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The Manhattan Project
Former Editor-in-Chief Ryan Avent writes a weekly column about neighborhood and development issues.
Sometimes I imagine that the vicious territoriality residents of this or that place occasionally display when comparing their home enclave to another is a sign of something positive, a rootedness and sense of belonging, maybe, to the neighborhood or city or state one calls home. If that’s the case, then residents of the cities of Baltimore and Washington must be some rooted and belonging sons of bitches, because rarely does the vitriol fly more fiercely than when the relationship between the two is discussed.
Let me pause a moment, here, to establish my Baltimore bona fides (and try to inoculate myself from the comment flames to follow). My mother grew up in a West Baltimore suburb, inside I-695 and a stone’s throw from downtown, where my grandparents continued to live until I entered my 20s. I’ve seen the Os play in Memorial Stadium, and for much of my early life, Washington was just the monuments you saw from the Beltway as you skirted the city on your way north.
While I ultimately chose to settle in the District, I don’t have much time for shouting matches on either side of the argument. Both cities are over two centuries old. Both grew rapidly into the middle of the 20th century only to suffer depopulation to the suburbs and accompanying urban decay. Both sit at the center of large and growing metropolitan areas. Both center cities have, to varying degrees, enjoyed some revitalization. Both have long and rich histories, distinct cultural touchstones, a common argot, and so on. Both have, to a great extent, lost their relevance as distinct cities, surrounded as they are by miles of growing sprawl which tangles its way between Baltimore and Washington and Annapolis and Richmond and everywhere, laughing at things like jurisdictional boundaries.
Consider this: both Baltimore and Washington claim fewer than one million people, yet the Washington metropolitan area is home to over 5 million souls, the Baltimore metro area holds nearly 3 million, and in 2004, the combined metroplex crested the 8 million person mark. By the 2010 census, 9 million will be within reach.
Between 2000 and 2006, the Washington metro area added half a million people and the Baltimore area added over 100,000. Of those 100,000, however, nearly half settled in Howard and Anne Arundel Counties, which abut both Baltimore County (and, for Anne Arundel, a little bit of Baltimore City) and the Washington metro area. Of the workers who live in Howard and Anne Arundel Counties but work elsewhere, more commute to the Washington area than to the Baltimore area. While the centers of each metro area might feel fairly distinct, the economic regions they inhabit are meshing tighter and tighter between the two and expanding outward. Eventually, the Baltimore-Washington metroplex will eat all of the state of Maryland. It’s already much of the way there.
Against this background comes the modest ad campaign, mentioned here earlier this week, seeking to attract Washingtonians to Baltimore city, based primarily, it seems, on the lower cost of space. Despite the considerable overlap between the metro areas (MARC carries approximately 20,000 riders between the metro areas each day, and many more drive between the counties involved) the cities at the heart of the region don’t themselves exchange that many people. In 2000, according to Census worker flow files, only about 3,000 residents of Baltimore City traveled to the District to work, and fewer than 1,000 made the reverse journey. While the metro areas squish together, the respective poles stay apart.
Picture taken by The Skipping Hippy.
Which is too bad, if you ask me. Baltimore City is about the same distance from downtown Washington as the growing suburbs of Loudoun, Prince William, and Stafford Counties (and closer than the booming exurban communities of far Western and Eastern Maryland and West Virginia), but where settlement around Stafford is sure to be sprawling and auto dependent, housing in Baltimore is dense, walkable, and favored by proximity to city buses, light rail, and commuter rail service. Where Prince William County groans under the addition of 100,000 new residents, Baltimore could swallow that number without a burp, using housing stock, street grids, and infrastructure made to support large numbers of people. Fairfax County’s developers are spending billions to create walkable town centers, the better to hold hundreds of thousands of new Fairfaxians, based on urban design patterns that define Baltimore, as they define many older cities which grew to prominence before the heyday of the automobile. From Baltimore west to Frederick, Hagerstown, and Cumberland, south to Fredericksburg and Richmond, and north again to Annapolis, lovely old downtowns throughout the region are frequently underpopulated relative to their best days, but built densely and often with direct rail access to centers of economic activity around Washington.
This all prompts me to ask a question: why do we not attempt to focus new, sprawling development into town centers that could use new life, and that are prepared to handle urban densities? Rather than encouraging the slow creep of low density, auto-centric growth that eats up unused land and replaces it with suburban uniformity, why not try to channel growth into areas struggling to find a tax base, but rich in building stock and infrastructure?
At its heart, such a strategy would mean a large investment in the rehabilitation and expansion of a regional rail network. Many rail lines between these cities already exist and with minor improvements and increased service they could begin to shape development patterns appropriately. One of the great advantages of rail, largely unexplored in the United States, is the potential for far greater speeds than can be attained on highways. Even modest improvements, increasing average rail speeds to 100 mph, could completely alter the way residents of the mid Atlantic region live and work. At that speed, to say nothing of attainable and much greater velocities available to travelers in Europe and Asia, it would be quicker to get from Baltimore to Union Station than from Bethesda. It would be easier to travel from central Richmond to downtown D.C. than it would be to drive from Woodbridge.
Growth along these lines would not mean merely the transformation of these old cities into bedroom communities. Migration of people into the Washington suburbs has brought with it job growth, turning Fairfax, Montgomery, and Prince George’s Counties into vibrant employment centers. And the alternative to such an arrangement isn’t that those places remain left peacefully alone. Instead, traditional suburban growth would ultimately find its way to their doorsteps, bringing with it the difficulties of congestion and strained infrastructure, along with continued stunted growth in the urban centers. Of course, urban centers like Baltimore and Richmond suffer from problems of crime, poor schools, and dilapidated building stock just as parts of Washington do. But these are solvable problems, and their solutions would be hastened by increases in the residential population and tax base.
The whole of the region, stretching from Southern Pennsylvania to Richmond, and West Virginia to the Eastern Shore, faces transformation under the continued expansion of the metropolitan areas at its heart. We can continue as we have done for decades, allowing the growth to continue in all directions in a growing web that consumes most available land, or we can attempt to direct growth into towns that can handle it, with densities that encourage sustainable development, and with transportation linkages that minimize the extent to which new residents mean new car trips. Personally, I don’t care who thinks their city center is the greatest. I would love to see them all thrive in a connected and distributed metropolis, that improves lives for workers and commuters and holds off the appetite of the sprawl that might otherwise eat the mid Atlantic.
