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Values and Political Structures: 030111
There are social incentives as well as economic incentives for non-metro lifestyles. Smaller communities offer greater opportunities for establishing social relationships with neighbors and local business owners. Smaller communities require greater personal involvement and anonymity does not exist. Schools are generally in closer proximity to home, there are fewer children in classrooms and students receive more individual and personal attention from teachers. Homes are also closer to basic goods and services residents need as well as having nearby access to parks, libraries and churches. Because these communities have fewer residents and require less sophisticated infrastructure, the costs associated with living there, including taxes are also generally less.
Finding a non-urban area to live as a commuter though is not easy. The difficulty in finding a smaller, more ideal, convenient non-metro place is that nearby edge communities (towns and cities) serving metropolitan centers are already housing large numbers of commuting workers traveling back and forth to urban jobs.
Consequently, the opportunities of a non-urban lifestyle near major cities have been lost in the increased population and density that already exists. So, commuting distances now become part of a demand equation for quality-of-life and affordability for many urban residents seeking non-metro lifestyles.
Also, if we understand that the costs of infrastructure and services to an ever increasing population are always greater than what the community collects through residential taxes on property, we realize that the added population burden places unsustainable demands on a community’s resources. Therefore taxes to residents moving to or living in the edge cities must increase to accommodate the added costs. Growth for the sake of growth never pays for its costs.
In these circumstances, therefore, the social incentive for moving to a smaller community as well as the economic incentive for relocating nearby is lost. So the second part of the quality-of-life and affordability formula must kick in to determine where to live. Realtors call this process: Drive to where you qualify.
How great of a distance must a commute become to be too far to consider? It depends. People who now live in San Diego often drive more than 100 miles to work in LA and back each day and never complain. Some people living in Pennsylvania spend more than three hours each way on the train into and out of New York City for work each day and think nothing of it.
Within these regions there were at one time ample numbers of non-metro small communities able to absorb the demand for commuting workers. Those times are past. In southern California, there is now a dense urban corridor that runs almost continuously from the United States and Mexican border in San Ysidro north through Los Angeles to the edge city of Isla Vista, north of Santa Barbara.
Others, yet, who live in compact regions like the Washington, DC area or the Las Vegas Valley may drive less than a half hour in commuting to and from work are still justified in their complaints regarding traffic and congestion. In these locations, with decades of continuous rampant growth the design of a transportation network to accommodate current traffic never occurred.
The geography of a particular region can also influence travel distances for commuting. If an urban center like Los Angeles was impacted in the same manner by inclement weather conditions as Boston commonly finds itself, reasonable driving distances for southern California commuters would be dramatically less. Portland, Oregon with a combined annual rainfall and snowfall of 40 inches naturally keeps commuters close by.
Across the desert southwest, on the other-hand, sustainable valley communities are a product of ample access to artesian sweet-water from snowmelt in the surrounding mountains more so than other geographic or climatic factors, including temperature. Because of water, driving distances between desert communities may often be a hundred miles or more. Other than community development growing together along Utah’s Wasatch Range, edge cities rarely evolve in the desert.
There are an ample number of Desert Ghost Towns throughout the southwest where there was too little potable water available for sustaining a community after mining resources were exhausted. Some of these Ghost Towns with water serve as short term winter havens for today’s “snowbirds”. But the Ghost Towns generally are too distant from metro-areas to serve bedroom commuters.
© RAF: 2011
Values and Political Structures: 030111
Most people living in larger cities across America have little knowledge, understanding, nor an appreciation of the roles smaller communities serve. But, without the nation’s small, rural communities its metropolitan centers would neither function nor exist. Whether, it’s the main sources of food, water, energy or solid waste storage, or hunting, fishing, camping, skiing, enjoying other major forms of outdoor recreation or the demand for a blue-collar pool of new workers for labor, maintenance and repairs, the basis for each of these resources lie outside the cities’ limits.
Historically, rural communities have continuously fed the employment needs for America’s big city corporations promoting business around the world. Significantly higher salaries over the years have been an economic magnet, attracting rural residents to fill the demands for service and white-collar employment urban organizations require.
Today, however, America’s heartland is emerging into an entirely new supporting role for assisting cities. Rural America and its small towns are becoming the affordable new home for retiring urban baby-boomers now living on a fixed income. They are also becoming a place of new opportunity for middle-aged men and women who’ve lost their careers in the corporate world due to downsizing throughout the recession, and they’re becoming an escape valve for households who are walking away or losing their urban or suburban homes through upside-down real estate investments engineered by Wall Street.
