Land Use Prof Blog

WSJ says More Office Jobs going from Suburbs to Downtowns

For decades the trend in most American cities has been one of jobs moving from downtowns to the suburbs.  A recent Wall Street Journal piece suggests that this trend may be shifting: Downtowns Get a Fresh Lease: Suburbs Lose Office Workers to Business Districts, Reversing a Post-War Trend.  From the article by Anton Troianovski:

As the market for office space shows signs of recovery, the suburbs are getting left behind.

For decades, the suburbs benefited from companies seeking lower rent, less crime and a shorter commute for many workers. But now, office buildings in many city downtowns have stopped losing tenants or are filling up again even as the office space in the surrounding suburbs continues to empty, a challenge to the post-war trend in the American workplace and a sign of the economic recovery's uneven geography. . . .

Statistics show that suburban office markets were hit harder by the recession than their downtown counterparts and are recovering more slowly. The national office vacancy rate in downtowns was 14.9% at the end of the third quarter, the same level as in early 2005—while the suburban vacancy rate hit 19%, 2.3 percentage points higher than in 2005, according to data firm Reis Inc.

In the first three quarters of this year, businesses in the suburbs vacated a net 16 million square feet of occupied office space—nearly 280 football fields—while downtowns have stabilized, losing just 119,000 square feet.

You might argue that simply losing fewer square feet than the suburbs (where the harder-hit industries such as mortgage lending and home building tend to be located) doesn't necessarily presage the long-awaited Return to Downtown.  But real estate guru and urbanism advocate Christopher Leinberger detects something bigger going on:

[S]ome scholars, urban advocates, and developers believe a secular shift is under way in the American workplace.

"Young people don't want to be out on the fringe...and as people are beginning to figure that out, it's beginning to get factored into office relocations," said Christopher Leinberger, a real-estate developer and a visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution. "It's a major structural trend that we in real estate are going to have to adjust to."

The WSJ article has lots of links to photos, data, and interactive maps.  Thanks to Houston Tomorrow for the pointer.

Matt Festa

Arcosanti - City on a Hill

We went to Oak Creek Canyon, north of Sedona, Arizona over the holiday.  It was beautiful. On the drive back to Phoenix, I insisted (over my wife's rolling eyes) that we visit Arcosanti. An experimental town founded in 1970, Arcosanti aspires to fuse architecture with ecology.

 

The town seeks to provide social interaction and accessibility of urban living with ecological goals ranging from spare resource use to environmental integratoin.  The project-town rests on 25 acres of a 4,060 acre land preserve. Although originally envisioned for 5,000 people, Arcosanti's actual population varies between 50 and 100 people. The master plan envisions a massive complex, called Arcosanti 5000, that would dwarf the current buildings.

Despite Arcosanti's meager population, the underlying land use philosophy - arcology - is intriguing. Although certainly not new, "archology" is Paolo Soleri's concept of cities which compact human necessities in marked contrast to urban sprawl with its inherently wasteful consumption of land, energy and time. Instead of isolating people from each other and the community, the "complexification and miniaturization" of the city encourages and relies on community.

According to promomtional materials,

• an archology would need about two percent as much land as a typical city of similar population 
• Archology eliminates the automobile from within the city 
• The multi-use nature of archology design would put living, working and public spaces within easy reach of each other, and
• walking would be the main transportation within the city
• "Arcosanti is probably the most important experiment undertaken in our lifetime"

Our visit to the town was uninspiring.  It did not meet the rhetoric above.  The bronze and ceramic wind bells Soleri sells were nice, but the edifices themselves were ill kept and uninspiring. We did not get a tour of the entire town, so perhaps judment should be reserved. 

Still, why only 50 residents (mostly students /educators) in a "city" that envisioned 5,000 way back in 1970?  Why does Soleri himself live in Scottsdale, Arizona (a sprawling well-to-do suburb)?  To me it tracks what James McWilliams calls "a problem endemic to modern environmentalism."  I agree with McWilliams's suggestion that "concerned consumers are flush with noble intentions, but too often these intentions succumb to external realities."

McKay Cunningham

Veterans Day

You might be surprised at how much land use and veterans' issues have been intertwined over the course of American history.  From land grants and westward expansion, to the expansion of education, to the postwar expansion of suburbia, many federal, state, and local policies have tied land use and development to an appropriate public concern for veterans; the results have been mixed.  I wrote a post on these issues last year; you can read it here.  

