MixedUseCores

News

2008-02-10T14:11:11Z

Rod Engelen died on Friday, February 8th in Phoenix of complications from a stroke. He was 80 years old. His was a rich world of old colleagues and friends, shared ideas, and warm communication and he will be greatly missed.

Rod continued to be optimistic about our ability to address societal and global problems in a timely manner. His focus on fundamental issues, principles, and core values is his legacy. And much of the material supporting that legacy is on his mixedusecores website. As is the case with so much in our lives, his website is not complete; but he recognized that it likely never would be.

A memorial service for Rod is planned for March 30th at the Unitarian Church of Evanston, IL. If you have any questions or feedback, let me know at mailto://dkengelen@fdm-online.com.

Thanks for your interest in Rod's work and issues.

Derek K. Engelen

LOSING CHEAP OIL COULD BE A BLESSING IN DISGUISE

2007-11-11T12:00:00Z

How It May Force Us to Get Serious about Mixed Use and make our cities more efficient, livable, and affordable.

For almost a century commitments to autos and cheap oil prevented us from doing this. Now, losing cheap oil makes it both necessary and possible to build regions and cities much better than we have been. We can no longer build sprawl. And we must and now can organize them into communities and neighborhoods anchored by mixed use cores.¹ These cores should:

Be compact

Made up of a balanced, compatible mix of activities and land uses

Have multi-modal access

Include convenient, efficient, pedestrian-oriented internal circulation

And attractive amenities: natural, built and cultural

Be strongly supported by their environment (most often residential neighborhoods)

These qualities still exist in many downtowns and centers around the country. Unfortunately, They were often neglected and lost as industry and auto use came to dominate and were not replaced or extended in new development. Now the loss of cheap oil will both require and stimulate us to reestablish or include them in both existing areas and new.

Moving Back to the Future

From the earliest settlements of civilization these qualities have been sought in towns and cities and largely achieved . We love to visit them in areas where they can still be found. Only defense was considered more important than these qualities by Greeks seeking sites for colonies or new towns around the Mediterranean or by early immigrants to America and settlers to the West. The principles have been reaffirmed many times since, often with well supported evidence. Some of the best examples of this include:

Lewis Mumford, perhaps the world’s most acute student of urban life.

Margaret Mead, one of the world’s most perceptive observer of relationships between of humans and their environment.

Victor Gruen, the "father" of the shopping center, a sharp critic of its failures and most eloquent supporter of true mixed use.

Architects Clarence Stein and Henry Wright who, in 1929, combined ideas about mixed use with Ebenezer Howard’s Garden Cities ideas to create Radburn, N.J. Mumford considered it "the first major advance in city planning since Venice". Although the crash in1929 prevented its completion, its concepts were subsequently reflected in a few new communities in the U. S., and many in England, Sweden, Japan and other countries around the world.

Visionary developer, J. C. Nichols, builder of the Country Club Plaza in Kansas City, in the 1920's. This is one of the earliest and most successful, still thriving, early centers combining housing, office, retail, hotel and other uses in any American city.

Despite these strong beginnings and even later efforts by Victor Gruen to apply mixed use principles, the depression, war, and growing dominance of the auto and cheap oil prevented the idea from being widely applied in the U. S. In the absence of strong pressure from any source it was far easier for developers and communities to simply ignore the lessons of mixed use and its related principles.

Revived Interest and First Principles

After World War II cities awakened to concerns about their downtowns². In the 1950's relatively comprehensive planning efforts were initiated in such cities as Seattle, Cincinnati, Chicago and Vancouver, each with its own approach. Even without benefit of guidelines all still achieved success. However, in his work for Chicago, Ted Aschman , as consultant to Chicago Central Area Committee, identified the six basic qualities defining a good downtown. These are listed above. Today I would add a seventh: "good management."

Unfortunately, although Ted’s firm, Barton Aschman Associates applied them widely in over fifty downtowns, they were circulated by the Chicago Central Area and reported by the American Society of Planning Officials (now APA), they did not become widely known. They are not even mentioned in downtown planning "manuals" eventually prepared by the American Planning Association (APA) and the Urban Land Institute (ULI). The principles and were and remain the foundation of the plan for Chicago and, in 1957, were applied in downtown Minneapolis and have been reiterated at every revision of it’s plan.

