Planning Edges

Do Stormwater Rules Stop Affordable Housing?

2013-03-14T17:50:11Z

Last week marked the 10^th anniversary of stormwater rules that have become a mild obsession in the development and redevelopment worlds. That obsession really grew as California and the entire east coast came to grips with how we are treating our coastlines like toilets.

In the past weeks, I received two reports that begin to put the stormwater/redevelopment relationship into better view. The first is from Rebecca Winer-Skonovd, a new UC Davis graduate who wrote her thesis on whether or not increasingly complex stormwater quality regulations impact affordable housing. The second is a new report from NRDC called Creating Clean Water Cash Flows. Both are summarized below.

Background

Since 2003, most medium and big cities have been required to implement stormwater management rules and regulations for new development and redevelopment. In the past, builders could dump stormwater into the curb and gutter, but no more. Now regulations direct Best Management Practices (BMPs) for managing the quantity and (in some cases quality) of stormwater runoff that leaves their building site.

However, as implementation ensued, some of us looked on in horror as the new rules allowed sprawl development to claim green cred even as infill developers raised alarm bells. At the Congress for the New Urbanism, we formed a group, Rainwater-in-Context, to draw attention to unintended consequences and work towards better rules (our letter on better runoff management for cities is here.)

While we feel we’ve made progress, there are still some high profile needs:

The Clean Water Act’s Bias for individual site practice- By controlling for imperviousness on a site-by-site basis, the preventative aspects of new urbanism and smart growth – like redevelopment and compact, walkable districts are not recognized - and are often punished. It should also be noted that the preventative aspects written into the Clean Water Act, namely anti-degradation, are weak compared to the stormwater rules. This results in legal action that bears down on urban areas while doing little to address massive land conversion upstream.
Current regulations hinder shared practices - Compact development relies on efficient land use, which relies on sharing facilities among sites, including stormwater. The 2003 rules included a provision for “alternative” compliance, though this came with strings and process attached. Local regulations and zoning codes further add hurdles for shared practices. Worst of all, there has been push back in the environmental community for whatever reasons.

For urbanists, both of these needs are important. We don’t work with individual sites (that is how sprawl works). We work with interconnected aspects of places and flows.

Affordable Housing

Rebecca's thesis is clever: she looked at projects built before the requirements and compared the costs of old stormwater versus hypothetical combinations of BMPs needed to meet the new, stricter rules.

The main takeaways are:

The biggest hurdle is financing, followed by site constraints and neighborhood opposition that bedevil any developer undertaking urban infill.
Some projects could have spent LESS money with a better selection of practices.
Several affordable housing projects exceeded regulatory requirements, in part to get financing points. Housing authorities that also manage the built project also have an incentive to consider long term savings from reduced stormwater fees (i.e. initial costs are offset by maintenance savings).
Thoughtful selection of BMPs helps reduce costs (both installation and long term maintenance).
Recommendations: (1) New financing mechanisms for affordable housing, (2) Credits for higher density development, and (3) Plan at the sub-watershed scale in order to identify the best candidates for off-site mitigation and shared runoff management.

Understanding the rules - Board Game style. Source: City of LA

NatLab

The Natural Resources Defense Counsel (NRDC) the Nature Conservancy, and EKO Asset Management Partners have joined forces to create the NatLab, or Natural Infrastructure Finance Laboratory. Their new report, funded by the Rockefeller Foundation, is Creating Clean Water Cash Flows, which covers financial tools for green infrastructure, including the use of vacant properties. The Full Report and 10-page Issue Brief are here.

There are a lot of gems in this report; here are some highlights:

Stormwater fees on existing properties are powerful; however, fee reductions have to be less than costs incurred by property owners.
Public policy can play a role in supporting project aggregation, offsite mitigation and credit trading programs, and subsidies for a portion of the cost.
Downspout disconnection onto landscaped areas is the cheapest bang-for-buck measure, though is more applicable on residential sites than commercials ones. Thus, a tradable credit that allows commercial owners to pay for a homeowner’s downspout disconnection is key.
The use of third party institutions and public-private partnerships will be needed to cost-effectively manage a system with trades, credits and shared BMPs.

The bottom line is (1) most of this seems to be driven where a stormwater fee (and credits against that fee) exist and (2) after a bumpy start, shared BMPs are enjoying recognition as a premier practice for managing runoff, but require a new kind of management structure.

There is still a lot of work to do. It is still not totally clear if rules are stopping developers because we are only hearing from those who made it work. We have no way to track developers who can't make the math work and abandon a project before they get to any permit desk. More importantly, great urban stormwater systems will only come out of great planning. That is the only way to forecast, design and apportion responsibility among multiple property owners and various municipal Departments. This seems to be a message in both of these great pieces. By the way, EPA intends to issue new draft rules in June, which may include more measures targeted to the eneds of urban patterns.

