Transit Oriented Development
Posted by Glenn on December 15, 2007 - 8:01pm in The Oil Drum: Local
Topic: Environment/Sustainability
Tags: light rail, smart growth, transit-oriented development, transportation [list all tags]
Transit Oriented Development or "Smart Growth" is often cited as one of the potential solutions to dealing with peak oil by reducing suburban sprawl and creating more usage of mass transit and walkable communities. The idea generally is to promote development near existing transit hubs or along transit corridors.
According to TransitOrientedDevelopment.org, the components of TOD are:
-Walkable design with pedestrian as the highest priority
-Train station as prominent feature of town center
-A regional node containing a mixture of uses in close proximity including office, residential, retail, and civic uses
-High density, high-quality development within 10-minute walk circle surrounding train station
-Collector support transit systems including trolleys, streetcars, light rail, and buses, etc
-Designed to include the easy use of bicycles, scooters, and rollerblades as daily support transportation systems
-Reduced and managed parking inside 10-minute walk circle around town center / train station
There's a lot of talk about promoting transit oriented development (the other TOD) in theory, but how much is actually happening around the US?
In searching around local US newspapers, I came across a few TOD projects in the works around existing or new transit hubs and corridors. Here are a few highlights:
The state Board of Public Works yesterday approved a pair of contracts that advance transit-oriented development projects. The board approved an interim $1.2 billion redevelopment plan for the State Center government complex on the edge of downtown Baltimore.The redevelopment of the 25-acre site, which brings together MARC service, light rail and several bus lines, has been described as the largest single-site project in Baltimore since the revitalization of the Inner Harbor.
Also approved was a $200 million development plan - including office, retail and residential construction - around the MARC station on the Camden Line at Savage in eastern Howard County. The state's development partner on the project is Petrie Ross Ventures of Annapolis.
Representatives of 56 companies descended on Beacon yesterday for a briefing on the first transit-oriented development project in Metro-North Railroad's 25-year history.
The response — three times what Metro-North predicted — thrilled the railroad and the community after five years of planning a Hudson Valley "gateway" that would connect the train station and the waterfront to the downtown.
"People here are prepared to see development — high-density, mixed-use development — happen at the waterfront, around the train station and along our Main Street, which is over a mile long," said Sara Pasti, director of the Beacon Arts Community Association, as she showed off the long string of renovated storefronts from the bus.
A Seattle developer on Wednesday unveiled plans for a 36-acre "urban village" in Bellevue's Bel-Red Corridor that could eventually have 800 apartments, ground-floor retail, several acres of open space and more than 3 million square feet of office space.
Named the Spring District, the $1.5 billion project would be a centerpiece of the city's revamping of the 900-acre corridor from an aging warehouse center to a tall, dense, mixed-use neighborhood, said Greg Johnson, president of Wright Runstad. The "spring" in the title is meant to indicate a season of transformation, he said.
"We certainly hope this can be the catalyst for the development that happens in the next 50 years in the Bel-Red Corridor," Johnson told 200 people at a Bellevue Chamber of Commerce luncheon at the Bellevue Hilton.
A Phoenix developer has big plans to build one of the largest mixed-use projects along the new light rail line.
Mike Lafferty, president of Lafferty Development Inc., will build the 11-story Union Square at 12th Street. He already has received Phoenix City Council approval to rezone the area, and now is lining up investors and looking at ways to rejuvenate the surrounding neighborhood.
Union Square, at the southeast corner of 12th and Washington streets, will include 280 condos, about 10 percent of which will be priced for middle-income buyers; public and business meeting rooms; a 175-room hotel; and street-level retail.
The first shovel of dirt has not been turned, yet light rail already has helped generate more than $220 million in planned office, retail, apartment and hotel development downtown.
Developers of three projects – Wachovia Center, Belmont at Freemason apartments and a Residence Inn – said the city’s starter light rail influenced their business decisions. Having modern transit within a short walking distance delivers a steady stream of potential customers and provides an alternative to driving for residents and workers, they said.
Wachovia Center is a 22-story tower and apartment building that will include office, retail and residential space on Monticello Avenue.
“The fact that there will be a light rail stop right out the front door of our project was a key part of why we selected that site,” said Thomas G. Johnson III, vice president of sales and development for Nusbaum Realty, the project developer.
The West Trenton Line reactivation plan is the key to plans by Hillsborough officials to create a Transit Village along the railroad line and Amwell Road.
According to the township's Master Plan, adopted by the Planning Board in 2005, the Transit Village district concept will feature commercial offices, retail spaces, residential development, access for pedestrians, bicyclists, vehicles, buses and cabs; and parks and open space. The Master Plan also allows neighborhood convenience centers, churches, nursery and private schools, libraries, parks and farm/agricultural activities in the Transit Village area.
What's happening in your area?
I'd be particularly interested in any re-zonings of suburban areas from single use residential areas to mixed use.
You build 64 blocks of city in the middle of a cornfield near a city in the suburbs, and use it as a bus terminal location.
You have 64,000 people who will support bus transport all over the suburban area, drawing in all the people that work in the suburban area and need a place to live.
This is not because of peak oil, but because of the financial effects of avoiding all the costs of owning a car. That's insurance, depreciation, repair, time wasted driving, etc. Also, that's all the people that can't drive cars because of minor physical disability, the kind of minor disability that does not prevent them from working.
This is not because of peak gas, either, though the high density development does reduce heating power requirements in the winter. It also isn't because of the lower cost of building apartment buildings instead of houses because the square foot cost is about the same. Elevators are expensive, and so are steel beam frames for apartment buildings.
If you want to deal with peak oil, build a synfuel plant.
Smart growth is an oxymoron. We’d be better off if we spent our energy finding ways to slow the growth rate. We can not have exponential growth in a finite world. That said, let us hope that most of these are not in the middle of some corn field but rather in the center of some trashed out urban ruin. The future for the untold masses will be in a more confined setting. Unless we bring back some industry I am not exactly sure what they will do for employment except wait on each other for low wages. It is a touch difficult imagining a future where thousands of citizens and their Amish (with computers)-like living standard flourish in a confined setting.
It's only hard because you're stuck in the American pioneer-farmer mindset. There are hardly any farmers left in the US, and nobody really wants to be a farmer, but everyone loves to play farmer, which is what the suburbs are all about.
