Development
Montgomery no longer a homogenous suburb
Two weeks ago, former Montgomery County Councilmember Rose Crenca was quoted by the Examiner as saying that people who don't want to live in a suburb should leave the county.
I watched her testimony at a recent County Council hearing on the CR (Commercial-Residential) Zone, where she first made the comment, and this exchange afterwards between her and sitting Councilmember George Leventhal:
Councilmember Leventhal: This [question] is for my neighbor Rose Crenca. You've given so much to the county over the years, but I wanted to make sure I understood you correctly. Did you say that people who disagree with you on a zoning issue should please leave the county?It's kind of tragic to hear Crenca lament a world that doesn't really exist anymore. I always wonder if, after a certain age, people lose their capacity to accept new information in their lives and just revert back to whenever they decided they were happiest.Rose Crenca: (Laughs.) Did I- Did I disagree with what?
Leventhal: (He repeats the question.)
Crenca: Only if they want to live in an urban area. Montgomery County is defined as suburban. All the people I know saved their money to go buy houses in suburbia, the perfect suburbia, Montgomery County. Now somebody's decided we're not suburbia anymore, we're gonna be urbia. And I'm saying no, we're gonna be suburbia. If you want to live in urbia, there are plenty of those places around. And there's some good ones. Go.
Leventhal: You're part of the tradition and history of this county, but civility and respect for people's opinions is also part of the tradition and history of this county.
Crenca: True. But I'm talking about is change - changing what is here. And I'm saying that we din't have any process to vote on changing what is here. This being a democracy I thought there'd have been a plebiscite or something. I don't recall that and I've been here since 1949.
Councilmember Nancy Floreen: (Interrupts.) I think Mrs. Crenca was using her pulpit to make a point, and she made a point.
In the 1940's, when much of Montgomery County was farmland, some people were probably upset to see their communities transition from rural to suburban. Others might have been excited at the prospect of new amenities, new neighbors, and the county's emerging reputation as an affluent bedroom community.
But no one really voted for that change to happen. It happened because of market demand for new housing, a lack of buildable land in Washington (and the declining status of the inner city), and a county government who, much like today, saw that people were coming and wanted to accommodate them appropriately.
Sixty years later, Montgomery County is a very different place. It's a majority-minority county now. The Post did a story just yesterday about the gigantic Asian community in Montgomery County. Though many of those Asian immigrants have settled in so-called "suburban" places like Rockville or Germantown, studies show that they're interested in a greater sense of community, including the ability to walk to shops and amenities. For people who grew up in dense Asian cities, Montgomery County is the "perfect suburbia," but not in the same way that Crenca describes it.
Not to mention, of course, that Crenca is 85 and part of a growing population of senior citizens in Montgomery County and the region as a whole. Many of these retirees will want to stay in their homes and communities, but those who can't drive anymore are essentially trapped in the "perfect suburbia." That's one reason why retiring Baby Boomers are flocking to urban neighborhoods.
Suburban and urban, old and new. Why can't we have our cake and eat it too?
That raises a bigger question, though: if retirees are going to live in Montgomery County, how do we pay for the services they need? If they're not working, the county doesn't get their income tax revenue. And if we send away all the people who might like an urban lifestyle in Montgomery County, like young professionals, immigrants, and retirees, then we're losing that money as well.
Montgomery County became the "perfect suburbia" because people were invited in. We could turn people away who don't look like us, who don't think like us, who want to live in apartments, who make less money than us or get around on foot or by bus. But we wouldn't suddenly go back to 1949 as a result. In fact, the county that would result would be far, far worse than what we have today.
Many people worry that plans to encourage urban development in Montgomery County is "imposing" a way of life on them. In fact, the opposite is true. Those, like Crenca, who still cling to a "perfect suburbia" which may or may not have existed, are the ones telling other people how to live.
 | A planner and architect by training, Dan Reed is interested in suburban retrofits. Dan works for the Friends of White Flint, writes his own blog, Just Up the Pike, and serves as the Land Use Chair for the Action Committee for Transit. Dan lives in Silver Spring.    |
Comments
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I like Rose Crenca in general, but this is a wholly close minded argument. "Perfect suburbia" doesn't have the traffic problems that Montgomery County has. It doesn't have the income disparity that Montgomery County has. It doesn't have troublesome isolated apartment complexes like Montgomery County has. There are a million people in Montgomery County. it's a huge regional job center. It's one of the cultural nexuses of the DC area. "Perfect suburbia" is a contradiction of terms.
by Dave Murphy on May 27, 2011 3:26 pm • link • report
I think it's Messrs. Reid and Levanthal who owe her an apology. If seniors really felt trapped in their suburban homes, many would make other arrangements. The fact is that most of them love their homes, though they may not like what their neighborhoods have become in recent years.
by Dan on May 27, 2011 3:31 pm • link • report
I think you've hit the nail on the head. They were invited in. If the current population of Montgomery County wants to transition to 'urban' it was do so by voting on a change of plans that essentially 'invites' that change in. Those suburban tracks that were built there starting in the mid-20th century couldn't have happened if the plans of the time (zoning?) hadn't been changed to allow it. The same has to happen now. If she's correct and people don't want that change, then it won't occur. If she's wrong then it will. I.e., It's really not just market forces that are at play here. The current people who live there have the right to determine their own direction within the larger scheme of things ... i.e., the limit change or to leverage it for all its worth. Whatever occurs, provided it gets decided by the people there now, it'll be the right thing.
by Lance on May 27, 2011 3:34 pm • link • report
by andrew on May 27, 2011 3:47 pm • link • report
It's the feed from the Montgomery County Council. They use Silverlight. Can't be helped.
The transcript is included below the video, so if you can't watch, you can still read what was said.
by Matt Johnson on May 27, 2011 3:48 pm • link • report
by Thayer-D on May 27, 2011 3:50 pm • link • report
From 1950 - 1960, MoCo became a suburb:
Year: 1960 1950 1940
Pop.: 340928 164401 83912
Dang that integration issue again. White people fleeing DC rather than integrate wanted a new place to live. So farmland became suburban for the new "invitees".
How were people invited? Paper invite or carrier pigeon? Did they have to RSVP? Was it BYOB?
by greent on May 27, 2011 4:08 pm • link • report
I grew up in Silver Spring and lived in Montgomery my entire life before attending school in Philadelphia. And my name has two E's, not one. Just figured you should know.
by dan reed! on May 27, 2011 4:09 pm • link • report
Data link:
http://www.census.gov/population/cencounts/md190090.txt
by greent on May 27, 2011 4:20 pm • link • report
by canaan on May 27, 2011 4:22 pm • link • report
Rose Crenca's vision for Mont. Co. is absent any diversity - no urbanization, and also no agricultural areas protected. I love the diversity we find here. If we grow smart, with higher density in some select areas while protecting our Ag Preserve, we can grow and still keep it diverse.
by Wayne Phyillaier on May 27, 2011 4:25 pm • link • report
by Lance on May 27, 2011 4:57 pm • link • report
by dan reed! on May 27, 2011 5:13 pm • link • report
That's not a very nice thing to say about someone who left the state for his graduate studies. Implies a bit of ressentiment, I think.
In any case, I've been to White Flint. How is this "perfect suburbia"? Crenca seems ill-equipped to formulate policies to manage MoCo's growth.
by JustMe on May 27, 2011 5:17 pm • link • report
This implies that what happens in Montgomery County occurs in a vacuum, with no effects on anyone or anyplace else. That is obviously not true. It's especially not true considering the arbitrary nature of jurisdictional boundaries.
Not that local residents shouldn't have any say at all. Obviously they should. But Lance's interpretation is too black and white.
by BeyondDC on May 27, 2011 5:39 pm • link • report
by Scotty McP on May 27, 2011 6:00 pm • link • report
Not really ... Of course there will be outside influences, but in the end it needs to be the community ... that decides in common through its democratic institutions ... how it proceeds. I.e., in what direction, with what caveats, at what cost ... and anticipated benefits.
For example, the very suburban nature of the county today wouldn't have happened if the farm owners at the time hadn't wanted it to. Look at Louden County. Didn't it for a long time have some restriction on building subdivision? Doesn't it still have some strict rules in place for new subdivisions in certain parts of it? Doesn't even MoCo have the Ag Preserve mentioned above?
Of course outside forces will 'conspire' to bring more development to a place like MoCo. It will do so by offering 'profits' (i.e., higher land prices) to those currently owning that land. And absent any laws or regs, it would be each landowner for himself ... With an spiral of construction occuring until the demand stopped ... i.e., until you end up with a NYC ... or until you end up with a Houston ... or even a Detroit. It's the complete lack of 'planning'. It's the free market without any guidance and by what the greater community wants.
