Google Buses: More Voices Offer More Opinions

I’ve previously written that the Google bus controversy, far from proving that urbanism is a flawed strategy, is instead an indictment of our tardiness in embracing urbanism.  I’ve also begun sampling some of the other voices that are commenting on the issue.  The further voices may not always agree with my thinking, but most put forth ideas that are complementary.

Today, I’ll dig more deeply into the other voices.

Writing in Slate, Matthew Yglesias argues that a land tax, in place of a property tax, wouldn’t help advance urbanism in San Francisco.  He’s responding to a Quartz article by Noah Smith.   I referenced the Smith article in my previous post.

Yglesias argues that zoning, not tax incentives, is the constraint on San Francisco urbanism.

I agree with some of what Yglesias suggests, but differ in the details.  For one, he conflates zoning and entitlement processes.  But the two are very different.

I’m sure the following explanation is unnecessary for 95 percent of the readers, but please allow me to bring the other five percent up to speed.  Zoning sets the general rules for land use, usually including the maximum project size that can be constructed without a variance.  Entitlement is the process by which the zoning rules are applied to a particular site.  During entitlement, the project size is often whittled down over concerns such as traffic capacity or building mass.  (The California Environmental Quality Act, or CEQA, is a key element of the entitlement process.)

In theory, using entitlement process to fine-tune zoning rules to a specific site seems reasonable.  And it often results in appropriate compromises.  But activist neighbors can also use the process as a cover for selfish ends.  Arguing that the building mass is out of scale for the neighborhood can be code for wanting to preserve a personal view.  Contending that traffic impacts are excessive can be code for wanting to preserve street parking for guests.

Through use and abuse of the entitlement process, a site that was zoned for fifteen units might be reduced to six units or even result in the developer giving up.  And for every unit that isn’t built, housing costs go up because of lack of supply and more households must find alternative accommodations, often in drivable suburban locations.

While I agree with Yglesias that zoning can sometimes be improved, it’s the entitlement process that’s the true weak link.

Also, Yglesias takes an either/or approach to zoning versus taxation system incentives.  To me, the best solutions require multiple adjustments.  For urban housing, I suggest that adjustments are required to the entitlement process, tax incentives, and zoning, in that order of decreasing importance.

In my first post on the Google bus issue, I wrote that the Google buses aren’t the true issue underlying the protests in San Francisco and Oakland.  Instead, it’s the concern among existing residents that the push for residential development represented by the Google buses will result in increased residential costs, forcing current residents to relocate.  To put a term to this concern, it’s gentrification.

Thus, it’s coincidental that several studies have recently come forth suggesting that gentrification isn’t nearly as detrimental as feared.  Per the studies, it’s true that the elderly and disabled can be displaced if that impact isn’t mitigated, but the studies are finding that relocations among other residents are actually reduced.  Furthermore, the financial health of the existing residents generally improves, presumably buoyed by the increased job opportunities in a gentrifying neighborhood.

The increased employment opportunities were intuitive, but the reduced displacement certainly wasn’t.  Nor will the debate be modified by a handful of studies.  But if the bogeyman of gentrification can be reduced, it’ll be a good thing for urbanism.

Lastly, Atlantic Cities suggests that the agreement reached between San Francisco and the Google buses for the use of public bus stops may set the value of public curb space, which could have implications for other urban activities such as parking and merchandise deliveries.

It’s an interesting suggestion.  However, the author undermines his own argument by noting that California law prevents charging the fair value of the curb space and instead limits the fee to the cost of implementing the program.

As urbanism proceeds, it’s likely that we’ll need to place a value on curb space, but the Google bus agreement won’t provide that benchmark.

As always, your questions or comments will be appreciated.  Please comment below or email me.  And thanks for reading. - Dave Alden (davealden53@comcast.net)

The Google Bus Issue Triggers Insightful Urbanist Talk

One of the great things about the urbanist community is that high-profile social issues will always elicit cogent and insightful comments from active urbanists.  It’s partly that a cohort of good critical thinkers has become attached to urbanism and partly that urbanism is a good solution to many contemporary social ills.

To be clear, urbanism isn’t a panacea to every issue that might need improvement, but it’s one of a half-dozen building blocks that can make the world a better and more sustainable place in the 21st century.

So I’ll return to the Google bus issue and sample some of the best thinking that has bubbled up around it.

Of course, the North Bay doesn’t yet have its equivalent of the Google bus issue.  Because of the historical happenstance of Silicon Valley continuing to burgeon while the North Bay’s equivalent, Telecom Valley, stagnated, the North Bay doesn’t yet have as much of the young demographic segment looking for an urban lifestyle.

But the North Bay is a good place to live that is eager to remain economically vital, so will soon attract the young and affluent who are roiling other areas of the Bay Area.  The Google bus issue should be studied in the North Bay so we can be smarter when our time comes.

On the Google bus issue, several commenters have noted that San Francisco and Oakland aren’t alone in their failure to anticipate and to prepare for the coming flood of young adults looking for an urban lifestyle.  Fingers are being pointed at Peninsula and South Bay communities for failing to facilitate the type of development that would have been attractive to techies.

I agree with the finger-pointing.  A more far-sighted residential program around the Silicon Valley would have defused much of the Google bus issue.  In an odd coincidence, I found myself in conversation over the weekend with someone who owns a large chunk of land in the South Bay which now has a low-density land use.  The landowner is intrigued by the possibility of creating a higher-density, urbanist use, but finds daunting the prospect of tackling the public, city, regional, and state issues that would be raised.

Others have concurred with me that blaming the tech buses is akin to blaming the messenger.  As Michael Coyote noted on Twitter, “I can totally understand why people are mad, but who does it help of you are mad at a tech worker versus some NIMBY?”  While NIMBYism certainly had a role, I'd also add CEQA and ponderous land-use processes to the list of wrongdoers.