Dense cities have existed since the beginnings of civilization. "It is a touch difficult imagining a future where thousands of citizens and their Amish (with computers)-like living standards flourish in a confined setting."
Oh really? How about Athens, or Babylon, or Bahgdad, or Vienna or Hangzhou? "Flourishing in a confined setting" is what people have been doing for five thousand years.
I think no new farmers are coming around due to the high startup costs there is no way that somebody can really just dive in. Land is extremely expensive these days and then nobody wants a farm around them. I could never see it as a reasonable thing to buy land and start farming at the cost of land right now. The return on investment would take forever.
Sadly this combined with all the stress and effort of farming stops people from farming. Not to mention the IRS breaths down farmers necks so hard that they just give up. Its a lose lose situation. I think the only way to encourage farming again is to remove all taxes from true farmers that run so many acres.
But what am I to know eh? Part of my family was run out of farming due to some of the above factors.That combined with farming being hard work and we live in a instant gratification society where people do not wish to wait for things to grow.
IMO farming is going to have to change with the times and PO. Local farming, less than 100 miles to the nearest city may start to flourish again as the FF costs of farming skyrocket. Thats not to say farmers will be making tons of $, but the need for local produce may become a necessity as the costs will be less than importing food from 1000's of miles away.
Farming will likely go more in the direction of manual labour and less machinery. You still see plenty of human labourers even in North America. Back in the seventies and probably eighties and maybe even now, manual labourers were and are still the backbone of many types of farming here in NA.
Cuba went back to labour intensive farming in 93 when they lost 85% of their FF from the Soviets. Every piece of arable land in and around towns and cities was put into production and that is how they barely survived their own version of PO and decline.
Here is what I reckon is the shape of food to come.
The Cubans more than "barely survived." Their health and longevity is now improved on Soviet days. They get more fresh fruit and vegies instead of just masses of grain and meat.
Suburbs are about people wanting to not be so close to large numbers of other people. Those who like living in cities do not understand that most people do not want to be that close to large numbers of other people.
I think this aversion to dense living has evolutionary origins. People like grass lawns for the same reason they like golf courses with grasses bordering on small forests. We evolved in those conditions. We like those conditions.
People who want others to gladly live in urban environments are trying to get humans to do something that is against their nature.
Hardly !
The "white flight" to Suburbia was just a mass movement, (see burnt orange shag carpeting comment above) and not the result of fundamental preferences.
You are pointing to a single data point in our very long history and claiming that is "human nature".
I think the opposite is very true, Suburban social isolation is aberrant, unhealthy and contrary to the basic requirements of mental health.
As one sure sign of the pathology of Suburbia, look at the growing rates of obesity, and prescription psychotropic drugs.
Alan
You are right, there aren't much farmers left in usa, I guess less than one percent of population whose prime source of income is farming because most farmers in usa has other non-farm-related sources of income too.
But usa is just a minute part of world on any perimeter except fossil-fuel-driven-economy and fossil-fuel-driven-technology. Most of the world still live in villages, a simple low-bio-foot-print life and has community-sense that americans don't.
Its right that babylon, rome, athens, tenochtitlan, constantinople were and are all cities but only a minute part of population lived in those cities as compared to populations of whole civilizations of each of these countries. Also don't forget that we can build sustainable cities but it has to be much much low-energy-consumer than modern cities, a scaling down of 100 i should say.
I don't know what you mean by a "scaling down of 100", what does that mean in actual numbers of people. My own look at the topic of city size lead me to think that absent fossil fuels, the largest likely city size would be on the order of magnitude of 100,000, with 10,000 much more common. Cities of a million could exist as capitals of great and well-organised empires, but there'd only be a few of these in the world.
Yes, I am of that rural mind set. The idea of living in a contemporary city of say 4 million plus has no appeal to me what so ever. By the way , the aforementioned cities of the world had many fewer people. The idea of living in one of the big American cities post energy decline and in a struggling economy appeals to me even less. I, like most Americans, do not want to live like the Chinese live now. Nor the people of Bagdad, nor even Paris or Toronto. Doing so in the future may not be to comfortable for anyone. That is where planning comes in. Any effort made is better than none. More importantly, the issue of an ever expanding population needs to be addressed more than anything else. We need to begin campaigns encouraging population control, every aspect of population growth. If it were possible, we should also be addressing the Antiquated Perpetual Economic Growth Paradigm. They are both killers.
Crystal City, Virginia (next to DC), although built in the 1960s, meets most if not all of the criteria cited. It doesn't have restrictive zoning laws, and combines offices, apartments, subway, and retail. It also has a vast underground component.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crystal_City,_Virginia
The US is awash in housing units today, green building to me means a rehab of close in dwellings, something along the current bus routes. Energy retrofits for existing homes will save all the embodied energy of new constuction.
Whenever I see plans for one of these "green" in-fill projects such as the one in Bellevue, I wonder where the food will come from. There is no mention of space for food production, and for 800 apartments the project would need on the order of 100-200 acres. Right now the Seattle area does need innovative urban village concepts to deal with the strangling effect of high traffic density. Ten years from now, where will their food come from?
" Ten years from now, where will their food come from?"
farms.
Farms that are close to the TOD will produce the food, then bring it in by electric powered small trucks in the 4 to 8 ton range that can go 60 miles to a recharge. These farms will produce vegtables, fruits, maybe nuts and a limited number of animals (perhaps processed on the outskirts of the TOD). Tractors will be recharged by the grid that is powered by wind or hydro electric near Seattle.
This is the way many communities worked 100 to 125 years ago, but the cities centered around steam powered and electric railways and the farmers used horses and wagons for hauling while cultivating with horses, oxen, or steam powered tractors.
Some city folks, like me, will grow a certain percentage of their food in community gardens (in backyard or on rooftop) to supplement what they buy at the local market. In a 12' x 14' area I grow mellons, peppers, tomatoes, beans, & basil. More than half I give away because I can't eat as much as I produce.
Food is an extremely high utility resource. We will continue to truck our food across half the country if necessary, no matter if we have to run the trucks on ethanol, manure, library books, or decomposing human flesh. It's that important. Food shipments on some level are the highest priority thing to preserve of any transportation, so we'll keep moving it.
