Some Thoughts on SPLOST (and the Green Line Extension)

A SPLOST or a special purpose local-option sales tax is what the State of Georgia is putting to a vote in order to improve their pitiful commute times. I think this is a great idea, primarily because it localizes a normally toxic statewide issue. The  situation that comes to mind is what happens in Massachusetts every time funding for an MBTA project is brought up. At those times residents in the Western part of the Commonwealth howl (justifiably I might add) that they have had it with funding transportation projects for Boston and it's suburbs. As a result projects tend to die or not get the proper funding they need. 

For years the Green Line Extension Project has been bandied about but has yet to be fully funded. For situations such as this in comes a mechanism like SPLOST, which if localized down to a municipality or a series of municipalities, could make community specific transportation projects easier to fund, and funded by those who would benefit the most.  It would properly puts the cost of living in a high density urban environment on the people who live near and benefit from it. Now as a resident of Somerville I would have no problem being assessed an extra 1% on my purchases made within Somerville in order to pay for the project. I'm sure many people in Somerville, Cambridge & Medford (not to mention other North Shore towns and I-93 Commuters) would feel the same way.

I do not know the specifics of how or if you could pass something of this nature in Massachusetts but I think localized tax vehicles are a serious option in attempting to rectify the growing infrastructure spending deficit in this country.

Some Thoughts on Squares & Transportation

I was idly thinking about how transportation (be it mass transit, roads or highways) corresponds to population centers (more specifically squares and neighborhood centers) and I came to the realization that it is your classic chicken or the egg quandary. In order for people to travel to and from a location they need a means of transport, but in order for their to be a means of transport their needs to be a location. Which leads to the question why do we build new or better transportation? Is it because the population demands it or is it in anticipation of the coming population? I would say it's probably a mixture of both with their being extremes on both ends. Governments build bridges to nowhere and subsidize rural airports but they also are forced to add lanes to highways and expand train/plane capacity. An interesting thought experiment either way. 

Some Thoughts on Sentimentality

Humanity as a whole is a pack rat. Our sentimentality often gets in the way of sound economics and progress. Before we go any further I would like to point out that I am not for wholesale destruction of history in the name of new developments, I am a large fan of historical sights and history centered vacations. I'm just thinking maybe we shouldn't classify everything that is old as historic, maybe some of it is just not worth saving. To prove my point I went to try and find a specific article I read months ago on the Domino Sugar Factory in Brooklyn only to find it crowded out by many other articles about inane New York landmark classifications. I think we may be going a little preservation heavy.

Edward Glaeser puts it this way in Triumph of the City:

There is great value in protecting the most beautiful parts of our urban past, but cities shouldn't be embalmed in amber. Too much preservation stops cities from providing newer, taller, better buildings for their inhabitants. Height restrictions, in Paris and New York and Mumbai, may seem like obscure arcana of interest only to planning professionals. Nothing could be more wrong. These rules are shaping the future of our cities and our world. If the cities' history becomes a straightjacket, then they lose one of their greatest assets: the ability to build up.

While in DC a couple months ago, Katy and I went looking at apartments in Arlington just to see what you could get for how much. Before even entering an apartment it was amazing to see how because of DC's arcane height restrictions all of the large apartment complexes were pushed out into Virginia. Then when actually looking at the apartments we were shocked at how expensive they were if you wanted any semblance of access to the DC metro. To reiterate we were shocked at prices in Arlington and we have lived in downtown Boston, one can only imagine the prices in DC.

Of course the high prices are justified, DC is booming which results in more people flocking to the city. At the same time the supply of real estate is kept artificially low by the restrictions placed on developers who through market forces would love to build higher. As a result of high demand and a low supply you have high prices. It is because of laws like DC's and thinking that we are all going to be swallowed up by the city that strangles innovation and slows an economy. If people can't afford to get to the city in the first place how are they going to innovate? If people are paying more and more on living costs how are they going to spend money in other sectors of the economy?


Or as Ryan Avent (I wish he had a wiki page for me to link to) puts in in his book The Gated City

Our thriving cities fall short of their potential because we constantly rein them in, and we rein them in because we worry that urban growth will be unpleasant. The residents of America’s productive cities fear change in their neighborhoods and fight growth. In doing so they make their cities more expensive and less accessible to people with middle incomes. Those middle-income workers move elsewhere, reducing their own earning power and the economy’s potential in the process.

