Too much public involvment or bowing to interest groups

[3467]

The big Lake County Vote will help with the Tollway but IDOT really doent pay that much attention to local government or interest groups. US 20 had a former congressman plus majority support and local government suppport. If you check the threads under Midwest you can see its a dead project due to cost overruns and lack of supermajority support. Its a choice between the Tollway and more work on the existing road.
Only Corridor 67 has a PAC. Those help a lot. Better yet the Chicago-KC (Illinois 110) had a Newspaper/TV Station owner

[flowmotion]

Well let's get real here. Any major exurban highway project is going to be a huge windfall for particular land speculators. (Who often have spent decades assembling rights long before the general public is even aware of the project.)

Real estate interests don't *need* to form "interest groups", as they have an incredible amount of "soft power", especially on the local governmental level. Regardless of a merits of a project, it's pretty naive to believe that any highway gets built purely for goo-goo Good Government reasons. There is a lot of money at stake.

Anti-highway groups are visible because usually "the fix is in" and they only way to fight it is through the legal process. And, unfortunately we have set up this ridiculously complex technocratic system where the only practical way for citizens to oppose horizontal growth is to cry about the spotted dragonfly or whatever. There rarely is a "up or down" vote on such things.

[vdeane]

What's wrong with horizontal growth, provided we don't create another housing bubble?

[agentsteel53]

What's wrong with horizontal growth, provided we don't create another housing bubble?

that's like asking "what's wrong with setting one's self on fire, provided we don't burn ourselves?"

[flowmotion]

What's wrong with horizontal growth, provided we don't create another housing bubble?

The problems with sprawl are extremely well documented; but primarily it externalizes costs for the benefit of a few. The important point here is that much of our highway spending is doing nothing to improve the economic infrastructure of the country, and some if it might be a net negative. (Admittedly this may not apply to Illinois tollway expansion.)

[J N Winkler]

Anti-highway groups are visible because usually "the fix is in" and they only way to fight it is through the legal process. And, unfortunately we have set up this ridiculously complex technocratic system where the only practical way for citizens to oppose horizontal growth is to cry about the spotted dragonfly or whatever. There rarely is a "up or down" vote on such things.

Another aspect of the problem is that whereas major highway construction is tightly controlled through the requirement to compile an EIS (which cannot be avoided by refusing federal funding because Section 404 permits are still necessary), there is almost nowhere a correspondingly high level of control over other planning decisions, such as allowing subdivision and housing construction.

My personal philosophy is that residential development needs to be well-served in terms of transportation facilities.  I don't particularly care whether that is done through highways, mass transit, or the two in combination, as long as the level of service provided is high.  However, the current situation--speculative housing development in combination with restraint in transportation infrastructure development--makes it difficult to achieve this goal, particularly in areas near the coast where year-on-year population growth tends to be high.  We also have a generalized low-tax mentality (even in stereotypically "blue" areas) which works against the provision of other infrastructure that is necessary for new development, such as flood control.

In Wichita pretty much every subdivision built from the immediate postwar period to about 1990 has very effective flood protection from the Big Ditch (completed 1959 at a cost of about $20 million), but now most new development on the west side is occurring in the Cowskin Creek basin, which regularly floods.  Low-tax fanatics move out there and then wonder why water comes into their houses when it rains.

[vdeane]

What's wrong with horizontal growth, provided we don't create another housing bubble?

The problems with sprawl are extremely well documented; but primarily it externalizes costs for the benefit of a few. The important point here is that much of our highway spending is doing nothing to improve the economic infrastructure of the country, and some if it might be a net negative. (Admittedly this may not apply to Illinois tollway expansion.)

Those of us who like to drive, want good roads, and aren't on the anti-car bandwagon are the few?  IMO we should bring highway development back to where it was in the 50s and 60s, before the highway revolt.

[Hot Rod Hootenanny]

What's wrong with horizontal growth, provided we don't create another housing bubble?

The problems with sprawl are extremely well documented; but primarily it externalizes costs for the benefit of a few. The important point here is that much of our highway spending is doing nothing to improve the economic infrastructure of the country, and some if it might be a net negative. (Admittedly this may not apply to Illinois tollway expansion.)

Those of us who like to drive, want good roads, and aren't on the anti-car bandwagon are the few?  IMO we should bring highway development back to where it was in the 50s and 60s, before the highway revolt.

