Vol. 4 No. 1, (Fall) 1997 Douglas R. Porter, Managing Editor

From the Editor...Having just returned from several weeks' travelling in Germany and Italy, it's only natural to report some findings about growth management over there. So: some information on regional development issues in Berlin, based on several interviews with planners and researchers, plus the musings of Albert Speer, a name from the past, found while poking through the shelves as my spouse pursued her studies in the state library in Braunsweig, Germany. Plus some news notes from all over. Your comments and suggestions for future notes are, as always, welcomed.

"We must find new forms of cooperation that can bind together the participants in the city-building process." Sound familiar? Like a lot of prescriptions for today's planning processes? The statement comes from Albert Speer, once Hitler's architect and then a professor of city and regional planning at the University of Kaiserlautern in Germany. Interviewed by the editors of Living, Das Kulturmagazin for its February, 1995 issue on architecture in the 3rd millenium, Speer prognosticated on needs for new thinking about city planning. His proposals sound much like those echoing around lecture halls and conference rooms throughout the U.S. Below, a "trans-literation" rather than a literal translation of some of his thoughts.

About new strategies for guiding city growth: We're all of one mind about the goals of planning but conventional planning approaches will no longer suffice. Citizens are reacting against professionals making plans which then implemented in an orderly fashion by public officials. Citizens are demanding to be part of the process. But planners are not successful in planting new ideas in the heads of citizens, so that interminable arguments extend project approvals for 10 to 15 years. Meanwhile, conditions are changing and other issues become part of the agenda.

We need to find forms of cooperative planning that bind together, from the beginning, all the interests in the process of community growth and change. Specialists cannot be allowed to focus on single themes or sets of standards that exclude consideration of all the values and interests in community-building. Unfortunately, collaboration is hindered by bureaucratic and regulatory structures, as well as the outlooks of professionals who insist on meeting abstract goals that demand maximum resources. We must recognize that compromises must be made to reach consensus solutions.

The Potsdamer Platz area, once one of the best-known, busiest locales in the worldbut almost totally destroyed by the war and the wall, is now the site of the largest inner-city building project in Europe.

About achieving the "intelligent city" (the title of Speer's 1992 book): I make the case that "intelligent" city-building requires carefully worked-out strategies that demand utmost familiarity with local issues and are disciplined by the resources at hand. We tend to worry too much about bottom-line costs and too little about taking advantage of opportunities that might save money in the long run. For example, a constant concern is recyling available land and buildings in communities, which in many cases seems to stir speculation and price increases. If cities could learn to work with property owners and investors to manage revitalization and rebuilding processes, we could make intelligent and thrifty use of our available resources.

About attention to planners' ecological concerns, which often seem superficial: The continuing spread of cities into the countryside is a misuse of land that hinders the achievement of sustainability. In Central Europe we see a steady increase in the amount of urban land per capita. Although part of the increase may be attributable to the increase in single-person households, this trend is expected to continue for the next 8 to 10 years. However, if we reused already developed land more intensively, we could avoid any need for using more space. We have considerable amounts of land available in freight yards in old industrial zones and harbor areas that could be better used.

Another concern is the continuing wasteful consumption of energy, water, and recyclable waste, which demonstrates the undeveloped state of our ecological consciousness. We could do much more to use our resources wisely.

About traffic, cars, and living space: Finding parking space in larger cities is a challenge; it is said, perhaps jokingly, that 40 percent of the traffic in Frankfurt is made up of people looking for parking spaces. Transportation strategies should allow people to reach the city by auto while providing secure environments for people on the streets. Proposals to take all cars out of cities offer an illusionary solution. Automobiles are too useful for individual movement to eliminate entirely. The solution to traffic problems is to increase choices for travel, including walking and biking.

About Berlin's place in the urban universe: Berlin's seemingly intractable political, economic, governmental, and traffic problems stem from 40 years of separation into two camps. West Berlin was an island of well-being supported by the West and the federal government. East Berlin was in a tremendously desolated condition although the GDR (German Democratic Republic) poured money into it. The two basically different structures make it difficult to find a common basis for the city's development as a capital and as a key player in the European union.

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Media coverage of Berlin's massive development projects currently rising out of the ground, and its new position as Germany's capital, has tended to mask serious growth issues arising in the metropolitan region. Interviews with regional researchers and planners in Berlin suggest that Berlin is following trends in U.S. cities (and many European ones as well) as population and economic growth decline in the city and climb in the surrounding region. Regional planners, recognizing the handwriting on the wall and bowing to pressures from local governments, are postulating a multi-nucleated region in which major urban growth would take place in six to ten smaller cities around Berlin.

