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Sunday, July 30th

Pittsburgh City Housing Making A Comeback?
If you read any national newspaper you undoubtedly know the housing market is cooling off. If you live in the large Pittsburgh suburb of Cranberry, your story is no different. However Western Pennsylvania in general and Allegheny County (Pittsburgh) in particular are faring much better.

According to a recent Pittsburgh Tribune-Review article, there has been a surge of about 40 percent in housing permits issued in Allegheny County, and a 27 percent decline in permits in Butler County, where Cranberry has seen its total slip to about 31 single-family units, from about 76 single-family units a year ago.

It wouldn't suprise me if a micro-look at other housing markets revealed similar trends. Gas prices are up, households are smaller and more and more of us are tired of the traffic and commuting. A video on ABCNews.com web site reveals the monster houses are falling hardest.

If you're afraid of the big bad bubble, look for reasonably sized urban homes. Read more at the City Home News blog

Eric Miller (editor@newcolonist.com), on 07.30.06 @ 15:58PST

Wednesday, July 26th

"The Case for Breaking Up Wal-Mart"
Barry C. Lynn's article is one of the most cogent, provocative, and practical statements I have yet read on this matter. If you care about democracy in America, go to Alter Net and read it. Excerpts:

In systems where oligopolies rule unchecked by the state, competition itself is transformed from a free-for-all into a kind of private-property right, a license to the powerful to fence off entire marketplaces, there to pit supplier against supplier, community against community, and worker against worker, for their own private gain. When oligopolies rule unchecked by the state, what is perverted is the free market itself, and our freedom as individuals within the economy and ultimately within our political system as well.
...

When Ronald Reagan took power in 1981, one of his first targets was antitrust law. The new administration put forth a variety of arguments -- not least that international competition, especially with Japan, had rendered moot the old fears of monopoly. Yet the driving motive clearly was the philosophical antipathy of the Reaganites to the idea that the American people, acting through their representatives, had any business whatsoever telling business what to do. And the practical effect was to harness the institution of the corporation to that administration's larger project of shifting power and profit from the working, middle, and entrepreneurial classes to the powerful and rich.
...

In essence, Wal-Mart has grown so powerful that it can turn even its largest suppliers, and entire oligopolized industries, into extensions of itself. The effects of this practice are most obvious in Wal-Mart's horizontal competition against other retailers. Retail experts sometimes talk of a "waterbed effect," which takes place when a supplier insists on collecting from weaker retailers at least some of the rent a more powerful firm refuses to pay. One recent study of how such power plays out within an entire system shows that a small retailer can expect to pay upward of 10 percent more than a powerful firm for the same basket of items. The effect also explains what takes place economically between communities served by Wal-Mart and those served by less powerful firms -- the more power Wal-Mart accrues, the more it is able to shift costs from, say, suburb to city. And so every day the competitive landscape tilts just that much more in Wal-Mart's favor. And so, every year, the landscape is littered with that many more dead or half-dead retailers -- including such once-big names as Winn Dixie, Albertsons, K-Mart, Toys R Us, and Sears.
...

The producers that dominated the American economy for most of the 20th century were geared to build more and to introduce new, to protect their capital investments against overly predatory investors, to raise price faster than cost, to show some degree of loyalty to workers and outside suppliers and communities.

Wal-Mart and a growing number of today's dominant firms, by contrast, are programmed to cut cost faster than price, to slow the introduction of new technologies and techniques, to dictate downward the wages and profits of the millions of people and smaller firms who make and grow what they sell, to break down entire lines of production in the name of efficiency. The effects of this change are clear: We see them in the collapsing profit margins of the firms caught in Wal-Mart's system. We see them in the fact that of Wal-Mart's top ten suppliers in 1994, four have sought bankruptcy protection.

