Buzz: In With "Density" . . .

From City Journal, please read Get Dense. The subtitle tells the story in a nutshell:

"It’s time to stop wasting land and resources in the name of environmentalism."

More than three decades ago, the British economist E. F. Schumacher stated the essence of environmental protection in three words: “Small is beautiful.” As Schumacher argued in a famous book by that title, man-made disturbances of the natural world . . . should have the smallest possible footprints.

The idea is that the environment is protected when human activities are concentrated into a smaller footprint. "Sprawl" immediately came to mind when reading this, and author Robert Bryce did not disappoint.

 Perhaps the most familiar example of environmentally friendly density, though, is the way humanity has concentrated itself by moving from the country to cities, a process that is happening especially rapidly in the developing world. The opposite process, suburbanization, requires far more land area per resident—and therefore more miles of streets, electricity cables, and sewer lines . . .

Bryce goes well beyond sprawl to address other aspects of human development.  He exposes through specific examples of food and energy production  how policies promoted as being environmentally protective can be exactly the opposite when the density of development is taken into account.  The numbers will open your eyes. He summarizes:

The greenness of density leads to two conclusions. First, those who make environmental policy should consider density a desirable goal in nearly all the issues that they confront. And second, the real environmentalists aren’t headline-seeking activists and advocacy groups; they’re farmers, urban planners, agronomists, and, yes, even natural-gas drillers and nuclear engineers.

Bryce's article is well worth reading... and we now have a new word to bring into discussions: "density."

Buzz: The Sprawl Lobby .

From Next American City: Sprawl, Under Any Other Name, is Still Sprawl, we learn that in the Cleveland suburbs, politicians woke up to the fact that sprawl development hurts locally grown small businesses . . . but they cleverly tried to promote more sprawl by making the development aesthetically appear to be more small businesses. 

Now, why do we keep up with the illusion? Especially when the reality is a stagnant region with little-to-no job growth, and a concomitant infrastructure footprint that has become so unsustainable . . .

Part of the reason for this . . . is the sprawl lobby.

The sprawl lobby is real, and it’s powerful not only in Ohio but everywhere. It largely represents road and home construction companies, developers and home builder associations with deep pockets, and in the case of Ohio is tied to the farm lobby. Yes, the farm lobby has been fighting for farmer’s rights for generations, which means in the current context a refusal to allow agricultural zoning to occur as it would deflect from potential windfalls if and when the farmer decides to get out of the milking cow business.

We've seen this all happening right here in Greater Utica, too.  Now we have new words to describe those promoting sprawl: the Sprawl Lobby.

New Hartford Development: Urban Cancer . . .

"Cancer ... is a large group of different diseases, all involving unregulated cell growth."  (Wikipedia)

"Urban Cancer is sprawl development, involving unregulated regional growth." (me)

"Urban cancer" immediately came to mind when I read the OD Story "Rezoning plan returns to New Hartford," where developers are asking the Town to re-designate about 250 acres to permit mixed uses including small businesses, retail, offices and restaurants. Supposedly the proposal was withdrawn and resubmitted so that it could incorporate goals from the Town's comprehensive plan. (One suspects that the recent change in the composition of the planning board might also have something to do with it.)


New Hartford Online posted on this subject as well, and listed some of the  interesting/troubling comments of the focus group that contributed to the development of the Town's Comprehensive Plan Update:

• This becomes a mini-city if everything comes together . . . 
• Town needs to be a leader and needs to be able to discuss issues such as the decay in the City of Utica; NH is a jewel in a rusting hulk
• NH has shown a lot of leadership in spite of itself commercially and etc. . . .
• NH competes with Utica for offices; businesses are moving out but NH isn’t prepared with a nice business park

Why is there competition between New Hartford and Utica? How is it possible? Does it make sense? This is where the analogy with cancer comes in.

New Hartford development in the Commercial Drive/Seneca Tpk/Route 840 area far exceeds what a town of 20,000 people needs. Rather, this vast commercial development depends upon the 60,000 people living next door in the City of Utica for its survival, for both customers and employees, and to make municipal services affordable.

This development, which is on the southwestern fringe of Greater Utica's urbanized area, would have been more sensibly placed within the City of Utica to be closer to customers/employees, and, more importantly, where the dollars it would generate could be used to maintain municipal services.  Instead, the economic activity generated by a Utica-resident population benefits New Hartford, leaving fewer dollars in Utica to maintain services and crumbling infrastructure.  The result is what a NH focus group calls "decay in the City of Utica" while "NH is a jewel in a rusting hulk."  From a regional perspective, however, the development is more appropriately described as a cancerous tumor because it is draining the life out of its host.

One market cannot spread its population and economic activity over double the area without increasing maintenance costs. Because municipal services need to be extended to cover the newly developed area, it's not hard to see why taxes/user fees in BOTH Utica and NH must go up. This makes the entire Greater Utica area non-competitive with other areas.  Like a cancer ultimately kills its host and itself, this sprawl development ultimately will kill the entire region. 

How this happened is much like what happens to people when they get old, things start breaking down, and they become prone to cancer. It takes more effort to keep an older person fit and trim than a younger one. If they get the right medicine they can keep going, but the wrong medicine will either do nothing or make things worse.

