Sprawl, World Climate Change, and Aldo Leopold

The following is an essay I wrote for my current Environmental Planning course at St. Louis University.  The assignment was to look at a current issue in the context of the writings of Aldo Leopold.  Leopold’s book, the Sand County Almanac, was published in 1949 — the year following his death at age 61.

Aldo Leopold missed the most horrific land-use crime, suburban sprawl.  Decades after Leopold was thinking like a mountain, men were blasting the mountain to flatten it for big box stores and acres of free parking.  Leopold’s writings give us much to ponder
about the conservation of wild areas but little to work from with respect to the rapid development of land for human use.  The amount of land consumed per person has steadily increased with each passing decade, and combined with an increase in total  population the natural areas which Leopold worked to conserve are disappearing at an alarming rate.

With the exception of Pearl Harbor, the United States was untouched from the ravages of WWII.  Just shy of six decades since his passing in 1948 at the age of 61, the world has changed considerably.  Leopold would not be pleased with our progress of the last sixty years.  In these passing years nearly equal to his life on this planet, we’ve ravaged our own landscape unlike anything seen in Europe during the war.
We’ve spent lifetimes attempting to seize control of the planet only to have it shake us off at different turns.  Not to say this is right, just an acknowledgment that this is where society has taken us to date. There is no question that we humans have not been thinking like a mountain, but how to overtake and develop the mountain and everything around it.  Ironically, while Leopold’s writings started an environmental movement for the conservation of wildlife areas he seemingly did nothing to abate the consumption of land for “normal” society.
Leopold’s time saw few suburban communities.  Those he would have seen would be the “Garden City” developments offering pastoral settings ringing urban cores, radically different than today’s ex-urban areas.  However, a year prior to his passing, the rise of suburbia was on its way with the 1947 start of Levittown.  Interstate highways, drive-thrus, bedroom communities, and the cloverleaf interchange would all come following his death.
My personal land-use ethic relates to this sprawl and our consumption of land.  In short, I believe that we humans are here for a short time and perhaps do get to consume the land — but only so much.  Humans have been building civilizations for thousands of
years but never has planet earth seen a more destructive group of people.  We crossed the line decades ago.  So much so the line can no longer been seen in the rear-view mirror.
We are at a point where today’s generations must make up for the mistakes of past generations.  In growing regions they must seek to rebuild in a more compact manner while any new ground taken needs to be developed in whatever term you like to use —
old urbanism, New Urbanism or just plain urbanism.  Multiple modes of mobility need to be accommodated in whatever we build, in any region, from this day forward.  Anything less is without a doubt, immoral.
So where does this leave Leopold?  Nature should still be front and center in our minds — we must be aware of why it is that we are reversing our past mistakes.  Nature, and the preservation of the planet as we know it, absolutely must come first.  Interestingly, this involves building human habitats that has little to do with nature in its pure form:  commercial districts lined with streetcars and rows upon rows of multi-unit housing stacked over retail, for example.  Every region, large and small, needs an Urban Growth Boundary to contain it from encroaching onto the natural environment surrounding it’s borders.  Many regions, from the Springfield Missouri’s to the St. Louis’ of the world, have already developed all the land they will need for the next 60 years.
The era of the ‘ranch’ house in the 1/4 acre ‘country’ subdivision are over.  The naturalist packing the Subaru with Chinese-made camping equipment purchased at REI is also done.  Our fundamental relationship with nature must shift.  Just as Leopold
suggested multiple generations ago, we must make a major shift in our society in how we view nature.  Our land ethic is no longer simply including land (soil, etc…) in with humans but we have to think globally as we never have before.
We Americans are warming the planet as no other country is doing and it is up to us to make sure we don’t heat the planet to the point where New York’s subways are flooded, that Miami beach’s deco hotels are not under water, that once lush areas of the world do not become arid and so on.  Of course, other countries are doing their best to catch up to the U.S.
Leopold’s guidance has proven helpful with respect to managing wildlife preservation areas but has fallen way short in the rest of the earth.  Although we’d never advocate hunting humans, we do need to learn to manage ourselves and the land we consume
so that we can get ourselves back in line with nature.  At this point we have little choice.

Traffic Congestion, Friend or Foe?

London is getting tough on traffic congestion, charging drivers extra to drive in certain parts of town (see wiki). New York is debating a similar measure in Manhattan. At last week’s Rail~Volution conference, many attendees concurred that addressing congestion was a top priority. After all, cars stuck in traffic are not productive — they are just stationary polluters at that point.

But not all are in agreement. In fact, the keynote speaker Doug Foy indicated that, “congestion is our friend.” How can having motorists stuck in traffic be good? What is the upshot? Transit, of course. Well, except buses and streetcars that operate in traffic with cars.

