Streetsblog San Francisco

They lord over empty parking lots in Hazard, Kentucky; Twinsburg, Ohio; and Lewiston, Washington like the ruins of a lost civilization. Vacant Walmart stores are slowly decomposing in more and more American towns these days. More than 100 of them have been memorialized as part of the group Flickr pool known smugly as “They Sold for Less.”

These empty husks — yet to be filled by any other retail tenant — are part of the detritus left behind by a paradigm shift in the real estate industry. Signs of the changing times, they tell us what kind of society we were before the bubble burst.

Now, as the commercial real estate industry regroups, evidence is mounting that Walmart and other mega-retailers will take a much different form than they have in the past. The new American shopping experience, according to many industry observers, will be less “suburban big-box” and more “urban destination.”

The demise of several mega-retail chains during the recession, including Circuit City and Linens ‘n Things, helped produce a vast oversupply of retail space, particularly that of the giant, boxy, just-off-the-interstate variety. Last summer, the research arm of giant commercial real estate firm Colliers International reported that there was nearly 300 million square feet of vacant big box retail space on the market — 34 percent of total retail vacancy left behind by a recession that walloped commercial real estate almost as hard as housing.

Since 2008 alone, 120 million square feet of big box retail space has become available. To put such numbers in perspective, that is the equivalent of the total shopping center space in Cincinnati, Kansas City and Baltimore combined, Colliers reported.

This period of retrenchment has humbled even the once-mightiest of retail forces. CNN reported last month that Walmart stores suffered their ninth-straight quarterly drop in sales. Another sign of the times: Walmart is no longer enough of a bargain for U.S. consumers, it appears. The mega-retailer has been losing market share to dollar stores.

The situation has apparently reached the point where the retail monolith is rethinking its whole carbon-gulping model. Walmart is joining other retailers in thinking smaller and more urban, says Ed McMahon, a fellow at the Urban Land Institute.

“What the recession has made completely clear is that we have way too much retail,” McMahon said. “We are going from the era of the big box to the era of the small box.”

Enter the “Walmart Express.”

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Do you know the name of your local Metropolitan Planning Organization or Council of Government? Most Americans don’t. In fact, most people probably have no idea these agencies even exist, let alone what they do. Yet they are surprisingly powerful and play a substantial role in shaping the places where we live and work.

Led by unelected boards, MPOs and COGs, as they’re known, are a special breed among government agencies. They lack the authority to issue taxes or impose laws. As such, they go largely unmentioned in the media and are mostly unknown to local residents, outside of the most wonkish circles. But the low profile of MPOs and COGs belies their considerable power.

Despite their limitations, they represent the strongest form of regional governance we’ve got in the United States, crossing city and county lines. More importantly, they disperse hundreds of millions of federal transportation dollars annually. MPOs and COGs are powerful forces shaping metro regions. While these agencies often distribute transportation funds more fairly than state DOTs, many of them are structured in a way that favors sprawl and works against cities.

MPOs and COGs can be profoundly undemocratic. They are governed by boards of public officeholders, but there is no requirement that they be in any way representative of the region’s population. In fact, the general rule that governs the composition of MPO boards is “one place, one vote,” rather than the more traditional “one person, one vote.” This often produces decisions dramatically skewed toward suburban and rural interests.

For example, greater Milwaukee’s MPO, known by the unwieldy acronym SEWRPC, is governed by a board of 21 members, three from each of the counties that make up the planning region. That means that the city of Milwaukee — population nearly 600,000 — has zero representatives on the commission that distributes millions of dollars for transportation throughout the region. It is not guaranteed any votes. The city’s only voting power comes from the three seats given to Milwaukee County — and those must be spread between the central city and many suburbs. Meanwhile, rural Walworth County — population 100,000 — is guaranteed three votes.

Milwaukee is an especially egregious case. But unfortunately, this general pattern is more the norm than the exception. A 1999 Brookings Institution study [PDF] found that central cities were under-represented in as many as 92 percent of MPOs and COGs.

