Category Archives: Places

Request from DuPage mosque for 50-60 foot tall structure rejected

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I’ve been tracking the cases of several proposals for mosques in DuPage County and one of the cases was in the news yesterday because of a ruling that did not allow a variance for the 50-60 foot tall structure:

During a heated hearing that included accusations from the public of demagoguery and religious insensitivity, the DuPage County Development Committee failed to endorse the plan on a 3-3 vote. The committee’s ruling followed a rejection of the proposal by the DuPage County Zoning Board of Appeals, said committee Chairman Tony Michelassi, who voted in favor of the project.

The group previously tried to win approval for a 69-foot dome and a 79-foot minaret when the County Board first considered construction of the mosque. Amid fierce opposition, construction of the religious center on 91st Street near Illinois Highway 83 was approved while a waiver to build the higher dome and minaret was denied…

MECCA leaders most recently sought a waiver to construct a dome that would peak 50 feet off the ground and a 60-foot minaret, the tall spire from which the faithful are traditionally called to prayer.

But with a cap on the height of new religious buildings set at 36 feet in residential areas, the group could not realistically construct a dome and minaret that are functional and true to religious custom, Daniel said.

Opponents of the mosque have said, among other things, that the structure would be obtrusive. The faith of future MECCA congregants has nothing to do with their opposition, nearby residents say. They noted that six churches of different denominations peacefully coexist in the neighborhood.

This continues to be a very interesting case: 50-60 feet tall is roughly 5 to 6 stories. This is considerably taller than many suburban buildings (where apartment buildings over a few stories are generally rare) but perhaps more in line with a tall traditional church steeple (though fewer churches desire steeples these days).

This case hinges on new zoning laws regarding religious structures passed by DuPage County in 2011. Here is some of the debate about this zoning change as recorded by the Daily Herald in October 2011:

DuPage officials say the zoning changes are needed because unincorporated residential areas don’t have the infrastructure needed to support new places of assembly. Existing roads, sewers, and septic and well systems weren’t designed for the uses, they argue.

However, DuPage officials dropped a controversial idea to prohibit new places of assembly in residential neighborhoods. The existing proposal allows new places of assembly in residential areas as long as certain requirements are met.

County board member Grant Eckhoff said the goal is to balance the rights of property owners and their neighbors. The proposed regulations give groups the opportunity to seek construction projects while protecting “the essential character” neighborhoods, he said…

The new rules also place greater restrictions on the size of religious buildings. Another suggestion is to prohibit organizations from converting an existing single-family house into a place of worship.

I noted the final 16-0 vote in favor of these limits on religious congregations that took place shortly after the above Daily Herald article. These new regulations seem to be primarily on the side of existing residents as it is the religious group that must prove that their structure does not put a hardship on the neighborhood. In other words, the religious group must have the support of the neighborhood at the very least to get a variance to the regulations approved.

Preserving “authentic” spaces can lead to more “contrived and uniform places”

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While I haven’t read the book, I was intrigued by this one paragraph that describes sociologist Sharon Zukin’s argument in her recent book Naked City: The Death and Life of Authentic Urban Spaces.

Sharon Zukin’s Naked City: The Death and Life of Authentic Urban Places signals its ambivalent relationship to Jacobs’s work in its subtitle, which both echoes Jacobs and argues with her legacy. Zukin’s argument is that Jacobs’s city is as much an artificial construct as any other, and that its imposition on living cities has tended to create mummified museums of urbanism rather than vibrant and authentic centres of human life: above all, it has unleashed the wave of middle-class-friendly gentrification that has made the special into the commonplace, the characterful into the bland, the human into the corporate. It seems that the more people insist on authenticity and individuality, the more contrived and uniform places become. Zukin uses New York to illustrate the problem: if you don’t know the city, you will definitely be at a disadvantage, as she wanders through streets and districts providing a sometimes illuminating, sometimes irritating commentary showing the ways in which the city has lost — or rather sold — its soul.

Authenticity: something that many people want but it is hard to find in places and perhaps even harder to maintain.

This reminds me of some ideas I’ve run into in recent years. One ASA presentation I saw a few years ago addressed this very issue by looking at a neighborhood that was just on the edge of gentrification in Chicago. This means the neighborhood hadn’t quite yet been overrun by wealthier, white residents but it had enough artists and wealthier residents to be clearly on the rise. The argument was that soon this place was going to tip into gentrification, meaning the true grittiness of the neighborhood would be scrubbed away as people moved in looking for “authentic” urban living.