Berlin's designation in 1991 as Germany's new capital, to be moved from Bonn over a multi-year period, added impetus to major redevelopment efforts already underway in the historic center in response to the reunification of Germany and focused particularly near the Brandenburg Gate and the vacant lands once occupied by the wall. Its skyline marked by dozens of building cranes, the complex involves major corporations and development firms in creating a new commercial and residential core for this central location. In the Spreebogen area around the Reichstag, which has been completely renovated. After several design competitions, sites have been chosen for the Federal Chancellery (including a conference facility, Chancellor's Office, Cabinet Room, and 310 nonresidential development each year through the year 2000. administrative offices) and the Alsenblock housing the parliament offices and committee rooms. Both complexes will will adjoin new large parks and plazas. Other sectors of Berlin, as well, are experiencing significant, though less massive, redevelopment.

The developmental hustle and bustle so evident in the city belies underlying shifts in population and employment that are favoring the outer region rather than the inner city. Planned shifts of 12,000 federal workers from Bonn and elsewhere to Berlin are almost evenly matched by planned movement of existing governmental offices to other cities. Secondary employment increases stemming from the federal presence are not expected to make up the continuing drain of industries to the suburbs. All around Berlin, industries are popping up in rural towns and mid-size cities, accessible to the autobahns and to growing labor forces in growing residential areas. At the same time, while the federal government is pouring billions of Deutschmarks into improvements of the U-Bahn and S-Bahn transit systems and the commuter rail system, billions more are being spent on highway expansions to meet traffic demands as more and more Germans commute by automobile.

The regional plan now in the final stages of approval attempts to reckon with these forces by acknowledging the emerging importance of the cities and towns outside Berlin as growth areas. The plan process is being managed by a Berlin-Brandenburg joint planning agency that was established in the early 1990s in the wake of projections of rapid growth -- as much as 10 percent annually. Although this forecast hasn't materialized (growth is now pretty stagnant throughout Europe) and voters turned down in 1996 a proposal to formally combine the two states to create a metropolitan government, elected officials continue to support the need for a regional development strategy. The regional strategy emobodied in the current plan attempts to reconcile somewhat differing views of the two states, the 16 county-like regional jurisdictions, and the 230 municipalities, each of which is responsible for preparing local plans (complicated by the complete lack of local plans in the old DDR towns).

Of particular interest is the tug-of-war between officials of the state of Brandenburg, most of whom tend to reflect pre-unification DDR attitudes towards centralized planning and distrust of private sector initiatives, and officials of the city-state of Berlin, long an outpost of western thinking that expects to blend public and private interests. Adding to the intergovernmental tensions is the long-term relative poverty of the Brandenburg area (with poor soils and few other resources) compared to the past and present glitter of Berlin's life-style. Inevitably, compromises have been made.

The plan now under consideration, for example, originally proposed that growth be directed from the urbanizing fringe to six regional centers. After the political dust settled from local reviews, five more "supplementary" centers had been added, effectively establishing a growth center in almost every section of the state. Unlike most metropolitan areas in the United States, however, a powerful federal land use code continues to require local plans to include an urban reserve or greenbelt that can only be considered for development after an exhausting study process -- a requirement that restricts the options available to local planners.

Regional planners looking forward to plan implementation see additional problems, however. Funding for supportive infrastructure will not be plentiful, given current funding rates of outlays, raising questions about how growth can be steered to specific areas. Some local jurisdictions have made commitments (to major development projects and community land banks, for instance) that will be difficult to achieve, while others are inclined to distrust the motives and follow-through of private-sector developers who must be attracted to build in designated growth areas. The kinds of lengthy project approval procedures referenced by Albert Speer will make it difficult to redirect regional growth.

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My recent survey of transit-focused development in the United States and Canada probed the ways in which such development is promoted in 19 regions. (See Transit-Focused Development: A Synthesis of Transit Practice, TCRP Synthesis 20 for the Transit Cooperative Research Program, published in 1997 by the National Academy Press.) Besides the adoption of policy frameworks by regional and local jurisdictions, transit-agency activities in joint development, and always the interest of real estate markets in station-area locations, it seemed that a vital factor was supportive planning for transit-related development by local governments. "Supportive" is a loaded word, of course, and depends very much on local conditions, established traditions in local planning approaches, and the position of planning in decisionmakers' eyes. For these reasons, local transit-focused planning varies tremendously from community to community.

Some examples:

• Guidelines to promote transit-supportive land use have been produced by a couple of dozen communities, many of them incorporating the "new urbanism" concepts of Peter Calthorpe. The guidelines typically include criteria and standards promoting mixed-uses, transit-supportive densities, street patterns and pedestrian pathways to improve station access, and streetscape improvements.