Rethinking Smart Growth - the Adoption of Innovation

2013-03-07T13:09:36Z

In some ways, looking at smart growth as an innovation seems absurd. After all, we are reclaiming design elements used long ago to remake cities. Truth is, we can never go back. Modern design must deal with new elements like parking demand, new technologies for transit, unknown energy supplies and harder questions emerging on the impacts of demographic change. We are in fact, pushing innovation.

Fifty years ago, Everett Rogers wrote the “The Diffusion of Innovation,” mainly to describe how improved seeds were adopted by famers. The graphic below sums up (using Legomen!) the procession of adoption (or rejection) and the adopter categories. These frameworks have been useful in understanding the adoption of all sorts of technology like seeds, cell phones and solar.

How things hit a tipping point or go viral has been the subject of much fascination. Some of the more important factors include:

The mass media’s most powerful effect on diffusion is that it spreads knowledge of innovations to a large audience rapidly
However, strong interpersonal ties are usually more effective in the formation and change of strongly held attitudes
In the process of going viral, opinion leaders hold a special role. They validate and communicate what innovators are working on. However opinion leaders will differ based on whether the social system is as heterophilous or homophilous. Heterophilous systems tend to seek out change and new ideas, while homophilous like to stick to social norms and tend to communicate with people of similar backgrounds. Thus, there are two types of opinion leaders. For heterophilous systems, innovative and elite adopters can rapidly influence people around them. For homophilous systems, it gets tricky. Spreading innovation will rely on multiple leaders who see an innovation that is compatible with conventional norms.

In 2007, the Solar Electric Power Association (SEPA) designed an online survey to better understand what was motivating solar buyers. Specifically, the Association wanted to see how and why one part of the public sees a good thing and adopts/purchases new tech, while others turn away and/or waits.

The entire report is worth the read. The results showed that solar was breaking out from the innovators and early adopters in the next category: the early majority. In a nutshell, the early adopters were

higher income brackets,
Held a post-graduate degree,
Lived in smaller households,
Are aware of and concerned about the environment and solutions.
More open to experts and vendor opinion

The top three concerns of the Early Adopter solar purchasers prior to installation were the quality of the equipment (17%), the initial cost (14%) and finding a qualified installer (14%).

ON the other hand, the Early Majority had the following qualities:

A more median income, education level , and household size
more wary of new technologies and risk averse
more worried about system maintenance or in search of low maintenance systems
question whether the system will perform as marketed
more open to reviews by peers than vendors and installers
in need of information that is clear, straightforward and free of any hidden costs

Another factor in moving from early adopters to the early majority is a new concept called “crossing the chasm.” This theory, posited by Geoffrey A. Moore argues there is a chasm between the early adopters of the product (the enthusiasts and visionaries) and the early majority (the pragmatists). According to Moore, promoters should focus on one group of customers at a time, using each group as a base for marketing to the next group. The chasm is regarded as descriptive mainly with disruptive – or discontinuous – products.

Source: Geoffrey Moore

So what does this mean for smart growth, new urbanism and related community design activities?

1) It seems like the late 1980s and 1990s were the innovative phase that resulted in the Smart Growth Network and Congress for the New Urbanism. During this time, innovators began to take on the DNA of development patterns and offer new ideas on infrastructure, open space and building design. It feels like we are now in the early adopter phase, with more states, cities and counties replacing old codes with new. Success stories result in new applicants for technical assistance.

2) It also feels like leaders are tackling the “chasm” and the characteristics of new adopter groups. Focus groups, leadership counsels, and communications strategies are now as prominent as policy guides. Certainly Gelnn Beck and foes of Agenda 21 are driving a lot of communications need, not so much because they are a large threat, but because small scattered groups can completely disrupt a planning process.

3) The attributes of solar purchasers seems to be a good mirror for looking across the chasm at the next adopters for sustainable development and smart growth. These folks are cautious, conservative and satisfied with the norms of the suburbs (or at least not open to questioning the system). Instead of experts, they will be more open to large networks of peers and opinion leaders. This is the genius of Angie’s List, which puts recommendations and ratings in the hands of people like them. In fact, Angie's List has featured articles on topics like stormwater management and "granny flats."

Of course innovation adoption in the vein of iPhones and laptops is not completely the same as community development. The main difference is that we are not selling a product to an individual, but rather to a group. There is an added layer that comes into play with compromise and consensus building.

Nonetheless, looking at community design as an innovation reveals that we could do a better job moving to new audiences not just through communications strategies, but with “products” that are practical, visual and peer-recommended.

Unplanned - A Walmart Wake-up Call

2013-02-25T20:47:12Z

Walmart's hand at an in-town store First, Walmart showed how unprepared communities were for handling sprawl. Now, the company is doing the same, but for infill. On February 21, the Sarasota Herald Tribune ran an article on how Walmart is moving to in-town locations for the next wave of growth. This is unfolding in Sarasota, where the retail giant has proposed a 24 hour supercenter on one of the last best parcels where the urban bone structure is intact. The sub-text is really interesting, and serves as a good case study for revealing a crisis in planning.

