medicare with a 50-foot pole. Those on the left are so afraid of losing even more of their jobs in 2012 and beyond that they don't want to touch any of it. They'll lose any influence with the largest group of voters if they touch Social Security and Medicare, and they'll lose their base if they touch Medicaid. They'll discuss the balooning interest by saying some of the same vague comments about the debt that their rivals on the right will say. They'll mention the reckless spending of the Bush Administration and conveniently leave out the past couple of years, and they'll indicate the need to raise taxes... not now, but at some point in the future.

Obviously, we have a problem. Two of our biggest programs are exploding, yet no one is willing to deal with them. Retirees are now taking more money out of the system than they ever put in... some twice as much... and we don't seem willing to raise the age of eligibility or have an income cap. Even taking a look at where to save money with Medicaid is suicide for the Democrats. Maybe our politicians should be more concerned about the country than their political careers. Or maybe the biggest problem is that no one seems to be able to have a civil and inteligent conversation about all of this. My wife just questioned me about it all and played devil's advocate, and all I did was get defensive about it. Why? Is it so hard for us to admit that other veiwpoints have their merits and that we don't know everything there is to know? Is it really that satisfying to us to demonize others just to get that intoxicating feeling of superiority?

The next 10 years are going to define who we have become as a civilization. Do we have any remaining ability to see beyond the paradigm of Red vs. Blue? Can we still solve our problems? We have to begin by talking, and we have to suppress that urge to come off as superior; that need to be right all of the time. For all of the politicians who have done the "right" thing in the past 50 years, things sure have gone wrong.

I've been one of the biggest proponents in the past for big government, at least when it comes to supporting those who are least able to support themselves. I have been an opponent of government's subsidization for large industries, such as oil, automobile, suburban housing, and agriculture. I still feel strongly about those things. But we've dug ourselves into such a deep hole from 60-some-odd years of fiscal and social policy that doing what I think is right will have to take a back seat to doing what is necessary. Don't get me wrong... I do not think at all that eliminating these programs and privatizing everything is what is sustainable, let alone necessary. But I do think that cuts to these programs, along with entitlements and highways and agricultural subsidies and the consideration of elevated tax rates on millionaires and billionaires, are necessary. Everything has to be on the table and debated on their merits. We no longer have the time to play political games.

My next post will describe what I think needs to be done to get things going in a sustainable direction, as well as what our fiscal and social philosophy should be when we emerge from this crisis. But do not think for a second that I am saying it can only be that way and that no other opinions matter. Think of it as the beginning of a conversation. We need a starting point, and apparently it needs to start outside of the Beltway. I'm not so self-involved that I believe it will start with me, but maybe I can influence someone that can start it.

This is a crisis; make no mistake about that. We've downplayed it and distracted ourselves from it for too long. It's time to put our asinine political games and arrogance aside. Let's talk!

A New Nation Demanded by a Generation?

2011-01-14T16:49:00.011-05:00

News flash: Generation Yers don't want what has generally passed for the American Dream since the 1920s. So says a reporter from the bastion of conservative printed news, the Wall Street Journal (a Murdock media outlet, if you weren't aware).

This article, based on a study by the National Association of Home Builders, is hopeful in some ways and kind of disturbing in others. On the up-side, it says what everyone already knows: the children of Baby Boomers, who actually outnumber their parents (why does no one talk about this???), do not want any part of a car-dependent lifestyle. Developers have known this for a while now, which has spurred them to start building condos and other housing closer to walkable commercial centers. The New Urbanists, for many reasons outside of the preferences of the silent majority generation, have begun developing entire traditional neighborhoods consisting of not just housing, but commercial and civic centers. Recently, car companies began to catch on to this trend, too, as they expressed worry over whether Gen Yers would actually buy their products. I happen to think we will continue to buy cars, especially when they transition from gasoline usage, just not in the insane, almost addictive levels that previous generations have. Much fewer than the majority of families living in neighborhoods with full amenities within walking distance, including good transit, will need more than one (and definitely not more than two) cars. Maybe to survive GM and Ford will have to return to the public transit business that they killed in the first half of the 20th Century.

I also like that developers are starting to nix home designs that include huge master bathtubs (can save a surprising amount of square footage there), more than one living room, and, if there are fewer cars, garages. What I was disappointed to learn about... though I'm not especially surprised... was the continual focus on designing the social areas of the house around the TV. Look, I've watched my fair share of TV in my lifetime (though not much recently), and I don't have a problem with the existence of TV or video games; but the whole culture of it has become ridiculous. Do we really have nothing better to do with our lives? If not, then maybe we should question what kind of story we're writing for ourselves (to borrow a concept from Donald Miller). I'm a big proponent of community-building and encouraging social interaction between people. Sorry, but TV and video games produce the opposite of these qualities.

But, I guess it's better to watch a lot of TV in a vital, mixed-use community where venturing out into the public realm (not surrounded by a ton of steel and glass) is more common than vegging in front of the tube in the burbs, where it's probably the most exciting thing you would have to do anyway. Oh, and by the way, if you think it is only the Gen Yers that want the walkable, functional, and social communities (if not in an urban environment, then at least in a suburb that is economically self-sustaining), then you are wrong by a mile. My own graduate research showed that as much as 90% of people (young and old, urbanite and suburbanite, rich and poor) prefer to live in these types of walkable communities. At the moment, most of what is offered is car paradise... but it looks like some much needed change is on the way.

Can Transit Really Work in the Burbs? Two Australians Without Much Foresight Think So

2011-01-05T19:05:00.016-05:00

So apparently some academics in Australia think that they've solved the problem of how to offer effective and efficient public transit to the suburbs. The common understanding among planners is that transit won't really thrive in outer suburbs because the densities are too low, thus making large, clunky buses and rail lines generally ineffective. These two blokes think such reasoning is rubbish. They're brilliant plan:

"The keys to increasing public transport use in outer suburbs are more frequent buses, running at least every 10-15 minutes, and not just in peak hour; better co-ordination with rail services; more convenient transfers; and fares that allow free transfers between modes."

http://www.theage.come.au/victoria/transport-study-derails-thinking-on-outer-suburbs-20110104-19f3c.html

Genius! With this masterful opus of innovative transportation policy, we can finally put aside the old debate and do what we like doing best in English culture: have our cake and eat it too. We can live in large houses on large lots in maze-like suburban pods out in the middle of nowhere and still keep the world from running out of oil by taking efficient and easy mass transit right from our neighborhoods to anywhere we want in our sprawling regions. Sounds almost too good to be true, but if they say so...

Oh, wait! There are a couple of catches to this grand vision. First, there's the problem that communities built for cars (and only cars), such as pretty much all outer suburbs are, how many residents are likely to take public transit when it is just so much easier and faster (yes, still faster, despite the more frequent buses) to drive? I'm going to step out on a limb and say: very few. One big reason for this: many people who live in suburbia wouldn't be caught dead on a bus or railcar. I don't mean to stereotype, but there are a lot of truths in stereotypes, and the truth here is this: if you love your suburbia, you probably also love your car to the point that taking even the most convenient public transit would be unthinkable.

Even if gas prices went through the roof (which they will sooner or later), this still wouldn't work. No matter how pricey gas will become, it will still not be worth it for people to spend 15-20 minutes on a bus to go 3 or 4 miles. Insanely high gas prices will do one of two things: make people move inward, where transit is more efficient and accepable; or the car companies will scramble to mass produce affordable electric cars, which will kill all efforts at expanding transit to outer suburbs for at least another 50 to 100 years.

Then there's the problem that we seem to be running into a lot lately: how in the world do you pay for extremely frequent, interconnected, and "free" (there's that word again!) transit service to miles and miles of cookiecutter-ness, with minimum lot sizes of 1/2 acre or more, without either raising taxes to levels that suburbanites don't want to pay or increasing fares to levels that no one, regardless of affinity toward transit, can afford. The obvious answer is: you can't. If this were possible, it would be happening somewhere outside of places like Toronto and New York, where people aren't so tax-averse. I can't help but assume that these two professors didn't think about cost or politics when they formed their elegant theory.

Sorry, chums, but I don't buy it! You can't make anything, let alone transit, to operate efficiently in the suburbs, the universe's pinnacle achievement of inefficiency, just like you can't fit a square peg in a round hole. Sure, you can sand down the edges and pretend it belongs in there, but it still doesn't really fit. Outer suburbs and efficient public transit don't mix. Period.

Do Big People Require a Big Government?

2010-11-04T16:47:00.003-04:00

Amongst my daily readings, I came across this gem:

http://www.mcall.com/news/nationworld/la-fi-happy-meals-20101103,0,6768723.story

I love it! Leave it to San Francisco to do what very few other places see the need for. Of course, this is very controversial, especially after all of the anti-government reactionary arguments flying around right now. And this will probably be sent to the courts and overturned, but I still want to revel in its accomplishment, however short-lived it may be.

I love the comment from the McDonald's lawyer about "this is not what our customers want." Well, duh! People who approve of your business model of marketing calorie-dense and nutrion-deficient food to kids are obviously not going to be the ones making a law such as this one. This is a spectacularly dumb comment. It is political, meant to stoke the fires of those who are inclined not to trust government in all its forms. It's like the Democrats complaining to the public after election day: "But this isn't what democrats wanted." Sorry chums, as much as I, a proud independent, sympathize with you, the people have spoken.

This gets at an important issue: does the public always have its own best intersts at heart? Natuarlly, we think so. We think that the will of the people is always best; this is the heart of democracy. But what happens when the will of the people brings about things such as unlimited corporate campaign contributions, lax gun laws for people without records (as if only people with current records will ever again use a gun in a malicious way), and more roads than we can possibly hope to pay for to maintain? Would a significant number of people actually say that these are good things? We voted for the politicians who made these things possible, and sometimes even voted for the laws directly, so they must be what we want, right?

I think we are drastically uneducated about the implications of the policies that the majority of us tend to support (education is the other heart of democracy). If we don't know enough about what we are voting for, then how can we claim that our "will" is a good thing? This San Francisco law is a case in point. If it is true that McDonalds speaks for "the people," then I think the people are just plain wrong. I'm all for personal responsibility; the parents should be the front lines of defence against their children consuming non-nutritious meals, but there are two inadequacies with laying the entire burden on the parents. First, the psychology of adding an appealing "free" gift to the product a company wants its consumers to buy is extremely powerful. I would argue that it borders on brainwashing. This is the "free good" phenomenon I've talked about in previous posts. When we perceive that we are able to get something for nothing (by the way, it doesn't exist), we go out of our way to engage in that "free" activity as much as we possibly can. The child throws tantrum after tantrum in public, embarrassing the parent enough to concede to their demand. Afterall, it's not that big of a deal, and the parent can get something artificially tasty and cheap as well.

Second, and perhaps most importantly these days, the undisputable fact remains that a cash-strapped parent can fill the bellies of two children with a couple of happy meals for the price that he or she could fill the belly of one child with healthier food. This is the result of the principles of commodity pricing and economies of scale combining to produce something that plays to our uniquely American value of "quantity trumps quality." It's genius, it's lucrative, and it's slowly killing us, especially those of us on the lower end of the economic ladder.

The mantra of "personal responsibility" seems to be winning the current debates, as evidenced by the massive shift to the right resulting from this week's election. I actually don't think it is such a bad thing to have a balance struck in the "environment-person" argument (is it the fault of the forces outside of the person or those inside of the person?). How can it really be only the person's environment that causes his or her behaviors when the person has a rational mind capable of making choices? And how can behavior only be determined by internal forces when behavior is, by definition, a reaction to or interaction with outside forces? We have to understand that there is always a mix of both going on (according to my argument above, there has to be; don't you agree?), or else we won't ever understand the root causes of anything and, as a result, will never begin to solve our various problems. So, here's my question: how far can and should we let this obesity problem go until we have to stop relying solely on the "personal responsibility" argument and start legislating healthier environments?

By the way, this same question could be asked about poverty, gun violence, suburbanization, cost of healthcare... the list goes on and on. What say you?

A Real Discussion About the Role of Government

2010-10-17T14:50:00.001-04:00

The role of government is obviously a big issue right now in the public discourse, one which threatens the "political lives" of our elected leaders and the course of our country. Some say that the only goal of government should be to protect the rights of their people. Some wouldn’t even go that far. Still others think there is a role for government to play in almost everything. But how much of this debate is actually a true discussion about the consequences of each viewpoint? I happen to think most of it is sideshow coming from people who have a personal stake in others seeing it their way. Now once have I heard a politician in this election season challenge anyone to actually think about the consequences and discuss them with someone who holds a different opinion.

Democrats are telling other democrats that republicans "drove the car into the ditch," and after the democrats (and only the democrats) dug the car out, now the republicans "want the keys back." Funny, and partly true, but not helpful. And republicans are still calling democrats "socialists" and comparing them to our favorite despotic dictators. Not as funny, and not as true, but they’re just playing to their base of extremely xenophobic yet well-meaning voters. None of this is encouraging anyone to talk with each other.

I was at a conference a couple of weeks ago which was headlined by David Bradley, a community and economic development lobbyist who has been intimately involved with our Congress since Reagan took office. He basically knows everyone there on both sides of the isle and has a good relationship with many of them. He said that he’s never seen such a divide between the parties in 30 years. He took a very unscientific poll, but it is worth mentioning anyway. He asked legislators from both parties to estimate how many legislators from the other party they knew by name. They didn’t have to have a relationship with them or know anything else about them… just their first name. He kept getting the same number in response: 25%. Are you kidding me? Each legislator gets elected and paid handsomely to sit in the same room with other legislators to solve the many problems that this country faces, and yet they have no chance of solving them because they are too entrenched in their own political theater to even introduce themselves to someone across the isle.

I can’t influence our elected officials to talk with one another. I can’t think of any candidates for office in Pennsylvania that aren’t divisive in their campaign rhetoric. Even those in 2008 who I thought would be more inclusive (ahem, Mr. President) have not lived up to their end of the bargain. But I can do my part by providing a safe place for people to openly discuss the role of government, generally and specifically, in the lives of citizens. I don’t want any name calling or pejorative terms (mentioning made-up words like Obamacare and calling republicans "Repugs" are conversational non-starters), and I don’t want any accusations. No matter what your politics are and no matter how closely you hold those principles to your heart and think other views are just dead wrong, you have to know that, despite what some very loud social commentators not-so-subtly hint to, liberals don’t hate America and neither do conservatives. We all love our country and want to make it better; we just have very different ideas as to how to do that.

