Build More (Densly)

A string of interesting newspaper articles today.  First this from the Morning Call reporting that Whitehall was not able to build a new loft-style apartment complex because of restrictive parking zoning regulations.  Once again, the thing that stops development, the thing that limits an increase in density is some primal obsession with accommodating the automobile.  This has got to end.  Municipalities need to change their mind set to understand that in the 21st century, population groups are going to demand workable cities which means density.  Cars (and policies meant to accomodate cars) are going to have to play second fiddle or not at all.

Then, a second article from the Call reporting that the Valley real estate market is heating up again.  Good!  But instead of doing more farmland conversions, lets think about redeveloping our core cities and changing zoning ordinances to permit greater urban density.  This is the message both from the Lehigh Valley Planning Commission.  The NIZ is doing amazing things for commerical real estate in downtown Allentown, but, the itself does not provide an incentive for residential development.  For the downtown to be a true success, residential developers are going to have to start moving middle class folks downtown to both live and work.

Think that is a pipe dream, not so fast.  The New York Times just had a front page article today indicating that for most people, the economics are now such that it is cheaper to rent than to buy.  The Valley's core cities should double down on this good news and encourage the development of mid-rise and high-rise apartments.

Transportation Tuesday: the Rosegarden and LVCI Doubling Down on Stupidity

A quick note about the concept of Transportation Tuesday.  I think that by any measure, any sane person would admit that the non-car transportation infrastructure in the Lehigh Valley is absolutely attrocious.  Not only that, but virtually nothing has been done to improve that fact.  This while cities all over the U.S. are preparing for a time when the car will no longer be king.  For reasons of consonance, I am picking Tuesday to browbeat public officials about the fact that they ought to be making better transportation choices.

Enough said about the philosophy, lets talk politics.  This week's Transportation Tuesday post considers the news out of West Bethlehem that the city is about to bulldoze under part of the rose garden to make room for a temporary parking lot for a middle school.  Are you fucking kidding me?!  Martin Towers and its massive parking lots are less than a mile from the site that this about to happen.  Why not make the teachers park at Martin Tower and walk in.  Hell, the kids walk further than that to get to school.  Here is my whole article about the situation.  Like it or not bulldozing under the rose garden for a temporary parking lot is the type of trade off you have to make when you run a town where you value the car more importantly than any other mode of transportation.  There can be no clearer and more causal link of cars destroying public space and undermining urban aesthetics than BULLDOZING A ROSE GARDEN to make way for a PARKING LOT.  Dumb.  And this from a city that calls it self the most walkable in the Valley.  Jokes.

Bike Infrastructure in Europe.

And then there is this from the ever assinine LVCI:  Urbanologists without Cars.  In a bit of crack reporting, LVCI runs down all the ways in which it is inconvenient to live in the Valley without a car.  No shit? tell us more!  From this he concludes that we should double down on car infrastructure.  Whoaaa there Spartacus.  Us "urbanologists" want to change the development patterns so that a car is not required.  We want to live in a downtown where there are parks, and vets, and doctors, and all that stuff you mention in walking distance.  That is our promised land.  We don't have that now because people like LVCI thought it would be good to structure the world in such a way that you NEEDED a car to get to essential services.  Good (maybe) if you are wealthy an live in the 'burbs.  Bad if you are poor and in a city and need access to stuff like, I don't know, food.  My grandparents, (probably like LVCI's) lived in Allentown and they got along fine without a car.  This isn't some mythical utopia we are vying for, just a workable city that existed pretty well in Allentown for a long time.

What Social Equality Looks Like to Millenials

A few days ago, someone in the comment section accused this blog (and Job Geeting) of asking big government for a hand out.  That's absurd.  As I replied, this blog (and Jon Geeting's which proceeded it), is largely premised on the fact that government ought to deregulate the housing market by stopping absurd subsidies to wasteful suburbs.  That is exactly what has happened in Allentown.  As I pointed out yesterday, Allentown has created a real estate free market where tax money flows back to developer to be used to finance the construction of new real estate.  That and minimal zoning restrictions has allowed Allentown to amass nearly a BILLION dollars of real estate investment.  Like I said, Allentown should be the wet dream of free market republicans and the libertarians.

What does this have to do with social equality?  Well, a strong case can be made that starting in the 1950s, the federal government and states undertook a conscious effort to segregate minorities in cities from the Lilly white suburbs.  If you read the transcripts of the senate debate about the mortgage interest tax deduction, Southern Democrats actually note that a benefit of the program will be to help middle class white folks escape "animals" in the cities.  Yikes, (bad quote isn't it Bernie? lol).  The fact is that the suburbs received TRILLIONS of dollars of tax subsidy over the years in a process that was meant to segregate a white middle class suburban majority from minorities who were to be left in cities.  Don't believe me, try to remember how the media depicted cities in the 1980s, you know when Philadelphia fire bombed a residential block or the film "Escape from New York."

Oh look, a black guy with a gun and a chain.

Now, I will concede that there were social programs around the edges to try to help populations left in cities.  But, here is the thing, I think most millennials are willing to concede that in many cases, government programs are ineffective.  Social programs are often a band aid over a much, much larger cultural problem.  What was that problem in America---it was racism that led to an incredibly unfair housing policy that sent middle class folks to the suburbs with their money and their cultural institutions.  The cities were left to rot with strongly derided "social programs" providing a modicum of relief.  When these social programs failed, the middle class sneered even harder form their suburban fiefdoms.

How to fix the problem?  Ronnie Reagan maybe got something right, maybe, sometimes government is the problem.  That is why Allentown's free market, zoning-light NIZ district is such a big deal.  For the first time, in a long time, it is encouraging people to come back to the city.  It is only when the middle class returns to Allentown, with their tax money and philosophy of stable civic organizations, that things are going to turn around for everyone in Allentown.

This is not to say that millennials are some sort of uber-generation bent entirely on social equality.  They want cities because cities are cool and interesting places to live.  But, here is the thing, they don't demand a lilly white playground like the suburban white flightiers before them.  And because of that single important fact everyone's ship in a city will rise.  By ignoring race and class, rather than dwelling on it, the millenials will do more for everyone than the previous generations could even dream.