Rural, small town life in America’s heartland is also becoming popular as a safe setting for urban families where parents desire to spend more time actively involved with their children’s lives; especially when the parents’ careers and income can rely primarily upon the internet for business communications, major ongoing working relationships and in developing and producing work products.
While communications distances are no longer a major issue worldwide, transportation often is. Consequently, proximity to clients and business associates often dictates how far people at work can live from their urban counterparts, their networking contacts and business base.
When convenient transportation is accessible, the distance limitations shrink significantly and the work place and the meeting place can be considerably farther apart. As an example, an airfreight pilot who moved his family to live in the small town of Boulder City, Nevada for its high-quality-of-life, commutes to and from Anchorage, Alaska for his pilot assignments flying cargo around the world.
It appears more and more of these moves can be anticipated. The nation is still enduring hard times; through continuing communication advances in technology jobs are being shepherded off shore and eliminated from the business world; and families are rethinking the values and purposes of life.
Values and Political Structures: 012711
Confusing distinctions between urban and rural life and metropolitan and non-metropolitan communities is widespread. Based on a variety of definitions commonly in use today, The United States Department of Agriculture defines America’s rural population ranging everywhere from 07% to 49% of the nation’s population.
We do know that with the end of the Civil War people began leaving America’s farms to move to its cities. This out-migration was accelerated by the advent of mass manufacturing and the Industrial Revolution. American cities kept attracting new migrants through the end of the 20th century. However, an interesting phenomenon began evolving soon after the conclusion of World War II.
After the war, in order to meet the immense demands for new housing in the most economical and profitable way, developers began using Detroit’s mass manufacturing principles in planning, designing and constructing single-family dwelling units. In lieu of more traditional pre-war higher density onesy-twosy townhomes, apartments and boarding houses, developers began selling single-family residences the way automobile dealers sold cars.
To find adequate property necessary to mass-develop this new type of side-by-side housing, developers moved to and beyond the edges of the existing cities to convert rural lands to construct the new rooftops needed. Developers defined these areas as the “sub-urbs” and promoted the use of automobiles as the convenient means of transportation into the nearby cities and back and for shopping outside the single-use development zones. By the end of the 1940’s two car garages became sub-urb living necessities for commuting households.
The popularity and supply of the single-family home over time and rings of almost continuous development have grown to the point where today there are greater populations of Americans living in the suburbs than living in the cities.
Just exactly, what are the suburbs? The earliest rings of post-war suburban development around the core of the cities have been annexed into the cities are now commonly considered neighborhoods that are part of the center city. For the purpose of clarity, I describe these oldest rings of development as the “urburbs”. They are generally smaller, more compact two and three-bedroom houses on relatively ample parcels of land, but are not pedestrian oriented.
Beyond the urburbs are rings and rings of additional housing developments constructed over the following decades. The farther away from the center city these developments are situated, the larger the houses are and the more land they consume. Some of these outer rings have also been annexed into the cities. In other cases, they remain unincorporated.
The most remote suburban development is frequently described in planning as the exurbs. If these more remote development rings accommodate any significant degree of commercial enterprise they commonly become referred to as “edge cities”.
All of this adds even more to the confusion and fuzzy line of demarcation between urban and rural life and metro and non-metro communities across America.
© RAF: 2011
Values and Political Structures: 010711
America is viewed as a rich quilt-work of hamlets, villages, towns and cities all stitched tightly together by the people living within each setting. But communities that are commonly considered urban and non-urban are less clearly perceived. Do we really understand what urban means? As defined, urban can be either an incorporated or unincorporated area with a population of at least 50,000 residents. So, it’s possible for a village, town or county with 50,000 people to be “urban”, while an incorporated city with a population of 49,000 is not.
To cloud any confusion even more, when asked to define a “metropolitan area”, most Americans will generally reply: It’s a large, densely populated city supported by a series of surrounding suburbs and small towns. When asked for the definition of a “non-metropolitan area”, most will again say it’s an agricultural or rural setting some distance away from the city that could include a few hamlets, perhaps a collection of villages or even a few scattered small towns.
