I think there are a lot more walkable neighborhoods (or sub-neighborhoods) out there than people know.

My 1978 condo rates "Walk Score: 45 out of 100"

As far as I know, they did that without "a federal- and state-financed infrastructure bank that would be a source of funds for any town that wants to have a town center"

It's happening.  It's one of the quiet changes going on around us, as sprawl reaches the limits of max commute, and max gasoline price hurt.

As to the "quiet changes going on around us", Odo-dude, why is this so quiet?  Shouldn't we be singing this from the apartment building rooftops?  But anyway, thanks again.

Sigh.

grist.org

Case in point:  The walk score for my house is 11.  Not surprising -- it's in a subdivision that typifies rural sprawl.  Am I ashamed?  Yup.  But that's all I could afford.  I've continuously run the numbers on moving into town but the transaction and moving costs are daunting -- and that doesn't even include the increased borrowing costs due to higher interest rates.  And because home prices are much higher in town, you get "less" house.  I'm all for downsizing, but I don't have the skills to deal with a "fixer upper" that's much older than I am.  In addition, the reduced transportation costs of living in town do not come anywhere near offsetting the additional upfront and ongoing costs of moving.

So what's the alternative?  Making my current house and transportation as energy efficient as possible, and helping my neighborhood become more pedestrian friendly by developing a larger cluster of services.  It would also be great if we could convince the county to extend bus service out here, but the anti-tax movement is so strong that such a step seems unlikely any time soon.

Bottom line:  Even for those of us who are environmentally conscious, it isn't always easy from a cost standpoint to avoid succumbing to auto-dependent sprawl.

Of course, if you've got kids it's tougher, as I can testify. I managed to find a reasonably walkable yet still cheap inner ring suburb. Some cities don't have any of those left.

grist.org

The key is to not look in a big city and find someplace near a college or university.

"As to the "quiet changes going on around us", Odo-dude, why is this so quiet?  Shouldn't we be singing this from the apartment building rooftops?"

Sure, sing!  But I'm actually kind of reassured that builders seem to be driving it in part, that they see $$.  Of course, some of the projects look a little strange (New Urbanism in Las Vegas?).

There is one thing you might be able to do though -- see if the zoning laws in your town allow for mixed use.  Can someone put a supermarket in a residential area?  Supermarkets, in my opinion, are the number one important nonresidential use, because a good, small supermarket can cut way down on miles driven.  Does your town require big parking lots in front of the stores?  Prohibit apartments on top of commercial/retail space?  Maybe some developers would come in and create centers if the zoning laws were different.

The other general question that I think we as a society should address is, what is a good size for a living space?  Having lived in NYC, our current 1300 sq foot apartment seems palatial.  I'm pessimistic about natural gas supply, so big homes will become more and more difficult to heat and cool (another job for an infrastructure bank, retrofit houses).

Icelander -- I'm starting to think you are right, we are in a university town, and many do have town centers.  But it shows that you don't have to have a big city to have a town center.

Odo -- I'm not sure that we have the time to wait for the market to solve this problem.  We have a clock ticking with both global warming and the end of cheap oil (peak oil), much less the state of our agricultural system.  

And I'd think all the high scores above say that we don't have to wait for builders, or for new government programs, when we (many of us) already have walkable destinations.

I'm the guy with only "42" but I've walked to the bookstore, the coffee shop, the burger joint, the japanese restaurant, the barbecue joint, trader joe's, smart and final, the frozen yogurt place, to buy socks, to the other japanese place, to Target ... those are the ones I remember off the top of my head.

Now on some of the longer ones I was walking for health, because I think it fits patterns of paleo-diet and exercise ... but that's another "utility" in the mix.

So who's really waiting here?  Somebody with a score of "95 out of 100" is telling me we have to wait for programs?

At the moment I think higher population density and higher energy costs are pushing us in the right direction for things like energy intensity.

On the other hand, things like the health of the oceans are "under-subscribed" with activists, and not yet heading in the right direction.

Perhaps one example to look at is how we got into this mess, the suburbanization of America (see Robert Beauregard's "When America became suburban").  It was rather rapid, and certainly fueled by greed, but the government had to lay out alot of money (for instance, the interstate highway system) and towns had to zone against mixed-use, to name just a couple of things.  So I hope there is a mad dash to build centers, but I think we should discuss government-led possibilities.

As far as ecosystem destruction such as the oceans, I definitely agree that that is part of the problem, but again, we need international agreements, dropping of fishing subsidies, enforcement, etc. to start to solve that pressing problem.

There is simply not a way to bridge that gap ;-)

The data are old, though; a bunch of the places listed haven't been open for many years.

I don't think that we have time to be blinded by blanket statements or ideologies.  We need to be very practical from now on.  When a society needs to move quickly, the government is called upon.  It's a shame that people can only understand this when it comes to war -- we could reorient the entire society during WWII when we faced a great threat.

The threat we face now is no less dire than WWII.  We need to be open to whatever can get us to a sustainable and democratic world.  Ben Franklin famously said someone to the effect, "A people get the government that they deserve".  It's up to us to make sure that we have a good government.

Ahhh, that felt good!

