American Dream

What a surprise! Families with children don't want to live in high-density, walkable New Urban developments! "We want a big backyard with swimming pool," says one father. "Walk everywhere with five kids? I don't think so."

We've been saying for years that there is a market for New Urbanism, but it is mainly limited to young singles and double-income-no-children households. And maybe not even most of those.

The Times says that New Urban homes make up only about 10 percent of home sales today. Of course, the New Urbanists say that is because of oppressive zoning laws that prevent them from building for the market -- as if all developers in many cities aren't oppressed by complicated and restrictive zoning laws. A survey by the National Realtors Association found that only about 17 percent of homebuyers aspire to a New Urban development, so 10 percent may be just a little short of the full market.

A recent article in Forbes magazine says that convention centers are almost always a waste of money. The center in our favorite smart-growth city, Portland, was cited as the leading example: Recently expanded at a cost of $116 million, it loses $5.5 million a year and enjoys just 43 percent occupancy.

So naturally, Salem, Oregon's capital city, had to have a convention center too. Its center is just opening at a cost to taxpayers of more than $32 million.

Forbes says the convention business "is a mess" because cities have spent $2.4 billion on new facilities, yet demand is falling. Exhibit space has increased from 40 million to nearly 65 million square feet, but convention attendance from more than 5 million people in 1996 to barely 4 million in 2003. This is only going to get worse as 44 cities are building or expanding their convention centers, almost all with tax subsidies.

Forbes points out that, when Portland asked voters for funds to expand the convention center a few years ago, they turned it down. But Portland, which is building light rail despite multiple voter rejections, did the expansion anyway, funding it out of higher taxes on hotel rooms and rental cars.

Now Portland wants to subsidize the construction of a new hotel to support the convention center. (Of course, one argument for expanding the convention center was that it would support local hotels.) But as both Forbes and the above article on the Salem convention center point out, such hotels are almost always bad investments. Flint Michigan, for example, spent $31 million on a hotel next to its convention center. The hotel later sold for $6.5 million to a nonprofit group that uses it for conferences.

A study by an engineer at the University of Virginia has found that red-light cameras increase rather than reduce the number of accidents and injuries. The study found that the cameras reduced the number of "t-bone" accidents, though not the number of injuries resulting from those accidents. But the cameras increased the number of rear-end collisions.

The above link is to an article in the Vancouver Sun that allows feedback from readers. Much of the feedback is from people who blame the accidents on the drivers. This is not entirely correct. Highway designers have a responsibility to their users to design safe highways. Most traffic engineers agree that design changes that lead to more accidents and injuries should be avoided. Unfortunately, in their zeal to "get people out of their cars," most urban planners seem willing to sacrifice safety to create more annoying driving conditions.

You can also read about this study in the Washington Post (free registration required). I haven't found the study itself on line but if someone does, please let me know.

People who don't live in Portland have another reason to be envious of the smart-growth city: It just extended its 7-mile-per-hour downtown streetcar line by another one-half mile. This cost just $15.8 million, about as much as the cost of two to three miles of freeway lanes. Of course, those freeway lane miles would each carry only about 30,000 passenger miles a day, while the half-mile of new streetcar line will probably carry around 500 to 1,000 passenger miles a day. So it was obviously a good investment.

Good old Republican Senator Gordon Smith wants Congress to waive import tariffs on the streetcars, which Portland buys from the Czech Republic. That will save the city about $100,000 per car.

The next step, already underway, is to extend the streetcar down to the controversial South Macadam area, where the city has promised a total of $255 million in subsidies to see the development of about 3,000 new condos in high-rise waterfront buildings that will destroy the views of thousands of existing residents. From there, commuters will be able to take an aerial tram to "hospital hill," the location of the Oregon Health Sciences University and several other hospitals. Why drive when you can ride a 7-mph streetcar and 10-mph tramway?

Call center amid whirl of debate
For starters the project will see a $450,000 grant and a $7.1 million, low-interest loan to build the project with no payments for 10 years.
I'd like to know what the taxpayers get in return and why Portland is picking winners and losers in their tax break lottery.