However, according to the United States Office of Management and Budget, the agency that defines metro and non-metro boundaries, a metropolitan area is a county or counties “with one or more central cities of at least 50,000 residents or with an urbanized area of 50,000 or more and a total population of at least 100,000.” Anything less than a community of 100,000 residents, for government purposes is considered a “non-metro” area. So today it’s possible for a city resident living in an urban neighborhood to reside in a non-metropolitan setting. It is also possible for residents living in a hamlet, village, town, city or county in one state being included as part of a metropolitan area located in a neighboring state. These confusing differences in definitions often result in limitations on the opportunities and abilities smaller communities across America have in marketing and attracting additional population, new businesses and the commerce necessary to create a sustainable economy. According to the United States Department of Agriculture communities with a population of 2,500 “…typically have not maintained the levels and diversity of employment, goods and services that existed in 1910”.
The Role Communities Play – 121110
Simply stated, a Community is a place where a body of people joins together to live, work and share a common set of resources, values, goals and objectives in accordance with the same laws, ordinances and regulations. People may also join together to create a Community for obtaining a stronger sense of security, synergy and potential economic opportunities that lie ahead.
To be a Community there must be some form of social structure and energy that continuously connects and bonds residents together.
If you travel across the United States of America today you will observe almost every kind and type of Community one can imagine – and this is good. There are small rural and even urban hamlets that exist without any specific local form of government other than a recognition and appreciation of the common interests that bond them together.
There are larger collections of neighboring residents forming villages that have common social and economic interests and some commercial support for providing basic goods and needs. These villages may or may not have any local form of governance either. Larger bodies of population exist as towns. Towns generally have more commercial enterprises available and some limited form of governance for controlling order internally. Towns are generally connected and directed by some larger outside body or bodies of governance. Cities are incorporated populations that are in control of local ordinances, regulations and community development.
Joined together in unity, communities throughout the United States create a rich quilt-work that supports society and providing this nation with the human resources and economic strength it requires for leading the remainder of the world through example. Communities of all sizes still remain the strength of this nation’s social, cultural, intellectual, economic, religious and political infrastructure.
Communities make the United States what and who we are. Communities are the glue that holds us together and they’re the ingredients that make us uniquely different from other nations. It’s the diversity and difference within us that brings strength of this nation, and it has always been this way since our forefathers united us as one together in 1776.
We often forget the roles that communities play in providing strength to this nation. Wars are never fought by governments, their fought by people. When wars are won they’re national victories. But, when lives are lost in combat it is our communities that suffer. Likewise, with jobs and employment! When the United States was at its height of international power and economic accomplishment, its farming, manufacturing and production was being performed and produced by America. But, when this nation’s jobs are displaced overseas by America’s corporations, corporate profits continue increasing, but out-of work, unemployed citizens are left to bring the suffering home to the communities where they live.
As communities across the United States continue to suffer during this recession, our common sets of values, aspirations and vigor weaken. Laws, ordinances and regulations are jeopardized and a community’s sense of security, synergy and potential economic opportunity deteriorates. The form of social structure that bonds and connects this nation together begins to come apart.
This is where we are today!
Values and Political Structures – 120210
Why are high school students today so far ahead of most adults across America?
If it appears to adults that teenagers are out of the loop in terms of the world around them, perhaps it’s because we focus too much attention on their clothing, the cell phone texting being performed almost continuously and the explosive music and rap that fills the air as they speed by on skateboards. But don’t let any of that fool you!
Teenagers fully understand the ramifications of these times and what their futures offer. If a kid is raised in poverty they know there are only three ways out: an education, the military and drugs. In most instances, if kids come from a middle-income or upper-income setting, with the knowledge of deaths from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan the military option is out of the question.
In America’s urban communities, high school kids in the midst of the current economic recession are learning also that graduation from high school is the only ticket to any future; and, any long-term successful future requires attending college. Those already in college will add, truly successful futures require graduate and post graduate education. Kids growing up in America’s rural communities learned these lessons years ago, unless they wanted to remain home and continue farming, ranching, working in lumbering or mining – or continuing their families’ local businesses.
Teenagers are exceptionally aware of what we as adults are doing – or not doing – in terms of investing in America’s futures. Our reactions as voters during this recession have been to cut government spending at every level in order to limit needs for any additional taxation. Students see this and wonder why their parents and others throughout their community are unwilling to invest in the infrastructure and services the children need today to prepare themselves for leading America tomorrow.
A question for us as adults today: if we’re unwilling to invest in tomorrow, should those who are the products of this disinvestment care about us in the future when we are in need of senior services?