It will just be less intensively farmed, less out-of-season, less meaty, and DEFINITELY less exotic.
It simply isn't possible to feed a city based on land within the confines of the city. This is not a problem. Even if you're assuming a systematic breakdown of order... your garden still doesn't get you anywhere individually, because your garden fences aren't strong enough to hold back a city that didn't garden and is out of food.
I think community gardens are a fantastic idea, but they're equal parts aesthetic and cultural as they are practical. Sure, they help - by the end of the Siege of Leningrad, the entire city was one big community garden. But they still relied on (starvation) grain rations, and many people still starved to death.
Gimme a break. Food will come from 400 miles away by heavy rail, just like in 1870. Do you know why Chicago exists, as a city? It was the shipping point for the produce of the Midwest, especially beef. From Chicago it went down the Great Lakes, across the Erie Canal and to the cities of the Northeast, all before the age of fossil fuels.
Econguy - here is why Chicago grew up to be important to transport: It was the cross roads of our RR based transporation system of the time. All cattle were not shipped through Chicago, just as all grain, hogs and chickens did not pass through there. Most cities, including New York were surrounded by farms that did supply a portion of locally consumed food.
My Grandfather who was born in the 1890's and grew up on a farm, then homesteaded in Montana before WWI, told me a lot about how people raised, transported and distributed food. His father was a railroad contractor turned farmer around 1880 after a collapse of the railroad building business and bancruptcy of many RR's.
One hundred years ago most major cities had stockyards where livestock was traded then sent to a local meat packing plant. The cattle was shipped by rail from maybe 100 to 500 miles to these cities. Shipping some livestock across the country was done, but most livestock did not travel that far. Cattle and hogs raised on Minnesota farms were shipped to Minneapolis and processed there for local groceries and meat markets. Same goes for cities in Kansas, Colorado, Texas, Nebraska, etc. The surplus livestock may have been shipped east, but a lot of it was consumed locally. And states like New Jersey did have dairy farms that provided milk, butter, cheese for NY.
Bottom line is that a larger percentage of food will have to be grown locally because fuel cost to transport it will be high, even if by rail. The railroads largely got out of shipping fresh produce and livestock because they were not cost competitive with trucks. I think a large part of the food will still travel by truck, but not as far as now. I formerly worked for two major RR's and have done engineering consulting work for RR's over the last 20 years.
Like virtually all major cities on large bodies of water, Chicago was a port town. The purpose of a port is transportation. The Erie Canal connected the Great Lakes and the Atlantic in 1824. That's why, when the railroads were built, they were connected at Chicago. Most of the city's growth, and its heyday, were indeed during the rail age.
Trucks have been more economical than trains because of highway subsidy, and also the efficiencies of avoiding transshipment. When fuel is more expensive compared to labor (for transshipment), and given recent improvements in transshipment (standardized freight containers), rail will become more attractive compared to trucks. This is already happening.
What do you think of proposals to extensively electrify rail that is now diesel??
City of broad shoulders. Hog butcher of the world. Cattle were slaughtered many places but the Chicago stockyards killed the most.
Tucson was a rail head rancher would drive their cattle to and then load them on the Southern Pacific.
Wrong!
For 800 apartments its 4000 people assuming 5 people in each family. That requires 3200 acres of arable land to produce average food of 2000 calories per person per day (not american food usage of 3500 calories per person per day) with very little meat usage as compare to today's american food usage (62.5 gm versus 250 gm) provided the meat is by mass half from 'white' sources (birds and seafood) and half by farm animals (goats, horses etc)
Duarte, CA -- The city General Plan focuses on creating a downtown corridor, with focus on walkability, and creating a second high-density zone near what will hopefully in a couple years be a light rail station. All of the cities along the prospective light rail route are energetically looking forward to its presence.
Where the light rail has already been installed, there has been a lot of transit-oriented development, including the new flagship WholeFoods in Pasadena which is right down the street from a rail station and easier to access on foot than by car. You can walk into it right off the street, without going into a parking lot.
I livein TOD, and I think it's a superior way to live, but I'm curious about costs.
Does anyone have any good data on HVAC costs per sq ft for dense residential (high rise, rowhomes), compared to single family dwellings?
The two major PO related housing costs are commuting fuel and HVAC, and I haven't seen good comparisons.
Also, I'm curious about comparative overall costs for urban, suburban and exurban living. Ideally we'd find costs for TOD and non-TOD variations, for suburban and exurban. It would be nice to see the relative magnitude of PO related costs.
Building and energy codes for multifamily are sometimes less stringent than those for single family houses. My guess for rowhome efficiency over stand alone buildings would be 30 to 50% less energy for HVAC, high density multi-story 70 to 80% less energy. HVAC system design for multiple dwelling units can be complex with a price to be paid for ill planned mechanical systems. Clearly, residential sharing common walls, floors and ceilings with a low surface to volume ratio will use much less energy per square foot.
"My guess for rowhome efficiency over stand alone buildings would be 30 to 50% less energy for HVAC, high density multi-story 70 to 80% less energy"
But, can you find actual data? Per sq ft? 70-80% seems too large a reduction, given the high window area to sq ft ratio of high-rise buildings.
"...Clearly, residential sharing common walls, floors and ceilings with a low surface to volume ratio will use much less energy per square foot."
Again, they have a high window area to sq ft ratio, and windows are much more important than wall/ceiling area.
You can put in R50 insulation in the walls & ceiling, and still lose a lot of heat with inadequate windows - even very good windows might be only R3, and be by far the biggest source of heat loss.
We put in 4 layers of windows - 2 layers provided by standard thermopane windows, 2 layers provided by retrofitted laminated glass. We added 1/2" laminated glass to a plastic skylight and immovable picture windows, and 3/8" on moveable windows. The walls/ceiling are standard R values, perhaps R13/R22.
We can maintain 70 degrees F (21 C) without turning on the heat until outside temperatures dip below 30 degrees F (-1 C). We could probably do without heat at all until 0 F (-18 C), if we had to, just by turning on all of the lights.
High % glass is an architectural fad, started by the Lever building in NYC. NOT required.
One exposed wall, with, say two or three full size windows.
I also recommend double hex cell window blinds as a way to almost double R value when closed.