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Is there any editing of the featured content on this site?
DCist contributors, so many of them called "Editors," should give a serious read of Strunk and White's "Elements of Style." It may be useful to also read George Orwell's "Politics and the English Language." In the case of both titles, I suggest paying special attention to the issues of unnecessary and pretentious language.
(I was going to provide links to the cited works, but it seems some knee-jerk "editing" has been put in place on the comments: no URLs without registering. What a good way to use the web.)
why not try to channel growth into areas struggling to find a tax base, but rich in building stock and infrastructure?
Because those areas are plagued with high crime and bad schools. Taxes are higher for services that are inferior.
I think it comes down to where people want to live. You can't determine whether people flock to cities or the suburbs. Providing infrastructure and transporation will make those options realistic for more people, but those reasons alone aren't really the biggest determining factors in where/how people choose to live. And politicians don't really want to risk spending tax dollars needlessly on infrastructure projects unless they know they are needed, which tends to cause those projects to lag behind population growth trends.
Such vitriol.....seriously, peeps, it costs nothing to be nice.
In that vein, great editorial!! Urban sprawl, pollution, and loss of biodiversity aside, there are a million good reasons to repopulate cities that can already handle growth easily. Plus, DC and Baltimore are such cool, funky places--way better than the monochromatic blandness of the suburbs. Wouldn't it be cool if, when DC or Baltimore are as old as, say, London or Paris, that they were as diverse and fun to live in as those places?
I suggest paying special attention to the issues of unnecessary and pretentious language.
Here's some more pretentious language for you: inane parochialism. Pedantic blowhard. Whoops! I just violated the 6th Elementary Rule of Usage, didn't I? Well, if anyone had any trouble getting my drift, I'll be happy to rephrase.
i am all about building MARC to annapolis so i don't have to take Dillon's bus, but honestly 100 mph trains? nobody takes the acela on the amtrak northeast corridor cause it's mad expensive to get to philly ten minutes quicker. the trains just don't pick up enough speed between stations to make a significant difference.
i am of course assuming that faster is always more more expensive, which may not be the case, but why HASN'T america gotten aboard the euro-train situation?
i suspect the answer is cashmoney.
"...and try to inoculate myself from the comment flames to follow"
I'm missing any whiff of real controversy in what you wrote. It seems solid enough to me. Anyone else driving through the exurbs, seeing planned housing developments on what was obviously recent farmland, and wondering about the long term effects of that?
If we are going to throw out the idea of faster trains - won't Metro tracks have to be replaced at some point? Why not faster Metro trains? Sure in the central city it wouldn't help but if you want more people riding transit shouldn't the yellow line crossing the river be faster than the rush hour gridlocked 14th street bridge?
This all prompts me to ask a question: why do we not attempt to focus new, sprawling development into town centers that could use new life, and that are prepared to handle urban densities?
They've already done that in Baltimore and downtown DC: it's called Gallery Place and Harborplace. You end up with acres of boutique condos, Disneyfied tourista junk stores, and gleaming mirrored office cubes. These are the ONLY forms of urban development that can afford the confiscatory taxes. And local city councils are more than happy to sell their birthright for a mess of pottage in order to generate the maximum amount of tax revenue per square foot. On the positive side, this is why you'll never see a Walmart downtown; on the negative side, you'll never see a Wegman's downtown.
As for regional rail, even the most modest improvements would cost hundreds of millions of dollars. Acela doesn't come anywhere close to its maximum speed because the rail stock is nowhere near the tolerance needed to sustain such speeds. High-speed rail requires dedicated lines, not temporarily unoccupied freight track. It's the same faustian bargain Metro made in the 1950s to only build two tracks; they didn't have the money to buy a third express line. And ultimately, with the declining costs associated with air travel, short-haul airbus service will end up taking the lions share of what Acela tried to accomplish. So in the end, high-speed rail is to commuting what canals were when the railroads took over.
And Obvious hit the other point about "vibrant" urban communities; most of the people who can afford the condos are DINKs or empty nesters who don't care about the appalling state of the public education system. For the most part, they're not affected by crime because of a sense of perceived safety in their particular neighborhood. Wait until they get mugged a few times too many. And when they start pooping out the crotchfruit, goodbye urine-stench alley, hello sprawling commute. And with any luck, your grandkids will be flying in to National from Front Royal.
Really, this urban revitalization fantasyland is a lost cause. For the most part, cities need to be more like the suburbs (cleaner, better schools, less crime) and the suburbs need to be more like cities (better mass transit, more sophisticated entertainment options, higher-class hookers). In many ways, it's the inner suburbs on the urban side of the respective Beltways that hold the hope for combining density, style, and livability.
And jetpacks. Lots of jetpacks.
Two Things:
1. "Washington was just the monuments you saw from the Beltway as you skirted the city on your way north." I did not realize that Baltimore is south of Washington, and that you would pass by it when traveling north from Baltimore.
2. All the fantastic physical infrastructure, street grids, zippy trains, walkable communities, blah blah blah don't mean squat if the schools still suck and theres crime. As usual Monkey is right.
Crime, schools, crime, schools, repeat.
Monkey, are you just ignoring every other neighborhood where new energy hasn't meant turning into Gallery Place? Just walking around the city, I think I'd have to call GP the exception, rather than the rule. And just because current tax policies strongly favor certain kinds of development doesn't mean it has to be that way. There are lots of policy options available to assist non-chains, and it seems to me that the city is beginning to take an interest in such measures.
Hundreds of millions? That's chump change where transportation funding is concerned. The country spends tens of billions annually on highways without blushing. And since funding for rail is already so low, modest increases in spending can make a huge difference. The days of declining costs for air travel are numbered. Infrastructure there is taxed, and any sort of national emissions reduction scheme will translate immediately into higher fares. Sure, maybe someone is about to invent the flying carpet, which will revolutionize commuting, but if the damn thing emits like an airplane, it's essentially worthless. It will be legislated out of competitiveness in two years. Unlike trains.
