A green project grows in Houston

After years in the making, Buffalo Bayou, a 10-square-mile Brownfields restoration launched in the front yard of downtown Houston -- a collection of parks, walkways, a performance center, botanical gardens, boat landings, and residential development, all along the waterway that winds in from the Gulf of Mexico through the center city to the  suburban headlands -- is finally coming together. The multi-neighborhood revitalization project, which retools a freeway corridor and recycles vacant and industrial land, is notable in a city better known for sprawl and no zoning.
   "This was a very different kind of process, led by a committed private partnership of civic, business and public leaders,  with a larger vision and a different cast of players -- which is why I think it has worked well in Houston,” said Jane Thompson, principal at Thompson Design Group, which led the effort in a team including Pratap Talwar from TDG, Ecoplan,  Henry Dodson of Dodson Associates, and Patrick Phillips, now president of the Urban Land Institute.
     A $1 billion master plan is being implemented. The transformation of some 6,400 acres has been managed by Anne Olson and the Buffalo Bayou Partnership. Part of what led Houston to embrace the project was the realities of flooding and storm surges, which have caused billions of dollars in damages to underground infrastructure. Allowing wetlands to do their work is the kind of natural ecosystems adaptation that is well underway in New Orleans post-Katrina; the parks and development plan is closely integrated with water engineering. Kevin Shanley, chief executive of SWA Group, designer for the Buffalo Bayou Promenade , was an advocate against “straight jacketing” waterways, as were TDG and the partnership.
      A thorough update on the project was presented at the New Partners for Smart Growth conference in San Diego. Another essay on the project appears at The Atlantic Cities.

New paths for Legacy Cities

Silver bullets for cities have come and gone over the years -- civic centers, festival markets, turning downtown streets into pedestrian malls, river walks, luring the "creative class." Today, however, when it comes to Legacy Cities -- typically Rust Belt metropolitan areas from Detroit to Flint to Youngstown to Camden, that have suffered population loss, a retreat of manufacturing, and rampant vacant urban land -- the dire circumstances calls for fresh, even radical thinking.
     Finding a new form for these cities was the theme of a convening last week at the Lincoln Institute, led by Lavea Brachman, executive director of the Greater Ohio Policy Center, and Alan Mallach, senior fellow at the Center for Community Progress. Some two dozen mayors, policy makers, researchers, planners, and foundation executives participated in a framing workshop that sought to build on Columbia University's American Assembly forum last year in Detroit.
     The moniker Legacy Cities is an attempt to describe these cities in a more positive way than "shrinking cities," though that reference in terms of population loss -- commonly 20 percent or more -- is apt. These are places that possess the assets of infrastructure, housing, density, and transit, but have not seen the revitalization and vitality of Boston, New York, Washington, Chicago, Denver, Seattle, or San Francisco. Decline has left perilious fiscal conditions, with drastic cutbacks in basic services, plummeting tax revenue, anemic economic development, and vacant lots that worsen the psychology of deterioration.
     There will be no silver bullets, but participants agreed "eds and meds" -- colleges, universities, medical centers, and the health care industry -- are foundational. There must be a triage system in place for dealing with vacant and tax-delinquent properties. Legacy Cities must be realistic and opportunistic, building on neighborhoods that show signs of strength attracting young people and entrepreneurs; not every medium-sized metropolis can be an arts capital, but might welcome the zeitgeist of "Rust Belt chic," including spelunking in abandoned factories.
    The most far-reaching ideas? Some places, like Highland Park or East St. Louis, are approaching the equivalent of failed states, and might consider a devolution involving the redrawing or "de-annexing" of municipal boundaries. At the end of the workshop, there was a call for the equivalent of the International Monetary Fund for stressed cities.
      The follow-up to the meeting will include the development of a toolkit and strategies, and principles and methods to help in the ongoing reinvention. The Brookings Institution Metropolitan Policy Center has also been engaged in Legacy Cities, and Neal Peirce and Phyllis Meyers at Citiwire have been covering the effort.

Getting the property tax right

       A lot of places struggle to get the property tax -- the lifeblood of metropolitan areas -- just right. This was unquestionably the case in the Canadian province of Ontario. Reformers there sought to introduce a full market value assessment, establish a property tax system that would be widely accepted, and remove property tax reform from the provincial political agenda. But although the reform effort was lauded by experts at the time, its overall objectives were not achieved. In fact, the new assessment system may have ultimately weakened the role of the local property tax.
     The Ontario experience is the subject of a new book, A Tale of Two Taxes: Property Tax Reform in Ontario by Richard M. Bird, Enid Slack, and Almos Tassonyi, which examines the broad reform measures in 1998. Getting the property tax “right” in Ontario has been difficult. One reason is that its property tax is not one tax, but two: a tax on residential property and a tax on business. These two taxes differ in their political dimension and economic impact, and in how they are administered. Tax reform has been a particular challenge because the local governments—municipalities, regions, and school boards—depend heavily on property tax revenues compared to other local funding sources.
      Revenue from the property tax alone is not sufficient for large urban areas to pay for the range and level of public services for which they are responsible. The paths to improving the property tax—for example, abolishing the heavily discriminatory taxation of business property—would leave a major revenue hole in local budgets. The question is how to make up for this gap. The authors consider two approaches to the problem: restructuring education finance and introducing a new form of business taxation, at both the provincial and local levels. 
     Over the past decade Ontario was able to successfully adopt a uniform, province-wide market value assessment system. However, its experience suggests that when reforms in property tax administration are combined with sound reforms in both property tax policy and some aspects of local governance and finance, they are more likely to bring about the desired benefits.
     Many jurisdictions around the world have been advised to implement major reforms in property taxation to resolve local government finance problems. A detailed evaluation of Ontario’s reform in both property tax policy and full market value assessment shows that, while such reforms are possible, they require very careful design, implementation, and sustained follow-up if they are to succeed.
     Richard M. Bird is professor emeritus at the Rotman School of Management and senior fellow at the Institute on Municipal Finance and Governance at the Munk School of Global Affairs, University of Toronto. Enid Slack is director of the Institute on Municipal Finance and Governance at the Munk School of Global Affairs, University of Toronto, and Almos Tassonyi is adjunct professor in the Department of Economics at Ryerson University in Toronto.

"Dream Team' in Bogota

A delegation led by Martim Smolka, director of the Program on Latin America and the Caribbean, traveled to Bogota late last month to provide expert advice on land policy for the new city administration. The new secretary of planning, Maria Mercedes Maldonado, has had a long association with the Lincoln Institute. The visit was noted in the newspaper El Espectador, with the headline: "Petro (the new mayor) assembles a 'dream team' of experts."
     Among the big issues discussed were how to increase the provision of affordable or social housing, to be located predominantly in the so-called expanded inner city; and a commitment to minimize environmental risks for lower income families. The challenges, says Smolka, include finding both suitable land and resources to augment national funds available for social housing. Value capture is seen as an important pathway for the extra funds needed for land procurement, but altering the system regarding building rights will be a tough sell, Smolka says.
     "Our team stressed the importance of transparency in this transition with clear indications of the purpose and procedures," he says. The value capture system in Sao Paulo sets a good example. The experts, which included Francisco Sabatini, Daniel Rodriguez, Paulo Sandroni, and Alfredo Garay, also suggested taking stock of existing public land that could be used for demonstration projects. The idea of building massive social housing complexes in distant areas with high transport costs is no longer seen as a viable option. The bottom line, the team suggested, was that as Bogota grows, the city must maintain its concern for "social sustainability" accompanying new development.