This year, we have at least one new land use/veterans issue to add: the U.S. Supreme Court decided Salazar v. Buono, which dealt with a land swap by Congress to protect a monument to servicemembers killed in World War I, placed on public land by the Veterans of Foreign Wars, that was in the shape of a cross.  Read our post here, and SCOTUSblog's resource page, and check out Christoper Lund's Northwestern Colloquy article on the case.

A happy Veterans Day to all, with gratitude to those who have served in harm's way.  

Matt Festa

Adverse Possession and the Foreclosure Crisis?

This New York Times article, At Legal Fringe, Empty Houses go to the Needy, tells the story of a guy in Florida who seems to be attempting to use adverse possession to take abandoned homes and then lease them for low rent to needy families.  

NORTH LAUDERDALE, Fla. — Save Florida Homes Inc. and its owner, Mark Guerette, have found foreclosed homes for several needy families here in Broward County, and his tenants could not be more pleased. Fabian Ferguson, his wife and two children now live a two-bedroom home they have transformed from damaged and abandoned to full and cozy.

There is just one problem: Mr. Guerette is not the owner. Yet.

In a sign of the odd ingenuity that has grown from the real estate collapse, he is banking on an 1869 Florida statute that says the bundle of properties he has seized will be his if the owners do not claim them within seven years.

A version of the same law was used in the 1850s to claim possession of runaway slaves, though Mr. Guerette, 47, a clean-cut mortgage broker, sees his efforts as heroic. “There are all these properties out there that could be used for good,” he said.

Apparently most of the homes are in foreclosure.  Guerette has taken possession, made some improvements, and is paying the property taxes.  The tenants and the neighbors--at least the ones quoted in the article, who understandably prefer occupied to abandoned houses next door--think he is doing a great thing.  The State of Florida disagrees.  He is being prosecuted for fraud.  

Is this an innovative response to the foreclosure crisis, or is it a scam?  No one likes adverse possession in theory when they first hear about it.  Students always ask, like Jennifer Aniston in Office Space, "so how is that not stealing?"  But of course the justification for AP--we prefer that abandoned land go to someone who will put it to its highest and best use--seems to have some application here.  On the other hand, this certainly isn't a "good faith" trespass under a belief in legitimate title.  The article quotes Florida law prof Michael Allan Wolf, who expresses concern that using adverse possession this way can lead to a serious disruption in chains of title and with the foreclosure process.  And it's not hard to see how this kind of activity could lead to widespread confusion and potential fraud.  

If this idea takes it a little too far, then what can we do about the parallel problems of massive foreclosures, abandoned buildings, and the lack of affordable housing?  Thanks to Scott Rempell for the pointer.  

Matt Festa

Lefcoe on the Uses and Abuses of Tax Increment Financing

George Lefcoe (Southern California) has posted Competing for the Next Hundred Million Americans: The Uses and Abuses of Tax Increment Financing.  The abstract:

Demographers predict that the US population will grow by one hundred million in 2050. Newcomers will settle in suburbia, particularly to the fast growing big cities of the south and west, cities in the resurgent heartland of the country, exurbia and ‘superstar cities’. 

Communities eager to appeal to these newcomers will use tax increment financing for public improvements such as stadiums, museums, plazas and promenades. These public improvements are often integrated into signature private redevelopment projects carefully designed to achieve environmental and planning objectives by being pedestrian-friendly, high density, and mixed use, accessible not only by automobile but public transit as well. 

After illustrating the beneficial use of tax increment financing, I describe six major criticisms often leveled against tax increment financing (TIF). (1) TIF helps outer suburbs lure jobs from center cities and inner suburbs; (2) TIF should be confined to seriously blighted areas and is not; (3) TIF is often used to subsidize the increased supply of retail development in markets where demand is static, achieving little except the displacement of sales from other locations; (4) cities sponsoring tax increment projects unfairly and inefficiently drain property tax revenues from other taxing entities including schools and counties; (5) There are few serious obstacles preventing local governments from sponsoring TIF projects in places that would have attracted private development anyway, or bestowing subsidies greater than necessary upon firms agreeing to locate in marginal areas; and (6) Many local governments don’t bother to analyze whether TIF projects are net tax revenue producers or assess periodically whether actual yields match initial projections.

