Two in a row!

The lead blogger here at Green Urbanism is really slacking. Bruce, you need to pick it up. Speaking of Bruce Wayne, should I change my pen name to Batman? Set up a little split personality dynamic for the blog?

Anyway, I just want to post a few really valuable reference materials on the current crisis in the housing markets, which is among the areas I'm most qualified to contribute to "the whole gamut" covered in this blog.

First of all, I highly recommend the Washington Post's coverage of the crisis, from all sorts of angles. They've already published a great overview of how the mortgage backed securities (MBS) market got out of balance ("Explaining the Crisis"). This week they have a similar three part series on how AIG got so intertwined in the market for credit and risk-hedging investments that it eventually needed to be bailed out. Both can be found here: Washington Post

Second, if you're feeling really ambitious, check out this pdf created by an investment firm called T2. It's a lot of information, and if you just want the conclusion, it's this: the subprime housing crisis is just just the tip of the iceberg, and the next year or two will have plenty more foreclosures and continuing declines in housing prices. Buckle your seatbelts and keep your arms inside the car.

Urban economics, rumors and government policy

Urban economics is a huge topic that I couldn't possibly do justice to in a blog post. A few blogs devoted entirely to the economics of cities do a pretty good job though. I highly recommend Ryan Avent, an economist who follows transportation and development issues in his blog The Bellows.

I just want to talk a little about a hot new topic: President-elect Obama's plan for a White House Office of Urban Policy. Now first of all, it is SUCH a relief to have a President who understands and appreciates the city--and the immense challenges and potential in America's cities. Unfortunately, these days, it's not often one sees the words "great" and "cities" in sequence. In 1961, a resident of New York City named Jane Jacobs published a book called "The Death and Life of Great American Cities". Until the resuscitation of the past decade, anyone who paid attention would have to say that the "Great American City" was dead. Anyone who didn't pay attention might forget that such a thing had ever existed. But thanks to a variety of factors--including demographic shifts making singles and empty-nesters the predominant American family type--cities are coming back.

I first saw Obama's suggestion of an Office of Urban Policy (OUP) way back in primary season, back when Clinton continued to insist "It's only a flesh wound", and people actually believed it. At the time, I was a bit skeptical. When we already have a Cabinet-level Department of Housing and Urban Development, what exactly would this OUP do except further bloat the bureaucracy? HUD sends around 4-7 billion dollars a year to cities for the purpose of providing housing, homeless assistance, and economic development. It spends another $30 billion or so on public housing and other housing assistance. A President sympathetic to cities could increase those numbers of course, but could also effect policy by simply redirecting it and guiding it to better uses.

But the more I thought about it, and the more I came to understand the limitations that HUD has (independent of money), the more I started to think that the OUP could be a great initiative. COULD be a great initiative. So here is why it could be good, and what it should do in order to be good.

First of all, the OUP will combine the efforts of the multiple departments that have a role to play in cities. The primary ones are HUD and the Department of Transportation. As long as the Federal Highway Administration and other highway funding mechanisms have a budget 5 times as large as the Federal Transit Administration, cities face an uphill battle. But even if the money doesn't change, if it can be coordinated with HUD grants and HUD-required planning efforts that local governments undergo, then we can make some progress. Other offices, like the Dept. of Education, Dept. of Health and Human Services, and the Small Business Administration can certainly be coordinated to better serve our cities. I'm focused on investing in the built environment though, rather than investing in human capital, so I won't address their potential--however, we need a President and Executive Branch leadership who does understand the roles of all these organizations and can tie them together.

The best candidate I've heard for OUP is Bruce Katz. Katz is a former Chief of Staff at HUD, and currently runs the Metropolitan Policy Program at the Brookings Institution. Brookings is a truly elite think tank in DC (THE elite think tank, in my opinion), and their Metro Program is a high profile comprehensive effort to draw attention to the immense value created by America's Metro areas ("Metro areas", because our cities are no longer defined by central business districts). The Metro Program is staffed by some of the most brilliant minds working in housing, transportation, and economics, and Katz is the man who runs the show. For what it's worth, he's also on Obama's transition team for HUD, and has been spotted in the HUD building.

Now, even with Katz at the head of the new OUP, it will have challenges. What is the office's authority? Will it control any money? It's easy to say multiple Departments should coordinate--how will they make it happen? Perhaps most importantly, the Federal government does not control cities. Hell, even cities don't control cities--citizens do. No matter how eloquently President Obama speaks about cities, or how much money is funneled to them, cities will continue to face an uphill battle until the American public begins to think more critically about those things they have come to take for granted. We all need to be more realistic about the costs of transportation, about the costs of land, about the costs of energy. We need to realize that a neighborhood where people look different, have varying incomes, or live in close proximity does not make it a dangerous neighborhood--it makes it interesting. We all need to get out of our cocoons--our cars, our backyards, our air conditioned living rooms with big screen TVs and video games--and remember (or dream about) what it's like to live in a great American city.