I'm not saying that the outer forces won't bring opportunities and threats to MoCo, just that those who live there now have a right (and obligation) to work together to balance out their communal and individual opportunities (e.g., selling to the highest bidder) and their individual and communal costs. And it's not like the needs of those not currently living there don't get taken into account .. that gets taken care of via the profit motive. So, no it's not black and white.
However, if you're thinking that those wanting to live there now should somehow just be 'granted' the right to live there irrespective of the wishes of those already there, then I'd say you're 'imposition' of your ideas is black and white. I.e., Either the current residents accept zoning and planning changes without the current democratic processes they have in place to decide those things communally between themselves, or they are somehow 'bad people' deserving of being called 'homogenous' or 'old' or 'whatever'.
There are means in place for acheiving what you want to acheive. They include persuasion and 'show me the money' ... They shouldn't include trying to shame people into giving you what they have. That's way too communistic if you think about it ...
by Lance on May 27, 2011 8:35 pm • link • report
Dan, this is one of the worst cases of yanking the run out from under those undeserving of it, demanding a future not based on clear precedent, etc etc.
Look, she's got a point. If people want to live in a City, they can go find a City that wants people to come live in a City. The vast majority of Montgomery County's citizens of all age ranges have a perfectly good city right downtown. The District wants more people to move there; after all, it lost one-sixth of its population in the late-1980s through the mid-1990s. Add in the effects of the massive Revitalization, the immense overbuilding of residential commercial real-estate in the District, the ongoing economic crisis and the implosion of the housing bubble, pretty much every yuppie in all of the contiguous counties can afford to live in a Real City that was Planned To Be A Real City.
In MoCo, to preserve our Agricultural heritage, we enacted the Ag Reserve laws. Folks who live in the rural areas do so mostly because they like it there. They grew up there, that's what they know, that's probably what the like if they live there after they grew up.
Nearly a decade ago, a man in Aspen Hill was brought in for a zoning and code hearing before an ALJ, whom if memory serves is now the head of the Planning Board. Very nice lady and immensely bright, whomever she was. She pointed out a few things to us, and in the end we got what we wanted, no legal permission for this man to convert a 3BR-2.5 2-floor rambler into a 2BR-1 bath 2 floor rambler with an 8BR-2 bath (no typo!) accessory apartment that had already been advertised out to rent.
Part of our argument, and especially the complaints of the neighbors, was that if we had wanted to move into a community full of boarding houses and apartments, we'd have bought condos instead of getting a mortgage on single-family detached dwellings zone R-60 and R-90.
In the same way, thanks to the Ag Reserve laws, people who are planning to -- for example -- move into a nice house in the country and who pay the big bucks for the place, will not have to worry that as soon as they sign the note, someone in YOUR INDUSTRY, Dan, will not instantly convert all of the surrounding properties into high-density commercial residential, to-wit, converting their lovely country home into an isolated pocket of peaceful green embedded in a noisy and polluted nest of apartment complexes.
I realize it goes against your education and profession, Dan, but try to develop the highly adult capacity to see things from the viewpoints of others, especially of those who will be affected by your actions. And then actually CARE. Care enough to not tell them that you think they're jerks because the contract they signed was for R-90 and R-60 and that's the only reason they signed the contract. Care enough to not tell them that they need to get with the program, when in fact it's folks in your industry, and their political paid ponies who need to recognize that when you rip the reasons for them living there right out from under them, effectively it's a sort of long-term "bait and switch" fraud.
MoCo should enact something like Portland's "limits to the city" ordnances, though let's please not get caught up the details of where Portland's experiment isn't totally perfect. We should do something equally visionary. I realize that you hate suburbia due to your experiences in Aspen Hill and Olney, but try to not let your hatred blind you or one day someone will report that they heard you standing in the streets screaming We Must Pave the Bay, and everyone hearing the news will yawn and be totally un-surprised.
We need a Limits To Urbanization here in Montgomery, in the same way and for about the same reasons as we needed the Ag Reserve ordinances.
Quite frankly, it's citified enough. If you want to make it even more citified, do it in Bethesda, Chevy Chase, DTSS, or even downtown Kensington. Do it in Glenmont, they've got the road and rail transit connectivity. Oh, hold it, you've (I mean the Urban Dev community) already citified (or have project in the pipeline) DTSS, Bethesda, Chevy Chase and to some degree Kensington. Now you need more space for more projects, and you're laying the groundwork, maybe, with a fore-running propaganda campaign? Call people reactionaries and intimate that since they're elderly they're mental cases and not to be respected? Astonishing. I think I'll get my mom on the horn to all of her friends in Leisure World and ask them how they vote ahem how they feel about that.
We need limits to urbanization. We need the limits of the Ag Reserve. We need people to understand that in a world nearing resource depletion amid massive overpopulation, we don't need to overbuild endlessly and more than a man needs to notice his neighbors all have cancer and thus decide to start smoking tobacco. It's madness in both cases. Madness.
Sorry to come out all unhappy and mean. Someone I respect told me that my writing comes across as angry and in this case that would be accurate perception. Now why don't you Urban Planner and Political follower folks maybe tell me how much commercial space you need to build in Aspen Hill (hint: a third of a million square feet of centrally located CRE is VACANT) and tell us that we're not urbanized enough (lots of high-density but not high-rise residential CRE and condos are here already). You've got lots of problems to solve with the stuff that's built already, before you talk about building any more.
Freeze the limits of Urban Expansion and do it by law.
by Thomas Hardman on May 27, 2011 8:56 pm • link • report
Personally, I come from a rural county that is turning more and more suburban. Personally I'd think a better plan to preserve open space (and more rural/small town character) would be to concentrate development rather than forcing homes to be located on 2-5 acre lots (the current track its on), this post pretty much advocates the same but on a higher scale.
by Canaan on May 27, 2011 9:41 pm • link • report
Only if they want to live in an urban area. Montgomery County is defined as suburban. All the people I know saved their money to go buy houses in suburbia, the perfect suburbia, Montgomery County. Now somebody's decided we're not suburbia anymore, we're gonna be urbia. And I'm saying no, we're gonna be suburbia. If you want to live in urbia, there are plenty of those places around. And there's some good ones. Go.
The point is exactly as she said. People saved their money to live in a Montgomery County that was intentionally suburban for the most part. Sure, the suburbs expanded to the point where they have caused all sorts of problems, such as immense traffic problems, huge commute times, etc etc. And so a limit to outward expansion of Sprawl was enacted, the Ag Reserve.
The thing is, people really did pay money with the sole intention of living in suburbia. They don't want to live in the City, in "urbia" as Ms Crenca calls it. And her point is that if you think that the current suburban nature of most of MoCo isn't to your taste, if you want it to be a city, then go move... rather than trying to change it into a city. Her point is that the majority of people here (she implies) vastly prefer to live in the community which attracted their home investment interest. Hey, when we moved to Aspen Hill in 1963, we moved here because it was both convenient to my mom's government job, and about as far out as you could be from the city. Most of our neighbors at that time had comparable intentions when they bought their houses, most of them new or with only one previous owner. If we had thought that 50 years later the second generation would be living in a deteriorating barrio where you can't get any significant large-scale employers to lease, we would have picked some other place. Most our our neighbors who bought near the time that we bought, feel exactly the same. Don't believe me? Actually go and ask them. I wish the County Council would door-to-door poll us as to what we want, but we've never seen a one of the pollsters here. They just shove down our throats whatever seems expedient to them.
What we want to preserve is the character of suburbs: Indeed, the Aspen Hill Master Plans cite the wide tree-lined boulevards of Parkland Drive and Arctic Avenue as a model for all future Master Planning in the County. This isn't intended to be rural nor "urbia". If people are paying the big bucks to live in suburbia, letting them pay those big bucks and then changing the neighborhood into something they don't want, that's totally a rip-off and everyone should be outraged.
Note that Dan pretty much declares Ms Crenca to be in her dotage and thus inherently irrelevant:
It's kind of tragic to hear Crenca lament a world that doesn't really exist anymore. I always wonder if, after a certain age, people lose their capacity to accept new information in their lives and just revert back to whenever they decided they were happiest.
Ah, Dan, your "information" is neither "new" as you seem to imply, nor for that matter do we live in "a world that doesn't really exist anymore". Basically, you're calling the game a win before it's played. More than one World Series game has stood all of the bookies on their heads in the top of the ninth inning. Somehow I'm reminded of FDR remarking, sometime back in the early 1940s, "[t]his so-called New World Order is neither new, nor is it order". What's going on in this article is neither new, nor is it remotely respectable. Basically it's the age-old thing of the young pups calling the old dogs irrelevant fools, while conveniently forgetting (and hoping that nobody else notices) that they themselves are working for other old dogs who happen to disagree with the formerly mentioned old dogs, who are standing up to defend the turf where they are long residents... not about to let themselves and their families be dis-accommodated by old dogs that are, comparatively, very new indeed to the neighborhood. Note to Ms Crenca, my apologies and please don't misread the analogy.