Additionally, you could argue that wanting to preserve authenticity is behind many NIMBY efforts. Once having moved into a place, residents want to preserve what they liked in the first place, sometimes going so far that it seems like they wish they could have frozen that place in time. In these cases, residents are often fighting against outsiders and trying to promote their own vision of an authentic neighborhoods. In the end, few, if any, places can really be frozen in time except maybe corporatized spaces like Main Street U.S.A. at DisneyWorld. Places change and might go through cycles when they are authentic and then become inauthentic.

So how exactly do you get authentic places? This particular reviewer doesn’t like Zukin’s suggestion that government should help guide this process. I might chime in that government in the past has been known to promote its own interests or the interests of wealthy businesspeople over residents. At the same time, if we leave everything up to an unfettered market, authentic spaces tend to get commodified, taken over by wealthy residents, and influenced by corporations. I would guess that Zukin prefers to have places where residents have a say in what happens in the neighborhood, that everything isn’t decided by outside forces and that government can act as a referee to look out for the interests of current residents.

A reminder: there are plenty of people who have a stake in whether a place is authentic or not and this complicates everything.

High rents and the lack of politics

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Forbes recently published a two part interview with law professor David Schleicher discussing his recent paper City Unplanning.  Schleicher discusses the perversity of zoning restrictions and begins by noting that, in many cases, rents and rental units available have nothing to do with each other:

In a number of big cities, new housing starts seem uncorrelated or only weakly correlated with housing prices and the result of increasing demand while holding supply steady is that price went up fast. The average cost of a Manhattan apartment is now over $1.4 million and the average monthly rent is over $3,300.

The only explanation is that zoning rules stop supply from increasing in the face of rising demand.

Effectively, Schleicher argues that new developments in big cities are subject to a form of NIMBYism which is effective to the extent it is apolitical:

Local legislators may prefer more development than we have now to less, but have stronger preferences for stopping development in their districts because these projects would hurt homeowners in their neighborhoods—either directly through things like increased traffic or indirectly through increasing the supply of housing, harming the value of existing houses.

This is a prisoner’s dilemma and absent a political party to organize the vote in local legislatures, one-by-one votes on projects will result in “defect” results, or situations where every legislator builds coalitions to block projects in their own district and nothing gets built [emphasis added].

I couldn’t quite understand Schleicher’s point from the interview, but it is much better explained in the full paper:

Importantly, most cities do not have competitive party politics – they either have formally nonpartisan elections and/or are entirely dominated by one party that rarely takes local-issue specific stances. Absent partisan competition, there is little debate over citywide issues in local legislative races and there is no party leadership to organize the legislature, making the procedural rules governing the manner in which the legislature considers land use issues far more important. The content of the land use procedure generates what one might call “localist” policy-making: seriatim [i.e., one-off] decisions about individual developments or rezonings in which the preferences of the most affected local residents are privileged against more weakly-held citywide preferences about housing.

It’s an intriguing thesis positively, but I’m not sure what I think of Schleicher’s point normatively.  Local voters generally do seem to prefer NIMBY outcomes in order to avoid threats (e.g., increased traffic, lowered property values) to their existing assets (i.e., homes and businesses).  But if local voters achieve this result through the mechanics of “weak” local politics, isn’t that an example of the political system “working”?

Put another way, high rents may be undesirable, but they are largely an outsider problem.  Current residents (insiders who can vote) first and foremost want to protect themselves from the problematic vicissitudes of new development (which will, if it is built, be populated with outsiders who obviously cannot vote unless it is built and they take up residence).  If current residents/voters achieve this goal through voting for “apolitical” council members, (1) isn’t this actually a highly political choice, and (2) isn’t this precisely how voting and elections are designed to work?

NASA on Vegas and sprawl

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NASA recently posted a video on Flikr showing 28 years of development in Las Vegas as seen from space:

When Landsat 5 launched on March 1, 1972, Las Vegas was a smaller city. This image series, done in honor of the satellite’s 28th birthday, shows the desert city’s massive growth spurt since 1972. The outward expansion of the city is shown in a false-color [i.e., red = green space like parks and golf courses] time lapse of data from all the Landsat satellites.

