Success Stories...

...when you hear the word Milwaukee, you might not automatically think of progressive urban revitalization. Maybe its because its nearby neighbor to the south, Chicago, casts such a large urban shadow (the ghost of Daniel Burnham ensures that). Maybe its another reason.

Whatever the case, this article and interview with John Norquist (former Milwaukee mayor/current CNU head) explains how Milwaukee has made a great comeback.

Definitely worth a read:

Shepherd: Why is Milwaukee beginning to see a revitalization?

Norquist: There is a lot of talk about the real estate market in downtown, how it's doing well and why it's doing well. There are all kinds of non-city-financed developments going on—big, small, infill and rehab—and it's spreading to the lower East Side. One of the reasons it's happening is because the city of Milwaukee regulatory system is fairly easy to use. There is an urban code now. So if you want to build an urban building, you do not need to get variances. It's a simplified process, unlike places like Cleveland, which has a pretty strong downtown, but neighborhood and housing development is weak.

Green Sprawl?

We've posted before on the importance of incorporating environmentally-sustainable building techniques into projects.

However, this article correctly points out that "green" buildings alone don't equal sustainability:

Several traditional big box retailers, such as Best Buy, have recently announced their intention of building green stores. A number of banks, such as PNC Bank, have also announced the development of green bank branches. In all likelihood, if these buildings achieve a sufficient number of LEED points, they will be certified "green" and may receive significant tax incentives for their efforts.

Most Best Buys and bank branches, however, are located in strip malls with seas of impervious parking lots that are accessible only by car. This phenomenon - where green buildings are located in unsustainable contexts - can be called "green sprawl."

Heartening News...

Writing a law review article takes alot of work. Formulating the idea. Researching it. Organizing the research. Writing. And, of course, getting it out there for the general public to read--hoping that it helps our national conversation, even if in just some small way.

That's why when I received the following email this morning, it helped me realize that the work is worth it--again, even if just to a small degree:

Dear Chad D. Emerson:

Your paper entitled, "All Sprawled Out: How the Federal Regulatory System Has Driven Unsustainable Growth" was recently listed on SSRN's Top Ten download list for Housing & Community Development Law. To view the top ten list for the journal click on its name Housing & Community Development Law Top Ten and to view all the papers in the journals click on these links link(s) Housing & Community Development Law All Papers.

Click here to access the paper.

Images of Anti-Sprawl

It's always nice to find compact, walkable towns in the midst of tourist-dominated areas. That's certainly the case at Fernandina Beach on Amelia Island where we spent a week this summer.

Illinois Passes Green-Friendly State Law...

Read the details over at Law of the Land.

A very interesting feature is the 1.5% project reimbursement grants. A great idea though the caveat is that they are "subject to appropriation".

Impact Fee Regulations and Sprawl

This article suggests that impact fees cause higher home prices and, thus, reduce housing affordability:

The issue of whether these impact fees are putting affordable housing out of the reach of a growing number of Americans is also the subject of intense debate. The housing industry maintains that [they are], and a study in 2006 by the Center for Housing at Harvard concurred with that observation.

"At the local level, land-use regulations often make it difficult for builders to develop affordable housing," according to the Harvard study. "Large minimum-lot sizes, restrictions on land available for residential development, impact fees that place the marginal cost of infrastructure and public services on new-home buyers, and approval processes that add risk and delays all play a hand in rising house prices."

The problem with this argument is that it creates a false scenario in that it ties the affordability of housing into only newly constructed homes.

What about the millions of existing houses that could be renovated or rehabilitated?

They are generally not subject to impact fees because the often utilize existing infrastructure. Indeed, yet another example of the terrible fallacy that new construction can ever really address affordable housing in a comprehensive way.

Public Money for Transportation Sprawl...

...the Sprawled Out blog explains more about this problem.

Can tax increment financing regulations be used to foster sprawl?

Apparently, some groups in New Mexico believe so.

