Question: Do you believe government should Manage Growth?
Answer: Yes!
Question: What if Growth Management regulations add $200,000 to the price of a house?
Answer: uhhh....

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/2004181704_eicher14.html

Boyd and Rather make some excellent points here. Yet, even the word "messaging" now has a negative connotation in this country, courtesy of decades of Madison Avenue and political spin. City planning, properly done, is all about making public policy through an open, honest, multi-party dialogue, with everyone's interests solicited and considered before a final decision is made by the folks we elect. In this dialogue the meaning that people attach to words definitely matters. But before we chuck entirely the three "fuzzy words" cited, let's pause to ask if people would choose for themselves a future that is un-livable, un-green (gray? brown?) and un-sustainable. Probably not. I do agree that smart planning for the recovery should be our focus - but planning is not just about managing growth - it's also about managing to grow. That means smart infrastructure investments and smarter codes.

There is a huge gap between what planners think of themselves and how the public views them. There is a great deal of skepticism about the intent of the planners and the populations for whom they are planning. And all too often it seems like they don't account for or can't predict the unintended consequences of their planning and designs.

Increasing density is a good idea, but you can't do it without also making sure that you aren't increasing the crime rate. You need to make sure that the public commons in dense areas are there for the benefits of the law-abiding. Kids need safe playgrounds more than junkies and other addicts need park bathrooms for their activities. You need to make sure that the streets are safe.

The problem for the planners is that our experience with growth in this region has led to balkanized neighborhoods without a common shared vision of what the neighborhood could be, increased traffic, increased noise, a perception of increased crime and less safety, and a decline in politeness and civility.

Anyone who grew up in one of Seattle's neighborhoods before 1980 can tell you that their local business district offered a greater variety of goods and services than they do now. There are more restaurants on 45th and Queen Anne Ave and Market than there were 30 years ago. But there is less variety in the kinds of goods and services offered in those areas. Growth tends to tear down the old buildings that businesses could afford to lease and replaces them with expensive storefronts that only boutiques and trendy restaurants and chains and franchises can afford.

Those of us of a certain age know what a sustainable, thriving neighborhood feels like. It feels safe, it feels organic, and it feels comfortable. It was built by the people who lived in it and created its sense of place. It wasn't imposed by someone else according to whatever urbanist theory was popular at the time.

BlueLight needs to update his information (and some day maybe even learn how to analyze his data). In a real estate market where prices are plummeting, the GMA is a stabilizing factor. Admittedly, the GMA with its simple urban/rural methodology is a blunt tool, but it is better than nothing at all.

And, yes, planners might do well to learn how to speak plain concrete English. Like all bureaucrats, planners have developed a code vocabulary for talking to one another, chocked full of empty soporific abstractions. "No ideas but in things," as the poet once said.

Woofer, can you link us to something that shows the GMA is a "stabilizing factor" in the real estate market?

The ultimate problem here is that GROWTH in human population or consumption are simply not sustainable. Period. And that is what we've been unwilling to confront.

Steve E. meet Steve E.
http://crosscut.com/2011/11/01/environment/21496/Dam-removal:-no-one-has-a-model-of-how-to-go-forward/

Sounds like Steve E needs to reduce his carbon footprint to Zero.

Thanks to Crosscut for more examples of the gobbledygook that "professional" planners speak:

"tie the old ways of thinking about topics such as transportation and land use to the “next-generation goals” about jobs and the economy"

"an open, honest, multi-party dialogue, with everyone's interests solicited and considered before a final decision is made by the folks we elect."

How about we all read the classic "Coming to Public Judgment" and the more recent "Death [sellout] of the Liberal Class" and then come back for some of that confronting that BlueLight thinks he has caught Steve E. doing. If so, way to go Steve!

"To help clarify this issue, the survey used a clear and easy-to-understand definition: “A sustainable community is an urban, suburban, or rural community that has more housing and transportation choices, is closer to jobs, shops, or schools, is more energy independent, and helps protect clean air and water.”

"more" than what? "closer" than what? This is basic logic, folks, and the fact that it's not well understood by many is how those with an agenda create polls that will give them the answers they've already determined that they want.

I give no credit to anything derived from polling because it's a joke. Humans being what we are, a great many of us feel uncomfortable if our ideas are perceived as being outside the norm. Therefore, when confronted with "properly" constructed polls, we answer in the ways that best reflect how we think we would feel if we were within whatever we perceive to be the norm. The poll creators are quite sophisticated enough to have taken this effect into consideration when devising the poll to give the preferred answer. We are being manipulated with polls, and some of us don't even know it.

