Tag: city

What Is “Smart Growth?”

The rapid growth of suburban areas, what some people call urban sprawl, is getting renewed attention by states. New governors in several states are setting up commissions or task forces to address the issue and to find ways to adhere to what’s called “Smart Growth.” The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham reports that there’s a lot of interpretation of what “Smart Growth” means:

Transcript

The rapid growth of suburban areas, what some people call urban sprawl, is getting renewed
attention by states. New governors in several states are setting up commissions or task forces to
address the issue and to find ways to adhere to what’s called “Smart Growth.” The Great Lakes
Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham reports that there’s a lot of interpretation of what “Smart
Growth” means:


Many urban planners have been alarmed over the last couple of decades as metropolitan areas have
sprung up where farmland or wooded areas once stood. Following new subdivisions have been
strip malls, parking lots and fast food franchises in a not always attractive fashion.


Last year’s election saw a number of states with new governors and some of them are looking at
what can be done to control that kind of unbridled growth. Michigan’s Jennifer Granholm noted it
during her State of the State speech.


“We will develop a cooperative, common sense approach to how we use our land so we can protect
our forests and farms, prevent the sprawl that chokes our suburban communities and threatens our
water quality, and bring new life to our cities and older suburbs.”


Governor Granholm says she wants “Smart Growth.” It’s a popular term, but what is it? What
does it mean?


“I think that Smart Growth is really hard to – certainly hard to describe.”


Barry Rabe is a Professor of Environmental Policy at the University of Michigan’s School of
Natural Resources and Environment. He says “Smarth Growth” sounds great.


“I don’t know anyone who’s really against Smart Growth. But, you can spend a long academic
seminar or actually a lifetime in search of the one common definition of exactly what that means.
Again, it has sort of an intuitive appeal. It resonates. We can all think of examples that are not so
Smart Growth or dumb growth. But, I think clearly this is something that lends itself to differing
kinds of interpretations by different groups.”


And as you ask the people who’ll be sitting at the table debating “Smart Growth,” it becomes clear
that each one has a different definition.


Lynn Egbert is the CEO of the Michigan Association of Home Builders. He says “Smart Growth”
is a private citizen building a home wherever he or she thinks is an ideal site.


“Our basis continues to be and our primary focus is, and it will remain, that it’s private property
rights under the U.S. Constitution that have to be maintained and that is an individual right. It is a
citizen’s right. And we have to work with local and state government to make sure that that’s
achieved and balanced.”


Egbert says the culprit causing urban sprawl is not the choices that landowners make. He says it’s
too much government regulation. Egbert says, generally, municipalities that zone areas into large
lots stop home builders from building more houses on smaller plots of land.


Others also place much of the blame for sprawl on government, but for different reasons. Hans
Voss is with the Michigan Land Use Institute.

______________
“Landowners do have a right to live in the area in which they choose as long as they follow local
land-use regulations and pay the full cost of that lifestyle. And right now the taxpayers in the cities
and across the whole states are actually subsidizing that style of development.”


Voss says to implement “Smart Growth,” the government has to stop subsidizing urban sprawl by
building highways and sewer systems that all of us have to pay for with our taxes instead of just the
residents who benefit from them. He says that money could be better used to revitalize older
suburbs and the center of deteriorating cities.


There are a lot more ideas of what “Smart Growth” means… and there’s a bit of public relations
spinning because of the ambiguity of the term “Smart Growth.”


The University of Michigan’s Barry Rabe says we’ll hear a lot about “Smart Growth” for some
time to come.


“It’s one of these buzz words that everybody likes. But, to come up with a common definition of
it, much less figure out how that would be implemented in public policy is tricky.”


Ultimately, compromise will define “Smart Growth” as states grapple with trying to find better ways
to use land without losing so much farmland to sprawling subdivisions and paving over natural areas
for parking lots.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, this is Lester Graham.

Drivers Turn to Car Sharing

  • This map is used by car sharing members in Ottawa, Ontario. It shows the location of cars available for pick-up (Image courtesy of Vrtucar – Ottawa, Ontario).

