Fwd: Ka`u Landing - Can the Substandard Subdivisions Become Sustainable?

[Wesley Roe and Marjorie Lakin Erickson]

hi everyone
        here is an article from Hawaii , that reveals so much how we subsidize
the urban sprawl and the use of the car.

>
> Subject: Ka`u Landing - Can the Substandard Subdivisions Become
Sustainable? 
>
>
> http://www.kau-landing.com/archive/798-1.html 
>
>
>   A Magazine from the Island of Hawai`i
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> Community Planning, Part I
>
> Can the Substandard Subdivisions Become Sustainable?
> Will the Government Let Them?
> by Bonnie Goodell © 1998
>
> "Urban form is largely a product of the dominant transportation system in
> place during a region's prevailing period of growth."
>                                                                          
>        -- Homer Hoyt
>
> This article has two parts.
>
> First: Can the substandard subdivisions on the Big Island transform
themselves
> from automobile-dependent, global-warming sprawl into self-sustaining,
> diverse, walkable and bikable communities? The answer is yes, for some
> surprising reasons, as I learned recently in a federally sponsored course on
> coordinating land use and transportation, in Seattle.
>
> Second: Will they be supported by government to make that transformation?
That
> remains to be seen. At present the state and the county of Hawai`i don't
> officially recognize the existence of either the subdivisions themselves or
> the people who live in them. I will describe the discrimination against them
> by the state and county, how it prevents movement toward sustainability, why
> it is so hard to reverse, and what is being done about it by an ad hoc group
> called the Sustainability Committee (Jon Olson, Roger Evans, John Luchau,
Bev
> Byouk, David Skaife, Keith Wallis, Ron Reilly and myself).
>
> Is it possible to move the substandard subdivisions toward sustainability? I
> have reason to hope because of the top of the heap planning experts (Rei
> Ewing Robert Cervero, and Uri Avin, for those who read those gripping
> professional journals, planning texts, and quotations in news magazines) on
> Coordinating Land Use and Transportation, and the other participants in the
> Seattle course - mostly transportation planners from all levels of
government
> and from all over the west. (I was the only private consultant and the only
> Hawai`i participant). Among those present were the people behind the
> "alternative" transportation transformation Portland, Seattle, and
Vancouver,
> and smaller towns and rural areas that are trying hard to transform
> themselves from auto-based sprawl. Also participating were federal enforcers
> of the Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act (ISTEA). 
>
> ISTEA is the federal transportation program that initiated, in 1992, the use
> of federal transportation money to try to re-program transportation
> nationally away from auto-dependence and toward multi-modal alternatives and
> Livable Communities. Livable Communities is the label attached to a land
> use/transportation development pattern that is recognized as being more
> sustainable than auto-based sprawl. The communities that are serious about
> Livability, multi-modalism, and sustainability have zoning and subdivision
> codes that, get this, prohibit single-use in any zoning district, except
> agricultural and open space districts, which are protected with a vengeance
> from residential or other use. Around transit stops, Livable Communities
> require specific land uses that produce the mixed use densities that make
> public transit work. Within a quarter mile of the transit stop there must be
> about 2,000 people living and they must be able to meet all their daily
needs
> (restaurants, convenience shopping, videos, specialty stores, bakeries,
child
> care, elementary schools) in that same area. In other words, Livable
> Communities create urban neighborhoods and rural towns that are more like
> traditional towns, the places that people lived in before Levittown,
freeways
> and malls. Workplaces are also going back into the mix, because the
> information age is transforming much of industry into something more like
the
> pre-industrial neighborhood craft shops. Car lanes are getting "calmed" and
> narrowed, with sidewalks, bike lanes, and bike/walk trails put in. Free car
> parking is out; secure bike parking, showers, and covered sidewalks with
> eats, trees and storefronts are in.
>
> Community-building and income diversity is the social mandate and design for
> pedestrian pleasantries is the architectural theme. 
>
> The places that have make these changes, notably Vancouver, Ottawa, Toronto,
> Seattle, Portland, Chattanooga, Minneapolis, Curitiba (Brazil ), and their
> surrounding rural towns, have become very desirable places to live. They
> attract clean, information-based industries, like software designers, not
> only because they have great amenities (such as neighborhood elementary
> schools of 200 to 400 students, all of whom can walk or bike to school and
> practice), and a great sense of community. They also have the value of
> sus-tainability. For the same reason that people in California choose to pay
> higher electric rates for power from renewable/sustainable resources, people
> also place a higher value on a community that is sustainable. When we start
> getting charged carbon taxes for gasoline, these communities will easily be
> able to cut way down on driving, because they are already moving that way.
