Slave New World?

One could view the finalists in Dwell Magazine's "Reburbia" competition as creative, light-hearted, largely harmless exercises in techno-dweeb future-think. And on that level, the top entries do offer some clever (if inadvertently humorous) scenarios for the urban and suburban landscape of the future. But there's a darker side to the contest that commands our attention.

That most of the finalists slavishly bow to the "sustainability" mania, and take predictable swipes at evil "sprawl" -- as if those who choose to dwell in a tract development are soulless wretches whose lives can't be worth living, for want of "walkability" -- isn't surprising, given the suburbia-non-grata snobbishness that runs in planning and design circles. This wasn't just a design exercise, after all; it was a political exercise, inviting architects and professional planners to have a little fun, while heaping requisite scorn on the environmentally-incorrect lifestyle choices of Homo Suburbanis.

Strolling the streets of Reburbia isn't just an imaginative adventure. It also offers a revealing glimpse into the mind of the modern eco-Utopian, which melds dark apocalyptic forebodings with naive flights of fancy. It's a mirror held up to the tortured psyches of "new urbanists," where all the predictable bogeymen can be found: Big box stores, freeways, parking garages, strip malls and, of course, "McMansions." There, too, is the fear of looming economic and ecological calamity -- the sense that we'll all have to resort to farming freeway medians in the dark days ahead. Tossed in for good measure are the energy policy panaceas of the moment.

You have wind-powered freeway systems, "big box agriculture," parking lot agriculture, big box biofuel plants, swimming pools that double as water purification systems, abandoned McMansions devolving into frog-friendly wetlands. Pessimism and misanthropy permeate the scenes. The future is not an earthly paradise, where human ingenuity and intelligence have triumphed -- the sort of Jetsonsesque future Americans were promised in the 1950s -- but a place where farmers scratch out a subsistence living (growing "organic" produce I'm sure) in empty parking garages and on former freeways -- in the wasteland that was suburbia.

The future of suburbia looks desolate and dark. Something terrible has happened there. Parking lots and big box stores no longer are needed, apparently. Where have all the people gone? Have they all moved -- or been moved? -- back into the urban core, to become bicycle commuters? Have they been loaded into boxcars and taken off to fenced camps just beyond the tree line, in a "final solution" to America's over-sized "carbon footprint"? Few hints of what happened to suburbia, and suburbians, can be found in the designs.

Where have all the cars gone, since parking lots seen superfluous and there's so little traffic that the medians can safely be farmed? Have cars become unnecessary? Have cars become illegal? Have cars been taken away?

Were the vacant McMansions that have become wetlands abandoned, as embarrassing extravagances, or were they banned by authorities for having an over-sized "carbon footprint" -- something Boulder, Colorado, is in the process of doing right now? Did their former owners go willingly, or through force? Maybe they've been indicted for environmental crimes and forced to wander through abandoned strip malls (those that haven't been transformed into organic farmers markets, that is) with a scarlet "E" emblazoned on their pajamas.

Reburbia contestants weren't charged with telling the story of how we get from here to there. All they were interested in was conjuring up clever "solutions" to the problem that is (in their frame of reference) suburbia. Yet the question hangs over the contest like acid smog.

Are these just the brain farts of naive Utopians -- harmless dreamers with a fashionably pessimistic outlook? Or are these draft planning documents for the "coercive Utopians" (in Thomas Sowell's phrase) -- those "planners" that intend to use the levers of power, and the force of government, to impose their environmentally- and socially-correct visions on those who won't go willingly?

The problem with such exercises is that the people who organize and participate in them actually take these ideas seriously. The danger is that they'll attempt to impose these visions by force, if given the opportunity. And the reality is that that opportunity is there, thanks to the power granted government planners through the mania for "smart growth," new urbanism and other social engineering fads, combined with the totalitarian tendencies of those trying to "save the planet" from climate change.

Americans have gradually been conditioned into going along like sheep with the planning thing. The broad acceptance of zoning rules -- and the notion that chaos will reign if there isn't some order imposed on things by planning "experts" -- laid the predicate for ever more radical concepts, like urban growth boundaries, new urbanism, historic preservation districts and so-called "smart growth." We've gradually become a nation of control freaks. We've learned that we don't actually have to own a piece of property in order to control it, because zoning laws have collectivized private property rights. The table has been set for even greater tyrannies.

