Rising Values in and Near Centers NOT Good?
But I’d like to also highlight something fundamental to social issues here. If the Baby Boomers and the Millennials want to move back toward the centers they will confront the very prices Leinberger sees as a good sign, which they, those looking to move “inward,” might not see that way: rising housing prices. Good for the developer and landlord with the money… that you and I may lack. In social justice terms in many neighborhoods it goes by the name gentrification. But in addition there are the big areas close to centers that are already gentrified, that is not low income and rising but stable and generally prosperous or at least fairly comfortable. Rising housing prices near the centers are good from the point of view of the everyday homeowner with a fixed mortgage or free and clear, but not so affordable to the people trying to get back into the vitality, convenience, land and energy conserving and face to face conversation of city and town centers.
Pedestrian oriented center proposed for a Chinese city - illustration by the author
The big problem here is in failing to give high governmental priority to reshaping the city to provide that housing, or more accurately the housing and all that goes with it for a descent community: jobs, shops, education, food, entertainment, access to plazas, parks and nature even, close in. And the associated big problem, the first step, is that the conversation has hardly started on this aspect of the problem. Perhaps people fear the subject too much.
At the core of all this, beyond the price-to-move-in problem but deeply involved with it, is the NIMBY problem of the people already there and wanting to keep things the same. (NIMBY = Not In My Back Yard, as most of you know.) If we really want to deal with this shift of people toward the centers, thinking it’s a good idea, and not price everyone out but the already well off, and if we want to do it in quantity enough to make a difference in environmental and social issues facing us in difficult times, if we don’t want to wait for those already in the centers to move or not give or sell their houses and condos to their own children or friends freezing out outsiders, which in many cases means many decades of waiting or just giving up, then we have to recognize the problem and deal with it. There is no way around it. In quantity of housing enough to make a serious difference in accommodating people moving toward centers and providing reasonable prices, a large number of lower density houses and other buildings need to be replaced with higher density, full range community development.
Given the importance of the trend Leinberger has identified, mentioned above, with only 12% of the population in arguably the two largest and most important demographic groups determining urban form wanting to live in the car-dependent suburbs any more, in the US anyway, something should be done. He backs his stats with information from the National Association of Realtors and the Zillow real estate database that readers are assumed to know about or be impressed by if we don’t know about it. But I for one accept that his conclusions compare well with masses of anecdotal evidence and my own experience in travels and believe his information is very significant. Beyond the trends in citizen housing desires, given the action-stopping, job-preventing barrier of very high prices toward the centers it would seem even more important to do something. And, given the coming conditions of general overpopulation projected for many decades yet as well as demographic shift toward the older and retired, together with energy problems serious enough and linked to the sprawl pattern of the suburbs that are the chief cause of climate change, sea rise and some disasters actually pretty hard to imagine, something must be done.
But the NIMBYs are in the way! Buy them out. With what money? (I’ll tell you in a minute.) But the historic nature of lots of buildings! Leave them alone; there are plenty of others not just highly non-descript but falling apart and due for replacement anyway – replace those close in to the centers with enough room in them to accommodate real numbers of people wanting the more urban way of life. Buy up, demolish and recycle building materials in the locations most automobile dependent and in the way of agricultural and ecological restoration. What we need to do is make a better deal. Create an opportunity for the NIMBY to be happy with selling: zone so the price goes up even more. They can sell their house as a single unit and in many cases it’s a bit worn out and won’t last much longer anyway. If the land it’s sitting on is zoned next for ten condos or apartments, it could be sold for a lot more than the present owner would get under one unit zoning. If the owner could afford it, or part of it, he or she could become the developer or create a development group to build and profit from the site. If the owner doesn’t happen to like apartment buildings and holds single family houses sacred from back when most people wanted to live in car-dependent (car-in-theory-pleasurable) development, introduce the possibilities of ecocity architectural features not generally recognized yet, such as use of rooftops and terraces, with great views, native plant and orchard landscaping, adjacent mini-parks and new shops and restaurants and other service at a walkable center near by, and so on. Some significant fraction of the population would actually like that. The NIMBY might turn into a O.K.IMBY and decide to buy into the new development. In Ecocity Builders we have met some who would like to retire to the country or take up other options simply because they don’t need or want that much empty nest anymore, not to speak the yard to take care of and the car to pay for and drive over to where the people are.
