Talking water

  The nation has been on a century-long binge of engineering projects to command and control the rivers of the Western United States – corralling and contorting wild rivers to meet the needs of the growing west and, in many cases, dictating how and where it would grow. But those days are over, writes Nate Berg at Planetizen. "You will never see another federal dam," U.S. Department of the Interior Deputy Assistant Secretary Deanna Archuleta said at the symposium Dec. 8-9 on water and land use in the West, hosted by the Urban Land Institute in partnership with the American Society of Landscape Architects, the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, the Sustainable Sites Initiative, and Ernst & Young. Conspicuously held in Las Vegas, the event drew together a spectrum of developers, policymakers and academics to explore the role of water in the future of development in the arid region. As resources dry up and sustainability issues take a bigger place in the spotlight, many attendees conceded that something has to change, Berg reports.

Climate change in the West

  As negotiators continue to meet in Copenhagen this week on an international climate accord, planners in western communities are promoting efforts that address climate change-related challenges – like managing water supplies, reducing energy consumption, building more efficient transportation systems and protecting open space. They're just not calling it climate change mitigation – because of abiding skepticism in the Intermountain West that global warming is a problem.
  A research team recently completed a survey of nearly 50 government staff and elected officials in seven Western states -- Arizona, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, New Mexico, Utah, and Wyoming -- on how they are addressing climate change in their planning and local land use decisions. The result is Local Land Use Planning and Climate Change Policy, the first report to be issued under the new name of the longstanding joint venture of the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy and the Sonoran Institute: Western Lands and Communities.
The findings, taken from focus groups and interviews, suggest new challenges for those mindful of climate change impacts in land use planning at the local level. Many of the local respondents in the report suggested that addressing climate change is a secondary benefit of pursuing good planning decisions, says Peter Pollock, Ronald Smith Fellow at the Lincoln Institute.
  “The research revealed a wide range of local government responses to addressing climate change in the Intermountain West, with few communities tackling climate change head on,” Pollock said.  “Even so, nearly all research participants agreed that local governments should be involved in addressing climate change.”
  Calling climate change politically controversial, western planners and officials reported that significant portions of their populations are unconvinced that climate change is a real problem or human-caused. They said that local skepticism and lack of urgency may be due to few visible impacts in their communities that residents agree are attributable to climate change. Instead, residents perceive the issue as global and remote, characterized by melting polar ice caps and rising sea levels.  In addition, Westerners may think their own cities and towns cannot make a difference in reducing climate change given the enormity of the problem, the report states.
  “I use terms like conservation, energy efficiency, savings,” one western official explained. “I think those are terms you can use to do these things without getting into the debate of climate change, whether it’s happening and who is causing it.”
  The research also noted that:
  * The most common way of framing policies that impact climate change seems to be “sustainability,” or else “economic efficiency” when communities seek to avoid environmental references altogether.
  * In most communities, particularly smaller cities and towns, there is a lack of sufficient staff to research and implement climate change-related policies
  * Those communities actively pursuing climate change policies, a minority, generally had more liberal populations or were significantly influenced by local universities.
  * Those communities where natural resource extraction, such as coal or natural gas, is a strong contributor to the local economy are less likely to be addressing global warming.
  * The vast majority of policies cited by participants as addressing climate change focused on mitigating, or reducing, its impacts through energy efficiency, expanded transit, urban forestry and water conservation.
  * Most participants stated that their communities have greater success with decisions and policies that impact new development, rather than existing development.
  * Many staff participants noted that elected officials in their communities are influenced by skeptical residents, more importantly voters, in failing to address climate change.
  Based on their findings, report authors David Metz and Curtis Below of Fairbank, Maslin, Maullin, Metz & Associates in Oakland, Calif., recommended that communications and materials provided to local officials should highlight the “co-benefits” of taking policy actions independent of climate change. Whenever possible, the economic benefits of a particular policy should be emphasized to offset concerns about costs. Local government officials also need case studies from peer communities of similar size and location that have adopted policies to address climate change, in order to learn from their experiences, the authors said.
  Jodi Peterson at the High Country News wrote her take on the research here.

