Mitt Romney, new urbanist?
As Massachusetts governor, Romney shocked his supporters by ardently embracing smart growth policies. He doesn't talk that way now, but who knows who's the real Mitt?
It turns out, as reported in this New Republic article ($), that Gov. Mitt Romney was a committed new urbanist while leading Massachusetts. What are we to make of this? There's more to the story than another illustration of his shape-changing politics — and, yes, he backed away from this seeming Republican heresy when he got Potomac Fever in 2006.
It's obvious that Romney was a moderately liberal governor, by Massachusetts standards, in 2002-06: pro-gay rights, pro-choice, convinced of climate change, and successful in implementing a health care program that is a very clear blueprint for Obamacare. He also ran on a platform of implementing smart growth policies for the state.
In the early years, Romney made good on the pledge, notably by appointing Douglas Foy, an ardent environmentalist and head of the Conservation Law Foundation, to head a new Office for Commonwealth Development, overseeing transportation, environment, and housing. Foy is described as "the bane of the business and development community," so his appointment as head of a powerful super-agency was a shock.
Among the policies Foy and Romney instituted: repairing roads rather than building new ones; cutting SUVs in the state fleet; encouraging narrower streets with slower driving speeds. Another measure provided funds to towns and cities that allowed more high-density, multi-family housing.
Some of this was just "adroit positioning," in the words of an environmental critic. The towns were slow to adopt the encouraged measures; Romney cut the land conservation budget; and toward the end of his term he seemed to lose interest and Foy quit shortly after Romney announced he wouldn't seek a second term.
However, some of the positions are consistent with Romney's analytical, business-consulting bent. His father, George Romney, after all was a secretary of housing and urban development under Nixon. Smart-growth is another name for efficiency, by avoiding the high infrastructure costs of far-flung development. And Romney is a modernizer who thought it foolish that historic Concord could no longer build apartments above shops — the very kind of mixed-use density that built the charming village centuries ago.
So possibly a President Romney would also be a smart-growth president?
Who knows what Romney we would get, of course, since he is the ultimate in political pragmatism. But consider that smart growth is now a very mainstream concept, and one that many business interests would support. Density is, in one classic real-estate sense, the latest illustration of the old practice of buying cheap land (especially in inner cities and older suburbs) and then getting it upzoned and getting government services to build more private value. Here in Seattle, the smart-growth coalition is largely driven by developers, their law firms, the Sound Transit coalition (contractors, property owners in line for new service, and greens). No president or governor would shy away from that kind of generous, potent political support.
Moreover, the next surge in housing and commercial development is almost certain to be in cities and inner suburbs, not the auto-dependent fringes. The money is being made in newly expensive neighborhoods such as Bellevue and Seattle's Capitol Hill, where strip malls are being demolished to make way for mixed-use projects served by good transit.
In noting this massive shift, Christopher B. Leinberger of the Brookings Institution and the University of Michigan, cites two demographic shifts, that go along with the collapse of the McMansion Belt. One is the boomers, empty nesters now in search of walkable, moderately urban places to live. The other group is the millenials (born between 1979 and 1996), a coming-of age group that favors urbanized neighborhoods for lifestyle reasons and to save money by not having a car. These two groups are the two largest generational cohorts in American history.
The same pattern might also come into play for office complexes, as the choice of Amazon to be in South Lake Union, or of Microsoft to expand massively in downtown Bellevue, demonstrates. The bucolic office park, an example of what's called "pastoral capitalism," is a highly inefficient way to develop land in a time of government retrenchment. It too looks like a profligate habit of the past. As these corporate headquarters get the new urbanist religion, their CEOs will also turn to political leaders who understand these new economic facts of life.
Whether there really is a move toward density is much disputed, however. Here's a recent article by Joel Kotkin, citing figures that the move to dense cities is actually declining. Kotkin observes:
Indeed, any analysis of the 2010 U.S. Census would make perfectly clear that rather than heading for density, Americans are voting with their feet in the opposite direction: toward the outer sections of the metropolis and to smaller, less dense cities. During the 2000s, the Census shows, just 8.6% of the population growth in metropolitan areas with more than 1 million people took place in the core cities; the rest took place in the suburbs. That 8.6% represents a decline from the 1990s, when the figure was 15.4%.