But perhaps the most interesting thinking was put forth by Noah Smith in an article published on Quartz.  Dusting off the work of Henry George, a long-dead economist from San Francisco, Smith suggests that a property tax that focuses more on the land, especially the land that has an increased value because of public facilities such as street and sewer, is more fair than the current system which focuses on appraised value.

Early in my urbanist reading, I came across a suggestion that property taxes should use a sliding scale, with taxes in the urban core based solely on the value of land, taxes in surrounding rural land based solely on the value of the improvements, and taxes in between based on a combination.  My memory is that it was James Howard Kunstler who put forth the concept, but I haven’t yet come across it in my rereading of his work.

 The Henry George and the sliding scale concepts are largely similar.  And I see value in both.  But I also see points of discomfort in both.

As currently constructed, property taxes are intended to ensure that a uniform standard of public facilities and services are available across the community, while also keeping cities solvent.  Those are valid goals that must be preserved.  Modifying the property tax system to encourage urbanism while maintaining the first two goals would be a tricky endeavor.

Also, one of the greatest benefits conveyed to land isn’t public improvements, but zoning.  If we’re to tax the property owner for having a public street across the front of his land, taxing him for higher zoning seems reasonable.  Indeed it seems only fair.  Changing zoning from rural to residential can be a windfall of a million dollars or more per acre to the property owner. 

But what if a city does rezoning on its own initiative, perhaps as the result of a new General Plan, and not at the request of the land owner?  And what if it’s likely to be a decade or more before the land is developed?  Is the property owner liable for the higher tax burden over that decade, even if it pushes him toward bankruptcy?

Lastly, I’ve often argued that many of our current institutions, including property taxes, lending practices, judicial rules, etc. have been inadvertently slanted toward drivable suburban development and that urbanism would do fine if we could just rebalance the rules to be closer to a free market.  To now argue that we instead must bias the rules toward urbanism is philosophically uncomfortable to me.

None of this is intended to reject the Henry George concept, only to note that it would be a deep pool with tricky currents that should entered only after careful thinking and planning, neither of which are strong points of our political system.

I’ll look at more Google bus thinking in my next post.

As always, your questions or comments will be appreciated.  Please comment below or email me.  And thanks for reading. - Dave Alden (davealden53@comcast.net)

How to Interpret the Google Bus Protests

Private shuttle buses have recently become a Bay Area controversy.  The buses are usually described as Google buses, although that term is inaccurate because more than 30 companies operate shuttles between urban residential neighborhoods in San Francisco and Oakland and offices in the Silicon Valley.

Although the Google bus protests raise legitimate questions about the private use of public curb space and bus stops, many observers correctly describe the bus protests as the visible sign of a deeper concern about young and affluent professionals displacing older residents of more limited means.

Several correspondents have suggested to me that the Google bus issue is a sign that urbanism is a flawed strategy.  In response, I can only suggest a remedial course in economics.

When the price of a resource, such as urban housing, is rising rapidly, the most reasonable marketplace conclusion is that demand is growing and supply is insufficient to match demand.  A key tenet of urbanism is increasing urban housing.  So, if one agrees our cities should moderate the prices of urban housing and allow for long-time residents to remain in their neighborhoods, urbanism is an appropriate path.  Indeed, it’s probably the only path.

So, the underlying cause of the turmoil in San Francisco and Oakland isn’t urbanism, it’s that the naysayers who for too long prevented good urbanist policies.

A great many people, among whom I humbly put myself somewhere in the back rows, have pointed for years to the looming trend of young adults moving back into cities.  We warned that institutional biases against urban housing must be reduced if a housing crunch was to be averted.  Those warnings were largely ignored.  Indeed, based on the comments from my correspondents, the warnings continue to be ignored and the underlying market reality misunderstood.

Given their strong heritage of urban residential life, it might be easy to assume that San Francisco and Oakland are good at urban housing approvals.  They’re not.  San Francisco Supervisor Scott Weiner, writing in the San Francisco Chronicle, suggests that the housing crunch in the City is largely self-created.

Using an anecdotal story about a San Francisco project that was whittled down during extended review, Weiner notes that the City entitlement rules allow the process to drag on for years.  Many of the resulting compromises reduce unit counts, units that would lessened the marketplace price pressures.  He also notes that the environmental lawsuits under the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) can often be used to further delay projects.

(For newer readers, I laud the environmental improvements that have occurred under CEQA.  But many of the balances that it implicitly makes and the opportunities it provides for judicial review are contrary to the environmental trade-offs required in urban settings.  CEQA was written for a drivable suburban world and its roots still show.)

To recap, getting to the Google bus protests took the following steps:

• Following the prerogative of youth to mark a new path, young adults of this generation are increasingly interested in living in urban settings.  (My generation had rock-n-roll.  This generation has urban life.  Both are good.)
• Observers saw the trend getting underway and warned that our cities needed to facilitate more urban housing.
• In many places, those warnings were ignored and the urban housing supply didn’t grow quickly enough.
• The young came downtown anyway, using the paychecks from the tech world to displace older residents.
• Employers, in an environmentally laudable move, began providing buses to carry workers to tech business offices.
• The displaced residents, seizing on the buses as a symbol of the change, began public protests over the buses.

It’s a very clean, simple story, with effect logically following cause.  And the only truly lamentable element was the disregard given to warning of the demographic sea change.  We should have done better.  And we need to do better starting now.

As always, your questions or comments will be appreciated.  Please comment below or email me.  And thanks for reading. - Dave Alden (davealden53@comcast.net)