Tag: "land use"

Fighting Global Warming Will Cost $4 Trillion +

A new report from the Global Commission on the Economy and Climate reports that fighting global warming will cost $4 trillion over 15 years. However, the report also says:

  • Countries will spend an extra $90 trillion on infrastructure.
  • Countries will enact policies to reduce their carbon footprints.

Expanding each participating country’s infrastructure, halt deforestation, regulate carbon dioxide emissions, land use reforms and reducing fossil fuel subsides is just the start of a much larger economic cost than just $4 trillion that the report claims would be the cost to fight global warming.

Sep 17, 2014 | 1 comment | by

Suburban Nation: U.S. 86 Percent Suburban

From Jurisdictional to Functional Analysis of Urban Cores & Suburbs

For decades there has been considerable analysis of urban core versus suburban trends. However, for the most part, analysts have been jurisdictional, comparing historical core municipalities to the expanse that constitutes the rest of the metropolitan area. Most core municipalities are themselves substantially suburban, which can mask (and exaggerate) the size of urban cores and understate the extent of suburbanization.

Our new City Sector Model evaluates the more than 8,900 zip codes in the 52 U.S. metropolitan areas that have more than 1,000,000 residents (“major metropolitan areas”) based on travel behavior and urban form. There are four categories, including  (1) Pre-Auto Urban Core, (2) Auto Suburban: Earlier, (3) Auto Suburban: Later and (4) Auto Exurban. It is recognized that automobile oriented suburbanization was underway before World War II, but it was interrupted by the Great Depression during the 1930s and was small compared to the democratization of personal mobility and home ownership that has occurred since that time.

Canada: A Suburban Nation

The City Sector Model is broadly similar to the groundbreaking research published by David L. A. Gordon and Mark Janzen at Queen’s University in Kingston Ontario (Suburban Nation: Estimating the Size of Canada’s Suburban Population) on the metropolitan areas of Canada. Gordon and Janzen concluded that the metropolitan areas of Canada are largely suburban. Among the major metropolitan areas of Canada, the Auto Suburbs and Exurbs combined contain 76 percent of the population, somewhat less than the 86 percent in the United States.

All U.S. Major Metropolitan Area Growth Has Been Suburban and Exurban

Virtually all population growth in U.S. metropolitan areas (as currently defined) has been suburban or exurban since before World War II (the 1940 census). The historical core municipalities that have not annexed materially and were largely developed by 1940 have lost population. Approximately 110 percent of their metropolitan area growth has occurred in suburbs and exurbs. Further, among the other core municipalities, virtually all of the population growth that has occurred in annexed areas or greenfield areas since 1940.

Identifying the Pre-Auto Urban Core

Not being constrained by municipal boundaries is important because core municipalities vary substantially. For example, the core municipality represents less than 10 percent of the population of Atlanta, while the core municipality represents more than 60 percent of the population of San Antonio. The City Sector Model applies data available from the U.S. Census Bureau to estimate the population and distribution of Pre-Auto Urban Cores in a consistent manner.

At the same time, the functional analysis is materially different from the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) classification of “principal cities.” It also differs from the Brookings Institution “primary cities,” which is based on the OMB approach. The OMB based classifications classify municipalities using employment data, without regard to urban form, density or other variables that are associated with the urban core. These classifications are useful and acknowledge that the monocentric nature of US metropolitan areas has evolved to polycentricity. However, non-urban core principal cities and primary cities are themselves, with few exceptions, functionally suburban (some of the most significant examples are Mesa, Arizona in the Phoenix area, which had a population of only 7,000 in 1940 and Arlington, Texas, in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, which had a population of only 4,000. Their populations, now both 350,000 or more are virtually all automobile oriented suburban).

The City Sector Model Criteria

Because of the substantial interest of urban planners in minimizing the use of automobiles and restoring transit, walking and cycling as primary urban travel alternatives, it is important to identify the extent of automobile oriented suburbanization to the greatest extent possible. Better information is required, regardless of an analysts’ orientation. (As an aside, this author believes that the data shows planning efforts to lead to lower standards of living and greater poverty, which is discussed in Toward More Prosperous Cities).

