Recession Thanksgiving: Upsides of the Downturn

You know me, always looking for the silver lining!

As Thanksgiving approaches, here are some more reasons that the recession may actually be doing some good for the country:

1. AAA says South Dakotans will travel 2.6% less this year for Turkey Day. That's less fuel burned up, less pollution. Travel will be up slightly nationwide... but it almost has to be up from last year's amazing 25.2% drop in Thanksgiving travel.
   
2. From the same report, air travel for Thanksgiving has dropped an "astounding" 62% over the past decade. Thank high prices... but also thank the Patriot Act: AAA cites "stricter airport security" as one of the factors in less air travel (so, the terrorists are winning?).
3. Urban sprawl has been knocked on its can. Bedroom communities that relied on long-distance commutes to coax residents to join their housing booms now are looking for ways to develop rail lines, denser and more efficient housing, and local business.
4. More folks are shopping at Goodwill, Salvation Army, and other thrift stores. The National Association of Resale and Thrist Shops (yes, there is one) reports a 35% increase in resales. Of course, the recession has also cut back donations at some stores, as folks hang on to their old clothes to get as much use as possible from them... although NARTS counters that almost 70% of their members report increases in incoming inventory volume. Good thrift business is good news for the town of Wilmot, South Dakota, which holds the grand opening of its new a community thrift store tomorrow. The Replay Thrift Store is a product of the Whetstone Valley Horizons community revitalization project.

So darn that President Obama, trying to end the recession. Doesn't he see all the good this recession is doing for the country?

We're still far from the hard suffering of the Great Depression that made our grandparents such tough characters. But even the relatively small lemons of this recession may produce some cultural lemonade.

Declining Cities and Towns: Turn Declining Neighborhoods to Forest

I've heard our city officials express the view that we "can't just sit here and be stagnant," that Madison and any town must "grow or die." I'm not convinced that bigger is always better.

Flint, Michigan, may believe bigger would be better, but they are facing the reality that growth just isn't an option. Flint has struggled for decades as auto plant shutdowns have caused it to lose almost half of its population, from 200,000 at its peak in 1965 to 110,000 today. (See Michael Moore's classic Roger and Me for history—Moore notes that layoffs in Flint in the 1980s happened even as car sales rose and GM posted record profits.)

Naturally, Flint has tried to reverse or slow its decline. But as this New York Times article explains, some leaders in Flint are realizing the best way to save the city may be to shrink it faster:

Instead of waiting for houses to become abandoned and then pulling them down, local leaders are talking about demolishing entire blocks and even whole neighborhoods.

The population would be condensed into a few viable areas. So would stores and services. A city built to manufacture cars would be returned in large measure to the forest primeval.

“Decline in Flint is like gravity, a fact of life,” said Dan Kildee, the Genesee County treasurer and chief spokesman for the movement to shrink Flint. “We need to control it instead of letting it control us.”

... Mr. Kildee was born in Flint in 1958. The house he lived in as a child has just been foreclosed on by the county, so he stopped to look. It is a little blue house with white trim, sad and derelict. So are two houses across the street.

“If it’s going to look abandoned, let it be clean and green,” he said. “Create the new Flint forest—something people will choose to live near, rather than something that symbolizes failure” [David Streitfield, "An Effort to Save Flint, Mich., by Shrinking It," New York Times, 2009.04.21].

Perhaps related, I had a conversation at last nights MWAIS conference dinner with Dr. David Olson, University of Nebraska–Lincoln prof and Montrose HS graduate. We talked about small rural schools and small towns. For all of our affection for small towns, we recognize that maybe some dots on our map just aren't culturally or economically viable. I certainly don't want to be the one to decide which schools or which towns don't get to survive. Officials in Flint will find it similarly challenging to decide which neighborhoods to bulldoze. But I suppose there comes a point where urban (or rural) decline is like gangrene: you're not going to save every neighborhood, and maintaining roads and water pipes and schools amidst abandoned houses is only sapping resources from viable neighborhoods. Sometimes you have to cut off the leg to save the patient.

And in Flint's case, cutting off the leg isn't a complete loss. I do find something appealing in the idea of replacing a dead neighborhood with a forest, a thing of beauty that would improve the quality of life for the folks who still call Flint home and would benefit generations to come.

Grow or die—I still don't buy it. Maybe there is an equilibrium point where a town's size is just right. Maybe cities need to accept growth and decline in harmony with changing economic conditions. And when decline is inevitable, as in Flint, maybe you can still grow... grow a good forest.

Heartland Building Green Building... But in Green Location?

