Deregulate Parking, Says Obama Administration

Great to see the Obama administration come out in favor of housing for people over storage for cars:

“Parking requirements generally impose an undue burden on housing development, particularly for transit-oriented or affordable housing,” the paper states. “When transit-oriented developments are intended to help reduce automobile dependence, parking requirements can undermine that goal by inducing new residents to drive, thereby counteracting city goals for increased use of public transit, walking and biking.”

The anti-parking stance came from a “Housing Development Toolkit,” a broadside against zoning. The report says zoning “reduced the ability of many housing markets to respond to growing demand,” making affordable housing hard to find in high-price areas.

Nixing off-street parking is not the paper’s only recommendation. It also advocates taxing vacant land, making it easier to get permits and making cities more dense.

This is the opposite of a big government mandate - it's the Obama White House urging communities to get rid of local regulations that restrict new housing and smart growth.

Massachusetts Scores Big on Best Complete Streets Policies

It seems like common sense: Make policies to help people get around, not just to help vehicles get around. Massachusetts does a better job of getting it right than many places, with Littleton and MassDOT earning recognition from Smart Growth America.

Then again, even here, many communities still have a long way to go. Why is it so hard?

Almost all of the key decision makers drive everywhere. At the top, governors and state agency heads are often chauffeured in SUVs and only wait for public transit in photo ops. And studies show politicians at all levels are most responsive to the concerns of wealthy constituents, who are much less likely to have to wait for a bus or bike to work or school than low-income families.

Signs You Should Stop Thinking About Smart Growth & Enjoy Your Egg Nog

When you see your future mother-in-law's holiday village and think, "Needs more height & density near the train station."

Merry Christmas, everybody.

Like Affordable Housing? Oppose Parking Minimums

Even within the city limits of Boston, one of America's great walkable cities & home to one of the country's most-used transit systems, developers are required to build a minimum of half a space for each unit of housing up to a ridiculous 1.5 parking spaces per unit of housing, whether the residents want them or not. It adds to the cost of housing and adds an incentive to drive - if you're forced to pay for a parking spot, you feel like you should keep a car there (or at least a large, rectangular box).

But some mavericky developers are boldly refusing to build things their customers don't want to pay for:

One of those developers is Dave Mullens with the Urban Development Group. He opened the Irvington Garden in a close-in Northeast Portland neighborhood last year. It’s 50 units with no parking places.

“The cost of parking would make building this type of project on this location unaffordable,” Mullens says.

Mullens calls the difference “tremendous.”

“Parking a site is the difference between a $750 apartment and a $1,200 apartment. Or, the difference between apartments and condos,” he says. Mullens says the current market is friendlier for affordable rental apartments than for condominiums. He says the Irvington Garden filled within weeks of opening, and has remained that way. He says the majority of renters don’t have cars – though some do, and park on the street.

And when some renters DO park on the street? Duncan Black flagged the worst horror stories single-family-home-owning neighbors have had to offer:

“The personal anecdotes I’ve heard have to do with elderly relatives coming to visit, or driving into the neighborhood, and having to park a block or two away, and/or fears about that.”

Parking a block or two away??

New Poll: Americans Feel Trapped in Their Cars

Americans would like to have more public transit options and don't know just how skewed our transportation spending is towards new roads, according to a new Natural Resources Defense Council poll:

• 55 percent prefer to drive less, but 74 percent say they have no choice 
• 63 percent (more than three in five Americans) would rather address traffic by improving public transportation (42 percent) or developing communities where people do not have to drive as much (21 percent) – as opposed to building new roads, an approach preferred by only one in five Americans (20 percent) 
• Americans over-estimate what their state spends on public transportation, estimating that it is an average of 16 percent of their state’s transportation budget – and still they would like that amount nearly doubled, calling for their state to spend an average of 28 percent on public transportation (note: The average percentage of transportation money – state plus federal – spent on transit over the past three years was 6.55 percent per state) 

Opponents of smart growth like to claim America is sprawling and car-dependent because people have sat down, carefully considered the options, and decided to move to a place far from work & friends so they can waste tons of money and countless hours stuck in traffic. But there are two realities here: People don't have all day to crunch the numbers on this stuff; and the amount of transit and by extension the amount of housing near transit is limited (and in some cases it's deliberately limited). So people often just figure out where they'd LIKE to live, then keep looking further and further away from that spot until they can find someplace that's affordable.