A number of data combinations were tested for the Pre-Auto Urban Core, to replicate as closely as feasible the 2010 population of the core municipalities that have virtually the same boundaries as in 1940 and that were virtually fully developed by that time (the Pre-War & Non-Suburban classification in historical core municipalities). The following criteria were accepted (represented graphically).

  •  The Auto Exurban category includes any area outside a principal urban area.
  •  The Pre-Auto Urban Core category includes any non-exurban with a median house construction date of 1945 or before and also included areas with a population density of 7,500 per square mile (2,900) or more and with a transit, walk and cycling journey to work market share of 20 percent or more.
  •  The Auto Suburban Earlier category included the balance of areas with a median house construction date of 1979 or before.
  •  The Auto Suburban Later category later included the balance of areas with a median house construction date of 1980 or later.

Additional details on the criteria are in the Note.

Results: 2010 Census

 The combined Pre-Auto Urban Core areas represented 14.4 percent of the population of the major metropolitan areas in 2010 (2013 geographical definition). This compares to the 26.4 percent that the core municipalities themselves represented of the metropolitan areas, indicating their large functionally suburban components.

The Auto Suburban: Earlier areas accounted for 42.0 percent of the population, while the Auto Suburban: Later areas had 26.8 percent of the population. The Auto Exurban areas had 16.8 percent of the population.

The substantial difference between U.S. and Canadian urbanization is illustrated by applying an approximation of the Gordon-Janzen criteria, which yielded an 8.4 percent Pre-Auto Urban Core population. The corresponding figure for the six major metropolitan areas of Canada was 24.0 percent. This difference is not surprising, since major Canadian urban areas have generally higher densities and much more robust transit, walking and cycling market shares. Yet, the Gordon-Janzen research shows Canada to be overwhelmingly suburban.

Population Density: As would be expected, the Pre-Auto Urban Core areas had the highest densities, at 11,000 per square mile (4,250 per square kilometer). The Auto Suburban: Earlier areas had a density of 2,500 per square mile (1,000 per square kilometer), while the Auto Suburban: Later had a population density of 1,300 per square mile (500 per square kilometer), while the Auto Exurban areas had a population density of 150 per square mile (60 per square kilometer).

Individual Metropolitan Areas (Cities)

The metropolitan areas with the highest proportion of Pre-Auto Urban Core population are New York (more than 50 percent), and Boston (nearly 35 percent), followed by Buffalo, Chicago, San Francisco-Oakland and Providence, all with more than 25 percent.

It may be surprising that many of the major metropolitan areas are shown with little or no Pre-Auto Urban Core population. For example, five metropolitan areas have no Pre-Auto Urban Core population, including Phoenix, Riverside-San Bernardino, Tampa-St. Petersburg, Orlando, Jacksonville and Birmingham. By the Census Bureau criteria of 1940, two of these areas were not yet metropolitan and only Birmingham (400,000) had more than 250,000 residents. Only the larger metropolitan had strong Pre-Auto Urban Cores. Many of the newer and fastest growing metropolitan areas were too small, too sparsely settled or insufficiently dense to have had strong urban cores before the great automobile suburbanization that followed World War II. Further, many of the Pre-Auto Urban Cores have experienced significant population loss and some of their neighborhoods have become more suburban (automobile oriented). Virtually no urban cores have been developed since World War II meeting the criteria.

Thus, no part of Phoenix, San Jose, Charlotte and a host of other newer metropolitan areas functionally resembles the Pre-Auto Urban Core areas of metropolitan areas like Chicago, Cincinnati or Milwaukee. However, new or expanded urban cores are possible, if built at high enough population density and with high enough transit, walking and cycling use.

