When Trader Joe’s or other smaller grocery stores tried to move in to downtown the city didn’t help solve their parking issues, so instead we are stuck with the big Vons chain. Wasn’t that an opportunity to practice what the development dept. new urbaners preach? A place for us to walk to! What a novel concept, provide a service people want to walk to without having to rebuild! If what the new urbaners preach is true the parking problem would have gone away.

This isn’t the first community unfriendly decision they’ve made. The corridors that they want to turn into canyons used to have small auto lots. They city forced them all to move to a giant auto center along the freeway and they’ve been threatening imminent domain on the commercial property owners of the vacant lots ever since. The business left are slammed along with for not being fancy new fake facade buildings, but old 1-story with empty lots in between. What irks me most is that the city could care less what the people in the neighborhood want. They only care what they can do to attract reinvestment dollars, which means pushing out the current residents.

This is just a thinly veiled open door for developers to maximize profits. Who needs a luxury condo? Try an 1100 sq. ft. 75 year old home with a porch and gardens. The new urbaners in this town are going to make my long term investment extinct. They are already allowing 3-story monstrosities to be built on top of the small old homes leaving 3 ft. strips around them. Green is what we need. We talk to the neighbors when we mow and garden! The new urbaner preachers sound like they’ve never lived in a neighborhood where they talk to their neighbors. It takes a community not a building.

I live in a 600 sq ft house with my girlfriend. Believe it or not I have trees and have to mow the yard occasionally. If I wanted to I could start a vegetable garden. The space is plenty for both of us. If you had 4 people per dwelling you could double the size of the lots and attain the same density without sacrificing any green space. 1200 sq ft x 3 stories = 3600 sq ft. This should be plenty of space for anyone. 20 people would live in a place that big in many countries. Given that the average family size is 2.5 people and shrinking, I see no need for dwellings larger than 3600 sq ft on average. The yards in this scenario would be ~2/3 of the plot or ~3000sq ft total. Plenty of room for trees, a garden, a pool, etc. So, just by taking advantage of the vertical dimension (3 story, narrow houses) you could provide very spacious houses with large yards, while still attaining a transit-supportive density.

“Moreover, in California - and I think this trend is rolling out to the rest of the USA - developers are being forced to put 10+ homes on an acre. In my opinion most of these developments are hideous. People are piled on top of each other. You’d be far better off in a high-rise.”

Given the choice most developers would build even more homes per acre as they would make more money that way. If you tell developers that they can build up to 10 units per acre than 99% of them will do so since it is more profitable. If you got rid of density restrictions altogether than developers would build as tall and dense as budget and environmental constraints allowed. A developer is not going to choose to build less densely unless coercive zoning codes require them to do so.

I think you should just try to keep an open mind about these issues. I have read the criticisms of new urbanism and as of yet remain unconvinced by them. I would say that a lot of new urban projects fall far short of new urban principles, but that is usually the result of attempting to create a “comprimise” between new urban design principles and suburban principles. When the two are mixed, disaster results. Bear in mind that I am not a professional and am not involved with new urbanism, but I have done a lot of independent research regarding the issue. My interest in the issue comes purely from the point of view of a concerned citizen. I’m just sharing this with you because I believe your heart is in the right place, and that you have been misinformed regarding some of the issues. It’s been an interesting discussion. If you would like to discuss some of these things further, feel free to e-mail me: pmccleery5@yahoo.com.

Moreover, in California - and I think this trend is rolling out to the rest of the USA - developers are being forced to put 10+ homes on an acre. In my opinion most of these developments are hideous. People are piled on top of each other. You’d be far better off in a high-rise.

In my opinion the smart growth lobby, with their obsession with high density and mass transit have carried the day - they won. The fact they aren’t satisfied and want more is frightening. I question nearly all of the studies and assumptions behind their reasoning, including resource scarcity, global warming, and “social justice.” And the piety that emanates from the smart growth lobby is disappointing, to put it mildly. Time will not permit me to respond to your many points, although I do appreciate that you are willing to share your thoughts. Most everything you’ve stated is addressed elsewhere on EcoWorld. Best wishes and don’t lose your passion.

This is a matter of aesthetics and is therefore subjective/opinion. Some people find a big yard life affirming while some find the hustle and bustle of Manhattan to be life affirming. Lower density housing costs more because it requires more materials and energy to be used per capita. You have to pay more in order to get more. The questions of social justice that this raises would require a separate and much lengthier conversation.

They only use modern cars in China (well, the vast majority). Athletes who come to china develop asthma after going for a run and breathing the air. Since the olympics are going to be held there they had to determine what the safe level of particulate matter was. After determining this, the Chinese government banned cars for a week and measured the particulate levels. The levels were below their targets, meaning the banning of cars for just a short time was more than sufficient to reduce air pollution to breathable levels. This suggests that cars, even modern ones, play a significant role in affecting the quality of the air we breathe.

You can definately have that in many new urbanist developments. You should check out the smartcode, it is a transect based code with different levels of “intensity” ranging from rural to urban. The difference is that the minimum *allowable* density is 10 units per acre which is the minimum needed to support transit service. This is not to say that 10 units per acre would be the minimum that could be built, but that if a developer wished he could be build up to 10 units per acre. If a developer wished to build homes on 1/2 acre lots he could still do so if he pleased. I live on a lot that is 1/20th an acre and I have a back and front yard with several trees and room for a garden while still having some room left over for a dog to run around.