So, let’s start generally: What is the purpose of government? Why do you hold this view? What are the consequences, good and bad, of government having this purpose?

I’ll post interesting comments and reactions on the main page. Remember… don’t demonize each other: I will call you out on it.

What Do We Value and How Do We Show It?

2010-09-18T13:32:00.001-04:00

I came across an interesting article recently that explores issues of public goods and our attitudes toward them. You can read the article here:

http://www.charlotteobserver.com/2010/08/13/1621427/losing-sight-of-what-matters-in.html#ixzz0xRzEZSbv

There’s a lot more in this article than I want to discuss, but I do want to dig deeper into this issue of what we value. What do we put stock in? What means something to us, and how do we show it? Many say that the best way to determine what we value may be where we put our time and money. But I’m not so sure this is true anymore. Think about what you value most. Is that where most of your time and money is spent? The author has an opinion on this:

“What we value ... is cheapness. Rock-bottom prices. Low taxes. So we get tomatoes that taste like crunchy sponges, but at least we don’t pay a lot for them. Instead of percale bedsheets made in the USA we buy sheets made in countries most people couldn’t find on a map, with seams that dissolve within weeks. We buy food with no taste, clothes that unravel and appliances we have to junk after five years. Our public schools have knee-high crabgrass. People get hacked off if our public parks look better than pesticide factories. But at least they don’t cost us too much.”

First of all, I don’t think we actually value cheapness. I think we truly value good food, good products, and healthy and well-kept communities. Instead, I think we have lost the understanding of the connection between those things which we value and the idea that they are worth paying for. In other words, when we buy the crappy tomatoes that have traveled thousands of miles so that food companies, and consumers, can get them cheaper, we have not lost value in good-tasting food; we have simply forgotten that good food is worth paying for.

And this brings up an important point: we’ve lost all sense of what is valuable. Even more, once we figure it out, we can’t remember the rational behavior involved in showing that the thing has value to us. The result: we can’t decide whether we value our tax dollars or vibrant, healthy communities more. And when we do decide, we behave irrationally. If we value lower taxes, we move out to the suburbs where we rack up infrastructure bills and abandon troubled areas, both resulting in higher taxes. And if we value healthy communities, most of us… well, we move out to the suburbs looking for that community, where the resulting infrastructure and city abandonment problems serve to create less vibrant and healthy communities (plus, more taxes). It’s amazing how backward we have become.

With all of the Tea (Taxed Enough Already) Party stuff going on, a pertinent question to all of this is: What is worth being taxed for? Where should tax dollars go and where should they not go? And to test my own thought; If people should receive tax cuts in poor economic times in order to spur economic growth, then shouldn’t they also be taxed more during good economic times in order to shore up some security for the bad times to come? I’m interested in hearing what people have to say.

2009 US Road deaths plunge to… 34,000???

2010-09-10T19:40:00.001-04:00

There’s nothing like optimism to make a horrific number seem okay. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration recently reported that 33,808 people died on our roads in 2009. It’s difficult to even imagine such a number, and the easiest thing to do is to simply not think about it. But for those of you who might be outraged or even just a little concerned about such mass mortality, there are people like Morning Call journalist Dan Hartzell and, alternatively, yours truly.

For those of you who might care, Hartzell alleviates those cares with perhaps the most ridiculous statement I’ve ever heard about traffic deaths: “…the 33,808 deaths recorded last year represent 3,615 lives spared, if you will, compared with the 37,423 people killed in 2008.” Wow! Is this really his idea of good news? He might as well have said, “But at least 310,180,000 Americans survived!” I guess when it comes to our highway system and the deaths that it causes, I’m a little more pessimistic. Try this for perspective: In 2009, the entire City of Easton died on United States highways and roads. Or how about this: 4 times as many people died on our roads last year than Americans who died between 2001 and the present in the 9-11 terrorist attacks and the two resulting wars. Or: Our traffic death rate is twice our murder rate, which itself is second highest in the world! How about this: While the death rate for rail passengers is currently 25 per 100 million miles of rail, our death rate for motorists, put in those same terms, is 1,338,136! And for good measure: Since our roads are subsidized at a rate of about $700 billion per year, or about $5,000 per tax payer per year, every 4,141 taxpayers literally pay for the death of 1 motorist.

And we’re okay with this, because we get relatively cheap subsidized gas, cheap goods transported by our subsidized trucking industry, and free parking. It’s what economists call a “free good,” a purposeful distortion of the market that takes away the demand ceiling so that we’ll continue to support industries that run our economy at perpetually higher rates every year. And it has been so successful that we are willing to put our lives on the line every day just to get a piece of it. Why? Because free goods predictably cause us to recognize that we are getting a massive deal every time we purchase that good (driving). And we all know that Americans simply can’t pass up a deal. To be fair, the rules of psychology show us that no one can, and our corporations and law makers know this all too well.

So, here’s my question: If the libertarian conservatives (and the Republicans who pretend to be ones) claim to be such pure free-marketeers and so deeply concerned about federal spending, why is a federal highway, industrial food system, and local free parking industry that receives over $700 billion per year in tax-payer subsidies (at 10% of our GNP, more than Social Security or Medicare) and kills off entire cities-worth of people not on their radars? Why does no one of importance (who can make or execute laws) ever talk about this? Is it because, as long as they don’t die on the road, they benefit from the system? Or is it because of their thousands of dollars in campaign contributions from said industries? This I would like to know.

What is Proposed in New York Should Stay in New York

2010-08-19T20:00:00.003-04:00

I hate to get involved in this discussion – I really do – but there are a few important issues at stake in regards to the Ground Zero Mosque controversy. First, and foremost, this is a local land use issue. This is not a county issue, nor state issue, and certainly not a national issue. September 11th was a terrible tragedy, and we have made it a symbol of our national unity (“We are all New Yorkers”). But when it comes down to it, this is a decision that must be made by the council members of the City of New York in response to the will of the citizens of that – and only that – city.

It is ironic, though not surprising, that many conservatives have come out strongly against the Mosque proposal. Two of the bedrocks of conservatism are local property rights and strong adherence to the constitution (remember the religious liberty clause?), yet many conservative (and then there’s you, Mr. Reid) politicians are so worried about winning a fast-approaching election that they are recalling the tragic events 9 years ago to condemn the very principles that they claim to stand for. Some are making ridiculous statements to make their case. Mr. Gingrich said that this proposal is akin to placing a Nazi sign next to the Holocaust memorial. An extreme political party is not at all comparable to a wide-spread, world religion. Instead, a more apt comparison could be made to placing a Christian Church (Nazis were overwhelmingly Christian) next to the Holocaust memorial, which I’m sure we wouldn’t have a problem with (I’m a Christian myself, so don’t think that this statement is anti-Christian). But that argument doesn’t win votes.

I’m actually in agreement with many in the Tea Party on this one. For all of their political shortcomings, in my opinion anyway, they actually understand the heart of this issue. Rand Paul put it in perspective well when he said that his own state would not be happy if New York inserted themselves into Kentucky issues, so he is sure that New York wouldn’t appreciate Kentucky doing the same. Even the man who doesn’t seem to “get it” gets this one.

Personally, I’m really concerned that this is such a monumental issue nearly a decade after the attacks. Yes, we should always remember what happened and make sure we do what we can to ensure that it doesn’t happen again, but why are we still so fearful? Fear of attack is one thing, but fear manifested in the discrimination of a religion whose peacefulness has, historically, been at least on-par with Christianity (remember the crusades, conquistadors, Holocaust, and the conflict between Ireland and Scotland, just to name a few) is of a wholly different sort. In our post-millennium brand of politics, we have let this fear fester instead of letting it go and moving on.

Many of the people coming out against this proposal are claiming that allowing this Mosque (by the way, it’s not actually a Mosque but a community center; but “Mosque” sounds scarier) to take root 2 blocks from (not “at”) Ground Zero will be a victory for the terrorists. Mr. Gingrich has even said that this idea was planned by terrorists just so that they could celebrate their victory. Come on, Newt! Even you aren't that paranoid! Contrary to what the talking heads are saying, I think that our fearful reaction against this plan has already assured their moral victory because it is a harbinger of the dramatic changes taking place in so many of the great American ideals. We are a mere, cold shadow of who we used to (and ought to) be. Terrorism has changed our way of life, and not for the better… and this is exactly what they wanted to occur.

But my opinion doesn't really matter, and neither does yours, because unless you happen to be a resident of Manhattan, it is officially none of our business.

My Crappy Day Could Have Been Worse

2010-07-12T19:49:00.001-04:00

I look forward to my walks pretty much every day, no matter what the weather is like outside. But of course, some days are better than others, and some days are just down right terrible. In the late fall and early winter, the rain and slush creates freezing puddles at every turn, some that I simply can’t avoid stepping through. In the dead of summer, as you can imagine, it becomes so hot and sticky that I often have to fight the urge to strip. Today was one of those terrible days, but considering the circumstances, it may have been the crappiest yet… literally.

I’m actually surprised it didn’t happen sooner. Really, the odds are in the birds’ favor, but it took a year and two weeks for one of them to relieve itself from a tree branch at precisely the moment that I passed under it. Crappy indeed! I hoped perhaps the tree was shaking off some moisture remaining from the weekend rain, but looking down the front of my shirt confirmed what I was trying to deny. I was about 5 minutes from my bus, but I definitely couldn’t go on with my day covered in poo. So, I stripped (sorry ladies, but I’m taken!) and went back home.

All in all, it wasn’t the best start to a morning, but it wasn’t going to ruin my day either. Nature called, and I happened to be there too. Someone walking amongst such beautiful trees should expect as much. So, needless to say, I’m not discouraged and I’ll be out there risking my cleanliness again tomorrow morning. Walking is always an adventure, but I look forward to it every day.

Another Bailout's A-Comin'

2010-06-03T19:10:00.002-04:00

As Americans in the year 2010, after all that has happened, we are understandably suspicious of what we call "bailouts." Well, it looks like another one is coming: this time for public transit agencies who are suffering from the lack of funding that is provided from our sorry excuse for a gas tax.

A group of senators have introduced a bill for emergency funding for transit agencies in the amount of $2 billion. There's no doubt that this money is needed, especially since ridership numbers are up all over the nation (and driving is down). But is there political will in an election year for yet another taxpayer-funded safety net for a private (or semi-private) industry? Honestly, I'm not sure. Although $2 billion is pocket change next to what was given out to the auto industry, Wall Street, and in the Recovery Act, it's the perception that counts; and the perception is that the taxpayers would be on the hook for funding yet another unsustainable industry.

When it comes to the automobile industry and the banks, I would agree with that notion completely, but the argument doesn't hold up with the transit problem for one big reason: It is only unsustainable because it is not on a level playing field. I'm sure those on the political right will score political points for coming out strongly against another bailout, but what they'll neglect to tell you is that we essentially bailout the automobile industry and its supporting infrastructure with almost $2 billion every day! The government subsidizes car travel with almost $600 billion per year, but it would be political suicide to be against that.

So, what is it going to be? Are we for some bailouts and not for others? Can politicians who call themselves conservative really say that the government should get its fingers out of all private business affairs? I would love to see someone come out and say that there will be no more subsidies for driving, corn, Wall Street, and Haliburton. No more subsidies for private business at all! Then maybe we could see what all of the hooplah about the "free market" is all about. But that will never happen, because it is these financially-loaded industries that buy our politicians, and they expect extreme loyalty in return.

Public School Funding

2010-04-17T16:29:00.001-04:00

There have been two recent stories in the local paper about school districts having to cover deficits in one way or another. Easton Area School District is by far the worst of all local districts with an $8 million and change shortfall. The school board, after being pressured by many residents, has cut almost 100 jobs and most extra-curricular activities, including all sports and the music program. And then those same residents praised the school board for making the tough decision to do what had to be done.

This is really frustrating to me because it really didn’t have to come to this. It is the result of top-heavy administrator salaries and poor decisions by those administrators for sure. But even if that wasn’t the case, the district would still have problems because of the way the area has grown, the current economy, resident aversion to paying taxes to benefit someone other than themselves (which is a false belief anyway), and the way we fund public schools in this country.

Up until recently, the growth of the Lehigh Valley has almost exclusively taken place in the suburbs. Part of that growth has come at the expense of the 3 major cities. As a result, businesses closed, property values decreased, and tax revenues followed that trend. The people that could afford the necessary transportation costs moved outward and took their taxes to other municipalities, thus creating a rich source of funding for the suburban schools and a significant loss from the urban schools. Now that everyone is suffering financially, the urban schools, which are the ones that need the most help, lose out even more.

And no one seems to care. We are quick to blame the district administrators, who should shoulder some of it. But we are also quick to write off the kids in the district as future failures anyway. One comment under the story summed up many others by indicating that only 20% of the kids are “worth a damn anyway.” What the hell does that mean? Who gets to decide that? Is that what we want to happen: only 20% of them becoming benefits to the society that largely forgets them? Because that is precisely what will happen if we believe it so strongly and do nothing to counteract it. We seem to think that it is better to pay for their future incarceration and government-reliance than to pay a fraction of that cost now to make sure that they are well-educated and able to be self-sufficient. Conservatives like to slam wasteful policies and programs. I actually agree with them completely. The problem is, conservatives don’t seem to understand, or at least public acknowledge, that it is actually cheaper to invest in people on the front end to prevent the more costly future consequences of not doing so. This applies to education, healthcare, housing, diet… pretty much every social problem you can think of. Instead, we cut budgets for every social program while greatly increasing our corrections budgets, as Pennsylvania did again this year.

So, how can we fix this? The most obvious is to fund more prevention programs. For education, this takes the form of providing every child with as much opportunity as possible to succeed. Cutting teachers and after-school activities in a desperate urban area so that people can pay fewer taxes is not the way to do that. But I do understand that taxes are a burden on some people right now. This gets at the larger problem of how we fund education. If we rely almost entirely on property tax revenues, we are bound to see great inequalities between urban and suburban schools in good times and the complete decimation of both in bad times. We need a better way to ensure that urban students get the opportunities that they need and that those opportunities will not go away when anonymous investment bankers make bad bets on derivative futures.

My solution is to use a four-pronged funding approach. Property taxes can still fund a portion of local schools, but they should be complemented by regional sales taxes along with state and federal funding. If the property taxes are not as much of a burden, people should have more disposable income to purchase goods and services, which would contribute to the schools. Even when both are down, state and federal revenues should prop up the districts that need it to ensure that the public continues to benefit from a public good in the times that they need it most.

