Boston mayor Thomas Menino joined Rep. Stephen Lynch (D-MA) today for the release of a new Urban Land Institute (ULI) report that maps the combined housing and transportation burden of living in the metro area’s various neighborhoods.

Using a method similar to the "H+T" cost index unveiled last month
with the support of Obama administration officials, the ULI report
calculated how Bostonians’ area of residence affected their commuting
and housing costs. Overall, the ULI found that the average Boston
household spends 54 percent of its annual income, or $34,300, on
housing and transportation.

Not surprisingly, the center
city was found to be a hotbed of lower transport spending, thanks to
denser development and a thriving transit system — and when housing
and transport bills were combined (see above chart), the city remained
a more affordable option than any of the suburbs in its immediate
vicinity.

The ULI was careful to note that lower "H+T" costs
in the center of Boston were made possible by more than just walkable
urban design. From the report (emphasis mine):

Combined costs in the City of Boston and Route 128 subregions appear to be among the lowest in the study area, but this is partly due to the unusually high share of renters
in these areas. Average housing costs for both renters and owners in
these communities are very high, but since a relatively high share of
households in the City of Boston (62 percent) and Route 128 (45
percent) subregions rent their homes, and since renting is typically
less expensive than owning, average housing costs appear to be lower
than expected.

The trend of rental housing improving the bottom line of urbanites
would seem to invite stronger federal and local support for affordable
rental properties. But as the Government Accountability Office (GAO) reported last year,
public housing options near transit service are at risk of being
re-priced out of the range of lower-income residents in 11 U.S. cities.

The GAO also pointed to the lack of reliable federal data as
an obstacle to the promotion of more transit-oriented affordable rental
housing. So far, local media coverage of the ULI report has focused on
its illustration of the high cost of suburban living, but lawmakers
from center-city Boston could find a potent argument for expanded
rental availability within the ULI’s data sets.

Billionaire Ed Roski seems bound and determined to give those people opposed to the construction of a new stadium to lure an NFL team back to Greater Los Angeles plenty of cause for concern.  Recently, Roski's lobbyists have been pushing Sacramento law makers to grant exemptions from environmental and planning requirements for his mega-stadium project in the City of Industry.

Roski apparently feels that his stadium is such a pressing need, that an NFL team is just chomping at the bit to move to Los Angeles, that the stadium needs an exemption from the City of Industry's General Plan and from the state's CEQA requirements.  A quick search of sports websites such as ESPN.com and NFL.com reveals absolutely no buzz about an NFL team planning to move or the NFL planning to expand by adding more teams.

The reaction to Roski's proposed environmental dodge has been a mix of in-credulousness to outrage.  Heck, even the L.A. County Board of Supervisors  found time to pass a resolution against the plan.  However, the leading voices against Roski's end round come from the environmental community.  The NRDC's David Petit demolishes the argument that they need an environmental exemption because those sort of pesky things just slow up the process.

And yet, development projects are completed all the time in California.  The CEQA process is not just a paperpushing waste of time:  it can improve projects, as we have seen repeatedly at the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach. 

Nearly every law carries with it the possibility of meritless litigation.  Should the civil rights laws be abolished because some losing cases are filed?  

Equally troubling is that the request for special treatment for the City of Industry stadium  is being pushed in the last week of the California legislative session, with a joke of a public "hearing" that only Capitol insiders will be able to attend.  Why the sudden rush? 

Also picking up a sword against Roski's misdirection was the Times, which editorialized against the proposed in today's paper.

Exempting the stadium from state environmental review would cut the public out of the process and free the developer from having to mitigate serious environmental consequences. The project would still be subject to review by the city of Industry, but things like traffic and air pollution don't confine themselves to one city; streets and freeways in the vicinity would almost certainly be jammed on game days, for example, and surrounding cities have a right to participate in decision-making and demand action to reduce the problems.

Back in February, Streetsblog discussed some of the protections that would be needed to protect communities from a traffic crush that would result from game day or other special event traffic created by a 75,000 seat stadium and accompanying parking lot.  Included in our suggestions were the creation of a feeder bus network, a traffic plan that protects the local streets of the surrounding communities and a plan to support transit options with a public relations and ticket sales campaigns.  It's highly doubtful any of these options would get serious consideration without an environmental review forcing the developer to face the issue.