Our sentimentality is what stops us from progress that could cure diseases and help lift the poor out of poverty among many many many other advancements. But personally I would like to see a change in mentality solely so we can have all of America as a giant national park sans NH.

Some Thoughts on Urban Rings, Gentrification and it's Antonym

I have finally gotten around to reading Triumph of the City by Edward Glaeser. I've been enjoying this book and as a result you will be subjected to quotes of the book at length and my thoughts about it. You should pick it up; especially if you, like me, think cities are tantamount to a living organism.

I've always known that there are wealthy areas and there are poor areas but I have never really thought anything more of it until Mr. Glaeser put it like this:

New York, Boston, and Philadelphia have four transit income zones: an inner zone (like central Manhattan or Beacon Hill) where the rich commute by foot or public transit, a second zone (the edges of New York's outer boroughs, or Roxbury in Boston) where the poor commute by public transit, a third zone (Westchester County or Wellesley) where the rich drive, and an outer zone comprising distant areas where less wealthy people live and drive. Paris likewise has excellent public transportation and consequently has an inner zone where the rich use the Métro or walk. The next zone has the poor living in more distant areas that are still connected to the city by train.

That innately makes sense when you think about it. Just take a commuter train from the end to the city and you'll notice there are two separate patterns (this of course can vary from line to line, my example is the Rockport line) the first is the people who get on at the end of the line (Gloucester) and get off in the later third (Salem, Swampscott, Lynn, Chelsea) and the second are those who get on in the middle (Manchester, Beverly Farms, and Beverly) and get off in the city. Those who live at the end of the line for the most part live too far away to commute into the city every day (though some do) the next third is just far enough away from the city to be quaint and cosy but close enough to work there. The final third is the not yet gentrified area or where the former urban poor are being pushed to as a result of gentrification (reverse gentrification).

All gentrification is is the ever expansion of the inner city (which is now for rich people, not the urban poor) through the reversal of white flight. For whatever reason, the wealthy (white is not all that accurate) love living in the city and because of their penchant for quaint town houses there is an inevitable limit in the supply of real estate. Those of you who know Boston think of the ever expanding South End. The dividing line between the South End and Roxbury is Massachusetts Avenue, or maybe it's Melnea Cass Blvd. Regardless most can agree that with every passing year the latter is becoming more and more true. As a result of the demand developers buy up Roxbury and resell it as the South End. The constant demand insures that the city will continue to grow up and out, pushing the less fortunate and businesses to the periphery

What does this mean? I don't know really. I like to think of it as the city growing, harvesting the raw materials that surround it and growing ever larger. As transportation links become better and more common we will see the city continue to grow as more real estate becomes available and more desirable to those who work and play in the city. Is this how it should be? Again I don't know. While I myself love my two family and the square I live in I feel guilty for not living in a large apartment complex which is better environmentally and far more efficient. Yet you can not just make people live in high rises and tell others they can not afford to live in the neighborhood they grew up in. We should be integrating not alienating those people. Is that possible? I would like to think that in the end society tends towards equilibrium in order to avoid conflict.

American Exceptionalism Must Die

A couple Saturdays ago I attended the annual Symposium put on by Mass Humanities at Boston College. I defer to my wife on how things of this nature should properly be managed and since I attended only one of the three talks I will reserve comment. Also before I continue, full disclosure, I am an Evgeny Morozov fan.

I thought the talk was good and as much on point it could be with the topic pertaining to the naive debate that the internet can be a good thing for democracy, the participants mostly saw everything in the negative. I for one agree that the internet while having great democratic qualities (wikipedia, chat, forums) it has far more bad ones (malware, misinformation, government crackdown, selective censorship, etc). But that's not the point I'm trying to make here. I'm here to add my two cents railing against this American exceptionalism bullshit that happens to spew out of a pundit's mouth from time to time.

The particular pundit I wish to speak of is the Sunlight Foundation's Mike Klein (an amazing organization that I have great respect for, see this Planet Money story), whose pseudo rant about Americans being above allowing the government to co-opt them. Besides being incredibly rude in Mr. Morozov's arguement by saying that Morozov's accent (Belorussian btw) corrupts his thinking on the matter, Mr. Klein was flat our wrong in his interpretation of American history. His reference to the vote being given to former African American slaves and women as a sign of inclusion was pathetically naive. Both are evidence of our two party system co-opting a cause/people to further each individual parties own political gains. The American two party system (I don't think that exists for what it's worth) is adept at shifting with the national conversation and seizing on opportunities when they present themselves. African Americans and Women were each a large block of untapped voters who could help shift/maintain the balance of power. We like to tell ourselves it was the right thing to do, but hardly is that ever the case.

