Local "Planning" Follies, part 4 - WalMart

 (c) by Mark Dempsey

Part of a series. See Local "Planning" Follies Part 1 - The state of play in land use planning for links to all posts.

WalMart

The two sections that follow—Part I: Heads, You Lose; Tails, the WalMart Wins and Part II: Even WalMart Fans Don’t Like County Policies—discuss public reactions to a single land-use proposal to build a WalMart store in at the intersection of two boulevards near my home: Greenback and Hazel.
Our County Supervisor claims she was completely surprised by the application, despite the presence of a deteriorated commercial building on the site for the last several years.

Part I: Heads, You Lose; Tails, the WalMart Wins

Sacramento County Supervisor MacGlashan responded to public disenchantment with a proposed WalMart (at Greenback and Hazel) with a startling revelation: the County could do nothing to stop WalMart. Her explanation: this property already has big-box retail on it (a furniture store in a renovated older supermarket), and is zoned for commerce, so the County's hands are tied. 

Apparently, whenever a land speculator or developer wants a rezone or plan change the Supervisors are more than willing to be flexible, but if the public even wants a review of an important project, all of a sudden our zoning laws have arrived on stone tablets engraved by lightening. What makes this transformation occur?

Ms. MacGlashan’s e-mailed response to this objection: “I consider the lack of opportunity for public input and additional environmental information (such as a traffic study) on a project of this magnitude a serious flaw in the Zoning Code. I am willing to and plan to advocate for changes in the code to address these issues. However, the County cannot change the rules in the middle of the game, so to speak, and the current property owner has the right to develop under the provisions of the code currently in effect.”

The “can't change the rules in the middle of the game” rule is a new one. When did the Supervisors enact this? Don’t the County’s actions potentially interrupt some plan somewhere, regardless of when the action occurs? And can Supervisors pass a building moratorium? At the drop of a hat! Can we enact legal obstacles to WalMart—apparently folks in Contra Costa County believe so, because they have an ordinance that prohibits WalMart. Turlock and Hercules, both within a few miles of Sacramento have successfully opposed WalMart in their towns, too.

Can we even call a “time-out” in the development “game” until new policies are in place, even if they mean improved land use? 

No. That contradicts the “can't change the rules in the middle of the game” rule, one very similar to Catch-22. So it's heads, ordinary citizens lose; tails, the commercial interests or developers win.
This “can't change the rules” handicap is apparently one of the least of the County's disabilities when it comes to managing growth. Call me a dreamer, but I can imagine a day when government represents people, not commercial interests, or land speculators. I can even imagine a government more interested in effective governance than formulating ever-better excuses. You may say I'm a dreamer...but I'm not the only one.

Part II: Even WalMart Fans Don’t Like County Policies

After I wrote to oppose it, a woman we’ll call “Carol” wrote me e-mail saying “Why do you not like WalMart? I am very excited it is coming to Orangevale. It will save me from going to Folsom [the location of the next-nearest WalMart].” 

At the risk of sounding like a boring, eat-your-vegetables parent, I told her my opposition has almost nothing to do with WalMart itself, or Carol’s shopping convenience. You can read about WalMart as exploitive, a bad deal, and so on at websites like www.wakeupwalmart.com, but that's not my primary objection.

Primarily, I object to the County showering benefits on commercial and development interests while it has precious little but excuses to offer its ordinary citizens. The County can change existing zoning whenever land speculators propose some development, and has done so frequently. 

Consider these recent examples of zoning changes just in the last few years: 20 acres at the nearby corner of Pecan and Greenback, Safeway’s proposed shopping center at nearby Madison and Hazel, or 6,000 acres of agricultural land proposed for development at Sunrise/Douglas. None of these properties were developed according to existing planning. 

The 20 acres at Pecan and Greenback could have adopted designs proposed by the Regional Blueprint, the County General Plan, the Community Plan, or even a 35-page “Special Planning Area” (SPA) document on file at the County recorder’s office. The number of hours spent formulating and holding hearings about the SPA alone is daunting even to contemplate. The sprawl built there follows none of these plans. And that is business as usual.

So zoning is, as currently practiced, at least flexible. But let citizens complain about what's permitted by existing zoning (like the proposed WalMart), and suddenly these zoning regulations are cast in stone, and there's simply nothing to be done. 

Just in terms of negotiating with applicants, this is terrible public policy. Because it’s such a pushover, the County has almost no leverage to ask commercial applicants to mitigate impacts like traffic, noise or litter. Because of this, the County certainly has much more difficulty requesting a redesign so a project would have lower impacts.

