This is a bit LA specific but you can probably generalize the conclusions to other areas.
While there are certainly cases where simple solutions work with complex problems, you should always beware when the appeal rests disproportionately on that simplicity, particularly when combined with ideology and vested interests.
Recently in Los Angeles, we've seen a powerful alliance between utopian urbanists, free market advocates, and real estate developers. The rhetoric has been lofty, framing their initiatives as a battle against climate change, congestion, and urban decay. A look at the details, however, raises serious questions and perhaps reveals the fundamental flaw of the alliance, that utopianists who depend on market forces and business self-interests are perhaps bound to be disappointed.
Before we get into cases, let's review a few general principles. Building housing so that residents have access to good public transportation is generally a great idea, but it is important to define what constitutes "good" here. Since the objective is to reduce or even eliminate the need for cars, the public transportation options need to be reasonably competitive in terms of range of destinations, speed, convenience, and pleasantness, roughly in that order.
The first is particularly important in terms of jobs and commuting. The main problem with the naïve live-where-you-work model is that people often live in multi-income households and frequently change jobs. This also brings up an aspect of public transportation that is frequently forgotten by people who write about buses and trains but don't actually use them. While as-the-crow-flies distance is usually a pretty good indicator of travel time if you have a car or a bike, it can be almost meaningless when you are relying on other forms of transportation. In a place like Los Angeles, it is easy to find examples where one 10 mile trip will take 20 minutes while another will take two hours.
A good (albeit arbitrary) metric for evaluating public transportation as a commuting option would be to count the number of destinations that can be reached by bus, train, and bicycle within a half hour (maybe 45 minutes). Based on that metric and other factors such as available land and demand for middle and lower income housing, there are a number of spots in LA that would be ideal for development.
Chinatown would be perfect. In addition to having its own train station, it's within walking distance of Union Station, the major transportation hub for the county. Between the different bus and rail lines, you have a reasonable commute to much of greater LA. Another excellent candidate would be the section of the Green Line that connects the silver line in the blue line in South LA.
On the other end of the spectrum, if you were to look at the map of the LA train system and try to find the worst possible place for building housing around stations, you would very probably end up picking the Expo line to Santa Monica. While overall a good addition to the system and certainly better than nothing, the Expo line is a slow and exceptionally badly connected train. The commuter relying on it would have either a very small list of destinations or would face daunting travel times.
You can probably guess where this is going. The one place where everyone's talking about this new urban vision is the one place it's least likely to work, Santa Monica. There are vacant lots used for parking within walking distance of Union Station and a desperate need for good affordable housing in places like Watts. Train station housing developments in those areas make far, far more sense from a public transportation standard and from an economic development standard, but given the choice between a trendy, upscale beach neighborhood and Compton, where do you think the real estate the money is going to flow?
(Yes, I do realize that there's a trickle-down argument, but LA's a big place and the idea that lowering prices in fashionable beach communities will have a noticeable effect on the market in East LA seems unlikely.)
At the risk of pounding home the obvious,bad housing regulations and zoning laws have done a lot of damage and NIMBYs bear a great deal of the blame. Under the right circumstances, intelligent deregulation and selective application of market forces could help alleviate some serious problems, but blind faith in those forces and in the enlightened self-interest of developers is foolish and dangerous.
"The main problem with the naïve live-where-you-work model is that people often live in multi-income households and frequently change jobs. This also brings up an aspect of public transportation that is frequently forgotten by people who write about buses and trains but don't actually use them. While as-the-crow-flies distance is usually a pretty good indicator of travel time if you have a car or a bike, it can be almost meaningless when you are relying on other forms of transportation. In a place like Los Angeles, it is easy to find examples where one 10 mile trip will take 20 minutes while another will take two hours."
ReplyDeleteThis is a really, really good point. I can also verify that this is not a Los Angeles specific issue but applies to a large number of cities, including international ones, that I have resided.
It is also the case that some places have no viable public transit (LA may be an exception but even in Washington, DC this was true). Plus, moving is a huge fixed cost -- do we need to further discourage job mobility?
Mark:
ReplyDeleteI'm confused. Why is there a limit to the number of places where dense development can be done? Or, to put it another way, if's a good idea to develop densely in Chinatown, Watts, etc., why can't this be done? Is there a way in which development in Santa Monica is removing the possibility of developing in those other areas? I have not followed this L.A. debate so I have no idea; this is just something about your post that I'm not understanding.
Andrew,
DeleteNo, though there might be some (probably minor) drain on resources, construction in Santa Monica does not preclude construction in Chinatown or on the Green Line. That said, the process by which we assess and prioritize is important. In this case, the resulting ranking is almost the opposite of what it should be. The top priority is arguably the worst choice. This is not a healthy state of affairs.
The housing policies of a handful of postage-stamp-sized cities (where, by sheerest coincidence, there are fortunes to be made in real estate development) constitute a wildly disproportionate chunk of the environmental discussion, while considerably more important issues such as the impact of airline travel, receive almost no attention. In the case of the Expo line, the situation is even worse, with even the direction of the effect in question.
When ineffective solutions to problems are billed as effective, getting support for solutions that actually work inevitably becomes more difficult. Building political resolve, lining up financing, even just getting smart people to think about the problems in productive ways is an uphill battle.
This nicely illustrates how a tiny part of a small part of half the problem became a defining issue of the environmental movement.
Deletehttps://www.vox.com/2016/10/19/13235588/leonardo-dicaprio-climate-urban-density
Mark:
DeleteI still don't understand why there needs to be a "top priority" at all. There are lots of construction contractors in L.A., right? And no central agency making priorities.
I'm not trying to argue with you here. I really just don't understand what you're saying.
This is a partial answer, but one of the points I'm arguing is that, at least under current conditions, low-priority projects come slower and are more likely to be canceled. Public support and political capital makes it easier to fast-track approval, acquire the land, and raise money, all of which improves expected ROI for the developers.
DeleteIf development along hubs and in places like South Central were (accurately) seen as the best option for housing, congestion and the environment then more of these projects would tip into the profitable/low risk category.
San Diego has this problem bad. There is a train up and down the coast, buses concentrated downtown, and a trolley to the Chargers stadium (which is now empty, of course). It's great for tourists, but going from my house in the east to my job in the north would mean taking long routes through downtown.
ReplyDelete