We're working on TIFs right now in my state & local government class.  Students find these animals to be challenging and interesting, because they are very powerful drivers of land use yet fairly obscure to the general public.  This article helps explain TIFs and put them in the context of land use debates over density, development, and urbanism.

Matt Festa

Lucy's UVa Report on a Different Path to a Housing Rebound

William Lucy (Virginia--urban & environmental planning) has authored a report titled A Different Path to a Housing Rebound.  From the UVa press release:

September 24, 2010 — Changing demographics are the main cause of today's housing surplus, according to new research by a University of Virginia urban and environmental planning professor. The path to a housing market rebound doesn't lie in new construction, William Lucy found, but in rethinking housing needs based on changing demographics.

Lucy based his report on a review of U.S. Census Bureau data, U.S. Housing Market Conditions: Historical Data, U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development reports, Joint Center for Housing Studies and research by the Urban Land Institute and other scholars.

"Surplus housing is not caused by either excessive new construction or by foreclosure," Lucy said, noting that only 20 percent of housing units for sale or sold in 2009-10 were new houses and foreclosures. 

The press release webpage includes a short, informative YouTube interview with Prof. Lucy.  There is also a link to the report and to his supporting data tables.  He concludes that the future of the housing market is in recognizing the demand for housing options based on location and demographics.  

More decentralized, multidimensional and shared solutions by developers, builders and government are required, and opportunities for fix-up, remodeling, expansion and condominium projects in cities and inner suburbs, fueled by preferences for convenient locations, will be the economic driver in the housing market in the future, Lucy predicts.

"Revival of housing may be slower than many wish, and it will not be a full early partner in moving employment toward its previous peak," Lucy said. "It is time to move on to a richer, more varied and enhanced quality of life with the convenience and energy efficiency that denser settlements can provide."

Matt Festa

Designing Tomorrow: America’s World’s Fairs of the 1930s

The National Building Museum has announced a new exhibition: Designing Tomorrow: America’s World’s Fairs of the 1930s, from Oct. 2 (Saturday!) thru July 10, 2011.  It sounds absolutely fascinating:

Between 1933 and 1940 tens of millions of Americans visited world's fairs in cities across the nation.Designing Tomorrow will explore the modernist spectacles of architecture and design they witnessed -- visions of a brighter future during the worst economic crisis the United States had known. The fairs popularized modern design for the American public and promoted the idea of science and consumerism as salvation from the Great Depression. . . . 

A first-of-its-kind exhibition, Designing Tomorrow will feature nearly 200 never-before-assembled artifacts including building models, architectural remnants, drawings, paintings, prints, furniture, an original RCA TRK-12 television, Elektro the Moto-Man robot, and period film footage. The artifacts are drawn from the featured expositions: Chicago, IL—A Century of Progress International Exposition (1933–34); San Diego, CA—California Pacific International Exposition (1935-36); Dallas, TX—Texas Centennial Exposition (1936); Cleveland, OH—Great Lakes Exposition (1936-37); San Francisco, CA—Golden Gate International Exposition (1939-40); and New York, NY—New York World's Fair (1939-40).

These world's fairs had a profound influence on American culture and ideals for land use.  I've blogged about the 1893 Chicago Columbian Exposition before and its impact on the origins of land use planning.  This group from the 1930s also had a profound impact on Americans' notions of modernism, suburbia, and even on the inspiration for Disney World (hey Chad!).  Can't wait to see this next time I'm in DC.  If you're going to ALPS in March, the National Building Museum is only a couple of blocks away from Georgetown Law, so definitely plan to check it out!

Matt Festa

Kotkin: Why Housing Will Come Back

On his New Geography blog for Forbes, Joel Kotkin has an essay on why he thinks there will be a resurgence in the housing market starting later this decade: Why Housing Will Come Back.  He begins with a historical observation:

Few icons of the American way of life have suffered more in recent years than  homeownership. Since the bursting of the housing bubble, there has been a steady drumbeat from the factories of futurist punditry that the notion of owning a home will, and, more importantly, should become out of reach for most Americans.

