Working For Jobs

by Sarah Goodyear.

I spent the last couple of days at a conference about
climate, cities, and behavior. One topic that kept coming up among the municipal officials there—from places like New York, Denver, Vancouver, Richmond, and San Francisco—was the importance of
walkable downtowns to attracting business and investment. Amenities like good transit, bike infrastructure, and
dynamic public spaces are increasingly being seen not as frivoulous amenities, but as essential tools in building a city’s economy.

In that context, some of us talked about Twitter’s announcement last week that it will be moving to new headquarters in San Francisco’s Central Market
neighborhood.

The move was contingent on some controversial tax breaks that the company had negotiated with the city, after threatening to
move south to the office parks of San Mateo County.

What makes the Twitter decision particularly noteworthy is
the contrast to the move being planned by old-school social media giant
Facebook. Its new headquarters will be in —you guessed it—an office park in San Mateo County. It’s a location that looks positively 20th century.

Facebook, which has 2,000 employees now, will be remodeling the office park
to be more like a real city.

Twitter, which could grow from 450 to 2,600 employees in the
next six years, will be in an actual city.

The Twitter outcome was made possible because
San Francisco officials—hoping to spur
the revitalization of a downtrodden neighborhood—were willing to make
concessions on the city’s controversial payroll tax. It was a play newsworthy enough
to merit the hilarious animated Taiwanese video treatment, see below (thanks to TechCrunch for the link).

Here’s what Twitter’s official
blog said about the decision:

We are proud that Twitter will be among the first companies
moving into the Central Market area and will be playing a role in its renewal
with the city and with other businesses, arts organizations, and the numerous
community organizations that have been doing hard work in the neighborhood for
many years.

San Francisco’s unique creativity and inventiveness is a part of Twitter’s DNA,
and we feel like we are part of San Francisco. Three-quarters of our employees who
live in San Francisco are involved in causes and charities in the city. Our
employees are excited to be active members of our future neighborhood as
volunteers, customers, diners and patrons of the arts.

A San Francisco government official at the conference told me
that companies seem to be recognizing the benefits of being in an urban setting—close to companies both similar to and different from themselves. You see it playing out in New York, where more and more tech startups are springing up all around the city, not necessarily in a centralized tech ghetto.

He said it’s about the potential for creative synergy. It’s also
about the lifestyle preferences of the young, creative professionals that
cities and employers want to attract. Old-fashioned sprawl is just not calling to that crowd.

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by Sarah Goodyear.

My head nearly exploded at the breakfast table on Saturday morning.

I was reading a piece in The
New York Times about an Illinois developer who has finally found a way
to unload the new houses he has built some 50 miles from downtown Chicago, in a
place he has seen fit to dub a “Village of Yesteryear.”

When drastic price cuts weren’t enough to entice buyers, he
decided to throw in $17,000 cash toward the purchase of a car with every house. (That money can only be spent at the local General Motors dealer, of course—because, let’s go
U.S.A.!)

So this is what it has come to. Developers are now giving away vehicles to entice
people to live in distant suburbs with life-draining
commutes just when gas is
hitting $5 a gallon. And a few consumers are biting—one is quoted as saying,
“My money was in the bank, collecting very little interest, so I thought I
might as well take a little gamble.”

Ah, yes, gambling on real estate. That’s the kind of
anecdote that makes you feel confident about America’s economic future.

The
article talks about how builders like Kim Meier, the guy behind the car
giveaway, are having trouble moving their newly constructed homes in a market
that is already glutted with buildings sitting empty:

Sales
of new single-family homes in February were down more than 80 percent from the
2005 peak, far exceeding the 28 percent drop in existing home sales. New
single-family sales are now lower than at any point since the data was first
collected in 1963, when the nation had 120 million fewer residents.

Builders
and analysts say a long-term shift in behavior seems to be under way. Instead
of wanting the biggest and the newest, even if it requires a long commute,
buyers now demand something smaller, cheaper and, thanks to $4-a-gallon gas, as
close to their jobs as possible. That often means buying a home out of
foreclosure from a bank.

Four
out of 10 sales of existing homes are foreclosures or otherwise distressed
properties. Builders like Mr. Meier who specialize in putting up entire
neighborhoods on a city’s outskirts—Richmond is some 50 miles northwest of
downtown Chicago—cannot compete despite chopping prices.

Which raises the question: Why is this guy building more
houses way the hell out in the tenth ring of exurbs when he can’t sell the ones
he already has? Maybe “putting up entire neighborhoods on a city’s outskirts”
is not a good line of work to be in at the moment.

