On Transit And The Environment, In Miami-Dade It Is Always A One-Way Conversation ... by gimleteye

Why do we have the same "dialogue" about transit and the environment, every few years in Miami-Dade? Because it is not a dialogue. A dialogue is between parties. What we have in Miami-Dade are dialogues for "show" and to maintain appearances.

In fact, this critical policy area affects everyone's life here. Every single day, commuters are confronted with the consequences of poorly planned transit and the constant shifting of goal-posts where it comes to our quality of life.

Transit and the environment is a one-way conversation. Between big sprawl developers, large-scale farmers, and their industry associations, supply chains and the politicians they support.

Although there is citizen resistance to the one-way conversation, every time there is an issue like the extension of a major highway (in this case, SR 836) it needs to regenerate. Gov. Rick Scott and the state legislature made sure that citizen resistance to growth and transit plans had minimal traction through the administrative courts. And over time -- especially after the Citizens United decision by the Bush Supreme Court in 2010 -- developers and their attorneys turned to challenging protesters and imposing significant costs like counter-lawsuits against the resistance.

Moreover, among protesters -- from neighborhood associations to civic groups and environmentalists -- there is no institutional connection between one generation of opposition and the next. Because there is no institutional connection, there is no funding or money to fund the resistance beyond the indignation against the next tranche of assaults against the environment and quality of life through zoning decisions at the county level.

The Knight Foundation -- which has the funding capacity to provide that institutional connection -- could have chosen to assist this critical area of public policy in the past. There were many, many chances. But the Knight Foundation leadership never had an appetite for conflict with developers, their downtown law firms and lobbyists. The celebrity culture has not been kind to Miami's natural environment or to the cause of middle-class commuters from distant suburbs to downtown jobs.

On the other hand, the connection between electeds and the developer class is hard-wired. The money is always there. It is used to exploit the profit formulas of converting low-cost farmland (former Everglades wetlands) into suburban sprawl. Citizens are fragmented. Finance and insurance is united to a single goal: build as much, as fast, and as profitably as possible. Advocates for sprawl have perfected marketing pitches that include paid-for local crowds to support more of everything that is bringing traffic to a crawl and closer and closer to the Everglades.

Next week, the county commission is poised to approve a major roadway extension using the argument -- long known as a lie -- that expanding highways relieves traffic congestion. Mayor Carlos Gimenez, who is term-limited, and retreaded county commissioner Joe Martinez are leading the way. Gimenez and his staff, in a meeting with environmentalists, asked for an "alternative" to widening SR 836. The invitation was a baited trap.

Citizens have had victories along the way, but these are skirmishes in a battle that has defined our political culture.

On June 19th, there is a landmark opportunity for one county commission district to change direction. In District 5, voters will elect a new county commissioner. Eileen Higgins is challenging the wife of Bruno Barreiro who resigned his seat to run for Congress. Barreiro had been a charter member of the unreformable majority who rubber-stamped zoning changes and expansion of development beyond the urban development boundary.

Electing Higgins would send a message, if voters have enough sense to give her a chance on the county commission to change the one-way conversation.

Stephen Paddock, Mass Murderer, Lived in Sun City and at one time: Florida. By Geniusofdespair

Stephen Paddock Photo  -- when he was younger.

Stephen Paddock owned a home in another 55-plus community Melbourne in Brevard County.

Sprawl at its best.

About Stephen Paddock:

"He has no political affiliation, no religious affiliation, as far as we know," Eric Paddock, his brother, told The Daily Mail.

Move the Urban Development Boundary (AGAIN)? ... by gimleteye

Today is the first Town Hall meeting to consider a massive change to Miami-Dade County: the extension of SR 836 and sprawl beyond the Urban Development Boundary. Once upon a time, Miami Dade county commissioners wisely decided to discourage development that involves moving the UDB. The state of Florida supported its efforts. 

Six meetings will be discussing the County Evaluation and Appraisal Report (EAR) 2018. Every seven years, the Comprehensive Development Master Plan (CDMP) is reviewed and updated as required per Chapter 163 of the Florida Statutes, a process known as an Evaluation and Appraisal Report (EAR). The EAR includes an evaluation of the progress the County has made in implementing the goals, objectives, policies, maps and text of the CDMP and also recommends changes.