A global shift in the economy and the nature of work - This may not seem like news, but how this translates to community design is still daunting. Nobody describes the shift better than Michael Freedman of the California-based firm Freedman, Tung and Sasaki. Fair warning: approaching Freedman’s work is a commitment of at least 90 minutes. But he strings the narrative together in a way that not only explains, but also says “and here is what we do next.” This video is great; if you don’t’ have time, there are jump-in points at minutes 23, 45 and 1:06 (or thereabouts).

In Sarasota, the job base has always been a feast/famine affair driven by retirees and the service industry. The County is now rethinking jobs both within its strong sectors (housing, tourism) and outside the box (design and niche manufacturing). All of these require exquisite settings – natural, built and creative. The fact that the County approved only one of two enclosed malls last year and the city is mulling over a Walmart speaks to the utter disconnect on designing for the future of the work they want.

Plans, codes and skill sets are stuck in time –The hyper-growth of the 1980s, 90’s and early 00’s, coupled with the massive recession that began in 2006, have left a trail of unattended needs (I am writing this after consulting with other friends who also worked in medium sized towns):

The Sequence - It is becoming apparent that good planning is like developing a financial portfolio with four questions (planning lingo in parentheses): What do you have (asset mapping)? What do you want (visioning)? How do you get there (comprehensive planning)? How are you doing (implementation and feedback)? Communities tend to jump immediately to the end of the process, which is the biggest gap in planning, in my opinion.
The Scale - There are a lot of comprehensive plans and zoning codes, but not enough of the middle small area plans that link how the big picture and site level details work together. This vacuum is made worse by funding cuts. The anemic role of area planning, in my opinion, is the second biggest gap in planning, particularly for infill and sprawl repair.
Stale Language - There are a lot of codes and plans out there splashed with 1990’s era smart growth language, but not necessarily enough to guide decisions or counteract older language that makes conventional zoning so detrimental.
Skill Sets - A lot of skill sets out there were developed in the go-go years of master planned communities, conservation development and complete street definitions that made roads wider (ever seen new bike lanes in Florida?). Cities are facing square peg/round hole frustration as large lot practices for things like stormwater, parking and loading docks are forced onto in-town locations.
The Punt - Sprawl has delayed hard discussions on where to redevelop. Determining the attributes of areas ripe for successful redevelopment and then communicating those results requires amazing skill.

The Crisis in Citizen Planning– This is where Walmart is getting really clever. Zoning codes tend to treat the residential interface with other development projects as a protection zone. Codes describing neighborhood retail centers are replete with words such as “less intense,” compatible, and “aesthetics.” Walmart has found an ally in outdated code language:

Less intense – a sea of parking lot drives down the Floor Area Ratio (or FAR). Walmart can argue they are less intense than a mixed use center. Intensity has been defined so narrowly (a measure of density for retail) that 24 hour operations, auto orientation and lack of connections don’t register.
Compatible – Walmart looks for neighbors who support the store, because once one household declares they can live next to a Walmart – the word compatible is drained of meaning.
Aesthetics – In Sarasota, Walmart is promising to paint the store beige. Aesthetics has morphed into comparative aesthetics (it could be worse) instead of a measure of livability.

In Sarasota, an overarching plan for the neighborhood was rejected after a nasty fight over condos. Foregoing a plan was seen as a protective move, though it only made the neighborhood more vulnerable because intent and aspirations have now been left open to interpretation by Walmart’s lawyers. Citizen planning, like a lot of environmental planning, is stuck in a bygone, just-say-no era. Roger Lewis wrote a timely article on zoning which is a great complement to what is happening in Sarasota.

In summary, the planning crisis is a play in (at least) three parts

Funding for area plans linking multiple landowners, as well as public and private realms.
Sequence and scale of planning and updates
Citizen planning for a future by design.

Walmart tends to be the subject of a lot of exposé. In a twist, Walmart has imposed an exposé on us: communities are unprepared to carry out better infill as part of a community portfolio.

How to Unravel Long Range Planning - A Case Study

2013-02-05T15:31:23Z

On January 30^th, the Sarasota County Board held a hearing to basically loosen up it’s award-winning land use plan called 2050 (Chapter Nine of the Comp Plan). Now seen as an “unworkable” new urbanist plan, the County interviewed developers to get ideas on how to make it “workable.”

The image show the dividing line with redevelopment and infill to the west and farms to the east

The 2050 plan was adopted in 2004 with six different sections on how to handle redevelopment, greenways and greenfield development. Any casual observer, though, would swear there was only one: what to do with development outside the Urban Service Boundary (USB).