What other funding sources do you think would be more appropriate to ensure sustainability for public schools? Do you have any other ideas?

Why Live in the Suburbs?

2010-04-15T20:06:00.000-04:00

As a former suburbanite, I naturally was ingrained with compelling reasons as to why the suburbs were better places to live than the cities. There are three main reasons that I can think of that sum up the argument for suburban living: 1) housing is cheaper and land is more readily available, thus one can afford to live in a larger house on a larger lot; 2) because the house is bigger and there is more open space, suburbanites are happier; and 3) there is less crime, thus it is safer.

Well, two studies are out refuting the first two reasons. The Urban Land Institute recently released a report showing that, when housing and transportation costs are taken together, city dwellers are actually living more cheaply than suburbanites, at least in Boston. But this would be similar to any urban area that prioritizes public transportation and walkability. Why is this? Urban living requires much less car travel; thus, most urbanites drive less, and many urban families have fewer vehicles than their suburban peers. When you consider that gas prices are up around $3.00 per gallon, the average person travels over 20 minutes (which works out to at least 20 miles) to work and 20 minutes (miles) back, and the average vehicle costs $10,000 per year when everything is factored in, you can see how the transportation costs add up quickly. So, the first argument for suburban living is on shaky ground. If we are paying more for suburbia, at least our increased happiness makes up for it, right?

If we are to believe two Swiss Economists (why not, they’re neutral!), then this argument is shaky, too. Frey and Stutzer identified a phenomenon called the “commuters paradox” in which we grossly underestimate the pain that we get from long commutes. In fact, perhaps the most emotionally painful feelings that we experience in our day-to-day lives are felt while stuck in traffic. But when we make the decision to move further away to get the bigger house and larger yard (which we have already seen is not necessarily cheaper), we think this benefit will outweigh the costs (literally and figuratively) of driving so far. Apparently, we are not very good at accurately weighing out these kinds of benefits and costs, and our happiness suffers as a result. This makes me think of the question: what are our priorities? Is status more important than time with family? Just as a caveat, if you ever get a chance to look at the rates of suburbanization and compare it to the rates of divorce over time, you might see something very interesting.

So, suburbanites don’t necessarily have a cheaper way of life, and they aren’t necessarily happier, but they must be safer! It is definitely true that suburbanites are less likely to be victims of violent crime, namely murder. There are, however, other measures of safety. Non-violent crime is almost as prevalent in the suburbs as the cities, and certain types of violent crime are actually more prevalent in suburbs. As an example, domestic abuse, both sexual and otherwise, happen more frequently in the suburbs than in the cities (the spread-out and private environment does little to discourage it). But more relevant to this topic is the safety of people operating motor vehicles. Americans are more than 6 times more likely to die in an automobile accident than be murdered. What’s more, automobile accidents are the leading cause of deaths for people between the ages of 15 to 24. With suburbanites doing most of the driving, you can guess the location of residence of most of those who die in car wrecks. By the way, another caveat: if you look at the rates of suburbanization and compare it to the rates of violent crime over time, you’ll see something else very interesting.

We don’t always think logically, and even when we do, we don’t always have all of the information that we need for our logic to give us an outcome that makes sense (remember the image-policy preference discussion in the previous post). If we are led to believe that we will be happier out in the burbs (as all of the real estate advertisements tell us), then the logical thing to do is to move there. However, if we find out that we aren’t happier in the burbs after all, how logical was our decision to move there in the first place? I think with all of the financial mess and foreclosures and gas prices (etc., etc., etc.), people are asking this question of themselves more and more.

When I think about it, I’m left with no real logical argument for living in the suburbs. I like being close to the action (if you can call what happens in Bethlehem “action”). I like not having to drive. I like the diversity (again, if you can call Bethlehem “diverse”). And I can’t honestly say that it’s more expensive, more “painful,” and less safe. So, I’m left to wonder: Are there any other compelling reasons to live in the suburbs? I’d like to hear them, because I’m fresh out.

Tragedy... and Confusion

2010-04-12T19:26:00.001-04:00

It’s terrible when something happens that could have been prevented, especially when it happens to a child. Yet another pedestrian was hit by a car in the Lehigh Valley on Saturday; this time, it was a little girl who was trying to cross the street with her sister. The car, traveling along a 45-mile-per-hour street, did not see her. My heart aches for the family of the girl as well as the driver. Out of respect for them, I won’t comment on the intersection, but as time goes on and wounds heal (and hopefully not too long into the future), I hope someone on the township or County councils considers more pedestrian-friendly safety features in that and other residential areas.

I do, however, want to comment on a recent blog post on a website called Mother Jones. Kevin Drum, the author, addresses a debate that has been raging for many years now: does suburban sprawl exist because policies mandate them or because people want them? Not surprisingly, Smart Growth advocates blame the policies, and Randall O’Toole and similar folks point the finger at public opinion. Drum seems to agree with O’Toole when he says, “These regulations aren’t something that’s being imposed by ‘government.’ They exist because people really, really, really want them.”

So, this brings up two issues. First does research really confirm that people “really, really, really” favor low-density suburban development over dense cities and inner-ring suburbs? And second, if the data does support that conclusion, do people always know what’s best for themselves?

Luckily, I did my thesis research on just this very topic. Previous research came to different conclusions. But what I noticed while reviewing them was that the studies that concluded people favored suburbs most often had participants judge only policy statements. This is dangerous because words such as “density” have garnered negative connotations that conjure up images of the Projects or other such monstrosities. What’s more, most studies that found that the majority of people favored more traditional developments were only presenting participants with images of the city blocks and neighborhoods. I would argue that this is a more effective method of gathering people’s reactions because we all have the ingrained ability to instinctually react to visual stimuli; I cannot say the same about written policy stimuli (if such a thing exists). But the downside to only examining images without their underlying policies is that when it comes time for the design codes to either go urban or suburban, the policies are what matter. Therefore, the public often goes in with a vision of what they want (more traditional development features), but they fail to make the necessary policy connections and, instead, rally for suburbia.

To test this hypothesis of visual-policy disconnect, I tested people’s reactions to both images and policies and compared them. What did I find? The people that did visually prefer suburban development also preferred suburban policies. But, those that visually preferred urban designs, which was the vast majority, didn’t seem to show any connection with urban or suburban policies; there was absolutely no relationship whatsoever. I had to conclude that, in a way, Randall O’Toole is right that people really like suburbia… just not all of them, and in the case of the most acute of our 5 senses, most prefer otherwise. But I also had to conclude that the vast majority that wanted their neighborhoods to look more urban also had no clue how to bring about such a vision. For example, a good number of participants that liked pictures of walkable neighborhoods also expressed desire for cul-de-sac policies, which actually counteract walking, as well as narrower streets, which promote walking. And of those that liked pictures of well-designed density, there was no consensus when asked about density policies.

What can we take from this? Both the Smart Growthers and Randall O’Toole are correct: suburbia is the result of policies that most people support, not because they are in favor of the results, but because they misunderstand their consequences. People are just really, really, really confused, and planners are really poor at educating them.

I think I’ve already answered my second question. Don’t get me wrong: I truly believe that people do know what is in their best interest when they completely understand the issue at hand, but when they don’t, as is the case with urban development (as well as many other social policies), the democratic process caves in on itself. We end up enacting costly policies, then enacting more costly policies to correct for the original policies – until we get to the point that we are at today where we can’t even afford to maintain the roads we already have let alone continue to build new ones.

Anyone disagree?

Addressing Food Deserts

2009-10-31T20:41:00.001-04:00

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

2009-10-25T12:39:00.002-04:00

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

2009-10-24T11:39:00.000-04:00

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

2009-10-17T15:15:00.000-04:00

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

2009-10-04T13:55:00.000-04:00

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

2009-09-12T20:44:00.002-04:00

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

2009-09-09T20:04:00.000-04:00

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

2009-09-03T20:18:00.000-04:00

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

2009-09-01T20:19:00.001-04:00

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

2009-08-30T13:59:00.001-04:00

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.

The Relationship Between Federal Spending and Recessions

2009-08-29T14:16:00.001-04:00

I recently received a Wall Street Journal article (“Big Government, Big Recession,” August 21, 2009) in the mail from Big Daddy that makes the claim that recessions are made worse by Big Government spending (which it claims started in the 1930s with Roosevelt’s administration). This is an interesting claim for several reasons. The most obvious reason is that the Great Depression began before Roosevelt took office (indeed, the greatest leader we’ve had this century probably would not have been voted in without a drastic time of national suffering). We have not had a recession anywhere near as catastrophic as the Depression since it ended in 1941. Big Government spending on infrastructure and making sure people’s basic needs were met brought us out of that Depression. Some people argue with that by saying that the War ended the Depression, as it did in several other countries, but the U.S. was out of the woods before it entered the fighting.

Another reason this claim is debatable: recessions have always been intricately tied to government spending and regulation actions, but not in the way most conservatives claim. Here are some reasons that recessions have begun and ended since 1900:

~The recession of 1913-1914, during the Woodrow Wilson administration, began as real incomes declined in a very unregulated market and ended around the time of the institution of the Federal Reserve System.

~The recession of 1921 set off the greatest deflationary period in the country’s history at just over 36%. This is largely recognized as a result of the conservative fiscal policies of the Harding administration.

~The recession of 1926-27, interestingly, is thought to have occurred because Henry Ford shut down is factories to transition from production of the Model T, the machine that began the period of government road, and thus infrastructure spending, expansion.

~The Great Depression began as a result of lax fiscal policies of the expansion period of the Roaring 20’s and widespread environmental destruction of farm lands (the Dust Bowl), both reflections of the federal policies of the Hoover years. It is important to note that economists don’t think the U.S. was actually in any kind of recession between the years of 1933 and 1937, a reflection of Roosevelt’s policies.

~The recession of 1937 was caused by crumbling infrastructure and a large population who were falling through the cracks in the system. The New Deal was instituted, putting vast quantity of people to work, rebuilding a large chunk of the country, and providing basic services for millions of people who needed them. The economy continued to grow following this period of vastly increased government spending until Roosevelt died and many parts of the New Deal were repealed.

~The recession of 1945 was caused by a great decline in federal spending after the War.

~The recession of 1953 is thought to have been caused by a change in Federal Reserve policy.

~The recession of 1960-61 ended when President Kennedy increased federal spending to improve GNP and unemployment.

~The 1973-74 recession coincided with the Oil Embargo. If U.S. policies did not entangle the country and make it completely dependent on oil to run almost every sector of the economy, this recession and many more to come would never have occurred to the extent that they did. The same issue caused a recession in the early 1980s after the Iranian Revolution.

~And, of course, our current recession has been attributed to lax fiscal policies and financial sector regulation, in which many abuses took place, as well as a vastly underfunded infrastructure.

If there’s any lesson we can learn from this, it is that Small Government led to many of these recessions, including the Depression and our current recession, and Big Government spending has gotten us out of them. The article makes a good point that we cannot say with much confidence that government spending has gotten us out of the current recession because not much of the increase has actually been spent yet, but it is clear that we got into the mess during a time of less government spending and regulation, and continuing that trend to get us out of it would not be reasonable.

The chart in the following link shows Federal spending from 1920 to 1941.

http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/downchart_gs.php?year=1920_1941&view=1&expand=&units=b&fy=fy10&chart=F0-total&bar=1&stack=1&size=m&title=Total%20Spending&state=US&color=c&local=Total%20Spending

This graph shows clearly what I have been trying to explain: once the spending increased at the end of the 30s and beginning of the 40s, the Depression ended, just as Keynes, the economist discredited by the article, said it would. It’s easy to see that the recessions described above were ended with more spending, not less.

The argument against this way of thinking is that we are “mortgaging our future” by spending so much. I understand this and would tend to agree in general, except for the fact that our economic, land use, transportation, and foreign policies of the past 60 years have already mortgaged enough of our future that we need to spend wildly just to keep up with the system we have set up. The vast majority of the almost $800 billion stimulus is to be spent on infrastructure, the backbone of our economy, and yet the investment will come up about $2 trillion short. Why? Because we have built our economy on the backs of roads, oil, and automobiles, and we have not cared to pay the full costs of such an inefficient system. As of now, our roads and bridges are in desperate need of repair and updating, but we have defrayed the costs for so long that our infrastructure deficit, now estimated at between $2 and $3 trillion, is more than we’re willing to pay. This tells me that we need to change our entire system if we are worried about bankrupting ourselves over a mere $800 billion when we really need to spend 3 or 4 times that amount. If there is anything that I fault the stimulus plan for, it is that it puts the vast majority of its money toward improving the road and bridge infrastructure that will just cause of bigger problem down the road when the infrastructure deficit will be even larger.

The final interesting portion of this article claims that increased government spending over the past year has decreased our GDP over the past 12 months. But the article cannot accurately claim that the new administration’s spending policies are to blame for our yearly decrease in GDP for two reasons: The largest decreases in GDP over the past year occurred before President Obama took office and the stimulus was passed, and, as the article claims elsewhere, only about 1/8th of the stimulus has actually been spent to this point. According to the Bureau of Economic Analysis, the economy shrunk 1 percent between both the 1st and second quarters and the second and third quarters of this year, while it shrunk 6.4% between the 4th quarter of last year and the 1st quarter of this year. What we have spent so far has drastically slowed the growth in unemployment, and thus slowed the decreases in GDP.

I have no problem with conservatives taking issue with increased spending (except that there is never any complaint among them when it comes to excess war spending and oil and automobile subsidy increases). What I do take issue with is when these opinion articles are presented with misleading numbers and information to support their position. I’m not the biggest fan of government spending excesses because I think the money often goes to the wrong areas, but if you are a fan of the way our economy is currently structured, as I’m sure most conservatives are (though I am not especially), then history shows that these periods of drastic government spending increases are necessary for supporting such a flawed system.

Dan "The Road Warrior" Hartzell Has Got Nothing On Me!

2009-08-24T20:12:00.002-04:00

I thought this was an interesting story and video in the local newspaper. Click on the link to see it:

http://www.mcall.com/news/all-a5_5warrior0821.6993181aug21,0,7175467.column

I’ve heard about “stings” like these, but I had no idea they were being conducted here in Bethlehem. Good for us! I finally feel as though I am part of a protected class: the endangered pedestrian. Unfortunately, I think the city is treating the symptom while being completely blind to the root cause.

