Sunday reading 12 April 2015

Every week we read more than we can write about on the blog. To avoid letting good commentary and research fall by the wayside, we’re going to publish weekly excerpts from what we’ve been reading.

Emily Badger and Christopher Ingraham, “Mapped: How hard it is to get across US cities using only bike lanes“, Wonkblog:

Bike commuting throughout the city is often like this: cobbled together out of a bit of bike lane here, an unprotected shoulder there, a scrap of sharrow and some silent pleas that cars won’t run you over. Bike lanes occasionally appear and vanish multiple times on the same street. Sometimes they last just a few hundred feet. It feels as if someone striped the city with dozens of quarter-mile commutes in mind.

Peter Mills, “Taxi fares: Feeling ripped off? Find out what your taxi should cost“, NZ Herald. Peter’s a co-worker of mine who does some really fantastic work developing apps and visualisation tools for transport data. I highly recommend checking out his taxifares.co.nz app!

Recently, Auckland found itself thrust into the global spotlight after being labelled as having some of the most expensive taxi fares in the world.

There are a number of reasons for these inflated prices, some of which fairly apparent, others slightly more abstract.

On the fairly apparent bench, we have issues such as Auckland’s sprawling nature and hilly geography.

A taxi that takes a patron from Britomart out to Te Atatu South has got a hefty return trip on their hands. Under ideal conditions, there would be a second patron waiting somewhere in Te Atatu, ready to take a trip back into Britomart, but this can’t be expected to happen all the time.

As a result, Auckland’s size and spread make for expensive taxi operation costs which are then are passed on to the customers. These kinds of issues can’t be avoided; population density and spread will always be factors in a city’s taxi fares.

There are other, slightly more subtle issues driving up taxi prices however.

Since deregulation in 1989, the New Zealand taxi industry has been operating in a supply and demand system. Under normal circumstances, such a system is self regulating, where the prices offered by the supply are controlled by the demand’s willingness to pay. Currently however, it would appear this system is not working as intended in New Zealand.

Nat Cheshire, “Do Not Rest: The Rebirth of Auckland“, speech to the 2014 Semi-Permanent design symposium:

It should be dawning on us that at this moment of our maturation our great opportunity is not the resolution of national identity that has so burdened this last century of art. The idea of New Zealandness in art must die. We must be past this already. Fantails are birds and ferns are plants and rivers are water and farmers kill sheep so we can eat their bodies. It’s not that these things don’t matter. It’s just that there’s so much that matters more. What matters most now is only the work, in its own terms.

Abandon your metaphors. We need to understand that the work we make here must not just be good here. It must be good everywhere. Fuck it, it would already be good everywhere. Our opportunity now is to engineer a reflexive cultural imperialism: to use our little cities as the launchpads from which to reach into those global cities that have the hubris to think they are finished, and start leading them rather than just learning from them.

In place of that world’s history and bigness and wealth, we have now laid out before us such unprecedented creative freedom. It is our collective responsibility to continually and aggressively exploit that freedom, and lead the world into its own future. For the first time in my life, though, I do not know what that future ought to look like. This — this not knowing — this is all I might ever have hoped for. In the absence of knowledge, I have found hope.

Noah Smith, “Piketty’s Three Big Mistakes“, Bloomberg View:

Economists combine a lot of different things into “capital,” such as machines, buildings and land. Rognlie points out that almost all of the increase in the value of capital over Piketty’s timeline comes from land, instead of from other forms of capital. In other words, it’s landlords, not corporate overlords, who are sucking up the wealth in the economy. It’s a dramatic, startling insight that was somehow overlooked before Rognlie came along.

This is a very different story from the one we usually think of. Didn’t we relegate all-powerful landlords to the dustbin of history when we got rid of feudalism? Haven’t productive corporations replaced rent-collecting landlords as the wealthy class in advanced societies?

Maybe not. Urban economists believe that as density increases, productivity increases. This is what is known as an “agglomeration economy.” But as it becomes more valuable for people to work and live near each other, the value of central locations — of land — goes up. Landlords, who are producing no more than they used to, but who were sitting on advantageous locations, reap huge benefits.

The New Climate Economy, “Release: urban sprawl costs US economy more than $1 trillion per year“:

Sprawl increases the distance between homes, businesses, services and jobs, which raises the cost of providing infrastructure and public services by at least 10% and up to 40%. The most sprawled American cities spend an average of $750 on infrastructure per person each year, while the least sprawled cities spend close to $500. In its Better Growth, Better Climate report, the New Climate Economy has found that acting to implement smarter urban growth policies on a global scale could reduce urban infrastructure capital requirements by more than US$3 trillion over the next 15 years. […]

Sprawl is bad for your health. Americans who live in sprawled neighbourhoods are between two and five times more likely to be killed in car accidents and twice as likely to be overweight as those in more walkable neighbourhoods.