For me, if an idea's based on polling results, it's likely a bad idea.

Blue, how about if I "link" you up to some simple logic? You don't really need a citation if you understand how the GMA affects the market.

Without growth controls inexpensive housing is supplied by the process of urban sprawl: developers head out to rural areas and buy up cheap land to build on. The GMA's limitations on lot sizes in and sewer extensions to rural areas now prevent this from happening. This places an artificial lid on the inventory of available urban residential property, driving up the price of individual urban lots. The impact of this scarcity factor on real estate prices may be reduced in a slow market but does not disappear -- in other words, it works to moderate the market's decline.

"...in other words, it works to moderate the market's decline."

It does?

http://www.seattlepi.com/realestate/article/Home-prices-continue-to-slide-nationwide-more-so-1353033.php

Until polling includes opinions from people who clean offices or work at McDonald's, polls mean nothing.

"Most people are really with us, but we need to pivot our communications strategy." Well no, they may not be, and pivoting your anything isn't going to help. That phrase only proves that this article's author doesn't get it any more than those who use "sustainable" get it.

The definition of sustainable community used in the survey is simplistic, and like many environmental efforts, leaves out equity. A core principle of sustainable development is supposed to be social equity.

how about Seattle planners, so concerned with residents transportation choices, concern themselves with planners choices, rather than the right words to sell their preferences. The City could stop hiring suburban dwelling employees that clog our streets and export tax revenue beyond city limits. instead, hire Seattle residents. keep the money in the communities it originated and limit the incentive to drive long distances for a paycheck.

Actually, g, that's a good idea. Perhaps it should be expanded. Maybe the Seattle City Council (maybe as they seek a City income tax!) should require that all businesses within city limits only hire people that live within city limits. Voila! Transportation problem solved!

A fundamental element about the relationship between planning and the real world of us mere mortals who inhabit the planner’s dreamscape is being overlooked here in favor of spin and cooption and manipulation. Nowhere in the article is it suggested that real live people with very real, legitimate needs – let alone their innate wisdom about what sort of built environment they want to create – be part of the design process. Polls and surveys that ask people to choose between options that planners have preselected don’t count. That’s cheating. We need more bonfires and barn dances far more than we need rigged charrettes.

I have very particular ideas about what truly sustainable development looks like and prefer the intellectually honest definition that William McDonough penned in his "Hannover Principles". The site design for my property in the foothills of the Olympic Mountains is based on visits to Permaculture sites and co-housing developments and eco-villages and anarchic community-building actions from around the country. The design includes extremely limited inputs of energy and natural nutrients at the time of build-out leading within a few years to net zero energy demand and a self-perpetuating nutrient cycle. Not suprisingly, it’s illegal.

And of course it would be, because the planning community has not done the same research that I have to put this type of site plan together and -as it has been my painful experience - aren’t in the least interested in making themselves familiar with that research. These projects are grounded in appropriate technology, experiential learning and tribal culture so -not having been born in a lab under artificial light - they haven't earned the stamp of official recognition.

I suppose I’m in the minority of those who aren’t “really with” the planning community and I’m glad for this minority status – I’ve earned it.

When the wheels come off the bus that "legitimate", professional planners have created, I will be there for them with a functional model to learn from. For a small fee, of course.

I sat across from a couple of planners for years when I worked for the government. One thing all planners have in common? They never plan to be without a job. Funny how their actions always lead to a need for more planning.

If anything says "smart" in the title, I know it's not.

Try using ordinary, descriptive words that anyone can understand. Common sense.

And this phrase ... "“creating and maintaining great neighborhoods in which to live and work" ... makes me want to puke.

Whose 3rd grader wrote that and why is it used and used and used? Trite.
Don't even get me started on sustainable.

Why don't the upzones include actual living wage jobs?

The neighborhoods with single family housing iare criticized by upzone cheerleaders as having too many nimbys but the facts are that real estate development that plants a giant cube of condos is usually what is proposed, very little infrastructure and rarely any living wage jobs.

How about the "sustainability" proponents take an honest look at how your idea is really being executed.
Messaging can't cover up poor execution.

Totally missing from the article and most comments is a real world consideration of what "sustainable" means. The article says the poll used some language "To help clarify this issue" but it is just more planners' happy talk.

