An Embarrassment of Riches

In a nation where everything has to be bigger and better, especially around this time of year, it's novel to see the things going on around the nation to attempt to curtail our voracious appetites, especially when it comes to devouring the land. One recent story that struck my fancy came out of Los Angeles, where the land of sprawl is coming to terms with its increasing density. The city's Planning Commission is contemplating a measure to curtail the McMansion effect that has plagued many of the metropolis' communities over the last few decades. In some camps, the measure falls short of what they are looking for to end the age of monstrosities on tiny single-family lots, what one City Councilman calls "Mansionization." First, the measure will only effect homes falling within a single type of zoning district, and would still permit homes to be half the square footage of the size of their respective lot. In addition, architectural requirements have not been added to the proposal, which effectively would allow the same "box" construction that many hope the revision to the zoning ordinance would end. Nonetheless, in a city where the average new home measures out at 3,250 square feet, it's a start.

How about in New York City, where the crush of cars that clog the 1950's style highway system has brought on the congestion pricing scheme that continues to work its way through the lengthy approval process. For the unindoctrinated, the plan would charge for all cars seeking to enter the island of Manhattan below 86th Street during peak times. In particular, tolls would be charged at the inbound Brooklyn, Manhattan, Williamsburg and Queensborough (59th Street) Bridges. Tolls were originally charged on these bridges (the ones that were around) up to 1911. The issue has been considered in various forms since the '60s, but has never been implemented. This week, the state commission charged with the hot potato continues to evaluate the proposal. It must issue its recommendation to the New York State Legislature and New York City Council for their approval.

In the same arena, which likewise impacts the congestion around New York, the U.S. Transportation Department plans on imposing limits on the number of flights coming in and out of John F. Kennedy Airport to alleviate the clogged skies above the Big Apple. An auction process may be instituted to distribute the coveted slots. The airlines see the measure as nothing less than a Kelo-like taking of property. As one spokesman noted, "We would oppose any auction process that seizes the existing assets of the airlines that have invested hundreds of millions, if not billions, over the years. . . ." Either way, the plan suggests that we need to safeguard our precious space -- even if it's 30,000 feet above our heads.

Finally, a spirit of sharing has emerged from the latest landmark agreement to redistribute the resources of the Colorado River amongst the states of the Western U.S. With dropping reservoirs met by increasing growth in the states of California, Nevada, Arizona, Colorado, Utah, New Mexico and Wyoming, the new plan fosters conservation and encourages scaling back the growth. As is unavoidable with any agreement, there will be grumbling. Environmental groups say it doesn't go far enough. The plan calls for decreasing water deliveries in times of drought. But nothing stops thirsty locales from sucking the river dry to those levels. Nonetheless, the realization has begun that maybe the era of America' embarrassment of riches may soon be over.

Lifelines

Last week, the New York area was hit with a mid-summer storm that brought a deluge of rain, not to mention the first tornado to Brooklyn in over a century. In the aftermath of the event, where New Yorkers were making new friends while waiting for the next subway train, or cursing to themselves while they sat in traffic on the region's parkways (which is where I found myself), a significant backlash hit against those who are in control of these lifelines of commerce and connections. The millions of people who crowd in and around the island of Manhattan rely on these modes of transportation to conduct their daily business, and their daily lives. When everything shut down for a time on account of a bit of rain (it was actually around 1.7 inches between 6 a.m. and 7 a.m. that fateful day), people turned to the holders of the puppet strings of New York's transportation system for answers.

Generally, the response was one of being unprepared for the onslaught, as the severity of the storm was not expected by the transportation hierarchy. The finger pointing merry-go-round went from the Metropolitan Transportation Authority to the National Weather Service to global warming. But in the end, after the water has drained away, the realization becomes how fragile the whole system really is. Together all of us head out into the world each day, seemingly, and in reality, in a multiplicity of different directions. Every commuter for yourself, so back off! But what we often forget is that we're all in it together, and need to work with one another to keep things running smoothly. And although the system appeared to crumble on the morning of August 8, 2007, in reality, it demonstrated how resilient New York continues to prove itself time and again. Within hours, most of the transportation network had been restored, and people resumed their daily tasks -- almost as if nothing had happened.