On paper, the goal was (and still is) laudable. Currently, land use east of the line (roughly Interstate 75) is centered on agricultural and ranch uses, with allowances for ranchettes on 5-10 acre plots served by well and septic. By now, it’s become clear that this is mostly worst-case density: too small to farm but too big to mow. What matters more, however, are ranchette residents’ urban preferences that bubble up: fast emergency response times, easy access to the city and airport, and a low tolerance for things like the smells and “devil-may-care” porch and yard décor prevalent in the country.

2050 is not that different from how Arlington VA incentivizes preferred growth, though at the opposite end of the urban transect. Landowners and developers are free to develop under their zoning. But, if they want to pursue more lucrative land uses, then there are strings. For 2050, the plan requires New Urbanist plans featuring interconnected, walkable neighborhoods with a variety of housing types, parks and other gathering spots.

Alas, say the developers, this does not work. Since 2050’s passage, only two projects have been built, and Lakewood Ranch(which was the model) is only successful in the arena of drive-to development. Instead, developers would rather build something dependent on golf carts due to the “population age group in Sarasota.” The land plans would also let them classify lakes as mandated open space and rework developer payments (aka “fiscal neutrality”). The County Commission agreed to a 90-day window for broader public input.

Joe Barbetta, the most knowledgable Commissioner on urban design, noted “You can’t airlift an urban community and put it eight or nine miles out east” (as covered in the February 1 edition of the Sarasota News Herald). Bingo – but….

The County blundered when it requested interviews with developersto point out flaws in 2050. Of course you need insight from developers, but the list includes mostly greenfield developers (or more to the point developers with mostly single use greenfield skills). Sarasota County's big problem is that there are so few locals with the skills needed to carry out the type of redevelopment that delivers less traffic, more economic development, and great urban design. Part of that lies in 2050’s biggest flaw: developers shot down the middle stage of planning saying that it was too much unpredictability and process. But it is this scale of planning that delivers.
In 2011, the County Board dismantled the land use planfor the nearby Benderson project and eliminated 437 units of affordable housing "because the market had changed." Fast forward 18 months and now housing costs are escalating even as more retail and service economy jobs are added. One might argue the need for affordable housing never actually went away. This should be a big lesson: sometimes the short term "no" is for a bigger long term "yes."
On December 12, the County actually made big changesto the landscape east of I-75, notably moving an interchange. Given sprawl’s reliance on interchanges and interstates, changing 2050 can’t just be tweaks to select policies.
The whole conversation on fiscal neutrality is painful. Sprawl is rarely fiscally neutral (see this rant on impact fees here).
Those funny kids who follow Glenn Beck’s quest to dismantle United Nations voluntary sustainability initiative called Agenda 21are also all over this (at least in Facebook comments). They want to get rid of 2050’s communistic, United Nations/Al Gore-sponsored central plan to cram people into apartments. But funny thing happened last week: Beck himself launched his new town, Independence, which will feature sustainable energy, local food, support for local business and attractive gathering places. Watch his video here – a must see.

Then there’s the design of Lakewood Ranch, which is also known about town as “Fakewood Ranch.” It is a sprawling landscape that was to have a Main Street as its centerpiece. Instead, the boutique shops, separated from almost everything, struggle while residents drive to the University Parkway/I-75 interchange strip malls for everyday needs. Lakewood Ranch is not failing because new urbanism is a failure; it’s failing because it is not new urbanism. It’s sprawl.

What happens when you hide retail in the center?

The battle has been set: keep 2050 as is, or loosen it. But that’s a false choice. The question is: If not 2050, then what will work to advance the timeless goals of the community: environmental protection, affordable housing, a diversified economy, limits on sprawl for water resources and habitat, and good transportation? Given the new interchange location, the need to develop the County’s assets at the landfill, the region’s fantastic agricultural sector and tight budgets for years to come, this is not a text amendment. It’s a whole new plan for east of I-75. It’s the sector plan that was missing from 2050 all along.

This saga is likely unwinding around the country as desperate localities are willing to forgo long term plans to get something - anything. It's how I got started at the tail end of the last recession in the mid-1990's when Home Depot wanted a store at an Arlington Metro station and neighbors galvanized around good urban planning. Imagine what a short term "yes" would have done.

Examining the Wreckage – The Siren’s Song of Impact Fees

2012-12-31T13:32:38Z

Last week, a former colleague resigned after improperly calculating traffic impact fees. He is a great guy and always wanted to do better transportation in a county stubbornly hard-wired for road expansion.

I have never really liked impact fees, but that unease was confirmed when I asked a local civic activist last year whether she was concerned about the costs of sprawl. Her forehead wrinkled and she replied: “No, they [developers] pay impact fees.”

Impact fees are charged for new construction to pay for off-site capital improvements that are needed by the new development. Fees are painstakingly calculated to meet several legal tests: (1) a reasonable connection between the "need" for additional facilities and new development, (2) the fee payer must "benefit" in some way from the fee, and (3) the fee must be based on a proportionate "fair share" formula. The website www.impactfees.com has more detailed information on the world of impact fees.