• Portland's Tri-Met worked with local jurisdictions to prepare plans for areas around proposed transit stations on the new western line as well as older station areas along the Banfield line. Such plans, prepared in collaboration with neighborhood residents, emphasized the need for medium-density commercial and residential development near stations and recognized topographic and other site conditions, existing and planned street and highway systems, park-and-ride facilities, and other specific constraints and opportunities of station areas. In addition, illustrations of proposed types of development were produced.

• A number of California communities are pursuing redevelopment opportunities around existing and proposed stations through detailed redevelopment planning that includes specific plans and illustrated examples of desired projects.

• Atlanta worked with local businesses and residents around station areas to identify needs and to fund streetscape improvements to enhance pedestrian connections to stations.

• Cities such as Chicago and a number of smaller suburban jurisdictions in the Chicago area and other regions have proposed station-area improvements as part of detailed revitalization plans for commercial and residential areas around stations. Such plans typically identify specific types of improvements such as streetscapes, parking facilities, facade treatments of existing buildings, etc.

• San Jose's planning department and transit agency cooperated in preparing neighborhood plans for station areas that identified potential sites for transit-focused development and recommended types of development most suitable for the sites. The plans included detailed illustrations of suggested forms of development.

• Montgomery County, MD worked with station-area property owners to define design criteria for the Bethesda Metro Center site, including proposed building masses, open spaces, and relationships to surrounding developments. In addition, the county established conditional zoning opportunities for station-area sites that typically result in additions of open spaces and public art in proposed developments.

• Arlington County, VA established a general policy to promote high-intensity station-area development to protect existing neighborhoods, then worked with neighborhood groups to prepare detailed plans illustrating desired forms of development and relationships to surrounding developed areas.

• The Sacramento city planning office is integrating transit-focused forms of development into its program of community plans prepared in cooperation with community groups.

These planning efforts go far beyond mere land-use plans that identify general types of uses and densities to promote specific forms and qualities of development most suitable for supporting transit ridership. In establishing development expectations and securing community support in advance of development, they can prove enticing to developers in the market for exciting project opportunities.

At the same time, it must be underscored that all these efforts have worked most productively when allied, not opposed, to market forces that desire certain locations and types of development.

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Meanwhile, the median price of a single-family home has risen from $64,000 in 1989 to $139,000 in 1996, contributing to Portland's ranking by the National Homebuilders Association as the fifth least affordable city in the United States.

These articles appear just as Portland's Metro regional agency is discussing the amount of boundary expansion to accommodate development over the next five years. Earlier this year the agency set aside 19,000 acres as a 30-year urban reserve. Metro planners suggest a boundary adjustment of 3,000 to 4,000 acres; builders' groups talk more about 8,000 to 10,000 acres. Whatever the decision, it's clear that the UGB and its effects has risen to the top of the regional political agenda. Given widespread interest in the whole concept of urban growth boundaries, the process will continue to draw national notice.

Toronto's Regional Reformation: Word comes via the APA's Intergovernmental Affairs Division Newsletter (information from Frances Frisken, Professor at York University) that the Province of Ontario has responded to the Toronto region's growth management crisis by decreeing the reorganization of the Municipality of Toronto (six jurisdictions including the city of Toronto) and the provincial office of the Greater Toronto Area (GTA) (five regional governments, including the Municipality of Toronto). A new act consolidates the six local jurisdictions in the Municipality of Toronto into a single entity to be called the City of Toronto, and to create the Greater Toronto Services Board (GTSB) to replace the GTA. The effectiveness of the new GTSB is at issue, since most of its actions will require a two-thirds vote of its entire local membership. The new City of Toronto will have a 56-member city council and a mayor. Local municipal referenda registered 75 percent against the plan, but a subsequent court challenge failed to negate the act.

Privatized Roads (I): As a followup to our report on the sometimes illusive benefits of privatized highways a couple of issues ago, we note the August 23, 1997 report in The New York Times of major problems with Mexico's private highways and toll bridges. Over the last decade, the government licensed companies and banks to construct and manage 43 highways and 9 toll bridges. On several of these facilities, the tolls are the highest in the world, the prime example being a 13-mile stretch outside Mexico City that costs $6 to use, twice the daily minimum wage in Mexico.

The total investment of $12 billion is at risk, causing the government to propose a $7.5 billion bailout to renationalize 23 highways and 2 bridges, most of which carry little traffic and require expensive maintenance. Many of the facilities, it seems, were built in areas needing little additional capacity and priced at a level that dissuaded potential users. Some road-building companies, however, recouped part of their investments through lucrative fees paid during construction, and at least one road was built mainly to benefit a developer's ocean-front property. According to the Times, one prominent political scientist called it "a dumb idea that didn't work."