What do you have against food? Grains need land to grow. Livestock need land to graze.

[Brandon]

What's wrong with horizontal growth, provided we don't create another housing bubble?

The problems with sprawl are extremely well documented; but primarily it externalizes costs for the benefit of a few. The important point here is that much of our highway spending is doing nothing to improve the economic infrastructure of the country, and some if it might be a net negative. (Admittedly this may not apply to Illinois tollway expansion.)

In my experience, growth happens, and roads must be built after the growth happens (see IL-53 extension for an example).  People will build where it is cheap, good roads and access be damned.  Better to try to be somewhat prepared than the other way 'round.

[vdeane]

What do you have against food? Grains need land to grow. Livestock need land to graze.

Do we look like we're anywhere near a shortage of food?  As much as people complain about growing corn for ethanol, the truth is we have a surplus.  A HUGE surplus.  It's to the point where the supply/demand curve is so out of whack that farmers operate at a loss before government subsidies.  This is all explained in the documentary "King Corn".

Not to mention that we prefer to throw away food rather than give to the poor.  THAT'S why we have starvation, not because we don't have enough food.

Plus I like having my own space.  I hate having to share a living area with someone, which is what happens when you pack people like sardines.  As long as we keep population growth in check (I'd implement a GLOBAL two children per family policy as well as one child per family in India, China, Africa, and Latin America) we won't out-grow the food supply.

And who wants to walk or take a bus?  The day I can reasonably get groceries from the store to home without a car is the day we all eat freeze-dried NASA food.  We NEED good transportation.  This means HIGHWAYS.  Surface streets don't work so well for large traffic volumes.

[jjakucyk]

Who wants to walk?  LOTS of people.  In fact, everyone walks at some point.  It's just that nobody wants to walk in the car-dominated sprawling dystopia we've built over the last 80 years.  We wouldn't need lots of highways or even wide surface streets if we built at reasonable densities.  Reasonable doesn't mean "packing people like sardines" either.  The most pleasant and oft-visted human settlements in the world are ones that have very high densities.  Think Tokyo, Paris, Florence, Amsterdam, Prague, etc.  These places have very narrow streets and high densities, but they're awesome places to be in because you can walk everywhere you need to go, and you're not walking next to a road with roaring traffic.  Density doesn't require 30 story high rise apartments either.  3-4 story townhouse neighborhoods are very dense and quite pleasant at the same time, especially the ones with very narrow streets that are easy to walk down.  You don't need a huge lawn to buffer you from traffic when there's no traffic, after all, and if the streets are all small, rather than 60 feet wide, then walking becomes much easier.  We've been building settlements like this for thousands of years, and they still work, it's only the ones we started building in the 19th and 20th centuries that don't.     

The question isn't how to fight NIMBYism and public interest groups, it's why do these groups even exist?  The answer is because people are fed up with the current development pattern.  It's taken a while, but people are finally starting to realize, even if only subconsciously, that more strip malls, more lanes of highways, more subdivisions simply aren't worth it anymore.  It's coming from the same place as the historic preservation movement.  We've been tearing down old buildings and building roads and infrastructure since the beginning of human history, and it's only recently that people have started fighting it.  Why?  Because historically when we tore something down or built new stuff, it was nearly always better than what was there before.  Now, the new stuff is almost always worse.  This is why people will look for anything they can to stop a new subdivision or highway.  After all, they'll just have that much more traffic to deal with, wider more unpleasant roads, more pollution, and they'll be farther away from real nature.  More sprawl won't make the lives of existing residents better, so why shouldn't they fight it?

The solution isn't to fight against these people, but to figure out what would actually make things better for them and for everyone.  If they don't want more highways and sprawl, maybe the solution is more transit and real towns.  If strip malls and parking lots aren't wanted, then propose a real Main Street with a plaza or park (but not undefined and useless "green space").  Look at the places where people want to live, i.e. where rents/prices are high, which are more traditional walkable neighborhoods, and replicate that so that more people can afford it.  There's a lot of people out there who want density and good walkable urbanism, but they can't get it because it's in such high demand.  Sprawl and subdivisions are cheap in no small part because it's so oversupplied, and it's easy to do, never mind how bad it is. 

