Sometimes we get a shocking reminder of why we are working for Complete Streets. That reminder comes this week in the manslaughter conviction delivered by a jury to a woman in Atlanta who lost her child to a drunk driver.
The suburban campus headquarters, once the pinnacle of corporate America, is on the decline. Two recent pieces from the Wall Street Journal and Fortune magazine explain that many companies are choosing to leave their suburban headquarters in favor of walkable downtowns with smart growth features.
“The youth of America, when they graduate, they’re looking to go to an urban environment,” Quicken CEO Bill Emerson explained to Fortune. Explaining that top recruits wanted to be in a place where they could live, work and play, Emerson added, “An asphalt parking lot is not necessarily the best way to do that.”
Features like mass transit, shorter commutes, the option of walking to work and access to restaurants and shops – all key principles of smart growth development – are forming a new model of what America’s most desirable workers want. Rather than trying to lure these workers out to the suburbs, many companies – including corporations like United Airlines, Zappos.com, Credit Suisse AG, Panasonic – are relocating to where young, talented professionals want to live. According to Fortune:
In general, suburban or rural locations are cheaper per square foot, have lower taxes, ample parking, and don’t require higher salaries for employees to feel reasonably compensated. But for companies looking to recruit younger people, all those factors have to be weighed against the reality that there is nothing hip about the ‘burbs.
How are we going to deal with gas prices? Pennsylvanians are paying about $3.70 per gallon and a recent Rasmussen Poll found that 72 percent of Americans think gas might cost $5 per gallon before long.
High gas prices depress other sectors of the economy, push up the cost of food and shake consumer confidence. This isn’t a new problem; it is one we faced as recently as 2008 and at various times since the 1970s. Will we finally demand real solutions?
It is time to get off the gas-price roller coaster. Calls for domestic drilling and other quick fixes to increase supply have dominated the conversation, but we know that ever-increasing global consumption of oil will quickly outstrip our capacity and continue to drive up prices. Alternative fuels have a long way to go. Real, long-term solutions must address our individual and national dependence on finite fossil fuels, which means we need to invest in infrastructure that gives communities better transportation choices.
AAA estimates the cost of owning and operating a car this year at $8,776. The average American household is now spending approximately 20 percent of its after-tax income on transportation. It would be a logical time for budget-conscious households to turn to public transportation, but here in Allegheny County, the Port Authority just cut service hours by 15 percent and many routes are overcrowded.
On Tuesday, the House Appropriations Committee reported out the Interior, Environment, and Related Agencies Appropriations bill for fiscal year 2012. The bill included severe cuts to programs administrated by the Environmental Protection Agency: the legislation proposes reducing the Agency’s budget for FY2012 by 18% – that in addition a 16% cut in 2011.
Help defend funding for the EPA’s Office of Smart Growth: click here to send a letter to your Representative.
David LeBlanc started slugging in 1997 and has been doing it ever since. He’s such a strong slugging supporter that he wrote a short guide and system map for users and now runs the Slug Lines website which is dedicated to the idea.
“Slugging” is an innovative, grassroots form of commuting in Washington DC and Northern Virginia that helps commuters get in and out of the city easily and efficiently. High occupancy vehicle (HOV) lanes, which require two or more passengers to use, provided the inspiration: drivers who would like to use the more efficient lanes pick up passengers – nicknamed “slugs” – and passengers, for their part, get a free and easy ride into the city. People almost always ride with strangers, but there’s a thriving community of devoted “sluggers.”
No one regulates or manages slugging; it’s a grassroots community of commuters who create carpools on the fly. A few other cities around the country have tried it to varying degrees, but it’s uniquely successful in the DC metro area. No one has ever conducted a formal survey or tally, but in 2007 the Virginia DOT pegged the number of daily sluggers at approximately 10,000 commuters.
LeBlanc visited Smart Growth America’s headquarters this week to discuss some of the frequently asked questions about slugging.