While it all sounds logical, the way we have developed SW Florida suburbs is anything but. It does not feel like sprawl is “paying its own way,” but it’s hard to put a finger on why.

Luckily, Nick Rosenberg wrote an amazing law review article in 2003 titled “Development Impact Fees: Is Limited Cost Internalization Actually Smart Growth? The article in the Boston College Environmental Affairs delves into the legal requirements a bit more, and explains how fees are marketed as a tool to cover costs and impacts, when in fact they do not. The 47-page article is worth the read; to me the most thought provoking points are:

1) "Specific and Uniquely Attributable" Test – By and large, impact fees cannot fund investments that will be enjoyed by the general public, but rather be specific and attributable to those paying the fees. For example, a court lifted school impact fees for a 55-and over trailer park because school age children will not live there. However, if fees are limited to the entity paying the fee (and not general public), no wonder we get these unconnected pods of development designed for denizens of impact fee districts. As the smart growth world tries to get better connected development with shared amenities, "urban design by impact fee" is working against us.

2) Particularized Benefits & Secondary Costs – Over time, courts have whittled down the scope of costs that can be covered by fees, as explained by these particularly good sentences:

“By taking a strict approach to the particularized benefit question, some courts have precluded fees that address anything more than the most immediate and direct infrastructure needed to facilitate development. Courts and municipalities have been slow to recognize that more indirect services and costs incurred by the community as a result of sprawl development are necessary and, in fact beneficial, to new development.”

The costs to natural resources and other social and health costs are often ignored, under-valued, or camouflaged. For example, as watersheds are converted, costs such as source water, aquifer recharge, sinkholes, water quality and sediment deposition hardly get noticed in formulae. In the past there has been little incentive to quantify costs, though the outcome of a recent Supreme Court case out of southern California might change that. If the Los Angeles Flood Control District is responsible for pollutants dumped by upstream communities, we will likely see a new era in environmental accounting.

3) Induced Sprawl - By allowing developers to pay a fraction for total impacts, the author argues that development that otherwise would not make sense under more rigorous scrutiny, gets approved.

Peter Katz has been developing a policy initiative (covered in Sustainable Communities Magazine) to put fiscal performance (by way of projected property tax revenue) at the front end of the development approval process by calculating infrastructure "payback" times. While this is a leap in policy for many cities, comparative scenarios of infrastructure payback mean little where officials and civic activists believe impact fees cover costs. Until secondary and long term costs are better quantified, the true costs of inefficient development patterns to taxpayers will go unaddressed. Exurban developers will point to legally-sanctioned impact fee spreadsheets as the basis for approval. And they will prevail.

This blog post is not an argument to eliminate impact fees. At a minimum though, we should rename them for what they are: fees that partially cover impacts.

Planning Rosemary and the Three Big Questions

2012-12-13T12:22:17Z

Once again, hope for the Rosemary District (a small, funky downtown Sarasota district in need of love) rises. Monitoring Facebook and local conversations, there is at once hope, and a loathing fear of the same action-free blah (density), blah (walkability), blah (affordable space for artists).

On December 10, Sarasota held an hour-long neighborhood meeting (covered in the Sarasota Patch here and video-recorded by the city here). Questions from the audience were thoughtful and varied, but focused on height/density, potential uses, and what can only be described as a yearning to figure out a vision for the neighborhood. So how would Rosemary get to a vision?

Vision-led planning tends to boil down to three basic questions:

What do we have?
What do we want?
How do we get there?

Of course there are supporting questions along the way. Communities review strengths and weaknesses as well as threats and opportunities. A bevy of studies on carrying capacity and economics are needed to give a reality check to the wonderful, wild ideas that surface during the process. But the focus is on the three questions:

What do we have? – While often overlooked, this step inventories existing assets, plans, investments and maps. Asset-based community development is a growing field, in large part as a response to the drudgery of conventional, “put out fires” planning. Assets can be people (often assembled though a stakeholder mapping exercise), buildings, events, and even those things often regarded as “problems.” One of the values of asset mapping is that you often have “What do you want” right under your nose. This process also starts off on a position of strength.

What do we want? – This is the visioning part of planning. The key attribute here is the word “we.” Older models of problem solving called on technical experts to analyze problems and prescribe solutions. While still needed, the role of technicians is forward looking. Done well, visioning sets a vision statement (which can be more than one sentence, but not much more) that is the discussion anchor.

How do we get there?- This is the strategic planning for all manner of activities that make a community hum. The mandated comprehensive plan has traditionally been the convening document, but there are a lot of other steps that can happen to “get there.”