Clearly, a lot depends on what is happening in the metropolitan area, as it densifies; looking at dense "core cities" does not yield a lot of population growth. A measured, comprehensive survey of these trends, in a new report by the Urban Land Institute, is summarized in this post by Chuck Wolfe, a frequent Crosscut contributor.
Finally, getting back to Romney, is is too far-fetched to think that a politician with such round heels would shift again from all those foolish Republican primary promises, into a kind of moderate modernizer, at least on these issues and where the development community and corporate America might be ready to follow?
Republican politics these days is so in thrall to the angry and extreme rightwingers, who have veto powers over the nomination, that an ambitious and shrewd politician such as Romney is forced into saying things he can't really believe, hedging them with escape clauses. (The alternative of talking sense in the primary is to be a Jon Huntsman, doomed to the margins.) If Romney turns out to be something like the early Richard Nixon, a kind of Disraeli in the "radical Tory" tradition, at least he can say we were warned!
I wouldn't expect him to do that in very high profile areas such as abortion, but low-profile issues such as land use would be more plausible. As for the big issue of the nation's deficit, if Romney does turn out (only after elected) to propose a grand compromise, complete with tax reform, he might get away with it. The Republican Party, outraged at the rhetorical level, would also realize that it has a sitting president to back and make successful. The question would then be whether the Democrats in Congress, even if given much of what they want, would go along.
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Comments:
Posted Fri, Dec 2, 10:01 a.m. Inappropriate
There can be no doubt that Romney is telling the right-wing base things that he doesn't believe but knows it wants to hear. You can euphemistically call that "pragmatism" if you want, but "opportunistic lying" seems closer to the mark.
The article's unexamined question is whether Romney can later show his moderate true (if that word can ever be applied to a politician) colors and get away with it. I don't think he can do it. If he gets the nomination and starts to move toward the center for the general election, right-wingers will stay at home or defect to fringe super-patriot third parties in droves.
If he stays on his current course and wins the election, he will then have an electoral mandate to do all those things he presumably doesn't believe in. An ever-suspicious right wing will be watching him like a hawk. If he deviates from his most recent epiphanies, the viciousness of the right wing attacks on Romney will make the smearing of Obama seem like a summer picnic. The airwaves will howl with terms like "Judas" and "anti-Christ", and all the barely suppressed bigotry about Mormonism will boil to the surface.
I think the poor schmuck is trapped. And being the coward that he obviously is, I don't see a President Romney rebelling against his ideological shackles on any issue that matters. At most you might now and then get a slightly less draconian form of an intrinsically bad idea. But with practice and the invaluable assistance of political pundits, perhaps we may learn to be grateful for even that minor sop.
Posted Fri, Dec 2, 10:16 a.m. Inappropriate
Dead-on analysis by woofer. I'll just add that David Brewster's concluding part about whether congressional Democrats would go along with a Romney "grand compromise" fundamentally misses the political dynamics that woofer analyzes so accurately. Anything Romney would propose would have to be so skewed toward maximizing social insurance and social spending cuts and minimizing tax increases (almost certainly lowering tax rates on the wealthy a la Pat Toomey's proposal) that it would be unacceptable to Democrats.
Posted Fri, Dec 2, 10:35 a.m. Inappropriate
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I wouldn't expect [Romney] to [say things he can't really believe] in very high profile areas such as abortion, but low-profile issues such as land use would be more plausible.
I wouldn’t expect Romney to say anything about land use as a candidate for his party’s nomination (or as a candidate for President if he gets that nomination). Land use regulation is the exclusive responsibility of states and local governments in this country.
Posted Fri, Dec 2, 10:35 a.m. Inappropriate
2 of 3
I’d be remiss if I didn’t comment on this:
Smart-growth is another name for efficiency, by avoiding the high infrastructure costs of far-flung development.
. . .