The good news is that these types of proposals, the ones that are aimed at reducing public involvement, only grow in the dark recesses of Sacramento.  Thanks to the multiple efforts to shine light on Roski's feint, it is unlikely the legislation will get introduced, heard and passed tomorrow; the deadline for new legislation. 

However, we'll be keeping our eyes open in Sacramento and thanks to stadium backers announcing that their nervois about the stadium's environmental reviews we'll be sure to keep an eye on their plans as they move through the process.

As livable streets advocates work to make headway in breaking the cycle of American auto dependence, the folks at Planetizen have put together a video narrative that explains how we got here. "The Story of Sprawl," a double DVD set produced by Managing Editor Tim Halbur, is a compilation of historical films dating from 1939 to 1965, documenting the confluence of factors that fostered the quintessential land use motif of the 20th century: far-flung, low-density, driving-intensive residential and commercial development. The discs include commentary from planning notables including Andrés Duany, Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk, John Norquist, Neal Peirce, James Howard Kunstler and Robert Cervero, featured in the clip above.

"The Story of Sprawl" is available now. Check the Planetizen promo page for more clips and ordering info.

Photo by yuan2003 via Flickr.

If
I criticize a portion of Bellevue’s cul-de-sac development, a commenter
is just as likely to deride my urban elitism as seriously analyze the
serious consequences of that development.

But development is not done in a vacuum. The policies that
favor highway expansion over transit expansion indeed favor sprawl. The
lack of strong building codes in expanding suburbs leads to cul-de-sacs
or strip-malls that block shared access with egregious shrubbery and
ditches. We all know what it’s like to have to get in your car to go to
the Baskin Robbins in the next strip mall over. Is this an
example of freedom? Not socio-economically, for certain. Not if you
prefer to walk than drive. And certainly this lack of oversight is not
the best choice for the planet.

But the problem isn’t the
suburbs themselves. It’s not even the suburbanites that occupy those
houses and drive everywhere. The problem is the government policies that historically let developers do nearly anything
with cheap land. It has been a failure at the federal, state, regional,
and local levels that we cannot mindlessly blame on suburbanites
themselves. Indeed, suburbs are a natural part of the metropolitan framework.
Auto-dependency
is not: therefore it is a product of poor governmental policies which
are a form of social engineering that have accelerated climate change
and have led to things like suffering through congestion
as a requirement to get to work.

…[W]e want our suburban readers to know: You are not the enemy.

What
do you think? Has the national mood shifted sufficiently that we can
have civil, productive discussions on this topic without hurt feelings
getting in the way on either side, urban or suburban? Can we get past
the stereotypes and start implementing policies that will reduce
auto-dependence in suburbia? Or does it all get too personal too
quickly?

In other contentious and not-so-contentious matters around the network, DC Bicycle Transportation Examiner advises GM to keep its P.U.M.A. out of the bike lane; Austin Contrarian crunches some numbers on "job sprawl"; and Discovering Urbanism looks to Charleston and Savannah for urban policy innovations.

Yesterday, news broke that the City of Industry City Council unanimously voted to approve a plan to construct a new stadium to try and entice the Bills from Buffallo or the Raiders from Oakland.  Putting aside any arguments about whether this is a good idea, because it clearly isnt’, I thought it could create a fun weekend excercise for Streetsbloggers.  If you were the transportation engineer for this project, what would your plan for this stadium be?

Here’s what we know about the stadium’s transportation plans.  First, there are a heck of a lot of freeways near the site.  The I-57 and I-60 run on each side of the stadium, and the I-10, I-210, and I-605 all feed into those freeways locally.  Adjacent towns are threatening to sue to stop the project siting local traffic fears, and the developer responded by promising to widen local streets.  Personally, as someone who lived in East Rutherford, N.J., home to the New York Giants and Jets; the thought of 70,000 people sitting in their cars on the way to the stadium feels more like a recurring nightmare than anything else.

The good news?  There will be a Metrolink train that stops adjacent to the stadium, with shuttles between the station and the stadium.  They’re also planning a separate lot close to the stadium special for charter and transit buses.

After the jump, you can see my transportation plan for the stadium.