The "Asset Map" for the Bellingham Arts District

While there are plenty of communities who have rallied around an arts district, Bellingham Washington’s Art District seems to be a great model. We don’t have to follow their script to a tee, but it seems like their approach would be similar. Their Arts District is part of a larger downtown plan

The conceptual plan was developed in conjunction with the Project for Public Spaces. This document lays out the what do we have/want/how to get there path. The placemaking map looks at the strong points, the concept design looks at investments and the implementation section lays out steps. The main focus is public investment in streetscapes and how to handle surface parking lots.
Instead of jumping straight to density, the starting point is making a really great place. Sarasota always jumps straight to density, which should get figured out towards the end of the planning process, not the beginning. Density is not a vision, but a tool. For example, in the asset mapping phase, the community will likely identify a couple of landmark buildings that are 5 stories tall. If the community wants space for artists as part of the vision, then affordability is essential. The planning phase will determine the economic imperatives, the location, mix, and numbers of units. See, we just talked vision, character and implicitly - density. But density didn't lead - the vision did.
One of the more interesting spaces in the Arts District is Make.Shift. Check it out.

If I were sticking around, I would do everything in my power to get the Project for Public Spaces here. Sarasota has played host to some of the most famous consultants and land use experts in the world. But PPS would focus on the streetscape, parks and public spaces. While at it, invite Jeff Speck who just wrote Walkable City. Tie in the North Trail and - BAM!

Managed Retreat and Economic Development… at the same time

2012-11-30T12:32:38Z

There’s plenty of talk about the need to retreat from the shoreline –Hurricane Sandy made this clear. In fact, Sarasota is already dealing with the “repair versus retreat” question on Siesta Key with Beach Road. Most literature on retreat focuses on structures located on shorelines, and frames the entire conversation around doomed property. But planning for climate change is not a lot-by-lot exercise, nor one to be viewed as all negative. For coastal towns like Sarasota, hope comes in the form of couple of questions:

How can we maintain access as long as possible?
How do we deal with the certainty of damaging storms, but uncertainty of timing?
Can we actually prepare for climate change and boost economic activity at the same time?

For Sarasota, one of the best ways to maintain the economic activity at the beach while limiting exposure is to create “jumping off points” to provide access to the beaches on higher ground. These areas are close to the beach, but on terra that’s a bit more firma.

The photos above shows one of Sarasota’s greatest climate adaptation assets, located on the mainland at the foot of the north bridge to Siesta Key. The main feature is Southgate Mall. While not dead, it is losing its premier anchor next year (Saks) and is losing hope for an Apple store. The area is already mixed-use; rich in roadways, but not connections. It would be easy to classify this as a mall retrofit, but it is not: it’s an area retrofit given the numerous strip centers that radiate along the arterials. Even if there were no such thing as climate change, this would be a smart place to undertake world class redevelopment.

But climate change, sea level rise and storm surge are factors. While a typical mall retrofit might look at housing, retail, and transportation, retaining the economic vitality of the keys requires additional thoughts on how to also add the beach experience to the use mix. The image above illustrates a potential strawman for a jumping off point plan. The primary planning area geared to redevelopment is in red, with a second tier next to neighborhoods. This yellow area would not see new zoning, but instead would get special attention in the planning process to ensure livability. The green shaded areas are most vulnerable to surge and need their own round of retrofits.

This type of planning – servicing the beach away from the beach – will require some thinking on the nature of lodging and access.

What kind of housing and hotel product? – Sarasota already represents about the widest gamut of lodging and housing imaginable: permanent, seasonal (snowbirds), sporadic (snowflakes) and tourist. Housing usually includes single family, townhouse, condo, apartment, assisted living, time shares, trailer parks, and hotels. But old definitions are changing. Sites like airbnb and Homeaway are blurring lines between ownership and hotel. Time shares are actually a key climate change real estate product, because owners still have other property even if storms wipe out buildings. For managed retreat, we need to rethink products in order to meet the three questions asked above. What would the real estate products and mix need to be? What needs to drive design and operations?

Transportation – For managed retreat, transportation is as important as use mix and in fact the development needs to be planned around the transit and transportation system. In fact, we likely need new transportation “products” and mix. First, the circulatory system to the beaches forms a core. As long as we are planning transit to the beach, we may as well link it to downtown. We should also form a better hub for the local bus system (Southgate now qualifies as one of the suckiest transfer hubs in the transit kingdom). Walking will need to link the core to the immediate area, so sidewalks, shortcuts and crossings need special attention before buildings are planned. Finally, car hire completes the picture with traditional rentals, but also car shares like car2go and Zipcar. Tourists could still rent minivans and whatnot, but imagine the vacation savings if you can rent a car on the spot only as long as you need it. Young renters would not need to fork out cash for cars. Snowbirds could leave the car up north. This idea would help limit congestion for cities that need to manage current demand while looking ahead.
New Zoning - I would invent new zoning: R-H-Tr: Residential-Hotel- Transportation. Just as developers need to install stormwater and HVAC, car share would be part of a building’s utilities (one they can share with other buildings in an area plan).

Note: Sarasota is developing a Post-Disaster Redevelopment Plan(or PDRP). Get used to this lingo.