To get federal funds to offset the costs to install a transit system one main thing must be shown — a time savings. This is why streetcars are not generally funded — while they offer great localized transit they suck at getting the suburbanite back to the park-n-ride after work or a game. So planners and engineers, trying to meet federal funding guidelines, focus on making the systems as fast as possible. Fast enough, to show a savings in time over the same A to B trip done by car.

Transit systems can only go so fast so the longer the trip by car, the better the transit looks. This is true for both new riders and for funding approval.

Engineers currently in court over the new Shrewsbury line found ways to save overall trip time. For example, the Clayton station is in the middle of the roadway rather than off to one side and more connected to the city. So while the trip time is probably less each time a train passes through that station I think it also has less passengers due to the highly disconnected means in which to get to the platform. Is this time savings really a gain if the total number of users are reduced?

Some were critical for a transit line not being run down the center of I-64 (highway 40 to locals) but in terms of time savings it never would have been justifiable. Stops along the route to pick up riders would have consumed more time than any delays from say Chesterfield to downtown.

The recent North-South study for future transit in St. Louis was focused on time savings too — how quickly can we get to the edges of the city limits to pick up suburban riders? Oh sure, we’ll stop and get some city folks along the way as long as they don’t slow us down too much.

Travel times throughout the St. Louis region just are not that great. That is, getting from the Illinois to St. Charles, from Chesterfield to South County or pretty much anywhere just doesn’t take that much time by car. This assumes, of course, that you have a car. Some of our worst congestion is getting a half billion dollar fix via the new I64.
So do we want to increase congestion in the St. Louis area to make transit a more interesting option? Hardly. So is congestion a friend or foe in St. Louis? I’d say neither. Increased congestion will only result in more money being spent on road projects. Besides, we are such a large region that a line or two of rail transit may never even impact where the congestion may appear.

In NYC, transit is simply a factor of life — so many people use the subways — reducing traffic congestion isn’t going to suddenly wake up New Yorkers to the idea of transit. However, it will free up road space so that buses, taxis and other vehicles have some room to function. In London the studies show that while some people use transit as an alternative people have also begun carpooling or altering schedules to avoid central London. Auto use in the core of the city is down a dramatic 25%. Back here in St. Louis we’ve got more road width than we know what to do with. In the city our streets were widened decades ago for the day when we had over 800k residents and streetcars.

So while it is easy for someone to claim congestion is a friend or foe, I think it really must be taken into context. The foe for St. Louis transit advocates, in my view, is our sprawling nature and divided political context. If the St. Louis County voters are going to pay for much of the expansion, it should serve them. Hard to argue with that logic. Still, I think a city/inner ring suburb series of streetcars serving local riders is the way to go.

Congestion will never be an issue in St. Louis. Never. We are so spread out and our population is stagnant. No, we have no congestion worries to help us justify transit expenditures. Oil running around $100/barrel, however, is our new best friend. Once gas prices make their steady climb past $3/gallon, with no return to the lower territory, we’ll begin to see some minor rumblings although nothing major. Once it passes $4/gallon, people will be calling out for more transit options and then we can hopefully raise the Missouri gasoline tax to levels say equal to Illinois.

The trick then will be do we try to run transit lines out to the far reaches of the region or do we focus in the central section of the region? Do we skip transit lines and stick with less costly methods like BRT (Bus Rapid Transit)? Regular readers know my thoughts, streetcars are the best solution for localized transit service — they offer the convenience of a local bus route while having the permanence of a light rail line to assure developers the line is there to stay. To those outside of the I-270/I-255 loop — you are screwed.

Our whole 16-county MSA (Metropolitan Statistical Area) could live well within a much tighter geography such as inside this highway loop. But market forces, combined with suburban zoning that mandated sprawl, has led us where we are today. Our homes and jobs are dispersed throughout the region to the point we have no congestion — just cars criss-crossing the region daily.

In our region congestion pricing is a mute point. Take care of the traffic signal timings and a few other things and we are good. In other cities, I think we need to work to reduce congestion through means such as congestion pricing. Letting congestion build for the sake of making transit look better is simply careless with resources and the planet.

I Biked, Walked and Scootered Yesterday

Heading from my new loft to the convention center 8 blocks west yesterday for the Missouri section of the American Planning Association conference I managed to make a trip on foot, one on bike and another on scooter.  The joys of multi-modal living choices!

The scootering, of course, was the easiest as it requires no effort and the weather was quite pleasant.

Walking was actually the second easiest.  It took less than 20 minutes at a comfortable pace.  I’m out of shape and substantially overweight so walking — and lots of it — is on my agenda.