First off, having a transit option to the stadium is great; after all it’s better than some sports teams are doing.  But to really make transit work, you need to promote it.  The New York Mets actually doubled transit ridership to their games just by promoting the heck out of transit on commercials and during game broadcasts.  Other teams have had similar success by offering discounts if you buy a transit pass at the time of buying a ticket, and others sell parking spaces with tickets.  If they run out of spaces, they run out of spaces and the buyer has to figure out another way to get to the stadium.

Second, the development needs to be bicycle and pedestrian friendly.  I know it’s difficult to picture acres and acres of asphalt parking as "pedestrian friendly;" but there is a lot that can be done to make it better.  For example, the developer should provide separate and protected paths so pedestrians and cyclists are both safe and comfortable.  The potential team could even turn the walkways in to part of the experience by having events, booths and food stands.

Third, the planner should protect the towns adjacent to the stadium.  Widening the local roads is only going to increase ticket holders desire to skip the freeways and drive though these towns to the stadium.  Unless I needed to hop on the freeway, I couldn’t tell you whether there was a game at Giants’ Stadium because East Rutherford didn’t increase its local traffic capacity when the stadium was built.

So there are my thoughts, what are yours?

Four of the line's stations are planned for Tysons Corner, a collection of malls and offices so unwalkable that traffic clogs streets when employees break for lunch. Only 17,000 people live there, but it provides 167,000 parking spaces for the hordes of commuters and shoppers who drive in on a daily basis. In this excellent NPR segment (listening to the audio is well worth the time), Robert Siegel looks at how Fairfax County officials are attempting to transform Tysons Corner into a more urban setting:

...a central part of the plan is to build residential housing, and plan for 100,000 people. But that means more than build apartment houses -- Tysons is also utterly inhospitable to pedestrians.

Clark Tyler, who chairs the Tysons Corner Land Use Task Force, says there are nine lanes of traffic near Tysons Corner Center, but the street lights give pedestrians only 40 seconds to cross them. Sidewalks mysteriously end.

So, what will the new Tysons be like? 

"Hopefully it will have sidewalks that aren't hyphenated," Tyler says. "It will have a grid of streets, shorter blocks, it will have a circulation system, so the other thing that would be radical is what they call LEED certified -- or green buildings that are energy efficient -- and all the rest because that's what we've recommended."

Buses to get you from the rail stations to these stores -- right now, that sounds like science fiction. It also sounds like a city.

Siegel's guide, Chris Leinberger of the Brookings Institution, sees Tysons Corner as a watershed of sorts, a model that other sprawling edge cities might follow. As the story makes clear, however, there are still plenty of misconceptions to dispel about density and smart growth:

Mayor Jane Seemans of the neighboring town of Vienna has some concerns about the Tysons plan. Will it increase her town's traffic, which is already congested? Will Vienna's schools and parks become overcrowded? "It's the impact that it will have on our quality of life in Vienna... We just want to make sure that we have a voice in the continuing development."

Earlier this fall, Governor Schwarzenegger signed into law a piece of groundbreaking legislation that would address global warming by curbing sprawl development.  A recent piece in the San Francisco Chronicle takes a closer look at the legislation to see whether it will actually have an impact on how California grows.

The ultimate impact will depend on how the legislation is put into effect, and whether its carrots and sticks will outweigh the cries from people who don't want big new buildings on their block.

Whatever the law's accomplishments, proponents hope it sends a clear message that will be reflected in future legislation and policies on the state and local levels: Dense, transit-oriented development is a critical goal for the collective good.

"A small step can be an important step if it's the step that turns the corner," said Tom Adams, board president of the California League of Conservation Voters, the principal drafter of the legislation. "I think it will change forever the way we look at land use in California."

This small step could have big dividends for California if the Governor empowers agencies to enforce the legislation as written.  During the debate before the legislation was passed, the California Progress Report outlined what the new law should accomplish:

The California Progress Report summarizes what the legislation does:

• Transportation planning: The California Air Resources Board (CARB) will set regional greenhouse gas reduction targets after consultation with local governments. That target must be incorporated within that region’s Regional Transportation Plan (RTP), the long-term blueprint of a region’s transportation system. The resulting model will be called the Sustainable Communities Strategy.