Despite the comparatively small share of the modern metropolitan area represented by the Pre-Auto Urban Core in the City Core Model, the definition is broad and, if anything over-estimates the size of urban core city sectors. The population density of Pre-Auto Urban Core areas is below that of the historical core municipalities before the great auto oriented urbanization (11,000 compared to 12,100 in 1940) and well above their 2010 density (8,400), even when New York is excluded. The minimum density requirement of 7,500 per square mile (not applied to analysis zones with a median house construction data of 1945 or earlier) is slightly less than the density of Paris suburbs (7,800 per square mile or 3,000 per square kilometer) and only 20 percent more dense than the jurisdictional suburbs of Los Angeles (6,400 per square mile or 2,500 per square kilometer). Some urban containment plans require higher minimum densities, not only in urban cores but also in the suburbs.

The United States: An Even More Suburban Nation

In describing the Canadian results, Professor Gordon noted that there is a tendency to “overestimate the importance of the highly visible downtown cores and underestimate the vast growth happening in the suburban edges.” That is true to an even greater degree in the United States.

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Note: The City Sector Model is applied to the 52 major metropolitan areas in the United States (over 1 million population). The metropolitan areas are divided into the principal urban areas, with areas outside categorized as exurban. The principal urban areas in Los Angeles and San Francisco encompass the smaller Mission Viejo and Concord urban areas, which are adjacent. As a result, some smaller urban areas, such as Palm Springs (Riverside-San Bernardino metropolitan area), Lancaster (Los Angeles metropolitan area) and Poughkeepsie (New York metropolitan area) are considered exurban. Areas with less than 250 residents per square mile (100 per square kilometer) are also considered exurban, principally for classification of large areas on the urban fringe that have a substantial rural element.

The Pre-Auto Urban Core includes all non -– exurban areas in which is the house construction date is 1945 or before. In addition, the urban core includes areas that have a population density of 7,500 per square mile (2,900 per square kilometer) or more and a transit, walking and cycling journey to work market share of 20 percent or more, so long as they are in the urban area.

The analysis zones (zip codes) have an average population of 19,000, with from as many as 1,000 zones in New York to 50 in Raleigh.

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This article is adapted from From Jurisdictional to Functional Analysis of Urban Cores and Suburbs, originally published in newgeography.com. That article contains charts, tables and representative maps.

Jun 25, 2014 | Leave a Comment | by

A Way Out of The Endangered Species Mess

Too many environmental issues are seen as crime and punishment problems.  The bureaucratic process that implements the Endangered Species Act (ESA) is one of the results. That process produces too few environmental benefits, too many economic losses, and an unnecessary infringement on individual liberties. Far more species go extinct waiting to be listed as endangered or threatened, and after being listed, than are upgraded to a less threatened status or delisted (true success).

The current process is unsuited to the real issue, which is how to efficiently accommodate competing users (people, plants, and animals) of land. That is being increasingly recognized, even by mainstream environmental activists. With the implementation details of each case now in the hands of government employees, the science of species listing and recovery is tainted by politics. Since the ESA’s official goal of preserving our biodiversity enjoys strong public support, we must develop news, more productive ways of pursuing it.

With appropriate property rights, market mechanisms will protect threatened plants and animals much more efficiently than the current bureaucratic process. Private property rights can be strengthened to make listed plants and animals more valuable to individual landowners (50% of endangered and threatened species occur only on private land) as they become more scarce. It will cause landowners (including public landowners) to ‘set aside’ enough land to recover and sustain each listed species. The key details are the definition of habitat, how much is enough, and how much actual and restorable habitat exists; facts that are already required by the existing process.

‘Set aside’ should not mean outright purchase in most cases. Most species can co-exist with human activity. Indeed, they must. There is not enough money or land to provide every threatened species with its own exclusive refuge. The viable terms of that co-existence determine the type of easement that landowners that eliminate habitat must purchase (perhaps subsidized?) from landowners that maintain habitat. The market price of such easement arrangements will depend upon development pressures (demand), the scarcity of existing and potential habitat, and the biological requirements of the species (supply).

In the well-known, expensive Edwards Aquifer-Endangered Species situation of South Central Texas, pumpers could be habitat eliminators during severe droughts. An approach analogous to land easements would be to levy a small pumping fee and use the revenue to maintain aquatic habitat. Depending on cost comparisons and conditions, a number of measures could be funded. They include springflow purchase, springflow augmentation, and artificial habitat maintenance for the inevitable times of severe drought. Past attempts (the 1995 Texas Legislature’s revision of 1993’s SB 1477) to address the problem are very expensive, they limit pumping too much, they do not ensure that the springs the endangered species depend on will not go dry, and therefore do not ultimately fully address the possibility of federal sanctions that supposedly justify the costly measures.