There is a meeting TODAY in Kendall. For those of you who can attend please ask questions and voice your concerns. If you can't attend please encourage others to do so.  If you want to read some history on the UDB, involving old battles fought along the same line, click here.

The Miami Dade Expressway Authority (MDX)-SR 836 extension project plans to extend the Dolphin expressway beyond the Urban Development Boundary (UDB), which serves as a buffer to agricultural lands and adjacent Everglades National Park. 

Allowing development outside the UDB will jeopardize in a significant way our water quality. It would reduce wellfield recharge and speed salt water intrusion into the aquifer, leading to increased vulnerability of the region to sea level rise as the location is sitting on the most low lying areas in the County.

Although an extension of the expressway sounds attractive to lessen the congested traffic for people living in the southern and western parts of the County, it has been proven that building more roads does not decrease traffic but the opposite. We need to encourage massive public transit projects if Miami wants to lead in smart growth and sustainability targeting infill areas. Changing our CDMP in the midst of what is the crisis of our lifetime- climate change- is exactly the reason we have CDMP and a UDB line, to protect us from additional sprawl that will not serve this County and our future needs.

Although an extension of the expressway sounds attractive to lessen the congested traffic for people living in the southern and western parts of the County, it has been proven that building more roads does not decrease traffic but the opposite. We need to encourage massive public transit projects if Miami wants to lead in smart growth and sustainability targeting infill areas. Changing our CDMP in the midst of what is the crisis of our lifetime- climate change- is exactly the reason we have CDMP and a UDB line, to protect us from additional sprawl that will not serve this County and our future needs.

Although an extension of the expressway sounds attractive to lessen the congested traffic for people living in the southern and western parts of the County, it has been proven that building more roads does not decrease traffic but the opposite. We need to encourage massive public transit projects if Miami wants to lead in smart growth and sustainability targeting infill areas. Changing our CDMP in the midst of what is the crisis of our lifetime- climate change- is exactly the reason we have CDMP and a UDB line, to protect us from additional sprawl that will not serve this County and our future needs.

Although an extension of the expressway sounds attractive to lessen the congested traffic for people living in the southern and western parts of the County, it has been proven that building more roads does not decrease traffic.  More roads inevitably increase traffic!

Changing our CDMP in the midst of what is the crisis of our lifetime- climate change- is exactly the reason we have CDMP and a UDB line, to protect us from additional sprawl that will not serve this County and our future needs.

Get Involved

Help shape the future of Miami-Dade County! Your vision can make an impact on the future of the County. You are invited to attend a workshop, take the EAR2018 Survey or email your comments.

Opportunities for public participation are as follows:

Survey:
Take the EAR2018 survey.

Town Hall Workshops:
Town Hall Workshops will be held in six locations throughout the County to inform the public about the Evaluation and Appraisal Report process and obtain feedback. Below are the dates and locations for the Town Hall Workshops:

• Tuesday, June 6 (6:00 to 8:30 p.m.)
  • Kendall Village Center-Civic Pavilion 8625 SW 124 Ave, Miami, FL 33183
• Wednesday, June 7 (6:00 to 8:30 p.m.)
  • Ruben Dario Middle School 350 NW 97 Ave, Miami, FL 33172
• Thursday, June 8 (6:00 to 8:30 p.m.)
  • African Heritage Cultural Arts Center 6161 NW 22 Ave, Miami, FL 33142
• Saturday, June 10 (10:00 am to noon)
  • Norman and Jean Reach Park 7895 NW 176 St, Miami, FL 33015
• Tuesday, June 13 (6:30 to 9:00 p.m.)
  • Highland Oaks Park 20300 NE 24 Ave, Miami, FL 33180
• Saturday, June 17 (10:00 am to noon)
• South Dade Regional Library 10750 SW 211 St, Cutler Bay, FL 33189
• QUESTIONS:

1. Why are we building in low lying areas?
2. Why don't we concentrate our tax dollars within the county we already have.
3. Fund public transit!
4. What are we really doing about sea level rise?