Publicizing Principles and Benefits

Finally, successes in some of the nation’s best central cities (Vancouver, Seattle, Minneapolis, Portland, etc.) as well as in some new suburban areas started generating attention to the values these principles create when applied and to failures when they are not. The work of Joel Kotkin, Richard Florida and the Urban Land Institute, in particular, has been very effective.

Several years ago, several planners and architects developed the concept of "new urbanism," established an organization using that name (Congress for the New Urbanism. CNU) and proposed a set of principles to be applied to new development. Likewise, the ULI initiated a program to overcome problems of many failing shopping centers using a set of principles they developed for this purpose.

The rules developed by these organizations are consistent with those developed by Ted Aschman. And, both the CNU and ULI continue to advocate and offer assistance in their application. And both organizations are calling attention to mixed use, and its principles for development and stimulating both developers and communities to accept and use them as a model.

How Do We Know Mixed Use Works?

Many claims are made for the value of mixed use. The benefit of mixed use principles is largely self evident. For example, the need for access and internal circulation cannot be denied. Yet, adequate transit and pedestrian facilities are often overlooked. No one argues against the value of compactness, amenities, real mixed use and support. Still, these are often short changed. And little hard evidence exists for claims that mixed use can reduce travel, provide more workers with convenient access to affordable housing or create stronger community identity and citizen involvement. Yet, logic tells us that these things are and can be true.

The claim which is most important in relation to the loss of cheap oil is that mixed use can be one of the most valuable ways to reduce the consumption of energy and especially oil. Research here needs to explore the degree to which mixed use can reduce the need for auto travel and fuel consumption. The theory is that mixed use will allow more people to live closer to most of the destinations that they have in their lives each day: work, play, school, shopping, education, health, etc. and that it provides an environment which generates better energy saving options for travel such as walking and transit.

The corollary question: is there some equally effective or cheaper way to accomplish such reductions, such as rationing or other types of control. However, I would argue that this is a moot question: the need for reduction is so great that we need to use every means we have.

Supporting Research

We cannot include here all the references to research results that may be appropriate. However, here are a few:

In response to the energy crisis in the 1970's several major studies were done using the mathematical models created to help plan the Interstate System in several regions to analyze the impacts of alternate urban forms. Several of these analyzed multi-nodal forms consisting of a number of large, mixed use centers. These studies were summarized in a report for USDOT by Dr. Jerry Schneider, titled Transit and the Polycentric City. Each study summarized its results in different ways. But all of them concluded that there were major savings in infrastructure costs and energy consumption by assuming a patterning of regional development into multiple mixed use centers.

One of these by Kyles, Sanborn and Carroll of the Brookhaven National Laboratory showed reductions in transportation energy use for the “growth center” (vs sprawl alternative) of 32%.
A second, by Peskin and Schofer of Northwestern University, compared three diagrammatic forms, two single-centered, "Concentric” and “One-Sided,” and one including four major “centers,” a downtown and three outlying centers. Reductions in gasoline use for the latter were 57% less for passenger travel in the Concentric option and 44% less than the One-Sided option.
A third, by Professor Ronald Rice examined six forms: central, homogeneous, multi-centered, radial corridor, linear and satellite. The multi-centered form was 23% better in person-hours ofwork trip travel and 22% better in average trip length. The greatest benefit would probablycome from non work trip travel which was not included.
The Costs of Sprawl, in 1974 (Real Estate Research Corporation) reviewed alternate patterns of residential development and concluded that huge savings in transportation infrastructure costs could result from building at higher densities, with an option of a “planned mix” with the lowestcost of any option except for “high density.” Several additional studies, such as the Costs of Sprawl, of this subject have been made since. None specifically include the element of “mixed use.” However, most continue to show substantial reductions in transportation and other costs solely from the factor of higher densities. Because the concept of mixed use discussed here requires a planned mix of uses and a higher jobs-retail-housing balance it could be expected that its widespread use would greatly increase savings beyond those generated solely by increased densities.
Work by Robert Cervero, especially his work with Robert Duncan reported in the Autumn 2006 Journal of the American Institute of Planners titled Which Reduces Vehicle Travel More: Jobs-Housing Balance or Retail-Housing Mixing? which concludes: “....Linking jobs and housing holds significant potential to reduce VMT (vehicle miles traveled) and VHT (vehicle hours traveled).”

