StrongTowns: Overview and Initial Encouragement

Downtown Petaluma

When I last wrote about StrongTowns, I was still smarting that an opportunity to host a StrongTowns event had been taken from Petaluma.

I remain cantankerous on the subject.  But I’ve also come to realize that the StrongTowns-inclined folks in Petaluma can use the setback as a springboard to achieve more than we might have from the single event.

The path to that springboard starts with having a solid Petaluma contingent at the public StrongTowns events in Santa Rosa during the week of January 18.

To build that contingent, all of my blog posts between now and the StrongTowns events will be about the StrongTowns way of thinking and about tying that philosophy to Sonoma County examples.

Although my particular target will be my fellow Petalumans, I’ll also be encouraging everyone in the North Bay to make a trip to Santa Rosa to partake of StrongTowns.

If you’re among my non-North Bay readers, while I won’t argue for a road trip, I hope I can at least offer some useful insights.

And if you’re among the readers who find me through the StrongTowns Member Blog Roll, perhaps you just want to skip me for the next couple of weeks.  I’ll be writing about stuff you already know.  And if the moderators for the Blog Roll choose to exclude me for the next couple of weeks, I’ll understand.

Also, please understand that you needn’t accept every aspect of the StrongTowns philosophy to attend the Santa Rosa meetings.  This won’t be some kind of StrongTowns Curbside Chat-thumping revival.

I encourage folks to attend who have quibbles with some of the StrongTowns conclusions.  It’s a category in which I put myself, a subject I’ll cover a few posts hence.

And I encourage folks to attend who reject the StrongTowns philosophy, as long as they can offer explanations of their alternative perspectives and are willing to engage in productive conversations on the subject.

Perhaps the best way to explain why folks should attend the StrongTowns meetings is to note that most infrastructure discussions in our communities are within the confines of the governing suburban paradigm.  What haven’t the potholes on my street been patched?  When can we add lanes to reduce congestion?  Why haven’t we secured the funds to complete the gap in the freeway?

StrongTowns looks at the bigger picture and questions whether the suburban paradigm is how we should be allocating our dollars.  Will we ever have adequate funds to maintain the roads we already own?  Are we making infrastructure choices that grow the economy commensurate with the costs?  Are we creating a more sustainable future for our children with our infrastructure and land use decisions?

StrongTowns asks why, if we can’t answer “yes” to the second set of questions, we’re continuing to work under the current paradigm.

If a discussion on these latter questions is important to you, then you belong at the StrongTowns meetings.

Now, let me begin a more concrete example.

During 2015, Caltrans moved toward completion of three large projects on Highway 101 in or near Petaluma, a new overpass for the Old Redwood Highway at the north end of town, replacement of the bridges over the Petaluma River near downtown, and replacement of the overpass at South Petaluma Boulevard near the south end of town.  The combined cost of the three projects?  Nearly $200 million.

At the same time, the City of Petaluma was struggling to find dollars to maintain streets, to replace 100-year-old water mains at risk of rupturing, and to plan for new culverts to replace culverts that remain in service despite being well beyond their target life.

Imagine aliens from outer space arriving to observe Petaluma and noting giant and elaborate engineering projects on the outskirts of town while the infrastructure crumbles where people actually live.  I think those aliens would question our ability to set good priorities.  StrongTowns adherents ask the same question.

I know there are many reasons that can be put forth to support the freeway improvements.  Congestion relief.  Traffic safety.  Travel time reductions.  Job creation.  Free money.  The problem is that most of those justifications quickly fade luster when examined critically.  Those examinations will be the subject of my next post.

For now, please put the StrongTowns meetings of January 19, 20, and 21 on your calendar.  If you must, you may use a pencil to write them down.  The goal of my next posts will be to convince you to trace over the pencil markings in pen.

It should be a fun couple of weeks.

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

Not Yet a Critical Mass, but Closer

Changes in public perception, and the resulting changes in public policy, usually don’t begin with a mass movement.  Instead, they’re more like rock slides.  The first sign is often only a few rocks breaking loose and clattering noisily to the valley floor, followed by more seemingly random and minor rock falls.   But eventually the main slide breaks loose and the landscape is forever changed.

In the past few days, we’ve witnessed an early rock fall that may be a precursor to an important shift in public policy, a shift that would greatly impact urbanism.

When Petaluma Urban Chat was first getting underway, we gave ourselves the collective reading assignment of the “Curbside Chat” booklet from StrongTowns.  The booklet sets forth the central tenet of StrongTowns, that we often build more infrastructure than we can afford to maintain or are willing to maintain.  (It was during this reading that an Urban Chat member commented about StrongTowns being “the Republican argument for urbanism.”)