Best Hopes for Energy Efficiency,
Alan
"High % glass is an architectural fad, started by the Lever building in NYC. NOT required."
True, though I think it's fundamentally nicer to live in. most people like it.
"One exposed wall, with, say two or three full size windows. "
I would think that a better solution to high fuel costs would be paying a premium for better insulated windows - it would be much cheaper than the fuel, and I think most people would think that's worth it.
More importantly, it's characteristic of our existing urban high-rise housing stock, and retrofits are a significant expense.
"I also recommend double hex cell window blinds as a way to almost double R value when closed."
A good idea. We have single cell window blinds, and they work well - I'll have to look into this idea.
Up thread you said you lived in a TOD. You very well might be in the best position to answer your own questions.
In the HVAC/R program I'm presently in, we use reference material to determine sizing requirements per site. Usually the reference material is sourced to industry practices.
I'd approach the TOD superintendent or equivalent, ask who the HVAC contractor was and go from there.
I live in a three story apartment building with two units per floor. Interior has been reworked with 6" insulation on exterior walls and thermalpane windows all around. With only one common wall and an occupied space above me my heat bill is less than $50 per month in the winter time and that includes using gas to cook and heat water. Setting temp at 66 deg. F helps. Summer time electric bill is less than $40 per month and I set AC temp at 80 deg. F, using fans and open windows when temp is less than 80 deg.
I live in St. louis where today's high was 32 deg. F and average high temp. in July is 90 deg. F.
$50 a month!
Testify!
I saw one woman on TV who lived in a Tumbleweedhomes-type teeny home who spent $6 a month in winter for heat. That was in Seattle, which doesn't get Maine-style cold but where it is around freezing in winter.
Six.
Bucks.
A.
Month.
Not even superinsulated.
It is 47 F outside and a 6 mph north wind is blowing (I have a northerly exposure) and I am thinking of turning on the heat.
Alan
Nick,
Housing built post-peak will be better insulated. Expect fewer windows and more multi-paned glass with argon layers. That'll be true for urban and suburban construction. The high glass designs will be disfavored.
There are historical precedents to this. During the so-called Mini Ice Age and Maunder Minimum period window size shrank in England (probably Europe too) and wall thickness increased.
Surprisingly enough, they seem to use a similar amount per square foot: EIA
(The total has AC info.)
One possible reason is that multi-family apartment buildings tend to have heating systems that are much older - and hence almost certainly less efficient - than single-family ones, a fact which suggests their insulation and other factors are likely older as well.
Add to that the common problem that the landlord pays for new insulation or heaters but the tenant pays for fuel, and perhaps it's not surprising that multi-family dwellings aren't as efficient as they could be.
I live in what is arguably the oldest streetcar suburb (1834), about a mile from the center of the CBD and slightly further to the French Quarter. The Lower Garden District of New Orleans is considered a classic "Old Urbanism" community.
The St. Charles Streetcar line is a strongly sustaining force to the Urban fabric. But so is Magazine Street, 5 miles of small shops (very few chains, at least 11 coffee shops, one of them Starbucks, etc). 28' wide streets with parking on both sides leaves most of the area for people. In many ways, we are the living textbook of what TOD should look like. Crumbling sidewalks with people on them 24 hours/day (having seen both, I believe that we have more walking traffic @ 3 AM weeknights than midtown Manhattan, despite much lower population density).
pre-K New Orleans was tied with New York City for lowest miles driven by residents (ignoring suburbanites coming in).
A radically different solution (much more human scale, and much shorter supply chains) in New Orleans vs. New York, but equivalent results.
The Millennium Institute is located in modern TOD, at the Courthouse Station of the Orange Line in Arlington, VA and is one of a number that I have seen.
One thing I have noted in new TOD examples is too much organization and too little beauty. Sometimes I think of a Disneyland neighborhood (Land of Tomorrow - TODLand). But then all American development since WW II lacks beauty and human scale.
Even so, compared to the sterility of the suburbs that my two brothers live in (neighbors down the street are identified by the car they drive, the black Lexus, red Caravan), even modern TOD is a major step up.
Between me and WalMart (7 blocks away) is a New Urbanism community ( http://www.rivergardenneworleans.com/ ) that takes it's queues from the surrounding neighborhood but is too car-centric for my taste. Still, kids play in the miniyards, street and miniparks, people spend time on their porches, they say Good Morning when I walk to WalMart (yes, I get some stuff there). It is evolving into a working class African-American neighborhood, which is exactly what we need !
Perhaps I should do a pictorial of my neighborhood just to show people what it looks like.
Best Hopes for TOD,
Alan
That would be a good idea, I think.
I've thought of doing that with the places in which I lived in Japan... complete with Google Earth images (highlighting the train stations), zooming down the residence, then photos of the neighborhood, etc.
As you are no doubt aware, living in a very old neighborhood, it can take decades for residents to work out the myriad of little details that makes life at least palatable, an in the best cases truly enjoyable, while living very close together. In this regard I think the Japanese are ahead of most folk.
These modern T.O.D. projects seem to lack the details that comes from decades to twiddling... and, as you say, the little things of beauty that people create to make the world around them more appealing.
Here in California there some developments in downtowns, esp. San Diego and parts of west LA, to try and make use of the (very limited and frustrating) mass transit. The one with which I am passingly familiar has its strengths but again lacks all the little details that makes a community "warm", as opposed to "sterile".
Higher housing density does not necessarily lead to a better life - witness all the government housing high-rises that become anathema to a good life.
Rather, what we need are fellow citizens who will make the changes in their lifestyles and personal habits to accommodate the less "elbow room" (as someone mentioned above) for the sake of living lives that are affordable in the long run.
Anyway, back to the photo albums... perhaps we should work on a collection of presentations, reviewing various high density locales and how they have (in their own ways) integrated rail, housing, commerce etc.?
Alan,
Regards shorter supply lines for smaller urban centers: A much higher cost for fuel should favor smaller cities over larger cities. Bigger cities need transportation over longer distances.
Also, I wonder about the relative energy efficiency of coastal versus inland cities. Inland cities can have farm land around them in all directions. Coastal cities lose that in 180 degrees due to an ocean or large lake.
So I wonder: how much of NYC's food comes by rail versus truck versus ship? Will higher energy prices favor ship or rail?