[S]mart growth is now a very mainstream concept, and one that many business interests would support. Density is, in one classic real-estate sense, the latest illustration of the old practice of buying cheap land (especially in inner cities and older suburbs) and then getting it upzoned and getting government services to build more private value. Here in Seattle, the smart-growth coalition is largely driven by developers, their law firms, the Sound Transit coalition (contractors, property owners in line for new service, and greens).
Nothing Sound Transit or that coalition is doing is “smart”:
-- There’s been one (1) big purchase of land in anticipation of a light rail station coming in (the old Coca-Cola bottling plant property acquisition). The financing plan for ST2 that Sound Transit is trying to hide from the public would involve selling a mountain of long-term bonds secured by pledges to collect extremely high regressive general taxes for four more decades (at least). No other light rail builder does anything like that because it is abusive and makes no sense in relation to developing either any specific parcel or on a region-wide basis. All the peers instead use mostly state and federal grant money and many don’t use any new general taxing to cover the capital costs. That would have been smart . . . indeed, a proper financing plan like that was a no-brainer that Sound Transit’s legal architects should have emulated because all the peers used it previously.
-- There are lots of new multi-family buildings just completed or underway in Seattle. These are mostly apartments, as the condo building excesses of the past two decades have left a glut of those units and that market’s prices still have not reached bottom. Most of that new apartment building is not connected in any way to light rail station sites. There’s been one (1) new apartment light rail TOD project (the Othello Station apartments). Half of that planned project didn’t get underway, and the rentals since it opened have been disappointing. That project had considerable tax incentives as well to prod its development. Light rail here does not drive what the author calls “smart growth”.
Posted Fri, Dec 2, 10:36 a.m. Inappropriate
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More evidence nothing Sound Transit and the entities benefiting financially from it are doing is “smart”:
-- The McMansion phenomenon in exurbs this piece condemns isn’t going to continue around here because 1) cheap credit for such subdivisions no longer is available, and 2) the employment picture and overall economic outlook around here is dismal, as this Crosscut piece from a couple of weeks ago attests:
http://crosscut.com/2011/11/23/econ-finance/21595/Washington-to-other-states:--We-suck-less-than-you-do.-/
Sound Transit’s taxing and spending practices can take exactly zero credit for the McMansion problem essentially evaporating.
-- New data show the truly insignificant region-wide effects of light rail systems. That kind of inflexible infrastructure does little or nothing to improve metro regions’ economies. Here’s current information about how the light rail systems in Atlanta and Phoenix do not deliver appreciable benefits in terms of metro areas’ economic well-being:
Prices in Atlanta, Las Vegas and Phoenix fell to their lowest home point since the housing crisis began four years ago.
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/2016885469_caseshiller30.html
Sound Transit's advocates always try to justify its massive taxing scheme on the grounds that "we have to impose these tax costs because Atlanta got light rail money we could have had in the 1970's". Well, light rail has been in place in Atlanta for three decades. There was some TOD built around the stations. What has been the result? Housing prices are one of the main indicators of a region’s relative prosperity and those are falling faster in Atlanta than elsewhere in the country.
The story is just as bleak in the Phoenix area. It has as much light rail now as ST2 (supposedly) would provide by 2025 (or so). Despite that massive infrastructure investment in Phoenix housing prices there also are falling faster than elsewhere in the country.
In the cases of both Phoenix and Atlanta their light rail systems were financed reasonably, and according to the customary method. They were not financed with mountains of new local long-term bonds secured by scores of billions of dollars of new tax collection pledges (e.g., the Sound Transit abusive financing scheme).
Light rail has not delivered any of the great economic benefits Sound Transit’s pushers keep promising it will deliver here. Those deflating home prices now in Atlanta and Phoenix show even light rail financed the right way does not appreciably help local economies. The abusive financing plan Sound Transit uses -- alone among its peers -- is a GUARANTEED loser for this region. It is the antithesis of “smart”.
Posted Fri, Dec 2, 11:12 a.m. Inappropriate
And who knows the real Obama? The electorate would have to guess which is the real Tweedledum, which, the real Tweedledee, and how that may matter until the next election.