As our reading progressed, I wrote several times in this space about “Curbside Chat”.  Through the magic of the internet, the folks at StrongTowns learned of our small North Bay group and reached out to us.  StrongTowns founder Chuck Marohn agreed to talk with us by video, addressing questions that may have arisen during our reading.

The chance to interact with Marohn seemed a great opportunity to jumpstart the local urbanist conversation, so I emailed all the local City Councilmembers and Planning Commissioners, inviting them to join us for the video chat.

Amidst the responses, which were mostly regrets about conflicting commitments, some of which I even believed, was an email from a Councilmember asking for more information on the StrongTowns proposition.  He was someone I thought would be predisposed against the StrongTowns thinking.  However, I also considered him a thoughtful, intelligent man who could be swayed by logical argument.

So I assembled the best case I could, tying together local potholes and other North Bay infrastructure maintenance challenges with the ongoing government fiscal distress of which he was well aware.  Perhaps my response ran a little long, because that’s what I do, but I thought it was cogent and persuasive.  I hit the send button and awaited his response.

I’m still waiting.

He never replied to my email, nor did he attend the video chat.  About the only response I’ve ever noted is that, when we bump into each other at community functions, he gives me sidelong glances as if I’m potentially deranged and sidles away at his earliest convenience.  (To be fair, I’m not the only person he seems to treat in this fashion.)  I usually let him go.  I have no reason to make him more uncomfortable that he already is.

Unfortunately, his response is fairly typical for how public officials respond to the StrongTowns message.   With much of the electorate focused on the continual expansion of infrastructure, elected officials are unwilling to hear a message that we need to rethink our approach to built improvements.  And the public works officials whose jobs are dependent on building more infrastructure are no different.  As 18th century Jewish rabbi Baal Shem Tov, phrased it “Fear builds walls to bar the light."

Thus, it was unexpected when Paul Trombino, the head of the Iowa Department of Transportation, publicly admitted that his state has more highway infrastructure than the public is likely willing to maintain.  He further called for a difficult but necessary conversation about how and where to reduce previously constructed infrastructure.

StrongTowns’ Marohn, who was present for Trombino’s comments, reported them with surprise and gratification.  CityLab, recognizing the importance of the story, picked up on Marohn’s news and repeated the story for their audience, also including evidence of implicit acknowledgements by other Departments of Transportation that driving patterns were changing and that hard infrastructure decisions might be coming.

Does this mean that the battle for a more informed approach to infrastructure has been won?  Hardly.  One need only look at the 101 corridor in the North Bay to see the continuing illogic, with multi-million dollar interchanges nearing completion at both ends of the Petaluma and the continuing drumbeat of demand for a third freeway lane between Novato and Petaluma even as potholes remain unfilled throughout Petaluma and 100-year-old waterlines fail, sending gushers of water down gutters.

But the Trombino acknowledgement of what StrongTowns has been arguing may have been a turning point.  Even as the 2004 decision by San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom to permit gay marriages in his city is considered a key early step to the now near-universal acceptance of gay marriage, Paul Trombino’s words may one day be considered a key early step toward a more enlightened and cost-effective approach to infrastructure.

And the way to live comfortably with less infrastructure is, of course, urbanism.

Perhaps I should send this story to the local Councilmember.

Next time, I’ll return to the subject of urbanism and senior living, using a recent personal experience to illustrate a point.

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

Stories from CNU 23: Infrastructure Patterns, Misallocated Fishing Piers, and the Creation of Funk

Nuts.   I still can’t share the update on Sonoma Marin Fairgrounds that I’ve been promising, although progress was made over the last few days.  I’ll continue to push for having something in my next post.

(For non-regular readers, I help organize a local urbanist discussion group.  The members have been assembling an independent land plan for a portion of the downtown Fairgrounds here in Petaluma.  The plan is proposed for implementation after the current lease expires in eight years.  I’ve been promising an announcement about the next step in the planning effort, but the pieces aren’t quite yet in place.)

In the absence of a Fairgrounds update, I’ll continue sharing moments that caught my attention at the recently completed 23rd annual meeting of the Congress for the New Urbanism.   (The photo is from a public park near the host hotel.)  This post will almost, but not quite, empty my notebook of shareable moments, although I’ll return in more depth to the topics addressed at CNU 23 in the coming weeks and months.  (Earlier snippets from CNU 23 are here, here, and here.)

The Persistence of Infrastructure: I’ve previously written that, even more so than buildings that can wear out and be replaced, patterns of infrastructure can persist nearly forever.  Build a bridge connecting two towns and the towns become so intertwined that a bridge must always remain.  Construct a lock to allow river commerce to an upstream town and it may be years before the lock can be abandoned.  Configure a subdivision around an assumption that everyone will drive and the multitude of homes may never allow pedestrian/bicycle/transit-friendly revisions.

Maria Zimmerman of MZ Strategies phrased it succinctly during CNU 23.  ”Infrastructure is a way to make your great-grandchildren live by your values even after you’re gone.”