In "global warming" the coercive Utopians have found the ultimate justification for using government force to achieve their goals, since anything can be justified in the name of "saving the planet." Property rights can be trampled. People can be displaced. Extravagances can be banned, or regulated away. Consumer choice can be curtailed. Environmentally-incorrect lifestyles can be made war upon. Energy policy can be dictated by central planners, and the economy can be micromanaged, in the interest of safeguarding the planet.

An alarmist view? Perhaps. But some of what I just described was worming its way into American society even before the battle cry of "save the planet" gave coercive Utopians the green light they need to impose their "Reburbian" values and visions on the rest of us.

The Economics of Affordable Housing

I hope Seattle's David Schraer has an unlisted phone number.

Anyone with so much common sense, living in the midst of such a loony bin, is bound to get hate calls.

In a guest column appearing in Tuesday's Seattle Post Intelligencer -- which makes so much sense I'm surprised it wasn't spiked -- Schraer explains something that seems to have eluded most of the city's leaders: that you can't wage regulatory war on developers, and relentlessly drive up the cost of building and the cost of land, and still have affordable housing and a reasonable cost of living.

If you take steps that restrict supply, un-met demand will drive prices higher. If you impose regulatory burdens on builders, that's reflected in higher costs that get passed on to buyers. It's elementary economics, yet most elected officials can't grasp it.

A recent study showed that local government regulations added about $200,000 to the cost of a house in Seattle, according to this report in the Seattle Times. Here's an excerpt:

"Backed by studies showing that middle-class Seattle residents can no longer afford the city's middle-class homes, consensus is growing that prices are too darned high. But why are they so high?

An intriguing new analysis by a University of Washington economics professor argues that home prices have, perhaps inadvertently, been driven up $200,000 by good intentions.

Between 1989 and 2006, the median inflation-adjusted price of a Seattle house rose from $221,000 to $447,800. Fully $200,000 of that increase was the result of land-use regulations, says Theo Eicher — twice the financial impact that regulation has had on other major U.S. cities.

"In a nationwide study, it can be shown that Seattle is one of the most regulated cities and a city whose housing prices are profoundly influenced by regulations," he says."

Then people wonder why all the lower- and middle-income people have left town.

The Seattle Times article and Schraer's guest column (pasted below) should be required reading for elected officials in Colorado cities -- in all cities -- that still can't connect the dots between regulator causes and market effects, and who will do everything in their power to drive up the cost of building, and create a scarcity of affordable and buildable land, all while decrying the lack of affordable housing.

Their misguided response to the affordable housing problem -- an approach Durango just embraced, unfortunately -- is to force private developers to build affordable units, as a condition of zoning or permit approval, which they do by raising the price tag on un-subsidized units. This unjust form of coercion travels under the euphemism "inclusionary zoning." A lucky few get subsidized living space, while everyone else pays more and the overall cost of housing creeps skyward.

What Steamboat Springs is learning the hard way is that you can require that a developer build affordable units, which come with appreciation caps, deed restrictions and other strings attached, but you can't make the public buy them. Market incentives almost always work better than mandates do -- but that presumes that the people making the rules understand market dynamics and basic economics. A surprising number of elected officials seem to be economic illiterates. Maybe we should make the passing of a pop quiz on basic economics a prerequisite to running for office.

But I digress. Here's Schraer's op-ed:

Housing at risk in Seattle

By DAVID SCHRAER

When housing is in short supply, why are we making it more complex and expensive to build?

For more than a decade, Seattle has experienced an unprecedented building boom during which prices were always up, money was cheap and wealth was inflated by rapid appreciation.

The boom followed the anti-tax, anti-immigrant movements that slashed government revenue and led to policies requiring new developments to pay for every imaginable impact. Planning and building departments were ordered to cover their costs through fees, creating many new hurdles and passing the costs on to developers. Fees, professional services and interest now add thousands of dollars to the cost of every new house, apartment or condominium.