It’s the design, stupid! On streets in the middle of a dense city, such as Bethlehem, there’s no way a driver should feel comfortable enough to go over 25 miles per hour. But they do, and the reason why? Because the streets are too wide. Bethlehem has done a great job with allowing on-street parking in many areas (which narrows the street a bit) and avoiding one-way streets in most cases (which serve to encourage speeding). But they have dropped the ball in many cases with street widths. Many perfectly good urban neighborhoods and commercial districts in the city have been tainted by street widths that limit safe walking, as displayed so clearly in this video. Motorists are much less likely to speed on narrow streets because they feel less safe doing so. Of course, one of the main purposes of designing streets for cars is to move them as quickly as possible, which is in direct opposition to pedestrian safety measures.

Have you ever been on one of those streets that seems too narrow for two-way traffic? Or at one of those 5, 6, or 7 way intersections that confuse the crap out of everyone? We have largely “fixed” these streets, but guess what? They are the safest streets in America by far. There’s a very good reason for this: drivers become confused and cautious, which improves safety for both pedestrians and other drivers. So, what’s our goal? To move people quickly, or to do it safely?

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? You have 24 hours!

P.S. It's amazing to me that Mr. Road Warrior is putting these stings down, as if pedestrians don't belong in crosswalks. It's like saying drivers don't belong on the streets, which as much as I would love to make that argument sometimes, it's just a dumb statement. I think I have found my calling: to be the literary arch-nemisis of the Road Warrior.

~The Pedestrian Pacifist

Comments on the Comments... Please comment

2009-08-24T19:23:00.002-04:00

Since comments can only be so long, I decided to post my reaction to Big Daddy's comments on the main page. I'll also write another posting about a completely unrelated topic so that I can virtually run from this controversy!

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I don't doubt that people are afraid or that they have every right to be afraid that something in their lives will change, I just think it's a little ridiculous the way a chunk of them are acting. I don't think reactions of this nature are helpful in the least. The same kind of reactions to war decisions and spending a few years ago were called unpatriotic, but now the same actions are being touted as the opposite by many. I think it is neither patriotic nor unpatriotic, but an unofficial attempt to filibuster any attempt at reform, which I consider just plain selfishness.

I think it is a poor argument that no one has had time to read the large bill and only lawyers can understand it. The bill has been around for almost a month now, and members of Congress never actually read or write bills anyway. Staffers get the intent of the bill from Congress, then the staffers write it and disseminate it, at which point other staffers read the bill and summarize it for their bosses. And most bills are lengthy and “legal-y”, so to put this one down for its length and legalese is hypocrisy. The legally-trained staffers write it and interpret it just as they have always done.

But I never said I liked the current plan. In fact, the plan I laid out couldn’t be further from any plan that is coming out of congress, perhaps precisely because of special interests, as you pointed out. I do realize, however, that my plan would never work in our current system, so in its place, I am more than willing to accept an insurance company that is willing to get rid of its pre-existing conditions rules, submit to some sort of cost-controls, and stop operating as if only certain people deserve health coverage. There are always special interests at play, but not all of them are considered bad. People don’t complain when Auto companies get billions a year in subsidies after campaign contributions, so why do they complain about this? Because “health care for all” doesn’t fit in with their own entrenched interests.

There is only one study that refutes that 47 million are uninsured, and it does so by saying that there are, indeed, 47 million people who are uninsured, but about half of them can afford insurance but are just not enrolled. This may be because they believe in the virtues of eastern medicine, or they would rather be unhealthy or stick the rest of the country with their bills, or maybe what we consider affordable just isn’t true. Millions of people earn just above the threshold of Medicaid but still cannot afford private health insurance. But even if they could afford it, then this is a perfect reason to mandate coverage. If the argument is that our uninsured numbers are inflated because people are turning down coverage, then make them get coverage. It seems as if people are making this argument to show that reform isn’t needed because things aren’t as bad as they seem, but really the argument is a perfect one for requiring coverage.

I also think it is a poor solution to cut people a check to buy coverage. Even if only about 20 million (per the dissenting study) are not covered because they can’t afford it, giving them the $5,000 (average yearly premium cost) to buy coverage every year would mean $100 billion per year. This would mean $1 trillion over a decade, which is exactly the amount that the first health reform bill was shut down for. Actually, now that I think about it, this would be preferable over doing nothing, but with this price tag, the bill would never get through a committee let alone come up for a vote. Conservatives would make a fuss over the price, and Liberals would scoff at its simplicity.

The government has been there all along to only set regulations, and look where it has gotten us. If you listen to any respected macroeconomist, he or she will tell you that a regulated free market is best for almost every class of consumption except when a system that provides significant externalities is involved, such as education, infrastructure, and, yes, healthcare. The reason is that large systems such as these in the hands of the free market tend to funnel toward monopolization, and prices of monopolies, as we have seen from the example of OPEC, are unruly and cannot be regulated. This is why privatizing education is a really bad idea if we want everyone to have a basic level of education (if all education was private, millions of children would be priced out), and it is also why privatized healthcare has been unattainable for millions of Americans. To say that the government has no place in the development of a country’s human capital (education, health, etc.) is to deceive ourselves. The only countries in the world in which the government does not supply universal, government-funded education are those that are the poorest of the poor. And the only countries in the world in which the government does not supply universal, government-funded healthcare are those that are the poorest of the poor, slowly developing, and us. We don’t seem to realize that investments in the health and well-being of everyone are the best investments we can make.

Oh, and by the way, Euell Gibbons had an enlarged aorta, smoked his whole life, and added large amounts of bacon grease and butter to his vegetables, all of which led to his heart attack at the age of 64 (pretty darn close to the average age for men). Pine nuts, some of which he choked on while having the heart attack, probably prolonged his life.

Are we talking about Healthcare, guns, or politics?

2009-08-22T19:06:00.002-04:00

At the risk of being booed off of the blogosphere, I’m going to resume my regular writing by going outside of my normal subject area and ranting about the one thing that everyone else is talking about right now: healthcare. First of all, I believe that everyone should have access to affordable and quality healthcare, just like everyone has the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of … Okay, you in the back… yes, you with the picture of Obama with a Hitler mustache… please keep your ridiculously nonsensical Nazi comparisons to yourself. And you with the assault rifle, please stop waving it around claiming that it’s your right to make me feel like my life is in danger just because you don’t agree with my opinion. And you, with your finger threateningly pointed my way, please stop acting like you bear no responsibility for the health and welfare of your fellow Americans and human beings. And you, in the way back, with your non-stop, unintelligible shouting for no other reason than to be obnoxiously dissenting against something you really know nothing about, please shut your trap and listen for once; you might learn something. Same goes for you, liberal ideologue who is shouting back, as well as you, overly-partisan Joe-Congressman. And you, former governor of Alaska turned Rush Limbaugh, please speak in complete and coherent sentences and stop sensationalizing EVERYTHING. And you, the “inconvenient” drama king of the FOX network, please try to remember your own healthcare debacle last year and stop pontificating out of both sides of your mouth. And you, madam Speaker, please loosen up a bit and at least acknowledge that good ideas can exist outside of your own head. And you, the great Changer, please change something. And of course you, the general American public, please get a spine and stop only thinking about what’s good for you.

Look, I don’t care how we get this thing done, just as long as we do get it done. I’m sick of politics and arrogance getting in the way. One side is trying to claim the moral high ground, but when it comes down to it, they are not willing to sacrifice their political careers to get it done the right way. And the other side, while bringing up serious and valid concerns, have not even attempted to put forward any solutions and so, as far as I’m concerned, can only claim moral bereavement and partisan one-upmanship. Is this really what we are all about as a people? Is this how we are best represented?

Here's what I suggest: 1) Mandate health care (courtesy of the only major rational thinker we have left: John Stewart). We do it for car insurance so that the insured aren’t paying double for the uninsured. Sound familiar? Even Romney supports it. 2) Civic group coverage. We need to take insurance coverage out of employment and only offer it through civic organizations. If we mandate coverage, then everyone will have to be involved in some kind of civic cause, which will give us some sort of sense of community and interdependence again. This type of model worked for and, I would argue, even created our “Greatest” generation, and it could work again. 3) Take the profit out of healthcare. As long as someone can make money off of something, that thing is bound to be corrupted and ever-more expensive. What decision do you think a healthcare provider makes when a more profitable but less healthful option is pitted against a less profitable but more healthful option? As long as the primary focus is on bringing larger profits to shareholders (the definition of a for-profit enterprise) and not providing the best services for customers (the whole reason government designates non-profit status: in order that a community-focused enterprise can compete with a profit-focused one), we will never get better care at affordable rates. Mr. Obama is right: we don’t absolutely need a public option to fix our problem, but we do absolutely need to take the profit out of sickness. 4) Prevention, please! We need the non-profits before we can get this one for the simple reason that it is not profitable in the short-term to prevent anything. But, at least 75% of our healthcare dollars are spent on treating preventable illnesses, and prevention yields, on average, a life-time savings ratio of 5 to 1 (meaning that preventing an illness costs 5 times less than treating that illness). This means that by simply preventing illnesses, our long-term healthcare costs could be 40% of what they are now. But this model does not maximize the healthcare industry profits, even though it maximizes our health, so it will never happen under our current system.

Most of all: 5) We all just need to step back, settle down, stop listening to the propaganda on both sides, and start thinking for ourselves. Turn off the TV. Turn down the radio. Get rid of the distractions. Put away your guns. Go for a walk (shameless plug) and seriously discuss with yourself or, preferably, another person what you really think needs to happen. When you hit the inevitable point at which you start thinking about how a change would negatively impact you personally or politically or financially, stop in your tracks, think about the millions of uninsured people who are less fortunate than you are, and repeat the following phrase five times, out-loud and as slowly and deliberately as possible: “It’s not about me!” Make sure someone else could reasonably hear you say it without having to listen too intently. Really let the phrase sink in to your psyche. Comprehend its meaning as deeply as you can... and then start thinking all over again.

Don't Bank On Pedestrian-Oriented Suburban Banks... and I Love You Mom!

2009-08-10T19:53:00.003-04:00

My “biggest fan” commented on my previous post that she doesn’t know of a bank that isn’t pedestrian-oriented. As much as I will probably regret correcting my own loving mother (I feel like I’m about to break a Commandment here), I’m going to have to respectfully disagree. I can't remember a single pedestrian-oriented bank in the Phoenix metropolitan area; not that they don’t exist there, but I suspect that they are few and far between, and there’s a simple reason why.

It doesn't make sense to build pedestrian-friendly banks (or any other type of business) in standard suburban areas, because people aren’t likely to walk to them. Since residences and businesses are purposely separated by segregated zoning laws, it is just not practical to "walk with a purpose" in these areas. Basically, it would be illogical to design a pedestrian-oriented bank in a standard suburban area.

This is, ultimately, not the fault of business owners or developers. Developers get a bad rap in planning circles, and sometimes for good reason. Developers often are only focused on their bottom line and not on what would be good for the community in which they are building. I don’t subscribe to Adam Smith’s “invisible hand” and neither do the laws of nature (I’ll write about this some time, I promise), so I have no problem with trashing developers for their selfishness. However, some (maybe most) developers are simultaneously looking out for their own interests while trying to provide economic benefits for the community. The only reason these developers create poor products is because they are playing by poor rules. Our planning is the problem, and poor development is simply the highly-visual result.

Now, I need to apologize profusely to my mom because I have committed the cardinal sin of family life: I have publicly disagreed with the person that brought me into this world. As self-inflicted punishment (and because my beautiful wife will be receiving my full attention while she is in town), you have heard the last of me until at least the end of next week. So long, and happy trails!

A Tale of Two Design Philosophies

2009-08-09T20:07:00.000-04:00

Many skeptics of Smart Growth and pedestrian-oriented development policies assume that such policies are inherently anti-growth. In fact, this is not true. If Smart Growth (emphasis on the word “Growth”) policies were meant to discourage development and “progress”, then we would see in these areas noticeable decreases in standard suburban features, such as parking lots. While it is true, in the case of parking lots, that many New Urban and traditionally-designed towns and cities have less need for parking spaces due to more efficient public transportation (thus smaller parking lots), most commercial, office, and civic buildings in these areas still offer parking lots to their patrons. The key difference between traditional urban and standard suburban designs is not the absence of any particular feature but, instead, its rearrangement.

West Bethlehem provides a striking example of this difference in design philosophy (see the video here). The beer store on one side of the street is set to the back of its lot, forcing a large slab of black-top parking to greet its visitors. What is wrong with this arrangement? Primarily, it fails the equitability test. With the parking lot facing Broad Street, drivers have a clear advantage when patronizing the business. Pedestrians must compete with cars entering and leaving the parking lot, a competition that we, the walkers, are likely to lose. Is the positive connection between driving and alcohol really the message we want to be sending?

On the other side of the street, however, the former Bank of America building (which, if you ask me, would be perfect for a much-needed Westside restaurant) was built in a completely opposite fashion. The building, which would likely be placed in the middle or to the back of a suburban lot, is placed right up against Broad Street, relegating the parking lot to the back. Drivers can still just as easily patronize the business, but pedestrians can just as easily do so as well without competing for space. This design levels the playing field and encourages alternative transportation.

I’m sure some of you will be thinking, “If pedestrian-oriented designs are so effective, why did Bank of America shut down the branch?” I’m not exactly sure why B of A left this location, but the pedestrian-oriented PNC Bank down the street is doing just fine. Perhaps it has to do with toxic loans: While B of A received $45 billion in bailouts, PNC actually took over a troubled bank.

Nude Pedestrianism... The Final Frontier

2009-08-08T14:45:00.002-04:00

Traveling around by foot or by bus is so(ooo!!!) much more interesting than by car. I’ve known this for a long time, and I’ve already written one post about meeting an interesting neighbor, but this truth was confirmed yet again today. Since my wife is flying in to the Lehigh Valley International Airport this week, I decided to take a bus out there to see if it was possible to bus it between the airport and the city (it is!). As the bus was leaving the airport, something out of the corner of my eye caught my attention. I knew instantly what it was, but I didn’t believe it. It’s not every day that you see it (hopefully), and, in fact, it may be a once-in-a-lifetime occurrence. Despite its scarcity, we humans intuitively know what it is before we even get a good look at it, and then we proceed to talk ourselves out of it until we, indeed, see that it is exactly what we had feared it would be. As the object came into clear view, my fears were confirmed as the bus driver mumbled, “Holy…”: a middle-aged, overweight, hairy naked man. He was just walking toward the terminal as if he wasn't aware that everyone could see his “cargo.” The Asian couple in the back of the bus that had just flown in was laughing hysterically. The bus driver remarked, “I need a new job.” I couldn’t help but smile as I shook my head in wonder.