It might just have been ok if Mr. Klein's naive belief in the glory that is American people power was the only thing that bothered me, but of course it was not. What really got me was his insistance that America is not susceptible to Eastern European strongmen or Maoist party politics because we are America. Again with the incredible naivety but this time while having spent the whole time siting examples to the contrary. Jack Abramoff's 60 Minutes interview about buying participants in politics, our lack of campaign finance reform means incumbents rarely lose, the brutality towards OWS protestors. No it's not murdering journalists or rotating through presidents; but what is aides rotating through campaigns and administrations? What of campaigns speaking "unfiltered" to the American people or on slanted news programs?

Are we really that much better or are we just that much better at lying to ourselves?

Some Thoughts on America's Multi-Party System

From time to time political commentators and political novices (all mostly of the left variety) lament that if only America had a multi-party system like Europe does then we would all be ok. I think that's hogwash. America does have a multi-party system (I would argue at least 8), what is missing is the election day free for all and post election horse trading of European Politics. Which from political theater stand point is awesome and as a political junkie I would love to experience it. From a practical standpoint, not so much.

Instead of the chaos America gets that out of the way in the primary stage, narrowing the many factions down to two major choices with the malcontents of the two parties (usually the far ends and the center) occasionally posting third party candidates. Both styles result in the same thing the majority of the time, a right of center or left of center government (there are of course notable exceptions but you will be hard pressed to find many of them).

The key difference between the two forms is that one is good at hiding differences as well as co-opting them in the name of coalition stability (America), whereas the other (Europe) is good at highlighting these differences in order to promote individual factions and their respective hot button issues. Regardless each system has more or less the following 8 divisions:

Far-Left
Left
Center-Left
Center
Center-Right
Right
Far-Right
Politically Agnostic

In Europe they are given party names, in America they run in the Republican or the Democratic primaries. In America in a way it's like Communist party politics; all the factions fighting it out behind closed doors but in the end they all belong to the same party which has the power. The American system preserves stability for a set period of time while many European systems, because of their fractious parties, reflect more of the mood of the people and can be more volatile  (snap elections, government's falling after a crisis, etc).

Of course I am not advocating one or the other. I myself would prefer an open primary with a top two candidate runoff as my election model of choice. I think that would be fairer to states that tilt one way or the other of center (think Texas or Massachusetts). What I mean to say with this post is that most Americans don't choose to exercise their right to influence the coalitions that are the Democratic and Republican parties for whatever reason. Yet, in my opinion, even if they did the end result would more than likely be a centerish government such as American democracy, and democracy as a whole, has always put forth.

Some Thoughts on Townies and Rutherford Ave

The impetus for the post comes from this Boston.com article.

If you have ever driven down Rutherford Ave then you know it is nothing to look at. More than likely you haven't looked at anything because you are flying down the street at 55 MPH+. Is that safe? No. Is that a desirable place to open up a retail store? No. Is that a place to raise your children or walk your dog? Of course not. That is exactly why the city and state would like to change that. Their thinking is if you make the place more desirable it will attract development, with development comes people and with people comes economic activity, with economic activity comes sales tax receipts and increased property tax takes, which in turn leads to a better standard of living for all those around.

But Townies see it a different way. They wrongly foresee increased car use on their side streets (one would assume with an Interstate running parallel to a road with stop lights people would use the Interstate), they see it as a grab by developers (because their homes, retail and restaurants appeared by magic) and they see an influx of the dreaded yuppie. I understand people fear what they don't know, and I am all for people being critical of change simply to make sure the change is for the better. But development is not always a bad thing, shrinking and slowing the flow of traffic is good for the surrounding area. If you are concerned about traffic flowing to side streets then add stop signs and speed bumps. Not only will this limit outside traffic it will make the environment safer for pedestrians.

What townies do see correctly however is a rise in rents (though that is undoubtedly all ready happening) which is a real problem and should be mitigated for current residents so as to ease the change over process. With that said if those renters have a stake in the surrounding business community the rise in rent will most likely be offset by a rise in demand for services in the same community. If they have no such stake it may behoove them to find work nearer where they live or to move closer to where they work, though a negative in the short term it is very much a positive in the long term.