If the rezone give-aways described in Why Bother Planning? in a previous post and Subsidizing Sprawl – North Natomas and the Environmentalists in another weren't bad enough, the standard big-box store designs the County regularly approves ensure that virtually all shopping continues to be in an automobile—despite the “Transit-Oriented Development” design guidelines in its 1993 General Plan. 

Carol might reply: But there are sidewalks in front of WalMart. If the neighbors want to walk or ride their bicycles there, they could. My answer: Those sidewalks end within a block of the proposed WalMart’s property, and current street design makes walking or cycling a hassle, if not downright dangerous. Not even the present General Plan update hearings include some provision for redesigning streets to be pedestrian-friendly with, for example, setback, wider sidewalks, or less glaring lights. (Although since I wrote this, the state mandated "Complete Streets"...so good news there!)

Carol might also say: But most people have cars, and prefer using them, so why bother making streets pedestrian-friendly? The answer: Because we want less traffic congestion now (it’s one of the top public policy concerns in most polls), and want to start building infrastructure alternatives to automobiles for the future. The current high price of petroleum is just the latest in a long series of price rises that began after the 1971 peak of U.S. domestic oil production (price of a barrel of oil then: $1.75)—a peak to which we will never return even if we produce all the projected Alaska and offshore oil. For more about this, see Thinking Globally: the Petroleum Problem, below

A prudent transportation policy would start building alternatives to single-occupant autos now, rather than scrambling to provide them when (not if) gas reaches $10 a gallon. If we discourage pedestrians and cyclists, project-by-project, even if it makes WalMart and Carol happy, we will continue to ensure the failure of transit, bicycling, or any alternative to autos. We will also continue to send our kids overseas in resource wars to ensure that oil imports are reliable.

So while I’d be happy for Carol to have a shorter drive to WalMart, I’m unhappy that she cannot see the dire consequences for the policies that subsidize and encourage the slam-dunk that WalMart’s approval is likely to be.

After I sent her this information, Carol wrote me to agree, not about WalMart, but that the County’s planning policies were something she disliked. Not even WalMart fans like the way the County handles land use.

Road Widenings Are Not the Congestion Solution

In a typical puff piece, the Sacramento Bee wrote to praise the proposed widening of Hazel Avenue as good, popular, and overdue. This is the story we generally tell ourselves about widening such large roads—it’s progress after all—but is that the whole story?

Given the alternatives presented to the public — basically that we can either keep existing roads as they are or widen them in the face of increasing traffic congestion — it's no great surprise that road widenings are popular, if expensive, solutions to that same traffic congestion. But are they the best or even the only solution? 

The biggest problem with such “solutions” is that they do not last. Though it may seem self-evident that a wider road would solve congestion problems by increasing road capacity, even the proponents of widening Hazel admit that their solution is only temporary. They estimate that traffic will return to present congestion levels within a decade.  

Widenings are only a temporary solution because they attract more traffic—traffic engineers call this “induced congestion.” In a decade, traffic will be just as congested as it is now, but in a wider street. And the $60 million, in the case of Hazel's widening, will be gone — spent on asphalt rather than other public goods. Typically, we are ready to impoverish the public realm, short-changing schools, parks, and other public spaces, but gold-plate amenities for autos.

Real, permanent congestion solutions are available, but the public seldom hears about them. Since most Hazel Avenue traffic is local, the most obvious permanent solution would be to design neighborhoods so people would not have to drive to local destinations. 

Why not build neighborhoods that integrate offices, schools and commerce, making them within a short distance of each other, and streets that accommodate alternatives to driving, like walking or biking? Instead of building single use sprawl neighborhoods (all homes, all commerce, or all offices) connected only by auto commutes, why not nip congestion in the bud, by mixing uses, so different destinations would be within a walk or bike ride? 

We could even relieve the congestion on collector streets like Hazel by making local neighborhood streets into a connected network, instead of sprawl spaghetti (the loops and dead ends that lead only to collector streets). Sprawl street design ensures there are no alternative routes besides the collector to any destinations outside the neighborhood. Everyone meets in the traffic jam on the collector street by design. 

Are the alternatives to sprawl untried, more costly or possibly less valuable than sprawl? In a word: No. Traditional development practices virtually identical to the pedestrian-friendly mixed-use proposed here were the rule for centuries before sprawl, the cost of construction is similar and the most valuable real estate in the region (per square foot) is McKinley Park, a beautiful old neighborhood built with the mixed-use, pedestrian friendly design. 