The funny thing about seeing a naked person in public is that, as much as you wish you hadn’t seen what you saw, you (well, I guess I should speak for myself here) inevitably wish you had brought a camera to capture the ridiculousness of the moment. Maybe the camera would have captured the look on his face (for those of you who are curious, you don’t really get a good look at the facial expressions of an unexpectedly nude person). What could he have possibly been thinking? Was he enjoying his freedom from the societal norm of wearing clothing when others are present? Was he nervous? When someone is that brave (or stupid) to do something that you would never do, it makes you curious as to who this person is and what made him that way. Why is he so different from me? It was then that I realized how he was choosing to get around Bethlehem: by foot! Perhaps he and I would be kindred spirits if we ever had a chance to get to know each other, but I don’t think I could get too comfortable with him. After all, if he’s that calm about showing his junk in public, one can only imagine what he would be like with his friends.

This Just In... Garages Lead To Urban Decay

2009-08-05T21:02:00.001-04:00

As I explained in the previous posting, there are two different types of houses: those that have garages that are flush with the house and counted as part of the façade, and those that place the garage, if there is one, somewhere else on the lot. This little design feature actually has some large consequences for sense of community and neighborhood safety. When the garage is flush with the house and facing the street, it is often the case (though not always) that the house lacks a front porch. Front porches are important for the cohesiveness of neighborhoods, and thus cities, because they allow neighbors to see each other. When neighbors can see each other, they converse together about local politics, local idiots, and meaningless things. Neighborhoods, and again cities, are built on these simple yet intimate relationships. These things don’t often occur when porches are absent. Even when porches and front garages exist in tandem, the porches are often recessed to the point where the street is hardly visible, which completely defeats the purpose of front porches. Front porches are meant to be public, not private. Private porches are meant to be located on the sides or backs of houses.

We like our private porches, whether in front or back. What does this say about us? I could go into a sociological explanation of American individualism and how it leads us think that we need more privacy than we really do. But I think it is more about our fear than our freedom. It is the same fear that drove many of us away from the cities into the suburbs in the first place. Everything is so… well, public in the city. For some reason, a good portion of us react strongly against the word “public.” Is it because it carries with it negative connotations of inner-city life? Or socialism? Whatever it is, many of us have let our fears overtake us in such a way that a true front porch would be completely unacceptable. We moved to the suburbs to escape from seeing people all the time, so why would we want a porch that encourages us to possibly interact with others? What if the neighbors don’t like me? What if they are annoying? What if they’re satan worshippers? What if the neighborhood kids are getting into mischief and I have to speak up? Won’t that be embarrassing? There are just too many possible things that can go wrong with putting myself into the situation where I might have to talk to my neighbors, so I like my privacy, thank you very much!

I would argue that these fears, begun at some point after the Pilgrims arrived in the 1600s, have directly led to the physical and social decay of our cities. We often wonder how our inner city poverty rates got so high, or how our schools became such a joke, or how guns and drugs became so prevalent, or how so many lots (27%, to be exact) have become abandoned in Detroit. Are we missing something? We fear these places, because the people are different from us, buildings are not kept up, and any hope that they might have had as children of “movin’ on up” were dashed by the time they reached their dead-end high school. We now have every right to fear these places because their problems are self-perpetuating and are only getting worse, and because their own residents fear them. So, even in these depressed cities, houses with front porches (and most have them) have very little positive effect because people are, ironically, just as afraid to use them as the suburbanites are, but for very different reasons.

It’s funny how a discussion about garage design can lead to a lesson about front porches, our tendency to choose privacy over publicity, and inner-city problems. It sounds like a large mass of tangents, but that’s our problem: We are so trained to look at things linearly that we get confused when non-linear or organic connections are made. Fortunately, we as a society are beginning to think “organically” again, front porches are making a comeback, garage design and its implications are being discussed, the “privatize everything” movement is losing steam, cities are slowly being revitalized, and Generation Xers are the most civically-involved, community-focused, and mission (not profit)-driven group of Americans since the great generation before the Boomers. There’s hope after all!

"Houses For Cars"

2009-08-04T19:33:00.001-04:00

One of the major differences between new suburban housing and their older counterparts is the presence and position of the garage. Almost all new housing structures feature front-loading garages, most with space for two vehicles, but many holding three or more. These “homes for cars” often comprise about a third of the entire façade surfaces of the houses that contain them. This was not always the case. Most older houses either contain a single-car garage on the front façade, a single- or double-car garage off to the side or back of the lot facing an alley or facing the street but set back from the facade, or no garage at all. These design strategies served several purposes: 1) presenting the home, not the garage, as the main focal point; 2) pushing the footprint of the home closer to the street for neighborhood surveillance purposes; and 3) to relegate automobiles to their place as simply one form of getting around.

Take a look at this short video of a Bethlehem neighborhood that epitomizes traditional neighborhood design.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gI9OAtqSLaI&feature=player_profilepage

Since I have very little access to suburban-type housing in Bethlehem due to my lack of wheels, I’d like to challenge you to post a video or image of your suburban neighborhood so that we can all visually compare the two. Let’s get out and learn something about our neighborhoods, folks!

The (il)Logic of Rounded Curb Corners

2009-08-03T19:33:00.002-04:00

Piggybacking on yesterday’s post, I thought I would discuss the larger concept that underlies rounded curb corners. Again, for reference, you may want to watch the video.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xwPpuPfkjss&feature=player_profilepage

Suburban designs take most of their inspirations from the needs and desires of drivers, so let’s take a moment to look inside the mind of a typical motorist, whom I will call Minnie (Minnie the Motorist, or Minnie Driver, which ever you prefer). Minnie, not unlike the engineers that design suburban streets, is an economic rationalist: time and gas are money. Thus, Minnie wants to be able to get from Point A to Point B in as little time as possible using as little fuel as necessary. Engineers have figured out that satisfying Minnie’s basic desire can be accomplished by doing what all manufacturers of low-quality products do: cut corners (in this case, literally). Although Minnie thinks these intersections are ugly and wouldn’t be caught dead walking across one of them, she enjoys the fact that she can speed around 90 degree turns, cutting about 1.5 seconds off of her driving time for each of these turns that she makes. That can add up to a whole 10, 20, or even 30 minutes in a year! Since Minnie is the average American female, she earns a little over $34,000 in gross income per year, meaning that she takes in about $17 per hour. Assuming she saves 30 minutes of driving time per year with rounded corners (a very, very liberal estimate), rounded corner features would be worth $8.50 per year to Minnie, or 0.025% of her income. Also, since the average gas price is $2.50 per gallon and the average car gets 22.4 miles per gallon (average SUV gets 18 miles per gallon), and assuming that the average suburban surface street has a speed limit of 40 miles per hour, saving 30 minutes (20 miles) of driving time would be worth $2.23 for cars and $2.78 for SUVs in yearly gas expenses. This means that Minnie’s convenience is saving her somewhere between $10 and $12 per year, or less than an hour’s worth of work! Some convenience!

But Minnie is easily satisfied by small conveniences such as this. It’s the same attitude that is involved when a car that has been tailgating you passes you only to be stopped by the traffic light one car length in front of yours. Don't you think that person is satisfied by her better position? Of course she is, and you are undoubtedly jealous of her. We all like it when we save time and money, no matter how inconsequential, and being cheap and efficient aren’t inherently bad things, but there comes a point where this kind of attitude can become counterproductive and no longer cost-effective. Is the minute amount of money “saved” with rounded corners worth the costs (obesity, sense of community, safety) that come along with discouraging pedestrian activities? In other words, should the average American take a “loss” of $12 per year to make sure that pedestrians are given a fair chance at crossing the street? You tell me… I’m biased.

Putting Pedestrians On Equal Footing With Drivers

2009-08-02T18:23:00.002-04:00

As a change of pace, I thought it would be interesting to begin adding short videos to much shorter posts than I have been writing so far. I conceive of these new posts as small lessons on single issues relating specifically to the design of Bethlehem streets from the perspective of a pedestrian. Don’t get me wrong: I am likely to write some days about larger issues that may or may not specifically pertain to Bethlehem, but I will always try to make sure that these larger rantings are connected in some way to these new short vignettes. Please don’t expect a new video or new subject every day, but you can be certain that at least one or two a week will be posted… until I decide to change pace again. Finally, I’m a writer, not a photographer nor a news anchor. My videos are not intended to be of the best quality, and my voice isn’t supposed to be catchy or interesting. The videos are intended to supplement my writings, which are meant to be the interesting part (easy for me to say, I know). That being said, I apologize in advance for the crappy videos and hope you can give me some constructive criticism… or recommend someone that can do them for me!

*************************************************

I first want to talk about the design of sidewalk corner curbs at intersection crossings. Please watch the following video of a Bethlehem intersection to gain a clearer understanding of what I am referring to.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xwPpuPfkjss&feature=player_profilepage

There are two basic opposing design philosophies: squared edge and round edge. Now, these are not exclusive categories but have varying degrees of each, ranging from 90 degree angles to completely semi-circular. A squared curb does the best job at putting pedestrians and drivers on as equal footing (pun not intended) as possible. The pedestrian has the obvious right-of-way when crossing the street, and drivers must slow down, almost to a stop, to negotiate the turn, even if no pedestrians are present. Square intersection curbs are widely-recognized urban features. A round curb, as the video depicts, gives the advantage squarely to the motorist. Pedestrians must walk farther to cross from one side to the other, and drivers hardly need to apply pressure to the breaks to make the turn. Rounded curb corners can be extremely dangerous for pedestrians attempting to cross them because drivers are able to take the corner at relatively high speeds. If the driver is distracted and doesn’t notice the pedestrian, there is more momentum and less time to stop when taking a rounded corner rather than a square one. As you can imagine, rounded curbs are prominent in standard suburban areas.

At the risk of slightly contradicting myself, I do have to mention a third type of corner curb design: the extended corner curb. This type of corner extends the sidewalk and narrows the street at each intersection. This decreases pedestrian crossing distances even more while requiring vehicles to take turns even slower. This is more of a New Urban, or neo-traditional, feature that does not often appear in traditionally designed cities, such as Bethlehem. If a city’s goal is to increase walkability, pedestrian trips, and safety, installing extended corners is a superior way of altering the environment to meet that goal.

http://farm1.static.flickr.com/210/502590159_a35c2dd97c.jpg
A corner curb that extends toward the right side of the photograph.

Taking a Different Path... or Avoiding the Apostle

2009-07-31T19:54:00.001-04:00

Quite accidentally, I have found a new reason to praise neighborhood street grids: easily avoiding annoying neighbors. I was walking home the other, taking my normal path and passing the neighbor (he lives a couple of blocks from me) who is always sitting out on his lawn. We always say hello to each other as I pass, but on this particular day he decided to engage me in the most frustrating conversation I have experienced in a long while. After our usual greeting, as I continued to walk, he called after me, “Do you know the Lord?” Now, this is always a dangerous question because anyone that is brave enough to ask it of a complete stranger in a public place is likely to be a little too hardcore for my liking. I decided there was no way out of it, so I turned and said, “Yes, I’ve been a Christian for many years.” I thought maybe this would placate him so that I could get home and make dinner (I’m always starving by this time). Instead, he asked me what church I attend. I told him that I just recently moved in and have not found a home church yet, but that I attended the Lutheran church down the street once. This is when he explained to me that Lutheran pastors are “apostates” that lead their “flock” astray. He made sure to let me know then that he has several theology degrees (I said “Wow! That’s great”), so he obviously must know what he’s talking about. I knew from the beginning of the conversation that it would be interesting, but this was getting ridiculous very quickly. He proceeded to tell me that he is a pastor trained in the charismatic Assemblies of God tradition that “strictly follows Biblical teachings,” which apparently “no other church does.” He explained to me that God may have some grace for the “flock” of these churches for a little while, but “these pastors are held to a higher standard, they know better than to manipulate the Word, and they will pay dearly on Judgment Day,” which, according to him as he looked at his watch for effect, “is coming soon!”

It was at about this point when I began to slowly back away as he continued talking to me. He mentioned that he knew many senior pastors that were disqualified from being senior pastors because they weren’t married. I must have had a confused look (I’ve never heard of that rule!) on my face because he began to explain in an accusatory way (as if I, a Christian, should have known this and been appalled by it) that the Apostle Paul said that only married men could be senior pastors. Once again, he mentioned that he should know because he has “several degrees in theology,” to which I replied, “So I’ve heard.” He went on about the sinfulness of these pastors for a while as I nodded and continued to slowly back away. He then admitted that he was “Biblically divorced” (whatever that means) and out of a job, but he was looking to start a church. I don’t know why I decided to make the situation worse by asking a question, but I did. “So, if you start a church, will you be the senior pastor?” This got him all riled up. In, again, an accusatory manner, he slightly chastised me for thinking he would do such a thing. “You would think so, wouldn’t you! That’s what all of these so-called men of God are doing these days.” Then he said something that convinced me once and for all that I needed to avoid this guy from this point forward. “Don’t they know that only apostles can start churches?” I was completely dumbfounded. This guy actually believed that he was an apostle! I had learned my lesson at this point and didn’t answer or challenge him. I wanted to ask him how he came to personally listen to Jesus’ teachings while he was alive (the definition of an apostle); what makes him think his interpretation of the Bible is better than others; if he had ever eaten pork, stoned a prostitute, cast lots, or given everything he owned to the poor, as the Bible instructs. But I held my tongue and eventually told him that I needed to get home. Unbelievably, he found a way to mention one more time, “You know, my theology degrees…” before I finally got away from him.

After that experience, I thank God (whether my neighbors version of Him or my own) for gridded streets! Ever since that day, I have simply taken a different route home, which has not taken any more time to walk. If I lived in a suburban neighborhood, it is likely that, because of the suburban desire to have no through traffic, there would only be one path home. In a more urban neighborhood, however, there are always several different paths to one destination, which efficiently spreads traffic evenly throughout the streets… and provides me with a less annoying path home.