That bias can have a strong impact on policy, further research has shown. A 2003 study by researchers at Virginia Tech found that for each additional suburban member on an MPO board, there was a 1 to 9 percent decrease in funding for transit — with highways being the favored alternative.

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There’s a place just outside Houston where the vinyl siding and attached garages thin out and recede into grasslands.

In this place — one of the country’s few remaining tall-grass prairies — something amazing happens each fall. First hundreds, then thousands, then millions of birds arrive here at Katy Prairie, an international wintering grounds for migratory birds, especially waterfowl.

Over the decades, this 1,000 square mile sanctuary has largely survived the encroachment of farmers and relentless development pressure from neighboring Houston, thanks in no small part to its dedicated supporters.

But the Katy Prairie has never faced a opponent like the Grand Parkway before. Piece by piece, the Houston area has been building a third — yes, third — bypass for the region. And much to the horror of local environmentalists, the next segment is planned to directly bisect this extraordinary habitat.

Development of this pristine land isn’t just collateral damage — it’s the point of the project. Project sponsors make no bones about it: The 15.2-mile Grand Parkway segment through Katy Prairie is a $462 million development project as much as it is a transportation project. Known as “Segment E,” it would be the third phase in a 180-mile “scenic bypass” for Houston. Each of the 11 segments is considered a separate and “independently justifiable project.”

Billy Burge of the Grand Parkway Association says right now there isn’t much need for Segment E, in terms of traffic. Burge and his colleagues don’t shy away from the fact that the project will generate more car trips and sprawl. In fact, they have what you might call a “build it and they will come” philosophy about road-building and traffic.

“There’s real demand in 15 to 17 years to have this,” said Burge, who chairs the association overseeing the project for the state and the region. “Once that link is completed, you’ll have a steady stream of traffic.”

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Local governments in the Bay Area have begun a coordinated regional effort to shift toward more sustainable urban planning mandated by the state’s landmark anti-sprawl bill, SB 375, which set ambitious targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) and called for better integration of land use and transportation planning.

Last week, the Metropolitan Transportation Commission (MTC) released its Initial Vision Scenario, which lays out preliminary strategies to accommodate population growth in the region over the next 25 years while achieving a 15 percent GHG reduction.

“The Initial Vision Scenario is a tool to advance dialogue among the Bay Area’s regional agencies,” said Ezra Rapport, executive director of the Association of Bay Area Governments (ABAG). “Through this collaborative planning effort to strengthen the character and qualities of our neighborhoods and communities, we can tackle the region’s population growth with a mix of housing, while preserving open spaces, protecting our economy, and getting residents where they need to go.”

The overview marks the first stepping stone in developing a Sustainable Communities Strategy, also known as Plan Bay Area, aimed at mitigating the impacts of a potential regional increase of 2 million residents. By directing new housing and job development into walkable, transit-accessible areas, the Initial Vision Scenario projects 97 percent of development could be absorbed within the current urban footprint but would still fall 3 percent short of the mandated 15 percent target.

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The owner of a patent law firm in recession-battered metro Detroit may have to leave Michigan, and it’s not because of the taxes, says Andrew Basile, Jr. His firm, which employs 40 people in the city of Troy, spends “more on copiers and toner than we do on state taxes.” The problem, Basile says, is that the firm can’t attract talent to Michigan because of the “poor quality of place” and “car culture” that prevails in the region.

In a letter to nonprofit Michigan Future, Inc., Basile vents his frustration with a leadership climate that has gone “berserk on suburbia.” (Basile is also the brains behind the Woodward Project, an initiative aimed at developing a vibrant livable center for Detroit.)

This instructive letter, sent by email under the subject line “Why our growing firm may have to leave Michigan,” explains how places like Detroit pay an economic price for lagging behind other regions on livability. Reprinted with permission of the author:

All…

Our recruiters are very blunt. They say it is almost impossible to recruit to Michigan without paying big premiums above competitive salaries on the coasts.