Note about the "diversity". Somehow, perhaps it's bad writing, but it's almost as if someone might be suggesting that only "old white people" could possibly prefer suburbia. Looking at the last two Census reports on the Aspen Hill tract and neighboring tracts, this is ridiculous. We're as "diverse" as anyplace in the region and perhaps with one of the most even mix balances. If anyone tries to tell me that the Chinese gentleman next door, the retired black American master carpenter across the street, the mixed native-and-immigrant couple nearby, the "latinos" all over the place, and the remaining population of white-and-retired folks don't like suburbia, I can only ask "so why do they continue to live here, or more likely why moved in here at the height of the Housing Bubble". This is why people moved here to MoCo and the heart of suburbia: it's what they like, and what they wanted, and for which they paid the big bucks."
by Thomas Hardman on May 27, 2011 10:33 pm • link • report
I don't think the county is under the obligation to take everyone who might possibly want to live there. That's why we have a free market. I do, however, think the county is under the obligation to accept something approximating its fair share of regional growth (which for the record, they do).
by BeyondDC on May 27, 2011 11:26 pm • link • report
Actually, they can just say no too. That is the free market. No one has any obligation of any sort to take in other people. If they did, we'd have an overpopulation problem (world wide) of unimaginable proportions. Like u said it really comes down to persuasion and 'show me the money'. No one is owed anything in this world.
by Lance on May 28, 2011 12:10 am • link • report
And sorry, but to expect a neighborhood to stay the same for almost fifty years is outrageous.
by Canaan on May 28, 2011 12:37 am • link • report
by Canaan on May 28, 2011 12:47 am • link • report
Have you heard of historic districts ... where neighborhoods are expected to stay the same ... forever?
Now, I CAN agree with this:
The trick is how to guide the development of the urban pattern. If done well, then the effects need not be so great on the suburban and rural parts. There is good urban and bad urban and good and bad suburbia. I want both to be good.
But there is the precondition that the people there now, via their elected officials, agree to making that change. I.e., that they see enough benefit in giving up their suburban areas for urban areas that they WANT to make this change.
by Lance on May 28, 2011 12:57 am • link • report
Re: your second point. I don't necessarily see the case in Montgomery as suburban to urban. I see it as the bad urban going to good urban and similar for suburban. What I think got lost is the fact that people have largely forgotten that suburbs can be compact and walkable as well and that by following an urban form doesn't make something in and of itself urban. DC has many suburban areas though its in the city proper. But its hard to look at them that way when many of our visions of the suburbs are formed by places like white flint or prince william county.
by Canaan on May 28, 2011 1:22 am • link • report
[...] And no where does Dan argue to make all of Montgomery county more urban. He says that it is foolish to think that by trying to orient development around a walkable scale one is trying to force people to live in a crowded city. [...]
I think there are a few points that you're missing.
1. Walkable scale, in most of the "intentionally suburban" part of Montgomery County is outside of the current concepts of Zoning. See also the "wedges and corridors" Planning documents and all subsidiary Master Plans.
2. Walkable scale, in Montgomery County, is generally seen only in the settlement cores that existed prior to the widespread ownership of automobiles that could easily exceed about 20 MPH. That means mostly DTSS, Wheaton, parts of Rockville, Kensington, BCC, etc. The rest of what we see today is effectively the elder settlement cores having become slightly more urbanized and city-like, while the rest was left intentionally devoid of most commercial uses outside of office parks or other campus type facilities. The car was king and in fact promoting development of car-dependent non-walkable "infill of former ruralia" suburban sprawl was considered both patriotic and contributing to the national economy.
3. See previous points again. "Wedges and Corridors" intentionally places all commercial uses outside of most concepts of walkability, even in the old pre-FAR concept of walkability. For example the majority of single-family detached residential dwellings are out of "reasonable" (less than half-mile) walking distance from grocery, drug, and/or convenience stores. Much of the neighborhood is in fact outside of a quarter-mile from the nearest bus-stop.
4. The modern concept of "walkability" is not understood by most people to be what the Urban Planning Community means when they say "walkable". They calculate by something called the FAR, floor-area ratio, IIRC. To the modern Urban Planning people, "walkable" means that you walk to the end of your hall in your high-rise, and perhaps the majority of the distance between you and shopping is traversed by elevator. To most of us, "walkable scale" means a quarter mile walk to the stores, and a quarter mile walk back home. The Urban Planning community has fooled many otherwise intelligent people by their clever re-definition of "walkable". You probably won't ever see this dichotomy of definition until you get deep into debate, and then they drag out FAR to make you look uneducated. What actually occurs is that we "regular" people discover that they use a different dictionary.
5. Given all of the above, any time Urban Planners talk about "walkable", they are talking about high-density mixed-use (and ideally transit-centric) development.
I think that we can all agree that there is no room for more Sprawl.
I think that we can all agree that some people prefer to live in their own little part of Sprawl that they bought and paid for, and bought and paid for that, knowing -- and desiring -- nothing other.
I think that we can agree that the only way that you can pack more people into the County, given the limits of the County bounds, and the bounds of the Ag Reserve, since you can not spread them out, all you can do is to stack them up.
I think we can all agree that there is a lot of money to be made by converting low-density Sprawl into high-density high-rise apartments and condos.
I think that any argument about how it's beneficial to pursue endless growth for the sake of endless growth is like a cancer cell stating that it's proud to be part of a tumor and that tumors are great and should be expanded. Hey, that cancer cell is supporting its allies, right? But when the tumor is too big, it kills the body. If the cancer cell decided "I think it would be better if I was not part of a tumor" and in fact saved the body by denying other cancer cells the opportunity for limitless expansion (until it kills the body), it would be choosing the right course, so to metaphorically speak.
Arguments toward the ultimate goal of replacing low-density Sprawl with high-density development occupying the same footprint -- rather than reducing or contracting Sprawl regardless of density, into a smaller footprint -- are essentially arguments towards putting endlessly more people in finite space, to consume finite resources.
Any argument not considering the ultimate requirements of food, water for both hydration and waste-management, and the energy to provide for those needs, is an argument overlooking and omitting from the discussion the most basic fundamentals of human life, outside of air.
by Thomas Hardman on May 28, 2011 2:08 am • link • report
by Canaan on May 28, 2011 8:14 am • link • report
The principles of the Enlightenment, the basis of our modern society, say that all people are entitled to life, liberty, and property. As long as individuals are allowed by right to purchase property, they will find a way to move to Montgomery county, and Montgomery County will grow. There is simply niway around this. Outside of a few very tiny municipalities, there is no way to zone someplace so strictly that no additional people will be able to move there. You frequently advocate a fantasy scenario in which the voting public (of an entire county!) can choose to prevent people from moving to and building on the land. Our legal system does not work that way, except in a few specific cases related to zoning which is about the management of population growth, not the prevention of it.
by Tyro on May 28, 2011 10:41 am • link • report
Actually if you follow at all what the so-called smartgrowthers are saying (at least on this blog), they don't want sprawl and they want development to occur at places where mass transit is available. Maybe it's just me ... but I can't help but read into that that they're hoping to see more dense development near the limited number of Metro Stations we have and no more development out in our vast quantities of available land in the suburban and exburban and beyond areas. Combine that with their zealous 'eco-efficiencies' and, again I could be wrong, but the world I'm seeing them envision is one where we build on as little land as possible ... leaving the Earth as free from the influence of humans as possible ... and leaving the vast expanses of this usable and beautiful land to the wild animals (and Sierra Club hikers) while we the humans live stacked in tall boxes, densely packed in. It's not a pretty site.
by Lance on May 28, 2011 10:48 am • link • report
However, there is one very important way in which urban areas are superior which is providing a wide variety of job opportunities for the highly skilled. This one factor is so important that it's reasonable to say that you have to plan everything else around it.
The reality today is that MoCo is one of the most well educated places on the planet and the county needs to provide a deep pool of job opportunities for these people. Obviously, that's not a priority for the 85 year old retired crowd that Crenca represents but the County can't cater to their job-agnostic preferences to the exclusion of everyone else's primary need for satisfying, well-paying work. Frankly, if there's anyone who should consider moving, it's retired people to Florida.
