Stability in housing

The need for action on foreclosures was a big theme at "Forging a New Housing Policy: Opportunity in the Wake of Crisis," a forum put on by the National Center for Suburban Studies and the Department of Sociology at Hofstra University in New York on Nov. 22. James H. Carr, chief operating office at the National Community Reinvestment Coalition, urged for better efforts to slow down foreclosures. The Lincoln Institute's presentation detailed two strategies for stabilizing housing in the long run: embedding the notion of land value capture into inclusionary zoning ordinances or statutes, by requiring below-market set-asides in any residential development that benefits from a zoning change; and allowing community land trusts to buy forcelosed properties in cities, to establish permanently affordable housing using the CLT model.
     Community land trusts as a foreclosures strategy to bring about neighborhood stablization will be among the many topics discussed at the 2008 National Community Land Trust Network annual meeting and National CLT Academy, presented by the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy in partnership with the Dudley Street Neighborhood Initiative, Dec. 2-5 at the Seaport World Trade Center in Boston. The conference will focus on the stewardship role of communities, and best practices and organizational challenges for community land trusts, including green building strategies. Some 150 participants are expected, with representation from leading CLTs such as Troy Gardens in Madison, Wisc. Tina Brooks, undersecretary of Housing and Community Development for Massachusetts, will deliver the keynote speech on Weds. Dec. 3 at noon. Further details are available at the conference registration page, including a downloadable agenda; the press release is available here.

Planning for change

Last week at the Lincoln Institute, planners and leaders in smart growth convened to plot a course for new challenges in energy, climate, and transportation policy as a new administration prepares to take office.
     Twenty-one planning directors from the nation's largest cities came together in the annual fall gathering to discuss climate action plans and to prepare for new investments in infrastructure. Cities are making progress, from incentives to reduce lawns in Las Vegas to limits on demolition of existing buildings in St. Louis, but participants warned that meeting goals for greenhouse gas emissions reductions requires a regional approach. "We've gotten green religion, but we haven't read the gospel," said Paul Farmer, president of the American Planning Association, co-sponsor of the meeting along with Harvard University's Graduate School of Design. Even Portland's progress on reducing emissions is limited without broader changes beyond the metropolitan area. The discussion centered on California's landmark AB32 and SB375 legislation targeting land use as a central feature of emissions reduction targets, and the need for a new approach for metropolitan planning organizations (MPOs) to implement transit strategies on a regional basis.
     Regions must be ready with plans for infrastructure that will likely be part of the Obama administration's economic strimulus package, said former Massachusetts Governor Michael S.Dukakis, speaking at a November 19 lecture at Lincoln House and again at the New England Smart Growth Leadership Forum November 20. He recommended that not only governors from New England but all the Northeast, and extending to Virgina, work together to argue for funding for a coherent transportation network. "I don't know how anybody could look at this country and not conclude we need a first-class passenger rail network," said Dukakis, who was vice chairman of the board of Amtrak for several years. Inter-city service with top speeds at 115 miles per hour would improve energy efficiency and reduce emissions around Chicago, Atlanta, in Florida and California; Amtrak could use stimulus funding for projects like replacing overhead catenary wires, old bridges, or laying down double tracks to better coordinate freight and passenger rail. "The danger is, the stimulus turns into a Christmas tree," he said. "We need focus. It can't be 2,000 earmarks." The guiding principle should be transit and inter-city rail that improves the quality of life and economic competitiveness of cities, saves energy, and reduces greenhouse gas emissions, he said.
   At the Smart Growth Leadership Forum, both Michael Repogle, transportation director for the Environmental Defense Fund, and Steve Winkelman from the Center for Clean Air Policy, said there was a good chance the rules of the game will be changed in the 2009 reauthorization of the federal transportation bill last known as SAFETEA-LU. Projects will be judged on performance outcomes -- whether they are integrated with land use policy and reduce emissions, for example -- and pay-as-you-go systems, such as insurance based on how much we drive, and congestion pricing will be at the top of the agenda.

Property rights and China

The recent actions stemming from the Third Plenary Meeting of the 17th Party's Congress of the CCP Central Committee in China, including steps to allow peasants to buy or sell land use rights for the first time, represent "a very big breakthrough" in Chinese land policy, said Zangchun Gan, deputy chief supervisor of state land in the Ministry of Land and Resources in the People's Republic of China, and a New World research fellow at the Ash Institute for Democratic Governance and Innovation at Harvard University, at an appearance at Lincoln House November 10. "We should proceed with both determination and caution," he said, noting that while it can be more profitable to "grow houses" on land than crops, in an economic downturn some urban migrants may seek to return to farming. The compensation of farmers in the urbanization of China should proceed at a "proper pace," he said. Biliang Hu, professor of economics at the Graduate School of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences and now a research fellow at Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government, agreed that infrastructure investments in irrigation, education and health care for rural land use would remain important, recognizing that the agricultural sector still contributes more to gross domestic product than urbanization. The two men made presentations on the new strategy of "building a socialist new countryside" in China as part of the fall Lincoln Lecture series.

