Land Use Prof Blog

Callison on the LIHTC and Geographic Desegregation

Bill Callison (Faegre & Benson, LLP; also ABA Forum on Aff. Housing and Comm. Dev. Law) has posted Achieving Our Country: Geographic Desegregation and the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit, 19 S. Cal. Rev. L. & Soc. Just. 213 (2010).  Here's the abstract:

This Article, which blends educational policy, housing policy, and tax policy, argues that one path down the precipice of racial inequality is to reverse a path that led us to where this problem began; namely, the racial segregation of the places where we live. This Article examines the country’s most important subsidy for creating affordable housing, the Federal Low-Income Housing Tax Credit (“LIHTC”), and considers whether the tax credit program has served as a tool for desegregating metropolitan neighborhoods. After concluding that the LIHTC program has not been an effective tool for reducing or eliminating continuing patterns of racial segregation and poverty concentration, this Article proposes numerous programmatic changes that could allow the tax credit program to promote greater geographic desegregation. Others have considered the impact of fair-housing laws on the LIHTC program. This Article contributes to that literature by going beyond fair housing to examine both the “cooperative federalism” concepts embedded in the program and the economic structure of tax credits, and by making practical suggestions on how the program can be improved to obtain racial integration. It takes a two-prong approach: First, this Article encourages more robust national guidance in order to encourage states to use credits to foster desegregation. Second, this Article considers changes to the economic structure of the program to provide incentives to developers and investors who undertake to provide affordable housing that results in desegregation.

Jim K.

Garnett on Mixed Land-Use Urban Neighborhoods

Nicole Garnett (Notre Dame) has added to her extensive body of work on land use, order, and quality of life in America's cities (read her book Ordering the City) by posting The People Paradox on SSRN.  Here's the abstract:

American land-use regulators increasingly embrace mixed-land-use "urban" neighborhoods, rather than single-land-use "suburban" ones, as a planning ideal. This shift away from traditional regulatory practice reflects a growing endorsement of Jane Jacobs’s influential argument that mixed-land-use urban neighborhoods are safer and more socially cohesive than single-use suburban ones. Proponents of regulatory reforms encouraging greater mixing of residential and commercial land uses, however, completely disregard a sizable empirical literature suggesting that commercial land uses generate, rather than suppress, crime and disorder and that suburban communities have higher levels of social capital than urban communities. This Article constructs a case for mixed-land-use planning that tackles the uncomfortable reality that these studies present. That case is built upon an apparent paradox: In urban communities, people do not, apparently, make us safer. But they do make us feel safer. This "People Paradox" suggests that, despite an apparent tension between city busyness and safety, land-use regulations that enable mixed-land-use neighborhoods may advance several important urban development goals. It also suggests an often-overlooked connection between land-use and policing policies.

Jim K.

Recent Article Highlights Need to Think Comprehensively About Land Conservation

A new article in the journal Conservation Biology, highlights the need to shift our way of thinking about preservation sites. As I (and many others) have noted elsewhere, climatic changes are likely to disrupt current land protection schemes. Many of our current land conservation strategies (including establishment of reserves and most uses of conservation easements) assume environmental stability. This assumption if inappropriate when studies increasingly demonstrate there will be large shifts in ecosystems and species habitat. The authors of Toward a Management Framework for Networks of Protected Areas in the Face of Climate Change demonstrate that there is a need to increase the resilience and robustness of our conservation areas and reassess our decisions regarding where protected lands should be and what the rules governing those areas should be. Although the study examines birds in sub-Saharan Africa, the ideas and cautions easily apply to decisions regarding land conservation in the United States and elsewhere.