Before jumping on this bandwagon, perhaps we would do well to understand the role that homeownership and the diffusion of property plays in a democracy. From Madison and Jefferson through Lincoln’s Homestead Act, the most enduring and radical notion of American political economy has been the diffusion of property.

Kotkin then notes that in recent years, and especially in light of the mortgage crisis, the single-family homeownership ideal has been criticized from both the right (government overpromotion) and the left (sprawl, new urbanism, environmentalism).  His response:

Yet for all the problems facing the housing market, homeownership–not exclusively single-family houses–is not likely to fade dramatically for the foreseeable future. The most compelling reason has to do with continued public preference for single-family homes, suburbs and the notion of owning a “piece” of the American dream.   This is why that four out of every five homes built in America over the past few decades, notes urban historian Witold Rybczynski, have less to do with government policy than “with buyers’ preferences, that is, What People Want.

Kotkin goes on to explain several reasons why he believes housing will come back, after adjusting to the market correction imposed by the economic recession.  Why I find most interesting is that his prediction is based less on economics or law than on demographics:

As boomers age, the two big groups that will drive housing will be the young Millenial generation born after 1983 as well as immigrants and their offspring. Sixty million strong, the millenials are just now entering their late 20s. They are just beginning to start hunting for houses and places to establish roots. Generational chroniclers  Morley Winograd and Mike Hais, describe millenials in their surveys as family-oriented young people who value homeownership even more than their boomer parents. They also are somewhat more likely to choose suburbia as their “ideal place to live” than the previous generation.

These tendencies are even more marked among immigrants and their children. Already a majority of immigrants live in suburbia, up from 40% in the 1970s. They are attracted in many cases by both jobs and the opportunity to buy a single-family home. For an immigrant from Mumbai, Hong Kong or Mexico City, the “American dream” is rarely living in high density surrounded by concret

An interesting take.  For more writings on urban theory from the center-right perspective (e.g., Why we Have to Learn to Love the Subdivision--Again) see Kotkin's New Geography website. 

Matt Festa

Gotta Get Back in Time

Last weekend we saw a TV rerun of the 1985 classic Back to the Future.  I was reminded of something that didn't occur to me until many years after I saw it for the first time, which is that it is, subtly, an excellent land use movie.  Christopher Leinberger observed this in the opening pages of his terrific book The Option of Urbanism: Investing in a New American Dream.  From the intro:

When I teach a graduate real estate seminar, the first homework I give to the students is watching the 1985 movie Back to the Future.  The film reflects most of the fundamental changes in how America has been built over the last sixty years.  

Specifically, in 1985 suburban "Hill Valley," the old downtown is dead.  The public square is deserted at all hours except for the homeless; once-thriving establishments have been replaced by adult businesses; and the clock hasn't been fixed in thirty years.  The new (1980s) mall at the outskirts of town now has all the action, accessible only by car (including time-machine car, or terrorist van!).  

When Michael J. Fox's character Marty McFly goes "back in time" to 1955 HIll Valley, he finds a vibrant downtown, where everyone walks around for work and shopping, teens go to the malt shop and the movie theater, and small businesses abound.  Sacred, safe, and busy, perhaps?  Back to Leinberger:

The two Hill Valleys show the only two viable divergent options we have in how to build our metropolitan built environment--which consists of the houses, roads, water and sewer lines, police and fire stations, office buildings, shops, factories, parks, and everything else that makes up where most Americans live, work, and play.  

Leinberger goes on to label the 1955 version as "walkable urbanism," and proceeds from there.  The Option of Urbanism has been one of the most insightful books I've read recently, and of course if you're looking for a Labor Day Weekend movie that deals with land use, you'll find Back to the Future worth a fresh look.  

Now, this kind of goes downhill at the end of the movie when, in the sequel set-up, Doc goes thirty years forward and then returns in a flying car fueled by household garbage.  So we can expect that in 2015?  

With that, is it possible that those of us who are interested in new urbanism can now be more sympathetic with George McFly's botched pickup line: "you . . . are my . . . density!"

Matt Festa

Rybczynski in Slate on Ordinary Places

Witold Rybczynski, Slate's architecture critic, UPenn prof, and author of many fascinating books, has an article--well, they call it a "slideshow"--called Ordinary Places: Rediscovering the parking lot, the big-box store, the farmer's market, the gas station.  It's a nice presentation with photos and commentary and well worth taking a quick look.    