There is a proposal to build a rail freight tunnel from NJ to (from memory) Queens. One reason is for better rail freight access to the ports. The other is to get rail service (food was specifically mentioned) to distribution centers. Rail to warehouse, truck from warehouse to restaurant or retail market.
I think that there are some commuter rail applications for these tunnels as well with minor modifications.
CSX has a proposal now (seeking federal funding) for a grade separated, 3 tracks from Washington DC to Miami Florida. Two tracks for regular freight @ 60 to 70 mph, 1 track (2 from DC to Richmond) for passenger service @ 110 mph (and high value, low & medium density freight as well).
Florida veggies & fruits could take this route to DC (Tropicana already has two unit trains) and then AMtrak tracks (at night) to NYC, or more conventional freight.
Remember 20 ton-miles of electrified rail use about energy (in the form of electricity) as much as 1 ton-mile of heavy truck (and 1 ton-km or less in Farmer Jones pick-up).
Also, foodstuff quantities matter. I use, perhaps, 3 oz of black pepper/year. Not a big deal to bring it 10,000 miles to Baltimore, package it, and ship it down to New Orleans.
New Orleans handles a very good % of USA coffee imports and processing (Folger's mainly), and it gets distributed from here. Americans use a dozen or more pounds of coffee/year, but transportation is not a big deal.
Grains, fruits and vegetables do weigh a lot, and transportation mode matters more.
Your half-circle vs. full circle ignores the productivity of the land (Suburbia = zero). The northeast will never truly feed itself IMHO. Railing wheat from the Dakotas to NYC, etc.can be viable and even sustainable (use renewable energy & electrified rai
I do not have the specific answer to your question, but these tidbits can affect the answer.
Best Hopes,
Alan
As Alan seems to be suggesting, the so-called New Urbanism is a dressed-up reprise of the traditional, Main Street-centric American community that preceded suburban sprawl. These instant downtowns make much sense -- there must be a dozen of them here in the Dallas area -- and residents like the social contact.
But I think the main criticism of them, voiced for instance by Joel Kotkin, holds up, and that's that Americans like their boxy, sterile suburbs. As a rule, they like the elbow room.
It seems to me that, peak oil or no peak oil, a futurist scenario is still going to include the 'burbs.
Steve LeVine, author
The Oil and the Glory
http://www.oilandglory.com
I don't know what to think about the suburbs. I think they have more to fear from the housing bubble in the next 5 years than peak oil. the suburbs do have some things going for it. there are yards, some of them big yards, to grow food. I know they can't be self-sufficient in food production, but if they need to be it won't matter where you live. the suburbs usually have a higher per capita income. they could have the resources to buy solar panels or PHEVs. the suburbs are usually safer than the cities. I see the suburbs becoming more self-contained. they'll need grocery stores and convienance stores located in the subdivision, possibly in residential homes.
many of the poor already live peak oil lifestyles. walking, using public transportation and riding bikes while living in dense communitiies such as two-family homes. less of their income is going towards consumer goods. the problem is many of the poor and working poor won't be able to deal with increases in food prices and energy prices.
"I think they have more to fear from the housing bubble in the next 5 years than peak oil. "
Is there any evidence suburbs are suffering more than urban areas? From what I've seen, cities are suffering more - think LA, Boston, SF...
I think that the suburbs of cities will do worse because the 2 reasons to move just outside of a city is gone.
1. you move because you think home prices are going to go up and living out far will be your only chance to own. that is not the case anymore.
2. the time spent commuting to a depreciating asset is not worth it anymore and gas prices make it even less worth it.
Those are not the main reason people move outside of cities. The reasons that people really move out of cities remain:
A) Lower crime.
B) More space.
C) Schools with better students (we euphemistically refer to "better schools" to avoid the mentioning that people are really fleeing lower class, lower IQ, and more boisterous kids).
D) Lower taxes and other living costs. The city taxes to go support the sorts of people that people flee to the suburbs to get away from.
The discussion here about new urbanization so far has pretty much ignored why most people choose not to live in a city when they can avoid doing so and still pursue their career.
You forgot the main, the primary reason people moved to the suburbs post-WW II. To get away from the Negroes.
Alan
I live in Australia where we don't have any Negroes and people still moved to the suburbs. I am not quite sure of your intentions in posting this comment but it does sound rather racist.
"White Flight " to Suburbia and "good schools" there was clearly connected to the WW II and early post-WW II movement of African Americans from Southern rural areas and the 1953 decision to integrate schools.
Suburban Sprawl in America was all about racism.
Alan
Bull, Alan. There was a movement, active since the 19th Century, based in the New England Transcendentalist notion of the importance of Nature to sanity, towards living in greener surroundings. It was the source not just of the early suburban movement, but also was explicitly involved in justifying urban parks, particularly Central Park and Prospect Park in Manhattan and Brooklyn. As it happens, the people involved in this movement were also, more often than not, abolitionists back in the day.
When America's wealth after WWII afforded people more choices in how to live, they moved to greener surroundings precisely because it was a long standing, pent demand in American culture. Granted, it was largely a value in white American culture. Blacks were anxious to get off the farm, in many cases; nor did many immigrants have this bias towards living outside of cities. And of course, the suburbs turned out to be a flawed realization of the ideal, once the developers got done cheapening the original concept.
To get back to topic here, I'm living in an old urbanist New England town: train station in the center of town, high density for about a square mile, lots of largely-open countryside including farms beyond that. Before this I lived near the aforementioned Prospect Park - and damn but I really need that park to stay sane in Brooklyn. Much as I wouldn't live in the suburbs again (having grown up in part in them), to my mind the original Transcendentalist concept was spot on. It fits very well with a Green ethic too.
And this has nothing, but nothing to do with racism.
White Flight had little/nothing to do with the Transcendentalist concept and everything to do with African-Americans suddenly appearing in the cities in large #s during WW II and immediately afterwards.
"Good Schools" in the suburbs meant classrooms of white faces (because early post WW II suburbs had the most overcrowded (and many temporary) classrooms with the fresh out of school teachers). School desegregation motivated MANY moves 'away". And "busing students" into mixed race schools was fought fiercely for decades.
Post WW II Suburbia was an overt expression of American racism.