If we are lucky we will have two sets of public management records to compare, so thank you David for pointing out that Romney and a few other prospects even stopped to acquire such a record before deciding themselves fit for the Presidency.
Thanks also for contrasting the density/smart growth PR with the reality. Here is an older Forbes article by Kotkin that compares two current national administration approaches to the topic you highlight.
http://www.forbes.com/2010/03/22/kevin-rudd-barack-obama-foreign-policy-opinions-columnists-joel-kotkin.html
Kotkin likes to use the interest of the working class in his arguments and in an unusually direct, non-patronizing way, but it also clear that is not what floats his boat. More genuine is the Australian he references, New City co-editor, John Muscat. By following the link to Muscat one eventually arrives at the heart of the matter—the Consumption Atlas:
http://www.acfonline.org.au/uploads/res/res_atlas_main_findings.pdf
Posted Fri, Dec 2, 11:36 a.m. Inappropriate
I think we've seen the "real Obama".. business as usual. Organizes shutdown of popular protests (occupy xxxx camps raided on the same night) Killing of US citizens via drones without benefit of trial... etc etc.
Romney might be worse if he kept his campaign promises, but his history at least shows he's willing to compromise and do the right thing when in office.
Posted Fri, Dec 2, 2:17 p.m. Inappropriate
Well, if that were the case, then it would repudiate the electoral strategy first expounded by Richard Nixon: Play to your base in the primaries, then veer to the center for the general. Perhaps after almost 20 years of partisan sniping, the voters might finally be in the mood for a pragmatic moderate.
Perhaps.
Posted Fri, Dec 2, 4:49 p.m. Inappropriate
Thing is the Republicans are supported by some of the worst of the worst of the 1%. And as Molly Irvins used to say, "you dance with who brung you."
More here:
http://www.gregpalast.com/romney-advisor-threatensbbc-investigative-reporter/
or google "Paul Singer Vulture capitalist" for some light reading.
Posted Thu, Dec 8, 3:50 p.m. Inappropriate
People grow, and get wiser. Some want us always to stay the same.
I'm hoping Mitt keeps the good values of acceptance while loosing the confines of liberal dogma like density and urbanism that have wrecked the American lifestyle in the last 30 years.
Posted Sat, Dec 10, 1 p.m. Inappropriate
So.... I'm thinking maybe the Brits understand something we're only now beginning to. Mitt, Newt, Michelle, Jon, Herman (OK, I'll include him out of courtesy)... they want to be President. I'm not sure they want to do the actual work of governing. So maybe we need a constitutional amendment to create a divided Executive Branch. We could have a President and CAO (Chief Administrative Officer).
The President could be pretty and exclaim at the outrages of the world or proclaim our national compassion for the tragedies of the world. They would attend funerals and go to useless meetings where they wave at crowds and smile a lot. Then the CAO could oversee the real work that we, as a nation, have agreed to undertake.
President would be elected by the people... who seem to like choosing the pretty (after all we start young by selecting our prom kings and queens, right?)... based on their charisma, their chiseled jaw lines, the attractiveness of their spouses, and all the other superficial qualities our culture prizes so highly.
The CAO would also be elected, but would actually have to show qualifications for a seriously written job description. The way normal people do. You know... an understanding of how the House and Senate actually work; military history; how our economy really works; oh, and of course management skill.
In the current Republican battle, the folks I named above could run for President. That would leave everyone free to find someone serious to run for CAO.
Whadya think. Am I brilliant or what?
Posted Sun, Dec 11, 10 a.m. Inappropriate
Here follows an engineering quesion for phneu-urhbanistas to consider. It regards the Columbia River I-5 Bridge Crossing project, of statewide as well bi-state importance. Seattlers most unconcerned include architects and their professional buddies. Give it a read, luzurs:
Both the old bridges are considered 'substandard' because their design is 2-lane, but act as 3-lane without shoulders. They are dangerously dysfunctional. River traffic irregularity raisings is dysfunctional. Still the truth is, BOTH BRIDGES have 30-50 years left by most predictions, offering plenty of time to prepare an capable replacement.
