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.
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
A new report says the number of “super-commuters” increased across the United States from 2002 to 2009:
New York University’s Rudin Center for Transportation reports from 2002 to 2009 the number of super-commuters grew in eight of the 10 largest U.S. metropolitan areas. They grew in the Philadelphia area by more than 50 percent during that period.
The growth of super-commuters has occurred not just on the East Coast, but in cities such as Seattle and Houston, which had the greatest increase. The typical super-commuter is under 29 and more likely to be in the middle class.
The super-commuter is defined as someone who works in the central county of a given metropolitan area, but lives beyond the boundaries of that metropolitan area…
Many super-commuters are willing to take a plane to get to work or drive long distances because they can’t sell homes that have lost value and move. They often travel to another city on Monday, then return to their homes and families at the end of the work week.
Americans tend to go to where the jobs are. Here are several thoughts about this:
1. It would be nice to have an overall number of super-commuters in the United States. The full report gives figures by city and some of these are interesting: 59,000 for Manhattan, 233,000 for Los Angeles, 99,000 in Chicago, 251,000 in Houston, and 175,700 in Houston. On the whole, it doesn’t look like we are talking about a large number of Americans though the rise in this practice is noteworthy.
2. Is this more of a function of the size of the actual metropolitan area (New York has a broader metro region) or about the ease of transportation into a city or a mismatch between the number of jobs and affordable/reasonable housing?
3. This definition of a super-commuter is limited. For example, if a worker from Champaign, Illinois commuted to a job in Oak Brook, located in DuPage County, it wouldn’t count as a super-commute. This seems problematic since the job distribution in metropolitan regions is quite more diffuse today than in the past. If this definition was expanded to include all long trips from one metropolitan region to another, the numbers would be even more noteworthy.
4. One of the maps (Figure 7) from the full report reminded me of the idea of the megalopolis:
This is a reminder that urban and transportation planning needs to be broader in scale.
5. Are these “super-commuting corridors” long-term realities? If the economy improved, would these numbers drop or because of technology plus the realities of the globalized, post-industrial economy, are these corridors only going to continue to grow?
Mark Hemingway takes aim at Portland, Oregon in a long cover story in the Weekly Standard:
Unlike the New York Times, I write not to praise the place but to note the litany of things that plainly have gone wrong. Also to alert anyone else who’s listening: Right now, America’s civil and social engineers are beavering away trying to turn your city or town into the next Portlandia.
Mark’s piece is a rambling barrage that roughly summarizes as follows:
A few thoughts re: development policies. Mark suggests “[t]hings began to unravel in 1973, when the Oregon legislature required cities in the state to set development boundaries with the goal of preserving farmland.” Portland responded by “cancel[ing] a major interstate freeway project” in order to start a light rail system. Mark objects to this decision because (a) the light rail has low ridership (“It’s called ‘light’ rail not because the trains are less heavy, but because it’s more lightly used by the public than, say, New York’s subway or Washington, D.C.’s Metro”) and (b) it allowed “Oregon’s integrated land use and transportation planning system [to be] manipulated to award [a former-politician-turned-consultant’s] clients hundreds of millions in state and city contracts relating to light rail expansion and the accompanying high-density developments.”
While I’m certainly no expert on either Portland or light rail ridership statistics, a cursory web search turned up this Wikipedia article suggesting that Portland’s system ranks 4th in ridership among similar U.S. systems and ahead of (much larger) cities such as San Diego (5th), Philadelphia (6th), and Dallas (7th). And as far as the revolving door between local politics, consultancies, and developers goes, it strikes me that this is a problem that has little to do with light rail as such. The placement of new roads and highways is similarly susceptible to backroom-dealing that favors the wealthy and well-connected. Mark makes no effort to explain why corruption (whether of the “small-c” or “big-C” variety) poses a bigger or more inherent problem with publicly funded mass transit projects (e.g., light rail) than with publicly funded car-based projects (e.g., highways), and I fail to see an argument so obvious that it needn’t be even implied (let alone spelled out).
A few thoughts re: Portland’s “generally hostile business climate.” Mark begins by quoting extensively from a 2010 op-ed written by the chairman of Nike, a company started and headquartered in Portland, which opposed an increase being considered in the state income tax. Whatever the merits or demerits of the tax increase or this two-year-old op-ed, it is hard to understand why Mark cites this as his leading example of Portland’s hostile business climate in particular rather than Oregon’s in general.
Worse, this op-ed is the closest Mark comes to criticizing Portland directly. In the subsequent paragraphs, he (a) tells the story of his own grandparents as an example of the “upwardly mobile, working-class life now seems out of reach for much of the city,” (b) notes that income is unevenly distributed in Portland (“Don’t tell Portland’s scabies-infested Occupy camp, but between 1980 and 2007, the share of wealth earned by Portland’s middle quintile declined by about 20 percent, while the top 1 percent’s share doubled”), and (c) rises to defend “the traditional working class” from “the new hipsters.”