Disclaimer: I really do feel sorry for the guy, because he must be lonely with his penchant of proclaiming his religious superiority to others. If you are the praying type, please pray for him. I don’t mean to make fun of him, and I will never reveal who he is, but I began this blog with the purpose of describing my experiences as a pedestrian in Bethlehem… and this was quite an experience! It was one that I would not have had if I had passed his house in a car.

Recipe To End Obesity

2009-07-30T21:28:00.001-04:00

To wrap up my series on obesity, I thought I would present some possible policy solutions to the problems that I have discussed. I’m not a huge policy-wonk, and I’m not a Washington insider, so I don’t have the greatest feel for what is feasible. Perhaps I’m too idealistic, but I tend to think that anything is possible, and when we stop striving for our ideals, we’ll fail as a people and as a nation. So, this is my best attempt at applying my ideals to practical solutions.

First, we need to change our development policies and processes. Currently, a city sets a zoning code for a plot of land, and developers must either conform to that code (which includes type and use of structure, density, setback distances, etc.) or apply for a conditional use permit with the city council. Most of the time, conditional changes in zoning are not granted for land uses that are seen as drastically different or incompatible with current surrounding areas. Some municipalities are stricter than others. One city might allow multi-family housing in a predominantly single-family neighborhood while another may not. Similarly, some cities might permit certain industrial sites to be converted to commercial uses while others would not. Very few cities, however, will allow a plot in a residential zone to be converted to commercial. There are a variety of reasons why this is frowned upon, one of which involves a fear among residents that a corner store or restaurant will bring too much unwanted traffic into their neighborhood, which may cause their property values to decrease. While this fear has not been corroborated by evidence (in fact, mixed-use neighborhoods tend to be better valued and are steadier over time), the NIMBYs (residents that have a history of opposing any changes to their neighborhoods by saying, “Not in my backyard!”) have significant power in local decision-making.

The problem with this system is that, while the zoning policies sound good on paper, once those policies are used to guide design and development, the results are often disappointing. Surveys have shown that the majority of Americans who admit that their ideal neighborhood is a bedroom community (only upscale single-family homes) think that current suburban bedroom communities are not visually appealing and are not ideally designed. According to my thesis findings, the reason for this disconnection between policy and design lies in the fact that we set the zoning policy before we have any clue what the resulting design should look like. Anton Nelesson, a New Jersey planner, found that when, in fact, residents of an area were gathered and asked to design and make a model their ideal neighborhood, people in every case (he conducted dozens and dozens of these workshops) built traditional, walkable, mixed-use neighborhoods. What does this tell us about how our zoning process should be changed? We need to take a cue from the Germans (who gave us the concept of zoning in the first place about 100 years ago) and design before we zone. Codifying a policy before we have an accurate vision of what it will result in is backward, but this is exactly what we do. A great deal of experience and research tells us that neighborhoods which are developed based on design, and not code, encourage more physical activity. So, Policy #1: Design before we zone.

Second, we should look seriously at how our land use and transportation policies can be better coordinated to provide for more options for people to get around. Currently, most cities and regions set land-use policies based on computer models that can only interpret automobile impacts. After land-use and road designs are set, then alternative forms of transportation are considered. This is the biggest reason why transit systems are ineffective and inefficient in most cities in which they operate. When an automobile-based environment is built, it is very difficult to go back and retrofit it with features that encourage transit use, walking, or biking. Most cities are unwilling to make the necessary changes, and for good reason: most of them would need to change so drastically that it would hardly be feasible. The solution lies in either laying a comprehensive transportation network first and building the city around it (which takes an up-front commitment that most cities are unwilling to make), or design land-use and transportation in tandem. While this is inherently more complicated than doing one before the other, its results would be much more equitable for all forms of transportation, including walking and biking. Marrying land-use to transportation policy 60 years ago would have made sloppy suburban development virtually unheard-of. Policy #2: Plan for land-use and transportation simultaneously and co-dependently.

Third, there is too much inconsistency and inefficiency in the divisions and collaborations between neighboring municipalities. This can be seen on the west side of Bethlehem where the city ends and Allentown begins. West Broad is a great mixed-use street with residences and local businesses; but as it crosses Pennsylvania Avenue into Allentown, it becomes predominantly commercial, which serves to bring in more traffic into the Bethlehem area than would otherwise occur. This has the effect of suburbanizing a perfectly good walkable urban neighborhood. Problems of this nature can be rectified through the authority of a strong regional planning body that can coordinate land-uses in areas in which one municipality transitions into another. Policy #3: Give strength to regional planning organizations.

Once the first three policies are in place, we can begin to look at laws that focus on public health initiatives, commercial disincentives for offering unhealthy foods, and consumer protection from those foods. Our fourth policy would actually be a set of policies that mandate the use of social marketing principles in every community to increase physical activity behaviors as a form of disease prevention. Social marketing is a well-established set of business and psychology strategies that seek to discover a population’s specific barriers to performing certain behaviors as well as discern the benefits that people experience from those behaviors. The goal of the research is to inform how best to implement an intervention that will break down those barriers while increasing the perceptions of the benefits. For example, a public health official might find through administering surveys to a random sample of city residents that the largest barrier to engaging in regular moderate exercise is that people are self-conscious about being seen exercising alone. Similarly, it is found that the benefit to exercising most identified by the same residents was the sense of accomplishment that is obtained. In order to address these two issues, the health official might decide to institute city-sponsored exercise clubs that double as support groups. These groups would allow residents to identify neighbors that enjoyed similar physical activities so that people could connect with the purpose of exercising in groups and encouraging each other to reach set goals. A set of policies that mandate city-specific interventions would go a long way in encouraging people to exercise more, thereby preventing obesity-related illnesses. Policy set #4: Obesity prevention through city-level social marketing strategies.

Fifth, while I would personally like government to ban certain foods outright, I know that this is not a popular or realistic solution. As an alternative (and probably more effective) solution, the federal government needs to create an incentive program for food producers, distributors, and restaurants. To begin with, food producers and distributors need to be rewarded with tax breaks and subsidies for meeting very stringent nutritional levels and punished with higher taxes for foods that have little nutrition or that are unnecessarily high in fat, sodium, or sugars. I’m not a nutritionist, so I can’t give specifics on how incentives could be tied to calories, fat, sodium, or sugar (mostly high fructose corn syrup) levels, but I don’t have to be a food expert to know that overkill on any one of those things should be discouraged and moderation rewarded. The two-headed goal would be to discourage unhealthy food while making it more expensive than good quality food (which is exactly opposite of how it is currently). Next, grocery stores should be encouraged to open in under-served areas (called “food deserts”) where low-income people often lack adequate access to high quality nutritious food. Tax incentives could be tied to the number of blocks away from under-served areas that the store locates. To top off this set of policies, portion sizes and calorie levels at restaurants should be incentivized to encourage healthier dining. As I discussed in a previous post, we are notoriously poor at recognizing how portion sizes impact our eating habits, and restaurants have taken advantage of this. In the case of restaurants, tax incentives need to be applied to an average of the establishment’s calories per order, which would be publicly displayed at each restaurant. Policy set #5: Encourage the production and sale of healthy foods and portions.

Finally, since we can only disincentivize and not eliminate unhealthy food environments, policies are needed to better protect consumers. Consumers should have the right to know what exactly it is that they are consuming (in the case of most soft drinks, 99% high fructose corn syrup… in case you didn’t know), where the food is coming from (the local farm or an industrial feed lot?), what unnatural chemicals or antibiotics were used to grow the food or to keep it from dying (please read Michael Pollan’s “Omnivore’s Dilemma”), exactly how many calories are in the meal (taking portion size into account) set in front of them, and how many miles the average person would need to walk or run to work off those calories. Consumer rights should unequivocally be placed above industry rights, and consumers should not be afraid or feel powerless to raise hell when something isn’t right. If it isn’t the job of the government to protect its people, then what is? Policy set #6: Protect the consumer over industry.

This has, by far, been the longest post yet (and probably the longest I will ever do), and I won’t apologize for it, because I think this subject is extremely important (and this post the most important of the obesity series). If any of you have suggestions for further policies, concerns with the policies I’ve mentioned, or want to debate me as to whether I’m making too big a deal over this issue, I welcome any of your comments.

School Design Gets a Big Fat "F"

2009-07-29T19:09:00.000-04:00

Perhaps the fastest growing portion of the obese population is school-aged children. Children as young as six are now struggling with obesity and other associated health problems, and research from past generations have shown that obese children are likely to become obese adults. There are many reasons why child obesity rates have grown greatly over the past 40 years. One reason is our food, which I have thoroughly discussed in a previous post. Another involves what children choose (or are allowed) to do for leisure time. Television is the big culprit, but is being quickly overtaken by computer games and the internet. Children used to spend a good proportion of their free time outside, running around, exploring, and playing games. Perhaps the biggest reason why children are playing outside less and less these days is because there is very little nature left in our cities to pique their interest. And the second most important reason why children now spend their free time in-doors is because parents fear for their safety. Richard Louv discusses both of these concepts in his book, “Last Child In The Woods.” Louv argues that ball fields and grassy areas are not as fascinating or beneficial for children as untouched natural areas, such as forests and creeks. Many of today’s parents grew up exploring their country-sides, swinging in trees, and swimming in local lakes. Today, however, many of these activities would apparently be unthinkable for parents to permit. Children wandering through the woods alone is a seen as a recipe for disaster, playing in trees could be an accident waiting to happen, rivers and lakes are heavily polluted and dangerous (this one is actually a valid concern and should spur political action among parents in support of local environmental standards), and predators could constantly be lurking in the bushes. Louv addresses these fears as well. He presents evidence that, while we are bombarded daily with reports and images of violent crime, including child abductions and the like, rates of these crimes have not changed since the 1950s. We simply have more access to these stories, and the media does what it can to sensationalize as much as possible. But again, perception is everything.

I believe that one of the most important culprits of childhood obesity is school design. Remember when schools were built within neighborhoods? These were schools that were placed within a 10 to 15 minute walk from most of the students that they served. The entrances of those schools avoided busy streets, were designed to be accessible from the neighborhood sidewalks, and parking lots were pushed to the back, kept small in the front, or placed on another plot of land altogether. There was actually need for schools to hire crossing guards because students could walk to school. There are still many great neighborhood schools in Bethlehem and downtown Salt Lake City, and I even attended one in West Phoenix, of all places. But most of these schools were built many years ago and their attendance boundaries were purposely limited. They don’t build them like that anymore! Now, most neighborhoods are planned without thought of integrating a school, and when a suburban neighborhood begins to grow to the point that a new school is warranted, districts try to get as much land for their money by purchasing large plots of land (usually farmland) in the middle of nowhere. These schools are planned to be many times larger than neighborhood schools, they are placed in the middle or to the very back of their monstrous properties, and the size of their parking lots are, frankly, ridiculous. Most are built a great distance from where a good portion of their students live; thus, they are likely to be located along busy major arterial roads. In some extremely suburban (pretty much rural) areas, there is no sidewalk access for the few students who would walk.

Because of poor planning and short-sighted school financial decisions, the number of children walking to school today is a mere fraction of what it was 40, 30, or even 20 years ago. The way these schools are designed, it is physically impossible for children to walk there. Sometimes it is impossible (or at least improbable, and mostly unsafe because of heavy traffic) for children to bike these routes. Students must either be driven by parents or a bus driver. But even bus transportation becomes improbable for these kids. In some areas, buses have to serve areas that are so spread out that some kids must catch the bus at 6:30 a.m. or earlier.

There have been some attempts to solve issues of safety in areas where walking to school is possible. These programs, such as Safe Routes to School and Walking School Bus, take a “safety in numbers” approach that, if you are worried about the safety of your child, is a good solution. But these programs are not feasible in areas where walking isn’t possible in the first place. We will never make any real progress on childhood obesity until we begin creating real neighborhoods (that includes schools, corner stores, offices, and restaurants) again. We can start by using current middle-of-nowhere school grounds as in-fill projects, creating completely new and traditional neighborhoods around them.

Oil, Technology, and Obesity

2009-07-28T21:28:00.002-04:00

Conventional wisdom tells us that skyrocketing gas prices would mostly be a bad thing for America. Leisure travel would be severely restricted, food prices would also soar (since oil is intricately linked with our industrial food system, a topic for another post), jobs would be lost, and many businesses would die out. There’s no question that $20 per gallon gasoline would be catastrophic to our current way of life, but Christopher Steiner, author of “$20 Per Gallon,” believes that this catastrophe is necessary, inevitable, and will actually make us happier and healthier. Now, for a disclaimer: I haven’t actually read the book yet. I’ve read several articles on the book, all of them favorable, but I am not comfortable making claims about what the author is trying to say. However, I would like to take Steiner’s interesting premise and pretend as though I had thought of it first. The following is my reaction to the concept of $20 per gallon.

First of all, major increases in the price of oil are bound to happen. Peak oil is a concept that refers to the point at which oil production has reached its maximum and can only decline from then on. The United States reached its own peak in the 1970s, and production has decreased at about 2% per year ever since. Now, for the first time on record, oil production in oil-rich countries has begun to decline. OPEC nations are having to work harder to produce less oil. In the short-term, this means they will pass on the costs by marking up the price of oil. In the long-term, as oil wells continue to deplete, market forces will put crude prices on a severe up-swing. Analysts have been saying that we could be looking at $6.00 per gallon very soon!

It is my hope that the following will be the storyline of how America will respond. First, most Americans will realize the implications of these changes and welcome the high prices. Higher oil prices increase the ability for alternative energy products to compete. Pickens may return to his famous plan once again (it’s my hope that the feds, who are not so worried about making a profit, will actually come up with their own plan)! Exorbitant food prices at chain grocery stores will begin to push consumers to their local markets and gardens for fresher, more nutritious, less chemically-sprayed and well-traveled food. City planners, engineers, and developers will realize the true market potential for compact, mixed-use, walkable, and transit-oriented cities. The outer suburbs will slowly waste away. Disproportionate funding for roads and highways will stop, and an influx of former road funds will be thrown into local and regional (and eventually national) public transportation projects. People will begin walking again to obtain their basic needs. People will begin to work the land again, which is truly a great form of exercise. Our collective weight will decrease, which will have an extremely positive effect on our health costs. Finally, and most importantly, veteran pedestrians, such as myself, will be looked to with reverence and given book deals.

