The source for New Urbanism, smart growth, and walkable communities
Commentary:
Hey, kids, can I borrow a trillion dollars?
The economy’s really lame, and I want to go out and create some jobs. Can I break into your future piggy bank? I know I’ve already borrowed $10 trillion — I’m only asking for one more.
All these highways that I’d like to build and widen will add to our energy problems, but we probably won’t see oil shortages until you are out of junior high school. We’ll cross that concrete overpass when we get to it. I know we’re not making any progress on global warming. Trust me, you won’t even miss southeastern Florida when you are 50.
You are not reassured? What do you mean, I’m grounded for two decades? That’s not fair!
To get the economy moving again, a massive stimulus package — estimates range from $500 billion to $1 trillion — will be the first order of business for the new administration. While nearly everybody agrees that a large economic stimulus is necessary — albeit with funds that are borrowed from future generations — the Obama Administration may be stepping into a pile of blacktop doodoo.
State departments of transportation and governors have $200 billion in “shovel ready” projects, according to Ken Orski, editor of the web-based Innovation NewsBriefs. These projects heavily favor highways, according to Heidi Przybyla of Bloomberg News.
“While many states are keeping their project lists secret, plans that have surfaced show why environmentalists and some development experts say much of the stimulus spending may promote urban sprawl while scrimping on more green-friendly rail and mass transit,” she writes.
The real problem is that America lacks a strategy for transportation spending. We have been drifting along a course set in the 1950s, when we began to use our enormous wealth to replace walkable communities and transit with sprawl and highways.
New York Times columnist David Brooks notes that America has changed. “If, indeed, we are going to have a once-in-a-half-century infrastructure investment, it would be great if the program would build on today’s emerging patterns,” he says. “It would be great if Obama’s spending, instead of just dissolving into the maw of construction, would actually encourage the clustering and leave a legacy that would be visible and beloved 50 years from now.”
The familiar debate
The problem goes well beyond highways versus transit. Money for transit should be coupled with a development strategy aimed at remaking our metropolitan areas, which account for 75 percent of our economy. “To best shape future communities through transit, new program funding should take two core questions into consideration,” says Douglas McCoach in Forbes. “First, does a project make a community more environmentally sustainable? Second, does a project engage in true place-making?”
Money that is spent on roads would best avoid the “facilities” approach — build a new highway, add a lane, widen a road, build an interchange — that has driven transportation dollars for a half-century. The Congress for the New Urbanism has a workable, sensible alternative that would steer funds toward environmentally friendly, efficient road networks (see “For effective stimulus, promote street networks” in Jan/Feb 2009 issue).
I propose two more ideas. One, the stimulus bill should include $1 billion for grants to plan sustainable communities. Municipalities are cash-strapped and not doing big-picture planning when they should have their hands on the steering wheel of transportation and land use. Charrettes would be encouraged.
Another $1 billion should fund grants to update zoning codes, which currently favor sprawl and inefficient road layouts. These could be the most important dollars the administration spends if we want a built environment that serves the 21st Century. CNU and the American Planning Association must help set the goals for the grants.
At a time of bailouts and infrastructure packages in the hundreds of billions of dollars, these two measures are a drop in the bucket. Yet they represent a more imaginative and wiser way to spend our children’s money. I’m not optimistic, though, that the multiple layers of big government are capable of nimbly leveraging current trends — even with an intelligent new president. Sorry, kids — can I have the trillion anyway?
This article is available in the January/February 2009 issue of New Urban News, along with images and many more articles not available online. Subscribe or order the individual issue.
By Robert Steuteville