The multi-center options analyzed in these studies only very roughly approximate the kind of pattern of mixed use centers contemplated by this analysis. Of course, for a large region there would not only be a number of large centers but also hundreds of smaller centers, each as self sufficient as possible in matching housing with job and other destinations. One could never expect universal matching of uses. But, I would expect only partial implementation in the manner proposed here to produce savings beyond those identified in the studies noted above.

In 1994, before recent rising concerns about the loss of cheap oil, Anthony Downs’ book, New Visions for Metropolitan America, emphasized five problems which he says we must solve: congestion, air pollution, loss of open space, growing infrastructure costs and affordable housing and evaluated four options to continued sprawl. He said that “if these problems are not addressed vigorously, they will gravely impair the political unity, productivity, and economic efficiency of American society and the personal security of everyone.” His concerns then are now multiplied by the loss of cheap oil. He identified and evaluated three broad options for future growth:

unlimited low-density development
limited-spread, mixed density growth
new communities and green belts
bounded, high density growth

All of these would be addressed by reducing the use of oil. Downs concludes that options 2-4 are superior to Option 1 in achieving the critical the social, economic and environmental needs which he has identified. I believe that his Option 2 is closest to the concept of mixed use which I have put forward. (See his table 10-1.) Downs says that it is likely most feasible.

He also names many benefits which he says good mixed use can generate. Because the stress on our resources is growing tremendously, it is essential that we choose the most efficient and effective option possible. With oil prices rising almost every day it will soon be painfully obvious that we must start acting on his concerns now!

Future blogs will discuss further evidence of the value of mixed use cores, the feasibility of their development and specific actions that may be required.

Mixed Use to the Rescue - In a Post Carbon World

2007-10-18T14:00:00Z

The drum beat is on to find huge funding for new highways. Chicago Tribune headlines shout “Area Gridlock Taking its Toll.” Media elsewhere also call for major new, multi-billion dollar programs.

The end of cheap oil and the need to reduce carbon emissions will prevent any such large endeavors. Rather, as well as requiring that resources to to other critical needs, they will require huge reductions in travel that virtually eliminate the need for any major new highway construction. The loss of cheap oil will throw all aspects of our lives into a tailspin: living standards, life styles, government and economy. This requires that urban settlements in the post carbon world be far more self sufficient, balanced in use, compact, of greater density and have high levels of pedestrian and environmental amenity.

Neither the nature, magnitude or urgency of the inevitable changes are seriously recognized. They will make obsolete much of the base of the economy, physical form and governing structure of the world, particularly that of the United States. In no more than ten to fifteen years the impacts beginning now will accelerate to create conditions we will hardly recognize and that will seem unthinkable. The evidence cannot be denied. Yet many in the oil industry and governments are doing exactly this. And the media, unfortunately, is confused and mute.

Finally, the evidence is emerging. The bottom line: we will face intense competition for increasingly scarce oil much sooner than we expect. Will find that there are no effective alternatives for oil. And will learn that few in power are yet willing to think realistically and plan for the future.

Available evidence is overwhelming. Two sources provide an excellent summary: First, The Last Oil Shock, by David Strahan. The words of it’s subtitle, “A Survival Guide to the Imminent Extinction of Petroleum Man” project the urgency of the subject. The book documents both the magnitude and timing of the changes required as well as many impacts of the loss of cheap oil. It also affirms conclusions of another important book, The Long Emergency, by James Kunstler and the film “The End of Suburbia” (obtainable from NetFlix).

Kuntsler goes much further in describing ways our lives will likely be changed by the loss of cheap oil. These will clearly shock many of us into denial and disbelief. The authors agree that we and our governments must act now to avoid debilitating chaos. (For more see “Peak Oil”, “James Kunstler”, “The End of Suburbia” and related links on the internet.)

Impacts

Strahan provides reams of highly relevant information about the impacts of the loss of oil (at any price). Most of these cover aspects of exploration, discovery, extraction and other aspects of its production and delivery affecting supply, availability and cost. He also deals with the limits of potential substitutes to oil. His observations about prices, shortages and likely crises are tempered but supportable. And his suggestions for saving fuel are down to earth. But he only hints at the upheavals in financial markets, the economy and community and personal lives that will be the ultimate effects of downsizing.