Jon Hunter notes with approval Heartland Consumers Power District's planned construction of a new green building in the industrial park out on the southeast edge of town. (Nice that the LAIC can convince the organization run by the LAIC president to move out there.)

I approve as well, but must ask the following: how green is it? Heartland currently has its headquarters smack dab in the middle of town, a block from Main Street, within walking distance of City Hall, the courthouse, LAIC HQ, China Moon, Dairy Queen, the grocery store, all those fine places a busy employee might meet or eat during the day. Now they are moving to a location at the edge of town, a good mile from the same amenities. How much more gas will folks use to get to this contribution to Madison's urban sprawl?

In other words, how green is your building when everyone has to drive to get to it?

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Update 2009.03.02: Recall also that in December, when ICAP agreed to move across the street onto the old Rosebud lot, Mr. Hunter noted with approval that keeping ICAP's 40-odd workers downtown was part of a win-win scenario. So may we conclude Heartland's move to the urban fringe is a loss?

Big Commutes, Big Houses on the Way Out?

NY Times plays catch-up with Madville Times this morning, turning its attention to the impact of rising energy prices on housing prices and urban sprawl. Folks in the suburbs and exurbs are rethinking the size of their commutes and their houses. A two-story living room in a big house an hour from work sounds great until oil leaps permanently into the triple-digit price range:

But life on the edges of suburbia is beginning to feel untenable. Mr. Boyle and his wife must drive nearly an hour to their jobs in the high-tech corridor of southern Denver. With gasoline at more than $4 a gallon, Mr. Boyle recently paid $121 to fill his pickup truck with diesel fuel. In March, the last time he filled his propane tank to heat his spacious house, he paid $566, more than twice the price of 5 years ago.

Though Mr. Boyle finds city life unappealing, it is now up for reconsideration.

“Living closer in, in a smaller space, where you don’t have that commute,” he said. “It’s definitely something we talk about. Before it was ‘we spend too much time driving.’ Now, it’s ‘we spend too much time and money driving.’ ”

Across the nation, the realization is taking hold that rising energy prices are less a momentary blip than a change with lasting consequences. The shift to costlier fuel is threatening to slow the decades-old migration away from cities, while exacerbating the housing downturn by diminishing the appeal of larger homes set far from urban jobs [Peter S. Goodman, "Fuel Prices Shift Math for Life in Far Suburbs," New York Times, 2008.06.25].

We kept our Lake Herman house relatively small (1232 square feet), and I can still ride my bike the five miles to Madison and back, so we won't be moving to town any time soon. But it will be interesting to see the shift of urban development back to livable urban centers, where people can walk to work and shop and don't spend their lives encased and isolated in big cars and houses.

Gas Price Spike Pops Housing Bubble

That's the conclusion reached by Oregon economist/consultant Joe Cortright in "Driven to the Brink," a study prepared for CEOS for Cities and noted on the Wall Street Journal blog. Writes Cortright:

The collapse of America’s housing bubble—and its reverberations in financial markets—has obscured a tectonic shift in housing demand. Although housing prices are in decline almost everywhere, price declines are generally far more severe in far-flung suburbs and in metropolitan areas with weak close-in neighborhoods. The reason for this shift is rooted in the dramatic increase in gas prices over the past five years. Housing in cities and neighborhoods that require lengthy commutes and provide few transportation alternatives to the private vehicle are falling in value more precipitously than in more central, compact and accessible places [Joe Cortright, "Driven to the Brink: How the Gas Price Spike Popped the Housing Bubble and Devalued the Suburbs" (PDF format!), white paper, May 2008, p. 1]

Cortright says that government efforts to help struggling homeowners make their payments and to crack down on predatory lenders will ease the housing crisis, but gas prices will have a lasting effect on home values and urban/suburban development. He sees an opportunity for cities to make themselves more livable and affordable:

The new landscape of housing prices and high fuel costs has important implications for public policy. Cities that offer attractive urban living opportunities in close-in neighborhoods, enabling people to drive shorter distances and make convenient use of alternatives to car travel, are likely to be more affordable and economically successful than places that continue to follow sprawling development patterns. Working to promote land use patterns that enable mixed-use development and provide more bikeable, walkable neighborhoods served by transit will provide multiple benefits, including cutting gas bills, reducing the trade deficit and reducing global warming [Cortright, p. 2]

Have you seen all that downtown development in Sioux Falls? Phillips to the Falls? Downtown apartments? All those folks riding their bikes to work? Sounds like they've caught the wave of the future.