Even if our periscopes toward the future are often foggy and distorted, we should try to build as timelessly as possible.

The Worldview of Transit Managers: The discussion of transit systems can often seem bloodless.  Fare box recovery, route efficiency, traffic signal priorities, and paratransit optimization are important, but only occasionally do those topics evoke passion.

But transit consultant Jarrett Walker pointed out during CNU 23 that transit managers often get a different perspective.  It’s the transit managers who sit across from tearful mothers who claim that a fare increase won’t allow them to deliver their children to schools, causing Children’s Protective Services to take the children away.

It’s worth remembering that transit systems aren’t strictly balance sheets, but are also lifelines on which real people rely.

Not Everyone Needs a Fishing Pier: Staying with Jarrett Walker, he noted that some cities structure their transit systems around providing an equal share of the transit pie to every district.  As he described it, this approach makes about as much sense as giving a fishing pier to every district regardless of whether the district has a body of water.

Transit should be about serving people, not dividing political spoils.

The World is Different Than When I Finished College: In an updated snapshot of a point about which I’ve often written, Christopher Coes of Smart Growth America reported that 64 percent of all college-educated workers between the ages of 25 and 34 now decide where they want to live and then look for a job in that place.

For those seeking economic growth, the message should be clear.  Build places where the next generation wants to live and employers will follow.  (And yes, the Fairgrounds plan noted above follows that dictum.)

Looking for the Funk:  The Dallas-area firm Ash+Lime Strategies, which was active in the planning of CNU 23, specializes in the field of tactical urbanism.  Tactical urbanism is the use of small urban interventions in the hope of triggering bigger ideas.  Faced with a brick hulk of an abandoned factory, some urbanists begin making plans to raze the building and to build four stories of mixed use.  Others bring in a band and a beer trailer to see what magic happens.  The latter urbanists are tactical urbanists.

Ash+Lime partner,   Amanda Popken, speaking at CNU 23, described their goal as being “Create the funk that makes a place.”

I suspect that most North Bay communities have underused places with funks yet to be exploited.  Here in Petaluma, I’ll point toward the aging industrial area bounded by the Petaluma River, E. Washington Street, and railroad tracks.  So, how do we create the funk that would make those places?

Next time, my goal remains to offer a Fairgrounds update.  Failing that, I’ll riff on a way of thinking about transit that was offered at CNU 23.

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

Observations from the Petaluma Wastewater Decision

Two weeks ago, a Sonoma County Superior Court judge issued a decision against the City of Petaluma.  Judge Gary Nadler agreed with former City Councilmember Bryant Moynihan that Petaluma had been wrong in using wastewater maintenance funds, which are rate-funded, for stormwater maintenance needs, which are tax-funded.  The story was covered by both Petaluma Patch and the Argus Courier.

It’ll be a difficult decision for Petaluma to implement because it puts a new burden on an already stretched municipal budget.

Predictably, much of the public comment focused on vilifying the wrong-doers in the Petaluma City Hall while lauding Moynihan.  But those reactions were simplistic.  There are other observations to be made, including one that ties directly to urbanism.

Observation #1 - Even if there are “guilty parties”, they’re no longer on the scene: The mingling of funds began during the tenure of a now-departed City Manager.  Also gone are many of the employees who reported to him.  Of the cadre of folks who may have had an opportunity to comment upon or to object to the decision back when it was first made, it’s possible that none remain in the city employ.

More recently, current city management has been taking a more cautious approach to the transfer of funds, documenting them as loans to be repaid, acknowledging the possibility that the decision would go against them.

If people are forming a lynch party, they may have a hard time finding appropriate targets.

Observation #2 – The judicial decision probably wasn’t clear-cut: When I first learned of the transfer of funds, I had two thoughts.  My first thought was that the transfer could be justified from an engineering perspective.  The city was correct that a properly maintained stormwater system diverts water from the wastewater system.  So using wastewater funds to maintain the stormwater system could be reasonable.

My second thought was that if mingling funds in that manner was legal, then it would be a huge loophole.  One can make an argument that maintaining roadways helps the wastewater system or that maintaining waterlines helps the roadways.

My two thoughts were contradictory.  It’s likely that the judge had to grapple with similar uncertainties.  Much of life falls into areas of grey.  This judicial decision probably fell securely into the grey.  And anyone who tries to characterize it as black-and-white is overreaching.

Observation #3 – Judges are only human: I’ve known many judges in my sixty years.  Almost without exception, I find them reasonable and intelligent people.  But not one has been an expert in all the fields that came before their bench.  Indeed, it’s impossible for any single human being to have knowledge in all the fields of human endeavor.

One of my favorite judicial stories is about a judge who was willing to admit his shortcomings.  The legal matter was a battle between partners in a land development project.  The argument was over how to allocate the development costs between the different land-holdings of the two parties.  The dispute eventually found its way into the judge’s courtroom.