And aside from the fact that “new home starts” is the holy
grail of economic indicators, what’s so terrible about Americans wanting to buy
cheaper, already existing homes closer to their jobs? Isn’t that sensible?
Isn’t that only the normal thing to do? Isn’t that what simple economics would
tell us is a likely outcome of a market that has overbuilt homes in places where
people don’t necessarily want to live, dependent on one sole mode of transport—the automobile—that is becoming ever-more expensive to fuel?

Those foreclosed homes that people are buying, many of them,
were new just a few years ago. Should we now be throwing them away like used
tissue paper because we had an economic downturn? What about making use of the
resources we have already committed to those places—the roads, the sewers,
the utilities? Once those things are built, people start paying taxes to maintain them, and keep paying taxes—whether they’re being used or not. Or are our very neighborhoods becoming disposable
commodities, all so that we can keep notching “growth” on the economic chart?

Look, I understand that construction jobs are some of the
only decent-paying blue-collar options left. But if homes are sitting
empty and need to be rehabbed, is there any shame in doing that work instead of
building subdivisions from scratch?

There are first- and second-generation suburbs across
America that could potentially be retrofitted
and redeveloped into the type of livable, walkable communities that so many
consumers want. That would leave greenfields green and prevent the
construction of more highways at a time when we can’t maintain the highways we
have. And it would mean fewer visits to the pump.

For the last week, every time I have looked at the internet
or turned on the radio, the ranting about gas prices has been there waiting.
This time around, it’s usually accompanied with a teensy-weensy bit of
self-awareness—an acknowledgment that the story has been cycling around for
the last 30-plus years, and that the talking points have long ago been solidified.

But the next level of realization—that we need to fundamentally
rethink the way our housing and transportation infrastructure
are configured, and stop the sprawl—has for the most part yet to kick in.

As Transportation for America tweeted on
Monday, “Next week, R’s will suggest expanding oil exploration & supply.
D’s will try curbing ‘speculators.’ Both will completely ignore demand.”

It’s an atmosphere in which an NPR host can interview John Hofmeister, founder and CEO of the non-profit group Citizens for
Affordable Energy and former CEO of Shell Oil, for six full minutes about “What
is driving up oil prices”—and never once mention the role that sprawl
development plays in increasing demand and shackling America’s citizens to a
transportation system that is dependent on fossil fuels. In which the president, like that former oil exec, talks about alternative techologies and fuels, but not a rethinking of growth patterns.

An atmosphere in which the only way to sell a house is to throw
in a free car. Because the person who gets that car won’t be thinking about the
thousands upon thousands of dollars it will cost to fill it up over the years. Or the empty, angry hours
spent on the road and in traffic.

Until it’s too late.

Update: Thanks to Midwest Energy News, who pointed out to me on Twitter that “Actually that development is so far from Chicago that it’s actually a few miles closer to Milwaukee.”

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by Kaid Benfield.

Cross-posted from the Natural Resources Defense Council.

In defiance of the environmental values it supposedly stands for, the federal Environmental Protection Agency is moving its regional headquarters from a walkable, transit-rich, downtown Kansas City (Kan.) neighborhood to one of the worst examples of suburban sprawl it could have possibly found, some 20 miles from downtown. The result could nearly triple transportation carbon emissions associated with the facility.

In addition, around 600 federal and associated civilian employees will abandon a central city at a time when the agency’s own staff is writing reports suggesting that central cities in the U.S. are making a comeback. Kansas City, Kan. (population 145,786), is much smaller than neighboring Kansas City, Mo.; the loss of 600 downtown jobs is a major blow to the city’s efforts to strengthen its core.

This decision is horrible in so many ways that it’s hard to know where to start. How the hell did EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson sign off on this?

Let’s look at the facts. The satellite image above shows the location of the current Region 7 headquarters in downtown Kansas City, Kansas. It’s not perfect when viewed through a smart growth and sustainable communities lens, but it’s not bad.

Now consider the new location, a low-rise “landscraper” of a building fronted by large parking lots outside of a suburb called Lenexa, and across the road from, among other things, a wheatfield.

I ran the addresses for the current and new facilities through Walk Score and Abogo, the calculator developed by the Center for Neighborhood Technology that estimates carbon emissions (and household costs) from transportation by location. Above, the EPA’s current headquarters location gets a Walk Score of 62, better than 81 percent of Kansas City as a whole. You can see the locations of nearby amenities on the Walk Score map, which also identifies six bus transit lines within a quarter mile walk of the facility.

Abogo calculates that an average resident in the vicinity of the current EPA Region 7 headquarters emits 0.39 metric tons of carbon dioxide per month, slightly more than half the regional average of 0.74 tons per month. Symbolically, it’s a great location for an agency that is attempting to address global warming. All that yellow and green on the map indicates that the average transportation costs associated with residences in the area are below the regional average.

(Abogo doesn’t directly calculate emissions and costs associated with commercial and civic facilities, but one can extrapolate that the differences between good- and poor-performing locations would be even greater because of the number of visitors associated with commercial and civic locations.)

