Social movements

New Urbanism: Planning healthier cities and retrofitting suburbia

(The third in a series highlighting U.S. Movements to celebrate, support, and spread the word about.)

Suburban sprawl has been the dominant development pattern for the last fifty years. By 2000, more people lived in suburbs than in cities, small towns, and the countryside combined. Most of these suburbs were built after 1950 to accommodate the automobile, and they usually have the following familiar characteristics:

Low population density
Separate business and residential districts
Large lots
No sidewalks
Complex hierarchical street systems
Cul-de-sacs
Large parking lots
Shopping malls
Strip malls
Big box stores
Traffic congestion

These features – especially the curving dead-end streets, lack of sidewalks, massive parking lots, and the distance between residences and businesses make it nearly impossible to walk or ride a bike in many suburbs.

The result? 41% of urban trips in the U.S. are under 2 miles, but 90% are made by car. Only 6% of trips are made on foot and 1% by bicycle (1995). Compare that with a few other countries:

France – 24% foot, 4% bike
Switzerland – 24% foot, 10% bike
Sweden – 29% foot, 10% bike
The Netherlands – 18% foot, 28% bike

The vast majority of Americans also drive to work. The average commute is 16 miles. Only 4% of Americans commute via public transportation, 2.93% walk, and .38% cycle.

Sprawl is hazardous to our health.

Suburban living undeniably has good points – big backyards, good schools, friendly neighborhoods, and roomy living quarters. But sprawling cities mean more driving and lead to:

1. Physical inactivity

Researchers Barbara A. McCan and Reid Ewing studied the health effects of sprawl by comparing the “sprawl index” to the health characteristics of 200,000 people in 448 different counties. They found that people living in more sprawling counties were more likely to

be physically inactive
have higher body mass indexes
be obese
suffer from high blood pressure.

2. Road rage

With everyone relying so heavily on cars, our roadways are packed and driving is often stressful. A third of drivers can be characterized as aggressive. 62% say they occasionally get frustrated behind the wheel, 40% admit to getting angry, and 20% confess to getting road rage at times.

3. Traffic accidents

Driving is one of the most dangerous activities we do each day. 6.5 million auto accidents occur every year in the U.S, and almost 40,000 people died last year in car crashes. That’s 110 deaths every day, or one death every 13 minutes.

4. Air Pollution

Cars are the leading cause of air pollution in the U.S. Long-term exposure to dirty air is known to shorten lives and contribute to cardiovascular and lung disease.

There’s an alternative to sprawl.

New Urbanism is an urban planning movement that rose up in the early 1980s in reaction to suburban development.

The ten principles of New Urbanism are:

Walkability – Amenities are within a ten minute walk from home or work and streets are pedestrian-friendly.
Connectivity – Cities are on a grid to make walking easier.
Mixed Use and Diversity – Residential and business districts are mixed and appeal to people of all ages and walks of life.
Mixed Housing – Neighborhoods have different types and prices of housing.
Quality Architecture and Urban Design – Developments are beautiful, comfortable, and have a sense of place.
Traditional Neighborhood Structure – The center of town is public open space.
Increased Density – Everything is closer together to make walking more convenient.
Green Transportation – A network of trains connects neighborhoods, towns, and cities.
Sustainability – Developments encourage energy efficient living: less driving, more walking.
Quality of Life – Neighborhoods, towns, and buildings uplift and enrich people’s lives.

New Urbanist developers have fought to change city codes that favor sprawl to build more walkable, livable communities. Critics have pointed out that some New Urban developments, like Plum Creek in Kyle, Texas; Kentlands, Maryland; and Seaside, Florida, are built on open space and thus add to sprawl, even if these communities are compact, mixed-use, and walkable.

But not all New Urbanist settlements are on open space. Many are suburban retrofits. Stapleton in Denver, Colorado was an old airport; and Belmar in Lakewood, Colorado and Mizner Park in Boca Raton, Florida were abandoned shopping malls.

Suburbia needs a rehab

Time Magazine reports that “the American suburb as we know it is dying” because of the housing bust, and Christopher B. Leinberger asks if suburban McMansion developments will be “the next slum” in the Atlantic Monthly. 148,000 shopping malls and big box stores closed last year, including Circuit City, Gottshalks, and many Home Depots and Mervyns. When big retailers desert neighborhoods, they don’t just leave giant, windowless, vacant buildings. They also leave lost tax revenue, fewer jobs and the potential for increased vandalism, more crime, and lower property values.

The residential districts of suburbs were also vastly overbuilt during the housing bubble. Arthur C. Nelson of the Metropolitan Institute at Virginia Tech, forecasts a surplus of 22 million large-lot homes by 2025, which is about 40% of those in existence today.

Remaking the abandoned miles of sprawl resulting from the unsustainable development patterns of the last fifty years will be a major challenge in the next few decades, and New Urbanist theorists, planners, and architects will undoubtedly be on the front lines.