Privatized Roads (II): The Dulles Toll Road, not to be confused with the Dulles Greenway, a truly privatized road with problems described in our previous report, still imposes tolls to generate revenues. As the Washington Post reported on August 8, 1997, recent revenues were not up to par due allegedly to the nefarious scheme of a transportation engineer employed by the Virginia Department of Transportation. His job was to oversee installation of automatic toll collection equipment. It seems that he may have levied his own "sur-toll" by submitting phony invoices to the contractor, collecting up to $366,000 over several months. Although previously on a fast-track career to head a district office, his toll-taking days appear to be over.

The Washington Highway Debate: We reported in the previous issue on Washington's highway debate being waged between the business and environmental communities (to somewhat oversimplify the antagonists). The fourth and final report from the Washington Board of Trade traces today's traffic mess to decisions during the 1960s and 1970s to curtail Interstate highway construction through the District of Columbia and to a failure to connect radial highways by circumferential connections (presumably referring to the original proposals for outer beltways.) The resulting congestion has driven businesses and people to relocate to less congested areas, contributing to sprawl, the report says. Furthermore, the current "constrained" long-range plan proposes only a 20 percent increase in regional road capacity, far short of projected future demands.

The Board's solution: expand or build new highways, including new bridges over the Potomac. The evaluation postulated 40 major improvements, including widening the Beltway to 10 lanes plus 2 HOV lanes (compared to the existing 8 total lanes). Most of the improvements expand capacity for suburb-to-suburb travel. Significant transit improvements are downplayed as attracting relatively few additional work trips.

Virtually all the proposed improvements have or would stir immense controversy. Proposals for new bridges in the eastern and western sectors of the metropolitan area have been roundly criticized for decades already. The concept of adding 2 to 4 lanes to the Beltway, which adjoins builtup areas along most or all of its length, is sure to raise the hackles of residents in the countless neighborhoods it would impact (a major reason the Interstate network was not extended into the District).

As we commented about the earlier reports, none of the evaluations considered the potential effects of changing land use patterns to reduce dependency on automobiles over time. None of the evaluations considered the potential impacts of the highway building proposals on future land use patterns and, secondarily, on environmental and other resources. The reports also overlook the fact that new roads that have been built are consistently overloaded within a few years as people and businesses move out to take advantage of new highway capacities.

Editorial Comment: The Board's solution for 2020 is predicated on a 1950s rationale. We can't build our way out of the traffic mess -- the study demonstrates that, showing that all that highway building will reduce the number of congested corridors only from 14 to 9. Also we're probably not prepared to accept the other messes that we'll create in the process. There is a middle way that requires changes in our expectations for how we live and travel. It's called adapting to reality.

The previous issue reported briefly on the action of Maryland's legislature, to the surprise of many, to approve a new growth management act with the moniker of "Smart Growth," to take effect on October 1, 1997. The act calls for the state to put it's money where it's mouth has been, namely by directing state capital expenditures to designated growth areas. The legislation identifies some existing growth areas (e.g., existing communities) and directs county governments (which under Maryland law have urban powers) to designate others using criteria for need, densities, and utility services. Some exemptions are granted for existing projects and project planning, and for selected housing and other programs.

Overall, the law will direct hundreds of millions of state dollars to existing communities, infill and redevelopment areas, and contiguous growth areas.

The law represents the logical next step from the rather ethereal 1992 law which called for local government plans to reflect seven "visions," the most operative being to promote concentrations of development and protect rural, open space, and natural resource lands. Still, the new act takes a giant step forward from the base of existing state growth management acts elsewhere, including the vaunted Oregon and Florida acts. State growth management acts in general have been long on telling local governments what to do and short on corraling the actions of state agencies.

The law passed in large part due to its saleability as smart fiscal policy, with proponents heavily emphasizing its effects on efficient and effective use of taxpayer dollars and avoidance of higher taxes to fund infrastructure. The Maryland Office of Planning did a yeoman's job in holding workshops and working with key organizations. Compromises were made: Governor Glendening gave up a lot to get a lot. The state's Office of Planning was refused the power to single-handedly veto projects deemed outside designated areas; density and utility service requirements for designated areas were softened; economic development gets rather free rein; definitions and exemptions allow considerable room for manuvering. But the law is on the books, Smart Growth policies will guide spending, and state goals to support compact development are strengthened.

(For information, contact the Maryland Office of Planning, 301 W. Preston Street, Suite 1100, Baltimore, MD 21201, which has a "Smart Growth Fact Sheet that effectively summarizes the act's goals and requirements. Telephone: 410/767-4562)