His suggestions for responses at the international and national level are these:

Undertake a massive public education campaign that will convince people of the gravity of the crisis and the changes needed and to provide “cover” for decisions that public officials must make.
Legislate or strengthen fuel efficiency standards and/or tax measures that will drive tax gas guzzlers out of production and off the road as soon as possible.
Remove exemptions of taxes on jet fuel and assure that they are reflected in the costs of aircraft and ticket sales.
Scrap all airport and road network expansion. (Avoid building facilities for highway or air travel that will not be needed or that may increase sprawl and carbon use.
Shift savings from above to public transportation.
Develop and apply a “cap and trade” system world wide and locally to reduce chaos from emergencies of availability, and assure equity and fairness in the allocation of diminishing supplies.

Kunstler deals more with consequences of lower supplies and higher costs such as impacts on availability of fuel for transport and agriculture and other critical purposes and resulting social and economic stress and conflict and what we must do. It is a sobering prospect. He says:

“The salient fact about life in the decades ahead is that it will become increasingly and intensely local and smaller in scale.... We will be compelled by the circumstances of the Long Emergency (read “post-carbon” era) to conduct the activities of daily life on a smaller scale, whether we like it or not, and the only intelligent course of action is to prepare for it. The downscaling of America is the single most important task facing the American people (emphasis added). As energy supplies decline, the complexity of human enterprise will also decline in all fields, and the most technologically complex systems will be ones most subject to dysfunction and collapse—including national and state governments. Complex systems based on far-flung resource supply chains and long- range transport will be especially vulnerable. Producing food will become a problem of supreme urgency.....”

“We spent all our wealth in the twentieth century building an infrastructure of daily life that will not work very long into the twenty-first century. ......

“Suburbia has a tragic destiny. More than half of the U. S. population lives in it. The economy of recent decade is based largely on the building and servicing of it. And the whole system will not operate without liberal and reliable supplies of cheap oil and natural gas. Suburbia is going to lose its value catastrophically as it loses its utility....

“American life in the twenty-first century has the best chance of adjusting to the Long Emergency in a physical pattern of small towns surrounded by productive farmland. I am not optimistic about our big cities — at least about them remaining big.... The industrial cities will never again be what they were in the twentieth century. They require too much energy to run and the industrial activities they were designed for are already defunct.
....”big cities will not be suited to the reduced scale of life in the post-cheap-oil future.... What’s more, the superdynamic suburban metroplexes of the past five decades – places like Phoenix, Las Vegas, Houston, Atlanta, Orlando, and so on – will decline even more rapidly...

“In The Long Emergency, the focus of society will have to return to the town or small city and its supporting agriculture hinterland. Those towns and cities will have to be a lot denser.....It won’t be easy. But they have the potential of coming back to life at a scale that the new economic realities will require....”

No one knows how accurate Kunstler’s assessments will be. But it is easy to see that we must vigorously
implement the settlement model he described. Anything we do will be made much more difficult by the
extreme competition for resources. But the potential of this model to save energy will make it essential.
But it’s many additional benefits – economic, social, environmental, health, convenience and job access
– will make it acceptable, even attractive, as a necessary choice as a place to live as well as to work and
do business.

“The significant problems we face cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them.” - Albert Einstein

The challenge is to make sure that what is done in the name of “mixed use” provides all the benefits of which it is capable. This means, among other things, not allowing – and certainly not subsidizing – projects that are mixed use in name only, offering very little of the convenience, energy and travel saving, balance and other benefits that true mixed use affords.

What We Must Do

We should, of course, make every effort to forestall the most severe consequences contemplated by Strahan and Kunstler not only by improvements in gas mileage, alternate energy sources, “cap and trade” distribution and changed mode choice but perhaps most importantly by creating an environment that reduces the need for travel and facilitates alternate travel modes.

To do this we must capture the real benefits and attraction of good mixed use to the fullest by energizing and stimulate the revival, “morphing” and building old or new centers, cores, downtowns, villages, and amenable existing “single-use attractions” into “mixed use”settlements to the fullest extent possible.

The opportunities are plentiful. For example, the regional plan for Chicago recognizes some 280 existing city or suburban or centers which it believes could and should be turned into the model desired. A relatively few already largely fit this definition. But the rest -- and many more, not yet targeted -- have this potential. Some are as large as “Edge Cities” which, with a heavy make over of new housing, transit, public services and pedestrian amenities, could become far healthier and more efficient places to work, conduct business and live.