Remember the Epicure! how the story of US 1 and LeJeune Road, Coral Gables illuminates the struggle for Ludlum Trail ... by gimleteye

So here is the thing about the closing of the Coral Gables branch of the Miami Beach fixture, Epicure Market: it was a death foretold. Epicure opened its store in the ground floor of a Jeffrey Berkowitz development in 2013, a stone's throw from the Village of Merrick Park.

I've lived nearby -- roughly defined as the intersection of US 1 and Lejeune Road -- for more than twenty years.

Fifteen years ago, I was civically involved in trying to keep the Rouse company from converting the old Coral Gables bus maintenance depot into a major mall. That mall, the Village of Merrick Park, has never found its footing, through some unbalanced combination of high rental rates and low consumer demand.

On August 24th, 1998 at the Omni Collonade in Coral Gables, the Rouse Company offered a public view of its project. The controversial development pitted then Mayor Raul Valdez Fauli, the Latin Builders Association lobby, and the Rouse Company against many, many Gables citizens who mounted a Coral Gables referendum to block the project. When I got up to the podium, lobbyists booed and hissed. Rouse won the referendum in November and measured by cost per vote it was the most expensive in Florida history.

The Miami Herald printed an OPED I wrote in September 1999. I know, it seems a century ago. "There is no hope for improving traffic because the scale of the development absolutely will worsen traffic in adjacent neighborhoods and U.S. 1 intersections."

The whole of South Gables empties out onto US 1 at LeJeune, so from a purely demographic point of view -- which is what retailers and their consultants look at -- the intersection ought to be a winner.

Except that it is defeated by single driver, traffic-driven density.

This is, naturally, the same observation why the FEC railroad right of way must be converted, in its entirety, to a linear public park: because of existing traffic congestion, there is no place to fit commercial building without destroying economic opportunities already in place.

I kept my notes from the 1998 public meeting. "David Plummer, the project’s traffic consultant, began his presentation by describing a “series of meetings held by the developer” which none of the objectors in the audience had received invitations to. Traffic is the Achilles Heel of the Rouse Mall—whose ramifications were ignored by city commissioners last year when Mayor Valdez Fauli bulldozed approvals through the local permitting process without requiring the developer to disclose the devastating traffic impacts. The August 24th meeting verified points raised by citizens a year ago, although it scarcely matters since necessary approvals were issued before the facts were in. The Rouse Mall will worsen, absolutely, traffic in neighborhoods and the intersections on US Route 1 that are already the worst in the area."

Way back in 2013, an owner of Epicure, Jason Starkman, said he wanted to expand to Coral Gables for a long time. "We always knew the Gables was the place for us for year-round business. And I know people in the neighborhood will enjoy shopping here." They did, except for the traffic and that is the best argument for local public officials to deny commercial building permits for what should become Ludlum Trail.

Remember the Epicure!

Miami-Dade County Commissioner Daniella Levine Cava co-hosts South Dade Solutions Summit ... by gimleteye

Over the weekend County Commissioners Dennis Moss and Daniella Levine Cava hosted a public meeting to bring the South Dade community into a visioning process for its future. For a part of Miami-Dade County that has been under constant pressure of growth for decades, as Miami has sprawled outward into farmland, the meeting was a first: an effort to put vision ahead of rote, automatic land development. A press statement for the event included the following:

Palmetto Bay, FL— Today, Commissioners Daniella Levine Cava and Dennis Moss hosted the first South Dade Solutions Summit. Community leaders came together to discuss some of South Dade’s most pressing challenges. The three main topics discussed at the summit were: fueling the South Dade economy, transportation connectivity and parks and the environment. US Department of Transport Assistant Secretary Carlos Monje was the keynote speaker.

“The goal of the summit was to channel the knowledge and experiences of the South Dade community to implement efficient and effective solutions to some of our region’s challenges. We want to build on the area’s unique assets,” explained Commissioner Levine Cava “South Dade is a very special part of the County, with its own needs and opportunities.”