    Want to know more about car sharing?


Cars are among the largest polluters in the world. They contribute to the smog that hangs over many large cities and they’re a major culprit in the creation of greenhouse gas emissions. But most of us are reluctant to give up our cars altogether. As the Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Karen Kelly reports, a growing number of North Americans are opting to share a car instead:

Transcript

Cars are among the largest polluters in the world. They contribute to the smog that hangs over
many large cities and they’re a major culprit in the creation of greenhouse gas emissions. But
most of us are reluctant to give up our cars altogether. As the Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s
Karen Kelly reports, a growing number of North Americans are opting to share a car instead:


(sound of stroller)


Nathalie Buu is pushing a stroller past the shops in a trendy neighborhood in Canada’s capital,
Ottawa. She’s heading for a car which is parked about four blocks from her apartment. It’s a
Toyota Echo and she shares it with about 15 other people. When she gets to the parking lot, Buu
wheels the stroller over to a black box attached to the side of a building.


“So you take the, umm, open the lock box and the keys for the car are inside.”


(key noise)


Buu belongs to Vrtucar, a car-sharing company based in Ottawa. There are almost 200
members, and they share 11 cars. The cars are parked all over the downtown area.


Buu has two kids and a regular commute. Still, she and her husband decided they didn’t really
need a vehicle.


“When we had a car, we just found it more of a headache to have to think about repairing it or
bringing it for an oil change, and having had a car in a busy city like Montreal, we don’t really
agree with having cars in the city. It’s just too busy a place and you should be able to use public
transport, I think.”


Nowadays, Buu takes the bus to her job as a doctor at a local hospital. And when she needs to
use a car, she calls an 800 number to reserve one.


The decision to share a vehicle has been quickly gaining in popularity. Car sharing began in post
war Europe. The first North American company opened in Quebec in 1994.


Today, there are 29 companies in North America, most of them in bigger cities like New York,
Chicago and Toronto.


Susan Shaheen is a researcher at UC-Berkeley who studies car-sharing. She says companies tend
to spring up in places where owning a car has become a hassle.


“These organizations tend to thrive when driving disincentives exist such as high parking costs or
congestion. Alternative modes are easily accessible, such as transit and something we see quite
often in the early adoption of this type of service is some environmental consciousness.”


Concern about the environment was one of the main reasons Wilson Wood and his business
partner Chris Bradshaw started Vrtucar. They bought the first car in 2000. They hope to have
twenty by the end of next year. The weird thing is, Wood says they’re actually opposed to
driving.


“I can’t think of two worse guys to run a car business. You know, we hate cars. We believe the
hierarchy of transportation needs should be: your first choice is your foot, your second choice is
your bike, your third choice is your bus, and the last choice should be an automobile.”


But Wood says the reality is, sometimes you need a car. He finds most members use them for
longer trips within the city, where public transportation isn’t convenient. Not surprisingly, the
cars are especially in demand on evenings and weekends. But the company keeps them in
parking lots spaced just a half mile apart. So if the closest car isn’t available, another one is
nearby.


Nathalie Buu says she uses the car for big shopping trips or to attend meetings in the suburbs.
And she says she rarely has trouble getting one.


“I tend to be last minute and I’ll just call and say is the car available right now? And very often it
is. I’ve never had a problem that way, which has been great.”


Buu says car sharing is cheaper for them as well. They don’t have a car payment. They don’t pay
for parking, insurance, maintenance or gas on a car they’d only use a few times a month.


However, they do pay fees. It starts with a 500 dollar insurance deductible which is returned if
you leave the company. There’s also a monthly fee of either 10, 20 or 30 dollars, depending on
how often you drive. And you pay for time and distance, which averages about 15 dollars for a
three hour, 22-mile trip.