One final note. Mark does begrudge respect to Portland’s small businesses, though he apparently can’t resist a few barbs:
While it’s hard not to root for entrepreneurial initiative wherever you find it, in Portland it carries a whiff of desperation. I submit that the real reason Portland has a thriving artisanal economy is that the regular economy is in the dumps. Portland’s hipsters are starting craft businesses in their garages and opening restaurants not merely because they “reject passive consumption” but because they can’t find jobs, the kind that offer upward mobility.
Perhaps Mark should re-read that 2010 op-ed he cited. Before Phil Knight was a multi-billionaire and the chairman of a Fortune 500 corporation, he was just another small business owner with “a whiff of desperation” about him:
Forty-six years ago [as of 2010], when Mark Hatfield was governor, I started a small business in Oregon. In our first year, sales totaled $8,000. I am proud that [Nike] eventually became a major employer in the state.
It has been my hope that other entrepreneurs would similarly pursue their dreams in Oregon.
Today, across the U.S. and not just in Portland, “the regular economy is in the dumps” and people “can’t find jobs, the kind that offer upward mobility.” If “a small city like Portland” has enough entrepreneurs to open “671 food trucks”, I say we should encourage them. The last thing we need is for the supposedly conservative Weekly Standard to ape the Willamette Week in its quest to publish “series of bitter, petty, pessimistic rants that generally s**t on everything.”
DuPage County now has over 915,000 people and has little open land left for development. Amidst rapid suburbanization after World War II, there has always been a DuPage County Fair. Now, there is public debate about whether it makes sense to continue having this event:
The DuPage County Board should examine the long-term viability of its county fair and how distribution of state funding for the event is handled, a consultant has recommended.
And if the fair continues, the county should consider a new location, even if it means sharing a site with another county, the consultant recommends…
The fair, held each July on county-owned land in Wheaton east of DuPage’s government center, is run by a nonprofit association that relies heavily on funding that is funneled from the state Department of Agriculture through the Fair and Exposition Authority. Transferring that responsibility to the County Board would remove a layer of government by in effect eliminating the need for the seven-member fair authority, and that would “relieve the county of any associated risk,” the firm said.
Crowe Horwath pointed to decreased funding from the state and declining fair attendance as reasons why the county should consider whether the fair makes sense at all in the long run. The fair received an average of $300,000 a year in 2005-07. The figure in 2011 was about $198,000. The firm also noted that the fairgrounds are valuable property for which a better use might be found. The fair leases the land for $1,375 a year.
It is not surprising that this discussion has arisen in an era of fiscal issues at multiple levels of government.
The best argument I could imagine for the fair is that it is a reminder of what DuPage County once was. For the first 100 years of its history, DuPage County was primarily farmland and small towns that were within the orbit of Chicago. Produce from the farms could be shipped by rail or road to Chicago, destined for eastern markets through the Great Lakes, or to the southwest, eventually bound for the Mississippi River and points due south. One farm in the county even became the focus of a television show during the early 1950s:
In the spring of 1953, the Illinois Department of Agriculture began a search for a farm and a farm family who would become the stars of a new television show on the National Broadcasting Company. One of the thirty-five farms on the itinerary was the Harbecke Farm on Gary Avenue, rural Cloverdale in Bloomingdale Township, operated by Harbecke’s daughter and son-in-law, Bertha and Wilbert Landmeier. Tracing their roots to pioneer German farm families, the young couple had moved to the Harbecke Farm to operate a dairy farm. They had recently installed dairy equipment which carried the milk in refrigerated tubes from the milking machine to cooling tanks on the milk truck, which transported the commodity to an Addison dairy. The farm also had a hay drier which was another piece of modern machinery not found on every farm in 1953. These advantages, plus the fact that the location was considered one of the best between Chicago and the Fox River for beaming the television waves, made the selection of the Harbecke-Landmeier Farm ideal for the show.
Thus, “Out on the Farm” began the first of a two-year run from the Harbecke-Landmeier Farm in the summer of 1953. During the second season the first outdoor network colorcast originating from Chicago was the pickup from the Landmeier Farm. At the end of the 1954 season, the show was over, as Cloverdale and all of DuPage County were due for rapid change.
Here is a short description of the transformation from farmland to urban county:
The DuPage County Fair is the only county fair in Illinois located in a completely urban setting. Historical research showed that when the first DuPage County Fair was held in 1955, the county was 85% farmland. By 2000, the last farm vanished as DuPage County was absorbed into Chicago’s urban sprawl.
Today, the only farms DuPage County residents are likely to know about are Forest Preserve properties such as Kline Creek Farm in West Chicago or St. John’s Farm in Warrenville.
In the end, it sounds like it will be difficult to reserve valuable land for a week of nostalgia and history every year.
Legally Sociable 