I don't doubt that we "could" do better, by some definitions.  I just observe that government programs tend to be "messy and human."

By all means press for better ... but I think a mixed response (including government and commercial programs good and bad) is what we'll get.

In this case, you might just tax fossil fuels at a rate proportional to their carbon emissions.

Done and done.

The people (AKA the market) will promptly figure out how to avoid those taxes (by using less fossil fuels).

I don't particularly like the idea of a carbon tax, it makes me nervous that the middle class, which has been hammered, will wind up paying for somethihng that the rich,corporations, and the military should be paying for.

But I think I observe that "mainstream economists" are not always forthcoming about the interventions they support.  It is not the first thing they want to talk about.

The 'free market' supporter on the street is much worse, immersed in a regulated market economy and unable to see it.

* - the way to avoid fringe classification (or fringe thought!) in life is to avoid sentences with the words "always" and "never."  If you believe that government should always <whatever> or that people should <never> whatever, you probably haven't thought out the corner cases.

"I don't particularly like the idea of a carbon tax, it makes me nervous that the middle class, which has been hammered, will wind up paying for somethihng that the rich,corporations, and the military should be paying for."

In my opinion there is no way to protect the middle class (what? screw them, protect the poor!) in a move from carbon fuels.

There is simply no way to stop using the fuels without impacting the users.

("military" is not yet a profit center to tax ;-o)

(By the way, I just wanted to also say that I very much disagree with die-off scenarios)

Anyway, 3 and 6 year olds pulling me away,  ahhhh!

So either the permit system or the tax is pretty much neutral in affect on the middle class and poor, while still providing price signal. (It is actually pretty close netting out to zero, but since economics is not that exact a science an equal division makes sure any it is a trivial transfer from rich to poor and middle class rather than a significant transfer from the poor and middle class to the rich.

But the real answer, as David points out, is that we have huge transfers from the poor and middle classes to the rich and near rich. Reverse those transfers and you can pay for all the infrastructure changes we need.

But you know what?  By definition you can not "insulate" the middle class from change, because the middle class is most of us.

If we are "insulated" so we can still drive our Hemis and F150s ... where exactly does the fuel or greenhouse gas emissions reduction come from?

Do the rich drive enough Ferraris to do all the reduction themselves?  I don't think so.

So if you've got to get us (the bulk of the population) our of our cars ... you've got to put the change upon us.  You cannot insulate us.

Shifting over the course of a decade from gasoline cars to PHEV and EV cars does not hurt most of us.

Shifting some car traffic to trains does not hurt us - especially if we build more trains.

Increasing density, building more walkable neighborhoods, so that some car and train traffic shifts to foot and bicycle does not hurt most of us.

Increasing video conferencing and telecommuting so that more people can work from their homes does not hurt most of us.

Switching our grid to mostly wind and sun and water does not hurt most of us - especially if most of the funds for this come from cutting military spending and taking back some of the tax cuts for the rich.

Insulating our homes does not hurt most if it - especially if we use creative instruments of the sort the energy fund Clinton is part of are used (where we pay out of energy savings rather than a fixed amount).

And so on and so forth. We can make changes that don't hurt most of us, that even make our society as a whole richer -- but the very rich and the near rich (say household making more than $120,000 a  year) are going to have to pay for most of it.

"...the less government intervention, the better" is another way of saying that no government (anarchy) is best. An intelligent economist would not want an unregulated market (John Stossel would, but he is neither an economist or intelligent). Unregulated markets historically degrade into slavery, which has been the norm for most the history of civilization.

Government has its role. There are some things only government can do, like trust busting, establishment of level playing fields like the 40 hour work week, pollution regulation, safety nets for the poor. But when it steps out of that role you get stuff like corn ethanol. And it is always trying to overstep its role. Which part of our government are you so enamored with, the one that took us to war by accident after it failed to protect the Twin Towers, the one falling all over itself to promote corn ethanol and soy biodiesel, the one that just voted 80 million dollars to fund abstinence only sex ed, or the one that won't touch medical reform with a ten foot electrified pole?

Disdain of a regulated free market is a form of self-loathing. Consumers are the free market. You and I are consumers. These computers we brainstorm on would not exist without that market.

"I don't think that we have time to be blinded by blanket statements or ideologies. We need to be very practical from now on. When a society needs to move quickly, the government is called upon."

They just don't come any more practical than me. And I agree that we don't have time to be blinded by blanket statements, and especially by dog-eared failed ideologies. Sure the government is called upon in times of war, but when you ask it to solve a complex problem what you tend to get is corn ethanol.

For once, I'm with Odo. Where I live, high-density urban housing is sprouting up overnight. The government is enforcing zoning and building codes as it should but it is the market that is meeting consumer demand. Building codes are an example of a level playing field. Because all builders must meet them, none gain advantage.

It is one thing for zoning laws to allow mixed use. It is another to demand it. If there is no market for small retail spaces, forcing people to build such spaces will not create a demand for them. Likewise, not allowing them to be built when there is a demand for them would be dumb also. If enough people want something, the market will provide. The trick is to get people to want things that are more environmentally benign than past status fads, like urban living in place of suburban sprawl.