In a world of rising tensions within and among nations, of accelerating climate and environmental change, we would be wise to design the production systems on which we rely to be able to evolve as rapidly as the human and natural worlds around us evolve. Instead, we have programmed the dominant institutions within our economy to eliminate all the wonderful chaos of a free-market system. Rather than speed up the random motion and serendipitous collisions that have for so long propelled the American economy, Wal-Mart and other monopsonists are slowly freezing our economy into an ever more rigid crystal that holds each of us ever more tightly in place, and that every day is more liable to collapse from some sudden shock. To defend Wal-Mart for its low prices is to claim that the most perfect form of economic organization more closely resembles the Soviet Union in 1950 than 20th-century America. It is to celebrate rationalization to the point of complete irrationality.

Again, go to Alter Net, read the entire article, and pass it on!

Richard Risemberg (rrisemberg@newcolonist.com), on 07.26.06 @ 06:15PST

Tuesday, July 25th

"California's Next Great City"
And don't laugh just because it's about Long Beach. Yes, Iowa-by-the-Sea has just hired architect and urban planner Stephanie Reich as its first "urban design officer," and her concepts just may make thet headline ring ture in no long time. A quote:

Placemaking is . . . an important endeavor in urban design, and takes place on a variety of different scales, on all different levels. So placemaking can be at the median level, at the street level, block-by-block, it can be pocket parks or dog runs, and how those discrete places then combine to build identifiable neighborhoods where people can say, for example, “I live in Willmore City,” and really be proud of that place where they live. And how then each of a variety of discrete places within the neighborhood gets tied together, and then that can be tied together in a larger community, and how those connections are made is also a function of creating an important urban design framework so that there’s not . . . discrete places and, in-between, sort of, not necessarily a no-man’s land, but a place that is really not identifiable . . . not distinguishable. So one of the most important opportunities in urban design is to identify the streets as an important place. Mark Winogrond, someone I respect very much, often quotes . . . Louis Kahn: “The street is a room by agreement.” And that’s a very important concept, that all members of the community – businessowners, residents, visitors – have a stake in creating a room by agreement and deciding where the furniture goes.

...

In my view, good urban design is not really achieved by a fixed ideology, a preconceived notion of what a community can look like. It has to develop organically from who is here, first and foremost, and who makes the community, what they want it to be and what we have to work with.

Read the entire interview in the Long Beach business Journal.

Richard Risemberg (rrisemberg@newcolonist.com), on 07.25.06 @ 07:10PST

Monday, July 17th

Supermarkets and Service Stations Now Competing for Grain
In our insatiable lust to sit in traffic jams in little tin boxes, we are now preparing to starve for the sake of driving. As Lester Brown points out:

In agricultural terms, the world appetite for automotive fuel is insatiable. The grain required to fill a 25-gallon SUV gas tank with ethanol will feed one person for a year. The grain to fill the tank every two weeks over a year will feed 26 people.

[...]

In some U.S. Corn Belt states, ethanol distilleries are taking over the corn supply. In Iowa, a staggering 55 ethanol plants are operating or have been proposed. Iowa State University economist Bob Wisner observes that if all these plants are built, they would use virtually all the corn grown in Iowa. In South Dakota, a top-ten corn-growing state, ethanol distilleries are already claiming over half of the corn harvest.

Read the full article at the Earth Policy Institute website.

Richard Risemberg (rrisemberg@newcolonist.com), on 07.17.06 @ 17:32PST

Wednesday, July 12th

Los Angeles Showing of "Contested Streets" documenary
Following the Northeast L.A. Critical Mass ride on Friday, July 21st, at 8:30 pm NELA Bikes! presents the showing of "Contested Streets", a NYC Transportation Alternatives co-produced documentary film that chronicles how New York City was overwhelmed by vehicular traffic and explores how, by learning from recent innovations in London, Paris and Copenhagen, New York City can reclaim its public spaces, boost street performance and secure its place at the forefront of the global economy.

The 57-minute video features examples of reclaimed streets from New York's sister cities, including footage of London's congestion pricing zone, Paris' Bus Rapid Transit corridors and Copenhagen's network of protected bike paths.

This showing will occur at Rockrose Gallery, a Northeast L.A. art and performance space at 4108 North Figueroa St. Close to the Heritage Square Metro Gold Line station. [Map] There will be adjacent off-street parking for bikes. Suggested donation for the space is $2.00.