So you've seen no improvement in urban public services in the last ten years? None at all? And you see no public interest in improving District schools? None at all? Come on, monkey, read the Post.
1. Bill, I didn't live in Baltimore. Driving from North Carolina to Baltimore, I believe one passes Washington.
2. Because no one is moving into urban neighborhoods, right?
"There are lots of policy options available to assist non-chains, and it seems to me that the city is beginning to take an interest in such measures."
The city may be beginning to take interest in these things, but 11-something million in this year's budget LSDB grants strikes me as too little too late for many neighborhoods.
Really, this urban revitalization fantasyland is a lost cause.
Poor, bitter, disillusioned Monkey.
Just because you gave up the ghost and fled to the 'burbs, doesn't mean that urban renewal isn't worthy and workable. Maybe when Baby Rat starts school and gets dumber I'll hightail it out of the District too. Then again, there is the remote possibility that by the time I have to decide my choices won't be: private school, leaving town, or sending my kid to Fort Apache Eastern.
So you've seen no improvement in urban public services in the last ten years? None at all?
Nope. DMV implemented that delightful Take-a-Card-and-Wait system. The line is actually pretty snappy, several windows to wait at, the wait not that long at all...until you have to PAY for something. The bursar's window is never open, and when it is open, it's inhabited by a bitter little passive aggressive tyrant who is inflicting her pain on every resident in DC who's unfortunate enough to come before her lordship. You still need to get in the car inspection line in SW, the ONLY one in DC, at 5am if you have any hope of getting anything done before 5pm. Vendor licensing? Contruction/repair permits? Records requests? Have you every tried to do ANY of these things through the appropriate DC agency? Sure, they finally replaced the last agency rotary phone, so now they don't ring off the hook. You just get to leave a voicemail...where nobody ever calls you back.
And you see no public interest in improving District schools? None at all?
DC has public interest dripping from every oriface. What it lacks is any ACCOMPLISHMENT. Across the board, test scores are down, funding is up, and they might as well replace the Superindendent's office with a revolving door. At least the door won't screw things up worse.
Virginia's already coughing up $2 billion in "chump change." VA/MD spend billions on highways because more people use them. I submit that even when we see gas at $8 a gallon, they will STILL spend more on highways. People will swap their SUVs for hybrids and smaller cars and KEEP their long-haul commutes, rather than deal with the hassle of public transit and crowding in the core. You keep forgetting the American mantra, as cited by the Dead Kennedys, "Give me convenience or give me death."
Because no one is moving into urban neighborhoods, right?
Judging by the urban condo sales slump, as well as people forfeiting their deposits on said condos, no, they're not moving into urban neighborhoods. And for every person who moves into DC, how many get sick of the crime, craptacular schools, and "vibrant" Kicker bass booms from Escalades at 2am?
Ryan, you keep trying to sell urban density and public transportation as the "answer." Did it every occur to you that maybe they were the "problem" that millions are trying to escape?
Monkey: Even allowing for differing tastes and priorities, DC's population is still growing.
Rat - What did "urban renewal" of the 1950s and '60s accomplish? How did the mantra go, "Urban renewal equals negro removal"? The Feds tore down "blighted" working class African-American neighborhoods in SW/SE and replaced them with high-rise poverty storage boxes and sterile condos. Thirty years later, they tear down the former, scatter the residents to the four winds, and replace the projects with more condos and office complexes.
The primary problem with the latest flavor of urban renewal is that it's all about "motivating" the underclass out of the core, and attracting a higher-income tax bracket to replace them. At a certain point, the middle class gets the message and gets the hell out. Until city governments create some incentive for the middle class to remain, you will continue to have extreme poverty living next door to extreme wealth and nothing in between.
Are the suburbs boring? Sure are! Will my teenage kids long to escape the stifling conformity! I hope to god they will. Will there still be all-ages shows downtown where they can listen to live music? Who the hell knows? By then, Black Cat will probably be a Vapiano with a Starbucks in the crapper.
Damn right I'm bitter. I've lost Sherrill's, Scholl's Cafeteria, Waffle Shop, and I'm about to lose Restaurant AV, all because DC wants the maximum amount of tax revenue it can generate, screw affordable dining and history. Bring on the $9 a plata tapas, for tomorrow we die!
Monkey, you'd have a compelling argument if it didn't conflict with the facts. I don't know what millions are trying to escape urban density. While the District's population has crept upward over the past few years, the population of denser neighborhoods in NW has grown by about 5,000 people per annum. This is nearly canceled out by departures from east of the Anacostia, but that trend has bottomed out and shows signs of reversing. People are moving into the central city, monkey. If they aren't buying at the moment, and many of them are (you'll find I think that the housing crunch has been far more severe in outer suburbs), then they're renting. There are no millions running away. That's just not what's happening.
Convenience? How is sitting in traffic convenient? How is driving 90 minutes to and from work convenient? People drive because they have to, because we haven't given them viable options. No one is putting a gun to the head of the 750,000 people who ride metro everyday; they do it because they can, and because they prefer to.
But individuals can't build their own rail lines. Consumers can demand rail all they want, but if it hasn't been built, then they're pretty much forced to get in the old car.
Show me where there is no demand for density and no demand for living near transit, and maybe I'll change my tune. I'm looking at the numbers, monkey, and I don't see it. I see people falling over themselves to get near a Metro station. I see even reluctant transit cities like Dallas and Los Angeles bowing to public pressure to build public transportation. I see annual transit ridership numbers increasing, despite the fact that mass transit is outspent relative to highways in this country by a factor of 20. Maybe it's time to update your outlook.
Monkey's right that many (most? I don't know) Americans would much rather keep driving their car/SUV to their McMansion in the suburbs or exurbs for the sake of "convenience." But I guarantee that more people would choose the city as a viable option if it weren't for the crime and the appalling state of DC services that Monkey so eloquently describes.