Others, consisting of mainly one or two strong potential anchors – major offices, research or medical centers or similar attractions – could likewise be “morphed,” through the addition of housing and complimentary uses and amenities, to the new, higher level of efficiency and self sufficiency needed.

And hundreds more in the region, probably smaller, could also be remodeled to reduce travel and add new efficiency, life and focus to communities or neighborhoods.

Beyond the Chicago Region there are hundreds of smaller cities and towns that may also have the potential to serve as the self sufficient community envisaged by Kunstler. Not all such communities will. But those that do may help to sustain much higher levels of economic activity and services in rural areas than could otherwise be achieved.

There are, of course, many more things that must be done to remodel and remake our environment on the
scale needed. Most action must be local. But collectively, it constitutes an effort comparable to overcoming
the 1930's depression, building the Interstate System or perhaps even some of the wars in which we have
engaged. It will require tremendous imagination, creativity, coordination, leadership and commitment. The
work required is another story to which I hope we will soon turn our attention.

SHOULD WE SUBSIDIZE MIXED USE OR SPRAWL?

2007-08-26T19:18:29Z

Subsidies to transit are always a good target for critics. Only half informed, columnist Dennis Byrne recently attacked them in the Chicago Tribune. He suggested that they cover half the cost of transit in the Chicago area. He proclaimed “We don’t pay half the motorists’ costs when he drives to work or goes shopping.” and that public spending on transit is horribly misplaced.

The fact is that we subsidize both transit and auto . But those of transit are almost nothing compared to those of autos. And the resulting higher auto use generates even higher, unmeasured costs on our own pocketbooks, society and the environment.

In an internet piece titled America's Autos On Welfare, the Sierra Club said: “....Every year those subsidies cost America billions of dollars. The exact dollar amount is difficult to calculate, but every study done shows that it is at least twice the amount motorists pay at the pump.”

Subsidies to Auto Use

Over the past thirty years at least eight studies have been made of subsidies to auto use in the U. S. The average of the estimates of these studies is over $800 Billion annually. That is over $2,700 each year for every man, woman and child in the country. Using Byrne’s assumptions of cost of about $3 for a transit ride and the federal estimate of 10 billion such rides per year indicates a total spent on transit each year of about $30 billion. If, as suggested by Bryne, half is paid by users, that shows a total subsidy to transit of about $15 billion a year. For every dollar to support transit we pay fifty to subsidize auto use

This largely explains the poor availability and quality of transit service which results in high unit costs and low ridership, feeding a self fulfilling prophesy and furthering the cycle of declining usage and revenues.

In recent years, where attractive, new transit service has been provided (such as Minneapolis, MN, Gresham, OR, San Diego, CA and others) new patronage has almost always far exceeded projections, often in the face of policies and practices hostile to transit use.

(These and similar data may be found at tinyurl.com/3o44w and www.sierraclub.org/sprawl/articles/subsidies.asp.)

Mutual Benefits of Mixed Use and Transit

Transit and mixed use centers are mutually supporting and essential to each other in two ways:

• First, good mixed use can generate far higher levels of transit ridership at less cost than dispersed development.
• Second, transit improves access and permits dramatically reduced costs for access, circulation and parking in mixed use areas.

Here's how this can work:

•    Compact, intense, pedestrian friendly mixed use attracts many more people to transit than scattered, low density development, greatly increasing revenues for transit.
•    The combination of transit availability, compactness and mixed use permits people who live, work or obtain services in mixed use areas to reduce or virtually eliminate their dependence on or ownership of cars and parking, greatly reducing their own costs and those of the public and businesses to meet these needs.
•    When people no longer need autos to live and work in mixed use areas they may shift to transit for access, reducing the need to own, park or drive a car, further increasing support for transit.
•    As transit ridership and related revenues increase and savings result from reduced ownership, these can be not only to improve transit but to meet other needs of the individuals, businesses, institutions and public agencies involved.

The bottom line is that wise investments in transit can produce tremendous advantages to everyone involved, citizens, businesses, the public and institutions. These advantages are economic, social and environmental. And there is little doubt that they far outweigh whatever subsidies may be required to create and operate transit services and to deal with any environmental or similar problems that they may generate. Moreover, the enormous secondary benefits which transit generates through its stimulation and support of efficient mixed use are probably beyond calculation.