All landowners would be better off under the proposed easement purchase process than under the expensive, open-ended, indeterminate process that exists now. Landowners contemplating land uses that would eliminate some habitat would enjoy lower known costs and no species habitat-related delays. The existing process is fraught with uncertain high costs and long delays, and often ultimate denial of permission. It is especially hard on small landowners, for whom the existing process can easily cost much more than their land is worth.

Under the easement purchase proposal outlined above, land developers would have an incentive to minimize their destruction of habitat, and other landowners would have an incentive to protect and restore habitat, and advertise its existence. Habitat owners would profit from the chance to sell the easements. Habitat owners would be better off under the proposed market approach than if there was no public interest in maintaining a sufficient level of species habitat. Contrast that with the existing incentives. Now most landowners fear (and take steps to prevent) the discovery of habitat of potentially threatened species on their property, because it could cause property values to fall, and land use restrictions could lead to forfeiture. Species also suffer from the existing process because it creates incentives to destroy habitat, and no incentive to maintain it.

In closing, it is important to summarize the role of government in the proposed market approach to species protection. The government would no longer engage in case-by-case ‘consultations’ (the root of the problem). Biological data would be used to define the terms of easements, and how much protected habitat is enough. The government would enforce compliance with the terms of the easements just like it enforces other contracts. If the requirement that habitat eliminators acquire easements constitutes a ‘taking’, public funds could be used to subsidize easement purchases.

Apr 30, 2014 | Leave a Comment | by

Does a State Renewable Portfolio Standard (RPS) Help Promote “Ethical” Energy Production?

Most state governments have instituted renewable portfolio standards (RPS), which require energy producers in the state to use ever higher levels of renewable fuels as sources of energy over time. These standards are usually expressed as a minimum percent of all energy produced in the state. Who knew that RPS might create an ethical challenge for state governments? I will explain.

Currently, 30 states use either mandatory or voluntary RPS to encourage energy producers to invest in technology for using cleaner, renewable fuel sources for generating electricity, rather than investing in new technologies for clean burning of coal and oil. Furthermore, environmentalists are increasingly touting energy generated from fossil fuels as wholly unethical, going so far as to formally ask the Pope to condemn investing in fossil fuel burning energy companies as being sinful. Oh my!

Which makes me wonder: If public policy is designed by a democratic process, does that ensure a more efficient and ethical outcome, relative to the decentralized activity of individuals interacting in a free enterprise system? For example, is the state more efficient when picking the “winners” from among competing energy sources and technologies? Are our elected officials any better than individual consumers and investors at ultimately promoting “ethical” energy production in society?

An article by Gerome Corsi and another by Wayne Root each question whether the recent federal stand-off at Bundy Ranch, a fourth generation family cattle operation in Clark County, Nevada, was really about protecting a newly discovered, sensitive tortoise habitat on this section of federal grazing land, as the federal government has claimed. Regardless of whether one agrees or not with the federal government’s decision to rescind this rancher’s grazing rights, both authors strongly suspect that the BLM’s decision was truly about a certain powerful U.S. Senator from Nevada fighting to gain control ever these federal lands in Nevada for a number of newly proposed solar power plants.

Why? There were strict RPS to satisfy, and Mr. Harry Reid was just making sure that they would be. Indeed, in another article, Corsi notes that 15% of all energy produced in the state of Nevada must be produced by renewable fuels. This number is required to rise to 25% by 2025. These minimums are among the highest across all fifty states for any RPS.

Both authors wonder whether Mr. Reid’s pursuit of ever more renewable energy production trumps any ostensible concerns for habitat preservation. After all, if the tortoise habitat of this particular section of federal grazing land was far too sensitive to allow cattle to continue to grazing and stomping upon it (as they had been doing for 140 years), then why did the federal government suddenly send in loud helicopters and 200 armed officers speeding around in four wheel vehicles to crisscross and tear up the land — just to corral the rancher’s posse of supporters and his meandering cattle? Or maybe they just wanted the land cleared for new Chinese solar panels?