There was a time when the United States led the world in terms of knowledge and productivity. That knowledge and productivity transformed into the highest quality of life of any society throughout the world. Times are changing. The United States is beginning to lag other developed nations and some developing nations in quality of life factors, including economics and health. This transfer of quality of life to others is occurring because these nations today are heavily investing in education and preparing the infrastructure their youth need for leading the world tomorrow.
If we want our children and grandchildren to lead productive, happy, healthy lives we need to change our behavior and invest in tomorrow.
Values and Political Structures – 112110
Is civil civic discourse in America today an oxymoron?
It seems it appears from the last set of election campaigns – and from the aftermath of the continuing political rhetoric, there’s no longer any sense of creating a responsible dialogue amongst citizens with differing views. Within the political realm we’ve made everything become either a black or white issue; when in fact, just about everything politics deals with is grey. One would think American’s are bright enough to understand this – and be able to sit down around a table with a cup of coffee, a beer or a glass of wine to find an un-contentious middle ground from which we can begin working together towards our common goals.
It is of no value to common causes to push everything to the two extremes. Yet that’s exactly what we Americans do. Is hatred not a learned frame of mind? Besides, hatred takes so much time and energy away from us when we could be using that energy and time working together doing things that make this nation better for our children and grandchildren.
As an example, politicians in both parties have taken the stimulus money and made it appear that its passage in Congress either saved America from crashing into another “Great Depression”, or it’s creating a debt that will keep the next generation of American’s lives buried in poverty. The fact is: neither position is accurate.
My understanding is money from the stimulus went to support three primary areas of the economy. First, the stimulus served to help state governments perform their obligations to citizens rather than eliminating public assistance programs. Another portion of the state’s stimulus funds went to public education for keeping thousands of teachers nationally in classrooms. It’ said, a full third of the stimulus went for funding tax cuts, which I don’t know if any American understood – nor the majority of us needed. The remainder is said to have gone to upgrading the nation’s infrastructure, which has been in a state of continuing decay for decades.
With any one of the three portions of the stimulus funding distributions above, why can we not discuss the merits of any one of the three, or them all in a civil manner in a civic setting? If we discard the political rhetoric and party slander we can come to our conclusions, or at least we can all better understand each other’s thinking.
This nation’s discourse belongs to us, the citizenry, not to the political agenda of either political party. We can come together and resolve America’s problems.
Feeding the Urburbs
Recreating a Sustainable Southern Nevada – 102410
When we redevelop and increase the density of the older original suburban residential neighborhoods surrounding the urban core of our downtowns, making these neighborhoods economically viable and productive once again as a community asset with value, we need to identify sustainable ways in which we can provide food for the residents without importing every item of every meal we eat.
We are learning once again that fresh organic fruits, vegetables, nuts and some meat proteins can be feasibly and economically grown in the city. Approximately 45% of the valleys fresh foods could be grown and produced here within our cities.
Urban communities all around the nation are looking to blighted areas or other parcels of land that were skipped-over and never developed, or properties that are vacated and left abandoned to use for contemporary urban gardens. Urban agriculture is increasing in popularity as an opportunity to put people back to work in meaningful ways during this recession. Rooftops in multistory apartment buildings have also become popular places for urban farming and raising poultry for eggs and meat.
When neighbors and friends come together to create gardens on vacant lots crime in the area drops because people soon come to know one another and learn where their neighbors live. When strangers enter these neighborhoods, the eyes on the street watch out for what’s happening.
We can and should begin farming in these same ways here in southern Nevada. Promoting Farmers Markets throughout our urburban neighborhoods should already be a high priority for local governments to support. By promoting urban farmers and helping develop garden plots for them to sell their produce and food products to the public we uncover an additional way to strengthen our sense of neighborhood and our community pride in a positive, productive manner.
There are a few Farmer’s Market locations around the valley today, but not enough to serve the amount of fresh produce and food we need. Also, most of the produce and other food products being sold here presently are being grown and prepared outside the valley by farmers, many of which are located in California. So money from these sales leaves southern Nevada and the state.
Similarly, we should recognize that as we become more metropolitan we possess a greater framework of urban, ethnic neighborhoods, where there is an added opportunity to foster and celebrate cultural diversity which in turn can produce a wider range of food products for the communities’ benefit. We certainly have an abundance of Latino cultures representing every state and region in Mexico, and every nation state and region throughout Central America, South America and Spain. We also now have Asian neighborhoods evolving in parts of the valley in a similar fashion. So if we can organize ways in which we can salute and celebrate our citizens and the foods they enjoy, we’ll be able to access a greater variety of better, fresher, natural foods for our enjoyment and good health.