Beginning in 1993, the County's General Plan even included “Transit-Oriented Development” (TOD) guidelines for building real mixed-use, pedestrian-friendly villages, as opposed to sprawl.

Unfortunately, even today, the County prefers to pay to update General Plans it ignores, and $60 million for one street's asphalt, rather than implement these TOD guidelines. 

It may take a village to raise a child, but we've apparently decided to build single-use sprawl instead, and to spend our money widening roads. Will our kids thank us?

Thinking Globally: the Petroleum Problem

Our local governments’ impotence to curb sprawl has more than just local consequences. If we continue to build infrastructure that requires more and more petroleum we will hamstring our own national economy. 

Why? U.S. domestic oil production began an inexorable decline in 1971, one that will continued until fracking came along, but that too will decline, and the decline would continue even if the U.S. produced all the oil projected to be offshore and in Alaska.

From the World Resources Institute (www.wri.org). In fairness, fracking has raised production above the right tail of the above graph, but fracked wells decline much more rapidly than those produced conventionally, and the finances for fracked oil are in crisis. Even the massive oil giant, Exxon, is in trouble. It's recently been removed from the Dow Jones Index for that reason, and bankruptcies among frackers are exploding wherever they operate. ANWR is the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge.

Because we cannot continue to produce more oil domestically, we must increasingly rely on oil imports as our demand increases. Such imports are so essential that since 1971 every recession has coincided with an overseas oil shock. Daniel Yergin’s history of the oil industry describes our increasing dependence on overseas oil imports as the root of the greatest peacetime transfer of wealth in history.

Why is this related to our city design practices? The U.S. consumes twice as much petroleum on transportation—most of it just getting around the city—as it does on all other uses combined (petroleum feedstocks, heating, power generation, etc.). The potential to right this by building less consumption into our infrastructure remains the enduring attraction of New Urbanist city design.

Externalities and petroleum

Part of the problem with the way we use petroleum are the market distortions economists call “Externalities”—costs unaccounted for in the price. The ill health and property damage caused by auto-produced pollution are two such externalities not reflected in the price of gas. The inactivity of driving rather than walking—a side effect of auto-centric civic design—causes disease, and is another such externality. Auto accidents, and some roads autos use are other externalities. 

Because domestic (and worldwide) demand for petroleum increases as economies grow—at least as they do currently—we are also increasingly reliant on imported oil. This is why our military is are overseas guarding oilfields and pipelines in places like Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Columbia. This military expense is yet another externality unaccounted for in the price at the pump. Oil producers get an income tax write-off called the “depletion allowance.” 

Before the second Iraq war, the World Resources Institute estimated that we subsidize petroleum nearly $300 billion annually. This figure did not include pollution-related costs, but did include roughly $50 billion in overseas military costs. This amount increases if you count the Iraq war expenditures which are running closer to $200 billion annually. 

The World Bank more recently estimated worldwide subsidies for petroleum at $1.2 trillion, and concluded the subsidies are regressive--the wealthy benefit more than poor people.

In a market that charged for these externalities, we would pay more at the pump. Higher costs for a tank of gas would make us re-think when and where we drove, and would encourage public policies that explored alternatives, like transit.

But because externalities amount to effective subsidies for petroleum, and are so pervasive and hidden, what we do is cheapen the tank of gas (so we over-consume), and make alternatives relatively more expensive. This is roughly like giving drivers $5 every time they start their cars, but charging transit passengers for their ride.

Why Compact Sprawl Is an Oxymoron

One of the biggest controversies about returning to pedestrian-friendly development stems from suburbanites’ concern about more compact, denser housing—building more homes on less land. People in the suburbs fear the widely publicized crime, poverty and other inner city woes, not to mention incompetent government management of resources like parks and police that would have much heavier impacts in more compact development. Given the government bumbling described elsewhere in this document, one can hardly blame them, either. 

Most who object to denser development do not know how sprawl design worsens the problems they fear. They are also typically ignorant of bad public policy decisions like red-lining that led to flight from urban areas. 

Red-lining is now illegal, but was common when the government first sponsored 30-year home loans in New Deal programs like FHA. Red-lining meant lenders avoided lending to inner cities, favoring suburban neighborhoods—also favoring whites over blacks. This meant that urban neighborhoods deteriorated, particularly those populated by people of color.

In line with the fear in the suburbs, typical sprawl apartment development design can bring hundreds of strangers into the midst of a suburban neighborhood. The neighbors’ concern about crime is not surprising, especially since sprawl street design discourages the presence of pedestrians who might prevent crime by their presence on the street.