If reshaping American cities to be healthier and less car-centric seems hopeless, look at Bogota, Colombia. In 1998, to fight severe traffic congestion and pollution problems, Enrique Peñalosa, the new mayor of Bogota, built 70 miles of bike paths; converted many streets into pedestrian malls; and built a relatively inexpensive rapid transit bus system. The results were quick and dramatic. The average commute time decreased 21 minutes and the air got significantly cleaner. The citizens of Bogota were so pleased that they voted to ban cars entirely from downtown during rush hour starting in 2015.

Read more about New Urbanism at Congress for the New Urbanism. Or grab a copy of Retrofitting Suburbia: Urban Design Solutions for Redesigning Suburbs by Ellen Dunham-Jones and June Williamson.

Are you a fan or member of a movement fighting for social, cultural, or environmental change? Leave a comment! Your movement could be highlighted in a future New Urban Habitat article.

Should Towns Print Their Own Cash?

By Abby Quillen

Local currency, also called community or complementary currency, is money that’s not backed by a national government and is traded only in a small geographic area. Over 2,500 local currency systems currently operate in the world, including in American communities like:

Ithaca, New York (Ithaca Hours)
Portland, Maine (Hour Exchange Portland)
The Berkshires, Massachusetts (Berkshares)
Corvallis, Oregon (The Hour Exchange)

The trend is likely to escalate in response to the 2008 global economic crisis.

How can local currencies help in hard economic times?

During recessions, people hoard money. Banks halt lending. Businesses shut their doors. And workers are laid off. The result? Cash becomes more and more scarce.

It’s hard to generalize about local currency systems, because they vary so widely. But almost all of them are designed to combat a scarcity of cash by matching unmet needs in a community with under-used resources, i.e. unemployed people. They are not meant to replace a national currency, but to complement it. Some are based on a unit of time, usually an hour. Others are based on the national currency.

How might the introduction of a local currency look?

Let’s say I’m saving every dollar I have, because I’m afraid I could lose my job. On Sunday, everyone in my town is given fifty “local bucks”. They are distinctive, easy to carry, difficult to counterfeit, and about half of the businesses in town have agreed to accept them. My inclination is to stash them away like my dollars. But they’ll lose 1% of their value on Saturday if I don’t spend them in the next six days. (Economists call this type of depreciation demurrage.)

So on Monday, I use my 50 bucks to pay my unemployed neighbor to create a website for me.
On Tuesday, my neighbor buys groceries at our local health food store.
On Wednesday, the store owner buys produce from a local farmer.
On Thursday, the farmer buys seeds from a local company.
On Friday, the seed company owner buys a shirt from a local tailor.

In one week, 50 bucks, has, in effect, become 250. The faster transactions happen (the currency’s velocity), the more economic activity each buck generates during the week. “Economic activity” is not some abstract concept. It is a website, food, produce, seeds, a shirt, etc.

The tailor doesn’t spend his 50 bucks by Saturday, so he has to buy a stamp for $.50 to stick on the back of the 50 buck bill to keep it worth its face value. There are 52 spaces on the back of the bill, one for each week of the year. Without the current stamp, the bill is worthless. (This type of currency is called a stamp scrip.) The tailor is out $.50, but he sold a shirt that he otherwise wouldn’t have.

Can the introduction of a local currency really pull a town out of a global recession?

Maybe. Consider what happened in Woergl, Austria during the Great Depression. Woergl was suffering badly. By some accounts, 1,500 of its 4,500 residents were unemployed. The mayor, Michael Unterguggenberger, had a long list of needed public improvements but little money. He had about 40,000 schillings, but instead of spending them, he decided to use them to back a local currency. Anyone could trade in local bucks at 98% of their value for schillings. Like the example above, the Woergl currency was a stamp scrip.

The project ran for 13 months. The bills changed hands very quickly. The Woergl citizens could pay their city taxes with them, so the council was able to carry out all its intended works projects. They built a reservoir, a ski jump, new houses, and a bridge. The community also replanted forests, anticipating future cash flow from the trees. Woergl was the only Austrian town to achieve full employment during the Depression until the Central Bank intervened and shut down the local currency system.

What are the possible downsides of a local currency?

Local currency systems are complicated. A group of townspeople needs to create, organize, and administer them. Businesses and citizens must be on board. They only work if enough people accept and use the currency.

Hoarding is also a hard thing to stop. It was a problem even in Woergl, because many people wanted to hold onto the currency as souvenirs.

Demurrage (a currency depreciating every week or month) can also encourage hasty spending. Even though the spending is local, more consumption can mean greater use of finite resources, such as oil, lumber, coal or water.

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Take Back Your Time

By Abby Quillen

(The first in a series highlighting U.S. Movements to celebrate, support, and spread the word about.)

Americans, along with Australians and Japanese, lead the industrialized world when it comes to the number of hours we log on the job. We work a full nine weeks more per year than most Western Europeans. And we’re guaranteed no paid sick, vacation, or family leave through the law. American workers have made large jumps in productivity in the last forty years, but our increased productivity has not translated into more leisure time for us. We’re toiling about five weeks more per year than American workers did in 1970.