This is probably one of those instances where a regulatory tool can be used for both sustainable and unsustainable purposes. Indeed, several cities have used TIF regs to successfully promote urban revitalization.

Tough call on this one.

Laws Eliminating Road Signage?

According to this article, that might be a good idea to increase safety:

The Shared Space team believes that signs, signals, and the traffic rules they represent make the roads more dangerous because they lead us to believe we are safe. “Conventional highway engineering operates on the dumb molecule theory of human behavior,” says John Adams, emeritus professor of geography at University College London and a Shared Space advocate. “And the human molecule is responsive to what it sees about it.”

More on the Costs of...

Sprawl:

Americans are paying $84 million a day ($31 billion annually) to live in communities that are laid-out inefficiently, according to the 2005 book, Sprawl Costs: Economic Impacts of Unchecked Development, the culmination of a 10-year research effort at Rutgers University and the Brookings Institution. "We are all paying a staggering price for sprawling development in this country, and that price will only go up as gas prices increase," writes coauthor Robert Burchell. "Sprawling communities need longer public roads, increase the cost of new water and sewer hookups by 20 percent to 40 percent, impose higher costs on police and fire departments and schools, and more. These costs are passed on to businesses and residents through higher taxes and fees and sometimes through fewer public services. And in most cases, sprawling developments do not generate enough property taxes to cover these added costs."

Here's a copy of an article on developing green-er projects that I wrote for the latest issue of Montgomery Future City Guide.

More on the History of...

...Ancient Suburban Sprawl:

The detritus of human habitation—mostly yellow clay potsherds—reveal that Tell Brak, an ancient city in northeastern Syria, urbanized more than 7,000 years ago and boasted suburbs likely filled with immigrants as far back as 6,200 years ago. In fact, rather than an ancient ruler willing a city into existence, the potsherds of Brak tell a story of a metropolis that grew as people, for their own reasons, flocked to it.

Article Update...

...I just accepted an offer to publish my article entitled "All Sprawled Out: How the Federal Regulatory System Has Driven Unsustainable Growth" with the University of Tennessee Law Review.

If you are interested in receiving a reprint once it is published, feel free to contact me at cemerson@faulkner.edu.

Measure E...

The so-called "Stamp Out Sprawl" ballot measure in California is continuing to draw very strong feelings--including some belief that it won't do what it claims it will:

Denny's Stamp Out Sprawl initiative, which will be called Measure E on the February ballot, does little to protect farmland. It contains no farmland mitigation measures and it leaves cities absolutely unfettered to pave over as much farmland as they wish. According to the California Department of Finance, 87 percent of Stanislaus County's growth since 1990 has taken place within its cities.

Neighborhood Schools: the Anti-Sprawl?

Thanks to Dan Banks with CityLoft Corporation for his help in putting together this Transect of Smart Growth Schools.

The Maryland Supreme Court...

...has just agreed to hear an important case involving the issue of Comprehensive Plans and their legal effects. The excellent Law of the Land blog has more here.

A Reduction in the Mortgage Interest Deduction?

If Congress were to limit the mortgage interest deduction to houses less than 3,000 square feet in size, would that help reduce sprawl?

At least one influential Congressman thinks so...and he's introducing legislation to do just that:

Besides imposing hefty new federal taxes on gasoline, the forthcoming bill would, in Dingell's words, seek to "remove the mortgage interest deduction on McMansions - homes over 3,000 square feet." Dingell said he recognizes that proposals like these will be highly controversial, but he says they are essential to achieving the environmental goal of reducing carbon emissions by 60 to 80 percent by 2050.

While the concept sounds good, I'm afraid that it would simply result in a bunch of still low-density, 2,950 square foot houses. Which, obviously, wouldn't be much of a long-term improvement.

Rather than this approach, I would first introduce legislation eliminating the MID on all second homes. That too is incremental, but seems politically more viable and doesn't use a seemingly arbitrary square footage number.