Of course, all of this is pie-in-the-sky stuff, and while I hope it happens exactly the way I predict (for somewhat selfish reasons, as the last part of the paragraph alludes to), it is so unlikely that I’m willing to bet on it. Steiner makes a claim that for every dollar per gallon rise in the price of gasoline, obesity will fall 10%. I think he’s right, but to a point. At the $6 level, obesity will decrease quite dramatically, but any higher and alternative fuel vehicles will begin popping up all over the place, which will be the quick death of the re-urbanization movement. The people that can afford to will move back out of the cities. The suburbs will be revived, and the cities will begin to decline again. While the environment will be significantly better than it is now, our health will begin to suffer once more. Finally, we may come full-circle when demand for oil gets so low that oil producers begin to practically give it away at prices cheaper than the alternatives. And, although alternatives would likely never go away, there would always be something to fuel our insatiable appetites for personal vehicles.

As far as obesity goes, as long as we continue our love affair with cars, alternative or not, we will keep getting fatter. Our cities will keep spreading out further and further, especially when the environmental costs are reduced. We’ll develop pedestrian motorized vehicles (we’re already seeing cops using them) that are accessible to almost everyone so that we no longer have to feel the inconvenience of walking or taking public transit ever again. Worst of all, alternative fuels will allow us to segregate our places of residence from our offices and markets to such an extent that those who will still want to walk will not be able to do so. We'll be locked in!

In summary, $20 per gallon will never happen, because we are just waiting until the very last instant in which it will no longer make financial sense to withhold alternative investment. And obesity rates will continue to climb as long as we rely on technology to make our lives “better.” Does this mean that I am for abolishing cars? No, I think there needs to be a middle ground where unnecessary car use is frowned upon and even marginalized and other, more active, forms of transporation are accommodated and encouraged; but if I were in-charge and had a choice of no cars or the scenario I laid out above, for the sake of us all, I would gladly do away with them altogether.

Fast Food's Double-Edged Sword

2009-07-27T20:51:00.000-04:00

Since my “biggest fan” (aka, my mom) brought it up, I might as well go with it. There are two basic ways in which fast food restaurants have significantly contributed to not only the loosening of Americans’ belts but also to the ballooning of societies all over the world. The first is the most obvious: extraordinarily fatty (not to mention high in sodium) foods. This is what happens when you try to mass-produce large quantities of food in the shortest possible amount of time at the cheapest cost imaginable. Here’s how it works: In its basic form, fast food is nothing but a bland imposter of “slow” food; so, to get people to eat it, producers must add incredible amounts of fat and salt. Unfortunately for us, those are two very irresistible flavors to most humans. And it doesn’t hurt (from a fast food restaurant’s point of view) that we don’t really expect to get good, much less decent, quality food from a place where a hamburger costs a buck and is handed to us a few seconds after paying. We are okay with mediocrity, and it has been slowing killing us for years.

On top of the unhealthy food, the portion sizes have spiraled out of control (and this goes for “slow” food restaurants as well). There have been several high-profile books and films in the not too distant past (“Fast Food Nation;” “Supersize Me”) that have attested to the fact that what we now know as the small drink and small fries are actually larger than the original larges of each. We don’t really pay much more for them, but we get a ridiculous 30-some-odd percent more calories. This is all due to the joining of a trick of modern economics with basic human psychology. Products can be offered for almost free, and yet the companies that offer those products can make significantly more cash. Even when McDonalds is offering 30% more calories for $0.25 more, it is now so cheap to mass produce those calories that they are gaining a $0.245 extra profit. Why do we allow them to do this?

Brian Wansink, a Cornell food researcher, thinks it is because, when it comes to food, we have no clue when we are being duped. He conducted several experiments (including one where he rigged up a soup bowl to refill slowly from its bottom) to test how well people were aware of how much they ate. He found that participants ate more when they dined from larger dishware, and participants were prone to eating all of the food in front of them (even if it was being refilled without their knowledge). The most amazing part of his research is that when participants were told that they had eaten 400 more calories than the person across from them (the control), the participants emphatically denied it. Even when shown the rigged soup bowl, they still denied it. Fast food and other restaurants make gobs of money off of our denial (which they have known about for years); meanwhile, our health is paying for it.

The second way that fast food is making us fat is the way in which most of these restaurants are designed. Think about it… what is the most stereotypical feature of a fast food restaurant (hint: this is how most frequenters receive their food)? Drive-through windows are as much a part of American culture as the food that is served through them. They are meant to serve as a convenience to encourage people to drive to the restaurant; and this is exactly what people do. I don’t really blame these people, because there is absolutely nothing to encourage pedestrians to walk there. Walking across a busy fast food parking lot and competing with cars is uncomfortable at best. If you are in a hurry and want to go through the drive-through on foot (or even on bike), you will most likely be denied food. It is one more way in which suburbia has diminished the importance of all forms of transportation other than automobiles.

I have less of a problem with fast food joints that are located in downtown mixed-use buildings or high rises. There are no drive-through windows. A good portion of customers actually expel some calories before and after eating the food. They are still guilty of “calorie gouging” (my term), but it is a much less problematic situation when cars are taken out of the equation. I’ll write about this tomorrow when I discuss Christopher Steiner’s new book, “$20 Per Gallon.” Until then, “slow” it down, be conscious of what and how much you are eating, and, for heaven’s sake, have some standards!

Tipping the Scales Toward Pedestrian Designs

2009-07-26T14:14:00.002-04:00

The field of urban planning has recently latched on to research that has linked a geographical area’s growth pattern to its inhabitant’s body-mass index. In other words, a city with 200,000 residents that has a very low population and housing density and full of standard suburban features (cul-de-sacs, arterial streets, buildings set far back in the middle of their properties with large parking lots, etc.) will have larger people than a city of the same size that is more dense and urban in nature. Research has shown this to be true both at a regional level (counties, metropolitan areas, large cities) and the local level (small cities, towns, neighborhoods). The concepts behind these findings have to do with how accessible goods and services are to pedestrians. If people are not able to walk (the American Medical Association recommends walking as a healthy activity that almost everyone can do) to accomplish any of their daily activities, they are less likely to walk at all and, thus, are more likely to gain weight. There are, obviously, other factors that contribute to our 66% overweight and obesity rate (overeating, excessive availability of calorie-dense foods, perceived safety, etc), but this is a very important and often overlooked factor.

American culture views losing weight in a very peculiar way. We know that it involves both what we consume and how much energy we expend, but we are constantly searching for ways to do it by only changing one of those factors: I’m mostly talking about food. Have you seen the commercials promoting the “miracle” diet pills that require no exercise to lose a ridiculous amount of weight in an even more ridiculous amount of time? Of course, if it sounds too good to be true… But we love the idea that we could possibly do no work but reap all of the benefits as if we did. The diet pills might succeed in sapping bodies of excess water weight and other fluids (and thus necessary nutrients), but this is extremely unhealthy. Others will try to lose weight by simply trying to cut their calorie intake in half, but their bodies – those things they are trying to exert their mastery over – will ultimately betray them by holding on to as many of those drastically reduced calories as it possibly can, as a body does during famine. You cannot lose weight in a healthy way by simply changing your food behaviors. You must couple a healthy change in eating with an increase in physical activity.

Many people have finally relented to this truth and are beginning to listen to public health officials (who have been saying this all along) when they give new ideas for becoming more active. The biggest problem with this, however, is that most of these appeals for increased physical activity fail because of one fundamental problem: the majority of our built environments are not designed for sustained physical activity. Sure, many suburban neighborhoods are quiet (thus exceedingly safe for pedestrian activities) and have access to parks or greenways, but there is little incentive and no good practical reason for anyone living in these areas to actually get out and walk. If I find that I need a couple of eggs and a grocery store is within a ten minute walk, and I don’t have to wade through a sea of cars in the parking lot to get to the store, I have a practical reason and significant incentive (no need to use expensive gas, and even get some moderate exercise out of it) to huff it by foot. If, however, the store and other destinations are only reasonably accessible by car, then a large set of walking incentives are not available to me.

I am especially attuned to this concept right now because I have no choice but to walk. While Bethlehem is mostly a great place for someone without a car (my barber and bank are right down the street in areas where I don’t have to compete with drivers), there are some frustrations. The only grocery store near me is a 15 to 20 minute walk away, and once I get there, I have to walk across a 5 acre parking lot. In fact, I should be going to get groceries right now, but I’m procrastinating because of its massive inconvenience. I have absolutely no access to a post office. If things are this difficult for an uber-pedestrian such as myself, imagine what it would be like for someone who is more normal who has lost access to a car.

My point being: if local, state, and federal governments are really serious about addressing obesity, they will have to begin by providing physical incentives for people to get outside in the form of making amenities and necessities convenient to get to without motorized vehicles. This can occur through smart land-use policies that provide more of a balance in home, work places, and marketplaces. No more of this separation between homes and destinations. Another strategy that must occur is the redesign of our building positions on their lots. This is as simple as switching the positions of buildings with their parking lots so that the building fronts the street and the parking is accessed from the back. This is a good way to encourage both drivers and pedestrians to frequent the store. These solutions (there are many others) are currently illegal in most areas of the country, but I can’t think of a conceivably good reason for that.

If you are concerned about how the growth patterns of your community, city, or region are contributing to obesity and its resulting serious health problems (heart disease, hypertension, type II diabetes and other such diseases that are driving the largest portion of our skyrocketing medical costs), go to your elected council meetings and make your views known. If they dismiss you as a radical, find other “radicals” in your area, organize a group, find a sympathetic community leader, and make it difficult for them not to listen.

Southside Bethlehem

2009-07-23T18:29:00.003-04:00

While waiting after work in Southside Bethlehem for the bus to come, and while looking out the window as the bus drives through the Southside, I often notice that I am the only white person around. This is interesting to me because there are white people that live and work in the Southside, but they are simply nowhere to be found. On the other hand, people of African or Hispanic or Native American or Middle Eastern origins are all around town, walking along the sidewalks, entering and exiting local businesses, gathering in small groups of neighbors to talk about the day’s events.

I begin to wonder if the white residents and workers of the Southside have purposely retreated into their own private worlds. This would be consistent with what has happened in other areas. White people tend to feel threatened and unsafe in areas of high concentrations of minorities… especially low-income minorities. Therefore, whites often abandon these areas for “safer” areas. I know I’m guilty of this. I am always a little nervous while waiting for the bus on the Southside, and I still have a fear of walking too far up and down 4th Street. Of course, anyone who has spent any time walking around the Southside knows that this fear is ridiculous. Everyone that I have come into contact with on the Southside is very friendly, which catches me off-guard a little bit. Why is that? Why do I have to assume that someone with a darker skin color than mine in a low-income neighborhood is out to get me? Logically, and from experience, I know this is not true, and it is especially not true in the lively and community-centered Southside. But I still feel threatened. Maybe it’s my own arrogance that makes me think that I am special enough for some stranger, even a menacing one, to take notice of. Maybe it is a reaction that I learned as a child. Maybe it’s a natural reaction, as some claim. Or maybe it is a consequence of the negative sensationalist leanings of our media (cliche, but true when you think about it). I’m really not sure which one it is, but it creates a unique and difficult to solve problem when it comes to walkability.

An area’s walkability is determined primarily by its amenities geared toward pedestrians. A neighborhood that contains finely-gridded, narrow streets with a variety of different kinds of destinations (shops, civic areas, parks, etc.) is much more walkable than one with wide streets that invariably end in cul-de-sacs and only contains an endless array of cookie-cutter houses. In other words, areas that are built to accommodate modes other than car-travel and that have interesting things to see are more walkable than areas that do not. But there is another side to walkability, and it is probably more obvious than what I’ve just described. A neighborhood can have very narrow, interconnected streets with wide sidewalks and a slew of very interesting places to visit, yet it could also be extremely unwalkable. Why? Because that neighborhood is unsafe (think central Allentown) or is perceived to be unsafe (such as some think of the Southside of Bethlehem). Safety is the key, and, unfortunately for the Southside, perception is everything. But the situation is more complicated with the Southside. Here’s why: white people don’t feel safe, so they don’t walk there but, instead, stay confined within the safety bubbles of their houses and cars (or university campus); people of color, on the other hand, feel completely safe and apparently feel no need to spend their free time anywhere but outdoors. This is the sign of a strong, vibrant, and sustainable community that the white residents, unfortunately, have (or want to have) little or no part in. This, however, is not an unusual occurrence. For those of you Salt Laker’s, this same dynamic is taking place on the west side in neighborhoods such as Rose Park (you know, the place often referred to as the “ghetto;” try walking its streets sometime, and you’ll be amazed!) where the neighbors of color are out and about being neighborly and the white folks have fenced off their yards. This is the future of American community, folks, and white people are largely missing out!

I won’t even pretend to know how to rectify this situation. It might be that the best thing to do is nothing, allowing white Southside residents to eventually see that their community is changing for the better without them. And it is changing for the better. The Southside seemingly gets a new locally-owned and operated business every week, and those businesses have, for the most part, been sustainable (compare that to just about anywhere else in the country right now!). The Southside also is having tens of thousands of dollars per year invested in building façade and weatherization (and other energy efficiency) improvements. And perhaps most importantly, a major bank (or any bank, for that matter) has finally committed to opening a branch on the Southside (translate: the powers that be think the Southside is worth investing in again).

I don’t mean to make this a racial issue, but what else can it be? And while most racial segregation issues (whether intended or not) have seemingly benefited the white community in the past, this is one instance in which they (or we, since I’m white) are, decidedly, at a disadvantage.

A Bus-rider's Manifesto... or Rantings from a Moderate

2009-07-22T21:34:00.002-04:00

Riding the bus in the morning is pretty relaxing for me. Once I get on and swipe my card, my responsibility for navigating myself through the world suddenly diminishes for about 20 minutes. It’s almost like entering a time warp where life is suddenly put on hold. Since the last time I got off the bus, I was responsible for: walking home without getting hit by a car or running into other pedestrians; getting the mail; making my own dinner; doing some exercises; keeping myself somewhat busy and entertained; going to bed at a decent hour; falling asleep; waking up when my alarm goes off; taking a shower; making and eating breakfast; making myself look presentable; being sure the door is locked when I leave home; walking to the bus without getting hit by a car or running into other pedestrians; and getting on the correct bus. Of course, we don’t always notice that we are constantly responsible for these mundane tasks, and suggesting that many of these things are worth taking note of is utterly ridiculous (at least for normally functioning people); but the truth of the matter is that, for most of our lives, when it comes to the actions that we take, the responsibility-buck stops with us as individuals (how’s that for a conservative political statement!).