Another thing that needs to happen is to properly weight the opinions of the various interest groups.  The big problem with public involvement in the US is that only those with a vested interest in the project (whether for or against) will make any noise about it.  That usually boils down to the government and developer (for) butting heads with nearby property owners and residents (against).  There needs to be a third component, those residents and business owners who aren't directly affected, and who don't have a personal interest in the project.  They wouldn't generally show up to meetings because they don't care enough to spend time on it, but these are the people who need to represent the community as a whole.  Some countries select people from the jury pool so they can get a random cross-sampling of the population.  However it's done, getting that third component is much more effective in mediating the other two camps. 

[agentsteel53]

there is a difference between "more highways" and "more strip malls".  I absolutely hate suburban arterial development, but I certainly do enjoy having roads to take me to places.  

it would be nice to disconnect the levels of traffic from the levels of development.  I'd rather have twice as many lanes as needed... and kept that way, by people not suddenly building infrastructure to need those lanes.  I really like having a fully four-laned, limited access (okay, close enough) national network of roads - even though four lanes of I-80 is way too much for, say, Elko to Battle Mountain, Nevada... and somehow we've managed to keep it that way by not turning rural northern Nevada into suburban Hell.

why can't we achieve that elsewhere?  who the Hell decided to turn Las Vegas into Henderson, anyway?

[jjakucyk]

Maybe because roads to nowhere (or through nowhere anyway) don't pay their way.  In fact, it seems that typical suburban development doesn't pay its own way as it is.  "New growth" has to subsidize the replacement of older suburban infrastructure after it reaches the end of its first life cycle, otherwise property taxes have to be increased by an extra 50-200%.  Even if a 4-lane divided highway can't be maintained from the tax receipts of strip malls, office parks, and residential subdivisions, it's still less "in the red" than if it was just running through corn fields. 

There are factors that disconnect development from roads alone, though it's not easy to keep in check.  To get beyond what I guess you could call "rural sprawl" to actual suburban development, you need sanitary sewers.  A lack of sewers can keep growth in check through a corridor that's still well-connected to highways.  Nevertheless, you can still end up with a lot of low density residential development, and what's to stop individual subdivisions from opening up their own treatment plant?  Once a few of those come online, and residents start complaining about its maintenance, then a new municipal sewer system is hooked up, boom, the big developments start. 

For Nevada specifically, it may be as simple as water availability.  If there's no aquifer that can be easily tapped by private wells, or any other decent source to create a municipal water supply, there's your answer right there.  It may also be that there's simply nothing there to start with, or the terrain is just too rugged and inhospitable. 

[J N Winkler]

It's taken a while, but people are finally starting to realize, even if only subconsciously, that more strip malls, more lanes of highways, more subdivisions simply aren't worth it anymore.  It's coming from the same place as the historic preservation movement.  We've been tearing down old buildings and building roads and infrastructure since the beginning of human history, and it's only recently that people have started fighting it.  Why?  Because historically when we tore something down or built new stuff, it was nearly always better than what was there before.  Now, the new stuff is almost always worse.  This is why people will look for anything they can to stop a new subdivision or highway.  After all, they'll just have that much more traffic to deal with, wider more unpleasant roads, more pollution, and they'll be farther away from real nature.  More sprawl won't make the lives of existing residents better, so why shouldn't they fight it?

I don't fully agree with this analysis.  It is not true that people have only recently started opposing new development or redevelopment of what already exists.  The mentalities involved were very much in evidence in the aftermath of the London fire of 1666, for example.  There is also a hedonic treadmill involved.  150 years ago, closed sewers were a novelty; now they are normal expected provision.  70 years ago, commuter freeways were a novelty; now they are normal expected provision.  When they are freed from the need to worry about basic sanitation and connections to the transportation network, people's concerns will shift toward second-order concerns, such as the functional characteristics of their dwellings and neighborhoods.  But in general discontent with new development is not something that materialized with the motor car.

The real problem with sprawl as it is experienced now is not peripheral development per se but rather the fact that, in many communities, the spatial development that actually occurs on the periphery is in excess of that actually required to accommodate population growth in the community, and the network infrastructure provision associated with that new development is typically inferior to that already provided in established neighborhoods.

In Wichita, for example, the "hot" retail development on the west side is NewMarket Square (basically, an overgrown strip mall) at 21st and Maize, 4 miles from the nearest freeway interchange.  The nearby arterials are all five-lanes with TWLTLs which are made nightmarish to negotiate by hordes of thoughtless left-turners.  Meanwhile, Twin Lakes (1.5 miles from the nearest interchange) and Towne West (right at the I-235/US 54 cloverleaf) are both in decline, with neither being fully rented out.  NewMarket Square has grown in tandem with, and in service of, Reflection Ridge, a McMansion subdivision built north of 21st Street to accommodate middle managers at the aircraft plants.