Before the trial could begin, the judge addressed the attorneys and the litigants.  He told them that he’d be willing to make a decision once the evidence was presented and the arguments made.  But he was sure that, because he lacked a land development background, his decision wouldn’t be nearly as reasonable or appropriate as any compromise they might reach.

So he offered his chambers for a final negotiation, along with his strong encouragement to reach a deal.  The parties took heed of his offer and were able to reach a good settlement.

I don’t know Judge Nadler, but I suspect that he’d be equally humble about his background in infrastructure.  Nonetheless, he was forced into making a decision by the intractability of the situation.  It’s likely that the decision was made by a decent man who was struggling to grasp the complexity of the engineering issues that were raised.  Which is another reason not to make broad conclusions about good guys and bad guys from the decision.

I’m not suggesting the decision is wrong.  I don’t have an opinion on that point.  I’m only noting that our system of justice sometimes results in decisions being made by honest, well-meaning people who lack a depth of technical understanding that would be helpful.

Observation #4 – The underlying issue is a city struggling with finances: We’ll likely never know exactly why the former city employees choose to begin the fund transfer.  But it was likely the result of a financially-constricted city trying to find a way to cover expenses.  Which is an increasingly common situation.

Perhaps this one particular strategy was rejected by the courts, but it was only one of numerous other strategies still being used by many cities, including selling and leasing back city property and securing debt against revenues streams such as parking revenues.

More important than questioning how Petaluma came to have their particular strategy rejected by the courts is asking why cities are increasingly forced to move into grey areas.  And it’s not just the recession that created the problems on municipal ledgers.  The Petaluma transfers began before the economic travails.

The answer is that we’ve created a world that is expensive to operate and to maintain.  At the same time, we’re denying the cities the funds to perform those tasks.

There are a number of actions that must be taken to address this concern.  But urbanism, which offers reduced per capita infrastructure costs, must be a key element of the discussion.  And every moment we spend in finger-pointing rather than in making the necessary changes is a disservice to the future.

If there is one thought that we should take away from the Petaluma decision, it shouldn’t be who do we blame, but how do we pull cities back from the edge of the financial cliff.  And urbanism is part of the answer.

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

 

(Note: Petaluma wastewater plant photo is from Petaluma Patch.)

The StrongTowns Theory and Social Equality

In 1978, when California voters approved the property tax limitations of Proposition 13, I was on the board for a condominium association in Walnut Creek.

The condos were about a half-mile south of the Pleasant Hill BART station.  Many of us began our daily commutes with a walk to the station.  Other pedestrians on the route came from single-family neighborhoods further south and from more condos midway between us and the BART station.

When Proposition 13 passed, the Contra Costa County Supervisors had to find substantial cuts in the county budget.  One decision, an admittedly minor one, but every penny counted, was to reduce streetlighting.  The County decided to retain streetlighting within a quarter-mile of transit stops such as the BART station and within single-family neighborhoods, but otherwise to turn off streetlights in residential areas unless adjoining residents agreed to pick up the tab.

The inequity was obvious.  Even though many residents of both condo projects had acquired their homes for the easy walking access to BART, the other condos would have their entire route home lighted, while we had to walk the last distance in the dark unless we agreed to pay.  Meanwhile, the residents to our south would benefit if the streetlights remained lighted, but weren’t being asked to participate in the cost.

Several board members attended a meeting of the County Supervisors to complain.  Not unexpectedly given the other priorities at the time, we were ignored.  The condo association agreed to pay reimbursement and the streetlights remained on.

I mention this story not because of a lingering resentment over the few dollars that I might have paid as condo association dues 35 years ago, but to point out that the social equality of infrastructure is difficult even in the best of times.  And when there is financial turmoil, the inequities can easily become worse.

StrongTowns argues that we have excess infrastructure and must soon make the tough decisions about what infrastructure we remain willing to maintain.  If StrongTowns is proven correct, we’ll have hard decisions to make amidst financial turmoil that may make the 1978 adjustments for Proposition 13 look minor.

And I fear that the StrongTowns will hold up.  In a recent post, I argued that it’s evident that we have at least some infrastructure that was poorly conceived to the point that it doesn’t justify the cost of maintenance.  Quoting myself, “The question shouldn’t be whether some of our infrastructure is unjustified, but how much is.  Is it two percent?  Or is it 30 to 40 percent?  My instincts tell me that the latter is more likely.”

From a career of watching decisions get made in public forums, I have a sense of the decision-making process that would result if infrastructure winnowing is required.  And my sense leads me to disturbing possibilities.

If a community as a whole decides to forego a particular element of infrastructure maintenance, I suspect that we’ll allow individual neighborhoods to cover the costs instead.  It worked that way with streetlights in 1978.  I see no reason why it would be different in 2013.