Pedestrians in a world of driverless cars

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Many bloggers are starting to tease out the social and infrastructure implications of driverless cars, including David Alpert over at the Atlantic:

[Driverless cars] will bring many changes, but when it comes to the car’s role in the city, they may just intensify current tensions.

David suggests that new technology will simply exacerbate current trends by “trigger[ing] a whole new round of pressure to further redesign intersections for the throughput of vehicles above all else”:

If autonomous cars travel much faster than today’s cars and operate closer to other vehicles and obstacles, as we see in the [University of] Texas team’s simulation , then they may well kill more pedestrians. Or, perhaps the computers controlling them will respond so quickly that they can avoid hitting any pedestrian, even one who steps out in front of a car.

In that case, we might see a small number of people taking advantage of that to cross through traffic, knowing the cars can’t kill him. That will slow the cars down, and their drivers will start lobbying for even greater restrictions on pedestrians, like fences preventing midblock crossings.

Our metropolitan areas could then look, more and more, like zoos for humans interlaced with pathways for the dominant species, the robot car.

Personally, I think one of these scenarios (i.e., “travel much faster…[and] kill more pedestrians”) is unlikely.  Initially, driverless cars will almost certainly be much more expensive than equivalent conventional vehicles.  A car that is both (1) more expensive and (2) more dangerous seems unlikely to sell well, to say nothing of the likelihood that such lawsuit-magnets would be sued utterly out of existence.  To catch on with a mass market, driverless cars will at least need to uphold safety’s current status quo.

As far as David’s second fear (“metropolitan areas [that] look, more and more, like zoos for humans”), I’m unclear how much that differs from current development patterns.  While there are plenty of examples of “walkable” cities, much of contemporary American infrastructure is extremely unfriendly to pedestrians, cyclists, and other non-car users.  To the extent that cars dominate today’s roads, a move to driverless cars seems only to continue, rather than augment, that trend.

Transit-oriented development in the Boston area

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Transit-oriented development has been popular for years now and here is an update on this development strategy in the Boston area:

“We see a huge demand around Greater Boston. We’re working in communities from Winchester to Lawrence that are all working to develop vibrant urban villages around public transportation,” Leroux said. “An overwhelming number of people want to live in these types of places, and communities that don’t create them are less competitive for residents and jobs.”

Filling the need in Somerville, where the residential landscape consists mainly of three-decker homes, is Maxwell’s Green, which will feature 184 rental units with amenities to rival many downtown Boston luxury apartment buildings.

Near completion and ready for occupancy this September, the $52.5 million development sits on 5.5 acres and is located minutes from the Red Line stop at Davis Square and adjacent to the much- anticipated MBTA Green Line Extension’s Lowell Street station…

SouthField, one of the largest transit-oriented developments in Greater Boston, is on track for South Weymouth at the former naval air station.

The first phase of the project is already complete, with residents occupying both apartments and townhouses. The total cost of the project, including the homes already built, is targeted at about $2.5 billion, which includes 2,800 homes and 2 million square feet of commercial space.

The “urban village” concept has been around now for several decades. They are thought to be particularly attractive for young professionals who want to live in the suburbs or further away from the city core (partly because of cheaper prices), don’t yet want to buy a home (condos being easier to maintain), want mass transit access, and also want to be in more lively areas with some cultural and dining options.

These types of development are very popular in the Chicago suburbs are well, particularly along the railroad lines that radiate out from Chicago’s center. Many suburbs have sought to build multi-use developments (condos plus offices or small retail establishments) near their commuter train stations. While this means that the residents can access mass transit, it also provides more pedestrians and hopefully customers for the downtown. A number of suburbs have pursued these developments as part of a downtown revitalization strategy.

I would be interested to see how studies about how much these developments reduce traffic and congestion. Particularly in a suburban setting, a couple might be able to go down to one car (or none?) if both use mass transit a lot. However, while mass transit access to the city center might be great, there is often a lack of mass transit options across between suburbs.

I also wonder how much transit-oriented development succeeds because it is seen as trendy.