* I was a MoCo resident for the first 25 years of life
by Falls Church on May 28, 2011 12:27 pm • link • report
We intentionally created this form of development in the general vicinity of the New Deal, with banking policy, with home ownership tax policy, with commercial depreciation tax policy, with transportation policy, and with zoning policy. Our government even went so far as to institutionally exclude the minorities that represented one of the things our new suburbanites were trying to get away from. We did this because we had the land, we produced more oil than the rest of the world combined, and we needed to increase consumption, burning off resources in the hopes of salvaging the economy. At this stage, however, we have better ways to salvage the economy - a whole century's worth of energy, transportation, and technological progress lies ahead of us. When we do find ourselves with excess resources for our employment level, governments in the rest of the world have shown us since the Depression the power that the modern welfare state can wield in improving people's lives, without relying exclusively on the dictates of employment. We are past this system of sprawl being a present necessity or a viable future. Self-serving advocacy of growth-restricting policies designed to appreciate your main asset (your single family house on a half acre in Aspen Hill) at the expense of the rest of the population's well-being is to be expected, but it is morally bankrupt. "I've got mine, go fuck yourself" hurts our ability to create successively greater qualities of life for each coming generation.
by Squalish on May 28, 2011 2:45 pm • link • report
Wow ... so, you think the whole world starts and ends with the metro Washington area? You know, you can get a 4 bedroom house for less than $100K in the Detroit area (and only slightly more in most of the mid-west). And there's lots of very affordable housing even close by such as parts of West Virginia AND Virginia (and no, I don't mean Northern Virginia).
Yeah, what this lady has now is worth a lot. More than what most people can pay. But wasn't always so. I bet if you look back to why she moved there to begin with many many years ago, it had to do with cost. I.e., At a time when housing was expensive in DC, developers started building in MoCo to provide cheap housing for those that couldn't afford DC. (Yeah, this was way before 'white flight'.) She helped make it what it is now. So, why should she give up what she worked to build just so that you can have something easy? Why don't you just do like she did, and go find a place where it's cheap today. There are a lot of those places. They're just not the 'popular' places. But you know, you go there now, and like this lady, in 50 - 60 years, that place could be popular too.
by Lance on May 28, 2011 3:20 pm • link • report
No one's saying that everyone deserves a free apartment in Bethesda. It's easy for Rose Crenca and people like her to tell these people (her neighbors!) to leave. But people come to Montgomery County for jobs and they deserve to find affordable housing within easy reach of those jobs. It amazes me that otherwise well-educated, intelligent people can't wrap their head around that.
by dan reed! on May 28, 2011 3:34 pm • link • report
Ah, up until this point I was admiring the well-constructed and fact-filled post. Yet you make some erroneous assumptions and leaps of logic as you segue to a conclusion which I don't think follows in a close-coupled way. Allow me to clarify, but let me do that later. First let me expand on the first sentence of yours which I quoted.
We are past this system of sprawl being a present necessity or a viable future.
Ah, this is a fact, and you almost express the correct conclusion which would arise from your coverage of the historic basis of the current situation. Yet you somehow manage to miss the fact that prior to the 1900s, we were a Frontier society, and until roughly the 1980s, while the frontiers had long been closed even in the arid West, infill and sprawl continued to expand in an economic model which can only be called Colonial. By this I mean that there was always room for growth, and for population increase, and for new development, and accessing new resources in terms of water supply, etc.
Yet the fact is, we reached the Limits to Growth, the tipping point where the Colonial economic model can no longer be expansionist due to inaccessibility of new resources of land, materials, and potentially even sustenance and operational energy requirements. We're approaching a Steady State economy. We're probably right now living through the last "adjustment" as the balance passes the last tipping point. The transition wasn't overnight nor all at once, but occurred in intergraded phases. Locally we can see the creation of the Ag Reserve as one of the first reactions to and also causes of tipping from Colonial Expansion into Steady State. Comparable causes/effects can be seen in everything from recycling to two-income families, etc. You almost got that right, but didn't hit the exact nail square on the head, so to speak.
Now, if you're thinking that I'm sitting here in Aspen Hill drooling over anticipated increases in home valuation, you're entirely wrong. Let me explain why. The more the property is worth, the more taxes I pay. Additionally, we are definitely in the Steady State model here in this family. Under Economic Colonialism models, I'd have struck out from home, and bought a place, expanding Sprawl without a doubt, and on the passing of the parent generation, the old property would be sold, repeat through the generations until the land is full. But under Steady State, I live at the home where I grew up and as the parent generation passes I remain in the same place. I have no children and my only concern is that the environment around me is one in which I can endure, perhaps thrive, in a house that is paid for, ideally paying the least taxes possible as there will be expenses of upkeep. This continuity on the same lands for multiple generations is emblematic of "full countries", and the last time it was "universally" in sway was in Europe from about the time that the Roman Empire in the West fell to the Goths and the other Germanic and then degenerated into the Feudal system of lords, vassals, and serfs. And you may notice that the news of a "new world" where almost all of the natives had suddenly died of plagues was gladly received and astonishing migrations began. It took nearly 500 years from Cristobal Colon's discovery for the American continents to once again become full. Yet in the last 100 years or so, we shot far past the former population's numbers. That's because we had technologies based initially on steam and later on internal combustion. We didn't just fill the land, we overfilled it. By at least a factor of two. To the point where we are changing the very climate... even as we start to exhaust non-renewable energy fuels.
My point is this: I'm not doing this for personal profit. I am not taking these positions because I think it's fun, or because I'm turning into a cranky old man with an expanding mean streak. I'm taking these positions for the same reason lots of people drive a Prius or ride a bike or take the bus or walk everywhere. It's not as if I am callous or uncaring. I care a lot, because I'm out to save the world. It's a dirty job, but someone's got to do it.
Rather than drooling over appreciation of my property's valuation, despite the immense and widespread suffering brought on the the Mortgage Bubble collapse, in terms of all of those things you go on about -- such as the high cost of nearly-unavailable housing impacting particularly young adults, immigrants or otherwise -- the collapse of the Bubble is the best thing that could have happened. Suddenly there were empty, and even affordable, houses littering the residential neighborhoods, with the only place hit harder than Aspen Hill being the neighboring 20906 zipcode. This adjustment both returned some sanity and sense of reality to the banking system and related mortgage-backed deriviatives such as commoditized debt obligations and credit-default swaps, and it plunged the valuation of some of the County's most entry-level residential properties down into affordability. People who could not have afforded to buy without fraudulent loans at the former rates, can now buy properties here under a straightforward system.
There are still lots of these properties on the market here, and in fact their commonness is depressing my house's value and I am glad. And while there are so many such properties here, the youngsters can have a chance to move to MoCo and live close to work instead of having to commute from Frederick or Bowie. The mad equations of a demented marketplace driven by self-serving delusions and rocket-science deriviative formulations of leverage no longer prop up the arguments for building more more more. There are empty houses all over the place here! and lots of empty Commercial Real Estate as well.
Thus, at least until these places are full up, all arguments to build more are effectively moot. Thus we need to concentrate on more and better retrofit planning for service delivery, possibly on code and zoning amendments to put a few more convenience/drug/grocery stores within walking distance in the car-oriented suburbs. That increases convenience without having to overbuild the urban zones. What, White Flint and "Science City" aren't enough for you? Oy gevalt.
by Thomas Hardman on May 28, 2011 4:09 pm • link • report
[...] No one's saying that everyone deserves a free apartment in Bethesda. It's easy for Rose Crenca and people like her to tell these people (her neighbors!) to leave. But people come to Montgomery County for jobs and they deserve to find affordable housing within easy reach of those jobs. It amazes me that otherwise well-educated, intelligent people can't wrap their head around that.
Dan, when you wrote "deserve", I think you typoed "desire".
I desire a Prius and a house in Potomac. But do I deserve one?
You declare that "people come to Montgomery for jobs", and in fact that's the case. But the people who come to Montgomery not because they "desire" the high-paying specialty positions, but because they "deserve" those jobs because of their years of study and achievement, they are the deserving no less than the desirous and they deserve to get what they worked for. Should they pay for it? You betcha. Will they be paid well for their talents and will the use that pay for rent or mortgage? You betcha.
And they're going to be competing for every last domicile, rental or owned, and that drives up the price. So how are we going to keep the price affordable for those who don't have mad skills and great pay? Ah, I see. Since you think they "deserve" affordability, why not make the same mistakes that resulted in Cabrini Greens? Why not re-create the Company Town, the modern serfdom, by assuring that so long as people stay in one place and work for the same company, they'll always have a short walk to work? Because, you know, they "deserve" it.