Obama

What a great week for our nation!  Finally, the American majority has voted to create a new direction for our country, and themselves, as it certainly required much thought and reflection to vote for a bi-racial candidate.  It is a great accomplishment for black-Americans, and it was very moving to see black-Americans across the country rejoicing!!  

An Obama presidency also has implications for various aspects of Green Urbanism.  Clearly, the automobile is here to stay, but we need more efficient automobiles.  Obama's pledge to automakers hopefully will be taken and used wisely, when the gift is given.  

More importantly, Obama has dedicated a portion of his campaign website to Urban Policy.  This includes addressing housing (affordable, energy-efficiency), transportation infrastructure (including train systems and public transport), livability of communities, urban education, and poverty.  A specific quote from his website appropriately relates to Green Urbanism:

"Our communities will better serve all of their residents if we are able to leave our cars, to walk, bicycle and access other transportation alternatives. As president, Barack Obama will re-evaluate the transportation funding process to ensure that smart growth considerations are taken into account."

http://origin.barackobama.com/issues/urban_policy/

To have a president that even acknowledges the concepts of alternatives to cars, and smart growth will hopefully make our country measurably better by the end of his second term (fingers crossed).  If we can provide this much, then we can actually begin to reduce our multiple-earths ecological footprint (http://www.footprintnetwork.org/en/index.php/GFN/ ,  http://www.footprintnetwork.org/en/index.php/GFN/page/personal_footprint_calculator/).  

Yield to New Ideas and Research

I was just going through my photos/textures (I'm a landscape architect....), and I thought it ever so appropriate to post this image.  It represents the bad direction we have pursued in city/transportation planning and design over the past 50 years,  and in many instances, continue to pursue.  

But we need to stop and think about and evaluate all the problems we are causing my continuing down the same wrong way, and think about the future, rather than the immediate gratitude and economic benefit.  Instead of continuing down the wrong way, we need to YIELD to new ideas, or in some instances, old ideas, cast aside in prior decades as being far-fetched.  To evolve and advance as a society, we must realize the benefits of change--economic, social, environmental, health, etc.  We can do this, the American public only needs to become exposed to the creative possibilities that are being thought up in design and planning fields, which span the realms of sociology, ecology, economics, architecture, community design, park design, alternative transportation ideas, housing and affordability, green construction.  The list goes on.

Watersheds

Many have become exposed to the concept that water flows toward a stream, and then "downstream" from that point.  Watersheds are the units in which these streams drain, i.e. a drop of water can hit at the top of a watershed, along a ridge, and flow toward a stream, within the watershed.  Within watersheds, there can be forests, lakes, cities (or parts of), and all of these attributes affect the water quality within the watershed, as well as the water quality exiting the watershed.  

http://www.wildeducation.org/programs/nww06/watershed_illustration.html

The image above illustrates the concept well.  It is important to look at watersheds, at a local scale (subwatersheds) and at larger scales (regional watersheds, if you will) so as to understand where water quality inputs are affecting the system.  

Development can, and often does, negatively impact water quality in watersheds.  Primarily, this is due to the installation of impervious surfaces over what had previously been pervious, or able to allow water to infiltrate.  Thus, in developed areas, stormwaters "runoff" impervious surfaces much more quickly than in undeveloped areas, quickly trickling to the lower point of the watershed, and into stream and river systems, causing flash floods.  

Citizens living "downstream" from these developed areas are often the ones who experience the effects of flash floods.  They are outraged, as they have the right to be.  However, the answer is not to create more engineering marvels along the banks of the stream to prevent floodwaters from reaching their floodplains.  No.  The answer is to treat the source of the problem.  We can no longer build enormous amounts of impervious surfaces, such as substantial surface parking lots, and big-box stores, and ignore the negative effects of such elements.

Let's consider a situation.  If we do continue to develop as we have, and flash flooding continues to increase in downstream areas, it requires spending millions of dollars not only to prevent further flooding to occur (which actually is bad, because it causes even more damage farther downstream), but it also requires that those with home insurance covered by flooding get paid, which in turn causes others' insurance rates to raise slightly.  Then, we have issues with economics of people being unable to afford house insurance, and other governmental spending to fix issues that could have been prevented in the first place.  

Furthermore, we go on pretending that what is currently occuring is good, and that we also can play God Almighty and control nature's forces (which are unpredictable) by building more levee and flood containment systems.  Even more, we have to deal with degradation of streams, which results in decrease aquatic species (yes, that means less fish for us to eat), and thus greater food prices.

This is not a worst case scenario.  It happens every year, across the country, with seasonal rains and flooding.  It is occuring more frequently in recent years due to the greater severity and intensity of storms.  So, this is not an issue to be taken lightly.  This affects all Americans at their pocket books.  Unfortunately, leadership in many locations continues to evade these issues, rather than confront them head-on, and educate the American public about the problems.  Then, the American public, which is wholely good at heart and in intent, could begin to demand better development methods.  Grassroots.  Democracy.  We need government for regulations, but we need the bottom-up to actually understand and retain the issues that are presenting themselves to us.