Rybczynski has written scads about great public spaces, traditional neighborhood development, and so on, so he certainly isn't a defender of sprawling suburbia.  So I think that his comments on the "ordinary places" in the slideshow are interesting, and make a good point about finding value in the spaces in which we live.  Rybczynski cites landscape historian J.B. Jackson's concept of the "vernacular landscape."  For example, here are some counterintuitive observations on that evil, un-green scourge of our soulless car-bound culture, the Parking Lot:

Whether you are going to a farmers market or a big-box store, chances are you will have to park. Parking lots, rather than squares and plazas, are the most common public outdoor open spaces in America. They are complicated social spaces, where travelling gives way to arriving, driving to walking, privacy to publicness—and vice versa. Although inevitably described as "seas of asphalt"—they look bleak in photographs—they are orderly, clean places; Jackson once referred to their "austere beauty." Parking lots are also surprisingly civic. People politely observe rules of behaviour for the sake of the common good, parking between the lines, staying out of the handicapped spaces, driving slowly. It is one place where cars and pedestrians happily coexist.

Interesting stuff; definitely check out the link for the photos and commentary.

Matt Festa

Merkel in NYT on When Less Was More in Housing

In the New York Times Opinionator Blog, architectural historian Jayne Merkel has published When Less Was More.  She notes the overlooked fact that for most of the "golden age" of American suburban expansion in the postwar years, the average suburban home was well under 1,000 square feet.

We tend to think of the decades immediately following World War II as a time of exuberance and growth, with soldiers returning home by the millions, going off to college on the G.I. Bill and lining up at the marriage bureaus.

But when it came to their houses, it was a time of common sense and a belief that less truly could be more. During the Depression and the war, Americans had learned to live with less, and that restraint, in combination with the postwar confidence in the future, made small, efficient housing positively stylish.

As we find ourselves in an era of diminishing resources, could “less” become “more” again? If so, the mid-20th-century building boom might provide some inspiration.

The article goes on to discuss the movements in early and mid 20th century architecture; the influence of modernism (but not Le Corbusier!), and has great photos ranging from Frank Lloyd Wright buildings to Levittown.  

But like much of American society, the middle-class home began to grow over time. The average size of an American house in 1950 was 983 square feet. Slowly, though, both more square footage and more amenities became part of the American dream, so that by 2004 the average home topped 2,300 square feet.

Land use is an inherently visual subject so the pictures are nice to see (curses on all those IP restrictions).  I'm always on the lookout for references to single-family housing as the "American dream" so I found this article particularly interesting.  H/t to Genevieve Coen.

Matt Festa

NYT on the Costs of Seizing Fannie & Freddie

Over the weekend this story by Binyamin Applebaum was featured on the front page of the New York Times: Cost of Seizing Fannie and Freddie Surges for Taxpayers. 

CASA GRANDE, Ariz. — Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac took over a foreclosed home roughly every 90 seconds during the first three months of the year. They owned 163,828 houses at the end of March, a virtual city with more houses than Seattle. The mortgage finance companies, created by Congress to help Americans buy homes, have become two of the nation’s largest landlords. . . .

For all the focus on the historic federal rescue of the banking industry, it is the government’s decision to seize Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in September 2008 that is likely to cost taxpayers the most money. So far the tab stands at $145.9 billion, and it grows with every foreclosure of a three-bedroom home with a two-car garage one hour from Phoenix. The Congressional Budget Office predicts that the final bill could reach $389 billion.

The article has some good vignettes of how the Fannie-Freddie "rescue" process is playing out in communities like the featured one in Arizona, where private contractors are paid to maintain, renovate, and try to resell the foreclosed homes.  The article also gives a short but interesting background on Fannie and Freddie.

Fannie and Freddie increased American home ownership over the last half-century by persuading investors to provide money for mortgage loans. The sales pitch amounted to a money-back guarantee: If borrowers defaulted, the companies promised to repay the investors. . . .

“Our business is the American dream of home ownership,” Fannie Mae declared in its mission statement, and in 2001 the company set a target of helping to create six million new homeowners by 2014. Here in Arizona, during a housing boom fueled by cheap land, cheap money and population growth, Fannie Mae executives trumpeted that the company would invest $15 billion to help families buy homes.