US mosques increased from 1,209 to 2,106 between 2000 and 2011

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A new study shows that the number of mosques in the United States increased 74% between 2000 and 2011:

Researchers conducting the national count found a total of 2,106 Islamic centers, compared to 1,209 in 2000 and 962 in 1994. About one-quarter of the centers were built between 2000-2011, as the community faced intense scrutiny by government officials and a suspicious public. In 2010, protest against an Islamic center near ground zero erupted into a national debate over Islam, extremism and religious freedom. Anti-mosque demonstrations spread to Tennessee, California and other states.

While some are pleased as this suggests Muslims feel comfortable enough in the United States to establish religious congregations, I think there are two other interesting things about these findings:

1. The methodology for counting mosques:

The report released Wednesday, “The American Mosque 2011,” is a tally based on mailing lists, websites and interviews with community leaders, and a survey and interviews with 524 mosque leaders. The research is of special interest given the limited scholarship so far on Muslim houses of worship, which include a wide range of religious traditions, nationalities and languages.

Researchers defined a mosque as a Muslim organization that holds Friday congregational prayers called jumah, conducts other Islamic activities and has operational control of its building. Buildings such as hospitals and schools that have space for Friday prayer were not included. Chapters of the Muslim Student Association at colleges and universities were included only if they had space off-campus or had oversight of the building where prayer was held…

The 2011 mosque study is part of the Faith Communities Today partnership, which researches the more than 300,000 houses of worship in the United States. Among the report’s sponsors are the Council on American-Islamic Relations, the Hartford Institute for Religion Research, the Islamic Society of North America and Islamic Circle of North America.

I wonder if other researchers might disagree with this methodology, particularly with how a mosque was defined. This is a reminder that it can be difficult to track or count religious groups because there are no master lists, not everyone is in the phone book, and not everyone has a web site. Additionally, religious congregations can quickly form and disband.

(I assume the researchers talk about this in their report but could the increase in mosques could be related to doing a more comprehensive search this time around?)

2. It is interesting to note where the mosques are located:

The overwhelming majority of mosques are in cities, but the number located in suburbs rose from 16 percent in 2000 to 28 percent in 2011. The Northeast once had the largest number of mosques, but Islamic centers are now concentrated in the South and West, the study found. New York still has the greatest number of Islamic centers — 257 — followed by 246 in California and 166 in Texas. Florida is fourth with 118. The shift follows the general pattern of population movement to the South and West.

I am most interested in the figures about the suburban growth as I have tracked several cases of proposals for mosques in the Chicago suburbs. This article doesn’t say but I wonder if the greater number of suburban mosques is because city mosques have moved from city to suburb (which would mirror the movement of Protestant churches out of the city in the post-World War II suburban boom) or because these are new suburban mosques built in response to a growing suburban Muslim population.

 

Odd statement: “Only 2.8% of your property tax bill goes to DuPage County”

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Two days ago, our household received the quarterly newsletter from DuPage County. While the front page of the DuPage Review trumpets “DuPage County Cuts $10.7 million from 2012 Budget,” the back page had this interesting statement: “Did You Know? Only 2.8% of your property tax bill goes to DuPage County.” See the figure below:

What exactly is the County trying to convey here? Pointing out this figure means: (a) you should not be concerned at all since this is a small amount (b) you should not care much if we ask for a little more (c) you should be impressed that we use such a small percentage, particularly compared to other taxing bodies. .

The focus here is on the small number (only 2.8%!) but it might also lead a lot of people to ask what my wife asked: why does the County need 2.8% anyway? The rest of the newsletter offers some hints: taking care of county roads, dealing with stormwater, and facilitate things like senior services and electronic recycling. The county budget for 2012 is $434.7 million and you can find more specific details here.

I wonder how many DuPage County residents know what goes on at the county level. Outside of occasional local issues, how many people actually have to be concerned about what the County does? Add in the fact that Illinois has the most local taxing bodies in the country (outpacing second place Pennsylvania by over 2,000) and it can be really hard to figure out how the County, township, Forest Preserve, Park Districts, municipalities and the other taxing bodies fit together and utilize property tax money.

New economic plan for Chicago region from Emanuel, World Business Chicago

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Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel announced a new economic plan for the Chicago region earlier today:

What’s clear from the 60-page report is that the city is aiming to shake up the status quo. Too many agencies have been making uncoordinated efforts to boost economic development, the report finds, and greater collaboration is needed. Job training programs have not been well-aligned with employers’ needs and should be tailored to specific job demand. And new funding models are needed for infrastructure and transportation projects, given the economic times.