Utica was a "mature" community sixty years ago when it was filled to capacity, but was showing its age. Envious of the shining new cities that arose from war's ashes in Europe, US experts of the day recommended duplicating the process by leveling whole sections of cities (with bulldozers instead of bombs) and building anew: Urban Renewal.  At the same time, US experts recommended arterial highways as the antidote to traffic congestion, predicting that downtowns would continue to grow by making it easier to whisk people in an out.  In hindsight, both were not only the wrong medications, they combined to make the patient very sick, not only here, but in other cities as well.  Urban Renewal destroyed the "critical mass"  of activity needed to attract new investors.  Arterials destroyed the advantage of a central location in the city by making suburban greenfields on the urban fringe as accessible as downtown.   Instead of high quality construction on expensive downtown land, we have low quality construction on the fringe, and depressed values downtown. 

More bad medicine came when regionalization of water and sewer systems with uniform rates made outlying suburban locations as cheap to develop as in-city locations in spite of the greater infrastructure needed to extend the services there.  Compound this with local development policies that gave PILOTs and other tax breaks for green-field developments. Development in New Hartford is probably more the product of these occurrances than anything done by the Town itself.

 Something is very wrong with local development.  Figuring out the answer will not be easy.

The More Things Change, the More They Remain the Same

Out with the old in 2012 ... the old Airport Commissioner, that is. Per the OD:

Oneida County Aviation Commissioner Vernon Gray is out. . .

“It’s a new term, and I made the decision to go in a different direction,” County Executive Anthony Picente said. . . .

David Wood, the chairman of the county Board of Legislators Airport Committee, said he had been informed Wednesday evening of the decision not to reappoint Gray.
“While he was there, Vernon certainly was instrumental in improving the airport,” he said. “I think there was a difference in vision between him and Tony.”

It seems like only yesterday Mr. Gray was appointed. Back then (November, 2008) I took to task some of the new commissioner's comments to the press ("New Commissioner, Old Vision") and then HE took ME to task to set the record straight!  The fact that he took time to do so in a thoughtful manner gave me reason to hope that he could turn things around.

Per the Rome Sentinel, Board Chairman Fiorini indicated that when Mr. Picente advised him of Gray's dismissal:

"He didn’t go into it," said the board chairman. "Obviously he’s got his reasons. I can’t say what went wrong... I’m not privy to that."    

If Mr. Fiorini can't say what went wrong, who can?  

Somehow I have the feeling that the County has just lost a good man.

Perhaps the reason why no one seems to be saying what went wrong is because no one really knows what went wrong.  To judge right from wrong, you need some standard for comparison. In the case of running any operation, the standard is the business plan.

In "Poised for Take Off???" 3 years ago I asked regarding Griffiss:

To the "officials:" Where's the business plan?

• What is the need that this over-sized airport will fill?
• What data exists and what assumptions are being made to support any conclusion that this albatross can ever be made profitable?
• What data exists and what assumptions are being made to support any conclusion that this albatross will ever return more to the taxpayers than is being taken from them

These questions need to be asked again today.  What is the "different direction"  that the County Executive wants to move in? Does anyone really know?  Is there data to support the vision? The impression with the airport has long been that the ones wielding the power are amateurs and don't know what they are doing.


The more things change, the more they remain the same.

Common Sense . . . From California!

Unlike New York where the Court of Appeals has given the green light to crony capitalism in spite of the State Constitution that provides otherwise, California (of all places!) is moving in the opposite direction. Per City-Journal: Crony Capitalism Rebuked:

On December 29, the California Supreme Court handed down what the state’s urban redevelopment agencies (RDAs) and their supporters called a “worst of all worlds” ruling—first upholding a law that eliminates the agencies, then striking down a second law that would have allowed them to buy their way back into power. This was great news for critics who had spent years calling attention to the ways modern urban-renewal projects distorted city land-use decisions, abused eminent-domain policies, and diverted about 12 percent of the state budget from traditional public services to subsidies for developers, who would build tax-producing shopping centers and other projects sought by city bureaucrats. As of now, the agencies are history, though the redevelopment industry is working to craft new legislation that would resurrect them in some limited form. . . .

The article, like many on City-Journal, is a good read.

Bring the Money to US . . .

A quick little video that explains how our US tax system is killing jobs . . .

A Change of Perspective . . .

Once again, the Arterial plays into the Observer-Dispatch's Good, Bad and Ugly column:

Once again the Utica Common Council has shown its lack of good sense by attempting to undermine the state Department of Transportation’s proposed North-South Arterial project in west Utica. In a 5-4 vote, the council voted this past week to urge the DOT to consider keeping Sunset Avenue open where it intersects with the arterial.

This should not be viewed as an "Arterial project," but, rather, a "project to close Sunset Ave and Warren St at the arterial, and close Lincoln Ave. at Court St."


A change of perspective from "commuter-orientation" to "resident orientation"  is needed to understand the true damage that the State's proposal will do to the city. These changes will disrupt traffic patterns that have been established for perhaps 150 years, and will be on top of other disruptions the State has done through other rounds of arterial-making. 