A structural challenge

  Imagine your salary has been cut in half while expenses are increasing inexorably over the next several years. That’s the grim scenario state governments are facing. Consider:
   -- State revenues from personal income tax, sales tax, and corporate income tax fell 11 percent in the third quarter of 2009, and 24 states saw double-digit declines
   -- Thirty-five states are facing mid-year budget gaps totaling 32 billion, for a total national budget gap of 190 billion, or 28 percent of state budgets, the largest gap on record.
   -- Expenditures on education, health care, public employee pensions, and basic services are predicted to grow faster than revenues by about 1 percent per year, as the gap gets wider every year.
   -- The elderly population, current 24 percent of the working population, will be 41 percent of the working population by 2030.
   “There’s trouble at all levels,” said Richard Dye, visiting fellow at the Lincoln Institute, at the daylong conference “Economic Perspectives on State and Local Taxes,” hosted by the Lincoln Institute and the New England Public Policy Center at the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston December 7, where more than 60 state legislators and think-tank executives from the six New England states gathered to grapple with the fiscal challenges and structural deficits of the day.
  Presentations included a look at why state government revenues have grown particularly sensitive to economic conditions over the last decade, by Leslie McGranahan from the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago; the impact of foreclosures by Kai-Yan Lee, policy analyst at Public & Community Affairs, Federal Reserve Bank of Boston; and South Carolina’s cautionary tale in attempting to reduce property taxes and increase sales taxes, by Laura Ullrich, economics professor at Winthrop University.
 Jon Rork, economics professor at the Andrew Young School of Policy Studies at Georgia State University, noted that while retirees continue to move to Florida, California and the Southwest, a new trend is for the elderly to move back with their kids in places like the Northeast, placing new burdens on those states’ health care costs.
    The conference concluded with discussion of efforts to adjust and “re-weight” tax policy on the revenue side in three states: rethinking the proliferation of tax credits in Connecticut, shifting the tax burden to out-of-state homeowners in Maine, and a tax reform commission’s recommendation to eliminate the corporate income tax in Rhode Island, the most hard-hit of the New England states.
   States need to do a better job of facing up to these realities, with better forecasting, multi-year budgeting and an honest assessment of how short-term fixes, like cashing in on tobacco settlement money or parking-meter leases, an initiative in Chicago, won’t address long-term problems, said Dye. “Looking at the fiscal future is scary, but necessary,” he said.

Water and land

 Globally, water may well become the next oil, as a resource at the center of conflict. In the Intermountain West, it's already become the major factor in growth and development going forward. Water supplies and infrastructure are strained due to rapid population growth, inefficient building and land use patterns, and an increasingly volatile climate. The West is going to have to be much smarter in water supply management as well as conservation by way of development, and that is the subject of Adapting to a Drier West: Water, Growth, and Better Development Practices, a symposium beginning tomorrow at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas that will bring together government officials, real estate developers, advocates, planners, journalists, and others to asses how land development techniques can conserve water and help replenish water resources. The symposium, the most comprehensive examination to date of the impact of urban development on water quantity and quality, is hosted by the Urban Land Institute Center for Balanced Development in the West, in partnership with the American Society of Landscape Architects, the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, the Sustainable Sites Initiative, and Ernst & Young.
 The private and public sector water and land use experts include Deanna Archuleta, deputy assistant secretary for water and science, U.S. Department of the Interior; Jeffrey Kightlinger, general manager, Metropolitan Water District of Los Angeles, Andy Lipkis, executive director, TreePeople; David Modeer, general manager, Central Arizona Project; and Bradley Udall, director, Western Water Assessment. Lincoln Institute fellow Peter Pollock, based in Boulder, will also participate, as will Jim Holway, director of the Lincoln Institute-Sonoran Institute joint venture. “It’s clear that regional and local problems with both water quantity and quality will continue without a broad-based cutback in public water consumption and a change in development patterns,” said ULI The Americas President Cheryl Cummins. “This event will look at water infrastructure through the lens of sustainable growth, illustrating how land development can be part of the solution to efficient water use, rather than the problem.”

