Why is Joel Kotkin Extolling the Virtues of Suburbia?

[M II A II R II K]

Review: The Great Inversion and the Future of the American City


04/23/2012

By Joel Garreau

Read More: http://www.newgeography.com/content/...bout+places%29

Is gentrification the “fifth great migration,” that will fill old downtowns with upper-middle-class white folks, while the tract mansions of the outer ring become slums for immigrants? So suggests Alan Ehrenhalt, the former executive editor of Governing magazine. In The Great Inversion and the Future of the American City, he proposes that a demographic shift is under way that is reversing generations of suburbanization and white flight.

- Ehrenhalt believes that “the massive outward migration of the affluent that characterized the second half of the 20th century is coming to an end.” Soon, he predicts, scarcely anyone “will be buying large, detached single family houses 30 miles from the city limits.” And, more specifically, “Chicago in 2030 will look more like the Paris of 1910 than like the Detroit of 1970.”

- For those of us who have long admired Ehrenhalt’s astuteness, however, this book’s theme is undercut by some real head scratchers: His “great inversion” thesis isn’t supported by the 2010 Census data, the location of high paying white-collar jobs, or the rise of the Internet as a social and economic force. As demographer Wendell Cox and others have noted, suburbs are capturing a growing share of the population increase in the nation’s major metropolitan areas. “Historical core municipalities accounted for nine percent of metropolitan area growth between 2000 and 2010,” Cox writes, “compared to 15 percent in the 1990–2000 period.

- In addition, the Internet is, counterintuitively, putting a new value on face-to-face contact. This has led to the rise of village-like places where people can easily meet. Some are embedded in old downtowns—the sort of places Ehrenhalt cites, such as Chicago’s University Village. Some are part of what traditionally have been regarded as suburbs. But the fastest-growing segment consists of places such as Santa Fe, New Mexico. Home to a world-renowned opera, charming architecture, distinguished restaurants, quirky bookstores, sensational desert and mountain vistas, and a great deal of diversity, Santa Fe, with a population of 68,000, is also little more than a village, far from the nearest metropolis. It represents aggregation and dispersal.

.....

[brickell]

Joel Kotkin: The Great California Exodus
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000...ditorialPage_h

[Chase Unperson]

Another bs article about the California exodus. I have been reading these articles for 15 years. If they were true everyone would be gone by now.

An ex-college friend was living a middle-classish life in Denver Colorado working in the communication industry there. He got a job with twitter in summer of 09 which he was really nervous about taking at the time considering the upheaval to his three kids and the cost of the bay area.. I just visited him and he confided that if he sold all his private stock shares neither he nor his kids would ever work again. And now he owns beautiful 3 story Victorian in cole valley right near golden gate park and haight ashbury The California dream lives on. Had he not had the cojones to leave the safety and comfort of his Denver life, none of this would ever have come true.

California will, for the foreseeable future, be a huge draw to the young and talented, and the young and talented will succeed.

[pacarlson]

Originally Posted by Chase Unperson

An ex-college friend was living a middle-classish life in Denver Colorado working in the communication industry there. He got a job with twitter in summer of 09 which he was really nervous about taking at the time considering the upheaval to his three kids and the cost of the bay area.. I just visited him and he confided that if he sold all his private stock shares neither he nor his kids would ever work again. And now he owns beautiful 3 story Victorian in cole valley right near golden gate park and haight ashbury The California dream lives on. Had he not had the cojones to leave the safety and comfort of his Denver life, none of this would ever have come true.

Sounds like you're making your friend out to be the typical newcomer to the state. I believe he's probably one of the exceptional 1 percenters.

[mhays]

California is growing at a decent clip.

People from the US don't move there much, but that's probably about high real estate prices more than general desire.

[yakumoto]

People are moving out of California due to a high cost of living, yet allowing the development of high density housing (i.e. the kind that can be developed in the built out areas/where people want to live) is a bad thing?

For a "free market" guy, this Kotkin doesn't seem to have a firm grasp on the whole supply/demand concept...

[mhays]

He's paid by people who build sprawl.

[M II A II R II K]

Homebuilding: Recovery & Red Tape


04/26/2012

By Rick Harrison

Read More: http://www.newgeography.com/content/...bout+places%29

Since the recession began, there haven't been any significant changes in how regulations could be improved to energize the housing market and foster innovation. Three areas where big regulation changes are needed? Environmental subsidies, density requirements, and zoning laws.

- Repeating the mistakes of the Carter era, federal and state governments have thrown vast sums of tax money at ‘green’ solutions likely to fail. A massive amount of our nation’s total energy use seeps out of inefficient housing, draining families of income at a time when they can least afford it. The subsidization of inefficient construction that incorporates energy saving alternatives is as flawed today as it was 25 years ago. Federal and state credits allow funding for improvements such as insulation, solar panels, wind generation, geothermal systems, and the like. These tax credits have to be balanced against taxes paid by families who are barely surviving this recession, if they are still in their homes making mortgage payments.