This contrasts strongly with subsidies to auto use which mainly initiate, perpetuate and increase the many costs from parking, accident, environmental, policing, health and other problems that it produces. These costs fall on property owners, businesses, employees, residents, users and governmental jurisdictions, not only in areas served but of many surrounding areas as well. (Not to mention costs at the national and international level including those of climate change, air pollution, wars to protect oil sources, etc.)

Net Benefits Must Justify Support

Clearly, where public monies and other resources are being spent for any purpose, the degree to which such spending results in secondary, perpetual and growing costs must be accounted for. This is not something we have done in the decisions we have made about auto use over the last half century. In many cases, not even the costs for maintenance and replacement of the facilities have been included. And we certainly haven’t recognized in any significant way the demands for secondary infrastructure, such as parking, utilities, communications and other systems, that auto induced sprawl has produced. The result is that we have created an enormous backlog of need for spending on every type of infrastructure for which no adequate financing exists.

Redirect Subsidies

We should not pursue programs which enlarge and extend this backlog. For example, we must work hard to keep deserving proposals for infrastructure maintenance from being so loosely defined that they result in massive pork barrel inducements to more auto use. Rather, we should support investments that will save and enhance the values and benefits that mixed use can generate.

The first is especially true in the face of the need to dramatically reduce energy use, particularly oil, and negative impacts on the environment. It is so important that we should consider establishing a moratorium on any major programs or projects which clearly have costly and damaging secondary impacts. We should confine support to projects which help us prepare for the post carbon era. Transit facilities and services coordinated with the creation and improvement of good mixed use environments especially should be included.

Vermont has apparently taken an important first step in this direction with its program to support downtowns throughout the State. See reports on this program here: http:///www.knowledgeplex.org/news/688301.html

Support Must be Targeted, Comprehensive and Coordinated

If we are to make the kind of progress toward mixed use which is needed, similar and more targeted and inclusive steps should be taken at every level, federal, state and local, and should include financing and subsidies of every type: housing, industrial development, beautification, transportation, energy and more. But we should support only sound mixed use – projects or areas containing a variety of uses and the public services and amenities, walkability and variety of activities essential to high levels of self sufficiency and convenience. Projects that are mixed use in name only, or that are not located in existing or planned mixed use areas meeting the above criteria, should be excluded.

We need to move in these directions now!

COLLAPSING BRIDGES AND MIXED USE

2007-08-08T02:00:16Z

What do collapsing bridges in Minneapolis and mixed use have in common? If you answer "nothing" you are likely to have a lot of company. On the other hand, if you answer "everything" you will be far closer to the truth.

As often said, everything is about money. And bridges and other infrastructure are all about money for sure. Lots of it, and often not enough. That is true for other areas too: health care, housing, energy, open space, recreation... you name it. We are rapidly approaching the time when the loss of cheap oil and other factors will make money even more scarce. Particularly for things that society really needs, like bridges and infrastructure. You can see this in the current gridlock in the Illinois legislature and elsewhere. There just isn’t enough money! The pressure to find and do more with what we have is becoming intense. And when the impacts of the loss of cheap oil kick in, it will be with a white heat!

So, how can we make the future more affordable? This is where mixed use comes in.

This may seem a reach, but some serious thought may change your mind. Relatively intense, compact mixed use in the form of well designed downtowns, village centers and similar concentrated development is essential to reducing costs and saving money in infrastructure and in virtually every other way related to the way we live. For over the past forty years studies have shown that this is true.

We must make more areas in our cities and regions more intense, compact and accessible. We must use a pattern that is older than civilization but which we have largely ignored for the past fifty years, at least in the U. S. This pattern is largely based on walking and must result in areas that are accessible by all modes, with safe and comfortable internal movement systems that don’t depend on oil. And which include a wide range of mixed use with high levels of balance and self sufficiency in housing, job opportunities and services.

Over forty years ago efforts were made in many cities to define what this might mean. Dozens of regions established plans that called for creating compact, mixed use centers, often called diversified centers, activity centers, downtowns, etc., linked by good public transportation. And studies showed that regions developed to this pattern could save billions of dollars in the building of infrastructure and many more billions in its operation. And famous studies, such as the Costs of Sprawl, showed tremendous infrastructure savings of compact, well planned development.