Booming trends

  The crystal balls are out on the housing market, and Dowell Myers sees a dark age ahead. The big problem is all the housing stock owned by aging baby boomers, says Myers, professor at the University of Southern California School of Policy, Planning, and Development, and not enough homebuyers to soak up the supply once they try to sell in vast numbers. A saving grace would be immigrants, but tightened policies on immigration are diminishing their role.
As those born between 1946 and 1964 move into retirement, the “mouse moving through the python” will utterly change the ratio of seniors to working people, with profound implications for the economy, the workforce, tax policy, Social Security, Medicare, and the housing market. “The volume of homes that are going to be releasing is enormous,” he says, between now and 2050. “We need to bulk up the future generation of homebuyers,” by investing in education, particularly for neglected minority populations, and recognizing the economic power of the foreign-born, whose homeownership rates continue to grow. “The window of opportunity was at the end of the Bush administration,” says Myers. His book on the subject is Immigrants and Boomers: Forging a New Social Contract for the Future of America.
   For the near term, housing prices are rebounding slightly in the “market clearing” process that has followed the bursting of the bubble that prompted the 2008 economic meltdown, says Karl “Chip” Case, economics professor at Wellesley College, and co-founder of the Case-Shiller Index. Prices have fallen 30 percent nationally over the last four years, and “sooner or later, that’s what’s going to bring people back.” The federal government is doing its part, buying $1.25 trillion in mortgages, extending the tax credit, keeping the federal funds rate near zero. “Housing remains a favored investment. It only takes a few optimists to move the market. We are getting back to the price income ratios we had in 2000,” Case says. Unemployment – 10.2 percent nationally and 16 million people out of work – remains a drag, however. California shows signs of life, prompting Case to remove the state from “FCAZN” – Florida, California, Arizona, and Nevada, which led the nation in steep 50 percent housing price declines. (He now includes Georgia in that group, creating the new acronym “FANG.”) Looking to the future, with the astonishing run-up in housing prices since the 80s behind us, Case agrees with Myers that “the big issue is what the baby boomers are going to do.”
   Myers spoke at the gathering of Big City Planning Directors Nov. 15-17. Case addressed the New England Smart Growth Leadership Forum Nov. 20.

New partners

  A federal sustainability agenda is truly taking shape in Washington, as agencies that for years have not talked to each other – HUD, EPA, and DOT – are integrating their efforts. Two senior officials delivered a clear message at the New England Smart Growth Leadership Forum Nov. 20 in Boston: large regions and local governments should be gearing up for this new partnership, to take advantage of new funding and serve as models for what the Obama administration seeks to accomplish.
  “We want to change the conservation, change the rules, and work with the willing,” said John W. Frece, director of EPA’s Smart Growth program, the under-the-radar team during the Bush administration that will soon morph into the Office of Sustainabille Communities, folding in the EPA’s fledgling green building program. “We realize we can no longer afford single-outcome actions. We need to align spending and policy with national goals.”
  The office continues to provide technical assistance on urban form, zoning reform, and greenhouse gas impacts of development, and publications such as Smart Growth for Coastal Communities. EPA also wants to develop sustainability criteria for the SRF clean water revolving fund. “What’s different is we have HUD and DOT sitting at the table with us,” Frece said, as the agencies re-write rules for funding programs and regulations for a greater emphasis on cities and sustainability, expanding transportation choices, promoting affordable housing, supporting existing communities, and minimizing programs working at cross-purposes. It’s a major change for Washington, he said, recalling how he was asked to review a speech by HUD secretary Shaun Donovan – itself an inter-agency novelty. “We couldn’t improve on it,” Frece said.
  Jim Lopez, senior adviser to HUD deputy secretary Ron Sims, agreed it was an extraordinary time. Although “there are ideas just flying around,” two HUD funding programs -- the $150 million sustainable communities initiative, which includes money for regional planning as well as local code reform, and $100 million energy innovation fund – are in the works. “We have an aim, fire, ready approach, to get the ideas out there. We want to model what works, and get those models to scale.”
  Another big opportunity for metropolitan regions are the TIGER (Transportation Investment Generating Economic Recovery) grants, jointly being reviewed by DOT, EPA, and HUD, although there have been $60 billion in proposed projects for a $1.5 billion fund set aside in the stimulus package. “It’s a bit more like buying a lottery ticket,” said consultant Mark Stout, who addressed the forum on the uses of stimulus money for smart growth. (Most of the funds went to repairing or building new highway capacity). Several TIGER applications involve transit-oriented development projects in Maryland, Miami, New York, and Utah, and initially for bus rapid transit along Blue Hill Avenue in Boston until the application was pulled due to neighborhood opposition.
  Aaron Gornstein, executive director of the Citizens Housing and Planning Association, led a wrap-up session at the forum to explore ways the New England region, metropolitan planning organizations, and major cities could better coordinate to respond to the new opportunities in Washington.
  Meanwhile, the coordination at the federal level may continue to expand. Looking ahead, the U.S. Department of Agriculture wants to join the partnership, and would bring billions for rural development.
  “The first step is to talk to each other. It’s the least you would expect from your government,” said Frece. Though many top decision-makers already knew each other working in smart growth before coming to Washington, “it’s complicated – we have different rules, and different cultures. We need to institutionalize this.”