Take me as an example - I'm a city boy through and through. I pretty much view the world through the prism of NYC (which I admit annoys the hell out of people from outside NY, but so be it) and would be happy as a clam if I could forever live in a decent, 2-br apartment in a prewar building in Upper Manhattan (and when I say Upper Manhattan, I mean *ABOVE* Harlem - the Heights or Inwood, not where the yuppies live.)
I'm moving to Silver Spring because I can't deal with the constant shootings, muggings, stabbings, assaults, etc. that happen around my current place every day. And I live within 500 feet of 3 embassies. I'm also tired of how fucking difficult it is in this city, and city government is just comedy.
Example: my building is completely infested with roaches, and the mgmt. company, knowing the city will never make it do anything, can't be bothered to address the problem. After about 15 phone calls, I finally got someone from DCRA to come and do an inspection, which was rushed, backassed and perfunctory, but at least it got the ball rolling. Then, after making another 15-20 calls (literally), none of which was ever returned, I finally got the guy to deliver the inspection notice to the landlord. Needless to say, the threatened penalty was a joke ($500 fine!! Wooooooooo.....) and DCRA has closed the file.
Total elapsed time during the whole process: about a month. If this were NY or Chicago, the two cities I'm closely familiar with, my landlord would be facing serious penalties and there might be a legal proceeding.
When I can get a nicer, bigger place for less money in the suburbs, have an urban, car-free existence, and still be within walking distance of Metro to get into the city whenever I want, why should I stay?
Oh, and another thing - the example of NY proves that, if cities get their act together, the number of people who want to live in them will soar. NY has more people now than it's ever had IN ITS HISTORY; it's surpassed 8 million and is still growing. This in a metropolitan area in which population and job growth overall is stagnant. Given the amount of room in DC for development, there's no reason DC couldn't see the same - except, of course, for crime, poor schools, and the pervasive sense of backassedness that imbues all aspects of life here.
"There are lots of policy options available to assist non-chains, and it seems to me that the city is beginning to take an interest in such measures."
Really Ryan? I mean, the only real alternative policy options that the city has considered center around the freaking ballpark and its surrounding (and likely chain-heavy) development.
I'll give you that there may very well be "lots of policy options," but I'm extremely skeptical of any legitimate interest the city is taking in them. D.C., like most every other city, sees the trail of dollar signs that follow chains and the resultant tax base, and nods obligingly.
Monkey sez:
"Ryan, you keep trying to sell urban density and public transportation as the "answer." Did it every occur to you that maybe they were the 'problem' that millions are trying to escape?"
I'll give you density, but I'm not entirely sure people are trying to out and out escape public transportation. More accurate to say they're trying to escape the costly calculus that must be undertaken on whether to drive and park at the metro, thus avoiding exorbitant parking fees, but spending an hour in transit, versus driving into town, spending an hour finding parking, and then getting gouged by the parking rates.
I actually do agree with Ryan that rail, if done correctly, would curb some of the urban barfing sprawl that we currently face. I'm just extremely cynical and don't think our city planners are quite clueful / pragmatic enough to think along those lines, so it will continue to remain a pipe-dream.
I truly believe that the forces are aligning such that more and more people will choose to live in Bmore and work in DC or vice versa, as opposed to shlepping it back and forth from the burbs every day. Consider the evidence:
1. The Dems are back in office in Maryland. O'Malley has renewed funding for the Office of Smart Growth, which Elrich had left stagnant since Glendening's tenure. Amongst other goals, the Office of Smart Growth is committed to channeling development towards existing communities (read the DC burbs in MoCo and PG, and Bmore city) and preserving our remaining countryside.
2. Urban living is increasingly in vogue. No doubt someone here will post about how I'm wrong because they'd personally rather live in the burbs than downtown, but those are individuals; the trend towards cities is undeniable. As was earlier pointed out, Crime and failing schools are temporary problems, solved in large part by new funds from the increased tax base of an increasing city population.
3. There is renewed interest in funding public transit projects, and we're only seeing the beginning of it. Trends like this don't come and go in a few years. They ramp up over decades and might continue for 50 years. Light rail and street car systems are popping up in cities all across the US lately, and you there I fully expect to see a regional rail system for the Mid-Atlantic in the next decade, whether its a ground-up effort by DC and Bmore to patch together their rail systems, or a top-effort in the form of expanded Amtrak service.
4. Global warming is not going away. Are we all in agreement that we're not going to wake up tomorrow to be told by experts that "Sorry, we were wrong....continue polluting."? You can bet that legistlation keep getting passed that will slowly make driving less attractive. More and more people will look for public transit options, choosing to work and live closer in to Bmore and DC.
5. Oil is still running out. Sure there are options we are looking into like ethanol, hydrogen, electric cars, etc but the best solution is the oldest one: Put lots of people on the same vehicle for an exponential increase in efficiency. Even if our trains ran on crude oil, they'd still be more efficient than everyone driving seperately in cars.
6. People are fed up with being auto-dependant in the burbs. Again, someone will surely post that I'm wrong because they do just fine in the burbs, but these are individuals. I'm seen more editorials, articles, and documentaries in the past year about suburban disillusionment than I have in all my previous years combined. Individual tastes vary, but there is an undeniable growing segment of the population that feels they were duped into spending 4 hours a day in their cars in pursuit of the American dream.
7. Suburban infrastructure is being strained. As we build further out, our roads, schools, water systems, sewage treatment facilities, gas and electric distribution networks must grow exponentially. As suburban and exurban communities are forced to limit growth, growth will be channeled back where it should be: closer in to the cities.
Argue these individual points if you wish; I'm no fortune teller and I could very well be wrong on any of them. But I maintain we are entering a "perfect storm" for smart growth driven by many factors at once, pushing us towards more sustainable land use/transportation patterns and away from the failed auto-dependant suburban experiment of the past 50 years.
Incidentally, I hope to find a nice rowhome in Bmore, and be the 3001st Bmore to DC commuter.
Now please improve MARC service? :)
I agree with the simple point of the editorial -- put more money into regional rail and transit. Ryan is right - for all the gobs of money thrown at transportation from the feds on down, even a slight shift of road funding towards rail and transit would make a huge difference.