Now let’s compare the same calculations and maps for the sprawl site to which the EPA intends to move. The Walk Score is only a “car-dependent” 28. That is not only far below that of the downtown location and the average for Kansas City sites; it is also far below the average even for the fringe suburb of Lenexa, 86 percent of whose residents are said to have a higher score. You could see all the nearby amenities on the Walk Score map—if there were any. Sheesh.

But, wait, it gets worse. Abogo calculates that the transportation carbon emissions associated with the new location are a whopping 1.08 metric tons per person per month. That’s nearly three times the average associated with the current location and one and a half times the regional average. This is not just some random corporation making a crappy location decision: This is the agency charged with protecting the environment for the United States of America.

(Ironically, EPA’s new regional headquarters did, in fact, recently belong to a corporation. The agency apparently decided that, if the site was once good enough for Applebee’s corporate honchos, it’s good enough for us.)

When the EPA joined the Department of Housing and Urban Development and Department of Transportation in the federal Partnership for Sustainable Communities, I applauded them. When the partnership issued its first-year report of achievement amidst an impressive array of actions to support local sustainability efforts, I applauded them again. Here’s one of the six core “livability principles” that the EPA pledged to uphold as a participant in the partnership:

Support existing communities. Target federal funding toward existing communities—through strategies like transit-oriented, mixed-use development, and land recycling—to increase community revitalization and the efficiency of public works investments and safeguard rural landscapes.

How’s that promise to support transit-oriented, mixed-use development, and community revitalization looking now, Administrator Jackson?

As for the commitment to “safeguard rural landscapes,” the area of sprawling office space where the EPA will be relocating is, in fact, rapidly converting agricultural land to pavement. Directly across the road from the EPA facility is another low-rise office park whose building footprint is dwarfed by the size of surface parking built to accommodate it. But adjacent to that property is farmland.

And it’s not just the principles of the sustainability partnership that the agency has decided to ignore. The EPA is also thumbing its nose at a series of federal executive orders that clearly establish government policy with regard to facilities location. In particular, on Oct. 5, 2009, President Obama signed Executive Order 13514 [PDF], “Federal Leadership in Environmental, Energy, and Economic Performance.” That order makes it the policy of the United States of America for federal agencies to “reduce their greenhouse-gas emissions from direct and indirect activities.” As shown above, this move will increase those emissions, not reduce them.

More specifically with regard to the siting of federal facilities, the order establishes mechanisms to accomplish the following:

“Ensuring that planning for new Federal facilities or new leases includes consideration of sites that are pedestrian-friendly, near existing employment centers, and accessible to public transit, and emphasizes existing central cities and, in rural communities, existing or planned town centers”
“The recommendations shall be consistent with principles of sustainable development including prioritizing central business district and rural town center locations, prioritizing sites well served by transit, including site design elements that ensure safe and convenient pedestrian access, consideration of transit access and proximity to housing affordable to a wide range of Federal employees, adaptive reuse or renovation of buildings, avoidance of development of sensitive land resources, and evaluation of parking management strategies.”

Silly me, I had assumed that the EPA actually had something to do with drafting this order for the President to consider and sign. Now I wonder if the agency has even bothered to read it.

If this matter is litigated, which I’m starting to think might not be a bad idea, could the EPA’s lawyers find loopholes enabling the agency to avoid the intent of the order? Maybe. But the fact that the nation’s most important environmental institution would be resorting to find reasons to escape sustainability practices that both it and the nation’s chief executive have indicated are important says all we need to know about what a mockery of principle this decision is.

And that’s not the only relevant executive order, by the way. Then-President Clinton signed Executive Order 13006, “encouraging the location of Federal facilities in our central cities.” Then-President Carter issued Executive Order 12072, requiring federal location decisions to “conserve existing urban resources and encourage the development and redevelopment of cities” and “give first consideration to a centralized community business area and adjacent areas of similar character.” These directives, as with President Obama’s, are still in effect. (Even then-President Nixon issued an order to “protect and enhance the cultural environment” through historic preservation.)

Officials in Kansas City are not happy about the EPA’s abandonment of downtown, as you might imagine. Neither is former Kansas senator and GOP presidential candidate Bob Dole, who helped Kansas City secure the building that now houses the Region 7 staff and was built specifically for them. Dole, who now represents the owners of the downtown building, pointed to its importance to the city’s revitalization in an opinion column in the Kansas City Star:

The EPA building, which remains in pristine condition, has anchored the revitalization and growth of downtown Kansas City, driving out much of the blight and crime that once plagued this community. About 550 federal government employees and 122 private employees work at Region VII headquarters.