But in the U. S., cheap oil, lack of knowledge or commitment and special interests and the obvious seeming attractions of auto use led to sprawl and disconnected single use developments that largely ignored both research findings and the successes of the past.

Recently and on a smaller, largely project scale, developers around the world have rediscovered mixed use. As a result, new projects are constantly being planned and proposed. Some of these are large enough and well enough conceived to produce the benefits anticipated, at least for their developers. Where they occur in well planned existing mixed use areas, such as village centers or downtowns, they can be expected to generate major benefits. Where they are very small or isolated or contain only a few "token" secondary uses, benefits will be limited. However, because of their good reputation, even projects with limited benefits are often welcomed and approved.

But the need and the potential benefit are great and we should encourage and support good mixed use development everywhere it is warranted. In areas the size of Chicago this could include a thousand or more mixed use centers or cores. These include granddaddy of them all, Downtown Chicago, to what the regional plan calls "hamlets." They could be anchored around anything with some attraction from smaller public, institutional or private activities, to major universities, hospitals, shopping centers and government, research or corporate headquarters or athletic, recreational or similar attractions.

Many downtowns in rural regions, too, could (and should) be targeted for this kind of growth and enrichment as well as in other urban regions throughout the world.

The opportunity and need are here to produce not only tremendous savings in infrastructure but also the improvement of living, employment and other cultural, social and environmental benefits for nearly everyone. Not to mention saving society from perhaps the worst bankruptcy we would have ever known.

THE MIXED USE IMPERATIVE

2007-07-25T19:51:54Z

Mixed use downtowns and centers have been essential to urban life for centuries. And up to fifty years ago every effort was made to assure that they existed, were easily accessible, walkable, compact and served our most important needs. But in the U. S., especially, cheap petroleum encouraged us to scatter functions widely across the landscape and abandon qualities of mixed use, economic and walkable access, energy saving, compactness and the many benefits they provide.

Understanding its value, a few vehemently argued the case for mixed use, recently making it popular, at least at the project level, with developers and public officials. But fifty years of scatter and sprawl vastly overwhelm what is being done. We need to return to the original and broad view of mixed use now!

A New Vision

Fourteen years ago in his book New Visions for Metropolitan America, Anthony Downs said that we must develop a new vision to deal with the issues emerging from this sprawl. He said: “...These flaws threaten to weaken the economic and social functioning of many metropolitan areas and therefore of the entire U. S. economy and society.” Even without accounting for the loss of oil, Downs makes a compelling case that we must make major changes in the way we build cities and regions to deal with these critical issues.

Downs says six key issues make it imperative that we adopt and follow a new vision
- Excessive travel
- Lack of affordable housing
- Financing infrastructure fairly
- Siting locally undesirable land uses
- Paying the costs
- Absorbing too much open space

But he does not specifically recommend any one of the four options which he exhaustively explores. However, his analyses plainly say that the new vision must include higher housing densities, putting jobs and housing in close proximity and providing better public transit. These conditions are major key stones of good mixed use.

The “New” Urgency

Three years ago James Kunstler focused on an overlooked reason for urgency in his book The Long Emergency . Citing predicted sharp declines in available oil Kunstler said that “The salient fact about life in the decades ahead that it will become increasingly and intensely local and smaller in scale. It will do so by degrees as the amount of available cheap energy decreases and the global contest for it becomes more intense. The scale of all human enterprises will contract with the energy supply.....” Kunstler says that the environments that can best survive the loss of oil will need to look much like communities built before widespread auto use which often were mixed in use, walkable and relatively self contained – conditions also anticipated in Down’s “new communities and green belt” future vision.

The Limited Response

There has not been any highly visible response to the alarms of Downs and Kunstler. About ten years ago the RPA (New York Regional Plan Association) started urging and helping communities give more attention to downtowns and centers as important focal points in its region. Vermont has had a program to help its communities improve their downtowns. San Diego recently initiated a program to further mixed use concepts in its communities and neighborhoods.

For over twenty years Vancouver has very successfully worked to apply mixed use principles to its downtown and other centers. And Chicago has updated its regional plan to once again assert the importance of downtowns and centers in the region and to identify nearly three hundred such centers. These range from downtown Chicago to “hamlets,” (but overlook hundreds more that should be recognized as potential mixed use cores and lacks programs for implementation.)