And let me ask you. If you've spent years learning the fine arts of recombinant DNA engineering, do you think you're going to intentionally select residence in the same New Age Tenements where the low-income unskilled people can afford the rent? Probably not. You're probably going to compete to get a place in the 'burbs, or at least in a more exclusive Big-Box-O-Rental, and once again that means that the price goes up and the poor folks can afford to live only one place, the New Age Tenements. And when such places evolve and then lock themselves into decay, the surrounding businesses move away, or at least the essential ones do. So why is BAE still in Aspen Hill? Oh, that's right, it's not. Who wants to either commute to the ghetto or actually live in the ghetto so they don't have to commute? Only the fearless, or those who have nothing to lose, and neither of those qualities are much valued by the employers in the high-paying technical, medical, legal, or R&D fields. On the other hand, you can always build exclusive Yuppie Towers coextensive with (or transit accessible from) Corporate Office Blocks, and as long as the rent is high the high-pay employers will have their own little Company Town.
Oh, so what is the alternative, I weep and wail as I wring my hands? Well, if you want to play around enough with "liar loans" and a banking system that plays fast and loose with credit-default swaps and commoditized debt obligations, you can get exactly what we got. Mostly scattered-site worker-barracks created wholecloth out of single-family detached residential units in the R-90 and R-60 zone. It's what the working poor "deserve", even if it does outrage the taxpayers and collapse the global financial system.
by Thomas Hardman on May 28, 2011 4:30 pm • link • report
Where's the conspiracy? Who's being forced to move into dense housing?
The answer is no one. There is no conspiracy. The market serves as the collective will of the people and they want denser housing. They will move in of their own volition. They'll even pay a premium to do so in many cases.
There is no conspiracy. Why are you in favor of suppressing this choice and freedom?
by Alex B. on May 28, 2011 4:57 pm • link • report
I live in a 110 year old farmhouse a mile from downtown Silver Spring. Ms. Crenca may have been part of the wave of people that transformed what was once a farm into a suburban neighborhood. And she probably came because she liked the level of development that they saw in Montgomery County at the time, and could maybe imagine a little more.
And the people moving into my neighborhood now, myself included, are moving here because they want to live within walking distance of Metro and all the other almost-urban amenities of downtown Silver Spring (and still have a decent backyard, which is pretty much unobtainable in what I consider truly "urban" areas). But as long as nobody takes away my vegetable garden, people can build up downtown Silver Spring as much as they want, as far as I'm concerned -- it will mean more good restaurants and interesting businesses within walking distance of my house.
I'm sure the same phenomenon is happening in many places throughout the county--development is not attracting just anybody, it's attracting people who want at least as much development as there already is, if not more.
by Elizabeth | the Natural Capital on May 28, 2011 5:56 pm • link • report
But as long as nobody takes away my vegetable garden, people can build up downtown Silver Spring as much as they want, as far as I'm concerned -- it will mean more good restaurants and interesting businesses within walking distance of my house.
This is at the heart of it. There's only so much of DTSS (downtown Silver Spring, dontcha know) left to be developed, and it can only be developed so far. Thus, when more developers want more land on which to expand and develop, they WILL be coming for your vegetable garden. And as some of the respondents here will say, to paraphrase, who the heck do you think you are to selfishly deny the will of the market and employment opportunities for construction workers. How dare you place vegetables above people. They'll go on and on like that, while the paid-off politicos find or make a way to get you off of your land. And you know why they'll get away with it then? Because you're not fighting it NOW.
Legislating Limits to Urban Zones is the next logical step after creating the Ag Reserve.
by Thomas Hardman on May 28, 2011 6:34 pm • link • report
There is no conspiracy. Why are you in favor of suppressing this choice and freedom?
I'm guessing that you've never been to any of the County Council meetings, read the blogosphere in the run-up to those, or even seen a newpaper in the time-frame leading up to "Science City" and "White Flint" major development policy decisions.
There was no "choice and freedom". There was "foregone conclusions" and "rammed down people's throats". There were stacked panels of bleating sheep and few other voices heard, and to dissenting voices, they may have been heard but nobody in power was listening. The majority of the County Council are clearly in the pockets of the construction and development community, and that clear minority within the greater community has grossly disproportionate influence even though we never directly hear their voices nor can we ever directly debate them. Thus, "the fix is in" and if that doesn't constitute "conspiracy" it definitely constitutes "railroading".
Game set match.
by Thomas Hardman on May 28, 2011 6:51 pm • link • report
Also, the patronizing tone of the article is a pretty good example of why so many people aren't swayed by Smart Growthers; the condescending "we studied this stuff in school, so we know what's best for you decades-long residents" really comes through.
by Fritz on May 29, 2011 10:32 am • link • report
I will admit to having a certain amount of respect for 19th century Russian thinkers who advocated policies that would retain the rural and agricultural lifestyle of the population rather than policies focused on the mass industrialization of the populace that occurred in the rest of Europe, all in the name of economic growth. I doubt, however, that the people here railing against smarter growth policies in MoCo are arguing that the spiritual integrity of the rural MoCo residents must be kept intact against smart growth policies. Rather, they're just advocating for destructive sprawl of the past which isn't sustainable and does damage to the entire metro region.
by Tyro on May 29, 2011 10:49 am • link • report
There was no "choice and freedom". There was "foregone conclusions" and "rammed down people's throats".
Except that's a policy change that allows for more diversity of development, i.e. more freedom for landowners to do what they want with the land.
And Lance was speaking of individual freedoms anyway - as if individual persons would be forced to move into denser developments against their will. Which is such blatant bullshit it deserved to be called out as such.
by Alex B. on May 29, 2011 10:59 am • link • report
I think you have that backwards. If you read the article, it's about forcing individuals to accept development where they're already living with the objective of making denser ... because in someone's value system 'denser is better', and since they can't afford already denser areas (e.g., downtown DC), they are looking to force it into areas where they think they'll be able to afford it. It's really all 'me me me' ... thinly disguised as we must help the other guy.
by Lance on May 29, 2011 1:23 pm • link • report
by SJE on May 29, 2011 3:08 pm • link • report
but you also think that its ok to have people live in Fredricksburg and West Va. because its cheaper out there and by building out there we don't have to change anything in closer in counties. Purely so that residents who already bought closer-in don't have to deal with change. Nevermind that even in that scenario the change is just being foisted on the people further out. You'd tell the exact same thing to residents of Spotsylvania county that you're accusing the cabal of "smart-growthers" are telling residents of montgomery county.
by Canaan on May 29, 2011 3:46 pm • link • report
[...] The funny thing is that no doubt Hardman is on some kind of organizing committee dedicated to "bringing good jobs and economic growt to Montgomery County," yet at the same time does not like the idea of more people building in MoCo or moving to MoCo. It's like people want better quality of life and better economic circumstances for the residents but don't want things to change and don't want the people working at the new jobs and new opportunities in MoCo to live there or make any quality of life demands for themselves. [...]
Thanks, I got an immense chuckle from the idea that I'm on some sort of organizing committee. My public service nowadays consists of a few hours daily of Neighborhood Watch, and occasionally heckling the InterNet, or at least the parts that need heckling.
Look, I have to remind folks of "what has gone before". Former County Executive Doug Duncan decided that he wanted to see MoCo become a powerhouse of high-tech R&D and he worked like a hungry Labrador to make it so. He got possibly hundreds of such firms, established as well as start-up, to either relocate to MoCo, to establish branches here, or simple get their start-up rolling. The end result was that there were far more jobs in MoCo than there were places to live. A construction boom followed on, but almost all new housing was "McMansion" size and style (there are some really egregious ones off of Bachelor's Forest Road or just off of Bowie Mill Road, near Olney) and generally these could only be afforded by established professionals. That means that usually in those last undeveloped places which got developed, you had a density of about two family per acre, or even less, with these families maybe consisting of two working high-paid mid-career folks and maybe one or two kids. By 2006 or so there was effectively no place left to build out in the Sprawl. As a follow-on effect from the massive expansion in the tech/R&D sector here, even more commercial real-estate was started, much of which has just hit the market in the last 2 years, so that facility floor space almost doubled, right as the worst of the economic disruption occurred.
Seriously, this is all history, research it yourself and draw your own conclusions. But my point is not that there are shortages of high-pay jobs and industry here, we're awash in it. It's an embarrassment of riches, so to speak. Yet those who ran in the District 4 Special Election after Ms Praisner's untimely demise, we all remember visiting the Verizon campus off of MD-29, trying to buttonhole voters from our district. It seems that 9 out of 10 came from outside of not just District 4, but outside of MoCo, about 4 out of 10 commuted from two counties away, almost 1 out of ten commuted in daily from out of state.