Visioning and Visualization

Another Lincoln Institute title has made PLANetizen's Top 10 list: Visioning and Visualization, by Michael Kwartler and Gianni Longo.Says PLANetizen: "This book is aptly rife with large, color images that help convey the authors’ main idea: visuals are essential to planning with the community. When aided by the effective use of visualization tools, public participants are also more effectively responsive, simply because the information is straightforward and manipulatable. Visioning and Visualizationis an excellent guide on how such potential can be attained through current technologies." The PLANetizen Top 10 list is in its eighth year, and is based on criteria including editorial reviews, sales rankings, popularity, Planetizen reader nominations, number of references, recommendations from experts, and the book's potential impact on the urban planning, development and design professions. The first book in the series,Visualizing Density, and the related Web site, made last year's PLANetizen Top 10 list. Visioning and Visualization is available on Amazon and can be ordered on the Lincoln Institute Web site in Publications and Multimedia, here.

Redesigning the suburbs

In the context of reducing vehicle miles traveled (VMT) and greenhouse gas emissions, guiding new land use patterns "may be an even hard job than we think," said Armando Carbonell, senior fellow and chair of the Department of Planning and Urban Form at the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, at the session "Redesigning the Suburbs" at BuildBoston, put on by the Boston Society of Architects each year in Boston. Still, it is possible to re-engineer separated-use, car-dependent suburban environments, he said, citing case studies from the Lincoln Institute workshop "Redesigning the Edgeless City," in New Jersey, New York State, and along state highway 7 in the Ft. Lauderdale-Hollywood area in Florida. In these areas, Carbonell said, the scale is vast and the capacity is enormous, suggesting it could take at least 20 years to "fill in" with housing and mixed-use development that can support transit.

     Fellow panelist Julie Campoli, principal of Terra Firma design in Burlington, VT and co-author of Visualizing Density, advised the audience to "think small" -- that is, narrow the focus to a quarter-mile pedestrian walk-zone, and be inspired by Shaker Heights, Ohio, and Orenco Station and Oswego Lake in the Portland, Ore. area. "Density makes transit possible, and transit makes density livable," she said. June Williamson, associate professor of architecture at the City College of New York and co-author of Retrofitting Suburbia, promoted "incremental metropolitanism," or infill redevelopment site by site. Paul Lukez, the moderator, architect and principal of Paul Lukez Architecture, teacher at MIT, and author of Suburban Transformations, suggested that lots of places, from Florence to Cologne, have been re-invented over the years, and that separated-use, car-dependent environments can be retooled as well.

     This year's BuildBoston conference, along with the national Greenbuild expo also being held in Boston this week, brings the focus on sustainable development in the context of a rapidly changing policy framework on energy, land use, transportation, and climate change.

A new era

As the holidays approach and 2008 comes to a close, one can’t help get the feeling of being on the brink of a new era, and not just because the nation elected the first African-American president. Many of the issues the Lincoln Institute has been focused on – climate change, smart growth, infrastructure, planning and urban form – are clearly on center stage. The policy discussion is now how to integrate progress on all those issues in a new energy economy, where the built environment and transportation systems are likely to be very different from the time when fuels were cheap and climate consequences were not so well established.

The discussion is mix of urgency and exploration. Architects, planners, journalists, and city and nonprofit leaders gathered at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia earlier this month for the conference Re-Imagining Cities: Urban Design after the Age of Oil  The idea was to duplicate the same conference, attended by Jane Jacobsm Lewis Mumford, Ian McHarg and many others, held 50 years ago, at another turning point for cities. Gary Hack and Eugenie Birch, Elizabeth Kolbert, Robert Socolow, Andrew Revkin, Alex Steffen, William J. Mitchell, David Orr, Harrison Fraker and many others, examined possible futures for the 21^st century  city. The conclusion was that a paradigm shift is needed on developing renewable energy, reducing greenhouse gas emissions, and supporting cities as the foot soldiers in both those efforts. Shortly after the conference concluded, President-elect Barack Obama indicated he would establish a new Office for Urban Policy. The energy, climate, and transportation challenges facing the new administration are detailed in this column on Citiwire. 

Meanwhile, EDAW, in partnership with the Urban Land Institute, convened developers and others for the Low-Carbon,  Low-Water Development forum in Atlanta, part of 12 such convenings around the globe. The Lincoln Institute contribution was an overview on climate change and the role of urban form – how smart growth, green building, zoning reform, new transportation infrastructure, and the regulation of carbon emissions will all become new threads in metropolitan policy.

In the coming days, the Lincoln Institute will convene planners from the 30 biggest cities in the nation for its annual conference on best practices and current issues. Former Massachusetts Governor Michael S. Dukakis will talk about the future of high-speed rail and transportation policy in the U.S. both at Lincoln House and at the New England Smart Growth Leadership Forum in Boston, Climate Change and Transportation: Innovations in Financing and Land Use. In addition, Armando Carbonell, senior fellow and chair of the Department of Planning and Urban Form, will discuss reinventing suburbs at BuildBoston.

Changing China

Land policies are changing fast in China. The New York Times reported a proposal last month that would allow peasants to buy or sell land use rights for the first time. As leaders confront an economic downturn, the Third Plenary Meeting of the 17th Party's Congress of the CCP Central Committee formulated policies to stimulate domestic demand and maintain political stability. On Monday November 10 at 12 noon at Lincoln House, two speakers will make a special presentation on the impact and context of these changes. Zangchun Gan, deputy chief supervisor of state land in the Ministry of Land and Resources in the People's Republic of China, and a New World research fellow at the Ash Institute for Democratic Governance and Innovation at Harvard University, will discuss the major new land policies slated for implementation; Biliang Hu, professor of economics at the Graduate School of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences and now a research fellow at Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government, will explain the new strategy of "building a socialist new countryside." The event is free but registration is requested.