“A global city like Chicago needs a clear set of goals, a clear framework for analysis and clear strategies for economic growth and the creation of jobs,” Mayor Rahm Emanuel said in a statement…

It is one of two major regional planning endeavors that has been under way for months. Next week, the Chicagoland Chamber of Commerce will unveil the results of a study conducted by the Paris-based Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), of how the region can better compete in the global economy.

Read the executive summary of the plan here.

A few quick thoughts on the plan:

1. I’m not particularly surprised by any of the 10 primary suggestions. What seems most pertinent here is that the plan is regional and wants to leverage the assets of the whole region for this one plan.

2. It seems to me that the trick will be uniting all of the local governments and taxing bodies in order to work on this plan. Some of the recent battles in Chicagoland indicate that this will not be easy: the battle over the expansion of O’Hare Airport and the battle over the purchase of the Elgin, Joliet, & Eastern railroad tracks by Canadian National. Perhaps this most recent economic crisis presents an opportunity – after all, Emanuel is well-known for saying, “You never want a serious crisis to go to waste” – where even the wealthier suburbs will want to tackle these issues together. Balancing all of these interests will be difficult as will having the right kinds of structures to enact change across communities.

3. This reminds me that while Mayor Emanuel may be considered liberal by some, he is pro-business in a similar way to President Clinton and other more moderate Democrats. This plan comes out of the World Business Chicago group that Emanuel has tapped to help lead Chicago forward. Emanuel’s vision may have more governmental involvement than some would like but matters like infrastructure are already government’s concerns and if managed well (which includes preparing for the future rather than simply trying to keep up today), can help everyone else succeed. If this plan is a success and the Chicago region continues to be or even builds upon its standing as a world-class city, Emanuel will be remembered fondly by many on both sides of the political aisle.

4. I would be curious to know how many plans like this have been developed in the past, how many were successfully followed, and how many were successes.

5. There are a number of groups who do regional planning in the Chicago area, such as the Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning which has its own Go to 2040 Plan, and I wonder how they will respond to this plan.

Car free in DC

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Washington, DC is seeing fewer cars these days, at least on a per-person basis:

Car registrations in the District have hovered around 275,000 over the last decade, according to D.C. Department of Motor Vehicles Director Lucinda Babers, even as the city’s population ballooned by more than 40,000 people in that time.

Experts say two forces are driving the change. There are more ways to get around the city without a car, and the down economy has everyone looking for ways to cut costs, like getting rid of that second vehicle.

As new residents of the DC area, my wife and I are part of this trend (though our location in the suburbs a few miles beyond the District’s boundary line means that we’re technically not part of this cited statistic).  There are indeed plenty of ways to get around the metro area without owning a car.  My wife’s office is a 10-minute bus ride away from our apartment (it would be 8 minutes by car), and I work mostly from home.  It’s hard to imagine that paying ~$600/month (i.e., conservatively, $200 car payment and/or maintenance, $200 insurance for two, $200 gas) vs. ~$60 for her bus fares is worth the extra 4 minutes a day.

To be sure, we are fortunate to have such great transit options available for our work (short bus ride and telecommuting, respectively).  But what really makes our situation workable is that we can (and do) still use cars quite often.  For short weekly trips (e.g., grocery shopping, doctor’s appointments, etc.), we use Zipcar (~$10/hour all inclusive, including rental, insurance, and gas).  For more special occasions (e.g., weekend getaways), we hire a vehicle from a traditional rental car company (e.g., Hertz, Budget, Enterprise).

Moreover, not owning a car has had a surprising, unforeseen side effect:  I actually like driving again.  I used to commute 1.5 hours/day through the Chicago suburbs, and I detested driving.  Now, I drive a handful of times throughout each month, and every drive feels like I’m zooming through car-commercial-world, fused with the open road.

All in all, our monthly transportation budget is considerably more than the $60 “minimum” needed for my wife’s bus commute.  It is also far less than the $600/month it would cost us to own (and use) our own car.  And there are plenty of intangible benefits of not sitting in traffic every day.  Down economy or not, it doesn’t always make sense to own a car.