Redevelop or Retreat? Sarasota’s Climate Conundrum

2012-11-05T14:16:02Z

Sarasota (City and County) has long advanced a redevelopment priority, at least in theory. In Hurricane Sandy’s aftermath, it’s worth noting Sarasota also has a more recent history of warnings about development on the coast. Mote Marine Laboratory, Sarasota County and Shafer Consulting have all produced top notch information and graphics on what happens with sea level rise and storm surge. Climate change presents a smart growth conundrum: what happens when the best redevelopment areas are most susceptible to the impacts of climate change?

Sarasota County is preparing a post-disaster redevelopment plan. Of course this planning will be controversial, but whether the outcome is helpful or mush depends on the sober commitment of each and every Sarasotan at the table. That commitment needs to include sensitivity towards those with assets in the way, tax and ratepayers, and responders who face different levels of harm depending on what/who is on the coast when storms strike.

Before we get to the redevelop versus retreat question, it helps to look at several terms.

Resilience – refers to maintaining integrity of systems, even when subject to disturbance. While it implies a level of “bouncing back” after an event, the real value is in preparation and designing for a variety of events ahead of time.

Mitigation –refers to steps taken to lower the risk. In climate science, this entails reducing greenhouse gases at the source, and efforts to sequester carbon. Local mitigation can include canopy and energy efficiency.

Accommodation – refers to making use of the land, but not attempting to prevent inundation and flooding.

Adaptation – refers to adapting to the changes underway, which can include prospective changes and codes to facilitate adaptation.

Managed Retreat – refers to moving investment away from the most vulnerable areas.

Witch’s Brew – OK – this my term, but refers to a collection of other conspiring issues – legal, regulatory financial and insurance. The 2012 Florida APA conference featured a presentation of recent Court cases. Over time, a stack of opinions have formed obligations on maintaining access to beach properties. A massive insurance pull-out and inability to handle sewerage might subtract plots along the beach anyway, but the legal fight to watch might be the first case involving limited budgets and a public safety breaking point. Imagine inland residents sick and dying from contaminated water versus 50 ocean front property owners insisting a submerged road be rebuilt.

What to Do?

Clear and early information – This interactive map from the Sarasota Herald Tribune provides a snapshot of the most vulnerable areas. Texas Sea Grant developed the CHARM model, which uses interactive map layers. Using a vertical Wii gaming device, users can tap multiple layers of information related to risk, inundation, and costs on the fly. The County should consider bringing Dr. John Jacob here to demonstrate the technology (He is a colleague of mine and is quite CHARMing).

Inundation Zones - For the barrier islands and near shore landscapes, Michael Volk’s presentation is the best I have seen: “An Analysis of Strategies for Adaptation to Sea Level Rise”. He breaks it down to Managed Retreat, Accommodation and Protection, though does not mince words on the importance of ultimate retreat. The presentation also lists design guidelines for development and vegetation in these zones.

Where should we Redevelop? – Redevelopment becomes an exercise in map layers. Several years ago, the County developed a “Multiple Projects” map to begin locating priority redevelopment areas. This effort was abandoned, in part because the county never explained the attributes of planning areas with the best potential. The map shows most of the locations, which are approximate.

First – explain what the attributes of prime redevelopment areas are. In general, the more urbanized areas with good infrastructure, transit and street networks (existing or potential) will be prime candidates. These areas need to include a wider planning area as well as buffers, design guidelines and connections for surrounding neighborhoods. Of course, elevation above sea level and inundation are leading attributes as well.
Second - The most interesting aspect of planning will be a new category of “jumping off” areas to provide access to recreation and economic development along the beaches. These jumping off areas are on the mainland along US 41 at the bridges. They are still in slosh zones, but provide retreat while still offering (and perhaps even enhancing) beach access.
Third – Develop special policies for the highest ground outside the Urban Service Boundary. One of the conclusions of post-disaster workshops has been to relax the USB, but this should not be done in a Wild West kind of way. Covering spongy open space with a schmear of development will only make coastal flooding worse.

Next post – “jumping off” area plans.

PB Placemaking and the Big Question: Who will Pay for Planning?

2012-10-22T12:13:10Z

Two recent news items on either end of the planning spectrum are worth noting:

1) Last week, Parsons Brinkerhoff dissolved the Portland OR office of PB Placemaking, the firm’s premier planning office that recently gathered prestigious awards for Tyson’s Corner presented in the video above.

2) In August, a Sarasota City Commissioner forecasted a grim budget in front of civic activists, noting rising pension costs as the deficit driver.

Both these news items involve money and planning, but actually they form a larger story on the state of planning. To understand this story, it helps to look at the various planning scales and ponder their funding sources (I realize there are other types of plans along the planning gradient; this is a rough outline).

1) Regional – Thanks to the Sustainable Community Planning Grants from HUD, there are great regional planning efforts underway. These federal grants seem to have ushered in a new era for multi-county planning around the country to turn self-defeating competition into powerful collaboration.