>
> What do these case studies and history have to teach us about substandard
> subdivisions? Well, first was something about the old, truly traditional
> communities that grew up all by themselves, by individual property owners
> doing what comes naturally, where the main mode of transportation is walking
> or biking. Houses, some with several apartments or rooming houses, all with
> front porches, sidewalks and big trees, are mixed with small businesses and
> small retailers in blocks that are 400 feet square, near Main Street. The
> buildings are harmonious because of their size, their face to the sidewalk
> and the sense of a community sharing. Their streets are clearly outdoor
rooms
> for the neighbors and visitors, first and foremost, because the residents
> created them that way for their own use, one unique street at a time. 
>
> The "new urbanism" towns that I saw had a certain over-studied charm, but
> were too master-planned, too rigged if you will. That is partly because they
> are totally new and completely designed by monument-seeking big names who
> work with big developers on new subdivisions in "greenfield" sites, a
> relatively blank canvas where they get to decide everything, all at once.
> What the substandard subdivisions have going for them is that they are more
> like those small towns that grew up from a bunch of homestead or town lots,
> each with an owner-builder. We seldom hear about them because no big name is
> looking for credit. But existing communities that have just changed their
> assumptions about land use and transportation have been not only very
> successful at transformations toward sustainability and livability, but
their
> transformation has been cheaper and more satisfying, as the neighbors on
each
> street do their own exterior decorating: creating pedestrian and
> bike/pedestrian cut-throughs and alleys and starting businesses like child
> and elder-care, hairdressing, and home-office services, expressly to serve
> each other by shortening or eliminating car trips from their own
> neighborhoods. 
>
> What is required to make transformations come naturally is changed
> assumptions about transportation. The "old paradigm" is that people drive
> cars for everything - thereby turning all open space into sprawl and making
> every public space hostile to un-carred humans - because they want to, and
> that any effort to change that behavior is "social engineering." But lately
> there has been a lot of research into the hidden subsidies provided for
> automobiles. They amount to at least several thousand dollars per year: from
> 1/3 of the federal highway funds that come from general taxes to the subsidy
> in all infrastructure costs provided to people who live in low density areas
> by people who live in high density communities. When California went about
> deregulating electric service, they couldn't deregulate the distribution
> system, because the subsidy required for maintaining power lines for big
> suburban lots (provided by high density areas), if removed, would have made
> those subdivisions completely unaffordable. And the same principle is true
> for roads, water lines, and all other linear infrastructure. Having your
road
> to yourself, while insisting on your right to zoom through other
> neighborhoods, is mooching, big time. In our secret heart of hearts, it
> seems, we all want to get to be the greedy jerk. 
>
> The actual cost of each and every parking space ranges from $100 to $400 per
> month, including on-street (a parked car pays no gas taxes), in a lot, or in
> a parking structure. Each car requires up to ten parking spaces out there at
> shopping centers, schools, and anywhere else we go. Free Parking? Never. A
> hidden subsidy of car use, paid for in everything we buy and all fees,
taxes,
> mortgages, and rents. What we know now is that we have created overwhelming
> social engineering for car use, and that if we had to pay the costs directly
> when we used or parked our cars, we wouldn't. Sustainable development would
> take care of itself. Those who could not afford cars would have great access
> to everything, because that would be most of us, at least most of the time,
> so self-supporting public transit and walkable/bikable, neighborly, mixed
use
> communities would develop naturally, just like they did before cars. 
>
> The way we estimate traffic is also "the big lie." People will oppose a
> store, elementary school or beauty shop in their neighborhood because it
> "creates traffic." WRONG! This particular b.s. is a classic example of the
> tunnel vision of transportation engineers, in which every "trip" is by
> definition a car trip, and of exactly the same distance of every other car
> trip. The average suburban home in a single use district generates ten
> one-way "trips" per day, the average day-care 79 trips per 1000 square feet,
> the average hardware store 700 per acre, etc., according to the "Trip
> Generation" manual of the Institute of Traffic Engineers. But in a mixed use
> neighborhood, those trips probably wouldn't be by car, and if they were,
they
> would be short trips. In low density, single use zoning those would all be
> car trips and all long.
>
> If you put a deli, a convenience store, an ATM and video store in the same
> building as an industrial employer, the number of trips generated would
still
> be the sum of all those uses, but most of those trips would never leave the
> building - and the employees would be more likely to use public transit
> because they wouldn't need their cars to do errands every day. But the
way we
> write our codes, we assume that putting those uses together like that would
> not only produce the same amount of vehicle miles traveled (vmt) as if they
> were each a mile apart, but that the parking lot would need to have as many
> spaces as if the employees were driving from the job site to the deli down
> the hall for lunch. This is observably and logically ridiculous, but it is
> part of how our low-density single use codes engineer us to choose and
> subsidize car use and traffic congestion. It would be funny if it weren't a
> major cause of global warming. 