The Urban Land Institute also started an informational program called “Transforming Suburban Shopping Centers,” aimed at making them more attractive, walkable and mixed in their use. It also has many publications on how to plan and build mixed use projects. But strong implementing measures are missing in all of these except for Vermont and Vancouver.

Oil Loss Deadly Serious

Even with the imminent loss of oil, almost no one appreciates how urgent it is that we return to mixed use principles and apply them vigorously and universally in both urban and rural regions. The challenge – and the opportunity – are enormous. Organizing development into good mixed use downtowns, centers and activity areas should become major public policy at every level -- local, regional, state and nation. It should deal with any area that is or could be “mixed use” in the best meaning of the term, wherever located and whatever its current status – mixed or single use, public, private or institutional, existing or potential.

Few people realize how imminent and painful the loss – or at least extreme increases in cost – of oil will be, much less the impact on our daily lives. Or how soon! Predictions can not be precise. But the losses and the costs cannot be denied. The only response that has a chance of really being adequate is that of conservation. The only sure way to conserve enough is to organize our lives to reduce how much we travel, and how. And the only way we can reduce travel significantly and maximize movement on foot and by transit is to create strong, mixed use downtowns, centers, villages and cores. Areas that contain concentrations of housing and jobs together with many of the activities that serve them.

Major Pro-Mixed Use Policies Needed Now

It takes time to create strong, vital mixed use. We should be working hard to do this right now.

While Downs focused on guiding new development, our efforts to implement a new vision must be applied wherever progress toward productive mixed use can be made. This will be largely in modifying and adding to existing development. Some of this is happening now. But we need policies and programs to do much more. Some of these policies must be to simply provide or allow others to encourage, finance, provide incentives, subsidize or mandate improvements such as the following:

•    Helping existing downtowns, neighborhoods and village centers whether in cities, suburbs or country, become stronger and more complete as mixed use areas.
•    Add housing and supporting services to intensive employment and activity centers of any type, office, retail, government, health, sports, entertainment, resort, retirement, religious ,etc.
•    Provide public and convenience services wherever they are needed, such as: post offices and mailing services (even mail boxes) , government offices and services, pharmacies, news stands, community and senior centers, etc.
•    Add local public and commercial services and more housing choices in neighborhoods lacking them.
•    Add amenities, open space, historical, cultural and recreational facilities in any areas where people congregate, live, work or shop.
•    Provide for rental of cars, cycles and other forms of travel to reduce need for auto ownership
•    Provide station and pick up locations for transit, ride sharing and other travel
•    Provide special pedestrian facilities such as under or over passes, shaded or weather protected pedestrian ways, escalators or other means of vertical movement, etc.
•    Provide and improve transit, both for access and internal movement, where needed

Where public or other groups provide funds for transportation, economic development, affordable housing or other public purposes, mandate priority in their use to areas of mixed use.

Every community and every level of government and every industry, trade, professional, business or nonprofit organization should be contributing thought on this subject. Because Federal government attention is heavily preoccupied with events in the Middle East and issues such as health care, Social Security, tax reform and immigration, others, particularly the states and professional groups, need to take the lead in thinking about how we can achieve a massive redirection in how we build our cities. The need is so great and the opportunities so many that we cannot afford to be held back by the inaction of others.

For more, see: www.mixedusecores.com and www.kunstler.com

Energy, Climate Change, and Building Cities

2007-07-16T15:38:58Z

Introducing Mixed Use Cores

This blog discusses the most important thing we must do if we are to really save energy and limit climate change. This is to improve how our cities and regions are organized! Specifically, we must vigorously transform every possible village, neighborhood and center of employment, services or transport into a compact, largely self sufficient, walkable and livable, mixed use development.

We have built many such areas and enjoy their success. But mostly we have failed. And the values they provide are no longer just a luxury. Rather, they are essential to overcoming many of the most critical problems we face. They directly benefit the environment and save energy. They also improve health, job access, make everything more affordable and contribute to a more equitable, sustainable and civil society.

This blog specifically supports and draws from the web site mixedusecores.co m and many other sources. This provides a wide range of information about the need for and benefits of such cores and of how they should be planned. I hope that it will encourage every reader to think about how we build our cities and towns and to share their ideas about how we might do this more effectively.

I will regularly bring new information and ideas to the blog on this subject which I hope you will find interesting. And I hope that any and all who have valuable ideas to add will do the same.

Welcome aboard!