Chickens and bees

   Like other cities, notably Detroit, confronted with rampant home foreclosures and vacant parcels, Cleveland is not willing to let urban land lie fallow. In the 77-square-mile area within city limits, there are currently 18,000 vacant lots totaling 3,500 acres. While the primary goal is neighborhood redevelopment – including an emphasis on arts and entertainment and building on anchor institutions such as the Cleveland Clinic and universities -- the city has also launched several initiatives to try to enhance urban form despite dwindling population and stalled private-sector activity. Among them: stabilizing vacant lots with urban gardens and native plantings, demolition of structures while maintaining foundations to allow the construction of greenhouses, allowing sideyard expansion, and using vacant lots for geo-thermal wells to heat neighboring structures. But perhaps the most interesting effort is “chicken and bee” zoning – dramatically reduced setback requirements for coops and hives on empty parcels. The city is considering going even further, relaxing rules for raising roosters, turkeys, geese, goats, pigs, and sheep, and possibly including new agricultural overlay districts for more intensive urban farming. Robert N. Brown, director of the Cleveland City Planning Commission, said that zoning would not be changed to accommodate processing or slaughtering, but that urban farming was seen as an appropriate use of the vacant land for now. He made a presentation on the efforts at the annual convening of city planning directors from the nation’s 30 largest cities sponsored by the Lincoln Institute, the American Planning Association, and Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design earlier this week.

Regional growth up north

   Not that long ago, a regional growth plan for the Greater Toronto area known as the “Golden Horsehoe” wasn’t something too many people were excited about. Local governments from 110 municipalities were wary, developers even more so, and environmental advocates were still focused on land conservation. Brad Graham, secretary in the Ministry of Energy and Infrastructure in the Ontario government, isn’t sure exactly when things turned around, but homebuilders may have led the way, realizing that intensification – the alluring Canadian term for greater density – was warranted in the 12,500 square-mile region, expected to grow from to 8.4 to over 12 million people. Stakeholders realized “they can’t wish away the population growth, and that it’s better to plan for it,” Graham said at the Nov. 2 Lincoln Lecture now available on video here.
   The Places to Grow plan, which Graham likes to describe as “pro-neighborhood and pro-community,” includes an emphasis on infill redevelopment, revitalizing some two-dozen downtowns and major town centers, “intensification corridors” along transit, and walkable, mixed-use standards for greenfield development. Local compliance is rewarded with major infrastructure investments, primarily transportation, but also help with the integration of what Graham calls “community infrastructure” such as hospitals and medical centers. “We wanted to raise the bar significantly, but make sure it was doable,” he said.
   Graham, an economist who has served in Ontario ministries of municipal affairs and housing, health, and finance, was recently awarded the 2010 Ontario Fellowship at the University of Toronto School of Public Policy and Governance, where his teaching and research will focus on growth and urban planning, sustainability and the importance of regions in new economic conditions.