It’s cheaper than renting a car for the day. But still, 15 bucks may seem a bit pricey for 3 hours in
a car. Make this argument to Wilson Wood and he’ll pull out figures from the Canadian
Automobile Association. They estimate it costs about 5 thousand dollars a year to own a new car.
Plus, Wood argues, car share members use their cars more wisely.


“Our members are making more efficient and more environmentally intelligent choices because
they’re bundling their trips. They say, ‘oh geez, I know I’ve only got the car once this week and
I’m going to take it for 2 hours on Friday afternoon after work so I’m going to do this, this and
this.'”


(sound in car)


Not everyone joins just to save money.


Nathalie Buu says her choice was a more personal one.


“If everybody was doing this sort of thing, then we’d have less pollution in the cities. And if
you’re thinking about the future, not only your future but the future of our own kids and the air
they’re breathing and the life they’ll live, I think it’s important to think about that and not just our
immediate needs.”


But it’s not always easy. And Buu says that’s okay. Because she feels like she’s helping to create
the kind of environment that she’d like to live in.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Karen Kelly.

Related Links

Tree Farmer Makes Season Merrier

  • Duke Wagatha drives down from northern Michigan each year to sell his Christmas trees. While in Ann Arbor, he and his crew live in this 1951 Vagabond trailer.

It’s that time of year again – parking lots across the country are filled with Christmas trees. Just about one out of every three people who celebrate Christmas buys a live tree. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Mark Brush spent some time with one tree grower in the height of tree selling season:

Transcript

It’s that time of year again – parking lots across the country are filled with Christmas trees. Just about one
out of every three people who celebrate Christmas buys a live tree. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s
Mark Brush spent some time with one tree grower in the height of tree selling season:


(sound of generator, saws, people chatting)


It’s a crisp afternoon at this Christmas tree lot in Ann Arbor, Michigan. That generator you hear is
powering the electric saws. They trim up the base of the tree so it’ll fit your tree stand. The guys’ hands
are blackened with sap and dirt from handling the hundreds of trees that came off of flat-bed trucks. They
take the bundled trees – open them up, and stick them onto stands. They’ve created a makeshift forest in
the middle of this strip mall parking lot. Customers wander through the forest searching for the perfect
tree.


Duke Wagatha runs the tree lot. He appears each year from north Michigan to sell his trees:


“We get here the weekend before Thanksgiving. Takes us probably about a week, or
five days to get set up, with the idea of opening the day after Thanksgiving. We like to let folks get one
holiday out of the way and then we start on the next.”


“Hello folks, how may I help you?…” (fade tree lot sound under)


He calls his business ‘Flat-Snoots Trees.’ You couldn’t tell from looking at his face now – but he
calls it ‘Flat-Snoots’ to make light of a broken nose he suffered in high school.


Duke seems to be a hard working free-spirit. His coveralls are all tarnished with pine needles and sap.
And when he moves, you hear ringing from the bells on his hat. He moves between the trees in his
parking lot forest telling his customers jokes and filling their heads with visions of Scotch pine, Fraser
firs, and Blue Spruce.


Margaret Jahnke has been buying trees from Duke for more than six years:


“He just makes it really personable – and there was one year it was really kind of warm and he had his
Hawaiian shirt on and his straw hat, and he was out here partyin’ away! And I’m like, ‘Whoa!’ It’s fun
to come, you know, just to run in, you know, to talk to him. And they’re really helpful!”


While they’re in Ann Arbor, Duke and his crew live in a 1950’s vintage trailer. The trailer’s paint is
faded, but Duke spruces it up for the holidays with wreaths and pine bows. And when you step inside, the
old lamps and rustic furniture make it seem as if you’ve stepped back in time.


(sound of trailer door opening)


“Whooo! It feels better in here doesn’t it?”


(sound of trailer door closing)


The trailer also doubles as his office. Customers pay for their trees in here and on occasion they’ll have a
complimentary nip of what Duke calls his “bad schnapps.” And the kids might be offered coupons for
free hot chocolate.


Duke is from Mesick, a small rural town in northern Michigan. Christmas tree farming is big business
in Michigan. The state is second only to Oregon in the number of acres that are in Christmas tree
production.