Cities once understood that development generates community wealth through sales and property taxes, construction wages and new economic activity. Permit fees were low, impact fees unknown and cities funded their planning and building departments from general revenues. Municipalities considered streets, sidewalks, utilities and public services as investments that would generate community wealth over time.

Today, Seattle penalizes new development rather than waiting patiently for taxes that flow in their wake, generating three problems.

First, additional fees and processes increase the initial project risk and costs. These costs are marked up and passed on to the buyer or renter. Second, the higher risk and costs inhibit development and reduce market supply, further increasing prices. Third, the city's enthusiasm to offload costs to the private sector results in policy gimmicks, such as incentive zoning.

The elephant in the room is the private sector provision of affordable older housing. Almost all work force housing has been and will be provided by older homes and apartments in the private sector. We need to remove barriers to housing development and build the large numbers of new housing units required to moderate rents and housing prices.

Public and philanthropic investment should focus on providing permanent affordable housing that maximizes the return on our investment, such as land trusts and mission-driven, nonprofit-owned housing. Housing levies, the primary traditional mechanism for local funding of affordable housing, are a good example. Seattle residents overwhelmingly have supported housing levies, leaving no justification for an end-run around voters.

During an economic downturn, pay-to-play barriers cobbled together during the boom will reduce our housing supply and rapidly inflate prices. With political will, Seattle can dramatically increase the supply of housing through policy changes. Significant increases in zoning capacity, new clarity and stability in codes and a return to funding infrastructure through broad-based taxes are all measures that will increase housing supply, moderate prices and lower the cost of mission-driven affordable housing, too.

Our primary strategy for affordable housing must be to build as much quality housing as possible to increase supply. Our secondary strategy should be to directly fund as much affordable housing as possible, all in permanent ownership by public and not-for-profit housing agencies.

Public policy that increases the cost of developing dense, green, quality housing equals more expensive housing overall and less affordable housing. There are times for cities to be pro-development. When the world, country, state and city are in recession, or worse, and housing is in short supply, that time is now.

David Schraer is a Seattle architect with in-plain-air architects and was the first executive
director of the White Center Community Development Association.

Keeping People in their Places

Bill Vogrin, who writes the "Side Streets" column for The Colorado Springs Gazette, last week unceremoniously exhumed the unsavory racist origins of neighborhood covenants in Colorado Springs -- covenants that continue to vex property owners of all colors and creeds today. Here's some language -- described as "boilerplate" for the era -- from a 1940 covenant placed on homeowners in one part of town:

"No lot in said tract shall at any time be lived upon by any person whose blood is not entirely that of the Caucasian race, and for the purpose of this paragraph, no Japanese, Chinese, Mexican, Hindu or any other person of the Ethiopian, Indian or Mongolian races shall be deemed to be Caucasian . . . If persons not of the Caucasian race be kept thereon by such a Caucasian occupant, strictly in the capacity of servants or employees of such occupant, such circumstance shall not constitute a violation."

We've come a long way since then, thankfully. Overt racism, at least of this sort, is today mostly hidden from view. But it's useful to at least recall the racist and exclusionist origins of these and other localized restrictions on property rights if we want to appreciate the continuing injustice at their core. Zoning laws have similar roots: they were first used in California to keep the Chinese on the other side of the tracks.

The overt racial overtones fell away as time passed. The Progressive era saw these sorts of laws put to use by organizing "experts" and uplifters. Along the way, their constitutionality was weighed and affirmed (wrongly) by courts. And they gradually became an entrenched part of the American landscape; unquestioned, unchallenged, but clearly unjust and un-American.

These laws began as a means of segregating people, along racial or socioeconomic lines, and they continue to function as such, albeit in much more subtle ways. Does that mean that people who support zoning, codes and neighborhood covenants, in their contemporary context, harbor racist leanings? Of course not. But they do tend to be the sorts of people who want to keep people in their places, figuratively and sometimes literally, forcing conformity to the collective by setting conditions on property rights. They value order more than they value freedom, regimentation more than property rights.

The fundamental unfairness that lies at the root of such rules persists, even if time and familiarity have made them, to most people, a respectable part of the modern American landscape.