As it turns out, Fannie and Freddie increasingly were channeling money into loans that borrowers could not afford. As defaults mounted, the companies quickly ran low on money to honor their guarantees. The federal government, fearing that investors would stop providing money for new loans, placed the companies in conservatorship and took a 79.9 percent ownership stake, adding its own guarantee that investors would be repaid.

The huge and continually rising cost of that decision has spurred national debate about federal subsidies for mortgage lending. . . .

I think the interesting question for the future is whether we are willing or able to reassess the idea of homeownership as the American Dream, and the extent to which we (over)promote homeownership as a public policy. 

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

"Sprawlanta"

In a funny confluence of events my colleague, Pratt Cassity, sent me a blog by writer Brad Aaron (formerly of Athens, now of NYC) on Streetsblog.  The blog is about an episode of the American Makeover webseries on Atlanta.  The film includes notable Atlantans like Robert Bullard, known as the father of the environmental justice movement and the head of the Environmental Justice Resource Center at Clark Atlanta University, Howard Frumpkin of the CDC, and Charles Brewer, developer of one of Atlanta's rare truly New Urbanist developments, Glenwood Park.  Although the film is ostensibly about Atlanta, it's really about Atlanta's status as the poster child of urban sprawl.  It's funny, short, and pithy, and would be a great introductory piece for students about sprawl and its effects, for good and for ill.

Jamie Baker Roskie

Local Growth Politics and The Real Estate Meltdown

In my previous posts, here and here, I discussed the nature of local growth politics in southern California and elsewhere.  The central dynamic of local growth politics nationwide is the conflict between developers and homeowners about whether, where, and what form new development should take.  This dynamic presupposes that growth is something perpetual and that the critical issue is how to "manage" growth in the same way we would use dams and levees to manage a raging river.  The history of Los Angeles and other sunbelt cities certainly gives us much reason to believe that growth is indeed inexorable unless some force of nature (such as extremely arid or mountainous terrain), some accident of history (such as the huge landholdings of the Irvine company), or some political movement (such as the environmental and slow-growth movements of the 1970s and 80s), applies the brakes.  And according to the "growth machine" school, even these latter forces can only re-direct or temporarily slow growth.

The events of the last few years, however, have cast doubt on whether growth is in fact perpetual and inexorable, as we are now seeing ghost-town residential subdivisions appearing on the fringes of many once booming cities and established neighborhoods becoming gap-tooted with boarded up, foreclosed homes.  It was no force of nature, political movement, or accident of history that caused this downturn, however, but rather the very idea that growth was going to continue perpetually.  As property values were increasing up to 30% a year, interest rates were low and mortgages were easy to get even for the worst credit risks, real estate began to be seen as a fool-proof and inflation-proof investment, with no thought that there would eventually be a market correction.  Unbounded optimism about growth drove real estate values higher until the now-infamous "bubble" burst.  Today we look back on this bygone era as some sort of extended Ponzi scheme, and those who peddled the benefits of growth as glorified scam-artists.  Many are calling for more stringent regulation of the mortgage-backed securities market, prosecution of predatory lenders, or the deconstruction of the long-cherished ideal of homeownership.

As part of the postmortem on the real estate crisis, we should question what the future of growth politics holds.  Will NIMBY homeowners become more favorably disposed to development as growth-driven revenue slows to a trickle?  With property values collapsing, will homeowners begin to challenge the suite of public policies (highway subsidies, mortgage interest deductions, Euclidean zoning, etc.) that have long reified the idea of homeownership?  Will developers see the need to build high-density transit-oriented development rather than undertaking speculative homebuilding in the exurbs?  Will they work with community groups to avoid costly delays as their profit margins get thinner?

We can only speculate as to the answer to these questions, but my research leads to the preliminary conclusion that no, the dynamics of growth politics have not substantially changed.  To the contrary, anecdotal evidence suggests that the real estate slowdown may deepen the existing animosity between developers and homeowners.  On one hand, the real estate downturn has resulted in increased cynicism about the traditionally pro-growth policies of local governments.  In Florida, a grassroots movement called “Hometown Democracy” is pushing a ballot measure for November 2010 that would require voter referenda on all amendments to a general plan.  In its campaign literature, Hometown Democracy argues that land use control needs to be taken out of the hands of local officials, whose habit of “rubberstamping speculative plan changes” caused Florida’s “destructive boom-bust cycle.”  On the other hand, influential students of urban development like the New Urbanist scholar Andres Duany have pinned the blame for  the real estate crisis squarely on NIMBY homeowners, who supposedly perpetuated sprawl to safeguard their own lifestyle.  In short, the anecdotal evidence indicates that the polarized discourse of growth politics is unlikely to subside any time soon.