Today in New York, The Ford Foundation is holding a 75th anniversary event to explore how fairness, opportunity and equity can serve as defining features in the development of megacities and metro regions this new era of urbanization. The event includes speakers working on all kinds of issues related to cities, including mayors, transportation experts, academics, artists, business leaders, journalists, governors and federal lawmakers.
The House Appropriations Committee just passed legislation that would eliminate funding for the Environmental Protection Agency’s Office of Smart Growth. We need your help to tell your Representative to reject this proposed cut when the legislation is considered by the full House of Representatives.
Send a letter to your Representative: Don’t cut funds to the EPA’s Office of Smart Growth.
Towns across the country are making better economic and environmental outcomes through their work with the EPA’s Office of Smart Growth.
When Lincoln, Nebraska, needed a hand figuring how its zoning codes were impacting redevelopment efforts in the small city, it asked the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Office of Smart Growth for guidance.
And when Bluffton, South Carolina, wanted help mapping future growth to make sure it would benefit the town’s economy for years to come, it asked the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Office of Smart Growth for advice.
Smart growth strategies create the housing, transportation and business resources necessary to keep America competitive in a global, 21st century economy, and the EPA’s Office of Smart Growth is a crucial part of implementing these strategies. We need your help to make sure the Office of Smart Growth receives funding next year: send a letter to your Representative today.
This week, Smart Growth America brought together representatives from groups who received Department of Housing and Urban Development regional planning grants as part of the interagency Partnership for Sustainable Community for a briefing on Capitol Hill. The grantees who spoke at the briefing represented a diverse cross-section of communities that are implementing regional planning grants, including representatives from the Metro-Boston region, Northern Maine, and Metropolitan Des Moines. Shelley Poticha, Director of HUD Office of Sustainable Housing and Community Development, shared the agency’s perspective of the transformative potential of regional planning grants and the unique cross-agency collaboration between HUD, DOT and EPA that defines the Partnership for Sustainable Communities.
HUD distributed just shy of $100 million for regional planning grants to 45 different grant recipients as part of the Partnership for Sustainable Communities in fiscal year 2011. So far those grant recipients have managed to leverage almost another $100 million out of local private, non-profit and local government partners to support their efforts. Shelley noted that kind of financial investment in support of a non-construction project was remarkable. Why is there so much excitement from the business community, local governments, universities and other partners on the ground when it comes to these regional planning grants?
The White House announced a new program today that will help communities across the country make their smart growth plans a reality. Strong Cities, Strong Communities is a new interagency pilot initiative that aims to strengthen neighborhoods, towns, cities and regions around the country by strengthening the capacity of local governments to develop and execute their economic vision and strategies. Speaking in a video about the new program, Assistant to the President for Domestic Policy and the Director of the White House Domestic Policy Council Melody Barnes explained that Strong Cities, Strong Communities will support local governments by providing necessary technical assistance and access to federal agency expertise, and creating new public and private sector partnerships.
You know it’s bad when Ashton Kutcher is Tweeting about road closures. Route 405 in Los Angeles is due to be closed for construction this weekend – an event predicted to be so paralyzing for L.A.’s traffic that it’s been dubbed “Carmageddon.”
While L.A. drivers prepare for catastrophe and stock up on canned goods, the 405 road closure illustrates one of the arguments presented in a recent article from Car and Driver magazine. “The State of the Union’s Roads: An Investigative Report” chronicles why so many of America’s roads are in poor condition – and what we should be doing about it.
“The interstates were designed to last 20 or 30 years,” the article explains, “but now some areas are pushing 50 years and handling far more traffic than their planners anticipated. But as we reach into our wallets, we run into our generation’s big dilemma: We’re nearly broke.” Highway revenues are down, repair costs are up and the federal government can’t afford the level of road investments it committed to in past years. While gas prices and time wasted in congestion are both soaring, more people are living in cities than ever before, which leads even Car and Driver to question the logic of doubling down on highways.