Dense Thinkers

"New Urbanism," the latest fad in urban planning, promises less traffic, better air, and lower taxes. Here's what it really delivers.

Randal O'Toole from the January 1999 issue

(Page 2 of 5)

• Urban growth boundaries to restrict suburban expansion.

• Prescriptive zoning and development subsidies to force higher-density development inside growth boundaries. Prescriptive zoning mandates higher densities whenever building or rebuilding occurs. If your house burns down, you may even be required to build an apartment in its place.

• Discouraging driving through "traffic calming" measures such as narrow streets, parking limits, roadway barriers, and zoning codes that require shopping malls to turn their parking lots into apartments. There may also be rules requiring employers to write up plans to reduce workers' auto commuting.

• A focus on hugely expensive--and hugely ineffective--rail transit to the exclusion of highway construction or expansion.

New Urbanists firmly believe they can change people's behavior by redesigning the cities in which they live. That's not an indefensible notion, but it's not as easy as it sounds. Consider the fate of Laguna West, a widely touted Sacramento suburb designed by California architect and New Urban guru Peter Calthorpe. Calthorpe thinks suburbanites suffer from a "sense of frustration and placelessness." To fix this, he designs what he calls "pedestrian pockets" or "transit-oriented developments" that plug people into where they live.

As envisioned by Calthorpe, Laguna West would have consisted of a "transit center" surrounded by high-density apartments and condominiums. A ring of single-family homes on small lots would surround the high-density core. Scattered throughout would be stores, offices, and other commercial uses. Most people would be able to walk to shopping, and many would be able to walk to work or the transit center.

But Laguna West was a financial failure. No one wanted to live in the high-density area, and as a result its developer went bankrupt. Instead, a new builder put low-density housing in the core. While those houses were actually salable, their presence also meant that most transit riders had to drive to the transit center. Since Calthorpe provided no parking at the transit center, drivers parked in front of other people's homes. The homeowners objected and successfully lobbied to have the transit center moved outside of the development. Meanwhile, residents do all of their shopping at a conventional strip mall outside the development. The only commercial use inside Laguna West--a quick oil-change joint--hardly testifies to people's decreased dependence on the auto.

If it's hard to design a successful suburb from scratch, it's that much more difficult to shift residents from already established patterns of land use and behavior. But urban planners all over the country are trying to impose New Urban ideals on existing suburbs and cities. Metro even hired Calthorpe to show them how pedestrian pockets and transit-oriented developments could be scattered throughout the Portland area.

Congestion as "Positive Urban Development"

The vision of a place where people walk to the grocery store and take the train to work certainly has its charms. But far from delivering urban zones from the curse of "auto-dependent" lifestyles, New Urbanist policies have consistently led to significant increases in highway congestion; deteriorating air quality (because autos pollute more in slow-moving, congested traffic); dramatic infrastructure shortfalls as sewer, water, schools, and other systems designed for low-density cities must be rebuilt for higher densities; rapidly increasing housing prices as land becomes scarce; and disappearing urban open spaces such as parks and golf courses as developers turn them into residential and other developments. Such negative outcomes are not accidental. Indeed, they are the predictable, inevitable, and often intended consequences of New Urbanist plans.

Consider the New Urbanist claim that increased population density will reduce traffic congestion. The idea makes some intuitive sense: If people are closer to one another, to jobs, and to shopping, they won't need to drive so much to get to their destinations. But the reality is that while higher population density may slightly reduce per capita driving, it vastly increases congestion and pollution. Say, for instance, that doubling density reduces per capita driving by 10 percent. Two hundred percent as many people each driving 90 percent as much results in 180 percent as many cars. Unless the road network is expanded by 80 percent--which New Urbanists would oppose--80 percent more traffic produces a huge increase in congestion.

Real-world experience suggests that 10 percent less per capita driving with a doubling of density is about the best that can be expected. In fact, it may be overly optimistic. What's more, Census Bureau and Federal Highway Administration data show little correlation between density and the number of miles people drive. The Miami, Ft. Lauderdale, and West Palm Beach metropolitan areas all cover about the same number of square miles. Miami has twice the density of West Palm Beach, and per capita driving is indeed about 10 percent less in Miami. But residents of Ft. Lauderdale, whose density is halfway between those of Miami and West Palm Beach, drive more than residents of both areas.

In Portland, planners have used a sophisticated computer model to predict the effects of their plans on driving habits. Under their most optimistic scenarios, by the year 2040, auto use will drop from 92 percent of all area trips to 88 percent. Since planners assume a 75 percent increase in population, this translates to a massive expansion in traffic and congestion--they figure three to four times the current number of congested road miles.

But that's OK, say Metro officials in one of their we've-got-to-destroy-the-village-in-order-save-it moments, because congestion actually "signals positive urban development." Indeed, though they rarely talk about it in public, a major short-term New Urbanist goal is to increase, not reduce, congestion. After all, clogged, slow-moving traffic might encourage a few people to get out of their cars, while punishing those who do not.

Minnesota's Twin Cities Metropolitan Council takes a similar view of increased congestion. In addition to planning the Minneapolis-St. Paul region, the council runs the area's public transit system. Bus ridership has declined by 40 percent in the past 25 years, while highway traffic has greatly increased, with further increases projected. So what does the Metropolitan Council plan to do? Build no more roads for at least 20 years. The council wants to promote ridership on its buses by increasing highway congestion to intolerable levels. "As traffic congestion builds," says the council's Transportation Plan, "alternative travel modes will become more attractive." Of course, as congestion builds, alternative places to live will become more attractive too.

If New Urbanist attitudes toward traffic congestion are muddled--they seek to alleviate traffic congestion by increasing it--their attitudes toward commuting are no less contorted. As with the assumed relationship between density and miles driven, the real world refutes New Urbanist claims that low-density suburban development forces people to spend more time commuting. Census data show that, regardless of the year or the urban area's size, commuters spend an average of 20 to 25 minutes getting to work. This is as true in Los Angeles (with a metro area population of 12 million) as it is in Houma, Louisiana (68,000).

Indeed, if New Urbanists were really concerned about long commutes, they would advocate more road construction and less emphasis on mass transit: The average public transit commuter travels a shorter distance yet spends more time commuting than the average driver. The first-, second-, and third-longest average urban commute times are in New York, Washington, and Chicago--which, not coincidentally, are the urban areas with the first-, second-, and third-highest shares of commuters riding mass transit.

A similar paradox undergirds New Urbanist air quality policies. Since automobiles pollute the air, New Urbanists convinced Congress to deny federal highway funds to cities with significant air pollution problems. Not only does that policy make it tough for congested areas to build bigger highways, it almost certainly makes pollution worse in those cities. That's because most auto pollution is a function of congestion and density: Cars use more energy and pollute more when they drive slowly or in stop-and-go traffic than when they drive fast in free-flowing traffic. The best prescription for reducing air pollution, then, is to reduce congestion by adding highway capacity or making other improvements to speed up traffic.