Part of the reason for this was the huge number of folks who already lived here before the demand for housing got so great, and they were siphoning off equity in the housing boom, "using their homes as ATM machines". Now that so many of those folks have gone broke and have moved on, more of the people who wanted to live closer to where they work have been biuing up those distresses properties. Notable exceptions are public-service workers such as cops, etc., who like the countryside in Frederick County more than they want to avoid a commute.
by Thomas Hardman on May 29, 2011 4:10 pm • link • report
@Thomas Hardman
There was no "choice and freedom". There was "foregone conclusions" and "rammed down people's throats".
Except that's a policy change that allows for more diversity of development, i.e. more freedom for landowners to do what they want with the land.
Ah, revising a zone and then specifying exactly what can be on the newly re-zoned property hardly constitutes "more freedom for landowners to do what they want with the land".
by Thomas Hardman on May 29, 2011 4:13 pm • link • report
I am pretty sure that MoCo has gotten a lot older over the last few decades. If we are talking about turning back the clock, to a younger average population, does that mean Rose should leave just to keep things they way they were?
I don't think anyone was seriously suggesting that the goal here was to lower the average age in the County. And in any case, the average age of the entire national population is rising, what with the Baby Boomers nearing retirement.
by Thomas Hardman on May 29, 2011 4:20 pm • link • report
but you also think that its ok to have people live in Fredricksburg and West Va. because its cheaper out there and by building out there we don't have to change anything in closer in counties. Purely so that residents who already bought closer-in don't have to deal with change.
No, that's not what I said. I said it's okay to change provided the people living there now okay that change. And I said it's okay to entice them to okay that change by offering them good value in whatever form that may be (e.g., higher prices, better amenities, etc.)
Where I disagree with Dan and this article is the notion that it's somehow okay to just impose this change on them. To use shame and all the other below board methods that I hear being used in this article. It's like anything in life, you want something you need to pay for it. You can't just go in and take it. And no, the current residents there don't 'owe' it to anyone to make any changes. If the developers have some fantastic ideas for turning the suburban parts of MoCo into urban parts, then the onus is on them to make it worth the while of Crenca and the people she represents.
But of course, I understand it's easier to deal with 'they don't want to see any change' than with 'how are we going to pay for that change'?
by Lance on May 29, 2011 5:34 pm • link • report
[...] Montgomery County became the "perfect suburbia" because people were invited in. We could turn people away who don't look like us, who don't think like us, who want to live in apartments, who make less money than us or get around on foot or by bus. But we wouldn't suddenly go back to 1949 as a result. In fact, the county that would result would be far, far worse than what we have today. [...]
Dan goes way overboard with rank imputations of racism, classism, and a previously unheard-of imaginary "-ism" against people who prefer to not drive or who don't own cars (presumably either because they cannot afford them or prefer to not have them).
Dan also invokes the immensely tired and FAIL-ridden trope of "but you can't turn back the clock to <insert ranbom year here>".
But the fact is, Dan, you also make a bare and unsupported assertion that MoCo became what it is because people were "invited in". Leaving aside the fact of dangling the participle in a summary phrase, it's still CRAP. People in 1949 -- or in the preceding decade which is more to the point of why development occurred -- had arrived here because of the needs of the government in the Second World War. The "army of secretaries" which initially was bivouacked in a tent city on the Mall needed housing and places like Takoma Park sprang up, and the initial "colony" in Chevy Chase suddenly became a fully populated digs for the new millionaires who ran the civilian side of the war-effort. And having settled here during the war, so nearby settled their support elements ranging from medical personnel to plumbers, electricians, and grocery stock clerks.
You can say they were "invited", but they were not invited. There was a need, they filled it, there was room, and buildings provided housing. But housing and development, at that time, was not the goal and driver of the situation. Rather, needs were being filled. There was no invitation other than as a follow-on to people getting hired and needing a place to stay.
But Dan, it's not 1949, at which time your paens to solidarity against entrenched racism might have been justifiable. It's 2011, and I can't think of any county in the USA where claims of racism (other than against whites) are more ridiculous. Almost as ridiculous, your claims that people are discriminating against the poor. If there's a County in the USA that's closest to the Euro model of taxation of wealth for redistribution to programs either uplifting the poor or directly contributing to them, name it or post an ISC ("I Stand Corrected"). You should be above resorting to this brand of weepy histrionics.
Especially you shouldn't be pulling out all of the stops on the crack pipe-organ of histrionics in the same article where you pretty much represent a respected elder as demented and incapable of living in the modern world and imagining that she's back in the 1950s. So, okay, anyone reading between the lines is going to pick up your code-words message of "old white people, bad; any other kind of people, good". But once again I have to say "get over it and you yourself have to stop living in the late 1960s" because this is the County with the most non-racist and "non-anythingist" diversity in all possible ways of income, education, access to healthcare, and any other damn thing you might want to drag across the floor. Face it, you're not barking up the right tree and you're not barking in the right neck of the woods, you're only barking because if there's no massive evolution of urbanism here in the County, given your profession, you're out of a job and you've wasted years in school as badly as someone who matriculated in the Art History of the Neolithic.
Dude, you have lots of "cred" but right now, you sound a lot like the representative of the Brotherhood of Buggy-Whip Manufacturers trying to ban cars, having run out of arguments and resorting to ad-hominem arguments because no other argument of yours has merit. Ms Crenca declares "this is suburbia because we the suburbanites bought and paid for it to be suburbia", and you don't argue against that (there is no argument against that), you just closely impute that she's demented due to age, living in the past, and to be disregarded. Once again, let's take this to the folks up at Leisure World and see how exactly they vote ahem think about that. 'Cause quite frankly you just alienated the single largest voting block in MoCo because just like most black folks get a bit riled when they hear someone use the "n-word" about someone aside from them, the elders hear someone talking about "demented old folks" and that's the last word of yours they'll allow to be heard in polite company. Whether it's you saying what you said, or someone else saying what you said.
Now that we've disposed of that... maybe you can stop accusing people of trying to live in the past, when they're just trying to hold onto what they've got. And maybe you can tell us what life's going to be like once you Urban Planning Compact Urbanity Zealots manage to stuff about twice the present global population into high-density mixed-use minimum-footprint Machines For Living and then run out of the resources and energy to make it work. Will you be living in your gated villa in the deep countryside laughing at all of the suckers? Seriously. You're not stupid though you might think that we are stupid. Tell us how this all works out. Tell us what our world will look like when you retire, if you have your way.
A world of beehives, with no energy to run them and no resources to feed or clean them? It's a great plan if you're a hypothetical space alien, not so wonderful if you're the people living in compact targets that have 10,000 ways to shut them down.
BTW you've never answered the question, when you get pinned in the corner, of why you don't accept voluntary limitation of population growth as an alternative to endless expansion of the population. Is it religious for you, or just that you'll be out of work if that path is followed? Inquiring minds want to know.
and we want to know it from all of the "Growth" community, "Smart" growth, and all others otherwise.
by Thomas Hardman on May 30, 2011 1:44 am • link • report
I raise the question that research is showing that those communities that have a component of younger population are a healthier community economically as we know the young do pay to support the old. A prime example is Japan and the problems its economy has because of the aging population.
So, should we be building communities that attracts younger people since M C is an aging population?
Milt's daughter
by Milt's Daughter on May 30, 2011 8:26 am • link • report
I think you have that slightly wrong. The young don't have the money to 'pay' to support the old. The old have the money. The young have the energy and, most importantly, the incentive to 'work' for the old and keeping the economy going. I.e., It's not that 'the young; are giving anything away as you make it sound, but rather that they are important in the scheme of things in a large economy in that they provide the goods and services which the old pay for out of a life's worth of savings.
And since the people in MoCo can still bring in youth to provide those services and buy goods produced elsewhere by youth (and old), MoCo's economy is not going to suffer because of your perceived lack of a youth component to it.
by Lance on May 30, 2011 9:19 am • link • report
I guess when this entry is no longer on the front page, I will no longer get the annoying update silverlight prompts (whose download by the way seems to take up quite a lot of space)?
by Jazzy on May 30, 2011 1:22 pm • link • report
[...] I raise the question that research is showing that those communities that have a component of younger population are a healthier community economically as we know the young do pay to support the old. A prime example is Japan and the problems its economy has because of the aging population.
So, should we be building communities that attracts younger people since M C is an aging population? [...]
The problems that Japan has regarding their demographics is one quite different from their economic problems. Their economics problems are quite complex, but are frequently cited as resulting from a combination of bad bank loans mostly through the 1990s, and also that despite one of the best-capitalized banking systems storing the greatest national personal savings rate on the planet, those banks remain shy of loaning money, due to their immense losses in the past.