Contact: harv@nelabikes.com or 323-225-4955

Richard Risemberg (rrisemberg@newcolonist.com), on 07.12.06 @ 06:44PST
Monday, July 10th

Dependence and Independence
Yesterday afternoon, we bicycled to a phone store two miles away, hoping to get Gina a new cell phone. it was a warm, clear day, a little before dusk, and the ride was pleasant along the back streets we had chosen.

When we arrived at the mall, well before closing time, the phone store was locked up, though there were customers inside. Rather droopy-looking customers, it is true: a sign on the door explained, in neatly inkjet-prined but misspelled and ungrammatical text, that the store was closing early because the air-conditioning had broken.

Makes you wonder how people did business in the several thousand years of commerce before 1950, doesn't it?

And makes you wonder how profoundly and broadly pervasive energy dependence is. The phone store had no real back door. They couldn't just let the outside air blow through and cool the place. They had a couple of odd boxlike blowers sprouting lengths of flexible ducting that people would take turns standing in front of, but the room had no circulation even with that.

So a modest failure shut down the store. A modest failure, but a complete dependence.

We got back on our bikes, threaded our way through the knots of struggling car traffic--ever so much more dependent on supplied energy than that phone store--and rode home through the twilight breezes...phoneless but free.

Richard Risemberg (rrisemberg@newcolonist.com), on 07.10.06 @ 06:34PST

Sunday, July 9th

Bush Wants U.S. Superhighway
Alright, so I'm spending the evening listening to a late night radio show. Anyway, the talk is about Bush wanting to build a "Superhighway" (twelve lanes) from Mexico to Montreal.

So, I did what anyone bored enough to listen to late night radio would do, Google it... (Just moments ago I found My Death Space.com, a site of my space users who went completely cyber, many the result of auto accidents). InfoWars.com says: "Quietly but systematically, the Bush Administration is advancing the plan to build a huge NAFTA Super Highway, four football-fields-wide, through the heart of the U.S. along Interstate 35, from the Mexican border at Laredo, Tex., to the Canadian border north of Duluth, Minn."

More, "the first Trans-Texas Corridor segment of the NAFTA Super Highway is ready to begin construction next year."

WorldNetDaily.com says "The NAFTA Super Corridor will be constructed largely by private companies that intend to operate the new I-35 as a toll road." The site also says the goal is to bypass West Coast ports (and union wages) and allow the shipments to be moved through the U.S. by Mexican nationals.

Comments?

Eric Miller (editor@newcolonist.com), on 07.09.06 @ 17:43PST

"Capitalist Roaders"
A longish article in the New York Times reports on the growth of car culture in China.

...car culture is taking root in China, and in many ways it looks like ours. City drivers, stuck in ever-growing jams, listen to traffic radio. They buy auto magazines with titles like The King of Cars, AutoStyle, China Auto Pictorial, Friends of Cars, Whaam ("The Car — The Street — The Travel — The Racing"). Two dozen titles now compete for space in kiosks. The McDonald's Corporation said last month that it expects half of its new outlets in China to be drive-throughs. Whole zones of major cities, like the Asian Games Village area in Beijing, have been given over to car lots and showrooms.

[...]

On the snail-paced drive back into Beijing, Zhu had passed through a zone on the edge of town that had been bulldozed and was being rebuilt as upper-income, car-friendly suburbs. In fact, this was happening around cities all over China: new gated communities, new themed enclaves, all for the car-owning class. What was conspicuously missing was a corresponding investment in mass transit, in public spaces and public access. And, in heavy traffic at the end of a tiring trip, it was easy to worry that the Chinese, rather than charting an innovative, alternate route into the automotive era, were on their way down a road that looks a little too familiar.

Read the entire article here: Capitalist Roaders

Richard Risemberg (rrisemberg@newcolonist.com), on 07.09.06 @ 16:57PST

Sunday, July 2nd

Ride, Sally, Ride....
If we ask ourselves what a metropolis might do when it wants to increase the use of its mass transit system, how would you answer? Yes, have a robust network of lines, that's obvious. Some would say to make it free to ride. That's fine. Reliability? Of course. And let's not forget the information campaign.