This poll suggests many Americans would like to live somewhere that's affordable AND has transit options, and they don't realize just how much of their tax money is going instead to subsidize The Next Phenomenally Expensive Paving Project That Will Surely Solve All Our Transportation Problems.

Walkable Development Again Blocked in Chesapeake

Neighborhood opposition has killed a plan to build 260 apartments in Chesapeake and instead only 30 to 40 single-family houses will be built:

[NIMBY activist Miguel] Walker also says the quality of Hickory schools would draw families with school-age children to the Chapel Hill Apartments.

"I couldn't blame anybody who would want to," he said. "But it also comes down to renters. I don't know if this sounds terrible: Renters aren't really going to be invested in the community."

A similar saga played out last month in Western Branch, but on a larger scale, when City Council killed the massive Breckinridge development. Walker said he's expecting a call from John Arthur, who spearheaded the fight against Breckinridge, but he also has picked up pointers about the Western Branch efforts from reading newspaper accounts.

That Breckinridge development would've brought 1,500 new living spaces and millions more in economic development to an area in decline, but Chesapeake blocked it anyway, again citing concerns about new students. As Matt Yglesias points out, "'the schools here are good and people will want to send their children to them' operating as a reason to not let people move to a neighborhood has a particularly toxic impact on educational equity and effectiveness."

You often hear people say that Americans must want sprawling suburban lifestyles, because otherwise more people would live in smart growth-style dense developments and any attempt to say otherwise is a secret UN socialist plot. But here we have two very real examples of existing single-family homeowners preventing new apartments from being built, forcing hundreds of people to live further out and drive further to get where they want to go, spending more on gas and spending less time with their families in the process.

Arlington Board Candidates Only Paying Lip Service to Smart Growth?

Check out my latest post to Greater Greater Washington.

Ask Senators Warner & Webb to Save Smart Growth Support

Just called the offices of Sen. Mark Warner (202-224-2023) and Sen. Jim Webb (202-224-4024) and asked them to support continued investment in the Partnership for Sustainable Communities. What is it?

When cities, towns and suburbs plan their future transportation, housing, water and sewer infrastructure and public services strategically, they save money and so does the federal government. The Partnership for Sustainable Communities, a collaboration between the EPA, DOT and HUD, is about making that type of planning possible. 45 regions containing 80 million Americans in rural, suburban and urban communities are already benefiting from the Partnership programs.

Investment? Planning? Of course it was cut by House Republicans in the 2012 budget, while tax cuts for the rich and subsidies for oil companies were continued. Cutting investments in America's future that cost just $527 million a year in the name of protecting tax cuts for the rich is like telling your kids you can't afford vaccines because you have to keep making payments on your Porsche.

Click the above map for an interactive look at how the program has delivered $3.4 million in targeted investments to Virginia. Doesn't sound like much, less than Washington Redskins Coach Mike Shanahan's 2011 salary, but that's exactly the point - small amounts of money well-targeted can deliver big benefits. The program has also worked closely with Virginia Tech's Metropolitan Institute.

Learn more at SmartGrowthAmerica.org, find your senators at Senate.gov, and please call them to support this incredibly inexpensive, valuable program.

Do Environmentalists Have a Fear of Heights?

Must-read article from The Atlantic on why, in most cases, conservationists shouldn't support height restrictions on new construction.

Generation Y Hates Loudoun County

At last week's National Association of Home Builders conference, panelists presented research showing the Millenials despise McMansions:

A key finding: They want to walk everywhere. Surveys show that 13% carpool to work, while 7% walk, said Melina Duggal, a principal with Orlando-based real estate adviser RCLCO. A whopping 88% want to be in an urban setting, but since cities themselves can be so expensive, places with shopping, dining and transit such as Bethesda and Arlington in the Washington suburbs will do just fine.

“One-third are willing to pay for the ability to walk,” Ms. Duggal said. “They don’t want to be in a cookie-cutter type of development. …The suburbs will need to evolve to be attractive to Gen Y.”

Outdoor space is important—but please, just a place to put the grill and have some friends over. Lawn-mowing not desired.

Makes you wonder. Who's going to live in all those McMansions when the baby boomers no longer need or want them? Will those areas redevelop sustainably, or will they just slowly revert to forest, The World Without Us-style?