How much will change now that the FHA backs mixed-use projects?

Matt Yglesias celebrated a rule change in which the FHA allows a greater percentage of commercial space in supportable developments. Reading into the details as supplied by the New York Times, however, made me question to what extent the new rules will actually impact development.

First, the article states that the previous rules were not much enforced before 2007, so why weren't there more mixed-use developments before 2007? Second, the new rule increases the allowable footprint of commercial space from 25% of the development to 35%. 35% surely allows more flexibility, but it seems that a 25% commercial footprint would be reasonable in most developments. So why weren't there more mixed-use developments with up to 25% commercial space even with the old rule? Most importantly, there are still other considerations such as zoning, expected buyer preferences, and developer experience that will change slowly over time before mixed-use development can be a significant portion of all development.

Mixed-Use Development, so risky!
Source: PhillyShark

Leaving aside the discussion of to what extent the federal government should subsidize homeownership, which Yglesias brushes aside, I would classify the rule change as a necessary but not sufficient step on the road to greater environmental sustainability in our cities' structures.

Density Balance

Among large U.S. metropolitan areas, Washington, D.C is unique in its height limit, enacted in order to preserve views of our nation's politically most important structures and national monuments. In November of this year, several members of Congress requested a study on the capital's height limit. There are some good arguments for and against keeping the height limit.

But I wonder to what extent the height limit impacts city-wide development. Sure, it prevents a central core from rising up beyond the artificially imposed limit, but perhaps that supports greater heights in other parts of the city. This spread density may actually benefit the city overall by reducing congestion in one part of the city and encouraging greater use of other parts. A multi-node paradigm like this is similar to Los Angeles, but on a much smaller scale.

Which brings me to an idea I want to call "density balance." Measuring cities by population density alone doesn't provide an accurate portrait of land use given that some cities have high concentrations of commercial and other non-residential uses. So what about the ratio of residential density (e.g., people per sq mi) to commercial density (e.g., commercial square feet per sq. mi.)? Such a comparison could help to measure an area's jobs-housing balance. The change in jobs-housing balance in a metropolitan area could in turn be an indicator of access to jobs for that area's residents.

Mental Health in Urban Cores

A week ago, Liza Long suggested that the Sandy Hook tragedy in Newtown, CT should be a policy window for a national conversation about mental health and how we (don't) treat and address it.

Long chronicles her difficulty dealing with her son, who has has a mental health problem and, despite being intelligent and at times sweet, threatens to kill her and himself. Feeling overwhelmed, she submits him to the hospital, and her social worker advises her that the best way to get attention for her son is to charge him with a crime. Long write, "No one wants to send a 13-year old genius who loves Harry Potter and his snuggle animal collection to jail. But our society, with its stigma on mental illness and its broken healthcare system, does not provide us with other options."

Addressing mental health could also do much to improve the safety and the perception of safety in our nation's cities. Homeless people tend to settle closer to city centers because of their lack of mobility and the relative concentration of services (e.g., clinics), necessities (e.g., McDonalds for food), and people (potential charity givers). With an estimated 20-25% of the homeless population in the U.S. has mental illness (compared to 6% of all Americans), much of that downtown homeless crowd is likely to scare people. Of course there is going to be a stigma for mental illness if most people's exposure to it is in the form of homeless people begging for change.

If we can provide mental health treatment more widely and more easily, it could contribute to making safer and more attractive urban cores.

The Case for Higher Gas Taxes

The national average gas price has been steadily declining since mid-September. A discussion of why gas prices rise and fall is beyond the scope of this post, but a good overview can be found on Robert Rapier's R-Squared blog.

Rather, I want to focus on the opportunity (yes, I said opportunity) presented by this decline in the price of gas. In many states, the tax on fuel has not been increased in many years. Considering inflation, therefore, state gas taxes are generally declining. This represents an enormous amount of potential revenue that can be applied to fund transportation improvements.

Proposing to increase the cost of gasoline is dangerous politically. So why not introduce gas tax increases that are tied to decreases in the cost of gasoline? When the non-tax price begins to increase, the tax rate can remain unchanged. Increases in the overall cost of gasoline may thereby be more gradual. Over time, yes, the cost of gasoline will increase. But this is a pill (or a vegetable, if you prefer to look at it that way) that will provide the necessary medicine (or nutrients) to improve our land use and transportation systems.

State Gas Tax Rates as of January 1, 2012
(Exclude Federal Tax Rate of 18.4 cents per gallon)

More gradual changes will allow for people to adapt by choosing more efficient vehicles, living closer to work, etc. Cities will have an easier time encouraging smarter development, lower parking requirements, and more viable transit systems, which may help straining municipal budgets.

Was there a time for cheap gasoline, when it fueled rapid growth in national GDP? Perhaps. But now is the time to reconsider our relationship with gasoline. Prices will increase overall anyway. Why not keep more of that increase to invest in our own infrastructures rather than to pay for imports.

A Nation's Divisions

There have been several highly thought out and creative maps used to show the results of the recent presidential election. The best attempt to indicate not only the party favored by counties (and the cities, regions, and states composed by them) but also the relative weight of those counties in terms of population, either by shade or by bar height.

These results have been interpreted in different ways. The U.S. is not as divided as people make it out to be. The U.S. is as divided as people make it out to be, but along urban-rural lines rather than state lines. The U.S. is not that divided even in urban-rural lines. Emily Badger comes close to the core of the situation when she states that the policies favored by urban residents align more closely with the policies identified with the Democrats.

Cities do demand, by definition, a greater role for government than a small rural town on the prairie. But the return on investment can also be much higher (in jobs created through transportation spending, in the number of citizens touched by public expenditures, in patents per capita, in the sheer share of economic growth driven by our metropolises).

Density makes all of these things possible, and it requires its own kind of politics. There’s no reason why the Democratic Party should have an exclusive lock on this idea. Investing government money efficiently – as Republicans want to do – is also about focusing on how it’s spent in cities.

 So how does that fit with the fact that the Democratic ticket won rural states such as Iowa and New Hampshire and with the lack of proof that "the results of the election that urban turnout over all played the decisive role in swing states like Colorado, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia or Wisconsin"? Perhaps it relates to the increasing similarities between urban cores and older, especially inner-ring, suburbs. The need for investment and reinvestment in key infrastructures, in schools, in municipal safety, and in many other aspects of what defines a community is not unique to big cities. But neither is the desire for tax revenues to be spent efficiently and fairly unique to rural residents. We need policies that will focus on spending available funds in ways that will provide an efficient economic, social, and moral return on the investment for the greater community. Now if only we could decide on what that would look like...

(Blog) Revitalization

It's time to bring this blog back. New design symbolizes a fresh beginning.

I plan to post more regularly and to focus more on my professional interests: urban planning, economic development, transportation, land use, communities, etc. Namely, how cities and regions change and grow. 

Stay tuned for more.