Consumption Junction

After another successful holiday season, where we've collected and given piles of loot to one another, it seems as good a time as any to reflect on this acquisitive culture in which we find ourselves. The spark that brought me to this topic was a wholesome story my fiance and I picked up on a Toronto talk show a few days before Christmas as we drove along the New York Thruway. As they explained to the enthralled host, a couple who had lived many years in the bustle of Toronto decided to pick up their belongings, leave their families and head for the "great north" in Yellowknife, Northwest Territories. Despite the remote nature of the settlement, the husband and wife team expressed no regrets for their decision. She took a job to study the thawing permafrost in the area, and he seemed to have a lot of extra time on hand to pursue his hobbies. She touted her five-minute commute, by foot, to the office -- ten if she stopped to window shop. He lamented the brief visit back to the "big city," and yearned for a speedy return back to his new utopia.

The quaint Canadian couple, along with our cross-country travels a few weeks before, got me thinking about America's urban-oriented mentality, and how most of us (since most of us live in cities and suburbs) will never know what it's truly like to live the "rural way of life." Sure, new developments on the urban fringe attempt to recreate this existence by incorporating the natural environment, be it prairie or forest land, into the residential and commercial structures that rise from the soil. Names of new places evoke what had to be removed to permit us to move in. But living in Yellowknife is still very different from buying into a new townhouse development in central New Jersey.

This divergence in lifestyle choice is clear, but it is not the end of the story. As mentioned last time, no matter how sleepy or "empty" their environs, Americans have learned to make productive use of property, even if it does not have skyscrapers rising above the surface, and subways running below it. If people are present, electric lines must be strung, roads must be built, and septic tanks must be dug. Residents must have a source of water, and they inevitably produce a stream of refuse that must find a home separate from the settlement. Even pastoral farms must have irrigation systems and gas-powered machinery to plant and harvest their products. There may be less people populating rural expanses, but there are people there nonetheless. The consumption of materials, resulting in waste products, is, at its most mundane level, the human condition.

So when that couple from Yellowknife recounts life in that "slower" part of the world, it's hard to overlook the fact that they enjoy many of the same "necessities" of modern human life, down to their satellite cable keeping them connected to what's happening to the South. Land use is land use, be it in midtown Manhattan or the Northwest Territories. There may be less people in their humble settlement, but the consumption mentality remains, down to the Yellowknife couple's window shopping on the way to work. And in this season where we try to find common bonds that unite us all, land use, oddly enough, is one of those connections. The universality of the land use process, which is how we decide to organize our settlements, makes it a common question for all of us stationed on this planet, wherever that might be. This is perhaps not the most heart-warming sentiment for the season, but, take a drive down the street you live on and see the garbage bag upon garbage bag of wrapping paper after Christmas. Viewing such a spectacle shows that it is the day-to-day realities of our existence that ties us tightly together, and brings us together to live in towns and cities strewn across the continent.

The Open Road

After thirteen days, twelve roadside motels, a speeding ticket or two, countless meals ranging from mediocre to just plain scary, and an experience that can never be forgotten, my fiance and I have completed our over 4,000-mile journey across this great nation. From Los Angeles to New York, with a detour up the Pacific coast to Seattle, we saw that what it means to be an "American" can mean almost an infinite number of permutations. In San Francisco, Portland and Seattle we saw vibrant city centers occupied by earnest city dwellers. Aided by geography and land use planning, these towns have preserved their core settlements, despite the pull of sprawl impacting all three. Even Portland, a model of land use efficiency, has Nike's world headquarters stationed on its outskirts in suburban Beaverton. Ellensburg, Washington is a sleepy town along Interstate 90 that survives thanks to the influx of spending power of Central Washington University and its students. We passed a night in Gillette, Wyoming, which the denizens happily tout as the coal capital of the nation. Mount Rushmore, and the tourist-dependent Keystone, South Dakota, at its entrance, mine the Black Hills for modern-day sources of income from the land. We drove along the edge of the behemoth that is Chicago, and observed the aggressive push of the metropolis into the Illinois prairie.

The examples were endless across this nation, of people adapting the land where they have settled to a hospitable and profitable place to live. What I came to realize was that no matter what the land offered, its inhabitants have found a way to make "productive" use of it. Even out in the expanses of South Dakota and Minnesota that we drove across, the plots have been subdivided into separate tracts whose owners cultivate the soil for agricultural purposes. In the grasslands of Wyoming, the federal government has leased these lands for grazing by cattle, sheep, llamas and any other domesticated animal seen fit. In Oregon, we wandered off the Pacific Coast Highway to seek out a fish hatchery, and saw fishermen parked along the side of the road, standing in the stream that ran along side. Even in the Crow Nation's reservation in Montana, cell towers rise along the roadway where on either side it appears there is "nothing."

This of course is not meant to imply that every square inch of the continent is occupied, but it is to say that land use takes many forms. Most of the press and attention does go towards what's happening on the urban fringe, and to big developments meant to revitalize city centers. But in all that "in between" space between the two coasts is an enormous amount of activity that cannot be ignored. Putting aside the metropolises that aren't located on an ocean, the world that is rural America offers a fascinating glimpse into why people choose to live in places that aren't hot real estate markets. Each place provides an attractive reason, whatever it may be. Otherwise, the settlement would have completely crumbled, just as it has in western "ghost towns" that some attempt to revive as tourist attractions.