That said, schools and crime is hugely important -- but for the purposes of this conversation -- is beside the point. There are older cities (with less crime and better schools) outside of D.C. and Baltimore in the region that could handle additional growth with existing infrastructure)
Ryan - To use your own language, a measly 5,000 residents is a drop in the bucket compared to the nearly half-million who moved to NoVA since 2000. Numbers for suburban Maryland are similar. Again, nobody's putting a gun to THEIR head to move to the burbs. It's just that DC has given them no viable option to live downtown. These are the cops and firefighters and teachers whose income doesn't allow them to live in the core. Assuming there was even the political willpower and funding to build Metro spurs from existing stations, you'd still have to deal with legions of nimbys, like the ones who demanded a tunnel to Tysons.
As for convenience, have you ever lugged boxes of electronics on the Metro from Pentagon City to downtown? The convenience factor of the "old car" still beat the inconvenience of waiting for a bus, taking the bus to the Metro, waiting for the Metro, riding the Metro, getting stuck on the Red Line because Woodley Park is leaking water onto the third rail AGAIN, and arriving late for your appointment. 90 minutes in the car rockin to tunes still beats 90 minutes trapped underground with a guy who hasn't washed his junk since the the first Clinton administration.
You're not seeing the numbers because the numbers don't reflect your world view, Ryan. Ridership numbers are increasing, but those numbers are being outstripped by more drivers on the road. There's demand for housing near Metro, and even greater demand for AFFORDABLE housing elsewhere. Where's the affordable housing in the core? Even if such a thing existed, the teachers/firemen/service sector workers don't want to live there. Why? We're back to the crime/schools/quality of life issues that DC's gummint refuses to deal with.
I'm with you on the public transit issue. Like most people, I wish EVERYBODY ELSE would take the subway and get out of my way.
Monkey, most people have big electronics products delivered rather than schlep them on the Metro. And, if for whatever reason I needed to purchase a giant thing and didn't want to spend the $15 or whatever it is for local delivery, I suppose I could always rent a Zipcar for the day.
Personally, I much prefer the inconveniences of public transit to the inconveniences of driving. When I was visiting my mom a few weeks ago in the suburbs of Chicago, I was startled by how annoyed she gets at all the other drivers, how she's started swearing at them, etc. I'm really glad I don't have to deal with that. I can just sit back, read, listen to music if I really want to avoid people, and that's that. And I save huge amounts of money every month by not owning a car, money which I can use to pay for grad school (in part) or take nice vacations.
Everyone has to make their own calculus, of course. But for me personally, using a car on a regular basis makes no sense. I agree that cars are necessary or at least helpful in certain circumstances (like your Best Buy scenario), but if you live in a city like DC those needs are few and far between. It's not like you're buying a 60" TV three times a week, right?
As was earlier pointed out, Crime and failing schools are temporary problems, solved in large part by new funds from the increased tax base of an increasing city population.
Can we define the term "temporary?" DCPS has been failing since about 1972. Since 1998, their budget has been incrementally increasing while test scores continue to decline. As for crime, there are any number of reasons you can pick for the overall decline, but I'd hardly say the problem was "solved." More funds does not equal improved performance either in schools or crimefighting. Flush twice.
That's 5,000 per year, monkey, into an area far smaller than all of the Northern Virginia suburbs.
Our serious traffic issues aren't primarily due to folks driving electronic equipment home from the store. They result from millions of drivers traveling alone from their homes to their jobs. Adding transit improves capacity far more than building more roads, and it increases the options available to a commuter on any given day. Money spent on transit is a much better bet, particularly given the environmental and cost issues associated with gasoline powered travel, than money spent to build new highways.
Housing is expensive in the core and around transit because opportunities to live in such places are so limited. It's far easier to buy a farm in Stafford County and erect 5,000 cookie cutter homes than it is to build apartment buildings downtown. It's no surprise, then, that so many homes go up in the exurbs, and that prices are lower there, and that people move where prices are lower.
But that's not a sustainable pattern over the long term. People discount the expense of extreme commuting relative to the expense of buying a home closer to their jobs, but both costs are real. By investing in density and transit, we reduce the cost of central city living, and we make it easier for people to choose to live closer in. Will everyone do that? No, and that's fine. I'm not trying to move everyone downtown. I'm just trying to move a larger share of a growing population downtown, because that's going to make a huge difference to the future quality of life of the entire metro area.
Institutional change doesn't happen overnight. The District has come a long way in a relatively short time, and in ten more years we'll be farther still. And others will still be unhappy about the state of public institutions, and that's fine. But institutional quality varies throughout cities everywhere, low density and high. Being unhappy with the job the District does in those respects isn't an indictment of density and transit oriented growth. It's an indictment of the particular historical path that led to this institutional state (which, one might note, has a great deal to do with decades of low density, auto-centric growth throughout the metropolitan area).
Monkey: The rate of population growth in DC v MD and VA aren't easily comparable. The huge differences in their relative areas, which goes to supply and cost, is one obvious reason.
But, if you do compare them, check out the % increase in each over a given time. Say, since 2000. Until about 2000, DC was bleeding people in absolute numbers (at what % per year, would you say?). Since then, whatever the negative slope was, it has turned around, and DC has increased its population by (about) 1%. That's pretty huge. Conversely, MD and VA have been on an upward trajectory since about 1865. They increased their population by about 10% in the same time.
DC could obviously do better, and it will to a certain point, but it's not doing so bad now. In fact, it's doing pretty good. But the playing field will never be equal. VA and MD just have a lot of cheap hinterland.
Can we define the term "temporary?" DCPS has been failing since about 1972.
Precisely. And when did white flight start? About 1968 after the riots, right? It looks to me like there is a strong correlation between population decline and decreased quality in schools, assuming DCPS has been failing since 1972 as you said.
So now that population is increasing again after all these years, shouldn't we expect our schools to improve? And they are. Fenty has put the wheels in motion. If he didn't, someone else would have. Its an idea whose time has come.
Interesting term, "sustainable." I hear that bandied about a lot but have yet to get a definition. I'm reminded of that line from Fight Club: "On a long enough time line, everybody's life expectancy drops to zero."