People – particularly affluent and educated people – just don’t want to live here. For example, below are charts of migration patterns based on IRS data. Black is inbound, red is outbound. Even though the CA economy is in very bad shape, there is still a mass migration to San Francisco vs. mass outbound migration from Oakland County (most notably to cities like SF, LA, Dallas, Atlanta, NY, DC, Boston, and Philly). San Fran only seems to be losing people to Portland, a place with even more open space and higher quality urban environments.

The situation for Michigan is even worse than it seems because those lines are net migration…

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Imagine two drivers leaving downtown to head home. Each of them sits in traffic for the first ten miles of the commute but at that point, their paths diverge. The first one has reached home. The second has another twenty miles to drive, though luckily for her, the roads are clear and congestion doesn’t slow her down. Who’s got a better commute?

Shockingly, the standard method for measuring traffic congestion implies that the second driver has it better. The Texas Transportation Institute’s Urban Mobility Report (UMR) only studies how congestion slows down drivers from hypothetical maximum speeds, completely ignoring how long it takes to actually get where you’re going. The result is an incessant call for more highway lanes from newspapers across the country.

An important new report from CEOs for Cities, though, has laid out major problems with the UMR. It shows how commuters in compact regions, whose daily trips look hellish based on the UMR, actually spend far less time in the car than residents of sprawling metro areas.

The misleading metrics in the UMR are a convenient bludgeon for the highway lobby. According to report author Joe Cortright, the UMR serves as “a drumbeat saying we need to spend a lot more on expanding capacity. It gets used in political speeches, it’s used in lobbying.”

The key flaw is a measurement called the Travel Time Index. That’s the ratio of average travel times at peak hours to the average time if roads were freely flowing. In other words, the TTI measures how fast a given trip goes; it doesn’t measure whether that trip is long or short to begin with.

Relying on the TTI suggests that more sprawl and more highways solve congestion, when in fact it just makes commutes longer. Instead, suggests CEOs for Cities, more compact development is often the more effective — and more affordable — solution.

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In a historic and unanimous vote yesterday, the California Air Resources Board (CARB) adopted ambitious targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 2020 and 2035, a move that will compel the state’s metropolitan planning organizations (MPOs) to better integrate land use and transportation planning.

“These targets are ambitious, achievable and very good news for California communities. Improved planning means cleaner air in our cities, less time stuck in your car, and healthier, more sustainable communities,” said Mary Nichols, the CARB Chair. “Cities that choose to develop sustainable communities plans that meet these targets have an advantage when it comes to attracting the kinds of vibrant, healthy development that people want.”

Although a number of representatives from powerful construction, development and oil industry interests lined up to oppose the targets, arguing passage would lead to fewer jobs and hurt the economy, sustainable transportation advocates said CARB was able to see through the rhetoric. They felt the vote was a watershed moment, a signal that business-as-usual transportation and land use models will no longer work.

“A growing body of research and our own data shows that smart growth is not just an aesthetic issue, it’s a real public health concern,” said Jane Warner, the president and CEO of the American Lung Association in California. “By moving to more sustainable growth patterns that offer healthier transportation options, CARB’s vote can help California avoid $1.66 billion in public health costs, more than 100,000 asthma attacks and other respiratory symptoms and 140 premature deaths each year.”

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Rarely would one describe sprawl as beautiful, but photographer Christoph Gielen managed to find some of the more incredible developments in the country and depict them in aerial photographs as a testament to the land use patterns he finds so distinctively and disturbingly American.

Gielen, born in Germany and living in New York City since 1982, laments both America’s obsession with automobiles and the environmental impact that obsession has had in constructing some of our cities.

“You have a terrific disconnect between place of work, place of living, place of shopping, a disconnect that manifested itself in the landscape,” said Gielen. “It was initially horrifying to me when I got here to spend two hours in a car to get from point A to point B.”

Gielen said his work is meant to provoke a discussion around the environmental impact of sprawl and he hopes it “triggers the reconsideration” of the trend. “I’m hoping to connect art with environmental awareness, so people contemplate what is sustainable and what is not.”