There are many people, many different ideas of what to do and where to live as we get older. If the NIMBY still doesn’t want the deal, go to someone else to offer it. If the NIMBYs get organized to keep things the same despite changing demographics, energy, pollution and environmental deterioration and so on, organize the political power of all those who want a healthier environment or more equitable social/economic order and who want to move back toward the centers so they can pass zoning laws so they can.
There may also be a way of looking at this to finance it to. Freeway and lots of car infrastructure is paid for by what some would call subsidies, others call investments. Call such expenditures for something you want to see built whatever you like, but which ones solve our problems as a society, as people who care about environmental impacts? Prioritize those and invest in them. We now invest in freeways, enormous amounts of parking – and more and more people don’t even want cars, and for more reasons than just a passing trend. In fact some people are strictly into pedestrian, bicycle and transit alternatives because they believe in them. If environmentalist could want to save the whales and many of them have never have even seen one, and almost none of them a whole one, some of them maybe a blow spout or fluke way out on the sea, they can actually live in or visit and enjoy, have commerce and social life in the more compact ecocity style centers while solving very serious problems we are having to face whether we want to or not. My own opinion is that ecocity design is desirable and fun; it would be loved by millions of people. You can see it in this newsletter and in my books and talks by Kirstin Miller and myself. But the New York Times, Post Carbon Institute and National Geographic are not yet up to speed on the full visualization of the alternatives they are saying we are tending toward.
But moving in that direction we could start in small areas and prove that higher density ecocity design is different, fine grain, “human scale” and accommodating serious number of people at the same time. But we all have to face the reality that there needs to be a change in the way we deal with the problem of resistance, both economic and simple neighborhood conservatism, blocking all those people looking for a better way to live by moving, as Leinberger says we are already starting to and wanting to, away from the dying fringe. Add the value of the lost agricultural land to sprawl development, the value of that land if it went back into food production and state and national governments should look at the balance sheet in the largest possible context – total sprawl development vs. total ecocity development on the other side. The savings, reinvested in the materials and the jobs to build the ecocity centers, the broadest possible “green jobs” context, would mean a high employment enterprise for rebuilding virtually the whole presently car-dominated city civilization we have developed and lead, in the next few decades, into a far better future.
Bottom line: create zoning codes and incentives, including matching grants and any other means of legal and financial support to get individuals, businesses and everyone on board for the shift toward the centers Leinberger sees is beginning to happen. Shift a large fraction of the money spent by governments on highways and repaving to instead help fund the new ecocity centers-oriented development pattern. The changes are beginning to head in a very healthy direction but they need a great deal of help.
But now a closing thought, going back to the National Geographic article. Sprawl is not reversing world wide. The American case is relatively unusual at this time. Sprawl certainly should reverse everywhere, if we value a healthy planet and want to avoid some real catastrophes in the environment that are assured to have nasty repercussions on society. So that means that we need to get on with the job of confronting the resistance against the shifts beginning in the demographics and opinions Leinberger points to happening in the United States, and solve that problem. The US has led the way to problems of sprawl and they are still growing elsewhere and in general. We in the US have an obligation to reverse the unhealthy truly colossal trend we started with Detroit and Los Angeles.
And finally a last complaint: some of us have been talking about this problem of sprawl and proposing its very specific solutions, the exact ones being brought forward today, for over 40 years. In fact for all that time we’ve had a much longer more complete list of the particular designs, strategies and tools, policy tools, planning and graphic tools and physical tools for building to succeed heading in the good directions indicated by the three articles I’m citing here. So please take advantage of what we know in this ecocity movement, give us some credit and get moving.
And if that really happened it would be about the biggest Christmas gift imaginable.
Thanks to Bill Mastin for alerting us to this article, “The Death of the Fringe Suburb.”
Richard Register is Founder and President of Ecocity Builders and can be reached at ecocity@igc.org.