Duke, however, calls himself a small-time grower. He’s a carpenter by trade, but his work tends to dry up in the
long winter months:


“It’s not enough to make a living for me and my family year-round, uh, but it’s a good extra source of
income and uh, winters are tough up there, so if you make a little bit of extra money – winters are tough
and expensive – uh, living in the country, you know, like anybody, you got propane bills and all that, and
it’s a little colder up there, so to make a little bit of money going into winter is pretty nice.”


A lot of work went into growing the trees that have now arrived on his lot. Each summer workers plod
through the rows and rows of trees swinging razor sharp machetes. They trim each tree to give them that
classic, symmetrical, Christmas tree shape.


After about ten years, the trees are ready for harvest. They’re cut, they’re run through a baling machine,
and they’re loaded onto trucks and shipped down to the lots.


(sound of tree lot with sound of Duke)


Even though there’s a jovial atmosphere on the lot, there’s also a sense of urgency. After all, Duke only
has a few weeks to sell trees that in many cases have taken more than ten years to grow.


And while selling the trees is an important part of Duke’s income – he gets something else out of it. He
really likes people. And he enjoys making connections with them – whether it’s getting them to laugh, or
just simply helping them buy a tree:


“Sometimes you get some grumpy folks coming in, and it’s usually just because they’re overwhelmed
with shopping, it’s cold out, they didn’t wear their long underwear, or whatever, but we can usually get
them turned around, you know, we have a little fun with them. Like I say, if we have to bring them to the
trailer and have a shot of bad schnapps with ’em – hey, that’s just fine too.”


It’s closing time at the tree lot. The workers are headed for a warmer space. Right now, Duke’s trailer is
filled with his relatives and friends.


(sound of door opening)


“Come on in! This is Duke’s family. It’s warm in here, huh?”


(more rowdy banter)


Duke will continue to sell his trees right up until Christmas Eve. Then he’ll drive home to spend a few
days with his family before he comes back to tear the lot down:


“It’s kind of like the circus coming to town. You build up your tree lot, you almost build like, well I
wouldn’t say a village, but a little spot where there was nothing – just an asphault parking lot. And when you leave – there’s nothing
left – we sweep up and go – so it’s almost like a mirage. Were those guys really here?” (laughter)


And so, they spring to their trucks and drive out of sight, knowing they helped make the season
merry night after night.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Mark Brush.

African American Health Problems Tied to Air Pollution

A new study shows African Americans are disproportionately affected by power plant pollution. The study finds most African Americans are concentrated in urban areas, closer to power plants. As the Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Annie MacDowell reports, health problems in the community such as asthma have been tied to air pollution:

Transcript

A new study shows African Americans are disproportionately affected by power plant pollution. The study finds most African Americans are concentrated in urban areas, closer to power plants. As the Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Annie MacDowell reports, health problems in the community such as asthma have been tied to air pollution:


The study shows blacks are hospitalized for asthma attacks at more than three times the rate of whites, and their death rate from asthma is twice that of whites.


Brian Urbaszewski with the American Lung Association says there’s a direct link between air pollution and asthma, especially within the black community.


“African Americans just tend to have a higher rate of asthma, so you have the people who are more likely to be sick in an area where the air is more likely to trigger an asthma attack.”


In one Great Lakes state, 90 percent of blacks live in counties with air pollution levels that exceed federal health standards.


African-American babies are in greater danger of sudden infant death syndrome and respiratory mortality because they live in more polluted areas.


The groups that put out the study want stricter laws to reduce emissions from coal-burning power plants.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Annie MacDowell.