But what might happen is that the affluent neighborhoods would choose to support their own infrastructure while refusing the support the infrastructure of the broader community.  It might be streetlights.  It might be street repaving.  It might be power lines.  But in the end, affluent neighborhoods would continue to live as they lived in the past, while the poorer neighborhood would be dark at night, have crumbling pavement, and be subject to periodic power outages.

If the scenario sounds familiar, it should.  It's what California has largely done with K through 12 education, allowing more affluent neighborhoods to create educational settings for their own children that are significantly better than are provided in poorer neighborhoods.  And the educational results haven’t been good, at least if one believes in the ideal of social mobility.

The U.S. prides itself on social mobility.  We like to believe that anyone in the U.S. can succeed despite humble beginnings.  But current results may not bear out this belief.  A recent study measured social mobility in developed nations.  The measure was percentage of people who die in a different quintile of family income than that into which they were born.  By that yardstick, the U.S. was 16th among the 23 nations studied.  Far from being a beacon of hope and opportunity to the lower classes, we now lag much of the world in social mobility.  I suspect that much of the reason lays in our schooling.

And now the StrongTowns theory comes along and raises the possibility that infrastructure will follow the same path of inequality as education.

 The U.S. was founded in an expectation that we all have equal opportunities to succeed.  Throughout our history, our implementation of this ideal has been imperfect, but we’ve largely retained the vision.  Except in recent times when we seem to have become increasingly willing to go our own ways and not to care about whether children in the next neighborhood have the same opportunities as our own children.  And now a problem with the economic sustainability of infrastructure may give us another opportunity to separate into our own boats, leaving our fellow citizens behind. 

This concern isn’t the fault of StrongTowns.  They’re only pointing out the problem with infrastructure; they’re not telling us how we should handle the shrinking of our infrastructure without further disadvantaging poorer neighborhoods.  But they’ll hopefully be part of the discussion about how to avoid the pitfall.

Which leads to one more opportunity to remind readers that Charles Marohn of StrongTowns will appear via video chat in Petaluma on Tuesday, February 12.  All are welcome to join us at Work Petaluma, 10 4th Street.  We’ll start at 5:30.  Marohn will present the StrongTowns theory and then take questions.  The social equality issue is high on my list of questions.

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

What Tulips and Asphalt Have in Common

My wife and I bought our current Petaluma home in June 2005.  If not the absolute peak of the housing market, it was darned close.  As a result, we’re stuck where we are, unable to sell the home for now.

Not that we’re looking to move.  It’s a fine home in a good neighborhood.  We enjoy the folks living around us.  There are schools within walking distance, along with a small grocery, pub, and deli.  And, if the weather is conducive to a longer walk, downtown is also reachable on foot.

We both had careers in fields that gave us insights to the housing market.  And we indeed expected that the market was near the top, with little room to go higher because many buyers had reached their financial limits.  But we didn’t realize the extent of the misbehavior underway on Wall Street.  So we didn’t anticipate the extent of the decline.  Now we sit, waiting for and hoping for a recovery.

Except for a bit of pique at Wall Street, we’re not particularly angry about the housing bubble.  Bubbles are the nature of free markets.  When times are good, commodities become overpriced.  When reality asserts itself, adjustments follow.

Nor are bubbles a recent economic phenomenon.  In the early 17th century, tulips bulbs were selling in Holland for up to ten times the annual salary of a skilled craftsman.  Less than a century later, the South Sea Bubble in Great Britain, which was more about speculation in government debt than about the South Seas, caused economic upheaval and the transfer of great wealth.

So, if we can create bubbles in tulips, government debt, and housing, is it possible, as StrongTowns argues, that there can be an infrastructure bubble?  Given the way in which we’ve made infrastructure decisions in recent decades, the only surprising thing would be if there wasn’t an infrastructure bubble.  And the fact that infrastructure isn’t a free market doesn’t really help.  Central planning can also create bubbles.  (See the USSR.)

I was recently an advisor during the scoping of an infrastructure project.  The funds were coming from a federal grant.  As a result, our conversations were about the best use for all the dollars in the grant.  Never did anyone ask whether the resulting project was truly needed or whether its maintenance might be a long-term problem for the local government.

I’m not criticizing the result of the scoping process.  I think we reached reasonable and appropriate decisions.  And I believe that the infrastructure will serve well.  I’m just astonished that at no time during the process did anyone, myself included, even question whether spending the entire federal grant was appropriate.

Instead, we acted as if the federal government couldn’t have possibly given us more grant funds than we truly needed.  We worked on the implicit assumption that the federal government has never wasted money.  It was a dubious assumption.

 And if the funding mechanism for a small local improvement can make us to forget to ask fundamental financial questions, think how much worse it would be for enormous infrastructure projects with broad political ramifications.  Decades of thinking that money from the federal government is “free” has distorted our financial good sense.