The demographic problem shows the risks we in the States could suffer should we become as overpopulated as Japan. It's almost impossible to spread out and create more Sprawl; there is extreme legal and financial disincentive for anyone trying to sell farm or woodland, for example. Thus, only building skyward -- as the "smart growth" faction desires -- is possible. Despite the Japanese being some of the most productive people on earth, and despite the increasing personal wealth of individuals, social ills not seen elsewhere have occurred. For example, the phenomenon of young men who hide in their rooms in their parents' flats; young women who both live lives as much apart from men as they can arrange and who effectively foreswear child-reading yet who are not "lesbian" as Westerners would understand the term. There are many places in Japan where the fertility rate is below one child per 5 couples, causing significant disruptions in school system planning, for example. Japan is not merely decreasing their population, they are effectively suffering a massive population collapse. Yet it is voluntary and there is no compulsion.
As to who will care for the elderly? Really, I can only advise taking a look at some of the better Japanese SF, for example the original "Ghost in the Shell" feature length anime. The Japanese lead the world in both research and deployment of Robotics, and it is a stated goal of their AI R&D industry particularly to concentrate on the development of robots which will assist in elder care. Even the current incarnation of Honda's ASIMO could do a lot of helping in the day-to-day lives of "younger elders", those who can't easily manage the housework or cooking, but who remain far from bedridden. As much energy and money as the Japanese are putting into this, shows a likelihood of eventual success, and probably quite easily in time.
Overpopulation studies conducted right here in MC by one Dr John C Calhoun showed us what happens to mouse and rat societies when they are given limitless food and nesting materials but in finite spaces. Eventually, after significant social problems, their population collapses, usually in a very complete mode. Rats aren't people, of course, and the Japanese were able to sustain very high concentrations of population because they are not merely very durable survivors, but are also extremely formal and polite in their dealings even with complete strangers. They are also taught to place the welfare of the community, of the people around them no less than themselves, at a very high level of concern. Yet however society and culture might adapt to conditions of exceptional overpopulation, in the end biology wins out, and we're seeing this now in Japan. We would have seen it in China if not for the mandatory Two Parents One Child policy. We avoided it here in the USA, mostly, through the establishment of popular reproductive rights options for women; the average US-born fertility rate is slightly below replacement rate, which would lead to a slow and manageable decline of population, if not obviated by the rates of immigration -- legal and otherwise -- and the traditionally higher fertility rates of new immigrants (legal and otherwise) and the slightly lower fertility rates of the children of new immigrants (legal and otherwise).
Here in Montgomery County, Maryland, if we have any problems relating to the age demographics, restricting ourselves only to discussin age distribution, there is certainly a "young-adult shortage". But that's largely due to the fact that we have more jobs than residences and those residences are competed for by very well-paid professionals who tend to drive the price up out of affordability for young-adults who may not be earning a full professional salary yet, or who may be limited by their repayment of immense student debts. Yet there is a rather vast rental market downtown in the District of Columbia and indeed recent Census results show that the District is becoming increasingly white, and youthful.
I could say "hey, the kids want the downtown life, and that's where most of them are working, anyway". Thus, even moreso, let the suburbs remains the suburbs, and let those who want the city move to the city, the city that needs and wants them, and leave the suburbs for the suburbanites, the established professionals, the people seeking to raise their children in one of the best school systems in the country. And let's leave the retirees to live as long as they can (and wish) on the suburbs they built and bought. Let's also never forget for a moment that MoCo is just one county in the Greater Washington Metropolitan Area, and we should let the city be the city, and let the countryside be the countryside, and let suburbia be suburbia.
And let's not go disrespecting Rose Crenca for summarizing all of this in a far more concise way.
by Thomas Hardman on May 30, 2011 4:41 pm • link • report
by ken k on May 31, 2011 10:49 am • link • report
@Thomas Hardman -has anyone (else) ever suggested your writing is a bit verbose and may be improved with an effort toward succinctness?
by Tina on May 31, 2011 11:08 am • link • report
Nothing causes more pollution than sprawl. You have to drive everywhere, which releases pollution. Your large detached homes require the most energy to heat and cool. You live off of subsidized roads and highways. Your whole lifestyle is environmentally unfriendly.
It's fine if you like living a subsidized, government-sponsored existence in the "country" but don't blame urbanites for pollution. Your CO2 and other emissions are much higher than people who live in denser areas.
Perfect suburbia is why more and more people who don't smoke are getting lung cancer. Perfect suburbia is why our life expectancies are cut by several years due to pollution.
It's fine if you want to go through life ignorant, but try not to sprout it too much in public.
by Patrick Thornton on May 31, 2011 12:00 pm • link • report
by Tina on May 31, 2011 12:59 pm • link • report
“For me, parking in a garage for grocery shopping is really weird,” said Bolormaa Baljinnyam, 40, of Rockville as she waited May 24 for an elevator with a baguette in her cart. “It’s kind of not natural.”
As fellow shopper Marcia Simon, 53, of Potomac put it: “I hate it, hate it! I’ve been in a lot of indoor parking lots, and they don’t usually intimidate me, but this feels very crammed in and very tight.”
Such complaints highlight a cultural shift taking place as planners transform parts of the sprawling suburbs into urban hubs where the car will no longer be king. The vast parking lots born out of the 20th century suburban boom, particularly those near Metrorail stations, are giving way to more clusters of high-rise office buildings, condominiums and stores where people can walk more easily or park once for multiple activities.(Suburbs take an urban turn as developers plan more underground parking, Shaver, Katherine, the Washington Post, May 31, 2011).
Perhaps they've been reading this blog and felt it necessary to chip in on their own time and in their own spot. So we can all run on over and flood their Comments section!
by Thomas Hardman on May 31, 2011 1:12 pm • link • report
Additionally, all of your arguments against Sprawl vanish if we assume a massive shift to non-polluting vehicle power sources. I should point out that it's a falsehood that urbanized areas generate less pollution, they actually consume more power, but it's generated far outside of the city, usually, and so its exhaust plume adds to the rural or suburban readings. The only case that's not true is when it's nuke course electricity.
@Tina: do you have any actual arguments or are you limited to cheap-shots in the ad-hominem fallacy? Further, nice attempt at putting words in my mouth. I don't defend excessive lifestyles in the Sprawl. I do defend Rose Crenca from getting badmouthed as a demented geezer, and I do declare it questionable to be going Urban for the sake of Urban Planner's career opportunities and in disdain of the people who already bought and paid for their chunk of suburbia.
Concision is appropriate only for simple subjects. All other matters require detail.
by Thomas Hardman on May 31, 2011 1:28 pm • link • report
Got any citations for the claim that power plant emissions aren't factored into pollution counts for cities?
by Neil Flanagan on May 31, 2011 1:50 pm • link • report
"Additionally, all of your arguments against Sprawl vanish if we assume a massive shift to non-polluting vehicle power sources"
There's the one argument against sprawl that unfortunatley will never vanish, and that is congestion. It's quality of life, not pollutants that are killing the ex-urban lifestyle in favor of moving closer in. See this excellent article in today's Slate Magazine.
http://www.slate.com/id/2295603/
BTW, before sprawl, there was only urban and country. There was a time when Rockville, Gaithersburg etc, where all considered urban. We just need to get back there for everyone's sake, including this not so nice elderly lady.
by Thayer-D on May 31, 2011 2:18 pm • link • report
See also (NOAA) Air Resources Laboratory Atmospheric Transport and Dispersion Research and Development (PDF). Also search for METREX, and related studies of Stack Gas Dispersion, as well as the excellent Wikipedia article on Atmospheric Dispersion Modeling.
Yet a bit of reading between the lines at the Wikipedia Air Pollution entry will tell you that Urban Air Pollution is a globally recognized problem. Additionally, the footnotes are invaluable.
Yet nowhere do I see any claims, stated exactly as I stated it, that rural/suburban-sited power generation facilities' emissions are not ascribed to statistics of the urban areas they power. Rather, the atmospheric dispersion models cited from Wikipedia concern themselves with entire regions, not with subsets of regions. This is rightly so as the wind occasionally shift. Yet by this same lack of specificity for me to cite, there isn't any known specificity to show that urban areas emit less pollution than their suburbs. Thus I have to ask @Patrick Thornton for cites to studies that specifically show more CO2 emissions from suburbs than from their urban cores.
Yet a fine argument by anecdote is available to anyone who knows the history of the Four Corners electrical generation facility. As it's near my birthplace, Farmington NM, I have some familiarity with the issues. The nearby small city of Farmington, Shiprock, Aztec, etc., are certainly not the major consumers of this power, yet they are assuredly the major consumers of its particulate emissions. And are any of the cities consuming that power sent to the grid, suffering in the footprint? Not likely, and why would this set of emissions in New Mexico be ascribed to, for example, Dallas TX? Someone please point me to any article that shows how such emissions are ascribed. That would have to be the minimum basis of "cap and trade".