- Making funds available to cities on the condition that certain higher densities are met is not a solution, either. What I hear most often is that we need to provide high-density housing and public transportation so that poor people can get to their jobs, assuming, of course, that all people of low income work downtown. Are multi-billion dollar light rail projects and heavily subsidized low-income high-rise towers justified by such rhetoric? A low-income family on the 6th floor of a high-density building will not have the same quality of living or the pride-of-place that a home with a yard would provide. Travel dependent on a train or bus schedule does not offer the independence of owning a vehicle and travelling on one’s own schedule. Travel by foot or bike makes perfect sense for some of those who live in San Diego, but in the rest of the world those alternatives are viable only for the few nice weather days.

- When the recession began, urban architects and planners celebrated the death of the suburbs and the coming advent of an urban rebirth. While the suburbs were certainly hard hit, urban areas did not receive the expected mass migration. There is a myth that sprawl was the result of large lots and low density in the suburbs. Over the past 20 years, the firm I founded has planned over 730 developments in 46 States and 15 countries. I would estimate the average density of our suburban developments at between four and five units per useable acre. Today’s suburban development must preserve wetlands, steep slopes, wooded areas, and most often contain a minimum percentage of the site in open space. None of those requirements were in place when our core cities were built.

- The designer of any development, suburban or urban, will squeeze every inch out of the site to stay within the most minimal dimensions allowed by local ordinances. This effort to maximize the client’s profits can only result in monotonous, cookie-cutter development. Many city planning boards have been manipulated into believing the illusion that a ‘forms based' or ‘smart-code’ approach is a solution. These new regulations simply increase the number of minimum standards, and restrict innovative solutions. What a ‘forms based' or ‘smart' code does accomplish is to significantly increase the consulting income of the firm that promotes this alternative.

- What's the blueprint for better planning? For starters, two ideas: government aid should be based on a ‘plan’ showing how the resulting development will enhance the living standards, and not be tied only to density levels. And agencies should reward contracts to the consultant with the best solution. This means creating a financial mechanism to increase – not decrease — profitability for sustainable planning and engineering solutions that require the least amount of construction costs.

.....

[mhays]

High living standards require a lot of driving.

(America, fuck yeah!!)

[M II A II R II K]

There is the point about the need to avoid natural settings unlike before but that's no excuse for excessive and inefficient sprawl. The main street I'm on used to be a downhill river back in another century.

[M II A II R II K]

Staying the Same: Urbanization in America


04/27/2012

By Wendell Cox

Read More: http://www.newgeography.com/content/...bout+places%29

.....

The urban area data permits analysis of metropolitan area population growth by sector at nearly the smallest census geography (census blocks, which are smaller than census tracts). Overall, the new data indicates that an average urban population density stands at 2,343 per square mile (904 per square kilometer). This is little different from urban density in 1980 and nearly 10 percent above the lowest urban density of 2,141 per square mile (827) recorded in the 1990 census. Thus, in recent decades, formerly falling US urban densities have stabilized .

- Urban density in 2010, however, remains approximately 27 percent below that of 1950, as many core municipalities lost population while suburban and suburban populations expanded. This resulted in the substantial expansion of urban land area reflecting the preference for low-density lifestyles among Americans and most people in other high-income areas of the world. Between the 1960s and 2000, nearly all of the growth in the major metropolitan regions of Western Europe and Canada has taken place in suburban areas, as these nations’ urban areas have dispersed in a manner similar to that of the United States. The trend continued through 2011 in Canada and domestic migration data in Western Europe shows a continuing movement of people from the historical cores to the suburbs and exurbs.

.....

[M II A II R II K]

Toward More Competitive Canadian Metropolitan Areas


05/16/2012

By Wendell Cox

Read More: http://www.newgeography.com/content/...bout+places%29

The Federation of Canadian Municipalities (FCN) and the Canadian Urban Transit Association (CUTA) have expressed serious concern about generally longer commute trip times making Canadian metropolitan areas less competitive. Each has called for additional funding for transit at the federal level to help reduce commute times and improve metropolitan competitiveness. The concern over commute times is well placed. Economic research generally concludes that greater economic and employment growth is likely where people can quickly reach their jobs in the metropolitan area.

- Yet the solution – more transit and funding for transit – misses the mark. Transit does many things well, but it does not reduce commute times. According to Statistics Canada, average commute times by transit in the Toronto, Montréal and Vancouver metropolitan areas are from 30 per cent longer to nearly double those of average automobile commuters. Some 58 percent of car users (drivers and passengers) reach their work locations in under 30 minutes, something accomplished by merely y 25 percent of transit commuters. Overall Toronto commute times are longer than either Los Angeles – famed for its traffic – as well as much less dense, and far less transit dependent, Dallas-Fort Worth. In Toronto, 21 percent of commuters take transit, compared to two percent in Dallas-Fort Worth.