The question shouldn’t be whether some of our infrastructure is unjustified, but how much is.  Is it two percent?  Or is it 30 to 40 percent?  My instincts tell me that the latter is more likely.

This isn’t an argument that infrastructure is inherently evil.  That’s not at all true.  Infrastructure is essential to our lives.  But not all infrastructure is good.  We need to return to making infrastructure decisions on a rational basis.  The same way the Dutch dealt with tulips.  No longer paying exorbitant amount for a single tulip bulb, but still retaining tulips as an essential part of the national character.  (See the above photo of a Dutch tulip field.)

Returning to good infrastructure decision-making won’t be easy.  There will people and businesses who will be harmed.  But our future requires us to make the effort.

Which is all the more reason to pay attention to StrongTowns when founder Charles Marohn makes his appearance via internet in Petaluma next week.   Join us at 5:30 on Tuesday, February 12 at Work Petaluma, 10 4th Street in downtown Petaluma, to listen to and to ask questions of Marohn.  RSVPs aren’t required, but would be appreciated so we have enough seating for all.

As a last thought, Alex Steffen, a known expert on sustainability, recently tweeted about infrastructure.  This is what he had to say.

“Lots of U.S. infrastructure—especially roads—makes no financial sense now, even before we talk climate emissions and energy vulnerability.” 

“I'd put to you that having highway construction companies and sprawl developers tell us how things work is unlikely to create a true model.”

 
I concur.  Listening to a developer of drivable suburbia talk about the need for more infrastructure is akin to listening to a 17th century Dutch tulip middleman talk about the value of tulip bulbs.

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

(Note: The photo of tulip fields is from a blog post on Likecool.com.)

Debating Infrastructure

I wrote recently about the possibility that the U.S. has overbuilt infrastructure and that the resulting inability to fund infrastructure maintenance is undermining the economy.  Therefore, I was intrigued to receive an invitation to watch a high school debate about U.S. infrastructure policy.  However, I found that high school debate is different than I might have expected.

Luckily, I later had a chance to communicate about infrastructure with a city councilmember.  The exchange was more my speed, both figuratively and literally.

The topic for the 2012-2013 national high school debate season is “Resolved: The United States federal government should substantially increase its transportation infrastructure investment in the United States.”  I was looking forward to hearing what high school students thought on the subject and whether they had been seduced into the infrastructure cult.

I still don’t have an answer to that question.  The initial arguments were presented so quickly that I was unable to follow the content.  The instructor had advised me about the speed talking used for the introductory salvos, but I still thought I was at a cattle auction.  During a break, the instructor described one debater as “perhaps the fastest high school debater in the country.”  Which I guess is a good thing, but it didn’t help my comprehension at all.

The arguments and counterarguments traded after the initial speech were presented at a more moderate pace and I was generally able to follow them.  Although I found the arguments tangential to what I had expected, often devolving into meta-debates about the rules of debate, such as whether conditional negative arguments are permissible.  I probably didn’t explain that correctly, but it was the best I could understand it.

A fresh-faced seventeen-year-old tried to explain the nuances of the debate to me during breaks.  I appreciated her efforts.  She truly was kind about it.  But she might as well have been instructing me in the social rituals of an aboriginal tribe.  A fast-talking aboriginal tribe.

To illustrate my point, the affirmative side talked of investing in a tunnel across the Bering Straits, linking the U.S. and Russia.  Ah-hah, I could grasp that one.  A Bering Straits tunnel would be the largest, most technically complex, and more expensive infrastructure project of all time.  And yet all it would accomplish would be the delivery of goods to the far eastern end of Siberia, an impossibly long distance from any sizable markets.  By any definition of “investment”, the tunnel would fail.

But instead the debate took on questions like whether the U.S. retained a residual animosity toward Russia from the Cold War, whether the tunnel would break down international borders, and whether a world without borders would be a good thing.  My arguments weren’t even on the table.  At least, I don’t think they were.  Everyone was talking too quickly for me to be sure.

If this sounds like I mocking debate, I’m not.  Any more than I would mock high school basketball.  Hitting a 12-foot jumper at the buzzer may not be a skill that helps in later life, but learning to practice hard and to be part of a team is a good life skill.  Similarly, speaking quickly may not help in a job interview.  But learning to assimilate arguments quickly and to respond comprehensively and effectively is a good life skill.  Probably better than those learned on the basketball court.

Had there been a debate club at my high school, I would have done well to participate.  The skills would have been effective in my career and in writing this blog.

Luckily, another exchange gave an opportunity to use my lesser skills of persuasion.  A city councilmember, writing in response to my invitation to the February 12 StrongTowns presentation, asked “Give me an example of how one might address supposedly excess infrastructure.”  My response included the following points.

