sprawl

Who is at fault for the fires in SoCal?

After burning nearly half a million acres, the devastating wildfires of this past week in southern California have been put down. Controversy raged with the flames; now that the air is beginning to clear, it's time to comb through the wreckage for some insight worth remembering. And there's a lot to examine, as experts of all types came forward with reactions -- some to lead, some to offer insight, and some to smear.

The San Francisco Chronicle had uncharacteristically kind words for Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger. Bill Whalen pointed out that:

Throughout the week, he stayed optimistic, talked action and results, and resisted the media's bait to blame someone -- anyone -- for California's misfortunes. It's exactly what you look for in a leader.

The governor won accolades, and the firefighters, working brutally hard while in danger, battling day and night against sixteen fires, fueled at the start by 100-degree temperatures and gale-force winds.

Watching the fires in southern California burn through the night. (Photo: San Diego Fire photo pool, via flickr)

Can urban planners save the earth?

A couple of weeks ago I was in Vancouver, B.C., at a conference where it seemed like everyone was talking about a new book called Growing Cooler: The Evidence on Urban Development and Climate Change.

Reviewing dozens of empirical studies, the book's central argument is that urban form is inextricably linked to climate. Low-density sprawl has been a principal contributor to North American climate emissions. And by the same token, smart compact development -- the kind that fosters less driving -- is essential to curbing climate change.

From the executive summary:

Even the greenest suburbs can’t touch low urban emission rates

Last Sunday, the Washington Post published a piece by Joel Kotkin and Ali Modarres which sought to debunk the ideas that dense urban areas are greener than their suburban counterparts and that encouraging dense growth might play a significant role in reducing America’s carbon output. The piece was wrong or misleading on practically every point, […]

John Dingell’s carbon-tax bill is designed to be unpopular

The carbon plan of Rep. John Dingell (D-Mich.) is considerably lamer -- and more transparently a poison pill -- than early reports suggested. So I strongly disagree with Chris Dodd, Friends of the Earth, and Gristmill's Charles Komanoff, who all applaud the bill. Here's why.

First, as Dingell himself has said, he wanted to design a bill with maximum pain to prove to everyone how unpalatable greenhouse gas mitigation is (see below). Why else include a pointless $0.50 gasoline tax on top of the carbon tax? Dingell actually has a double agenda here -- to torpedo climate legislation and a toughening of CAFE at once. Taxes are unpopular enough -- but two of them? Come on! We've seen gasoline prices jump two dollars a gallon in recent years, with little impact on usage. What would another 50 cents do, except piss people off? It would never make the final bill, and Dingell knows it.

Second, Dingell "phases out the mortgage interest on primary mortgages on houses over 3,000 square feet." But why? Here is the lame answer:

Land-use and development decisions are crucial in the fight against climate change, says new report

Living closer to where you work will do more to fight climate change than buying a Prius and living in the ‘burbs. We’ll never beat climate change until we change the way we structure our communities. That is the conclusion of a new report out from the Urban Land Institute: The report, "Growing Cooler: Evidence […]

Does anyone choose to live in a condo?

One of the curiosities of language is that our usage can sometimes inadvertently reveal our underlying beliefs. Consider how condos are often described as if they are conscious actors who perform actions, such as "packing people together."

One example comes from the Seattle P-I: "Now, condominiums are building upward, packing people into to what used to be inexpensive property." According to this way of writing, it's the condos, not the owners, that have what we philosophy majors call "agency."

This is just weird. Admittedly, I don't get out a lot, but I've never seen condos roaming the streets, rounding up suburban residents, and stuffing the poor saps into boxes. I've always been under the impression that developers build condos in urban neighborhoods because there are lots of people who want to live in them.

Single family homes, by the way, aren't given the same treatment in our usage.

How does the Home Interest Mortgage Deduction affect sprawl?

Now that the housing market is tanking, is it a good time to talk about the absurdity of the Home Interest Mortgage Deduction?

I mean, it's truly crummy social policy. The biggest benefits go to the people in the highest tax brackets, own expensive homes, and earn enough income that they can itemize their deductions. So in essence, the HIMD is a ginormous housing subsidy for the well-off -- and one that dwarfs all of the housing subsidies to lower-income folks. This NY Times article lays out the case nicely: apparently, half the benefit of the deduction goes to the 12 percent of taxpayers who make at least $100 grand per year.

But the conventional wisdom is that the home interest mortgage deduction isn't just crummy social policy, but crummy environmental policy as well. Allowing homeowners to deduct mortgage interest on their taxes gives people an incentive spend more of their money on housing than they otherwise would. And people with extra money to spend on housing tend to buy larger homes on bigger lots -- which, in theory at least, means that the HIMD primes the pump for low-density sprawl.

But is this really true? Does the HIMD really accelerate low-density sprawl?

Necessary

This op-ed from Rick Cole, city manager of Ventura, Calif., will be music to the ears of all you Gristians: The feel-good stage of California’s leadership on global warming is unsustainable. Kudos to the pop stars with their calls to switch lightbulbs and unplug cellphone chargers when not in use. But we can’t pretend that […]

Images of dense development

Just wanted to point out a great website, "Visualizing Density," a product of the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy (LILP). I'm not feeling like my usual prolix self today, so I'll let them do the talking:

Sprawl is bad. Density is good. Americans need to stop spreading out and live closer together. Well ... that's the theory, anyway. But, as anyone who has tried to build compact development recently will tell you, if there's one thing Americans hate more than sprawl, it's density ... One reason people reject density is that they don't know much about it -- what it looks like, how to build it, or whether it's something they can call home. We have very rational ways of measuring density, but our perception of it is anything but rational.