I’m afraid that without modern zoning codes developments of 1/2 acre lots would be very scarce as a developer would make much more money with denser developments. It is precisely the coercive suburban zoning codes in place that have perpetuated sprawl and made denser, mixed-use communities illegal to build. Now, all of this is not to say that some developers would still choose to build lower-density developments under the smartcode; but if the density restrictions were done away with you would get a lot more density, not less. I think codes should regulate things like minimum square footage per person, lot sizes, setbacks, etc in order to maintain safety & comfort. This is pretty much what the smartcode is all about-regulating form while letting the *type* of building be determined by the developer (i.e. supply/demand). The smartcode is around 50 pages or so, while conventional zoning codes are often hundreds of pages due to all the regulations that need to be in place to enforce a suburban environment.

The 10 unit per acre limit gives developers the option of building up to 10 units per acre. Since this is also the density required to operate a transit service with a frequency of 30 minutes between vehicles, it also gives developers the option of building transit-oriented communities, and gives consumers the choice of living in them. If a developer still wished to build less densely they would be allowed to do so, and people would be free to live there if they wanted.

The peak oil issue to me is more significant than the C02 issue, if only due to the timeframes. The adverse effects of global warming are on a 50 year time scale whereas peak oil is likely occuring right now (hence the ever increasing gas prices). Let’s just say for now that what you are claiming about green cars is not consistent with what I have read regarding the issue. As I understand it, the green energy required for these vehicles will not be available at the same scale as oil. In other words we will have hydrogen cars but the cost of the equivalent of a gallon of gasoline will be higher than what we are paying today. So far it seems that we are in a race of rising energy prices vs. technological innovation. Some believe that technology will ultimately win the race, but so far it is losing (and therefore we have higher energy prices, not lower). When I say technology I mean the use of machines to attempt to maintain unsustainable behaviors. Technology also means the application of knowledge, so the smartcode itself could be viewed as a technology in that light.

As for your support of market forces - I would think this principle, combined with your belief that we are headed for even higher - much higher - energy prices, would make you rest assured we will have cleaner, more efficient cars than ever within a decade or two.

That you agree we could scrap the coercive zoning mandates and end up with smarter growth is a breath of fresh air. As for me, I just want to be able to afford a private yard big enough for a garden and a few trees. When rationing of water, energy and land makes the aspiration to have something so simple and life affirming the province of only the very wealthy, we are on the wrong track. The market can deliver abundance - the government should make sure it’s clean, and otherwise get out of the way. This obsession with CO2 has stacked the deck, and more of us should question the motives of rational institutions whose elites have looked at this carefully and still condone the alarmism.

I completely agree here. What you seem to be missing is that urban sprawl itself is the result of a set of coercive mandantes. Urban sprawl is not the result of natural human tendencies, it exists through intensive land use regulations. The historic cores, the parts of cities that people like to go to, would be illegal to build under modern zoning codes. Prior to anti-urban zoning laws cities were built to a pattern that very closely resembles new urbanism. By all means, let’s go the free market route. A developer is going to try to make as much money as possible. Without strict anti-urban zoning laws limiting density, a developer will opt to build as many housing units as environmental laws would allow. This means a developer would build as tall and dense as their budget and environmental constraints allowed them to, since they could sell many more housing units this way. Without parking requirements requiring a developer to build 2 parking spaces per unit, they would choose not to, especially if mass transit were available. If all subsidies for both roads and transit were removed and they were forced to compete based upon profitability, than transit would be the clear winner if both vehicles were filled to capacity. A single lane of highway can move around 2,000 cars per hour per lane without experiencing
traffic jams. A single lane of light rail can move 25,000 people. It’s a fact that the per capita energy use of someone using mass transit is much lower than someone in a single occupancy vehicle. What that translates to is the ability to move more people at a lower cost, thus making more money.

Even if you disagree with the 95% of scientists who agree that global warming is real, are you going to deny the fact that car exhaust contributes to lung cancer and asthma risks? It’s a public health issue. We’ve banned smoking in public places, but there is no minimum safe distance for car exhaust. Some companies previously involved with denying the link between smoking and lung cancer are now in the business of protecting the interests of auto, oil, and sprawl building companies by denying the link between our oil use and climate change.
The Reason Foundation is one good example.

The issue of alternative fuels and EROEI translates into higher transportation prices, no matter what combination of alternatives are used. Peak oil means these alternatives will not come online fast enough to make a difference anyway. If they were coming online fast enough they would be displacing demand for oil and gas prices would not be going up, which they are.

We also are well aware that cars still have environmental impacts other than CO2, which by the way, we don’t believe has nearly the potential impact the CO2 alarmists claim. In fact, we believe CO2 alarmism is condoned and encouraged by powerful special interests who benefit from the hysteria and attendant, ill-conceived policies, read “Carbon Fundamentalism” for our latest take on this:

It is true today’s parallel hybrid cars have more embodied energy and require more elaborate recycling compared to conventional cars. But series hybrid cars - and, for that matter, modern clean high-mileage diesels - are less complex than conventional vehicles. The idea that we can never build a totally green car is incredibly short-sighted, as are any policies based on such a flawed notion. Read posts in our “Green Cars” category for all kinds of encouraging reports. And in any case I reject the malthusian assumptions that underlie these concerns. I believe in the power of the free market, the power of innovation, and I believe we will always have abundant land and resources if we don’t stifle markets or innovation. And for that I have been banished to “Wingnuttia,” where I proudly reside with a clear conscience.

One of the fallacies I would suggest informs your reasoning is the “either/or” dichotomy. Either we do high-density infill or we do suburban sprawl. Either cars are green or cars will never be green. I believe that many people, maybe even most people, prefer high density living arrangements. But I passionately disagree with the notion we have to artificially engineer high density communities through coercive mandates. In my opinion, environmentalists, urban planners, and public employee unions have made housing unaffordable to ordinary workers. They are now using the “global warming” scaremongering to consolidate their power even futher. I think this tragedy was completely avoidable, and I don’t think the environment is any better off as a result.