Alan
You are a racist c*n%. There are two fundamental causes of suburbia and they have nothing to do with race:
1) Cars, like trains before them, make more places accessible and these places provide the space that people crave, so people develop and move to these places.
2) Planning laws were not used in America to avoid sprawl for the common good because of America's bias towards freedom of the individual and corporation. England, in contrast, built a planning system to avoid "ribbon development" (sprawl) along roads and a network of greenbelt to contain cities.
If your family moved away from cities to avoid black people, they they are ignorant idiots. Your prejudice has nothing to do with urbanism and your assumptions are meaningless.
By your definition, there were a lot of ignorant idiots, I think.
I have a large number of relatives who lived in the city of Detroit. They fled outward in the 1960s because of black folks.
I'm sure a lot also "fled" because it was the in thing to do, but to dismiss the race (and associated class) aspect for a large share of what happened is ridiculous.
I was editing my previous post to make it more mild before you posted again, after I'd calmed down! Here it is:
There are two fundamental causes of suburbia and they have nothing to do with race:
1) Cars, like trains before them, make more places accessible and these places provide the space that people crave, so people develop and move to these places.
2) Planning laws were not used in America to avoid sprawl for the common good because of America's bias towards freedom of the individual and corporation. England, in contrast, built a planning system to avoid "ribbon development" (sprawl) along roads and a network of greenbelt to contain cities.
Black people were only kept from enjoying suburbia by a racist country which kept them from enjoying the new economy. Black people were and still are not given as good educational and work opportunities, dumped in the worst forms of polarised social projects and the new suburban classes would no pay enough tax to regenerate crumbling cities.
You are in effect blaming black people for unsustainable urban form and a big chunk of global warming. Quite the most vicious and stupid approaches to politics.
Having spent four months in Africa I discovered that Black people have maintained many of the family and community values much lost in the western world. I went to Ghana and found a warm nation of friendly, helpful people. Quite the most decent people I've ever met. I now work with many black people in inner London and they are the most approachable kind people. It is terribly sad that you cannot appreciate a whole group of your society and that you can play a race card to blame black people for social trends which were mainly driven by the white middle class. You are ignorant and an idiot and I hope for goodness sake that you don't represent the views of many people. Just remember that Hitler used similar arguments to avoid personal responsibility for hyperinflation and economic collapse. I hope people like you are ignored post peak, because the turmoil will certainly give you a platform, which I intend to take from your feet.
Saying that something was "an overt expression of American racism" is not blaming black people for anything.
From a UK newspaper front page today:
Slave labour that shames America
Migrant workers chained beaten and forced into debt, exposing the human cost of producing cheap food
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/article3263500.ece
So how do these poor souls afford a family house in the suburbs and a SUV. It is not white flight, its blacks being trapped in poverty. Honestly, you guys should be ashamed of your attitudes or be locked up for inciting racial hatred.
I chose to live in a city that was, pre-Katrina 66% or 67% African American, with a black mayor, etc. And I have been quite loyal to that city in a number of profound ways.
Any veteran TODer can attest to that.
I could go on about my friends, etc. but why ?
Still, I do observe that the racist reactions of the white community to the mere presence of "the other" was a primary driving force behind post-WW II Suburbia. So much so that the term "white flight" was invented to describe this common cultural phenomena.
Alan
Ok, we obviously have opposite opinions. You call it White Flight, which is rational from the white perspective. I call it Black entrapment, which is rational when you look from the outside at how Black people have been systematically excluded from the American economy.
What you must remember is that suburbia has been a global issue anywhere with good access to cars where planning has not restricted suburbanisation. White people benefited from this form of economic growth because many are very much part of the middle class. The working class has largely been excluded and it includes a disproportionately high quantity of black people because they are systematically discriminated against in the work place with little social net in the form of things like universal healthcare or decent affordable housing projects.
A failure to recognise the causes of this inequity is the result of middle america's obsession with individual and corporate rights which are placed above collective rights of the community as a whole, which can only be supported by collective action, i.e. government intervention. At this point I return to my comments about anti-left-wing and communist propoganda since the world wars, which have polarised political debate in your country and fail to recognise that a healthy society involves a balance between individual (right wing) and collective (left wing) action.
Just look at Australia, which has had probably even more suburbanisation than America. Did the Aussies move to 1/3 acre plots to escape Lebanese in the inner cities? No, they just like having a big garden. You really need to delineate the issues. If a solution to a complex issue appears too simple, it probably is. Just because your little mind can't contain more concepts, doesn't mean that your simplicity is correct.
Alan, I don't understand how someone could misconstrue your view as being racist. You are obviously just stating that racism exists and is a major factor.
Anyway, I live in an urban area after being raised in a suburban area. My family and many friends don't understand how I can live around black people and I think that holds true for much of suburbia. My siblings chose to live in the suburbs and were given down payments for their houses -- I was not.
Blaming a section of society for a social problem with complex causes, such as suburbanisation, is the definition of racism. Take your argument to the extreme and, kill all the black people and the problem will be solved. Sounds silly? Your grandparents fought a world war on that same way of thinking. Unplausable that the masses would consider it? You haven't lived through hyperinflation or a great depression nor experienced how quickly things can snowball in that situation.
You will look at a Black pastor or a black criminal in the same light when discussing suburbanisation if you use concepts such as white flight because you are applying a judgement to people simply because of the colour of their skin. It may not appear like racism to you because it is institutionalised racism. This is group think, when all those around you think something is rational it becomes conditioned into your psyche and takes much thought to delineate issues and de construct the accepted way of thinking.
The bias towards gangster rap music in your media, invested in by white middle class record executives reinforces and plays upon the insecurities of the white middle classes, even though more black people would probably prefer to listen to uplifting gospel music at church, praising god rather than glorify guns.
Oh come on, somebody stick your neck out. Show common sense a bit of support!
The phrase "White flight" explictly acknowledges that much of the country half a century back was racist. It then attempts to explain their actions. It doesn't blame black people - it observes that the reason white people left the inner cities was because their racist perceptions weren't compatible with living in increasingly black cities.
Observing that this was the case doesn't speak to Alan's or my bias at all. Any more than observing that slavery existed 200 years ago makes us advocates of its use. You are trying to talk us out of racist views we don't hold.