Sprawl and Fire Hydrant Regulations

This article discusses how some sprawling growth is easily outdistancing the nearest fire hydrants. It goes on to question whether localities should pass regulations requiring hydrants within a certain distance of a house:

Nearly a fourth of U.S. families face the same protection inadequacies as the Webers because they live in extended suburban or rural locations with no hydrants, says Lori Moore-Merrell, an operations analyst with the International Association of Fire Fighters. The lack of fire hydrants is a growing problem as more homes are built outside urban and suburban infrastructure, she says.

States create their own standards, and localities may or may not enact stricter rules, says Chris Jelenewicz, an engineer with the Society of Fire Protection Engineers.

While fire protection is obviously important, any regulatory efforts to address the issue should require that the costs of extending the required infrastructure for these hydrants (as well as future maintenance) is bore exclusively by those developments and homeowners necessitating the expansion.

In other words, if people insist on living in sprawl, they should bear the present and future costs of that short-sighted decision.

The Sounds of Sprawl...

...Daily Sprawl is always in search of multimedia sprawl resources. After all, students learn in many different ways.

Recently, while preparing for a Land Planning & Development Law class that I teach at the law school, I came across these two at the iTunes music store:

Little Boxes by Malvina Reynolds

Rockin' the Suburbs by Ben Folds (er, I used the Over the Hedge edited version)

UPDATE: We quickly received the Rockin' the Suburbs video (again, Over the Hedge version). Quite good.

Smart Growth Law Update...

...here's a case from Wyoming in which a county's efforts to promote more sustainable land development patterns (by, among other things, clustering new development into denser nodes) survived a legal challenge based on a variety of claims including an alleged Fair Housing Act violation: 482 F.3d 1225 (10th Cir. 2007).

Losing Touch With Reality in Southern California...

...at least one elected official in Orange County, California has apparently lost even a loose grip of reality. That person would be Jerry Amante--Mayor Pro Tem of Tustin and a director of the Orange County Transportation Authority.

He recently wrote this editorial that essentially praises Orange County for building more and more traffic lanes while, in his eyes, Los Angeles erroneously focuses on multi-user transit options:

There is a philosophical difference between OCTA's reputation as a road-builder – at least since the proposed CenterLine light-right system was laid to rest several years ago – and Los Angeles' Metropolitan Transportation Authority, which focuses its resources on subways and rail. What it boils down to is that, in Orange County we're proud to build lanes, not trains.

Mr. Amante, please pause and reflect on what you are really saying. For the last 50+ years, Southern California has been addicted to new road-building/expanding. It has spent billions of dollars on this habit.

And, for what result?

Annually, some of the worst congestion in the United States of America. Yet, now you propose to ramp up this addiction even more?

This reminds Daily Sprawl of the last throes of Soviet Russia--desperately using rhetoric to cling to a failed policy.

We think that your once fellow Golden Stater might have best described this madness:

Mr. Amante, tear down that overpass.

A Developer Tries To Do the Right Thing...

...but the city says no. Short-sightedness, indeed:

Commissioners tabled the project, asking House to return with plans that incorporate larger setbacks, more access for emergency vehicles and revised parking plans that don’t allow for roadside parking along 34 th Street.

Weekly Sprawl Sighting...

Every now and then, we'll try and provide an interesting visual example of sprawl. When doing so, we always try and provide the correct credit for the image. Sometimes though that isn't available. So, if you ever see an image that has no credit or an incorrect credit, please let us know and we'll get it fixed.

And, as always, this is a non-commercial, educational blog--no ads or other revenue are ever generated here...

Two articles...

I recently set up my SSRN account.

So, now readers can download my latest sprawl-related law review articles for free.

This includes the work-in-progress version of my latest article "All Sprawled Out: How the Federal Regulatory System Has Driven Unsustainable Growth".

Just click here and away you go...

Fellow lawprof...

Michael Lewyn has published a new lawrev article on how zoning laws foster auto dependence.

You can download the paper from here.