Simply put, the state proposes to sacrifice the proper functioning of Utica's local street system to make it easier for people to get to and from the suburbs. 

That is wrong, and the Council is right in taking a stand that protects Utica's interests.

A New Law for a New Year?

Per the Post Standard: Proposed NY law would require documents to be made public before meetings. 

Amen to that idea!  All too often members of the public that are concerned enough to attend city or town council meetings have no idea what their representatives are discussing because proposed legislation is been distributed solely amongst the representatives.

In this day when almost any individual can publish information and make it available to the world on the web at virtually no cost, there is simply NO EXCUSE for legislative bodies to not make this material available to the public in advance of meetings by posting it on the Internet.  It is actually less time consuming and labor intensive to publish on the web than to print and physically distribute materials.

According to the article, the Governor has until today to sign this into law.  Let's hope that he does.

Drama . . . On Sunset Avenue!

By the West Utica Puppet Theatre . . . (Of Course!)

Recommended Reading . . .

A couple articles caught my eye the last few days that seemed relevant to Utica.

Mario Polèse in City-Journal: Urban-Development Legends - Grand theories do little to revive cities 

 . . . just as personal finance has yet to unlock the secret of how to get rich, no surefire government-led strategy exists that can turn around a troubled economy . . .
The history of local economic development is a story of academic fads.

See how many "fads" listed in the article have been heard around here coming from our local "Economic Development" gurus.

Alex Ihnen in Next American City: A Highway Runs Through It

As the St. Louis Arch itself neared completion in 1964, before the surrounding park became anything more than a parking lot and construction site, the area was amputated from the city by what would come to be referred to as a “crushing maze of infrastructure”. Interstate 70 was being built, resulting in a maze of sunken and elevated lanes that truncate the city’s street grid, and separate its residents from the memorial and the Mississippi River. . . .

And almost 50 years later . . .

When the public has had a chance to participate, the message has been clear: the boulevard conversion should receive full consideration, it should be studied.

There is still time for discussion about this issue; the question is: will anyone listen?

A half a continent away . . . but the same discussion that we have in Utica.

Unsustainable. . . .

House Passes Bill to Avert Government Shutdown 

With the government just hours away from running out of money for a wide range of programs, the House of Representatives approved on Friday a nearly $1 trillion spending bill. The Senate most likely will pass it on Saturday and send it to President Barack Obama to sign into law.

The House vote approving the spending bill was 296-121, with about a third of the chamber's 242 Republicans voting no.    [emphasis, link added]

Meanwhile . . .
50 Facts About The U.S. Economy That Will Shock You

1. A staggering 48 percent of all Americans are either considered to be “low income” or are living in poverty.

2. Approximately 57 percent of all children in the United States are living in homes that are either considered to be “low income” or impoverished.

3. If the number of Americans that “wanted jobs” was the same today as it was back in 2007, the “official” unemployment rate put out by the U.S. government would be up to 11 percent.

4. The average amount of time that a worker stays unemployed in the United States is now over 40 weeks.

5. One recent survey found that 77 percent of all U.S. small businesses do not plan to hire any more workers.

6. There are fewer payroll jobs in the United States today than there were back in 2000 even though we have added 30 million extra people to the population since then.

7. Since December 2007, median household income in the United States has declined by a total of 6.8 percent once you account for inflation.

8. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 16.6 million Americans were self-employed back in December 2006. Today, that number has shrunk to 14.5 million.

9. A Gallup poll from earlier this year found that approximately one out of every five Americans that do have a job consider themselves to be underemployed.

10. According to author Paul Osterman, about 20 percent of all U.S. adults are currently working jobs that pay poverty-level wages.. . . .

Rich Can Pay for It All . . . NOT

"According to Internal Revenue Service data, the entire taxable income of everyone earning over $100,000 in 2008 was about $1.582 trillion," reported the Wall Street Journal on the morning after Obama's speech. "Even if all these Americans — most of whom are far from wealthy — were taxed at 100 percent, it wouldn't cover Mr. Obama's deficit for this year."

 Unsustainable.

The Pledge of Allegiance . . . But Not at the New Hartford Town Library!

The Pledge of Allegiance was in the news this past week. In Around Central NY: Pledge of Allegiance Joe Kelly reveals that the Pledge was written by a local man, Francis Bellamy, who is buried in the Rome Cemetery. Mr. Kelly presents some little known facts about the Pledge, and about Mr. Bellamy, who wrote the words that are repeated every day in schools and government meetings throughout the nation.

One place where the Pledge is not heard, however, is at the meetings of the New Hartford Town Library Board! One trustee, Mr. Wiatr, sought to right this wrong, but here is what happened . . .

Almost the entire New Hartford Library Board believes that saying the Pledge is "for show," and "waste of time" (or at least voting on it is such because most abstained) !  New Hartford OnLine produced this video, and did a little research that shows the New Hartford Library Board as being out-of-sync with other library boards across the state. 


The Bigger Question that only New Hartfordans can answer: Is the New Hartford Town Library Board out-of-sync with its own community?