The emerging reality that Chuck Marohn of StrongTowns postulates is difficult to put one's arms around.  Marohn tried to tackle the question in a post he wrote in October 2011.  He suggests that suburban neighborhoods beyond the limit of economically sustainable infrastructure will have four possible outcomes:

Lower Entropy: More of life would be lived in a neighborhood, with trips to town becoming special events.

Neighborhood Repair: Neighborhoods would evolve to a more sustainable configuration, perhaps by the addition of more residents and economic activity, increasing tax revenues for infrastructure maintenance.

Abandonment: Some houses and even entire neighborhoods would be left vacant.  Marohn argues that we’ve already seen this in the inner cities of the 1940s and 1950s.

Salvage:  Some homes would be demolished for the value of their materials.

The complete StrongTowns blog post is here.

Admittedly, Marohn is talking about Minnesota, which has a different reality than California.  So I’ll offer a local possibility.  Perhaps Sonoma County decides that it can no longer maintain River Road between Santa Rosa and Guerneville.  Between the damages from increased Russian River flooding and limited funds, Public Works can't keep the road repaired.  Instead, the County keeps the road from Healdsburg toward Guerneville open, but with a lower design speed because of poor pavement condition.

In that world, no one could live in Guerneville and work in Santa Rosa. The daily commute would be too dificult.  Many of the homes in Guerneville would survive, especially those above the new flood plain.  But the homes would become weekend hideaways for people willing to spend two hours driving from Santa Rosa to Guerneville by way of Healdsburg while using $10 per gallon gas.

This example is only a possibility, but it’s credible for the not-too-distant future.

Hopefully the councilmember will attend the February 12 meeting.  Perhaps some of the St. Vincent High School debate team will also participate.  If they promise to ask questions in a normal speed voice.

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

Dad as a Cult Member

I’ve mentioned my father several times in this blog.  He continues to force his way into my writing.

Dad was a civil engineer for life.  By his high school years, he knew that his path in life would be engineering.  From his arrival on the University of California campus in 1940 until he left his final consulting job in about 2004, he was devoted to his craft.

And part of that devotion was his career-long membership in the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE).  ASCE’s monthly magazine, “Civil Engineering” arrived regularly at my childhood homes.  At his memorial service in 2010, I reported that “Until I was 10, I thought a toilet required a stack of ‘Civil Engineering’ magazines on the tank to flush properly.”

With that background, it was startling to have StrongTowns describe ASCE as a cult.  But they make a good case.

The StrongTowns notes that ASCE argues for infrastructure funding even when economics belie the argument.  Few seem to notice the inconsistencies.  And many in the media and elsewhere repeat the argument uncritically.  It’s as if the need for more infrastructure is so self-evident that the numbers don’t need to make sense.  Which does sound much like a cult.

At the time of the StrongTowns blog post, ASCE was calling for $2.2 trillion in infrastructure expansion and maintenance.  And they were estimating the benefits as $1 trillion.  So they were called for spending with a benefit/cost ratio of less than 0.5.  And yet no one seemed to care about the upside-down argument.

Even worse, some of the benefits seemed illusory, such as valuing extra time spent commuting at the same hourly rate earned during working hours.  Example: If you earn $25 per hour, or $52,000 per year, ASCE was arguing that it was justified to spend almost $1,100 per year to shorten your commute by five minutes each way.  I’m awfully sure that a tax measure that billed every commuter $1,100 per year to save ten minutes per day would fail badly.  But it was part of the ASCE calculation.  And few objected.  Very cult-like.

Ironically, the early 2013 ASCE infrastructure update arrived in my inbox after I’d begun this post.  The numbers have been adjusted, perhaps in response to the StrongTown objections.   Such as a footnote that “Costs do not include … value of time other than business travel.”  And the cost and benefit numbers may have been adjusted to make the benefit/cost ratio greater than 1.0.

But it’s not quite possible to decipher the numbers.  The cost of deteriorating infrastructure between now and 2020 is estimated as $0.6 trillion to households, $1.2 trillion to businesses, and $1.1 trillion in trade, for a total GDP reduction of $3.1 trillion.  I’m not an economist, but I’m not sure how those numbers are supposed to add up.  They don’t add up to the total, plus it would seem that some double-counting must be involved.

And the costs aren’t much better.  The cost for all infrastructure needs through 2020 is estimated as $2.7 trillion, with anticipated funding at only $1.7 trillion.  Against which of those costs are the benefits to be measured, the total infrastructure bill or the shortfall?  If we assume that the reduced GDP is to be measured against the total infrastructure cost, then the benefit/cost ratio is 3.1/2.7 or less than 1.2.  It’s an awfully small number for a report that is presumably written to optimize the case for infrastructure spending.