Several years ago the EPA, making a further commitment to Kansas City, located its technical laboratory a block from headquarters to facilitate operations and movement of employees between the offices …

The federal government should also contemplate the effects a move will have on Kansas City. Traditionally the federal government has supported choosing urban sites for federal facilities taking into consideration the economic, social, and cultural conditions, public transportation, and the economic development and employment opportunities in the area.

Put another way, insofar as this matter is concerned, Bob Dole appears to care more about urban sustainability than the Obama administration’s EPA. (See more coverage of the opposition to EPA’s decision here, here, and here.)

The decision to abandon the city and exacerbate suburban sprawl was ostensibly made to save money, though one might ask whose money, since employee and visitor commuting costs to the sprawl site will be substantially higher than they are now for the central location. In any event, although the lease in the new location will be heavily discounted for the first year, over the length of the lease costs will likely be higher in the new location than they would be under a new long-term lease for the downtown property.

A second argument advanced in favor of the sprawl site is, ironically, that the former Applebee’s building is LEED-certified, while the current building, which was built to then-prevailing green standards in 1998 but predates LEED, is not. If that is the real reason, it more than anything else I have come across illustrates the perversity of LEED building standards that largely ignore the environmental consequences of location. Research shows that transportation energy use and emissions of purportedly green buildings, when they are placed in sprawl, wipe out any benefits conferred by the technology of the buildings themselves. I’ve written about that repeatedly.

EPA’s partner in the federal sustainability partnership, HUD, has said that it is going beyond the old LEED standards and beginning to adopt the principles of location efficiency and the new-generation LEED for Neighborhood Development, which emphasizes not just internal building characteristics but also the locational context of development. Has HUD now surpassed the EPA as the federal government’s environmental leader? I wouldn’t be the first to suggest that it has.

Moreover, the federal Department of Energy says that the current, downtown building has plenty of green features:

The building is situated on a brownfield site and was planned from the beginning to serve as a model for economically and environmentally sustainable building practices.

Every aspect of this building’s design, construction, operation, and maintenance was considered for sustainable applications and practices. Water conservation is achieved through native landscaping and low-flow interior fixtures. Building materials were selected for their recycled content and their contribution to a healthy indoor environment. Strategies for energy conservation range from siting decisions and the use of daylighting to efficient HVAC components.

The owner of the downtown building has said that it is willing to obtain LEED-gold certification for the building’s operation and maintenance, at its own expense, within a year.

In today’s rancorous political climate, conservatives charge that the federal government’s interest in sustainability is basically a statist plot to force Americans into a lifestyle that they don’t want. To them I say, rest easy, my friends; go back to fighting that other statist plot, decent health care for all Americans. You have absolutely nothing to fear from this one.

Amazingly, in this case it is by ignoring sustainability that the government may be forcing its employees into a lifestyle and increased costs that they likely do not want. The much-heralded government interest in sustainability not only is not forcing ordinary Americans to do anything: It isn’t even having an effect on the government’s own practices.

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by Jonathan Hiskes.

A while back, Sarah noted
the proliferation of Detroit “ruin porn”—images and films that depict abandoned
houses, crumbling factories, and desperately unemployed masses without showing
that intelligent life does, in fact, remain in the city.

There’s something of a parallel
trend for sprawl: illustrations of the overbuilt, over-mortgaged empty subdivisions
littering exurban America. The implied message is quite often that these places
were built carelessly and are unaffordable, unsustainable, damn near unlovable.

New York artist
Christoph Gielen’s aerial photos of subdivisions seem to fit the genre, with
the repetitive geometric shapes they find in suburbia. The German-born
photographer looked for places with the highest rates of foreclosure, The
City Fix says, which led him to Florida and the Arizona.

He provides the
standard critique of suburbia, telling CNN.com:

Sprawl is a really careless use of new land. I want people who
look at my photos to start a reconsideration of how they live through art …

It’s so ironic because the United States touts itself as a
place of limitless freedoms and the land of individuality and individual
expression, but the lived experience is like a monoculture. It’s weird. It’s
total sameness.

But a simplistic,
didactic message makes for boring art, and these images aren’t boring. I asked
my friend Kevin Buist, a real live artist,
for a thought on what’s going on here:

CNN’s reading of Gielen’s work is really one-dimensional.
They seem only interested in using his work as an illustration of sprawl, which
is bad, end of story. But I think the images really work because they’re so
beautiful. There’s a tension between how remarkable it is to see pattern
operating on that scale, and the knowledge that those building practices are
unsustainable. I think the fact that that type of development is unsustainable
is part of its allure. There’s something undeniably sexy about throwing caution
to the wind, ignoring naysayers, and doing what you want. The people who sell
cigarettes and subdivisions don’t have a particularly difficult job.

The sexiness of something
that makes no freaking sense—maybe that’s it.

CNN and Gielen’s
site each have a collection of his work.

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