What most objectors don’t know is that denser housing within traditional, pedestrian friendly mixed-use neighborhoods reduces crime because it provides more “eyes on the street,” or more neighbors to stop bad behavior. Jane Jacobs says of her New York City neighborhood: “When Mr. Lacey, the locksmith, bawls out one of my sons for running into the street, and then later reports the transgression to my husband as he passes the locksmith shop, my son gets more than an overt lesson in safety and obedience. He also gets, indirectly, the lesson that Mr. Lacey, with whom we have no other ties other than street propinquity, feels responsible for him to a degree.” One further bit of evidence that this is true: Per-capita crime is higher in low-density suburbanized Sacramento than in high density, pedestrian-friendly New York City.

When Sacramento's General Plan, and more recently the Sacramento Area Council of Governments (SACOG) Blueprint, proposed denser development, some, even some real estate professionals, protested such development would not be marketable. Builders are especially reluctant to face the NIMBY protests about such projects. 

Why encourage the controversial compact development? Commutes, infrastructure and transportation costs—both monetary and environmental—decrease dramatically with compact development, so planners are eager to encourage such projects. Viable mass transit, and neighborhood commerce are impossible without some increase in suburban housing densities.

The Real Objection to Density

Higher density housing offers an inferior lifestyle only when it is without a community as its setting.—Andres Duany
If what you sell is privacy and exclusivity, then every new house is a degradation of the amenity. However, if what you sell is community, then every new house is an enhancement of the asset.—Vince Graham

What suburbanites really object to is dense development designed as sprawl. Typical sprawl apartments or condominiums are a poor imitation of single-family sprawl housing. The design maximizes privacy, but short-changes space for interaction. Such designs offer little or no accommodation for meeting outside the individual unit—there is no “social space.” Most tenants meet neighbors in the parking lot—hardly a place designed for lingering—or when they pound on the common wall to tell their neighbor to turn down the music.

Single family homes, even the standard suburban sprawl models, offer a chance to meet neighbors while doing yard work, walking the dog, or when taking an evening stroll if street design permits—and don’t offer as many opportunities to complain about noise. So when one neighbor asks another to lower the volume, the neighbors typically know each other first as something other than a nuisance, and the whole social fabric of the neighborhood benefits by this mutual accommodation.

Condominiums built according to sprawl designs are also a poor investment in comparison with single-family homes. Their uniformity explains some of this. Because owners who travel or otherwise need lower maintenance housing are among the primary purchasers of condominiums, condo owners often move more frequently than homeowners in single-family suburbs. Since the units are identical, the lowest priced, most desperate seller sets the market price. Even in single-family home sprawl, identical models are distinguished by differing trim and landscaping. Not so condominiums.

Condo prices also stay low because of homeowners' association's dues changes and wrangling. As might be expected, neighbors who have no place for neutral socializing have contentious association meetings that decide neighborhood issues.

The condo dues changes were especially troubling because, initially, the California Department of Real Estate did not sufficiently audit budgets, and dues proposals, in condominium applications. This gave California condominiums a bad reputation when they first were built.

Condominium developers had every incentive to underestimate expenses collected by the association because buyers qualify for loans based on their expenses, including condo dues. The lower the expenses, the more buyers qualify, and the easier it is to sell units. 

Because dues underestimated real expenses, earlier condo owners had to stomach large dues increases when, for example, the roof needed replacing. These increases were anathema to fixed-income retirees who would otherwise be enthusiastic condominium unit buyers. 

Fortunately, pedestrian-oriented development offers the best solution to the most intractable of the problems of high density housing. By design, such pedestrian-friendly neighborhoods offer places to socialize between units. People can meet in a park, or walkway, or front porch. This increases the neutral socializing, and lowers the contentiousness that makes denser development so unpopular with suburbanites. 

Traditional neighborhoods also offer ways to avoid the shock of integrating hundreds of new apartments into a neighborhood—something sprawl apartment design typically demands. Building large homes with eight-unit apartments means the lower-cost apartment units bring social diversity to a neighborhood without the difficulty of integrating hundreds of new strangers.

Building a variety, of units with different plans and facades could be a requirement for any high- density building code. This would keep values up, and eliminate the value-lowering competition for identical units. 

And finally, California’s Department of Real Estate has been more carefully scrutinizing condominium budgets lately. This ended some of the abusively low dues estimates—and the later catastrophic dues hikes.

Educating the public about the possibilities of high density housing is one avenue we can pursue with our planning policies. The alternative is to continue building (and subsidizing) suburban sprawl as we do now.