Then there is the argument that the average household will lose $3,100 per year if the infrastructure work isn’t done.  Which ignores that a big chunk of that $3,100 would be taken as taxes to pay for the infrastructure.   The chant of the cult continues.

I’m not arguing that there is no infrastructure work to be done.  One only needs to drive a short distance to understand the problems with our roads.  And concerns about flooding, water, sewer, electricity, etc. are nearly as evident.  But I’ll join StrongTowns in arguing that we can’t afford to fix all of it.  And that we need to start making hard choices about spending priorities based on credible economic analyses.

If Dad was still with us, I think he’d agree with me.  He believed in ASCE, but he believed in facts even more.  That’s one reason why I miss him.

(Acknowledgment: I’m also an ASCE member, although Dad and I worked in very different areas of the profession.  My ASCE membership is a remnant of my early days in the profession.  I remain a member because I have life insurance that would cost more to replace elsewhere.  Besides, there are still many good folks who belong to ASCE.  Perhaps they need deprogramming, but they’re decent people.  These days however, I feel far more professional connection to the Congress of the New Urbanism and the Urban Land Institute.)

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

Are We Sure It Shouldn’t Be Now?

It’s Monday morning and the holidays are officially behind us.  Children are back in school and most decorations have been returned to the attic for another eleven months.  It’s time to look ahead at urbanism in 2013.

I recently spoke with a friend who has tried his hand at urbanist development and hopes to do so again.  He commented that a particular city “was waiting for the economy to improve before refocusing on downtown redevelopment.”

I recognize the attitude.  I’ve had it myself.  The thinking is that urbanism is a future necessity, but that we still have time to move that direction.  That we should have working toward a more urbanist world for the past decade or two, but another few months or years of foot-dragging, while unfortunate, can be accommodated.

I’m not sure anymore.  It’s possible that the time when urbanism is essential has arrived.  And that waiting until the economy recovers is a fool’s errand.

Those who have followed this blog have read various reasons why we should be pursuing increased urbanism.  Because we’ve suppressed urbanism for decades by ill-conceived public policies.  Because there are people who prefer an urbanist life and deserve a reasonable opportunity to live that lifestyle.  Because diminishing petroleum reserves will force changes in transportation options.  Because climate change will be lessened with a more urbanism lifestyle.  Because there is increasing evidence that public health improves as urbanism grows.

All of those reasons remain valid and all have some degree of urgency attached.  But a different reason may have now pushed its way to the front of the line, especially in a time of ongoing economic duress.  That reason is the StrongTowns hypothesis.  The StrongTowns folks argue that we’ve already built more infrastructure than we can afford to maintain.  That the burden of the infrastructure maintenance deficit is an anchor on the economy.  And that a principal course of action to redress the problem is urbanism.

I still retain a trace of hesitancy about the StrongTowns hypothesis.  It fits the facts remarkably well, but is so startling and far-reaching in its implications that a lingering bit of skepticism is appropriate.

However, the credibility of the hypothesis is sufficiently high that we should all be thinking about it.  It would be irresponsible to blindly proceeding with new and expensive infrastructure requiring ongoing and as yet unfunded maintenance without pondering the StrongTowns hypothesis.

Furthermore, every day brings news of more people buying into the hypothesis.  As Canadian Jesse Paulson writes on Twitter, “Canada's costs of replacing roads in fair to very poor condition: $7,325 per household!  We've built too many roads, eh!”

Meanwhile, Calgary has hired a planning director who brings an occasionally overboard but always enthusiastic endorsement of urbanism.  Among his quotes, "The best places to visit have the worst traffic. Who in here has gone on vacation in Houston?"  And "Other than saying they serve horse meat, nothing kills a restaurant faster than locating on a one-way street. ... We want people to slow down, look out the window at the retail environment and have street parking to liven up the sidewalk."

Also, the EPA reports that infill development is increasing across the U.S. 

The tide may be turning, with additional support flowing toward urbanism.  But tides often turn with agonizing slowness.  And every bit of new infrastructure, especially that which will require unfunded maintenance, has the potential to create a burden that will bedevil our economic health for years.

It’s likely that we can no longer delay our move toward urbanism.  Waiting to do so until the economy improves may be like waiting for Godot.

This is a good time to note that Charles Marohn of StrongTowns will make a presentation via the internet to Petaluma Urban Chat on the evening of Tuesday, February 12.  He was originally scheduled for tomorrow, Tuesday, January 8, but will be spreading the StrongTowns word in Pennsylvania, so asked to delay his presentation by a month.  Everyone is encouraged to join us that evening.

Petaluma Urban Chat will still meet tomorrow, Tuesday January 8, 5:30pm, at the Aqus Café in Petaluma.  We’ll continue our discussion of the StrongTowns Curbside Chat booklet in preparation for Marohn’s February presentation.  Please take a look at the booklet and then enter the conversation.

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