>
> Health professionals, as well as real estate investors, are catching on that
> cutting the car trips to elementary schools alone, by making elementary
> schools within walking or biking distance, makes residents more economically
> fit and more physically fit. Inactivity and poor diet are second to
> cigarettes as a cause of death. Parents spend an estimated two hours a day
> driving themselves and their children, replacing natural exercise time with
> sitting in traffic. Children are raised to know the inside of the family
car,
> but have no concept of geography because they have no personal experience of
> it; they view their own neighborhoods as a TV-like window screen at best,
> hostile territory at worst. Ironically for the many substandard subdivision
> residents who have beaten themselves against the State Department of
> Education's brick wall - unsuccessfully trying to locate schools where the
> children can walk or bike to them - the Hawai`i Department of Health, under
> Jack Lewin, was one of the first government entities in the U.S. to sponsor
> workshops on Livable Communities as a basic health issue.
>
> How have communities changed their transportation/land use assumptions to
> better reflect reality and sustainability? Surprisingly "if you build it
they
> will come." If you don't widen roads and you do put in dedicated bus routes
> that get you there faster than car routes, people will choose buses. And the
> buses will create the density and mixed use needed around the bus stops. The
> best way to do it is DURING growth, when growth arranges itself around the
> transit, bike, walk system. Remember , the land use pattern is the result of
> the transportation system in place when growth is occurring. The places that
> have most successfully demonstrated this are places like Ottawa, the capital
> of Canada, where 60% of the trips to downtown are by bus. Why? When Ottawa
> started growing rapidly in the 30s, they created lots of express-bus-only
> roadways. The buses circle a neighborhood and then get on the bus road to
> downtown. No transfers, no sitting in traffic. The growth arranged itself
> around those bus routes.
>
> In Curitiba, Brazil, according to U.S. News and World Report, "Though
> Curitiba has a higher number of cars per capita [than Sao Paulo]...Seventy
> five percent of the city's commuters use public transport and traffic has
> declined by 30 percent since 1974, even as the population has more than
> doubled." Once again, buses. Why buses? Because you can afford dedicated bus
> routes as the growth is occurring, before you can afford to trains or
> subways. Curitiba also planned for land uses along the bus routes. Another
> thing both places do is solve the problems that make buses slow. They make
> cheap buses act like expensive trains. Dedicated lanes or roads. Protected
> loading platforms. You buy your ticket to get into the loading area and then
> multiple doors open for 30-second loading and unloading, and this could
> include wheelchairs and bikes.
>
> If you widen roads, people will drive more and sprawl into farms and
forests.
> If you provide convenient, fast, efficient dedicated bus, bike and walk
> routes, people will ride, bike and walk, and will cluster themselves into
> real villages, in city and country. That's all well-documented. The vision
> choice is that simple. After that it is a matter of design to make the
choice
> work. 
>
> The sustainable choice is also cheaper. Central transit corridors, with
> public facilities and services clustered along them, would allow outlying
> areas in the subdivisions to reasonably stay more undeveloped, more like
real
> country, the roads private and little improved. There are now many
successful
> models and examples of transformational policies for more sustainable,
> walkable, bikable, livable communities. Far from it being "too late" the
> substandard subdivisions are prime for such transformation. 
>
> It is especially sad that in Hawai`i, political co-opting of reform
buzzwords
> - like sustainability and empowerment - has been used to stifle real reform,
> so change has come to be viewed as an impossibility. Elsewhere, real land
> use/transportation reforms for sustainability, made ten years ago, are now
> yielding huge economic and environmental dividends.
>
> There is a huge difference between the old transportation mindset - the
> conviction among traffic engineers that the function of transportation
> improvements is to provide the capacity to move people and goods around -
and
> the new land use/transportation paradigm - that the function of
> transportation improvements is to provide access between the destinations of
> people and goods in a manner that contributes to health, safety, equal
> opportunity, environmental protection, prosperity, and community diversity.
>
> Communities that make the transition to Livability become more than just
> desirable places to live. They attract the kind of small, clean, globally
> competitive industries that provide great opportunities for the next
> generation, and they have become more competitive in the real estate market
> than the commuter suburbs that have been the almost exclusive money-maker of
> residential real estate developers for forty years. The substandard
> subdivisions are prime for transformation to Livability, and have more than
> 80,000 low-priced parcels on which "the little guy" can directly benefit
from
> being part of that transformation. If the substandard subdivisions achieve
> Livability, with their own schools, soccer fields, medical centers, shopping
> and jobs, the older communities need not be paved out of existence to
> accommodate the traffic from the substandard or new subdivisions. 
>  
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> 1998-1999. Email us at: <mailto:ezine at kau-landing.com>ezine at kau-landing.com
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