- Among Montréal commuters, 20 percent use transit and spend more time commuting than their counterparts in more decentralized Phoenix, where less than two percent take transit. Commute times in transit-focused Vancouver are worse than much larger Los Angeles and indeed longer than nearly American metropolitan area, including Dallas-Fort Worth, Houston, and Philadelphia. Given this pattern, transferring car travel to transit likely would increase commute times and make metropolitan areas even less competitive.

- Areas outside downtown lack any such intense concentration of jobs. The area outside downtown, accounting for 6 out of every 7 jobs, maintain much lower employment densities and generally lacks transit service. This is illustrated by the nation's largest employment center, which surrounds Pearson International Airport in Toronto. Its more than 350,000 employees are spread around an area the size of city of Vancouver (or the city of San Francisco) at a density so low that quick and efficient transit is simply impossible. For the overwhelming share of work trips to outside the downtown area, the car does the job and transit accounts for less than 10 percent of commuters. Thus, the automobile is the rational choice for most people who commute to locations outside downtown. And things are not getting better for transit. According to Statistics Canada, employment has been growing much faster outside of downtown than in the high density core areas suited for transit.

- While the prospects for improving transit commute times are discouraging, some current land use strategies further increase traffic congestion and lengthen commute times and make metropolitan areas and make metropolitan areas less competitive . Compact cities (also called smart growth) policies have been adopted across Canada in an effort to reduce automobile use and increase urban densities. The planning expectation is that housing should be placed near rail stations. Yet job locations throughout metropolitan areas remain highly dispersed, and with the rise of working at home, are becoming more so. The potential for transit systems (or walking or cycling) to materially impact commuting is very limited in the least.

.....

[vid]

That's a lot of effort to say "You will get to work faster if you don't have to stop at 5 places along the way to pick up more people".

[M II A II R II K]

Housing Affordability Protests Occurring in "Livable" Hong Kong, Not "Sprawling" Atlanta


07/18/2012

By Wendell Cox

Read More: http://www.newgeography.com/content/...bout+places%29

.....

As Jon Copestake, the Editor of the Economist Intelligence Unit’s Cost of Living and Livability surveys and I discussed in front of a Property Institute of Western Australia meeting, The Economist livability ratings are not aimed at average resident households, but rather at an international audience, such as corporate executives and corporate relocation services. This distinction can be important.

- With the developed world's highest urban area density and lowest automobile market share, Hong Kong beguiles anti-sprawl "smart growth" crusaders, for whom these two characteristics are the "two great commandments." The entire Hong Kong urban form (urban area) is as dense as Manhattan at 67,000 per square mile (25,900 per square kilometer), but is more than twelve times the density of the New York urban area: the city and its “sprawling” surrounding suburbs (5,300 per square or 2,100 per square kilometer). Similarly, Hong Kong is somewhat more dense than the ville de Paris, but seven times the density of the Paris urban area (9,800 per square mile or 3,800 per square kilometer).

- To its permanent and unsubsidized residents, though, Hong Kong's spatial Nirvana does not provide much in terms of livability. Excessively Long Commutes Hong Kong's high density indicates that jobs and houses are relatively close to one another, which should indicate that commute times would be short. Not so. Commutes are among the longest in the developed world – only Tokyo residents take more time to get to work. The average one way commute is 46 minutes in Hong Kong, well above the developed world average of 33 minutes for urban areas over 5,000,000 population. By comparison, commuters in similarly sized Dallas-Fort Worth (26 minutes) and "gridlocked" Los Angeles (27 minutes) get to work much faster.

- The 8th Annual Demographia International Housing Affordability Survey rates Hong Kong as the most costly out of 325 metropolitan areas. The median house price in Hong Kong's is 12.6 times the median annual gross household income (the "median multiple"), which leaves little more than a pittance in discretionary income for many households. Perhaps this is why Hong Kong's fertility rate has fallen to rock bottom levels near the lowest on the planet – people cannot afford kids. Even during the housing bubble, coastal California never became so unaffordable. Hong Kong housing is nearly twice as costly as San Francisco (6.7 median multiple) and more than four times as costly as Dallas-Fort Worth (2.9), Houston (2.9) or Atlanta.

- Atlanta's low density would suggest that jobs and houses must be so far apart that commute times are very long. Again, not so. Atlanta commuters have among the shortest travel times (29 minutes) in the world among urban areas of similar size. Shorter travel times make Atlanta more livable. Other similarly sized US urban areas do even better, such as Dallas-Fort Worth (26 minutes) and Atlanta's leaders know that traffic congestion need to be eased to improve Atlanta's competitiveness. But the political process politics has offered a dysfunctional plan that would spend more than half of a new tax on mass transit, which is used by only the one percent. Less than one half of the money would be spent on the roads that the 99 percent use. Any strong growth will overwhelm the stingy highway improvements, and if the voters approve the July 31 referendum, Atlanta's travel time advantage over Hong Kong could narrow.