To add to my doubts about governmental ethics in this sad situation, both authors point out that not only does Mr. Reid have a strong political interests in developing these multiple projects to satisfy Nevada’s strict RPS, but his former senior advisor, Neil Kronze, was recently confirmed by the Senate as the new Director of the BLM… which manages the grazing leases on all federal lands.

Corsi further piles on more doubts when he reveals that a BLM document specifically points out how the Bundy Ranch cattle are grazing on lands that are ear-marked for the state’s regional energy mitigation strategy to develop solar energy. Corsi notes this report states that mitigation activities are “not durable with the presence of trespass cattle.” I guess that implies cattle herds and solar panels simply do not mix well. Further, Corsi thinks it is highly interesting that this report no longer appears on the BLM website, despite its being available on internet archive files.

So, I wonder: If the government lies about why it is refusing to renew a cattleman’s grazing rights to federal land, whose eviction was a direct response to artificially created scarcity of renewable energy resulting from strict Nevada RPS regulations, that are specially designed to favor one type of clean energy technology (and its jobs) in one industry over another, is this all ethical?

Perhaps we should consult the Pope…

Apr 28, 2014 | 1 comment | by

How The West Was Won – By The Feds

Well sometimes feels like we never won it when so much of our land and resources are under the direct control of the U.S. government and tribal authorities. If you take a look at the American “west”, you will see a very big difference from the other half of the country in terms of land owned by the government and land that is “free” to own by the public.

The federal government owns approximately 29% of the land area in the United States, more than 653 million acres. The U.S. General Services Administration’s report on Federal Real Property Profile, 2004 shows how much land the government owns in each state. The top 10 federally owned states:

  • Nevada 85%
  • Alaska 69%
  • Utah 57%
  • Oregon 53%
  • Idaho 50%
  • Arizona 48%
  • California 45%
  • Wyoming 42%
  • New Mexico 42%
  • Colorado 37%

Out of the top 10 states (all are in the American “west”), the federal government owns 505 million acres or 77% of the total land area owned in the United States by the federal government.

The White House acknowledges the fact that not only is the United States government the largest property owner in the country, but also a major source of government waste because of this fact. Efforts to make much of this property available to the public for purchase have been minimal. The White House Federal Excess Properties site shows the federal government’s effort in selling off properties.

The Federal Government is the biggest property owner in the United States, and billions of taxpayer dollars are wasted each year on government properties that are no longer needed. The President has proposed an independent Civilian Property Realignment Board to help the Federal Government cut through red tape and competing stakeholder interests to sell or get rid of property it no longer needs. Over time, this could save taxpayers billions of dollars and help to reduce the deficit.

This map shows just the tip of the iceberg in terms of opportunities for downsizing the Federal real estate portfolio. Under the President’s proposal, more properties, in some cases with significant market value, would be added to this map and dealt with more quickly and effectively than they are today.

President Obama and Vice President Biden launched the Campaign to Cut Waste to eliminate misspent tax dollars in every agency and department across the Federal Government. Getting properties like those highlighted below off our books is a key first step in this effort.

The Civilian Property Realignment Board was cancelled by congress and a very painful and slow process for eliminating this waste is still in place.

Before any agency sells a surplus property, it is required by federal law to ensure that no other U.S. agency wants it. It must then offer a right of first refusal to state and local governments as well as nonprofits. Buildings must be assessed as potential homeless shelters and reviewed for environmental contamination and historic significance.

All of these federally owned properties have the potential to be transferred to state/local governments or to private interests. Benefits could include:

  • less government waste of resources and taxpayer dollars
  • increased efficiency of remaining federal properties
  • greater use of agriculture, energy and natural resources for private use

The bipartisan Federal Real Property Asset Management Reform Act of 2013 is intended to expedite the sale of federal property that is underutilized. A greater effort in this direction is very obvious and needed.

Apr 16, 2014 | Leave a Comment | by
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