Residents of compact, connected communities in the United States save more money and have greater economic opportunity than they would in more sprawled, automobile-dependent neighbourhoods. Households in accessible areas spend on average $5,000 less per year on transportation expenses, and real estate located in smart growth communities tends to retain its value better than in sprawled communities, due to greater accessibility to services.

Matthew Yglesias, “Neighbourhood walkability is good for the commercial real estate bottom line”, Vox:

Neighborhood walkability has been a huge asset for commercial landlords during the recovery from the 2008 recession. Moody’s and Real Capital Analytics have a cool dataset that lets you break down commercial real estate prices by WalkScore.

You can see that whether it’s in suburbs or in central business districts, prices have rebounded from the recession much more strongly in walkable areas than in car-dependent ones:

Graeme Stewart-Wilson et al, “What is the full cost of your commute?” Moving Forward:

In the absence of mechanisms that force us to directly pay for the broader impacts of how we travel, we tend to underestimate the total cost to both ourselves and to society of different modes of transportation. This influences our daily decisions about how to commute − but also our views on whether or not to support proposed transportation investments on the referendum ballot.

For example, the price tag of replacing the Pattulo Bridge or building rapid transit in Surrey is frequently mentioned when discussing the referendum. But we don’t consider the added cost of waiting longer when busses are full. We don’t account for the increased life expectancy we gain from cycling, even though our decision to commute by bike means actual savings to the healthcare system. The Cost of Commute Calculator even assigns a value to the discomfort of riding a packed bus. After all, commuting on crowded public transit feels longer than the same time spent walking on a pleasant day.

The tendency to underestimate is most striking when calculating the cost of driving. The amount we pay through taxes for direct costs like road infrastructure and indirect costs like pollution, accidents and noise is significant.

A couple of thoughtful pieces from Bob Dey below. Firstly:

Council budget submissions a mockery of sensible planning
The best evidence that we live in a society of unbalanced thinkers is the graph showing the levels of submission for investing in Auckland. It’s a growing city, but there was a strong show of opposition to spending on transport. Every concrete jungle needs breathing spaces, children need parks to play on, yet opposition outweighed support for spending more on parks & community.
The strong show of opposition to spending on economic & cultural matters is an indication that plenty of Aucklanders don’t want a city that plans for economic growth instead of just letting it happen, and celebrating cultures is not something for the public purse.
But the huge opposition to spending more on governance & support shows how the council, in its first 4 years, has managed not to take everybody with it on a path forward. You can say there will always be malcontents, but this almost entirely negative vote stands out.

Bob also comments on some US articles about distant city fringe suburbs (or “exurbs”) vs inner cities, and the apparent resurgence of the fringe areas. He makes the point that these things are often seen as a dichotomy, which they’re not, and also that we need to think about the opportunities in between the inner city and the outer edge, and with a scale that falls in between urban sprawl and high-rise apartments.

What disturbs me most about these types of article, and also about much of the intensification v sprawl debate in Auckland, is the lack of thought given to suburban intensification – the how, not whether.

Apartments above or beside retail are starting to appear around some suburban centres [in Auckland]. These developments can be far better than the “all or nothing“ mindset because they provide for people to stay in their communities – perhaps single parents, the elderly, and also young singles, taking advantage of beaches, sports clubs, walking to shops and, importantly for urban activity, shorter commutes or easier access to public transport.

They can also, unfortunately, be stern reminders of our utilitarian, cost-dominated developer streak, as in boutique retail at ground, upstairs apartments, plenty of parking, concrete everywhere…. Soul, nowhere.

Both the exurb & intensification thinking here needs to be far more than simply plonking down a home. The equation has to include good access to jobs, shops, schools & amenities – integrated solutions.

DW, “Germans want fewer cars in built-up areas, more public transport“:

Close to 82 percent of Germans who partook in the Federal Environment Agency’s biennial survey indicated they wanted town planners to focus less on private car transport and more on pedestrians, cyclists, car pooling and other means of public transportation.

Regarding the figures released on Monday, Germany’s Environment Minister Barbara Hendricks said, “We need a new concept of mobility in towns,” adding that reducing noise and fine-particle pollution should be a priority.

Germans don’t seem to be that different to Aucklanders, incidentally. As Matt wrote earlier in the week, consultation on Auckland Council’s Long-Term Plan found that people overwhelmingly wanted more spending on public transport and active modes.

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