The fragility of our lifelines is a theme that has traveled across the nation recently. The deadly bridge collapse in Minneapolis was a national story. In New York, we followed it with the same attention as anywhere across the nation. The fallout from this tragedy was a renewed effort to inspect the bridges across America. The result was a staggering number of spans that require some significant attention. Where the money will come from is another story altogether. The theme of precarious lifelines spans the centuries as well. Archeologists studying the ancient city of Angkor in Cambodia, believed to have been as sprawling as Los Angeles, have learned that the crumbling of the Southeast Asian metropolis in the 1500s may have been caused by the collapse of its highly sophisticated water management system. The sheer scale of the endeavor was its ultimate downfall. The caretakers could no longer maintain the system. The connections between our own transportation issues are instructive.

No matter how great our monuments become, we must keep in mind that without the lifelines that serve them, there is no way to sustain, or support them. The Angkor Wat temple stands as a testament of Angkor's fate. As American metropolitan areas have fanned out to the far reaches of the hinterlands, it is imperative that transportation remains at the forefront of any planning for the future. It may not be the most intriguing aspect of a new project, but it may very well be the most important.

Times Remembered, Times Lost

As a youth, I spent much of my time in Kings Park, New York, a sleepy suburban burg tucked along the northern shore of Long Island, about fifty miles east of Manhattan. All of my family members have since relocated to other places, but for some reason the hometown retains a special place in my heart. Aside from the good school system (which produced such luminaries as Houston Astros great Craig Biggio and members of the metal group Dream Theater) and a relatively good location for commuters to New York City, the other claim to fame for my hometown is the enormous state mental health facility that occupied about 450 acres of prime real estate, including along the water. In its heyday in the mid-1950’s, the facility held over 9,000 patients, and required a small army of workers to man it. When it closed in 1996, the great news, and anticipation, would be what the State decided to do with the property. For several years the belief was that the tract would be sold to developers, and a massive residential and commercial building spree would commence.

In a classic example of NIMBY concerns at work, the hamlet mobilized, behind organized citizens groups. Local politicians joined the crusade to stop the construction. After it was discovered that Kings Park lacked a local sewer system (something that any resident could have told anyone who cared to ask), and that the site had some serious environmental remediation issues, the desirability of the site waned. Still there was potential that the development would occur. Then, just after Christmas, the State announced that it would transfer the overwhelming majority of the property to the State Parks Department, and that the dedicated swath would join its neighbor, the Nissequogue River State Park. As told to the New York Times in a small blip of story in its Sunday Real Estate section, the players in the process were shocked, and had little idea that this would be the result of ten years of anticipation.

This is where the New York Times lost its interest in the story. The writer no doubt had to hop back on the Long Island Railroad and make it back in time for her deadline. But the surprising nature of the pronouncement begs a number of questions intertwined with the land use process itself. Mainly, the State’s foot-dragging in making a determination should have tipped the Neighbors and Town officials that the State was having difficulties trying to convince a developer to purchase the property. If these folks were really involved in the process, wouldn’t they have known?

Beyond this query, the real lesson from Kings Park is that in the pursuit to regulate what can and cannot be done, and what does and does not get built, it is ultimately the property owner who is in control, and everyone else interested in what happens must wait to see what the owner decides to do. It is an actor/reactor symbiosis, and until the owner makes some type of affirmative action, everyone else needs to wait. This simple order of things causes much of the frustration for those participating in the land use process. The waiting can be endless, or in the Kings Park case, ten years, which is pretty long, too. Functioning within the land use arena requires a substantial helping of patience. Sometimes it takes people time to make up their mind, particularly when they’re public servants, and particularly when the decision involves the future of an entire town, no matter how much ink devoted to it by the New York Times.