He lives in NOLA - somewhat incompatible with "moving away from cities to avoid black people."
Growing up in the 90's in an upper-class, suburban, multiracial society, people like me were insulated from racism in an extreme way. Our only real contact with it, other than vague historical references, was ghetto hip-hop culture and deliberate trolling - it was a hangup of a previous generation. We weren't socially conscious during the LA Riots, and OJ was merely some odd celebrity which the media seemed to be obsessed with. It wasn't MLK's colorless society (mostly because of residual self-segregation and cultural differences which we didn't understand the source of, just accepted), but it was close. Common wisdom was that civil rights was a process whose start caused the Civil War and whose final conclusion created the protest culture of the 60's.
As I've grown up, I've come to understand how sheltered these views were. School integration was protested virulently in my area on into the 80's. The destruction caused by race riots is still visible today in some cities. In many parts of the country, you can still grow to adulthood without having significant contact with people of another race. And while overt public racism was suppressed in the Baby Boomer generation, I still have several friends whose parents condemn them for multiracial relationships - in an extremely liberal area where non-hispanic whites are a minority. My upbringing didn't include the notion that authority figures like those involved in the case of the Jena Six still existed. But apparently, they do.
He's speaking of the historical phenomena of suburbanization, which peaked in the 40's, 50's, and 60's. His analysis that it was mostly racial does not speak to his prejudices at all, and he deserves an apology - regardless of the validity of the argument. It's my contention that it had about equal amounts to do with:
A) distaste for crowded, dirty, increasingly black cities, seen as a haven for organized crime and far too industrialized to live in
B) a romantic ideal created as a promotion for the GI bill to have your own homestead, raise the kids in Pleasantville, and own every modern innovation known to man. This was a generation which still had a memory of using oil lamps, and progressed to the universal TV dinner and transistor radio in a remarkably short span of time.
C) the freedom of individualistic car-based existence, first tasted when families uprooted in the Great Depression and lived out of their cars in search of work, and widely praised in popular culture (from Kerouac to Brian Wilson)
D) How cheap agricultural land and oil (which the US produced better than anyone else at the time) was
E) US tax policies which emphasized depreciation ended up developing vast tracts of land into suburban commerce as an investment mechanism, and crippling traditional urban centers
F) Somewhat overlapping with A, B, and E, a desire to shop, work, and live in entirely different places evolved, and brought on zoning policies which encouraged single-use superblocks surviving to today.
The hip hop culture you refer to is something promoted by white record producers to sell records. It is responsible for many of the misconceptions of black people. MTV has much to answer for.
Transportation costs in the suburbs are high, and are getting higher. The combined cost of housing plus transportation is higher in the auto-dependent suburbs than in central cities and transit-oriented corridors. From the report A Heavy Load: The Combined Housing and Transportation Burdens of Working Families:
More at the Center for Neighborhood Technology's Housing + Transportation website.
This is coming from a Canadian perspective, but I think that these points are a bit outdated. That may be why people fled to the suburbs in the 50s and 60s, but nowadays things are more complex.
For example, many of the less desirable suburbs, such as the Vancouver suburb of Surrey, have more crime than the central city does. They don't necessarily have more space, either. Present-day suburbanites often live in apartment buildings.
So why do people flock to suburbia, in the 21st century? Largely because real estate and rents are cheaper.
The higher default rate in suburban areas is becoming a common story around the nation. A recent article appeared in the Charlotte Observer titled New suburbs in fast decay, and had a remarkable interactive map of every foreclosed property.
A similar story from Indianapolis:
Midnight Run
"The specter of families running from foreclosure, leaving their new homes in the middle of the night, haunts the Franklin Township section of Indianapolis, a part of the city where home builders flourished during the boom."
Dallas:
Suburbs are home of foreclosure woes
Washington, D.C.:
Area Suburbs See Rise in Foreclosures
California Central Valley:
Foreclosures Spurring Suburban Blight
Even before the housing bubble started collapsing, the book Tomorrow's Cities, Tomorrow's Suburbs by Lucy and Phillips documented how the older suburbs built 1950-1970 were declining faster than historic urban neighborhoods. The aging suburbs have all the hassles of decaying, obsolete housing stock combined with all the suburban disadvantages of inconvenient location, traffic congestion, and poor degree of walkability and transit service.
If a working poor person is using public transit and lives in a modernized old building (like mine built in 1894) the cost for energy will not be much of a problem. Higher cost of food will be a problem unless they grow or raise some of their own, like I do. Also, going to the local farmer's market can save on food.
Main problem with the "burbs' is that these former middle class people will find themselves in the poor catagory as their jobs disappear and they won't be able to afford driving 50 or 60 miles per day to the new job. They will have to move close to work perhaps nearer an urbsn center.
What rational human being would prefer avocado colored appliances with burnt orange shag carpeting ?
Yet that is what the 1970s Suburbanites chose to buy.
Moral, Americans are herd animals when it comes to housing, NOT rational actors choosing preferences.
Laurence Aurbach has collected a wide variety of polls, and about 30% of Americans want to live in TOD, but less than 2% do. Build the Urban Rail, zone for TOD, and empty many suburbs of most of that 30%. Once the momentum (stampede AKA "white flight") gets going, then many/most suburbs will empty to below viable levels (remember that Suburban housing is NOT durable) and many will collapse entirely IMHO.
Best Hopes for TOD,
Alan
Hi Alan, we can discuss the pluses and minuses of polls in terms of accuracy on another occasion, but look at what is going on. I covered real estate for a little while back in 2005-'06, and took a real shine to the New Urbanism myself, seeing it as the clear future, for the same reasons you and others state.
But then I took a close look at the arguments of nay-sayers, and, looking around me and the many states I visit, I decided they have a point. When Americans are asked and shown the glitzy, dense communities, their eyes generally light up. Yet moving there is another matter. They have not voted that way with their feet. New Urbanism is niche, and has captured precisely two markets -- young professional singles and married couples, and retired active seniors.
Humans are not always rational. But you can see what they do. I know you've read Kotkin. He makes sense on this issue.
John15 is right about what may happen -- the 'burbs will simply become more self-contained.
http://www.oilandglory.com
New urban developments have experienced market success generally, with residences commanding higher prices than the comparable competition, and with property values appreciating at faster rates than the comparable competition. There are several academic studies documenting this effect. Even in the midst of the current housing market slowdown, new urban, TOD and infill developments are performing better than the competition.