• Housing planning: Each region’s Regional Housing Needs Assessment (RHNA) – the state mandated process for local jurisdictions to address their fair share of regional housing needs – will be adjusted to become aligned with the land use plan in that region’s Sustainable Communities Strategy in its RTP (which will account for greenhouse gas reduction targets).

• CEQA reform: Environmental review will create incentives to implement the strategy, especially transit priority projects.

This article has gathered a lot of interest from around the Internet so far drawing stories from Planetizen and The City Fix.  However, no matter who looks at the issue, nearly everyone agrees that the deciding factor on whether this legislation will be more than just a "feel good" move will be in how it is enforced.  Will Governor Schwarzenegger empower state agencies to the point of overwhelming local pols in a ratable chase to build the biggest box on a street corner near you.

Photo: Exhuberance/Flickr

Watch this vid touting a contraption called the "SpeedFit," then get your punchlines ready. We like this one from the YouTube peanut gallery:

they already have that. its called walking.

Hat tip to Burbia by way of Andrew Sullivan.

The Governor surprised some observers when he signed S.B. 375, legislation that reqards communities that follow smart growth principals when planning and punnshes those that embrace sprawling growth patterns.  As recently as last Friday, the Governor signaled that he was, at best, undecided about the legislation.  However, leading environmentalists praised the Governor after the bill was signed:

"Land use is . . . the hardest part of the climate equation," said
Thomas Adams, president of the California League of Conservation
Voters. "This signature sends a crucial message from Arnold to sprawl:
‘Suck it up.’ "

However, all of the news out of the Governor’s office.  Following the advice of Alaska Governor Sarah Palin, Schwarzenegger vetoed legislation that would have collected more than $60 for each 40-foot container that
moved through the ports of Los Angeles, and Long Beach.  The fee would raise over $400 million annually which would go towards traffic relief, freight rail improvements, and cleaner burning engines.

What’s happening here goes a lot deeper than the end of cheap oil. We
are now passing through the early development of a wholly new
geographic order – what geographers call “the spatial fix” – of which
the move back toward the city is just one part.

Suburbanization was the spatial fix for the industrial age – the
geographic expression of mass production. Low-cost mortgages, massive
highway systems and suburban infrastructure projects fuelled the
industrial engine of postwar capitalism, propelling demand for cars,
appliances and all sorts of industrial goods.

The creative economy is giving rise to a new spatial fix and a very
different geography – the contours of which are only now emerging.
Rising fuel costs are one thing, but in today’s idea-driven economy, it’s time costs that really matter.
With the constant pressure to be more efficient and to innovate, it
makes little sense to waste countless collective hours commuting. So
the most efficient and productive regions are the ones in which people
are thinking and working – not sitting in traffic. And, according to
detailed research by the Nobel Prize-winning economist Daniel Kahneman,
commuting is among the least enjoyable, if not the single least
enjoyable, of all human activities.

The results are fascinating. Annual price changes in most of the largest metro areas, including New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Miami, San Francisco, Seattle, Baltimore, Washington D.C., and Philadelphia, followed a similar pattern: Values were most stable within a 10-mile radius of the center of the city, but generally worsened with each successive radius ring as far as 50 miles from the center of the city.

"There's a pretty clear pattern of neighborhoods close to the urban core holding their values better than neighborhoods in suburban and exurban communities," said Stan Humphries, Zillow's vice-president of data and analytics. "Where there is a lot of supply and demand changes, there's a quicker effect on housing prices." 

It may seem obvious by now that rising gas prices are affecting decisions about where to live, but don't tell that to the editors at Money. As Greater Greater Washington blogger David Alpert points out, the magazine's latest list of America's best places to live skews heavily toward the sprawling, suburban side. Of course, Money's readers can probably absorb a spike in transportation costs without too much hardship, which may explain why they don't factor it into their rankings.

A completely different picture emerges from Money's own online series about how people are adapting to more expensive gas. The short profiles read like a public service campaign for living arrangements where cars are not required to make even the most basic trips. Here's what Carrie Zukoski, 41, a PR director living in St. Louis, has to say:

I ride my bike as much as I can. Rising gas prices hurt much less at the pump for me. Last fill up was 22 days in between. This year I'll try to bike even more.

In 2007 I commuted by bike about 1,400 miles. Compared to many people, it's not that much, but for a fair-weather commuter who lives less than five miles from work, it's not too bad.