I invite you to share your own thoughts about how, if at all, the real estate crisis may alter the dynamics of local growth politics or other aspects of land use law or policy. 

Ken Stahl

"Boomburbs" and Local Growth Politics

In my previous post, I briefly sketched the thesis of my recent paper on local growth politics.  Here, I want to provide some important background for the project.  Those of us who study land use and local government tend to believe that local politics are dominated by homeowners, who disproportionately participate in local politics, either by vote or otherwise (such as appearing at a hearing to oppose a rezoning request), and whose participation is motivated solely by their own self-interest as homeowners.  That is, homeowners will advocate whatever local policies will boost property values, lower property taxation, ensure quality schools for their children, and protect neighborhood quality of life.  Usually, this means that homeowners support growth controls, exclusionary zoning policies that enable communities to screen for wealth, and opposition to almost any new development.  The thesis that "homevoters" control local government was most recently articulated in William Fischel's influential book, The Homevoter Hypothesis, but it is also amply supported by other important scholarship and caselaw. 

As Fischel points out in his book, the homevoter hypothesis really only works in relatively small suburban communities where homeowners can be assured of dominance.  It works less well in large, more diverse cities.  But Fischel assures us that this fact does not diminish the importance of his thesis because, after all, only 25% of the nation's population live in cities larger than 100,000 residents.  We are, in other words, a suburban nation full of homevoters.  Again, land use caselaw seems to support Fischel here, as so many of the important land use cases deal with small suburban communities attempting to use their zoning powers to maintain their suburban character.  Scholarship on land use and local government, likewise, frequently bemoans the exclusionary practices of small suburbs and the increasing fragmentation of metropolitan regions brought on by the proliferation of such small suburbs.

Having been steeped in this literature, I could not have been more surprised when I started reading a book by Robert Lang and Jennifer LeFurgy entitled Boomburbs: The Rise of America's Accidental Cities (2007).  According to the authors, Fischel's depiction of small suburban communities dominated by homevoters completely ignores what was (at the time) the fastest-growing, highly populated, and most politically influential region of the country, the Sunbelt.   Most communities in this region are neither small suburbs nor conventional big cities but "boomburbs," large, incorporated cities of over 100,000 that are "suburban" in density and attitude but "urban" in size and diversity (ethnic, architectural, and otherwise).  The authors argue that these boomburbs are  far too large and diverse for homevoters to dominate; instead, boomburb politics are driven by the "growth machine," a matrix of interests that profits from development, including politicians, developers, construction companies, unions and the media.  It is not only size and diversity that weaken the influence of the homevoter; boomburbs virtually all use at-large voting systems that tend to dilute the influence of neighborhood homeowners' groups and maximize the influence of deep-pocketed developers.   

Lang and LeFurgy's book was a revelation, but something about their argument struck me as far too simplistic. A significant plurality of the boomburbs the author identify are right here in southern California. Indeed, southern California has often been considered an archetype of the "growth machine" thesis.  However, southern California has also been labeled the birthplace of the NIMBYs ("Not in My Backyard,") a somewhat more pejorative name for Fischel's homevoters, and writers like Mike Davis have chronicled the bitter growth wars southern California has endured over the past several decades as developers have done battle with affluent homeowners.  It occurred to me that Lang and LeFurgy were ignoring something crucial: In the sunbelt, and in southern California specifically, "homevoters" who are dissatisfied with the "growth machine" and the at-large system can use the initiative process to put the brakes on growth. In fact, homeowners in southern California have passed scores of slow-growth initiatives after the passage of the epochal (or apocalyptic) Proposition 13, which itself was partially the result of strong anti-growth sentiment.  So there seems to be an uneasy equilibrium between development interests and homevoters in places like southern California, brought about, at least in part, by the co-existence of at-large voting and the initiative process.  Making matters even more interesting, I discovered that both at-large voting and the initiative process were enacted as part of the Progressive movement's effort to reform local politics.  This signaled that despite the opposition between pro-growth and anti-growth interests built into the political structures of boomburbs, there might be some underlying continuity as well.  Indeed, that continuity became my thesis, as you can see from my previous post.   You can also download the paper here.