Yet, when I step onto the correct bus and swipe my fare card, I begin to partake in 20 minutes of absolutely no responsibility for my whereabouts. Until I again have to take responsibility for myself by pulling the stop cord at the right time, I am completely at the whim of the bus driver. The driver could veer totally off course and end up driving across the U.S./Canadian border, and I would have no control over the matter. I become completely dependent on another person. As scary as this sounds (and it is scary when you step onto a bus and put your trust in the driver for the first time), it is strangely liberating to willingly give up control over that portion of my life. We tend to think that we have attained the epitome of freedom when we first strike out on our own, or when we get in the car and take responsibility for getting ourselves somewhere, but maybe it is just an illusion. Maybe being reliant on others, something not so highly thought of in our culture, is the real ticket to freedom (there’s the liberal in me!).

I don’t think many other people have come to this epiphany, however. I have come to this conclusion because of the noticeably miniscule numbers of transit riders in Bethlehem and around the country. The numbers in Bethlehem are around 2% (an estimate that is very much rounded up), while ridership around the nation is somewhere between 3% and 4%. Amazingly, these are actually stark increases from a few years ago after gas prices spiked. Ridership, however, is still so low that many people who are anti-public transit have pointed out that most transit systems (in fact, according to some, all but San Francisco’s BART) are less energy efficient and emit more pollution per person than private automobiles do. The sad truth is that they are correct in most cases.

But it’s hard to blame the pro-transit lobby for this. What most people don’t realize is the unbelievable (believe it!) amount of money that the government spends each year to encourage automobile use. The latest estimates – which include subsidies to oil companies and car manufacturers, tax deductions to car owners, construction of new roads in newly expanded suburban areas, tax breaks for buyers of newly-constructed homes (which are only able to be built in new, outlying suburban areas), costs of environmental destruction, and lost savings by intentionally pricing foreign alternatives (such as the amazingly cheep and clean Brazilian sugar cane ethanol) out of the market – put annual government subsidization of automobile infrastructure at almost $500 Billion! If you think the Recovery Act was wasteful and unnecessary, you may want to begin thinking seriously about how your car is also part of America’s bottomless borrowing pit. I’ll say it again: $500 Billion per year! And the worst part of all of this is that even with all of this money flowing into our transportation infrastructure every year, we are still a couple of trillion dollars behind on our infrastructure up-keep. That is how inefficient our 1.3 car per capita system is!

As opposed to the $500 billion car fund, how much does transit get? Let’s just put it this way: even with our new pro-transit administration, stimulus funding only allocates about $9 billion (of the almost $800 billion) toward public transportation projects. You might say, “Well, of course! Why should we provide any more funding for a system that only serves about 3% of us?” This becomes a chicken-and-egg dilemma. Does transit struggle because of lack of funding, or is funding withheld because of low transit ridership? The answer, right now, is both, and until we break the cycle and start funding it (and stop unfairly pitting in against a favored automobile industry), it will never become efficient and convenient enough for people to want to ride. And I feel sad about that, because I want others to experience the same liberating dependency that I feel every time I sit in those cramped, bucket seats. I want my bus to be packed and overflowing. Mostly, I just want transit to be given a fair shot and to give people more of a choice in transportation (there’s that conservative in me again!).

Tell me what you think. Should we allow transit to compete?

Comments lost in cyberspace...

2009-07-21T18:43:00.002-04:00

It has come to my attention that comments have been left but are not showing up on the page. I am not sure if there is something wrong with the page or if the commentors did something wrong. So, here's what I want you to do. First, please leave a comment on this posting... it doesn't have to be anything insightful, just say "here." Then, read the following posting, as that is the real post for today. Lastly, comment on that one and tell me what you are thinking. It's as simple as 1-2-3. Go!

Community Reinvestment Act and the Mortgage Crisis

2009-07-21T18:40:00.001-04:00

On my way to work, and again on my way back home everyday, I pass through the south side of Bethlehem, an area that has been ravaged over the years with massive disinvestment that is just now beginning to come back. Part of the reason that this area is beginning to bounce back has to do with local enforcement of the Community Reinvestment Act. For those of you that are not up on your 1970’s community development policy, CRA was created during the Carter administration with the purpose of putting pressure on banks to invest a good portion of their deposits in the form of loans to the communities in which their branches exist. CRA was also meant to take further action on banking practices of “red lining,” in which areas of cities were literally marked off with red marker to advise lenders not to disperse credit to those areas. This redlining was essentially what happened to South Bethlehem, a community composed of mostly minority citizens. It wasn’t until various community organizations began to act as holistic financial institutions that things took a turn for the better. These nonprofits used private and public grant funds to begin loaning money to local entrepreneurs and homeowners to start businesses, buy homes, and make building façade improvements, while at the same time providing comprehensive financial education, expert support, and other such services that make it extremely difficult for the borrowers to fail. Not only has this strategy helped the community invest in itself, but it has spurred demand for outside investments, such as the new Sands casino. I can’t help but think that banks who have a history of redlining missed out on a great amount of future capital.

CRA has come under a lot of scrutiny lately, with many people calling for its repeal based on the belief that it led to our mortgage meltdown. The argument goes like this: CRA forced banks into an abundance of sub-prime loans, which were unsustainable for the new homeowners once the fine-printed rate increases came due. I don’t think that CRA, at least the way it is currently structured, is faultless in this whole matter, but I can’t put much stock in this argument. CRA forced banks into ridiculous loan practices? No more than banks forced sub-prime mortgages on prospective homeowners. The fact is, there was no force involved with any party. CRA was encouraging sub-prime loans without actually placing any enforcement on the way in which those loans were structured or distributed. Originally, because housing values kept increasing (to the point where some people actually began to believe that they would keep increasing forever), banks were making gobs and gobs of money off of these unconventional loans. They could hand out a high rate, variable loan, or an ARM that would balloon in the near future, and fully expect that the recipient would soon come back and either refinance or take out a home equity loan, further making money for the bank. Homeowners also had little reason to second guess the system, because everyone seemed to be benefiting from it. I could stop throwing away my money on rent and start paying a mortgage, without any money down, and start building equity. And since I assumed that my home value would keep increasing, I could take a loan backed by that equity to improve my quality of life. This was a system that seemed to benefit everyone. Then, of course, everything crashed and it was all exposed as a sham.

Many would say that CRA should be the one with the most blame here because it is at the top of the process; however, I have a hard time giving it too much blame. Again, the law isn’t perfect, and it is in the process of being improved considerably, but I believe the blame lies mostly on the banks, and somewhat less on homebuyers. I could make the greed argument against the banks, and it would be true, but it is so overdone that it has little effect anymore. My argument is that the banks were focusing too much on their short-term investments that they completely ignored the fact that they could make so much more in the long run (by averting a housing bubble) by taking the kind of holistic approach in more credit-risky neighborhoods that the South Bethlehem nonprofits have taken. Instead of making it a point to deceive homebuyers in order to potentially make a lot more later, why not work with the homebuyers to help them succeed, which would in turn lead to more wealth creation in the area. I fault the homebuyers to a lesser extent because of the deception practices of the banks, but I still do fault them. Many were innocent victims, but some were just plain stupid. It’s one thing to be duped into a bad mortgage, but it’s quite another to deplete their equity. The “American Dream” came back to bight many of them in the ass. But as far as the CRA is concerned, I place the least amount of blame on the intent of the law itself because increasing investment in neighborhoods that need it and eliminating redlining is simply the right thing to do. Forget about profits; forget about the “virtues of the free market.” There are some things that are more important than money, and this is one of them.

Now, if only the law could make sure that the right investments are made… but that’s a subject for another post. Anyone want to refute me? I welcome your comments.

Honk if you agree with me

2009-07-20T18:46:00.001-04:00

My days begin by leaving my apartment and walking ¾ of a mile to a bus stop, where I take the F bus to the south side of Bethlehem to work. As you can imagine, I end my work day the same exact way, only in reverse. So far, this has worked out fairly well. The weather has been mostly perfect… according to locals, a little too perfect. Apparently, this is a very unusual summer weather-wise. It rained all through June, and it has rained at least a couple times per week in July, which has kept the humidity to a minimum. It has also kept things fairly cool, which I have appreciated greatly while trying to not turn on my air conditioner. It hasn’t been all perfect, however. The beginning of last week was hotter and stickier than I had yet experienced. Then on Friday, torrential rains began to fall halfway through my bus ride home, and I had to partially walk home in it. My umbrella was somewhat helpful, but it is still uncomfortable walking around in wet dress clothes.

Overall, the weather has treated me well, but it’s the drivers that I have a little bit of a beef with. One day last week while I was walking home, someone drove by honking their horn. I know this person was honking at me because I was the only visible person in the area. This seems pretty innocuous, but I have some prior experience with this and know better. My ego would like to imagine that whomever it was thought I was so good looking that some noise had to be made, but I know this isn’t it because they only saw me from behind (not my best feature). No, this car honked at me simply because I was an easy target. If you are prone to getting your kicks from trying to embarrass other people, there is no easier way to do this than to drive by a pedestrian that is walking where no one else is and honk obnoxiously. I made an even easier target than normal because I was dressed up and carrying my bag on my shoulder. This didn’t bother me much, but it got me thinking about the psychology of drivers.

There have been several sociological studies done that have suggested that people become somewhat insensitive to normal human conduct and morally-blind, even sociopathic, while in the driver seat. Now, I’m a pedestrian at heart, and I’m pretty laid-back, but even I have experienced this while driving; and I’m sure you have too. Think about how you react when someone cuts you off. Yes, there’s somewhat of a life-threatening aspect to this in its extreme, but most of the time there is little risk of harm. It is just dang annoying! The natural reaction is to throw your hands up in a “What are you doing!?” motion, and hurl some choice words, if not choice fingers. But think about how your reactions are different if someone cuts in front of you in a crowd or in line at Starbucks. You are likely to be less aggressive, because you are in the physical presence of other human beings, which, even if you are enraged, causes you to control and sensor yourself. Some claim that this difference is simply a power trip that comes with operating such a powerful piece of machinery, but I think it has more to do with the fact that life seems to takes on a completely different form when viewed through the windshield of a moving vehicle. It is tough to establish any kind of emotional or psychological connection with another person when you are in a vehicle and he or she is not, which inevitably causes drivers to see pedestrians, and animals for that matter (“dogs are worth 50 points!”), less as living beings and more as objects that are potentially slowing you down. This is even more the case when considering how drivers conceptualize other drivers. Although this is not the root cause of road rage (that’s a deeper, individual psychological problem), it is the trigger! I am not saying I know for sure that the driver that honked at me saw me as less than human, but the situation sure made it easy for the driver to do something that would be, in almost any other circumstance, socially unacceptable.

What do you think? Tell me your stories.

Bethlehem By Foot

2009-07-19T14:33:00.000-04:00

As a student of urban design and planning policies, I find myself constantly analyzing the streetscapes of the environments in which I spend my life. My eyes have been trained to notice some of the subtle details that the average person simply passes by and takes for granted. For example, rounded curb corners are prevalent in suburban areas, because those areas have chosen to make automotive travel as easy as possible (in this case, to minimize the need for an automobile to slow down while turning a corner). While this design may save a little bit of gas by utilizing momentum instead of requiring the vehicle to accelerate from a stand-still, rounded corners are a nightmare for pedestrians, because drivers have learned that they do not have to slow down much at all to make those turns, thus they are less likely to notice the pedestrian trying to cross the street. Indeed, these areas as they are designed are not meant for pedestrians, whether a crosswalk exists there or not.

My life has recently changed somewhat drastically. After graduating with a Master's degree from the University of Utah and searching endlessly for employment, I finally achieved what almost 12% of American college graduates right now have not: I got a job... in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania! Although the job doesn't pay what I know I'm worth, and I'm not doing what I really want to be doing, I am employed. And thank God for that! But I am also suddenly alone. My wife of three years will remain in Salt Lake City to finish her graduate program until December, when she will drive across country to her new home. For the purposes of this blog, the key concept in the previous sentence is this: she has our only car. Now, I'm sure that we could afford to buy a second car, even on the pitiful wages that I am making, but considering that we already spend almost $400 per month (including payment, insurance, gas, and up-keep) on the one car, it would be great if we could save $4,000 to $5,000 per year (and unknown amounts of carbon and soot pollutants) by not investing in another vehicle.

So, this leaves us with the current situation: I am in a brand new city by myself for 6 months, 2,000 miles away from the only vehicle I own. Luckily, Bethlehem is a very old city; therefore, it was built before automobiles dominated. In the downtown and the older neighborhoods, the streets are generally narrow (which serves to slow traffic), the buildings front the street (which gives pedestrians a comforting sense of partial enclosure), cars are perpetually parked on the sides of the streets (further protecting pedestrians from the already slowed traffic), and all of the areas have been zoned for mixed uses (which, above all else, makes pedestrian travel possible and worth while). I hasn't taken me long to realize that this Christmas City USA (as it is known) has a great deal to teach us about how cities are meant to function. On the other hand, there are also many areas in which Bethlehem can improve.

This blog is meant to call attention to these areas of excellence and those in need of improvement, with the hope that readers without any urban design training, and perhaps those that have never thought about these issues before, will begin to take notice of their own environments and seek for ways of improving them. We live in a society that values democratic participation, especially in local governmental issues. City design should be one of these issues, because, as I will discuss in posts to come, the design of our environments has strong impacts on our behaviors, our physical existence, and even our psyches. I hope that I can convince you of this so that you will try to influence your own local policies for the betterment of your communities. Even more than this, as I have just alluded to, this blog is meant to be a commentary on current design policies, their resulting impacts, and suggestions for new policies that are based on real-world examples and current research. I will do this through multimedia as much as possible, so look for some embedded YouTube videos in the near future.

I don't pretend to know everything, and I'm sure that some of my points will make some readers uncomfortable, and perhaps even anger a few. If I can create any kind of response from my blogging, either positive or negative, then I've done what I have set out to do. I will be sharing my journey of living in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania for six months without a car, and I want you to share with me your own thoughts in return. Please leave comments, insights, questions, talking points, and your own examples of your living environments. This blog is not so much for me to document my unusual life over the next half year, but it is more about sharing my knowledge and experiences with you for your benefit and general enrichment of you and your communities. If you find that I am not doing this effectively, please let me know and suggest how I can do it better.

On that note, let's get on with it!