In the world with growing population and resource limitations, this is the most commonly used definition: Sustainable development (economic activity) "meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs." This definition was developed by the Brundtland Commission at the direction of the UN General Assembly, published by Oxford University Press in 1987. Steve E's comment is correct that growth is a if not the problem; sustainability is the inverse of endless growth as defined in our current economy.

As Jeremy Rifkin points out in his recent writings, our economy fails to acknowledge the thermodynamic limitations on growth. Humans constitute c. 1% of the planet's biomass but consume almost a quarter of the primary productivity (energy available for use). See http://www.pnas.org/content/104/31/12942.full (Haberl et al., Quantifying and mapping the human appropriation of net primary production in earth's terrestrial ecosystems, 2007). This behavior cannot continue; it is not sustainable.

Growth is an essential component of corporate capitalism. Mainstream economists for the most part accept the capitalist paradigm. However, many scientists and analysts believe we are close to the end of the era of "growth" as defined by most economists, E.g., Richard Heinberg (The End of Growth, 2011); Immanuel Wallerstein (World-Systems Analysis, 2004); Meadows et al. (Limits to Growth: Thirty Year Update, 2004).

There is an increasingly broad and deep literature analyzing these and related sustainability issues. I find it remarkable and disconcerting that planners are not addressing the resource limitations that are going to make urbanists' dreams for the future little more than "pipe dreams." Plannerssuck's proposed building somewhere on the Olympic— “The design includes extremely limited inputs of energy and natural nutrients at the time of build-out leading within a few years to net zero energy demand and a self-perpetuating nutrient cycle.” — is where we need to be heading.

So, you despise it when people want to live in a detached single-family house, with a yard, and have a car. That's really what it boils down to. Well, I've got some news: We don't all crave an apartment in a trendy section of town, with lots of noise and "vibrancy." In fact, most of us don't, and won't.

You want to live in places like that? Fine. They're available all over the country. Move. Just get out of our hair.

However, many scientists and analysts believe we are close to the end of the era of "growth" as defined by most economists

"Many scientists and analysts" believe all kinds of things. So what?

JakeJackson--"So what?"

I gave three cites to get you started; do some of your own research. (I know it's work, at least for those who don't wish to be willfully ignorant, which is a common disease among Americans--http://www.gallup.com/poll/145286/four-americans-believe-strict-creationism.aspx & http://www.gallup.com/poll/126560/Americans-Global-Warming-Concerns-Continue-Drop.aspx).

Here's another couple for you:

• Concerning the "many scientists" language: "The strongest consensus on the causes of global warming came from climatologists who are active in climate research, with 97 percent agreeing humans play a role. - Petroleum geologists and meteorologists were among the biggest doubters, with only 47 percent and 64 percent, respectively, believing in human involvement." http://articles.cnn.com/2009-01-19/world/eco.globalwarmingsurvey_1_global-warming-climate-science-human-activity?_s=PM:WORLD

• "Contrary to popular belief, The Limits to Growth scenarios by the team of analysts from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology did not predict world collapse by the end of the 20th Century. - This paper focuses on a comparison of recently collated historical data for 1970–2000 with scenarios presented in The Limits to Growth. The analysis shows that 30 years of historical data compares favorably with key features of a business-as-usual scenario called the “standard run” scenario, which results in collapse of the global system midway through the 21st Century." http://www.csiro.au/resources/SEEDPaper19.html

• The last one above is admittedly not a peer reviewed paper (I don't think). Maybe you'd prefer academic density: http://www2.lse.ac.uk/researchAndExpertise/units/mackinder/pdf/Futures_LtG-CC_2010.pdf ("The two limits debates: "Limits to Growth" and climate change" -- Abstract includes: "We suggest that climate change policy discourse needs to focus more closely on the social, economic, and political dimensions of climate change, as opposed to its excessive emphasis on emission reduction targets. We also argue that an excessive faith in the market mechanisms to supply global warming mitigation technologies is problematic.")

• And if you really want simple (and amusing), here's two short videos by Heinberg: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cJ-J91SwP8w and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EQqDS9wGsxQ

In short, we're heading for a crash. That's "so what."

In short, we're heading for a crash. That's "so what."

I've been hearing that prediction since I was a kid, and it's been a long time since I was a kid.

JJ--did you so much as look at a single reference, or are you just one of the willfully ignorant? Do you know how many people were alive when you were born? Now? Systems change, and your lifespan is miniscule in the bigger picture. The content of your posts is miniscule as well.