With so many Americans out of work today, it may seem weird to talk about the issue of overwork. However, the two problems are related. The more hours individuals work, the fewer jobs are available, which is why companies nationwide are instituting voluntary or mandatory furloughs and reducing employees’ work schedules to avoid layoffs. As strange as it seems, with company’s closing, mass layoffs, and sky-high unemployment rates, we may actually start hearing more about overwork. In 1933, at the height of the Great Depression, a thirty-hour workweek passed the Senate. (The Roosevelt Administration withdrew its support, and the bill didn’t make it through the House).

The folks at Take Back Your Time (TBYT), a broad, non-partisan coalition, have been sounding the alarm on American “time-poverty” for years. They contend that overwork and “time-stress” have detrimental effects on our:

health
marriages
families
relationships
communities
democracy
pets
self-development
spiritual growth
environment.

Their six part Time to Care Public Policy Agenda fights for:

1. Guaranteed paid leave for all parents for the birth or adoption of a child.

Currently the U.S. Family and Medical Leave Act only allows 12 weeks of unpaid leave if you work at a company that employs more than fifty employees. Between 2001 and 2003, only 28% of pregnant women actually took maternity leave.

Why is paid family leave important?

Time off from work before and after a baby’s birth helps strengthen families and has broad societal and health-care-related effects. Consider the findings from two studies conducted by Sylvia Guendelman (University of California Berkeley) :

Women who took leave in the ninth month of pregnancy were 73% less likely to have a Caesarean section than those who worked up to delivery. Caesarean deliveries are associated with longer hospital stays, risks of surgical complications, and longer recovery times for mothers. (Women’s Health Issues, January/February 2009)

Women who returned to work shortly after delivery were significantly less likely to establish breastfeeding within the first month. Breastfeeding is associated with numerous health benefits for babies and mothers. (Pediatrics, January 2009)

The World Health Organization has this to say about the importance of Family Leave:

A pregnant woman should have a reduced physical work load and no night work during the second half of pregnancy.

A pregnant woman should have complete absence from work from week 34 to 36 depending on her health status and physical workload.

Women need at least 16 weeks absence from work after delivery.

Breastfeeding is a major determinant of infant health. Infants should be exclusively breastfed on demand from birth for at least 4 and, if possible, 6 months of age and should continue to be breastfed together with adequate complementary food until the age of 2 years or beyond.

How does the U.S. compare to the rest of the world? Here’s a sampling of parental leave benefits in other countries:

Sweden – 16 months with 80% of pay
Lithuania – 52 weeks with 100% of pay
Spain – 16 weeks with 100% of pay
Poland – 16-18 weeks with 100% of pay
Canada – 50 weeks with 55% of pay
Algeria – 14 weeks with 100% of pay

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2. One week of guaranteed paid sick leave for all American workers.

Americans currently have zero days of sick leave guaranteed through the law. The implications of this has been in the news recently with the threat of a flu pandemic.

3. At least three weeks paid annual vacation leave for all American workers.

More than 147 countries mandate paid vacation. The United States is the only industrialized nation that doesn’t .

Are vacations important? Consider these findings:

Over 12,000 men were enrolled in a heart health study (Psychosomatic Medicine,2000) and followed over nine years. The men who took vacations most years were 20 percent less likely to die of any cause and 30 percent less likely to die of heart disease than those who forewent regular vacations.

In the Wisconsin Women’s Rural Health Study, women who took vacations frequently were less likely to become tense, depressed, or tired, and were more satisfied with their marriages.

4. A limit on the amount of compulsory overtime work an employer can impose.

Currently the Fair Labor Standards Act provides no protection for workers 16 and older who do not wish to work mandatory overtime. Adult workers who refuse overtime are subject to employer discipline and discharge.

5. Making Election Day a holiday.

U.S. voter turnout for presidential elections jumped about five percent between 2000 and 2008. Yet only 56.8% of eligible voters made it to the polls last November. Contrast that to turnout in:

Australia – 95%
Italy – 90%
Germany – 86%
Brazil – 83%
Canada – 76%
Britain – 76%
Japan – 71%

Why are Americans so lackadaisical when it comes to democracy? In a survey conducted by the California Voter Foundation, 28 percent of infrequent voters and 23 percent of unregistered voters said they don’t vote or don’t register because they’re too busy. It can’t help that voting day is on a Tuesday, when the majority of us have to work.

If making Election Day a national holiday seems too bold, we could simply move election day to a Saturday, or as Martin P. Wattenberg proposed in a 1998 Atlantic Monthly piece, move it to the second Tuesday in November, combine it with Veterans’ Day, and call it Veterans’ Democracy Day.

6. Making it easier for Americans to choose part-time work, including hourly wage parity and protection of promotions and pro-rated benefits for part-time workers.

Part-time work equality benefits families. 60% of working moms say they’d prefer part-time work.

The European Community implemented a directive on part-time work to “end less favourable treatment of part-timers in order to support the development of a flexible labour market, by encouraging the greater availability of part-time employment, and increasing the quality and range of jobs which are considered suitable for part-time work or job-sharing.”

You can learn more or become a member of Take Back Your Time at www.timeday.org.

Are you a fan or member of a movement fighting for social, cultural, or environmental change? Leave a comment! Your movement could be highlighted in a future New Urban Habitat article.

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