Urban Artists Fight for Graffiti

  • Graffiti artist Juan Carlos Noria imagines his artwork as a gift to the community. Artwork provided courtesy of JCN at them-art.com

Graffiti has been a part of urban life since ancient times. There’s also a long history of trying to get rid of it. In many North American cities, civic leaders are experimenting with new ways to eradicate graffiti. But as the Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Karen Kelly reports, urban artists are determined to keep it alive:

Transcript

Graffiti has been a part of urban life since ancient times. There’s also a long history of
trying to get rid of it. In many North American cities, civic leaders are experimenting
with new ways to eradicate graffiti. But as the Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Karen
Kelly reports, urban artists are determined to keep it alive:


About twenty artists, most of them men, spread out on either side of a canvas wall set up
in the middle of a parking lot. They wear baggy jeans, baseball caps and gas masks. The
ground is littered with spray paint cans as they splatter color across the canvas.


(sound up)


The artists build on each other’s ideas. Horizontal purple stripes are transformed into an
exotic bird. Pen and ink drawings peek out beneath layers of orange and brown, slowly
disappearing under the paint. This is Ottawa’s first graffiti fest, organized by
local artist Juan Carlos Noria. He arrives by bicycle, wearing splattered jeans and
carrying two backpacks stuffed with spray paint.


“This is our way of giving back to the city true expression and unfortunately I do agree that some of it
is ugly but it’s like a hammer, you know? It’s a tool for building or destroying.”


Noria is a full-time artist who sells oil paintings and sculptures. But his best known work
might be his graffiti. He creates detailed pen and ink drawings on white paper. Then,
late at night, he glues them to downtown buildings.


His drawings depict the plight of humans in the modern world. One shows a man using
one hand to pour coffee into his mouth, as he pounds a hammer with the other.
Another depicts a person surrounded by bubbles representing thought – about money,
heartbreak, and the passage of time.


For Noria, this sort of unexpected art is comforting in a city that prides itself on
cleanliness.


“My living room isn’t this clean, you know? And a lot of these Ottawa streets are super
clean. In an alley that is vacant, it’s almost like a mark that a human being has been there
and I think that’s important, you know?”


But to many other people, graffiti is a sign of crime, decay and danger. That’s prompted
Ottawa to join other North American cities in introducing a graffiti management policy.
The plan includes a special phone line to report graffiti and tougher fines for those who
are caught.


The city estimates it spends about 250 thousand U.S. dollars cleaning up graffiti on city
property every year.


Paul McCann is head of Ottawa’s surface operations office. He says the biggest problem
is tags – initials or names scrawled in marker.


“I’m not talking about the nice graffiti art that a lot of people appreciate but the problem
is the tagging. Some of it is gang related. It’s not in the right place, it is considered
vandalism if you don’t have permission.”


McCann says there’s been a sharp increase in tagging. And it can make residents, and
tourists, feel unsafe. But he draws a distinction between the taggers and the so-called
serious artists.


While graffiti will never be tolerated in places like the parliament buildings, McCann is
looking for areas where graffiti can flourish, such as skateboard parks. It’s a strategy
that’s been used in other cities, including Toronto and Montreal. And it’s something Juan
Carlos Noria is eager to support.


“Graffiti is a movement of the youth. We must embrace it, say it’s not going to go away
so let’s give them spaces to work in and I think that by offering them these spaces, the
older artists will realize these are gifts, so they will in turn speak to the younger artists and
educate them and that’s what it’s all about.”


For Noria, graffiti offers a public venue to vent his frustration about pollution, capitalism,
and the ubiquity of advertising. Not long after the graffiti fest, one of his works
appeared on the wall of an abandoned theatre. It depicts an angel imagining a beautiful
gift as it sends a spray of paint onto the building.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Karen Kelly in Ottawa.

A Cure for Sprawl

Sprawl affects urban and rural residents of every Great Lakes state. Rapid development continues to swallow farmland and leave impoverished urban cores in its wake. But one Great Lakes mayor believes there’s still time to preserve land and revive cities. Mayor John Logie shares this commentary:

Transcript

Sprawl affects urban and rural residents of every Great Lakes state. Rapid development continues to swallow farmland and leave impoverished urban cores in its wake. But one Great Lakes mayor believes there’s still time to preserve land and revive cities. Mayor John Logie shares this commentary.