2) Sector (or sub-regional) – In talking to other planners around Florida, planning at this scale is happening around big infrastructure projects, such as airport expansions, interchanges and ports. Localities are leveraging federal and state dollars for local land use and transportation planning surrounding the projects.

3) Comprehensive Plan – Comprehensive Plans for cities and counties are common around the country, though vary in the level of required elements, analysis and ties to state dollars. Comprehensive plans are typically paid by localities, though can be supplemented with grants, foundation dollars and state funding.

4) Corridor/nodes – Here in Florida, FDOT has been leading corridor projects along with MPOs. Our local example is Sarasota’s Citywide Mobility Plan.

5) Small Area and Neighborhood Plans – These plans are almost exclusively left to localities. For sprawl repair, redevelopment and smart growth, this is the most important planning increment BUT one that relies on foundational work of visioning, comprehensive planning, and in some cases corridor planning.

Some thoughts on the future of funding:

The Sustainable Community Planning Grants program had to fight for another round of annual funding. No matter who wins the next election, the pressure on budgets, especially discretionary items, will only grow.
The downsizing of PB Placemaking should be a wake-up call to the planning profession. It’s important to note that PB also transferred 147 employees from NYC to Pennsylvania, so there are likely factors other than planning TOD involved. For transit oriented development, the truth is it feels like we are at the tail end of a golden age of TOD planning. The pipeline is thin, project planning is long, and much of the TOD work was the realization all at once in the mid 1990’s that urban and suburban stations built long ago were actually economic and land use assets.
While much of the ballyhoo over pensions is a convenient way to swipe unions and wriggle out of contracts, as more boomers retire, pension costs will crowd out other budget items – like planning.
When the Florida legislature reduced planning requirements last year, the urgency of data, analysis and planning dissolved. With less pressure, local budget hawks are demanding no dollars be directed to planning, since we are no longer legally bound to do so. While they may not succeed at getting zero dollars, they set up a negotiating process that bends the budget downward. I imagine this is not just a Florida phenomenon.

None of this means planning is dead. I realize there are a lot of people smarter than I am helping frame new directions but there are a couple of themes:

Competition for infrastructure-related planning jobs will be fierce
Although “heavy” transit projects and TOD are slowing down, the real opportunity is bus TOD. I’ve written on this before, and if you think it’s obvious to localities, it’s not.
Planning needs to be rebranded as portfolio management. Just as families seek advice on their income, taxes, assets and allocations, communities have to do the same thing. This asserts an economic role for planning, but also provides comfort for stewards of the environment, because they are now an asset class on par with everything else. Arts lovers will also see an explicit tie since artists build their work in portfolios.

In closing, I would like to give a virtual nod to G.B. Arrington who worked with PB Placemakers. He has a way of mixing the technical, practical and artistic aspects of planning communities in an approachable way. He has made me smile on many occasions. He will no doubt re-launch soon as he is one of the best in the planning business.

Second Hand Health Care Costs - Messaging & the Big Soda Ban

2012-10-03T19:08:41Z

As with almost everything, there's the soft sell, the hard sell, the dumb sell and the smart sell. In NYC, Mayor Bloomberg banned the BIG GULP to fight obesity in what many observers see as the hard, dumb sell. Aside from public health practitioners, the general reaction has been Nanny-state negative, including Jon Stewart.

To complicate an already-complex issue, a new video circulating shows a newscaster taking down a viewer email as an example of bullying. Without a doubt, the email used a hard, dumb sell:

So is Bloomberg a bully? Not at all - he broached the subject in the right way by (1) picking the right object in super size sodas and (2) framing it as a budget issue.

In fact, health care costs are the budget issue of our time, and obesity is a main reason. An obese person incurs medical costs that are $2,741 higher (in 2005 dollars) than if they were not obese, according to the newest study on the topic. Nationwide, this translates into $190.2 billion per year, or 20.6 percent of national health expenditures (this is up from 17% two years ago). Moderate obesity increases health care costs by 30% compared to those at a healthy weight; severe obesity more than doubles health care costs. How are we going to have a conversation where, on the one hand, pointing out a person's extra weight is bullying, but on the other hand, if she and I share the same health insurance company, I am paying. To borrow a phrase from smoking campaigns, I am experiencing second hand health care costs.

This conversation is already evolving. To whit:
1) Last month, a group of former military leaders joined forces to begin attacking childhood obesity as a national security issue. They cannot find healthy recruits. This begins to put the obesity fight into a conservative frame, where to date, public health admonitions on obesity have been viewed skeptically as nanny-statism.

2) The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation is so frustrated, their latest report just comes right out and says it in the title: "F is for Fat"

3) Supporters of active living and better neighborhood design have a huge role since we are the smart sell. Even people with genetic predisposition for obesity benefit from low impact activities like walking. Those of us who work hard to make functional, walkable communities are not just public health promoters, but deficit hawks as well. Time to start making that point harder because, to quote Bill Clinton, it's arithmetic.

Halloween's coming!Happy Halloween