My contention is the current design CANNOT perform safely. Two, there's a question whether "speed & thru-put" are being over-exaggerated. And three, How the plan for widening I-5 affects Lloyd District interchanges, entry/exits, sidewalk treatments, etc. As yet, I have not seen a supportable concept for Lloyd District. I suspect CRC problematic situations/circumstances are being repeated; lengthy, unrewarding process, etc.
Look, I believe now there is a State's Rights issue for the rightwing to address and spend their time to prove Oregon ISN'T being "Over-ruled" by Washington REPUBLICANS. Their great heres.
Issues between States is a states-rights issue.
I blame Wsdot and give the benefit of the doubt to most Oregon decisionmakers. Are WSDOT engineers calling shots on ODOT and OREGON territorial decisionmaking? Washington decisionmakers are unquestionably among the worst psuedo-expert engineering tools in the nation box. THE DBT IS DEADLY DANGEROUS DUMB. Support the most honorable great mayor Michael Mcginn for his totally undeserved BRUISING from inferior subordinates & peers who are skinnier and think they're smarter. The peace & joy season -should- include mercy.
Posted Sun, Dec 11, 11:02 a.m. Inappropriate
I hate 'Smart Growth". It's a branding term that leaves me cold. We cannot afford the costs of "Smart Growth".
When we cannot afford something, it isn't smart. Why can't politicians and planners grasp that message?
Posted Tue, Jan 31, 10:51 p.m. Inappropriate
Your article cited a researcher who stated,
"One is the boomers, empty nesters now in search of walkable, moderately urban places to live. The other group is the millenials (born between 1979 and 1996), a coming-of age group that favors urbanized neighborhoods for lifestyle reasons and to save money by not having a car. These two groups are the two largest generational cohorts in American history."
This is true for some, but not everyone. Dr. Timothy McGranahan and colleagues of the USDA finds large numbers of "creative class" 20-40 year old adults moving to "exurban" small towns of 50,000+ population, for natural amenities and outdoor recreation.
That's why we see a large migration of 20-40 year old individuals to
Bend, Boulder, Durango, Santa Fe, and Albuquerque.
Second homes and retirement homes are also very popular in these locations. As lifespans extend, retirees want an active lifestyle with hiking, skiing, and don't necessarily care about smart growth or walkability.
Indeed, the migration of these two groups away from congested cities, that are difficult to maintain (light rail is one of many examples), can help alleviate pressures on large metros of several million.
On the same note, the popularity of exurbs and suburbs around Seattle continues to increase, due to retirees who don't want to live in towering condos in Seattle and Bellevue.
Posted Tue, Jan 31, 11:11 p.m. Inappropriate
Hello again,
W. M. Romney has a home in Utah and certainly Utah is attracting both young and older newcomers to exurban areas around St. George, Park City, Moab, etc.
A few references,
1. Dr. McGranahan Web Site with links to PDF articles,
http://www.ers.usda.gov/AboutERS/Bios/view.asp?ID=dmcg
2. Download the baby boomer migration report,
http://www.ers.usda.gov/AboutERS/Bios/view.asp?ID=dmcg
3. Colleague Tim Wojan on Bohemians and the Creative Class moving to small towns
http://www.ers.usda.gov/AboutERS/Bios/view.asp?ID=twojan
Disclaimer: This does not imply an endorsement from me of this type of relocation. Instead, personally, I prefer "suburbs" of major metros where those of similar interests tend to live (artists, musicians, hiking, bicycling, skiing). Issaquah is a suburb and a great place to live for this sort of thing.
Often, due to regional urban growth boundaries, and other constraints, these areas can no longer be developed. If land use planners used supply and demand, they would cancel urban growth boundaries and build 1 acre lots in all directions around suburbs, with community gardens and mountain bike trails in the foothills.
But that's not what we see at Issaquah Highlands with its clearcutting and high density !
Check out the new Diamond Tail Ranch, for 2+ acre lots in a planned community next to Placitas and Albuquerque - Rio Rancho, New Mexico - I shouldn't give secrets away but I am not planning to buy a house there, at least not right now ! :-)
http://diamondtail.com/
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