Urban sprawl is alive and well in Grand Rapids, my hometown. The term refers to the insidious way that webs of suburbs, manufacturing plants, etc., are expanding in unplanned, ever-widening circles around our city. Such sprawl results in longer commutes, pollution, and the loss of undeveloped land. The American Farmland Trust reports that 70% of the country’s prime farmland is now in the path of rapid development. On the list of 30 of the most sprawling cities in the entire United States, Grand Rapids, which has experienced a 48% increase in its urban area between 1990 and 1996, ranks right in the middle, behind such hyper-growth communities as Las Vegas, Austin, and Tucson, but well ahead of Cleveland, Chicago, and Portland in our rate of sprawl increase.


This Land-use change has rarely been done in a responsible fashion. Some sprawl apologists say what we’ve ended up with is that’s the American Dream, and any problems are easy to fix. They say there’s plenty of land left in America. They say congestion would go away if we just build more roads. But sprawl matters. Pollsters say it’s the most important issue in the Country.


Distress about urban sprawl arises from many factors: loss of open space, traffic congestion, economic segregation, a lack of affordable housing, and a lost sense of community. According to Harvard University political scientist Robert Putnam, the longer people spend in traffic, the less likely they are to be involved in their community and family.


To solve these problems, it takes a combination of land conservation and real free market economics, which can actually provide smaller lots for those who want them. However, many communities try to maintain what they believe are high property values by allowing only large-lot homes to be built. This effectively excludes several types of households, including singles, some empty nesters, single-parents, and the elderly, along with lower-income people. And the favored “middle-class family” with kids, today represents just 25% of new homebuyers. Only 11% of U.S. households are “traditional” families with children and just one wage earner. One size no longer fits us all.


Here’s what we need now.


We need smaller houses in walkable clusters, town homes in real “towns,” lofts in vital urban neighborhoods, and affordable housing just about anywhere. The development of compact communities that offer urban amenities and street life will show that the market actually supports more density and more housing diversity—not less. But we’re not building communities like those; communities that can help reduce many symptoms of sprawl, including traffic. Instead, we’re just building new roads. But for every 10% increase in new freeway miles, a 9% increase in traffic is generated within 5 years as sprawl continues. You just can’t build your way out of gridlock. More importantly, today we can no longer afford to keep building new freeways. The key is building more walkable communities. All this depends on promoting different land-use patterns, and not just building new roads.


Property rights advocates argue against regional planning, or any planning for that matter. They say that people should have a right to develop their properties as they please. As a historic preservationist, I have heard that for years. But what if one person’s development decision adversely impacts another’s property, or the whole neighborhood, or the whole region? What if certain choices require more public tax dollars to pay for infrastructure and services than others? At the regional level, it is public dollars that enable development on private property. Without highways, roads, sewers, water systems, and public services, development cannot occur. Therefore, we must use the tool of government spending appropriately – and seek out and implement the most cost-effective public investments which creatively and positively support growth, but discourage sprawl. My name is John Logie, I’m the Mayor of Grand Rapids, Michigan.

Living Next to Wild Neighbors

People moving out to wooded lots in the suburbs are finding
those lots are already inhabited. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s
Lester Graham reports… some homeowners are battling nature,
but others are finding ways to live in harmony with it:

City Ignites Green Space

Many cities create parks to try to incorporate green space into theirurban landscapes. But maintaining them can be expensive and laborintensive. Now, one city has created a unique solution–addingnaturalbeauty while saving money. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Tasya Rosenfeld has the story:

Big City Recycling Faces Challenges

The recycling programs in big cities often are not as successful as
their suburban neighbors. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester
Graham reports… some recycling advocates believe big cities can have
better recycling programs if they make recycling a higher priority:

The Midwest Moves on High Speed Rail

Nine states in the Midwest want high-speed passenger rail. They might getit… but they’ll have to pay for most of it themselves. The Great LakesRadio Consortium’s Lester Graham reports… it’s not likely much help willbe coming from Congress: