A PLAN REVIEW

What started out as a plan review became a policy question when all the detailed distraction was removed. The plan represented an isolated battle. It was not linked to a municipal strategy of land use allocation, shelter capacity, development intensity, and economic performance. This made it one of a series of endless conflicts representing little progress. The risk was potential decline and sprawl beyond a single lifetime.

POLICY QUESTION

Incorporated land is a city’s capital. This low density residential proposal represents a low yield investment with a high degree of risk-associated with operating, maintenance, and improvement expense over time; even though it appears to be new revenue without expense at the moment. The question is relatively simple:

Does the city wish to invest its capital in a low-yield return that will reduce its average yield per acre when its average expense per acre will inevitably increase over time?

The question becomes more significant when future annexation to correct a revenue deficit is recognized as a withdrawal from the only bank that matters. It is a limited source of life I’ve chosen to call the Natural Domain, and it is being consumed by a Built Domain that has evolved to become a second world on a single planet.

The answer will remain a matter of emotion and opinion until architectural algorithms, geographic modeling, and relational databases are correlated to address the physical, social, psychological, environmental, and economic issues that affect our quality of life.

The goal is to shelter growing populations within geographic limits that are economically sustainable without excessive intensity; and to protect their source of life from excessive consumption beyond these limits.

Implications

This development proposal represents increased institutional cost for the services that will be needed. These costs increase as a project ages and inflation reduces the value of money. What appears to be new revenue at little cost must represent adequate revenue over time. If it doesn’t, offsetting revenue will be needed to prevent potential decline and blight. When new revenue does not cover its expense over time, a Ponzi scheme of annexation ensues to provide new money with no better idea of future expense. The result is urban form we call sprawl. This mistake has been repeated in countless cities across the nation and continues because our methods of evaluation are still inadequate. The problem of deficient revenue becomes more acute for surrounded cities with inadequate land use allocation that have no room to grow.

There is no institutional obligation to assume the costs of a proposal and no freedom to impose these costs.  It is an institutional decision that must be carefully considered, but is hampered by the lack of tools, knowledge, evaluation, and correlation available.

Unfortunately, emotion and opinion fill every void in knowledge. The result has been sprawl with a leading edge of active consumption and a heart of decline. It feeds on the Natural Domain without symbiotic guidance.

The long range answer involves design categories, architectural algorithms, and relational databases that can model city planning options and implications within geographic limits. Land use allocation, development capacity, and intensity decisions will be hampered by the default to opinion until cities decide to build these models. The issue is simply too important to remain in the hands of emotion and opinion. It is a matter of shelter and survival.

 

COMPETITION

Education, credibility, relevance and value improve when explicit knowledge is distilled from tacit instinct, awareness and talent. The challenge is to define the topics that can be refined to accomplish the objective.

Competition distracts from a focus on knowledge until research is established as a separate endeavor. I composed a few paragraphs in rebuttal to the financial contention that competition is adaptation and it occurred to me that you might find it useful.

COMPETITION

We adapt to survive competition. When the principle is reversed, competition within the family of man becomes predation based on deception disguised by ethics. Adaptation requires anticipation. It can be obscured by the dust of competition.

A culture that glorifies athletic competition glorifies deception until it becomes a cultural tradition. The look-away pass in basketball and the double reverse in football are examples of deception in this competitive context.

The next time you hear or proclaim that “winning isn’t everything - it’s the only thing”, consider the implications when athletic reality is adopted by cultural opinion.

Darwin meant that a species adapted to survive an unstable natural environment. This morphed into phrases like the one above and others like "only the strong survive" to justify predatory behavior within and beyond our species. We have created many unnatural parallels to Darwin's unstable natural environment. The economic system is one example that thrives on instability to justify predatory behavior in an artificial environment. We are deluding ourselves if we believe that growth, consumption and competition represent adaptation on a planet that does not compromise with ignorance when responding to universal forces beyond our comprehension.

TACIT KNOWLEDGE

I've been out of touch working on a new book that I hope will be complete by the end of this year. I'm including the first two paragraphs of the Introduction. They represent a synopsis that I've been seeking for a long time. I'm blogging them to stay in touch during this effort.

 

------Walter 

A growing population cannot survive without shelter on a planet with limited resources. The threat is shelter sprawl that consumes our source of life and shelter intensity that destroys our quality of life. The question is how to shelter these populations and protect their quality of life within a limited Built Domain that does not threaten their source of life -- the Natural Domain.

The answer will require symbiotic solutions to save a parasite that does not recognize it is human. This book introduces a classification system, vocabulary, and equations built on architectural logic. The logic is tacit knowledge that has been verbally transferred over centuries. It must become explicit before it can grow. The transition will permit research, comparison, debate, and the accumulation of knowledge in a measureable language that can add to the conversation.

Scoundrels in Law

I was surprised by the book Scoundrels in Law by Cait Murphy. It's about the trials of legal firm Howe and Hummel in the last half of nineteenth century New York City and the beginning of the twentieth. If you ever wondered what was going on during the architectural evolution, this explains some of the social activity. It includes the highly public trial of Harry Thaw, Stanford White's murderer, since they represented the defendant. (Stanford White was an architect and partner in the prestigious New York firm McKim, Mead and White.)

It you ever wondered what the word "tenement" actually meant during those times, this book paints a picture you will remember.

TRAFFIC LIGHTS

This is a contribution to a string of comments regarding traffic lights in the Regional and Urban Design Committee of the AIAKnowledgeNet.

A traffic light is a symptom of a much greater disease in my opinion.

An urban composition is created with a street system euphemistically called a public right-of-way. The result is hardly a symphony. I’m not surprised that the term “quality of life” is gaining traction as the public begins to recognize that protection of its welfare involves more than a ribbon of sidewalk adjacent to parking and a torrent of traffic in the city it calls home.

This result represents a collision of opinion related to city design. Opinion began with a belief that a land owner had every right and a neighbor’s right did not extend beyond his property line. A tenant had no rights and the Reform Movement began as we left the farm to live in cities with no public sanitation; safety; or light, air, and ventilation. Modest improvements were made but the individual prevailed and the population was thrown into the street with a sidewalk as its companion.

I’m not suggesting that the problem can be solved in many lifetimes. It is simply too vast. I’m simply pondering the role of a traffic light in the cities we have created.

Sustainability & First Ring Suburbs

A first ring suburb is an encircled city that has little or no expansion potential.

Every acre within every city/suburb produces revenue that sustains the whole. Every acre also has an average operating and maintenance expense that is a function of activity and age. This is critical to an encircled suburb with no land to annex. If it doesn’t understand the implications of its land use allocation it can’t plan for the future and learn to live within the limits imposed.

Think of it this way. Each land use category is a field. A crop has a yield per acre of field allocation. Income is a function of field area, crop yield in bushels per acre, and the value per bushel. In city planning, field area is land use allocation. Crop yield is the square feet of building area constructed per acre. Income is revenue potential per square foot of building area constructed.

Gross building area per acre of land consumed is development capacity. Development capacity and revenue potential can be measured at existing locations to understand the economic implications of a land use allocation pattern.

At the present time many cities have not done the homework and cannot forecast development capacity options. They know past income and expense but this is balance sheet accounting. It is not city planning. It means that a city may know its revenue and expense per acre but have no ability to forecast the adjustments required.

In these cases a fringe suburb will pursue the annexation of land to add new revenue, but it won’t know if the revenue will be adequate to meet its expense over time. It only knows that new revenue is needed to meet old expense and that new construction has little maintenance cost. The city’s economic future is wishful thinking at best under these circumstances and an unintended Ponzi scheme at worst. The result can be sprawl that consumes the environment or the decline of an encircled city.

There is a bigger picture that I should also mention. Our cities combine to form a Built Domain. The capacity, context, composition, and intensity of land use allocation and shelter construction within the Built Domain affects our quality of life, but sprawl threatens to consume our source of life – the Natural Domain. From this perspective we live in one world, threaten another, and must learn to live within limits to protect the gift we have been given.

First ring suburbs are being forced to live within limits. They have no annexation options and this has enormous implications. At the present time many slowly decay from within because they have not recognized that a city is a farm; but a farmer can change next year’s crop to improve his income. A city does not have this luxury, and any change is fraught with negative terms such as urban renewal, redevelopment, eminent domain, confiscation, and so on.

A new highway has an easier time because the objective is clear. The purpose of redevelopment is often debatable because the homework has not been done to build credibility. The immediate assumption is that redevelopment has nothing to do with public benefit and everything to do with private gain. This may be true for an individual project based on criminal intent, but in general the assumption couldn’t be farther from the truth in a free market economy. Revenue is needed to support public benefit shared by all. Suspicion concerns the justification of expense until the deficit becomes visual blight.

There is also an underlying political issue that prevents progress. A city’s budget problems become exacerbated when redevelopment is not an option and annexation is not a possibility. This raises the specter of property devaluation. Devaluation in its present form is a slow, gradual process that allows many to escape before the threshold of blight is visually obvious. This is a future that no one wishes to acknowledge before they leave, and a problem that city planning rarely has the power to address.

As if this weren’t enough, many school systems believe they protect property value with the quality of education provided. This can distract attention from the real problem. If a city’s streets are potholed; its curbs crumbling; its basements flooding; its safety compromised; its services inadequate; and its buildings in disrepair; its property value will decline. In other words, the quality of city services protects property value. A school system protects its rate of appreciation. Confusing the two benefits can distort priorities and place a city’s future at risk.

First ring suburbs represent ideal laboratories if they have the courage to undertake the relational database research and information required. Populations have the capacity to meet adversity when they recognize a challenge. A city that is able to define the challenge will inspire confidence. It is the unknown we all fear, and the reasons for sprawl and blight are a mystery surrounded by suspicion within a vacuum of knowledge.

First Ring suburbs can lead the way by helping us all learn how to live within limits without threatening our quality and source of life.

To the Phillipines & Malaysia

I've noticed that a number of readers have been coming from the two nations mentioned and I’m aware of the problems you face. I know that the book and equations I’m working on will help and have been focusing my attention on completion because I believe it will help other nations as well. I can only ask my readers to be patient since I’ve neglected blog submissions for some time. New subscribers may wonder about the gap and this is my attempt to explain.

I think the manuscript will take two to four more months and then there is the publishing process. It has a mind of its own. I hope to have all completed by the end of 2014 at the latest and can only apologize for my lack of attention in the interim. I have you all in mind and hope you find the book to be a contribution to your efforts.