Ken Stahl

County Struggles to Pay for Unused Infrastructure Capacity

In our relatively short time as co-editors of this blog, we've written several times about the impact of the implosion of the housing market.  (Just check out our housing and mortgage crisis categories for many of these posts.)  Recently, the local paper here in Athens - the Athens Banner Herald - carried a story about how nearby Jackson County is struggling to pay for the expanded water and sewer service they built to meet the expected demand for new home building.  Jackson County is an exurb of Atlanta and before the economy crashed it was experiencing massive growth.  Now, as in so many places in the country, subdivided land is little more than "PVC farms" (so called because they are empty except for PVC pipes sticking from the ground where homes are to be built).  The Jackson County commission's solution to this is to begin charging a $10 a month maintenance fee on the pipes.  However, with many of the builders gone bust, they will have to wait to collect this fee from future developers.  Let's hope that works out for them.

Jamie Baker Roskie

Anderson on Race, Poverty, and Exclusion at the Urban Fringe

Michelle Wilde Anderson (Berkeley) has posted Cities Inside Out: Race, Poverty, and Exclusion at the Urban Fringe.  The abstract:

Across the country, from Aberdeen, North Carolina to Modesto, California, city growth has bypassed hundreds of low-income neighborhoods founded under conditions of racial segregation in the early to mid-twentieth century. Denied annexation to neighboring municipalities, these urban pockets remain unincorporated, covered only by county governance and, in some cases, rural service standards. This article represents the first comprehensive academic treatment of such communities, which I call unincorporated urban areas. Challenging popular assumptions regarding an inner-city of racialized poverty in contrast to a white, suburban privatopia, unincorporated urban areas turn our attention to suburbs where the gravitational pull of the urban economy, affordability constraints, and the desire for homeownership have led to the settlement of low-income communities of color at the unregulated fringe, just beyond city limits.

The article analyzes the adequacy of local government structures serving unincorporated urban areas and the flexibility for reform within those structures. It asks, for the first time, whether two tiers of general purpose local government - a city and a county - offer urbanized areas greater participatory voice, stronger protection from undesirable land uses, improved collective services, and greater household mobility than county rule alone. In so doing, it raises the question of what adequacy in the context of local government might mean, revealing unquestioned assumptions about the allocation of power among cities, counties, and states. New legal issues concerning municipal services, extraterritorial eminent domain, and the risk of land loss come into focus in this investigation of cities inside out - urban life placed outside the reach of municipal government.

Matt Festa

Developer Doubles Up on New Buyer Tax Credit

From today's Gainesville (Ga.) Times, a story about a developer who is offering to double the first time homebuyer and "move up" homebuyer tax credits as an incentive to buy in his subdivision in South Hall County (less than an hour north of Atlanta).  I've heard of lots of incentives, but that's a new one on me.

Jamie Baker Roskie

Slugging

Are HOV lanes a good idea?  They are controversial, to be sure.  Some think that they are essential to disincentivizing traffic and rewarding carpooling.  Others think that they are inefficient or infringe too much on liberty.  But for those commuters who live in areas with HOV lanes, the practical question is how to adapt.  KHOU.com reports on the emergence of one response to HOV lanes: Slugging.

HOUSTON – Would you jump into the car of a stranger? Hundreds of Houstonians do it every morning on the way to work to save time and money.

The phenomenon called "slugging" developed in the northeast and has caught on in Houston over the last few years.

The "sluggers" park at a Metro Park and Ride lot and form a line to get into cars with drivers who are looking for a passenger so they can legally take the HOV.

Slugging seems to have originated, or has been most successful in, the DC area.  I think it would be creepy to rely on a commute in a stranger's car (plus, the story doesn't say how they get home).  But on the other hand, I kind of like the free market ordering response to regulatory restrictions--when the government creates an HOV lane, the commuters establish a new informal but effective institution, the slugging line. 

Matt Festa