Federal sustainability programs at risk, CNU says
As the Obama Administration releases a budget that pleases some transit advocates, the Congress for the New Urbanism warns that the promising HUD, DOT, and EPA sustainable communities programs are facing the Congressional axe.
"We want to alert you to an impending threat to some relatively small but important programs that are on the chopping block in DC," wrote CNU CEO and President John Norquist and Chair Victor Dover. "Yesterday morning NY Times columnist and economist Paul Krugman warned about cuts to programs that can build a stronger future for America. There may be no better example than the attack on Sustainability planning grant programs. These grants fund planning that can save energy and increase productivity in communities across America."
The Partnership for Sustainable Communities is an unprecedented partnership between the US Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), US Department of Transportation (DOT), and the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to bring together housing, transportation, and environmental resources at the federal level to promote sustainable land use and transportation.
This partnership has worked together on 107 grants for planning-related activities through both Sustainable Communities and TIGER II grants, Reconnecting America reports. Forty-five regions and 61 individual communities received planning grants. DOT also issued another 42 TIGER II grants for capital projects, in addition to its previous award of 51 TIGER I grants in February, 2010. Approximately 59 of the 100 largest metropolitan statistical areas (MSAs) received some type of award, the organization reports. Of the 50 largest MSAs, 40 received an award.
In an email letter to CNU members, Norquist and Dover explain: "The House Appropriations Committee's 2011-12 budget proposal completely eliminates the HUD, USDOT, and EPA Sustainability programs. The new GOP majority also plans to try to rescind dollars already awarded by the Sustainability and TIGER grant programs. The Senate (which retains a Democratic majority) and President Barack Obama would have to agree to the cuts, but the Sustainability programs are at great risk as other appropriations with organized interest groups supporting them also face reductions. The highway lobby and the housing industry, for example, will be aggressively defending what they see as their interests."
Norquist and Dover urge CNU members to make sure that the recent sustainability grants — issued in October 2010 — "are used for good urban projects." They also ask members to fight to save the program. At the end of January, Shelley Poticha, former CNU executive director and current senior advisor for sustainable housing and communities at HUD, spoke at the Seaside Institute, urging new urbanists and smart growth advocates to get involved. "She said communities across America want and need design and planning advice. 'I just issued 40 mil of grants to change the codes of this country. Get off your butts and write them,' she said, imploring CNU designers to help local, regional governments get the planning and coding right."
Click on the link below to look at the Sustainable Communities Regional Plannning Grants for 2010:
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Comments
Can urbanist ideas stand on their own feet?
How critical are federal dollars for the formation of sustainable communities? Does it take HUD, DOT and EPA to build smart? Are good urban projects doomed if the federal government quits spending money it actually does not have?
Do this community's ideas have no market basis?
What are the advantages to focusing at the state and local level, without one eye (or both) on federal input/money/inteference? How can these advantages be leveraged? How can the components of good urban projects be made more clear to the stakeholders? What new forms of collaboration can be developed? Might a wider variety of local decisions surface more creative and useful ideas?
Designer Idealism vs Hard Core Realism
Federal dollars are in fact critical and the catalyst for sustainable urbanism, regardless of the deficit, and for several reasons:
1. It does not matter how good your New Urbanist plan looks like or how ell was conceived: there is not market demand for such plans, when 80% of the real estate buwsiness specially in housing development, mixed use or retail is dry of funding (and no short time good recovery in sight). There is no money in the development community to provide systematic change as the HUD grants will do (ask the Urban Land Institute)
2. It does not matter how solid is your New Urbanist design plan, or how well-coded, if the local regulations and policies are true impediments to sustainable urbanism. The federal money is aimed to change the rules of the game (regulations and policies) so urbanim can actually happen. Besides, developers don’t fund regional plans or pay for comprehensive zoning changes. That should be the federal or MPO government job. Local governments don’t have money, especially with a depleted tax base due to foreclosures and an average 50% reduction in the tax assessment of homes.