Where exactly is that brick wall we're supposed to run into? When we run out of oil? 20 years? 40 years? I'd figure it would be a lot sooner, considering the exponentially increasing consuption by China and India. Seems like the suburbs are sustaining themselves quite nicely, and their residents are adapting to long-haul commutes as well. Not my cup of tea, but if you're insane enough to live in Front Royal, you get what you deserve. And if and when we finally run out of oil, pretty much sucks for the ex-urb crowd...as well as anyone who has to get their food delivered by freight truck, meaning everyone.
I chose an inner burb because I can be downtown in half an hour, the schools don't suck, there are neighborhood dives where I can still get cheap beer and greasy food. And there's a Metro on a bus line if I absolutely have to take it. But all that can change overnight; crime goes up, taxes go up, kids grow up and move out, shuffle around and the whole equation changes. DC's one of the most transient cities in the nation, and compared to the rust belt, it's fairly recession proof. Hence the overall population increase. It's just pretty much a given that if you're single, you're going to want a more urban lifestyle and if you got 3 kids, you ain't livin downtown unless you got a Swiss bank account.
And the sustainability question goes both ways. How sustainable is a half-mil population in DC? The population peaked at over a million during WWII and the housing stock was much smaller then. What's a sustainable population for downtown? 750k? 1.5 mil? At what point does 90 minutes alone in a car seem like heaven compared to living an urban density lifestyle? And isn't that what drove the creation of Levittown in the first place? Another baby boom and all those urban hipsters start flooding the suburbs AGAIN.
Housing in Baltimore is dense, walkable, and favored by proximity to city buses, light rail, and commuter rail service.
Having gone to college in Baltimore, I dispute this assertion. While there may be several public transportation options for those who don't have to venture too far beyond the Inner Harbor, the rest of the system seems geared to ferry people well outside the city, not within it or to closely neighboring points. After spending several hours on ridiculously convoluted bus routes to get to job interviews (and more than a few cabs when I had to go places where no bus routes existed), I concluded I'd be far better off coming back here.
So now that population is increasing again after all these years, shouldn't we expect our schools to improve? And they are.
Where are you getting this information? Which schools are improving? Because I have a lot of friends who are in a family way who want to know.
You're making a faulty syllogism: increased population does not equal improved performance. The DCPS student population is DECLINING; the increased DC population are not middle class families with kids, they're singles and DINKs. The overall population could double, but if your school population is predominately underclass kids with parents who don't have the means to be actively involved in their children's schooling, what difference does it make?
Our metropolitan area is attractive for lots of reasons, many of them economic. People want to move here, and will do so until the return to moving here is no longer greater than the benefit of moving here.
The thing is, every time someone settles here, their decision to do so has an effect on the people already here. It confers some benefits--the economy grows, the labor market deepens--and some costs--increased congestion, higher housing costs, and so on.
Sustainable development means growing such that the benefits to additional residents continue to outweigh the costs. Growing outward at low densities isn't sustainable, because new residents ultimately add more to congestion problems than they do to economic benefits. Maybe the crunch at which new residents are deterred is a long way off, but in the mean time, emphasis on such growth drags down the quality of life for existing residents and forces many people to make difficult choices between expensive homes and crushing commutes.
Not everyone wants to live downtown and take the train. That's fine. Housing price disparities between homes with access to transit and those without reveal, in part, the fact that the public would prefer more transit than they currently have. If we can't put everyone downtown, at least we can give residents of a larger area the ability to choose transit. But individual families can't build new lines by themselves. Regional coordination is needed.
The only problem with the imcreasing gas cost argument is that suburbanites will be acommodated not with improved transit infrastructure (which is expensive), but expansion of where businesses operate to bring the jobs closer to where people live. This is the next big negative consequence of urban sprawl, as even the suburbs become choked urban areas with dense street networks and rush hour traffic. If DC doesn't get it's act together to support denser development, it is going to become the ignored inner-inner core while people escape the urbanized suburbs by moving even farther out to commute to a place that is by then only remotely associated with DC.
If DC doesn't get it's act together to support denser development, it is going to become the ignored inner-inner core while people escape the urbanized suburbs by moving even farther out to commute to a place that is by then only remotely associated with DC.
Well, that's been the case for the past decade at least. The vast majority of commuter traffic is suburb-to-suburb, bypassing the core completely. Purple Lines and Intercounty Connectors and Dulles Rail Extentions are decades too late to meet current demand. Core growth has been, and will continue to be reverse commuters and inner city commuters who can afford an upscale urban lifestyle and the costs associated with that lifestyle. The problem becomes when the very things that made a neighborhood vibrant and liveable (independent shops, cafes, restaurants, particularly ethnic ones) can no longer afford the costs associated with an urban location (crime and taxes). At some point, the only businesses that can afford a downtown location are the very cookiecutter national chains that litter the sprawling suburbs.
Re: Comment #17
Monkey,
Perhaps I shouldn't have used the loaded term "urban renewal", because what is going on now isn't as burdened by historical or policy driven racism like the original urban renewal plans were.
But I don't really understand your point here. You seem to be saying that urban revitalization, renewal, recycling, reformation or whatever you want to call it is pie in the sky. But what's the alternative? Allow poor, inner city neighborhoods to become totally blighted and then do what with the residents? Ultimately we will all find ourselves in the same situation whether we try to do something for our cities or not: trying to figure out what to do with the urban poor who are unable or unwilling to move out of their neighborhoods.
I agree with you that we have thrown good money after bad in DCPS, but again what are our choices? Underfund the schools and see if that works better, change over to a total "school choice" system where there are no public schools? We all know the score with mismanaged DCPS contracts, charter school finance fiascos, and the like. What, is there going to be less graft and theft from decentralized school administration?
What we are doing and have been doing obviously isn't working, so I'm willing to try something different, but what? I'm all ears.
Keep Hope Alive,
HR
I just moved to Baltimore from DC. We wanted a house and couldn't find one in our price range in DC. We could find shells, condos, and as-is properies that screamed for to-the-studs renovations, but nothing else.