If anything, our excursion across the nation reminded me of the richness of this country and its people, and the need to keep that in mind whenever seeking to explain the collective decisions by this country. From a land use perspective, it opens up for me a new interest in rural land use, and how it interacts with metropolitan pressures. Coming from "the city," it reminds me that in my future work, rural concerns are just as critical as those that impact the existing built environment, because the rural world is as much a part of the economy and the debate as the urban realm. If only the press would realize that as well. Apparently all it takes is a two-week sojourn across the continent.

Fees, Glorious Fees

One of the less heroic chores during my days as a land use attorney was making sure that before we submitted a land use application with a municipality, the application fees and escrow amounts to serve as retainers for board professional reviews were computed properly. Some were straightforward affairs, requiring flat fees for projects. However, other localities’ formulas required the combined mathematical powers of our office to arrive at the correct figures. Sometimes it would take careful conversations with the town to ensure accuracy, and perhaps haggle for a better price. Constructing overly complex computations based on a variety of factors – square footage of construction, lot areas, etc. – town officials would take great glee at spotting our “errors” to extract additional funds from the applicant. Those situations would lead to the query often lamented by lawyers: “Is this why I went to law school?”

Clear for a time from those moments of frustration, I recently read an article from the Los Angeles Times about the cry from builders over an increase in “impact fees,” or payments required by municipalities and other governmental units to finance new services and infrastructure required by new development. As one builder from the piece notes, “[t]he added costs have made many new homes unaffordable.” At best, this statement is pure hyperbole. Although different from land use application fees and escrows, impact fees derive from the land use process, and often are tied to approvals as conditions that must be met to permit the drawing of building permits. If builders could not sell their products, they would simply stop producing them.

The push and pull over impact fees boils down the issue of who should pay for the needs created by new development within a community. Municipalities argue that existing residents and businesses already pay taxes. To require additional payments from these constituencies would not only threaten local politicians at the ballot box, it would be inherently unfair, imposing a double taxation on the community. On the other end of the debate, new residents (and the builders who pass along the costs to them) argue that they are being discriminated against, and that the old residents benefit from new roads, more firemen and increased funding for schools just as much as the new inhabitants.

In the end, as is the case with any change, all parties have to pay. New residents pay, as part of their purchase price into the community, for the infrastructure and services the town will provide. The town pays by having to grow its bureaucracy to accommodate the needs of the newcomers. The existing residents pay by losing some of the qualities that attracted them to their homes or places of business in the first place. To require monetary payment from the consumers of new development may be the most affordable cost amongst the respective groups “impacted” by the new construction.

But all of the affected parties also receive a benefit for the changes that come from new development. Obviously, the new residents have paid to enter because they receive the benefits that the town has to offer. The town itself will increase its tax base, and no doubt the prestige of being the home for new businesses and homes. Finally, the existing residents will be enriched by the influx of new personalities and ideas into the community. There is a reason for the fees. In the end, they are more often than not well worth every penny.

Next time, I'll delve into the journey my fiance and I just completed -- a two-week odyssey on the road from Los Angeles to New York -- and the facinating ways in which we use and occupy the North American continent.

Drosscape

I just finished a fabulous book called Drosscape: Wasting Land in Urban America, by Alan Berger. Published by the Princeton Architectural Press, the book just came out earlier this year. Berger, an associate professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Design, states the case for redevelopment, particularly in the context of “dross,” or wasted land within the built environment of metropolitan areas. Berger calls for the adaptive reuse of properties that have fallen into disuse on account of deindustrialization, post-Ford economic shifts and technological innovation. Sites contaminated by industrial processes, dying shopping malls, old landfills, decommissioned military installations, areas bordering infrastructural improvements, redundant sports stadiums, and transition areas for residential communities are just a few of the targeted parcels.

Berger makes the astonishing argument, which makes the pro- versus anti-sprawl debate irrelevant, that “there is no growth without waste and that urban growth and dross go hand in hand.” Comparing the growth process of metropolitan areas to any other living organism, Berger asserts that just as a living thing grows, cities produce waste in their pursuit to expand. “Dross” is an unavoidable byproduct of metropolitan growth. Nonetheless, Berger notes with great enthusiasm that these underutilized areas are great opportunities for designers, not to mention developers and other land use professionals, to return these parcels to productivity within the modern economy.

The greatest virtue of Berger’s work, however, is the phenomenal collection of aerial photographs that he has compiled while hanging out of an airplane high above his targets. Over half of the work is comprised of Berger’s capturing of the sites he discusses in the text. Berger chronicles the shifting dynamics in cities today by concretely showing how Americans use the land they occupy. New residential units, malls and warehouse facilities sprout on the far edges of existing communities. Central cities attempt to cope with this movement by redefining its place in the metropolitan area’s overall future. Berger supports these photographic examples with statistics displayed in easy-to-decipher graphs.

Essentially, Berger advocates using redevelopment to return the “dross” to the mainstream of the built environment. He notes the Kelo decision as an occurrence “for better and worse” but he misses the finer points of the Supreme Court’s decision. Nonetheless, Berger firmly stands behind its overarching vote for municipal power to carry out his “drosscape” agenda. Despite its glossing over of the existing land use process, a nagging problem with redundancies in the text and its calls for change without specifics commonly found in academic tracts, Drosscape offers a wonderful overview of the state of affairs in modern American land use. The vivid pictures alone are worth the price. It also demonstrates once again the power that land use holds over American psyches – even those deep and meaningful psyches that walk the greens of Cambridge, Massachusetts.