The aftermath of Kelo

   The decision by Pfizer to abandon facilities in New London – part of the redevelopment plans that led to the Supreme Court’s landmark Kelo decision in 2005, affirming the use of eminent domain for economic development projects – has stirred the debate anew on the use of eminent domain. The departure of Pfizer, which is relocating to nearby Groton, seems to confirm the frailty of big plans that require takings for major land assembly. Property rights defenders such as the Institute for Justice point out that 43 states have passed so-called anti-Kelo laws, restricting the use of eminent domain for economic development projects.
   But Harvey Jacobs, professor in the Department of Urban and Regional Planning University of Wisconsin-Madison, recently completed research for the Lincoln Institute that takes a closer look at the passage of these laws, and found that the majority are largely symbolic. “The issue is not the number of these laws, but their impact,” he says. “When presented with the choice of severely restricting the options for local governments to promote the public interest it is clear that state legislatures lean towards the benefit of the many over the burden on the few.”
   The research, co-authored by Ellen Bassett of Portland State University,will be published soon as a working paper and posted at www.lincolninst.edu.

A smart recovery

   It once again feels like an important moment for smart growth. Economic recovery is underway, and the Obama administration is placing new emphasis on sustainability, the coordination of agencies like HUD and Transportation, and "place-based" initiatives. A critical reauthorization of federal transportation funding is coming up (though Congress has been kicking that can down the road). The best and the brightest in major regions are determined to be ready for this new era, and New England is no exception. New challenges and opportunities for smart growth during the economic recovery, including the new engagement by the federal government on sustainability, will be the topic of the New England Smart Growth Leadership Forum November 20 at the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston.
   Shelley Poticha, senior advisor for Sustainable Housing and Communities at the US Department of Housing and Urban Development, will deliver the keynote address, “An Alternative Vision of our Economic Future.” John Frece, director of the Environmental Protection Agency’s Smart Growth Program, will discuss new collaborations and policy priorities at the federal level. Questions for consideration include:
   * Is smart growth holding its value over time, as compared with sprawl development?   What do the patterns of foreclosure tell us?
   * Has stimulus funding from the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act supported smart growth, hindered it, or been neutral?
   * What is our vision for a smart growth future?  What does it take to create a smart growth community?
   * How is the Obama administration promoting smart growth?
   Wellesley College housing expert Karl “Chip” Case will be on hand for an up-to-the-minute look at the housing market. Lincoln Institute president Gregory K. Ingram will review the recent report evaluating statewide smart growth initiatives in four states. The discussion of stimulus funding and smart growth, and perspectives from local and state government, and the non-profit sector, will include Mark Stout of Mark L. Stout Consulting, Northampton Mayor Mary Clare Higgins, Thomas Burack, commissioner of the New Hampshire Department of Environmental Services, and Scott Wolf, executive director of Grow Smart Rhode Island. Aaron Gornstein, executive director of the Citizens’ Housing and Planning Association, will facilitate  a final session on how the New England region can best position itself to take advantage of new federal funding for regional transportation and housing activities, and how stakeholders from the housing, transportation, and energy sectors can work collaboratively in planning and implementing new smart growth initiatives.
   The day will culminate with a plan of action for the New England states to be more effective partners with the federal government in this new era, said Armando Carbonell, senior fellow and chairman of the Department of Planning and Urban Form at the Lincoln Institute. Earlier that week, planning directors from among the thirty largest U.S. cities will meet in Cambridge in a program convened by the Lincoln Institute, Harvard University's Graduate School of Design, and the American Planning Association, to be briefed on national housing and demographic trends and engage federal officials in discussions on the Obama administration’s initiatives in urban, transportation, and environmental policy.
   The New England Smart Growth Leadership Forum is an annual gathering of the region’s leaders from governmental agencies, non-profit organizations, and the private sector, who play a critical role in shaping growth in New England. This year’s forum, Smart Growth From Hard Times, is sponsored by the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy in partnership with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the Federal Home Loan Bank of Boston, Citizens’ Housing and Planning Association, and the Boston Society of Architects.