I don't envy the residents of Reflection Ridge their money and their square footage, not least because they have to deal with Stalinist HOAs and a high property crime rate which is driven by frequent turnover of property, which is in itself a symptom of the property-as-investment disease.  For me it is perfectly viable to walk or cycle to the nearest supermarket; this is not so for the residents of Reflection Ridge, because they have to contend with single-point access to the arterials and five-lane hell once they reach them.  I can see my freeway access from my living-room window; they have to drive for ten minutes minimum before they reach a freeway.  The new is far worse than the old in terms of accessibility to transport, choice of travel mode for basic errands, crime rate, and many other quality-of-life measures.  It is also more expensive--houses in Reflection Ridge cost about twice as much per SF as older houses in Wichita.

But when commercial interests pour money into NewMarket Square and similar arterial-corner developments in order to service Reflection Ridge, and as a result existing retail developments like Twin Lakes and Towne West wither on the vine, that affects me personally.  It makes me more disposed to support controls on spatial development which are designed to maintain the vitality of existing development.

The problem is that any controls that are imposed must not have the unintentional and unwanted consequence of raising the cost of setting up a new business or developing land to the extent that they raise the cost of living.  This is the basic tradeoff inherent in planning control.  If an American supermarket chain spends just $2 million to develop a new site, and its British counterpart has to spend £20 million to develop a site of the same size, and both American and British supermarket chains operate to similar expectations of marginal profit, then how do you think the British supermarket chain recovers its higher land costs?  (This is an actual example taken from a [British] Competition Commission report into supermarket pricing, investigating suspected price-gouging in British supermarkets.)

The solution isn't to fight against these people, but to figure out what would actually make things better for them and for everyone.

Yes, it is, and high-density is not necessarily the answer for every region.  In Wichita, for example, it wouldn't fly.  There have been attempts to encourage high-density development downtown and these have had some success, but they have required the city government to enter the property market as a risk absorber and demand for condo-style downtown living is soft.

Sprawl and subdivisions are cheap in no small part because it's so oversupplied, and it's easy to do, never mind how bad it is.

Part of the reason subdivisions are cheap is that the infrastructure now provided for them--freeway access, flood control, etc.--is far inferior to that provided for comparable subdivision development in the 1950's and 1960's when there was a more firmly entrenched culture of prudential provision.  What cities like Wichita have been moving to, in default of such a culture, is a planning model which treats land as a fungible, consumable commodity.

I am not sure what to suggest in terms of a solution, except to point out that densification is not a one-size-fits-all answer for every community, any more than the old approach of subdividing full sections, providing basic commercial facilities at every mile intersection, and providing freeways on a grid with four- to six-mile spacing was for every community back in the 1960's.  History suggests that some communities will fail to find good answers, while others will be both smart and lucky.  Not every city can be at the head of the class; some will have to wear the dunce cap.

[berberry]

Thoughts? Anything similiar in your area?

I don't know anything about this specific situation, but I can at least think of one possible reason why a local group might prefer a cloverleaf or SPUI to a stack or directional:  aesthetics.  Stacks in particular - and directionals to a lesser extent - are almost always unsightly, the only exception as far as I'm concerned is when they complement their surroundings, which is fairly rare but does happen, like sometimes near a downtown.

I understand that cloverleaf interchanges can be horribly dangerous.  Even though I think they're often attractive-looking, I'd probably be opposed to building a new one except in small towns and rural areas, or on non-interstate roadways.  Stacks and modern directionals can be much safer and even a pleasure to use, but graded for their appearance from nearby locations they often rate an F-.

[vdeane]

It's one thing to be against the insane amount of subdivision development today and quite another to be against all suburbs and transportation other than mass transit.  As for what's to stop development along an arterial - how about zoning laws?  Getting people to view homes as places where they live and not as investments would help.  Demand was HIGHLY inflated during the housing boom because most of the buyers were buying the house not to live in it but to sell it in two years at inflated prices.  It was essentially a decentralized ponzi scheme.

I'll also mention that I've lived in upstate NY my entire life.  I never saw the housing boom.  We were (and still are) business as usual here - the housing market hasn't changed that much in my lifetime.