Louploup, your references were discursive and non-responsive. Your arrogance is just so typical of Seattle's smug, self-righteous liberals, who love to portray anyone who doesn't toe their line as ignorant, and so on. I have news: You have no corner on the truth. Your assertions of intellectual superiority are laughable.

JJ--Well, discursive can mean rambling, but it also means proceeding coherently from topic to topic and marked by analytical reasoning. I'm pleased to be accused of that. If you're looking for the opposite (and very little smug, self-righteous liberalism), try http://www.soundpolitics.com/

being a sucker for these end-of-line affairs:
both of you might want to do some wading in the proceeds of the end-of-month International Conference on Family Planning— http://www.fpconference2011.org/

The following is a snippet from lead-up on that home page, which I have started searching for evidence of results of the Gates' big vaccine push.

Economist: Now we are seven billion.
"...IN 1980 Julian Simon, an economist, and Paul Ehrlich, a biologist, made a bet. Mr Ehrlich, author of a bestselling book, called “The Population Bomb”, picked five metals—copper, chromium, nickel, tin and tungsten—and said their prices would rise in real terms over the following ten years. Mr Simon bet that prices would fall. The wager symbolised the dispute between Malthusians who thought a rising population would create an age of scarcity (and high prices) and those “Cornucopians”, such as Mr Simon, who thought markets would ensure plenty.

Mr Simon won easily. Prices of all five metals fell in real terms. As the world economy boomed and population growth began to ebb in the 1990s, Malthusian pessimism retreated.

It is returning. On October 31st the UN will dub a newborn the world’s 7 billionth living person. The 6 billionth, Adnan Nevic, born in October 1999, will be only two weeks past his 12th birthday. If Messrs Simon and Ehrlich had ended their bet today, instead of in 1990, Mr Ehrlich would have won. What with high food prices, environmental degradation and faltering green policies, people are again worrying that the world is overcrowded. Some want restrictions to cut population growth and forestall ecological catastrophe. Are they right?..."

louploup. You're in the wrong decade. Your day passed already.

common1sense: Can you post something more specific than a one-liner, like some specifics about my "discursive" posts that is inaccurate, illogical, or anachronistic. afreeman correctly observes that Ehrlich was correct on the longer haul (was he in the wrong decade also, just too soon? Like Malthus was in the wrong century, two or three too soon?). Are you suggesting that we shouldn't develop scenarios, based on current and projected resource use and population growth, so as to better adapt to clearly changing circumstances? What are you suggesting beyond a personal slight?

Regarding the Simon & Ehrlich wager, it is easy to find authors who claim that Simon would continue to win the bet (i.e., the Cornucopians are correct, the Malthusians wrong). On the other hand, I cannot find credible facts to counter Peak Oil as the best model for our energy situation. Simon and his followers argue about the price of copper and similar commodities, which are much easier to replace than cheap fossil fuel (energy). The price of oil is very closely tied to the health of the increasingly integrated (capitalist, growth dependent) global economy; the balance is very fine between "too high" leading to recession (http://oilprice.com/Energy/Oil-Prices/Why-Recession-always-Follows-Oil-Price-Increases.html) and "too low" (causes booms which drives up consumption leading to the next price spike and recession), etc. Each recession is becoming harder to come out of because of the inherent instability in the system.

Aside from fossil fuels, there are a number of other key, difficult to replace substances (fresh water, phosphorus--http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2010/04/20/peak_phosphorus) and processes (arable land) that appear to be at or beyond their "sustainable" level of consumption. Search for "planetary boundaries."

The point of these exercises is not to be "doomsayers" but rather to help us figure out how to move forward in a way that does not go off the cliff as appears to be the likely result of BAU (business as usual). In that regard, I suggest that energy density and energy return on investment (EROI) are key concepts. See http://www.mdpi.com/journal/sustainability/special_issues/New_Studies_EROI/ There's a very recent paper there ("Predicting the Psychological Response of the American People to Oil Depletion and Declining Energy Return on Investment (EROI)") that observes: "Americans will need to acknowledge the reality of biophysical constraints if they are to adapt to the coming energy crisis."

Our highly dysfunctional governance and polarized politics do not give me much optimism that we'll figure this out before some rather unpleasant events occur. That's my considered opinion, whatever dismissive insults JJ, common1sense and others throw my way.