Sorry to go technical and long-winded, @Tina, but Flanigan brought it up. Now you get to listen to the guys with pocket-protectors and calculators that only do RPN.
by Thomas Hardman on May 31, 2011 2:25 pm • link • report
Ah, in this area, much of that problem can be laid specifically at the feet of the "Wedges and Corridors" planning methodology in effect here in MoCo for, what, 40 years now? I know that at least some of the major contributors to discussions here would support the notion that increasing "gridded interconnectivity" would ease this congestion. More light-traffic bridges across Rock Creek and the Northwest Branch could save a lot of people being forced onto long-haul arterials just to go around the block or across the creek. Case in point, Sandy Spring/Ashton east of MD-108 and south of MD-650.
Lest anyone suggest that I am relentlessly singing the siren song of one-person-per-gas-guzzler Planning, please remember that in general, I do support mixed-use high-density transit-centric development for those who want to live there but for the rest of it, I do not support it being crammed down the throats of people who prefer their little quarter acre of well-tended Urban Forest in the close-in suburbs.
Also, so many respondents here have so many slightly different dictionaries that it's difficult to know what's under discussion. For you, I ask, would you consider suburbia to be "urban" if it had a more wide-reaching transit circulation and more "griddedness"? What would be wrong with Aspen Hill, for example, if it had its own little fleet of electric mini-vans circulating in the neighborhoods far from bus-routes, connecting with the longer-haul buses that connect to the rail-transit hubs? It's not "walkable" as defined by FAR but a lot less people would need cars as much. Thus less congestion.
by Thomas Hardman on May 31, 2011 2:43 pm • link • report
While I agree with your point about the need to expand the grid/interconectedness of some local streets, the Slate article's main point is that no matter how many roads you build, they will reach a critical mass at some point. As for shoving density down the throat's of unsuspecting suburbanites, there's a contradiction in criticizing the parochial nature of the Wedges and Corridors plan and asking for local's support when one wants to develope their land to accomodate more demand. We'll never please everyone, but more vehicles whether they be gas, electric or otherwise will always result in congestion.
As for pollution, there are studies (from Britain?) that show the large prevelance of cancer and athsma near highway traffic.
by Thayer-D on May 31, 2011 2:54 pm • link • report
Re; sprawl: Excuse me. It sure sounds to me like you're defending the sprawl lifesyle. See thayer-Ds comment. In it s/he mentions powerplants, congestion and sprawl. S/He intimates at but doesn't specify farm land, wildlife habitat or impervious surfaces and their effect on water systems, or the well documented rise of the obesity/inactivity epidemic along with sprawl. There is a lot to dislike about sprawl. Okay you like it. But don't try and pretend it hasn't had negative consequences.
by Tina on May 31, 2011 2:57 pm • link • report
by Tina on May 31, 2011 2:59 pm • link • report
Also, as you and evidently Slate argue -- and I do not disagree with this -- as population increases, eventually you reach a point of saturation and it doesn't matter if you have ultimate prevalence of "griddedness" once you're saturated to the point of gridlock. Yet, as so many people do, in these arguments y'all tend to embed an implicit-yet-tacit assumption/presumption of endless increase in population. There may be something in that, as even if there were no immigration and no net gains in national population, still there is global migration to urban areas from rural areas. To some degree this inevitably results in some Sprawl and the associated problems. But as we all know there are people who are aware of the problems and work on them both individually and in combinations or even in aggregate.
I think we all agree that there's enough Sprawl and enough people living in it. Yet having people thinking that the only solution is a single solution, MUHDTC ("mixed-use high-density transit-centric" or "mega-mudhuts"), is limiting otherwise agile minds and seems to cause an unwillingness to do what can be done to keep extant suburbia livable.
And again I remind people that MoCo doesn't exist in a vacuum. There are other jurisdictions facing even worse problems and working aggressively to deal with it (Tyson's Corner Wants More People to Call It Home, Hosh, Kafia A, the Washington Post, May 31, 2011).
by Thomas Hardman on May 31, 2011 4:12 pm • link • report
Short summary is "probably you don't know how long and hard I've been working to make things better", especially around here. Let's just say that I was all over Global Change probably before Al Gore even heard of it, as he was too busy inventing teh intarwebs at the time.
(and yes I know some of my links are outdated and feel free to log on at http://www.earthops.com and fill in the blanks on the wiki.)
by Thomas Hardman on May 31, 2011 4:22 pm • link • report
Re: cutting trees: I (think?) in DC if a tree has a circumference greater than a certain number its considered community property even if its growing on private land and prohibited from being cut, with threat of penalty.
Re; work vehicles on lawns: I lived in Long Branch when a law was passed that commercial trucks were now prohibited from being parked on the street. Our next door neighbor did exactly what you describe; paved part of his front yard to get a small truck off the street. But I think its a stupid classist anti-economic law to prevent small business owners from parking their work vehicles on the street in front of their homes. What did MoCo/Long Branch think was going to happen when that law was passed? No foresight or "thinking it throughness" at all. Unless the real aim was to drive people who have businesses and work vehicles out of the community; to create a community of only PhDs who work at NIH.
by Tina on May 31, 2011 4:34 pm • link • report
I only raised age to make a point, not to attack old people.
Rose Crenca wants to go back to way things were, and those who like it different should leave MoCo. Well, the way things were includes a lot more young people. Therefore, by Rose Crenca's argument, old people should leave to make things the way that they were.
by SJE on May 31, 2011 4:54 pm • link • report
The new rules allow one commercial vehicle less than 8 feet height and/or 21 feet length 10,000 pounds gross-vehicular weight to be parked on the property but not in the street, satisfying concerns of traffic safety with oversized vehicles parked curbside. Yet all in all, this vastly increases the potential number of 'small commercial vehicles' that can be parked in residential zones. It also allows one RV per residential property. Now all of our moderately successful tow-truck operators can park their rig next to their winnebago and still have room curbside for their "Judge" and Harley.
The good part is that the place up the street where they once parked 3 Satellite TV installer trucks on the driveway and 3 at curbside, well, that place is up for sale. Can't imagine why. ;)
See, I don't mind "urban", but I do mind people turning suburbs into light-industrial parks. I mind it even more if all of their fluid leaks go straight into the Bay.
by Thomas Hardman on May 31, 2011 5:10 pm • link • report
by Tina on May 31, 2011 5:39 pm • link • report
@SJE, you wrote, in-part: [...] Rose Crenca wants to go back to way things were, and those who like it different should leave MoCo. Well, the way things were includes a lot more young people. Therefore, by Rose Crenca's argument, old people should leave to make things the way that they were. [...]
I should mention that if you look at the Census stats for places such as Aspen Hill, once again we are developing a demographic with more "young" people, especially children of school age. That this demographic is almost exclusively non-"white" is something I will note in passing rather than focusing on, other than to also mention in passing that this supports Dan Reed's statement that MoCo is very diverse. But to counter his contentions, as near as I can tell, the very largely "latino" (central-american indigenous ethnic, mostly) population very much prefers the suburbs to the urban environment, as most of the writers here seem to be using the term "urban". For example, for those whose familial culture and way-of-life came here from El Salvador, the population density and distribution of much of El Salvador greatly resembles the population density and distribution of suburban Montgomery County, Maryland. In El Salvador, only the very rich or the very poor live in the city, almost everyone else lives in what amounts to a country-wide Sprawl. You might get even more resistance from such persons than you would get from elderly white suburbanites, should you (by which I mean "anyone") try to convert R-60 or R-90 zone single-family detached residential neighborhoods to MUHDTC ("mixed-use high-density transit-centric").
If anyone wants to bring up the context of how we're transitioning from the classic US Model of Concentration of Poverty to the European Model of Concentration of Poverty, go right ahead. Contrast and compare how the model of MoCo and other outlying suburbs are shifting from the domain of the wealthy middle-class to the domain of people who cannot afford MUHDTC "towers of nearly unaffordable yuppie exclusivity". If the yuppies don't want to live in suburbia, thus, let them go live in MUHDTC and let the suburbanites -- increasingly the poor folks taking advantage of the right to put as many relatives in one house as is possible while allowing 105 square-feet per person under current regs -- have suburbia.
Just be sensible enough to put enough buses in the neighborhoods so that they don't have to have 7 cars per quarter-acre lot just so that the construction workers and restaurant ladies can get to work.
by Thomas Hardman on May 31, 2011 7:37 pm • link • report
http://msp.msde.state.md.us/StatDisplay.aspx?PV=35||15|0807|3|N|8|13|1|2|1|1|1|1|3
by Thomas Hardman on May 31, 2011 7:49 pm • link • report
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