Pedestrian Friendly Neighborhoods
Recreating a Sustainable Southern Nevada – 081810
Las Vegas has proven to the world we can construct America’s largest schools with the largest enrollments anywhere, but we are failures at keeping children in school through graduation. One major factor in this failure is the distance between a student’s home and the location of the schools across the valley. As a consequence, the heaviest congestion on today’s regional roadways occur when parents are taking their children to school in the mornings and picking them up in the afternoons.
Congestion is not only a significant traffic issue, but it’s a major health issue as well. Traffic congestion creates vast, greater amounts of air pollution than smoothly flowing traffic. Urban air pollution is the leading cause of asthma and other permanent bronchial disorders in children, and continuous exposure to air pollution adds to health problems associated with heart disease and cancer.
Redeveloping the Urburbs offers us the opportunity to get residents out of their automobiles and outdoors walking, riding bicycles, using electric carts and public transportation - because travel distances to where we need to be are shorter. When we add the appropriate pedestrian and bicycle amenities to the neighborhood, leaving the car at home becomes a popular option.
Many valley families currently own two and three family vehicles. Alternate modes of efficient and convenient transportation allows us to reduce the numbers of cars we must possess; and for every vehicle we eliminate, a typical household saves $1.000.00 a month each. If the community builds smaller schools closer to home, and walking or bicycle riding to school is made safe through planning and design, we can eliminate large amounts of air pollution.
Beyond school and the convenient commercial, retail and services households need, if we add employment centers to the Urburbs, we can walk or bicycle to work. If we add libraries, parks and recreational areas and churches to the Urburbs, we can live better and have happier lives. We’re also creating new jobs, a new economy and a far stronger sense of community –because we will know our neighbors. Isn’t that what we all want?
Please provide us with your thoughts and ideas regarding repurposing the Las Vegas valley; in turning its economy around and creating a world-class community that is home for each of us - and we’ll respond. We’ll also connect you with others so you can learn how they think about this set of issues as well!
If you want to learn more about our current recession and receive an unbiased and current objective economic report on the community today, go to www.rcg1.com.
Thanx!
Increasing Existing Development Densities
Recreating a Sustainable Southern Nevada – 080610
Rethinking the roles older neighborhood communities, surrounding the urban cores across the valley serve for the future, making them productive and fruitful once again adds to the long-term sustainability of the region. Plans and zoning provisions for repurposing the Urburbs for tomorrow’s needs should already be in place –but in most instances they’re not.
The advantage the Urburbs have over the suburbs is that current property values are significantly lower and the properties are closer in proximity to where the larger majority of jobs are located. There are many older neighborhoods within walking distances to major employment centers. While some of the older neighborhoods possess housing stock that has been maintained and upgraded over the years, larger amounts of the existing housing is in a state of disrepair and is rapidly dilapidating through neglect. Most of the neglected properties are non-owner occupied residences.
Upgrading the Urburbs requires three levels of improvements. First: Dilapidated properties need to be audited to determine their potential for upgrading and continued re-use. Those that can be upgraded need to be considered for future higher density purposes, either by adding garage apartments or Granny Flats. Instead of a single-family residence, the upgraded properties should be increased to a minimum five living units - or become a mixed-use property with some commercial or retail space. If the properties are not valuable for extended use, they should be razed and replaced with higher density housing. Second: Suburban amenities for leisure and recreation need to be brought to the Urburbs as a magnet for attracting and serving new residents, and Third: Commercial, retail and service businesses should be added nearby within convenient walking distances.
Inter-mixing older, upgraded properties suitable for extended use with new facilities maintains the historic patina and protects the human scale of the original neighborhoods, while giving them new functional and purposeful lives. Reinvesting in these neighborhoods also increases the property values and taxation local government receives, which offsets the costs of programs and human services. When older neighborhoods are re-vitalized business activity in the neighborhood rises and crime goes down. Repurposing older neighborhoods in the Urburbs is a win-win proposition that makes the Las Vegas valley a better place for everyone.
Please provide us with your thoughts and ideas regarding repurposing the Las Vegas Valley; in turning its economy around and creating a world-class community that is home for each of us - and we’ll respond. We’ll also connect you with others so you can learn how they think about this issue as well!
If you want to learn more about our current recession and receive an unbiased and objective economic report on the community today go to www.rcg1.com.
Thanx!
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