Bicycling, on the other hand, was a chore.  The only one of my bicycles I have downtown now is my rather cool looking single speed bike, a bike that weighs in at 50lbs!  Add my weight and you can imagine the challenge of pedaling all that around.  Granted, it had been over two years since I had really bicycled anywhere so it felt good to be on the bike.  Plus those bike helmets are feather light compared to a motorcycle helmet.

Although the YMCA is across the street I’m really not a gym kinda person.  I prefer my exercise outdoors — more naturally.  Hence the walking and bicycling.   Well, time to hit the sidewalk and walk back down to the conference for the final day.

St. Louis’ Planning Director Speaks on Density

This morning Rollin Stanley, St. Louis’ Director of Planning & Urban Design, spoke at the opening plenary session of the Missouri American Planning Association Conference. Stanley took the place of Mayor Francis Slay.

Stanley alluded to spending another week in London coming up shortly — winning another award from an organization that doesn’t disclose the number of entries? Click here to read last year’s post. The topic this time? Who knows. I’m sure I’ll have to do another sunshine law request to get a copy of what is touted as a city-saving plan.

But Stanley’s talk this morning was really good. He is, in fact, a really great public speaker. This morning he talked about changing demographics and how we all need to watch out for it. He indicated that increasingly we will see more and more single person households and how the country will be quickly adding another 100 million people. This led to density — and specifically the need for increased density. Or densification as term goes in planning circles.

He is right, of course. Stanley talked about the need for tax revenues to help support city services. He showed the census tracts for the Central West End and how the population has dropped since the 1970s — some 30% if I am not mistaken. A dropping population cannot support local jobs and retail services.

Yet the city continues to build low-density, often single use, projects in highly urbanized areas. Downtown St. Louis has the urban character is does not through good planning but through the re-use of existing buildings. Buildings our current zoning codes wouldn’t likely allow to be built today.

Another speaker on the plenary this morning was the Chief of Staff to Chicago’s Mayor Daly, Lori Healey. Healey shared real projects that demonstrated, for example, Chicago’s commitment to becoming a green city. Stanley, however, could only illustrate what we are not doing — pointing to the attempt to build a high rise building at the NE corner of Lindell and Euclid — that was stopped due to neighbors. Stanley pointed out the location’s proximity to transit and other amenities and asked, “If we can’t build a high rise here, where can we build a high rise?”

Of course we all know that we can actually have good densification without having high rise buildings popping up on random corners. I’d personally much rather see dense corridors, with localized transit like frequent bus service or streetcars, occupied by 4-8 story buildings their length than the occasional high rise. This discussion of what we build, where we build it and how we fund it needs to happen quickly. As you might suspect, this is really about zoning.

Much of the city is zoning one or two family. Basically, we’ve zoned ourself into low density housing. Sure, there is nothing wrong with single family housing but not everywhere. Our major commercial streets needs to be denser — excellent locations for multi-family housing.

Stanley is a smart man, he understands zoning and urbanity. Unfortunately, he has no power and seemingly little influence without our ward based politics in this city. Hell, he can’t even get nice urban projects built blocks from his house, much less throughout the city. So while he talk on the need for densification was good I just have to wonder how far he will get in city hall. Good luck.

Auto-Centric Strip Mall in City Adds Pedestrian Access

Just a few weeks ago the curbs were in place for the auto drives/parking at the new auto-centric strip mall, located technically across the street from the Soulard neighborhood (see prior post). As of October 21st, no visible signs of any pedestrian access had been made — it was as if it was assumed everyone would simply drive to this location even if you could see the place from your home a block away.

From another angle we can see, below, the curbs all in place and simply ready for the asphalt.

Myself and others objected to the suburban design, no doubt. But lacking a single sidewalk connection was just too much — people in the city do in fact walk.

Today, above, we see that a short section of sidewalk was added between the public sidewalk and the auto drive. The newly poured curbs were cut out and replaced with accessible ramps. Although I have not checked the ramps for precise compliance at first glance they appear to comply. See there, it wasn’t so hard was it?

Does this new accessible entrance make this project urban? Hardly. Does it make the project minimally tolerable until it can be razed for something worthy of being in our city? Yes! Why something so simply as a few feet of concrete and assumption that people will in fact seek out a walkable environment (although this is not technically a good walkable environment) it not required from day one is beyond me. This is not difficult and for a subsidized project this should be the very minimal that is acceptable.

Thank you to everyone that express their outrage over this lack of pedestrian access and the overall suburban nature of this design.  Hopefully we’ll make enough developers come back and modify their designs to add pedestrian access that at some point they’ll just ask for it up front!  Of course, you’d think their architects and engineers would just include it to begin with —- it is a federal requirement after all.

As of this time the Starbuck’s, a separate structure at the far end, still does not seem to comply with the ADA standards for accessibility.