In the end, it all comes down to biodiversity. Poison Darts--Protecting the biodiversity of our world

So perhaps you, Jon, and I can agree on this: we should not mandate any particular form of housing or settlement. But neither should we favor any particular kind in our regulations, laws, or tax codes.

If we really had a level playing field, I suspect density and mixed-use would explode many times faster than they are now. But a genuinely level playing field would be alien to today's city planners, developers, and builders. It would involve radical change. And creating it could easily be cast by opponents as government intervention in free markets. So you see the dilemma that arguing in these terms puts us in.

grist.org

Bear in mind, stuff like single-family zoning is entrenched partly (maybe largely) because neighbors like it. Zoning gives them some power over the development process, and nobody likes giving up power.

And I don't mean to suggest that, oh, if only it weren't for those blasted neighbors! The development process is something that can be worked to protect a community from true threats, but it can also be used to stifle natural development processes. I don't see any way to draw a line between the two, and I don't imagine most cities are very interested in trying.

I'm sure many would feel that as hurt ... the same who would feel hurt now if they were "forced" (by economics or mandate) to drive a smaller or more efficient car.

"Now all we need to do is create a federal- and state-financed infrastructure bank that would be a source of funds for any town that wants to have a town center.

Which most certainly is not necessary, any more than subsidizing the purchase of a Prius is, which, by the way, is yet another perfect example of government bumbling that made me about $3,000 richer this year at the expense of my fellow taxpayers. The Prius; a product spawned by the market to meet the demands of consumers, saving more gas than all the government bungling combined. Corn ethanol, spawned by government, killing CAFÉ standards and increasing fuel use by a billion gallons annually. Seattle's exploding density; also spawned by the market, but at least being allowed by our local bureaucracy.

Claxton6 sums zoning up pretty well. Downtown Seattle is ringed by single family neighborhoods. Those who own those houses like it that way. Other people who cannot afford these houses who also want to live closer to downtown want less expensive and therefore denser housing. Local politicians are stuck between warring groups of citizens, as always. Suburban sprawl resulted from that same kind of pressure. Consumers wanted that kind of housing because at the time it had higher status. But, status symbols are an ever-changing thing. What was cool last year may not be cool this year. Huge McMansions located thirty miles from where you work are starting to look kind of stupid.


In the end, it all comes down to biodiversity. Poison Darts--Protecting the biodiversity of our world

Heh. I don't think you can harp on the gov't for killing CAFE, without acknowledging that the gov't, you know, created CAFE. So, the fuel saved by that initial gov't bungling probably is more than that saved by Priuses. Also, before I chalk the Prius up to market, I'd want to know more about its genesis in Japan, with respect to the Japanese market, regulation, and gas taxes.  

That said, I agree that in, at least in matters of urban form, the first step is to get the gov't (here, local gov't) out the way. Sadly, the local gov't is almost never going to do that*, so you need some higher level of government to encourage or force them to. (An example would be, I think, the Portland metro transit area, where to receive a transit stop, the local gov't has to agree to zone to allow density.)

* Partly because: say you're a local official, in a ward system. The people with an interest in the status quo are your constituents. The people who an interest in change are not, because generally they're not living in your ward yet--the whole point is they want to get in.

Look at figure 2 on this page and note that Cars "Achieved" is almost always above "CAFE Standard."  The same is true for LDT Achieved/Standard.

So no, I don't think the policy (CAFE) "did" it.  I think our government lagged, and wrote a CAFE to match what was harmless to automakers.  That is, it enforced what we were already doing.

Total fleet (achieved) mileage fell from a 1987 high of 26 MPG, to today's 23 MPG, as people chose SUVs, or not.

Since there was no upper (government mandated) limit on the number of trucks and SUVs that could be sold, we could have really had any "mandated" number for our fleet average between 22 and 27.5 mpg (the "LTD" and "Car" limits).

The market totally decided on our 23 MPG.

Now, I certainly hope going forward that we can tilt things again, with a combination of cultural and mandated factors ... but my reading of history is that culture has to lead.

MPG has to be what everybody wants, before congress will follow, and legislate it.

My former apt in Manhattan = 94.  (surprisingly low - what does it take to get 100?)

My current cottage in Westchester: 11.  

ouch.

As to whether we force people to do so, I'm not advocating that, although I'm trying to straddle two problems here: what is politically possible, and what may be necessary.  If everybody thought that we are heading toward a "long emergency", I suppose you could actually mandate density; it may be that at some future point in time, that will actually happen, the outer suburbs will be abandoned and torn down for materials, etc., but we're obviously not at that point yet.

The other complication is that transit systems depend on density, but density depends on transit systems.  So how do we deal with the chicken/egg problem?  Transit must be done by government, but the "market" will work in different ways depending on whether the transit is there first.  Do we set up transit stops in the hopes that something will emerge?  Should the government set up transit, build some developments (or take bids from private contractors, then build), and let the market handle the rest?  My "wilder" infrastructure bank idea was to actually create mixed use development along with the transit stops.  I'd be interested to hear what is going in in Portland, for instance, because there was a case of putting in transit, and it seems to be having some effect on development.