.....

[mhays]

Do these idiots know that Hong Kong also has long distances, as development goes to shorelines and valleys on the other side of uninhabited mini-mountains and bays?

[hammersklavier]

I finally figured out why so many urbanists have this base revulsion of Kotkin and Cox. They're the apotheosis of the scientistic tradition in urban planning--the idea that urbanization can be reduced to statistics and math, and that form and function don't count. This is, as Jane Jacobs pointed out, utter rubbish.

That, and they're in bed with suburban "growth" interests.

[mhays]

....misused math. They use stats to mislead.

[M II A II R II K]

The New Geography Of Success In The U.S. And The Trap Of The 'New Normal'


07/18/2012

By Joel Kotkin

Read More: http://www.newgeography.com/content/...bout+places%29

.....

Certainly recent economic news of slowing growth and job creation bolster the pessimists’ case. But Americans may face far better prospects than portrayed by our dueling presidential mediocrities. Let’s look at those states that have found their own way out of the “new normal,” in some cases reversing all the losses of the Great Recession and then some.

- The states that have added the most jobs since 2007 — Texas, North Dakota, Louisiana, Oklahoma and Alaska – are located in a vast energy and commodities corridor extending from the western Gulf to the northern tip of the Continent. New York and Washington, D.C., prime beneficiaries of monetary easing and a growing federal government, have also clawed back. But the big winners are in the central energy corridor. Since 2007, Texas has created almost five times as many jobs as New York; California is still down almost 900,000 jobs and Illinois is off close to 300,000. This should represent what Walter Russell Mead calls “a new geography of power,” the anointing of new places Americans and business go to find opportunity.

- Why the energy and agriculture states? Since the onset of the new century, much of the sustained growth in the world has taken place not in the financial or information capitals, but in regions that produce basic commodities like energy and food. In the high-income world, the consistently best-performing countries since 2008 have also tended to be resource-rich ones such as Norway, Australia and Canada. Blue social policies work best when financed by petro-dollars and minerals sales.

- In this neo-Victorian society, the “new normal” means a society dominated by “innovative” or “creative” masters and their chosen, lucky servants. Leave your job and family in the Midwest or Nevada to become a toenail painter in Silicon Valley, San Francisco or Boston. Besides losing any sense of one’s independence, it’s hard to see how a barber or gardener can live decently, particularly with a family, in such expensive places. This bleak reality may not inevitable, though. In many places construction employment is on the rise from its nadir in 2010. This recovery has been a nationwide phenomena but is, not surprisingly, most evident in growth states like Montana, Colorado, Indiana, Iowa, Nebraska, Tennessee and Utah.

- Over the past two years Michigan and Ohio have experienced the biggest drop in unemployment of any states in the union; Michigan leads the way with a drop of almost five percentage points, while Ohio comes in second with a nearly three-point decline. Other key Great Lakes battlegrounds—Wisconsin, Indiana and arguably Missouri—have also seen two-point drops in their unemployment numbers. Why is this happening? A lot of it has to do with business-friendly state regimes.

- Unlike Illinois, increasingly the sad sack of the Midwest, these states have cut taxes, worked to increase the availability of skill training and streamlined regulations. This has allowed them to take advantage of new opportunities. Improving the business climate represents the third critical element for overcoming the new normal. Most rundowns of the states with consistently favorable business and tax climates – as judged by executives — start with Texas, Utah and South Dakota. Many states that are recovering best from the recession, like Louisiana, Wisconsin, Florida, Ohio, Michigan and Arizona, all have been improving their rankings in business surveys over recent years.

.....

[Standpoor]

Wow. That is one insulting article. Towards a lot of different people. But since I live in Illinois let us take a look at the numbers that he cites.

Percent Change of Jobs from May 2007
Indiana -3.22%
Illinois -4.85%
Wisconsin -5.01%
Ohio -5.10%
Michigan -6.94

Such a sad sack indeed.

[J. Will]

And things are not getting better for transit. According to Statistics Canada, employment has been growing much faster outside of downtown than in the high density core areas suited for transit.

Nonsense. I don't know about Montreal, but in Vancouver and Toronto (metro areas), transit ridership has been growing MUCH faster than the overall population growth. This will be evident when the 2011 census numbers are released, and both regions have seen their transit commute mode share grow. I'm predicting Toronto will be at nearly 24%, and Vancouver probably 19-20%.

Transit commute mode share in Canada as a whole increased from 2001-2006, and it will again show an increase from 2006-2011.