Sure, Baltimore is about the same distance as the ex-burbs but it also has incredibly high property taxes and an abysmal educational system. When we have a school-age child, I'll try to enroll them in the Ingenuity Schools program, or look for a charter school. Failing those options, I'm not sure what we'll do. My local school isn't just a poor performer, it is dangerous.
In terms of transit, well, Maryland is screwed up. MD, unlike most states (I think NJ is the only other one) does not have dedicated funding for public transit. Instead, they have a transportation trust fund (TTF). The TTF funds the MTA, the State Highway Administration, the Port Authority, etc. All those agencies fighting for the same pot of cash.
Currently the MTA receives about 50% of the dollars in the TFF alloted to operations but they only receive about 1/3 of the funds for capital investment projects. Combine an aging system with increasing ridership and poor infrastructure investment... You're looking at a looming crisis.
MD needs to get a dedicated source of revenue for the MTA. Boston did it by requiring localities to pay if they fall under certain service areas, plus they dedicate 20% of the sales tax revenue from a recent 1% increase. Sales tax is dicey because it is so regressive but it is worth exploring, particularly an increase on luxury goods.
HR,
There may not be less graft and theft at the school level, but at least it will be slightly more transparent. It's a sad state of affairs when the neighborhood blogs and self-appointed watchdogs are doing a better job following the money than the government agencies whose job it is to make sure the check gets from point a to point b. How are the DCPS and urban development models similar? They're both highly centralized, stovepiped, 1950s-era management systems. It's like Reagan's trickle-down economics theory writ large, just replace "economics" with "urine" and "theory" with "your kid's head." The denser the bureaucracy, the more rigid it becomes and the less adaptable it is to change. In the case of the Redevelopment Land Agency, responsible for handling the District's properties, all you have are a bunch of corrupt little feifdoms where the head honchos just sit on properties for DECADES, accomplishing nothing. If they actually developed anything in their portfolio, they'd be out of a job. How do you manage something after its developed and out of your purview? Why do you think they took the Southeast waterfront properties out of these guys' hands and made it it's own development corporation?
In both cases, there is ZERO accountability at the admin level.
I'm not saying urban development is pie-in-the-sky. I'm saying DC's development model is geared towards gleaming office boxes (with zero ground floor retail for locals), affluent singles and DINKs (whom DC can gouge for tax revenues and who don't have kids in the system), and tourists (who want generic chain food, gewgaws and gimcracks, and who hardly impact the infrastructure). If anything, THIS is an unsustainable economic model, because eventually people with money get tired of being taken to the cleaners; they start breeding and realize the schools are a mess; they get bored with the same old precious, boutique dining; and their cozy neighborhood is "vibrant" with jackhammers at 7am, street preachers, and gunfire.
And come the next recession, goodbye tax revenues, hello budget/service cuts. Now, had you spent your time attracting and retaining a stable middle class...
Monkey - What's your best guess on how to attract and retain a stable middle class in DC? Obviously fixing the public schools would be a start, but do you think a totally decentralized (but slightly more transparent) school administration will do the trick?
HR
HR:
Butting in here...
It's not just schools. As ME points out, it's also pretty much every development and economic-growth choice: Zoning, traffic management, parks maintenance, land valuation for tax purposes, the construction of massive numbers of apartments and condos suitable only for SINKS and DINKS. They're all of a piece.
The common thread is the chasing of short-term gain and picking of low-hanging fruit. But, what else could have been done in the 8 or 9 years since we got back what little budgetary control we ever had? It is undeniably a way of boosting liquidity.
I just hope this is only phase 1 of a neighborhood and middle-class friendly long game.
I doubt it, Mark. It's all economics - in this country, all development is really geared toward meeting the needs of the rich. Look at NYC, the city that is arguably in the best position to really build a sustainable environment for families because it's so flush with money and has such a strong base to build from. Yes, schools are improving. Yes, the public infrastructure is receiving lots of investment. But the only people who can afford to take advantage of all of that are really those who work on Wall St. or are otherwise involved with the Wall St. money machine. When a 1-br, fixer-upper in an old building on 215th St. goes for around $300K plus extortionate maintenance and tax payments, what middle-class person can actually afford to live there?
And I don't fault Bloomberg or anyone in city government for that, really. It's just the law of the market, which as we know is paramount in this country. And frankly, I don't know how it's possible to even stop the changes. Unless the city's going to seize hundreds of thousands of condos and co-ops via eminent domain to house teachers and cops, the middle class is going to continue to be squeezed farther and farther out to the fringes of Queens and Brooklyn. Even the Bronx is getting expensive now.
In DC, I think, the situation is broadly similar. There's lots of money floating around in the District going to all the lawyers, government hacks, and fork-tongued Republican hangers-on. And while housing in NY is limited by geography and density, housing in DC is limited by crime and height restrictions. As someone (Hillman?) has said here many times, DC doesn't have an affordable housing problem, it has a crime problem. And, since no one's allowed to build 50-story condos in the nice parts of town, the choice is either: move to the suburbs or move to the ghetto. While your average 20-something kid from Wisconsin might think it's really cool to live in the hood for reasons of street cred and getting sloshed at Wonderland, that really isn't a sustainable lifestyle choice. Eventually the threat of crime and the grind of shitty ghetto neighbors eats away at you, unless you have overriding reasons for living in the district - e.g., family history or something like that. Middle-class people are not going to come to DC so they can have homeless drunks piss on their doorstep or so their grandma can get mugged when coming to visit.
To make DC more attractive to middle-class people, you have to do one things: either make the cheap parts of the city less crime-ridden so families will choose to settle there, or increase the supply of housing in nice neighborhoods (i.e., remove height & historic restrictions) so prices fall somewhat and middle-class people can afford to live there. Neither of those things looks set to happen.
Well said, Jason.
I think that the cheap(er) parts of the city WILL in fact be less crime ridden in the future, but only after gentrification sweeps through, ensuring that the average middle class person can no longer afford to buy there.