3. It is easy from the designer's point of view to think that your New Urbanist ideals are so compelling and good-looking that you will be able not only to get funded but have the endorsement of the regulators and the real estate market. Well, it does not happen just like that, and this is why many New Urbanism plans ended up on a dusty shelf (even in the good times). Yeah, design it...someone will build it..and they will come, right.
4. It is ludicrous that Republicans are attacking the only source of money that could potentially reignite the interest of the development community in investing in projects that do have a future (infill, less car-dependent). The housing and automobile industry has systematicallybeen responsible for exacerbating the car-dependent model of the typical suburb, and that model has been largely funded and lobbied by Republicans who like instant gratification in short term investment based on cheap housing. Long term view and investments which are tied to sustainable development by the way are in direct conflict with their short term view and need for easy money.
5. It is easy to attack the federal spending strategy to economic development and be concerned for the deficit (of course, after a Republican president spent 8 years creating it and vanishing a surplus). The reality is that private investment is in a funk (ask the ULI) and nobody will spend on New Urbanist projects (or anything else for that matter) unless you have key properties on big cities. In short: No Fed money, no nothing. We know that Federal spending in infrastructure was the only recourse after the Great Depression, why change now the strategy?
6. The market (and the investment) will lean towards reduced uncertainty and risk, and to business models that support a new model of economic development. That is being call sustainable development. However, it will not materialize up in the air from good intentions and policy. You need a large scale intervention in changing the systematic problems that got us here from the start. The HUD grants are aimed to do just that, and only the government is in a position to do that (or take a financial risk or investment of such magnitude).
I actually think that New Urbanists should be entirely happy with the HUD grants because they will ultimately create, make the case, and maintain the payroll of consulting firms working on sustainable urbanism. My 5 cents.
Federal funding = utopian dream
The federal government cannot keep borrowing without further damaging the economy. And while the federal government has Constitutional responsibilities, urban development is not one of them. To the points above:
1. The lack of market demand is a function of damage caused by flawed federal programs that need to change.
2. Change local regulations & policies locally; states are able to collaborate on regional issues.
3. No market, no project.
4. The federal government is not a source of money; they have to take it away from somebody to have any.
5. In short: no cuts in federal spending, no economic growth, no projects.
6. Get the feds out of the way and let the market work. Sustainable development, like other things, can result from hard work by teams of people. "Free federal money" is a utopian dream, unsupported by the economic facts.
I actually think that New Urbanists need to stop thinking of New Urbanism as a federal program, and address it as a market issue.
A Catalytic Federal Contribution
In this new economy, most recognize that the federal government must stop spending money it does not have. On the other hand, the federal government has played an important role in creating value. One of the most effective federal interventions in our cities was the Hope VI program which established an important role for HUD in partnership with private developers. Although it had many flaws, Hope VI provided seed money and gap financing for dramatic urban transformations that would not have otherwise occurred. The program enjoyed bipartisan support, was crafted by HUD and CNU, and replaced horrible public housing with new mixed income neighborhoods. This use of taxpayer money created dramatic returns for our cities and began the process of getting the government out of the housing business. There are important team responsibilities for both the public and private sectors in complex redevelopment efforts. You can't expect the public sector to just quit without damaging the private sector.
Catalytic activity is not limited to the federal government
So, having had federal involvement in the past, with the resulting "dramatic urban transformations" noted by the previous writer, what now, given that the federal government does not, in fact, have money for these and many other programs, is the catalyst?
Is the private sector so incapable as to need ongoing government involvement of some type? The private sector has always had a learning curve! I submit that they can develop their own catalytic efforts.
I can and do expect the federal part of the "public sector" to just quit spending money on housing. I expect each of the states to pick their own way through this landscape, while developing a variety of models on the way and learning from each other. I expect the private sector to make this work, and to do a better job without the federal government in the mix.