Indeed, this question is on the minds of many system planners whose ridership isn't what ought to be.

Now let us ask ourselves "who?" Who will be among the new users? The easy ones are those who would use the system anyway, but either did not know how to use, or could not gain convenient access to, the system. As soon as you reach them, they are on board. But most metropolitan systems already reach the bulk of this demographic. Then there are those who do not like the idea of mass transit. Forget getting them to ride, right now.

Then who? As it is with any change in a population's behavior, those on and near the behavioral line of adoption are most likely to "test the waters." They are willing to try it once or twice to see if they like it. With luck they'll tell their friends

Next, then, we have to ask "how?" How will these people test the water? Are they more likely to take the bus to work and risk being late, or would they prefer to try the system on some less risky adventure like going out on the weekend or after work? A little of both, but I am willing to go out on a limb and say that people would rather adopt innovation at low-risk than at high. Bus to the beach, subway to a concert, but gotta drive to work.

I know, I know, "there are studies out there that say..." etc. But take for a minute two recent examples from my own little experiment:

The other month, the various Los Angeles area mass transportation systems celebrated "Ride Your Bike to Work" week with a nice offer: Ride any bus or train for free as long as you have your bicycle with you. A great idea and I was happy to take them up on their offer. It seemed a simple way of trying something new.

MTA is a pretty good system, and during peak periods, busses and trains in the L.A. Basin are packed. I am a car commuter, yet, I still liked the idea of trying the bike/train combo.

Unfortunately, once I got past the great idea phase and into the actual planning phase, things got a little complex. First, bicycles are not allowed on any downtown bound train during rush hour. The Red Line train doesn't allow bicycles at all during rush hour. A sensible restriction, as the system is packed during peak periods. Second, not all busses have bicycle racks. A rider could still take advantage of the offer as long as they had their helmet with them, but what if you need your bike for the last leg of your commute? On the homeward commute, I was still in the system after the peak schedule making my wait for a transfer very long. In the end, I survived, but it was a significantly greater amount of stress and trouble than it was worth.

Example two. Last Saturday, my husband and I decided to bus downtown to see an outdoor concert. We occasionally try this model--weekend bus to the beach or downtown. We left at 6 o'clock in the evening and it took us a full hour door-to-door, no transfers, to travel 5 miles. 50% of that time was spent waiting for the ballyhooed Rapid bus. Extended waits like this, though not the norm during evening and weekends, are not uncommon either. We intended to arrive early to get a seat, but we barely made it on time and stood in the back.

No one who walks away from their first mass transit experience feeling like I did would be likely to look kindly on the system. Yet "test the water" riders are important to system growth. And if peak is packed and off-peak is an entry point for new users, where should we be looking to increase ridership? Off peak.

The final question: How are you investing in your system to encourage these new riders? New vehicles, improved stations, extended lines are all fine ways of spending money and gaining rider loyalty. But it will take more than that to get people to dive in. We have to make it as painless as possible. Pain is having to idle about at a stop without benches in the heat of day or cold of night waiting for a bus. Pain is having to block out a huge hunk of time to travel a short distance.

For a blog posting this is getting long, so let me cut to the chase:
With mass commuting there is the carrot and the stick. The stick is impossible car traffic drives people into the system. The carrot is making the system wonderfully easy. I propose that we act on the latter. Invest in the system, fully. Let us capture those maybe riders and move the line a bit.

1. Increase (i.e. broaden) peak services periods.
   
2. Increase frequency during off peak periods.

Yes, it means letting vehicles run with fewer passengers more often, and yes it means paying more driver-hours, and yes it means more maintenance. But the potential returns are huge. We are all familiar with the dreamy ridership of systems like Tokyo, Paris, San Francisco, and others. Think of your metro system on that list. Think of the cars off the road, the miles of pavement never to be made, and the socio-economic future of your city.

GS Morey (gsm@newcolonist.com), on 07.02.06 @ 18:10PST