I suspect that if you asked people if they would like to live in small towns -- especially towns with passenger rail connections (another type of TOD, I'd argue) -- you would get even greater numbers responding favorably. Small town America is archetypal America, even more so than the small family farm. Small towns are naturally human scale, and do not require a lot of special effort to make them so. In small towns, you have plenty of housing with yards that can become gardens (actually, you'll find a lot of gardens in small towns right now), yet you'll also find a fair number of people walking or bicycling; more could, if they had to. Most small towns are surrounded by agricultural land, and are at least potentially capable of feeding themselves entirely within a local catchment area.
We are likely to have some epic population movements over the next century. Not only are the metro suburbs likely to become increasingly non-viable and uninhabitable, but we also know that the increasingly arid southwest will have to downsize its population to match a very low carrying capacity. We also know that as sea levels rise due to global climate change, there will be massive relocations of populations from places like south FL, south LA, and east NC. IMHO, I would argue that small towns would have at least as much capacity as urban TOD to absorb these populations, and maybe even more. There are lots of small towns right now with empty houses just begging for occupancy. Many small towns are dominated by an aging population that will be leaving even more vacant housing units over the next few decades. Most small towns have room for infill and modest expansion without the need for huge investments in infrastructure. Ramping local food production to support increased local populations is a much easier proposition to contemplate for small towns compared to urban areas.
The main reason why more people don't live in small towns now is the lack of good job opportunities, and to some extent the isolation; the two are not totally unconnected.
As the global and national economies begin their inevitable decline toward a lower sustainable level, a lot of jobs in metro areas are going to dissapear and not be replaced. While small towns might also suffer some job losses, a greater percentage of people are likely to be engaged in the supplying of non-discretionary goods and services to the local area; thus employment is likely to hold up better in the small towns. Furthermore, as transport and other energy inputs drive up the cost of non-local goods and services, or disrupts supplies altogether, it is likely that increasing opportunities will develop for specialized production of goods and services for the local economy. For example, a small town that had not been able to support its own bakery for many years due to the availability of cheap baked goods at the supermarket might find that, with non-local baked goods becoming hugely expensive, there is now a bakery niche available to be filled. Thus, small towns may become one of the few places with good employment opportunities.
Reconnecting our small towns with passenger rail (as they largely were a century ago) is, IMHO, a project every bit as urgent in priority as is electrified mass transit in metro areas; perhaps it is even more important, because people in urban areas can carpool, bicycle, or walk a lot more than they can now, but once motor fuel becomes prohibitively expensive, small towns will become totally isolated unless they have a passenger rail connection. Small towns have traditionally served as collection points for the gathering of any agricultural surpluses their local farms have produced, for shipment to the cities. This pattern will have to reassert itself in the future, which means that the continued viability of urban areas may be more dependent than anything else upon maintaining and expanding the network of rail connections to small towns.
"about 30% of Americans want to live in TOD, but less than 2% do."
They could move from suburbia to urban TOD, but they don't. Perhaps it's because urban living is much, much more expensive (much higher mortgage costs, higher income, sales, property taxes, higher food costs, etc, etc). Does anyone have cost of living stats, as I requested above?
"most suburbs will empty to below viable levels "
That would require a lot of new construction. With new construction at about 800k units per year, that would take quite a while. And with urban sq ft land costs 3-5x as high as suburban, it would cost a very high premium.
"And with urban sq ft land costs 3-5x as high as suburban, it would cost a very high premium."
this depends on where you live. in NYC yes, in detroit, no.
There is not enough T to build enough OD for more than a few % of the population.
Build LOTS more Urban Rail (T), enact favorable zoning laws, and let nature take it's course.
Without post-WW II freeways, only a few % of the population would live in Suburbia today.
Build enough Urban Rail to saturate demand (entirely possible).
Today, single family homes are 2.5x larger than in 1950 and families are smaller. Retail space/capita has grown 10 fold (see Suburban shopping malls).
Building condos, du/triplexes & apartments 1/3rd the size of SFRs today (note common walls also save on construction costs) and less construction materials than today could build highly energy efficient & pleasant homes for twice or three times as many people as today.
Urban land is worth more because it saves so much in other ways and is more desirable to live in. And build enough Urban Rail to saturate the market, and prices will drop. There is a scarcity premium for TOD today.
Best Hopes for TOD,
Alan
The "small town America" format favored by the New Urbanists is a dead end. First of all, so-called "New Urbanism" is not even urban at all, but rather a "small town" ideal. That's why I call them the "New Suburbanists." Second, in many cases those small towns/small cities were actually the "suburban sprawl" of their day. 19th century development in the US is very spread out, but European standards. Roadways were enormous. They were interested in facilitating transit of large horsedrawn wagons, in much the same way as contemporary "planners" are concerned primarily about automobile traffic flow, resulting in eight-lane avenues. Compare any post-1840 US "small town" or small city with a medieval village in Europe. It is vastly more spread out, gigantic in scale. There are a few pre-1800 neighborhoods out there -- Colonial-era Boston, Lower Manhattan, etc. -- that reflect real European-style density, rather than the big streets/rectangular grid pattern popular in the 19th century, but in the US these are so rare as to be almost nonexistent.
Second, the automobile suburbs themselves are in large part an attempt to live in a "small town America" environment. In fact, many of those suburbs WERE small towns, until the widespread availability of automobiles after WWII allowed people to move there and work elsewhere. Most "small towns" are reliant on automobiles, because they are too small to justify other transportation options.
The "New Urbanists" are completely pathetic. They should be championing real urban environments, of which there are many successful and wonderful examples throughout the world. When the "New Urbanists" shut up about "small town America" and stupid Portland, OR and start talking about Paris or Rome or Prague or Rio de Janeiro, then I might get interested.
The same is true of many high-density, transit-oriented European cities - Warsaw, for example, has lots of wide roadways.
It also has a brilliant public transit system that will take you all over the city quickly, conveniently, cheaply, and efficiently. Prague has a similar system - love those trams.
Enormous roadways aren't the problem; lack of alternatives is the problem.
I think you're setting up a straw man, and aren't even taking the time to define it.
How e