Gielen’s process for selecting the subject cities started by analyzing foreclosure statistics and areas with the highest rates of defaulted loans. He then studied satellite images of those cities, primarily in Florida, Arizona and Nevada, and then visited the areas in a car, sometimes even posing as a prospective buyer to get tours of the properties with real estate agents. After deciding on the developments he wanted to shoot, he would hire a helicopter to get the aerial perspective he sought. In several cases, he stumbled upon sprawl that wasn’t yet on a map or in satellite images.

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The Metropolitan Transportation Commission (MTC), in a historic vote Wednesday that will help guide the future for more sustainable land use and transportation planning in the Bay Area, recommended a 15 percent per capita target for reducing greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) by 2035, the most aggressive goal to date among California's metropolitan planning organizations (MPOs).

"Bay Area residents should be really excited about the 15 percent target. That's because it's high enough to trigger the transportation and land use changes we need to make the region more livable and affordable, especially as our population grows significantly by 2035," said Marta Lindsey, the communications and development director at TransForm.

Lindsey sent out an alert last week urging people to write emails to the MTC, fearing the commission would adopt a lower target of 10 percent, which its planning committee recommended at a meeting earlier this month.

"It's a realistic target given MTC's modeling and the kinds of investments and policies we already know really move the needle in terms of how much people drive their cars," said Lindsey.

Under the groundbreaking anti-sprawl bill, SB 375, most of the state's 18 MPOs are required to set a target for reducing greenhouse gas emissions for passenger vehicles and light trucks by 2020 and 2035. The California Air Resources Board (CARB) recently adopted a set of draft targets (PDF) for the four largest MPOs (the Bay Area, Sacramento, Los Angeles and San Diego), which represent 80 percent of the state's population. Each MPO will then be required to development a Sustainable Communities Strategy (SCS) to show how it will meet its target. CARB is expected to adopt final targets in September.

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With financial reform nearly complete, the Senate Banking Committee
turned its attention today to one of Senator Chris Dodd’s (D-CT) next
priorities, the Livable
Communities Act. Local government came out strong for the
initiative to promote sustainable and integrated regional planning, with
representatives of the nation’s cities, towns, counties, and regional
planning organizations testifying in favor. Among committee members,
concerns persisted about whether
the bill would disadvantage rural areas. 

The Livable Communities Act would
provide
about $4 billion in competitive grants to coordinate housing,
transportation, and economic development policy with an eye toward
promoting sustainable development. About $400 million would be slated
for planning with the remainder funding implementation. The bill would
also create a new office within the Department of Housing and Urban
Development to guide and administer the programs. If passed, it would
strengthen the Obama administration’s multi-agency Sustainable
Communities effort. 

At today’s committee hearing representatives of the National League
of Cities, the National Association of Counties, the National
Association of Development Organizations, and the National Association
of Regional Councils each strongly endorsed the goals of the bill. 

Witnesses drew on professional experience — from trying to
revitalize barren neighborhoods in Indianapolis to managing the growth
of a rural Maryland county — to explain how federal policy could spur
better development where they live. The Hartford region, for example, is
investing in a new bus rapid transit line, said Lyle Wray, the
executive director for the region’s Council of Governments, but they
haven’t been able to tie the transit project to broader goals. "Linking
that opportunity to affordable housing, jobs, and sustainability is what
the Livable Communities Act would allow us to do," he said.

Describing the bill today, Dodd stressed that integrated
transportation and land use planning can help address a host of
challenges: high foreclosure rates, climate change and oil dependency,
deteriorating infrastructure, traffic congestion, and the loss of
farmland. Those problems, Dodd argued, aren’t urban or rural. "One
community can use the grants to develop brownfields in a post-industrial
area," he said, and "another might create a livable town center or main
street." 

Even so, Senator Jon Tester (D-MT), expressed doubt about whether
his rural state would benefit under Dodd’s legislation.

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