Well, since people in the 'nicer' neighborhoods are hell bent of blocking any further development in their areas, that seems to only leave one option... But come on, let's be honest. Most of DC (including the 'nicer' neighborhoods) is made up of detached, single family homes. Easing the height restriction should not be necessary. There are plenty of opportunities to build in more density closer to downtown and along the transit corridors. But that won't ease housing prices, it'll just attract more people who can afford the same high prices to be closer to urban amentities. Besides, like the SUV culture, middle income families want to live the american dream in their big cozy houses out in suburbia. A family of four is hardly ever going to afford a 4-bedroom condo anywhere near DC.
The one obvious difference, Jason, is that DC has no ability to tax the vast majority of the income earned here. This is because the vast majority is earned by residents of MD and VA. NY has tax reciprocity. That means the assessed tax on the income earned within NYC by residents of other jurisdictions is apportioned.
So DC has fewer cards to play. On this basis, and on the basis of the need to compete (to some degree) with the expanding MSA around DC, I do understand and agree with the evident priorities. We need money to make changes.
But those general benefits need to flow back, and the cost and benefits need to be more equally shared. That's one of the big ticket items the last mayoral election was all about.
Yes, it was me that said DC doesn't have an affordable housing problem - we have a safe housing problem.
This was in response to the lame mantra I've heard ever since moving here - that 'gentrification' was ruining the existing bucolic utopia that was DC, making it so that no one could live here, driving out the canteloupe-sweet, dew-kissed residents, all of whom apparently have lived here since before George Washington was born, none of whom were addicted to crack and sucking up taxpayer dollars by the butt ton, and all of whom were just one more midnight basketball game away from becoming productive members of society, like MBAs, corporate lawyers, or maybe the new head of Mary Kay cosmetics.
This was ludicrous 10 years ago, and it's ludicrous today.
DC before this 'gentrification' was by and large a cesspool of crime and hell, with a population that was consuming many more city services than they could afford, and with the decent working people of the city simultaneously poorly served by a stunningly arrogant local government and terrorized by the crime and hell that their own fellow residents were inflicting on them on a daily basis.
DC has improved dramatically, but we ain't out of the woods yet.
If we had a decent police force you could afford to live in DC. There would be dozens of terrific neighborhoods you could afford.
The considerable majority of DC is 'ungentrified'. Don't believe me? Whip out a map of DC and tell me how much, geographically, is considered in a 'good' neighborhood. Yes, I know, 'good' is a loaded term, but really we're talking about considerably less than half the city. In the other half, you can find plenty of affordable housing. But, sadly, it comes at the price of reasonable personal safety. Hence, newcomers don't consider it. And the decent people already there remain constantly taken advantage of by street thugs and a police force that assumes that's just 'how things are'.
DC is ridiculously underdeveloped. Don't believe me? Take a drive up NY AVE NE sometime. There's plenty of places for us to build. It's just that there's also plenty of places to get jacked up and possibly killed if you linger too long.
Schools - no, we can't assume that with more tax revenue DC schools will improve. Why not? Because no one so far has had the balls to do mass firings in the school system. No one has rooted out the layers of stupidity, indifference, laziness, and arrogance that has characterized DC school administration for decades now.
Until that happens, you could coat each DC school in gold and diamonds and you'd still have the same crappy schools we have now. Except they'd be shiny.
And gentrification is no panacea for crime. Just ask the folks along U Street or the trendy new 14th Street corridor. Or H St NE.
What I do think will eventually change DC is technology.
Simply put, we will eventually have video surveillance on every street, like London. This will at long last kill the majority of DC street crime. When this happens, the city will become affordable again, as the currently affordable neighborhoods will be a reasonably safe living alternative.
I'm not thrilled about that tradeoff.... privacy for safety. But I guess I'll just have to consider a certain level of my privacy just the latest victim of the thug life mentality so common in DC. And I do think it's the only thing that will actually impact crime in DC (assuming, of course, that we've got a DC government agency that's actually able and willing to use such surveillance correctly).
Why? Because we've managed to breed a new criminal mentality. It's now even more acceptable to rob and harm people that you view as 'interlopers' in 'your' neighborhood. This type of crime, when added to the existing crime of opportunity, is going to guarantee that DC will be chock full of crime until technology makes that impractical for the criminal.
The idea of higher taxes driving out retail businesses is intriguing. And there is some merit to this.
But even this could be addressed pretty easily. If only residents and businesses would demand it.
Simply lower the business franchise tax (or unincorporated business franchise tax) on businesses in DC by the amount that their real estate taxes go up each year. That way, if your real estate taxes go up, your business income tax goes down. The city is still paid, but you aren't whacked twice.
And make it retroactive, to, say, the point taxes were five years ago. When, according to many of you, DC was a wonderland of charming local businesses just waiting to serve their wares with consummate professionalism, a wink, a smile, and good graces to all.
DC got an unexpected and unearned windfall when our real estate taxes doubled and tripled. And the city made ZERO efforts to mitigate the impact of these taxes on businesses.
But higher taxes ain't the only reason some businesses in DC are going out of business. In some instances it's also because they are finding that people are sick of crappy service, high-ass prices, filthy stores, and a generally indifferent attitude.
I'm afraid I agree with Monkey, to an extent (especially about the building of ugly new buildings with no retail on ground floor.... that's an abomination). DC is still screwed up. Many city services are still a joke, even though they have come a long way in a few short years.
Again, it will be that way until residents demand that mass firings be done, all across the board, in city agencies. Until then, we're going to get surly, unresponsive, arrogant, and stupid city services.
The sad truth is, when a citys's residents have to argue for why it is livable it rarely is. Paris, London, NYC, Rome (just as a few obvious examples- and three great capitol cities) don't have to promote themselves or redevelop, people WANT to live there with a vengance and fight to do so. Cities like that even at thier LOWEST, are among the most desirable places for people to live. They have thriving hearts and if you have to explain what makes them great to someone, that person will probably never get it anyway. DC and Balitmore had thier hearts ripped out by suburban zombies long ago, and the millions of chain store shopping suburbanites who surround these cities like a plague will be sucking the life force for ever. There is not a large enough creative base in these cities to pull out ahead. Too many beaurocrats. 4.5 million "Washingtonians" never set foot in the city itself- that say's it all.