Below is the authors’ abstract:

Networks of sites of high importance for conservation of biological diversity are a cornerstone of current conservation strategies but are fixed in space and time. As climate change progresses, substantial shifts in species’ ranges may transform the ecological community that can be supported at a given site. Thus, some species in an existing network may not be protected in the future or may be protected only if they can move to sites that in future provide suitable conditions. We developed an approach to determine appropriate climate change adaptation strategies for individual sites within a network that was based on projections of future changes in the relative proportions of emigrants (species for which a site becomes climatically unsuitable), colonists (species for which a site becomes climatically suitable), and persistent species (species able to remain within a site despite the climatic change). Our approach also identifies key regions where additions to a network could enhance its future effectiveness. Using the sub-Saharan African Important Bird Area (IBA) network as a case study, we found that appropriate conservation strategies for individual sites varied widely across sub-Saharan Africa, and key regions where new sites could help increase network robustness varied in space and time. Although these results highlight the potential difficulties within any planning framework that seeks to address climate-change adaptation needs, they demonstrate that such planning frameworks are necessary, if current conservation strategies are to be adapted effectively, and feasible, if applied judiciously.

 HOLE, D. G., HUNTLEY, B., ARINAITWE, J., BUTCHART, S. H. M., COLLINGHAM, Y. C., FISHPOOL, L. D. C., PAIN, D. J. and WILLIS, S. G. , Toward a Management Framework for Networks of Protected Areas in the Face of Climate Change. Conservation Biology, no. doi: 10.1111/j.1523-1739.2010.01633.x

- Jessica Owley

Judith Wegner, Annexation, and the Boehl Lectures

Thanks, Matt, for the wonderfully kind introduction.  I am excited to be guest-posting on the Land Use Prof blog.  Despite the flood of emails (and steady stream of students and professors wanting an associate dean's immediate attention), I read the Land Use Prof blog every day, and find the posts both helpful and thought-provoking.  It is a real honor to be a part of the great work that y'all do!

For my first post, I want to share some insights from Judith Welch Wegner's Boehl Distinguished Lecture in Land Use Policy at the University of Louisville this past Thursday, January 27, and to highlight the value of a land-use lecture series generally.  Professor Wegner is well known in legal education for her past roles as a 10-year Dean at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, President of AALS, member of the Order of the Coif Executive Committee, and Senior Scholar at the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching.  In the land use field, she is known as the Burton Craige Professor of Law at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill and for her especially influential article "Moving Toward the Bargaining Table: Contract Zoning, Development Agreements, and the Theoretical Foundations of Government Land Use Deals," 65 N.C. L. Rev. 957 (1987).  I predict that she will play a major role in reviving interest in annexation as a land use legal and planning issue.

Judith gave her Boehl Distinguished Lecture in Land Use Policy on "Annexation, Urban Boundaries, and Land Use Dilemmas: Learning from the Past and Preparing for the Future."  Her basic concern is that annexation is often disconnected from land-use planning, which results in problems of sprawl, uncoordinated growth, inadequate infrastructure, and fiscal stress.  Drawing on census data and examples from North Carolina's famous "annexation wars," Judith pointed out that there are no quick-fixes, no one-size-fits-all model solutions (a point that I particularly like and have addressed most recently in "Fourth-Generation Environmental Law: Integrationist and Multimodal").  Local culture matters.  Some of the worst conflicts do not arise from expanding large cities but from small municipalities in rural or at least non-urban areas, making it difficutl to get a handle on what exactly "smart growth" might mean in these low-density communities.  Water and wastewater dynamics play significant roles, as do municipalities' desires to improve their fiscal health by increasing their property-tax base through annexations.  When municipal annexation is difficult, though, alternatives to annexation take its place, including the proliferation of special districts, the rise of county authority over land use, and the dominance of gated communities.  All in all, according to Judith, annexation conflicts demonstrate why local governance structure is a "wicked problem" but one that is critically important to land use practices and sustainable development.  I am looking forward to the publications that will result from her research.  Annexation issues have received too little attention in the land use legal literature.

But her lecture implicitly makes another point -- the value of a land-use lecture series.  More on that tomorrow . . . .  [OK, maybe not as tantalizing as who shot J.R., but hopefully something of a hook to bring you back.]  Again, thanks for letting me come aboard!

Tony Arnold

Panel on "Premature Subdivisions" for New Partners Conference

As I previously posted, the New Partners for Smart Growth Conference is happening in Charlotte, NC February 3-5.  Here's an announcement from the Lincoln Institute about their panel at the conference.

Call them the new ghost towns - "premature" subdivisions that have been laid out in anticipation of a continuing housing boom and unfettered growth at the periphery. In many areas there is a large surplus of already platted lots, improperly located to foster smart growth. Teton County, Idaho has granted development entitlements in the rural countryside sufficient to quadruple their population. Most of these lots have non-existent or poor services.

Even in areas that expect large increases in population, these premature subdivisions are in the wrong location to foster smart growth patterns. In Arizona's Sun Corridor, approximately one million undeveloped lots, many not even platted yet, have been entitled and would lead to further sprawl.

The current economic downturn provides an opportunity to address past impacts, better anticipate and prepare for future growth and improve property values, says senior fellow Armando Carbonell, who will be moderating a panel, Reshaping Development Patterns, at the New Partners for Smart Growth conference in Charlotte Feb. 3.

Carbonell sees an opportunity to redesign communities to transfer development pressure from previously approved development areas to foster more sustainable development. For example, in the suburbs of the Northeast, there are projects that remake the suburban highway, turning "edge city" districts into compact mixed-use centers, and using green infrastructure strategies for shaping new communities at the metropolitan fringe."There's a sponge-like capacity to accommodate population growth without any further peripheral development," says Carbonell.

The panelists exploring these issues will be Arthur "Chris" Nelson, Metropolitan Research Center, University of Utah, on demographic and population trends; Jim Holway, head of Western Land and Communities, the Lincoln Institute-Sonoran Institute joint venture; and Thomas Wright, executive director of the Regional Plan Association of New York, Connecticut and New Jersey.

New Partners for Smart Growth this year marks its 10th anniversary as a collaboration of the Loal Government Commission and the Environmental Protection Agency.

"Premature subdivisions" aren't just a western or northeastern problem - we've seen a fair number of them here in Georgia as well.  If any of our readers attend this session, or any other session at the New Partners conference, please send us a report!

Jamie Baker Roskie

Inclusionary Housing in International Perspective

 The Lincoln Institute of Land Policy has recently released Inclusionary Housing in International Perspective: Affordable Housing, Social Inclusion and Land Value Recapture, edited by Nico Calavita (Planning-San Diego State) and Alan Mallach (Brookings).  After 60 pages on the U.S., the book devotes a chapter each to Canada, England, Ireland, France, Spain and Italy.  The penultimate chapter looks at inclusionary practices in a variety of other countries including India, Israel, Colombia and South Africa.

Jim K.

James J. Kelly, Jr.

Visiting Prof. of Law, W&L

[email protected]

Reminder - Smart Growth Conference Coming Soon

A reminder from the folks at EPA:

The 10th annual New Partners for Smart Growth: Building Safe, Healthy
and More Livable Communities Conference in Charlotte, NC is right around
the corner — February 3-5 in fact! This is the largest and most
comprehensive conference focused on smart growth and sustainable
communities held in U.S. each year, and not one to miss.

The multi-disciplinary program includes dynamic plenaries, in-depth
implementation workshops, cutting edge breakouts featuring the latest
research, case studies, tool and strategies, and tours of local model
projects. The line-up of over 400 speakers is stellar, with
international and national expertise mixed with local and regional “know
how.” We expect 95% of the over 100 sessions to be AICP accredited.

The program this year also has a strong underlying them of financing and
capacity-building — important and timely topics for state and local
governments, NGOs, and the grassroots organizations working in the
trenches on critical smart growth issues across the country.

Additional emphasis is being placed this year on providing as many
networking opportunities for participants as possible. Beyond the usual
informal networking opportunities offered — the number one reason people
attend this event — conference planners are organizing networking forums
that will focus timely issues such as: the unique challenges of smart
growth in small towns and rural areas; new federal technical assistance
for sustainable communities; advocacy building at the local and national
level; continuing the conversation on better connecting environmental
justice, equitable development and smart growth; smart growth
strategies, tools and resources in southern states; and Health Impact
Assessments for new and experienced practitioners. We expect others to
be added before and during the conference.

SIGN UP NOW! The conference registration deadline is January 14th!
Register at http://www.newpartners.org/registration.html.

The deadline to receive the reduced group rate for this event ($95) at
the Westin Charlotte Hotel is January 10th. Call 1-866-837-4148 and
indicate that you are attending the New Partners Conference.

Jamie Baker Roskie

Southeast Smart Growth Network Video Conference

I just received this announcement from Katie Sheehan at UGA's River Basin Center:

The Southeast Smart Growth Network invites you to join us for our first regional video
conference showcasing key smart growth initiatives in the Southeast. The hour and a half program
will be presented from four interactive sites linked by the University of Georgia. You may also view the presentation from your computer.

Overcoming Obstacles to Smart Growth – A Case Study of the Town
of Davidson, NC (2004 EPA Award for Overall Excellence in Smart Growth
Achievement) - Town of Davidson Planning Manager, Lauren Blackburn,
and Commissioner Marguerite Williams will explain the main tenets of the
Davidson Planning Ordinance, initial community reactions to draft policy,
and the tools used to build support for change.

Going Green in Georgia – David Freedman, Principal at Freedman
Engineering Group and former Director of Engineering and Construction
for the Georgia Department of Natural Resources, will discuss strategies
for a successful green building program and cost neutral approaches to
constructing green buildings.

HUD-DOT-EPA Interagency Partnership for Sustainable Communities -
Anne Keller, Senior Sustainability Advisor, Environmental Protection
Agency Region 4, will discuss the new partnership and provide an
overview of the communities in the Southeast receiving grants. Amy
Brooks, Transportation Planner, Knoxville Regional Transportation
Planning Organization, will briefly discuss their initiative to develop a
Regional Plan for Sustainable Development.

Southeast Smart Growth Network – Christine Olsenius, Executive
Director of the Southeast Watershed Forum, will introduce a new project to
analyze green building programs in 5 Southeastern states.

DECEMBER 13th 2010, 2-3:30pm EST video conference.
Watch online: Email [email protected] to
receive the conference url and link-up instructions.

You can also watch from four locations;

Athens, Georgia - Center for Teaching and Learning, North Instructional Plaza, http://www.ctl.uga.edu/location, park at the Tate Student Center, 705 S. Lumpkin Street

Atlanta, Georgia - Georgia Department of Community Affairs, 60 Executive Park South NE, http://www.dca.ga.gov/main/About/DCAMap1.pdf, sign in at the security desk in the lobby

Charlotte, North Carolina - University of North Carolina, Charlotte, Room 126 Fretwell Building – #45 on campus map, park on parking deck, http://home.uncc.edu/directions

Knoxville, Tennessee - University of Tennessee, Room 156 Plant Biotechnology Building on the Agriculture Campus, http://www.utk.edu/maps/

Looks like it will be very interesting - unfortunately I've got a conflict, but I imagine it will be posted on a website for later viewing.

Jamie Baker Roskie

Venne on Property Rights and Democracy in Oregon

Patrick J. Venne has posted his paper Out of Bounds: Reconciling Private Property Rights and Democracy in Oregon.  The paper is about urban growth boundaries in Oregon.  From the intro:

Urban growth boundaries are tools of urban containment applied to curb the otherwise natural outward sprawl of cities into the countryside--an unattractive stretch of physical structures that has economic as well as environmental costs. UGBs are implemented literally as physical boundaries outside of which urbanized development is for all intents and purposes largely banned. For many reasons, some obvious and others not, such devices have been received with mixed fanfare and in some instances have been highly contested.

While you're at it, check out Patrick's blog, Mainely Urban, focusing on urban development and land use planning in Maine and nationally.  From Portland OR to Portland ME!  It's a really informative and nice-looking blog with lots of great pictures and visuals.    

Matt Festa

Smart Growth Achievement Awards

From the Office of Sustainable Communities at EPA:

2010 National Award for Smart Growth Achievement

Date: Wednesday, December 1, 2010
Time: 3:00 PM - 5:00 PM
Location: National Building Museum 401 F Street NW, Washington, DC 20001

The National Award for Smart Growth Achievement recognizes communities
that use the principles of smart growth to create better places. This
annual competition is open to public- and private-sector entities.

Please join us at the National Building Museum in Washington, D.C., on
Wednesday, December 1, 2010, from 3:00 to 5:00 p.m. to celebrate the
winners of the 2010 National Award for Smart Growth Achievement. One
winner will be announced in each of the following categories: Smart
Growth and Green Building; Programs, Policies and Regulations; Civic
Places; Rural Smart Growth; and Overall Excellence in Smart Growth. The
communities honored this year range from a rural coastal area to a
historic reuse project. They show us that if we grow smarter, we can
make America's cities, suburbs, small towns, and rural communities more
resilient to economic and environmental challenges and more beautiful.

After the awards ceremony, representatives from each of the five
award-winning communities will participate in a panel discussion that
will include challenges they overcame; partnerships with government,
nonprofit, and public stakeholders; and lessons learned for other places
hoping to build sustainable communities.

Please RSVP at the National Building Museum's website

Jamie Baker Roskie

Shoup on Graduated Density Zoning

Prof. Donald Shoup (Urban Planning, UCLA) contributed a comment to our recent post on Daniel Kelly's eminent domain paper.  In case you missed it, I wanted to be sure you had the chance to get the link to Prof. Shoup's important paper Graduated Density Zoning, from the Journal of Planning Education and Research (2008).  The abstract:

The difficulty of assembling sites large enough to redevelop at higher density can impede regeneration in city centers and accelerate suburban sprawl onto large sites already in single ownership. One promising new planning strategy to encourage voluntary land assembly is graduated density zoning, which allows higher density on larger sites. This strategy can increase the incentive for owners to cooperate in a land assembly that creates higher land values.  Graduated density zoning will not eliminatethe incentive to hold out, but it can create a new fear of being left out.  Holdouts who are left with sites that cannot be combined with enough contiguous properties to trigger higher density lose a valuable economic opportunity.This article examines the difficulty of assembling land for infill development, and explains graduated density zoning as away to encourage voluntary land assembly.  Finally, it presents the results of graduated density zoning in practice.

Graduated density zoning is a compelling idea.  You may also be familiar with Shoup's influential work on parking, including his book The High Cost of Free Parking (APA, 2005), and very recent articles quoting him in the New York Times (Tyler Cowen, Free Parking Comes at a Price, Aug. 2010) and Slate (Tom Vanderbilt, Time Expired: The End of the Parking Meter, Oct. 2010).

Matt Festa

EPA Announces Registration for 2011 New Partners for Smart Growth Conference

From Roberta White at EPA:

Conference registration is now open for the 10th Annual New Partners for Smart Growth Conference, which will be held on February 3-5, 2011 in Charlotte, North Carolina.

The multi-disciplinary program will include over 100 sessions and will feature cutting-edge policies and programs, projects, strategies and implementation tools that address the challenges of implementing smart growth development. The 2011 conference will include an underlying theme of capacity-building and financing smart growth. Conference sessions will focus on issues such as: financing smart growth and capacity-building; improving local economies and job creation; reducing greenhouse gas emissions; improving transportation systems and land use patterns; improving water quality; improving public health and safety; conserving energy and other natural resources; promoting equitable development and environmental justice; providing affordable housing choices; and creating safer and healthier communities for all. Several sessions will be approved for AICP continuing education credits.

The conference agenda also includes special events, including a one-day workshop on February 2, 2011 entitled " Achieving Equitable Development:Strategies to Empower Community Organizations." Visit www.NewPartners.org for detailed information on the conference program, tours of model projects, special events, invited speakers, hotel and transportation information, and to REGISTER NOW!

This event always sounds super interesting to me.  Maybe next year I can make it - Charlotte's not too far from Athens.

Jamie Baker Roskie

Eagle on the Really New Property

I'm still out of town, but a quick dose of internet access reveals what looks like a very interesting new property theory piece by Steven J. Eagle (George Mason): The Really New Property: A Skeptical Appraisal, forthcoming in the Indiana Law Review.  The abstract:

This article reviews recent scholarship invoking the prophetic tradition in American jurisprudence and calling for the transformation of property law. It contrasts imposed top-down social change with Burkean and Oakeshottian gradual change derived from conversation within our legal and cultural tradition. The work of Robert Ellickson is presented as illustrating the development of property law in the Burkean tradition. Transformative property scholarship, on the other hand, largely reflects Osborne and Gaebler’s view that government should steer and private actors row, reinforced by Thaler and Sunstein’s call for soft paternalism. The article asserts, however, that Kant and Berlin’s admonition that all of humankind is “crooked timber” precludes officials from a privileged position, a postulate well supported by public choice theory.

The article views the change in conceptual thinking from Hohfeldian property to Heller’s anticommons and assertions of disintegration and entropy of property. These set the stage, for instance, for advocacy of “rightsizing,’ through the shrinking private parcels through smart growth and densification, and the supersizing of government-controlled land through condemnation for urban redevelop.

Other topics discussed are regionalism, new governance, and the creation of affordable housing, through, among other things, the rearrangement of traditional landlord-tenant relationships. The article expresses skepticism that flaws inherent in the top-down transformation of property would permit outcomes that are coherent and effective, and could withstand capture by affected interest groups.

Matt Festa

Fox on Smart Growth in Vancouver & Seattle

David Fox (J.D. Candidate, Boston College) has published Halting Urban Sprawl: Smart Growth in Vancouver and Seattle, 33 B.C. Int'l & Comp. L. Rev. 43 (2010).  The abstract:

Haphazard and unorganized land-use planning in United States cities has resulted in endless sprawl that is straining infrastructure, polluting the atmosphere, and negatively affecting quality of life. This Note compares efforts of two similarly situated North American cities—Seattle and Vancouver—in enacting Smart Growth policies to combat sprawl and argues that Seattle, and American cities in general, should look to Vancouver’s example to limit urban sprawl and comprehensively plan at local and regional levels for sustainable growth and more livable spaces over the coming decades.

I'll be in Vancouver when you read this post, so I'll be checking out the land use!

Matt Festa

Denver's new Form Based Zoning Code

Denver has adopted a brand new zoning code, it's first major revision in over 50 years.  The new code is billed as form-based.  We've posted before about Denver's process towards this new code.  From the Denver Post: Denver Council Passes Overhaul of City's Zoning Laws.

The Denver City Council on Monday unanimously approved an overhaul of the city's zoning laws, making the first comprehensive change to the city's land-use rules since 1956. . . . 

The new code would replace one that city planners characterize as inefficient and inflexible. They said the new rules would steer growth and density to areas near transit corridors and support existing development patterns in long-established neighborhoods.

The Post article is a little short on substantive description of the new ordinance, but it has a nice graphic illustrating the different characteristics of the new zones: downtown; urban center; general urban; urban edge; and suburban [sounds pretty transect-y, doesn't it?].  The process started with the Denver comprehensive plan in 2000 and was supplemented by the Blueprint Denver movement.  There is a very good website promoting the new code called The New Zoning Code: Putting Blueprint Denver to Work, at http://www.newcodedenver.org/-- lots of information, explanations, and the new ordinance's text and map.  Check it out.

Matt Festa

Land Use Panel at Law & Society Association

This weekend is the always-excellent annual meeting of the Law & Society Association in Chicago.  I haven't scoured the program, but there is sure to be a plethora of interesting panels and events.  I do have firsthand knowledge, however, of one particular land-use panel that is guaranteed to present fascinating projects from interesting up-and-coming scholars.

Panel: Managing the American Dream: Land Use and the Politics of Growth after the Mortgage Crisis.  Fri., May 28, 12:30-2:15
Chair: James J. Kelly, Jr. (University of Baltimore)

The Effects of SmartGrowth on the Preservation of Historic Resources, William J. Cook (Charleston School of Law)

Debtors' Environmental Impact: Structured Finance and the Suburbanization of Open Space, Heather Hughes (American University)

Sustainability and the Practice of Community Development, James J. Kelly, Jr. (University of Baltimore)

The Artifice of Local Growth Politics: At-Large Elections, Ballot Box Zoning, and Judicial Review of Land Use Initiatives, Kenneth Stahl (Chapman University)

The abstract:

Land Use is one of the most interdisciplinary areas of legal theory and practice, yet in today's environment there are common issues facing land use planners. The goals of promoting growth, land development, and property ownership are in tension with emerging priorities such as growing “smart,” reducing sprawl, and sustainability. These issues expand across borders and regions yet remain intricately tied to local politics. The mortgage and financial crises have impacted the land use environment for governments, communities, and landowners. This panel explores contemporary land use challenges from the perspectives of local growth politics, sustainability and community development, smart growth and historic preservation, and the impact of policies promoting home ownership.

I had really hoped to be there for this panel, and I am very disappointed that I won't be able to make it.  But perhaps since Will, Jim, Ken, and (I hope) Heather are friends of the blog, perhaps we might be lucky enough to get a report, and we'd love to host more discussion of these forthcoming papers on the blog (hint, hint!).  At any rate, if you are going to LSA or will be in the Chicago area, I highly recommend that you attend.

Matt Festa

Congress for the New Urbanism 18: Atlanta

Last week Jamie posted about the "Sprawlanta" video, part of the project American Makeover: An Online Film Series about New Urbanism.  "Sprawlanta" won first prize at last year's Congress for the New Urbanism video competition.

This week, the Congress for the New Urbanism meets in SprawlAtlanta for CNU 18, its annual conference.  The description:

Is New Urbanism the prescription for healthier communities? Increasing scientific evidence suggests that community design -- land use, design character, transportation systems, sustainability, and density -- can promote physical activity and lifelong communities; lower the risk of traffic injuries, obesity, heart disease, and hypertension; improve air quality, affordability, social equity, connectivity, mental health and long-term value; increase social connection, sense of community and healthy food access; and reduce crime, violence and contributions to climate change. Organized with assistance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Congress for the New Urbanism 18, "New Urbanism: Rx for Healthy Places," will present new research and innovative techniques for assessing the health impact of land use, transportation planning, and community design decisions -- from fine grained to mega-regional scales. Share the opportunities and challenges of designing and retrofitting communities that make it easier for people to live healthy lives -- CNU's 18th annual Congress in Atlanta, May 19-22, 2010. Preceding the Congress will be certification training, the NextGen Congress and other partner events May 17-18, 2010. For further information, visit http://www.cnu.org/cnu18 .  

Looks like the program has a very interesting lineup of speakers and events, as usual.  If you can make it to CNU 18, send us a report!  

In other CNU news ("CNUse"? . . . sorry . . .), guess which city will be introducing the newest CNU Full Chapter this weekend?  Houston, we have a Chapter!  Board members Andrew Burleson and David Crossley will be also be speaking in Atlanta.  Congrats to CNU-Houston.  

Matt Festa

Nandwa & Ogura on the Urbran Growth Controls and Regional Economic Growth

Boaz Nandwa (American U. Dubai--Business Administration) and Laudo M. Ogura (Grand Valley State--Economics) have posted Do Urban Growth Controls Slow Down Regional Economic Growth?  The abstract:

Previous studies indicate that urban growth controls (local land use regulations that attempt to restrict population growth and urban sprawl) have increased housing prices and diverted population growth to uncontrolled cities. As a result, when growth controls become widespread in a region, new workers (young and newcomers) might struggle to find adequate housing.

Considering this potential restriction imposed on the growth of the regional labor supply, we investigate whether the adoption of residential land use regulations have affected regional economic growth in recent years (2001-2008). In the regressions, regulatory indexes developed by other authors are used as proxies for the strictness and prevalence of regulations. Results suggest that aggregate production and population have grown at slower rates in highly regulated metropolitan areas. Per capita production, on the other hand, does not seem to have been affected.

Matt Festa

Hollander on Shrinking Cities

Justin Hollander (Tufts--Planning) has posted Moving Toward a Shrinking Cities Metric: Analyzing Land Use Changes Associated with Depopulation in Flint, Michigan, in Cityscape, Vol. 12, No. 1, 2010 .  The abstract:

Cities around the globe have experienced depopulation or population shrinkage at an acute level in the last half century. Conventional community development and planning responses have looked to reverse the process of depopulation almost universally, with little attention paid to how neighborhoods physically change when they lose population. This article presents an approach to study the physical changes of depopulating neighborhoods in a novel way. The approach considers how population decline creates different physical impacts (more or less housing abandonment, for example) across different neighborhoods. Data presented from a detailed case study of Flint, Michigan, illustrate that population decline can be more painful in some neighborhoods than in others, suggesting that this article’s proposed approach may be useful in implementing smart decline.

Matt Festa

Texas Sprawl Goes Out With a Bang

They imploded Texas Stadium recently, which was in the suburban city of Irving in the DFW metroplex.  What is Irving going to do with all of that land?  Turns out they have a plan, as described in this story: Texas Sprawl Goes Out With a Bang: Development Sprouts on Irving Transit Line.  

Once the last traces of Texas Stadium are cleared away this summer, Irving intends to dust off plans drafted 10 years ago to transform the Cowboys’ former home and the surrounding acreage into the densest, most walkable neighborhood in the Dallas-Ft. Worth Metroplex outside of downtown Dallas. An extension of the Dallas Area Rapid Transit (DART) Orange line is slated to run through the stadium footprint on its way from downtown to Dallas-Ft. Worth (DFW) International Airport. . . . The stadium site is the next piece in its urban puzzle.

That piece has three owners -- Irving, the neighboring University of Dallas, and Southwest Premier Properties, a private developer -- whose holdings comprise 468 acres. The plans the three chipped in for 10 years ago (and resulting zoning) call for things like four- or five-story apartment blocks with ground floor retail rather than single-family homes. (The Greater Irving Las Colinas Chamber of Commerce tossed some renderings up on its Web site Monday. “’Urban-suburban,’ is a phrase we’ve been using a lot lately, says Maura Gast, the executive director of Irving’s Convention & Visitors Bureau, referring to the notion of urban densities in a suburban setting. “Everywhere the DART is going is driving more density. The market will support it; developers have started jockeying along that path.” Where the stadium once stood, Gast would like to see something like Chicago’s Millennium Park -- at least she has the acreage.

Part of the reason for the assessment of market demand for urbanism is that the nearby Las Colinas area that is home to corporate offices but lacking in other dimensions.  

The glittering towers featured in the opening credits of Dallas -- one pair seemingly clad in gold leaf, another as black and viscous as an oil slick -- lie not in Dallas proper, but in the remnants of El Ranchito de las Colinas, the 12,000-acre “Little Ranch of the Hills.” The same year DFW opened just west of it in 1973, owner Ben Carpenter unveiled his master plan for a wholly-owned-and-operated city carved from those mesquite-shrouded hills -- the largest urban development in the country. Before a single plot of land was sold, he ordered the dredging of lakes and canals, stocked them with gondolas, and ran a monorail overhead. "It is Disney World for the affluent," Texas Monthly reported in the 1980s.  [paging Chad Emerson!]  "In fact, when executives from Disney World visited the development a few years ago, one of them commented that it was a shame ol’ Walt couldn’t have lived to see the real thing."

What’s most interesting about Irving’s plans to add density in its last undeveloped corner is the tacit admission that Las Colinas’s gold-plated office parks and single-family homes are no longer enough. "The piece that has always been missing from Las Colinas is the human density that’s missing on weekends and at nights," says Gast. The reason for adding that piece is an eminently practical one -- it’s what those corporate tenants, their workers and developers all want. Irving is embracing transit-oriented development because it thinks it can make money doing it.

Matt Festa