In order to encourage creativity and innovation, the summit was structured following a conversation methodology known as World Café. Over 170 participants discussed the topics in small group sessions and rotated around the room in order to hear different viewpoints as the day continued. Ideas and suggestions shared throughout the summit were consolidated and will form the basis for a South Dade action plan that will be developed by a team comprised of local elected leaders led by Commissioner Levine Cava and Commissioner Moss.

“The input of the community is going to be key in getting us where we want to go. If you have a plan that the community buys into, when resources come available, you have a plan to funnel those resources into,” said Commissioner Moss.

Commissioner Cava responded to the following EOM questions:

Why, the South Dade Solutions Summit?

South Dade has unique challenges and opportunities. To shape our future and ensure that we have the right kind of growth, we need shared leadership across the business, civic and government sectors.

What was the inspiration for the summit?

Districts 8 and 9 share the lower 1/3 of Miami-Dade's geography, and have many of the same needs. We need to come together to find solutions so we can bring South Dade its fair share of resources and opportunities, while preserving our unique assets.

Who participated?

Approximately 200 leaders from the community and organizations that serve the community. The mayors and council members from the District from Pinecrest which is not in district but is very linked, to Florida City, the two school board members for the area, Congressman Curbelo, representatives from our state legislature (the elected members are in Tallahassee for special session), Beacon Council, Greater Miami Visitors Bureau, Farm Bureau, Economic Development Center of South Dade, Chamber South, numerous faith and nonprofit leaders, FIU, MDC, Biscayne National Park, Everglades National Park, tribe, Miccosukee Tribe, numerous Miami-Dade County departments, environmental and other advocacy groups).

How many citizens were involved?

In addition to above, community volunteers.

Can you comment on the record of civic engagement in South Dade compared to the rest of the county?

We are a very family and community oriented area, with many opportunities for community and civic engagement. However, there is a need for coordinated advocacy around the needs of the area.

How has your experience in civic engagement prepared you for this event?

I bring a lifetime of commitment to and experience with civic engagement to this role. We will not be able to put the needs of the citizens forward effectively without the active engagement of the citizenry. To counteract the influence of those who bring big money to the table, we need a base of concerned, informed and active residents.

Why isn’t this going to be another “talk” and “no action” moment? What are the outcomes you hope for the summit?

We will turn the results of our session into a set of goals and actions steps for the next three years, assigning roles and responsibilities, and monitoring progress with regular reports to the community. The "Leadership Group" to move the plan forward will be the two commissioners and 4 mayors for the districts, with input from other key stakeholders.

How do we prevent South Dade from simply becoming another version of West Kendall, because isn’t that what developers want?

By mobilizing through these and other efforts and making sure we can shape the future, rather than have others to dictate the terms.


Commissioner Daniella Levine Cava's opening remarks at the South Dade Solutions Summit:

Today’s event is a watershed for our community. It reflects unprecedented collaboration of government, business and our community leadership. Commissioner Moss and I issued the call, and you responded, enthusiastically. For your trust and hope we are so very grateful.

All of Miami-Dade faces enormous challenges, and also is blessed with tremendous assets. And South Miami-Dade looms large in both. We have about 1/3 the land mass, but a much smaller fraction of the population. That means we are poised for great growth. Indeed, we are the fastest growing part of the county.

Yet, the question for all of us is: what kind of growth. We want right growth, the kind that will bring jobs and grow our economy, while not sacrificing our natural beauty, open spaces, family orientation, dynamic culture and environment. We want to have a say in how that growth occurs. And that is why we are here today.

We organized the day into three key themes for our future: parks/environment, transportation connectivity and fueling the economy. Our environment is foundational, and that’s why it is first. Our transportation is the critical feature that will most affect our potential for success: can our residents, businesses, tourists get from here to there? Currently that is an open question. And finally, our economy is the backbone. Can we create jobs in our region that will lead to shorter commutes, building on unique assets like our agriculture and our two iconic national parks? Can we maximize the impact of our strong educational institutions and educational attainment of our residents?

Prince Charles on land development: too much common sense to ever take hold in Florida? … by gimleteye

Three cheers for Prince Charles, "Facing up to the future: on 21st century architecture". It may be too late but worth noting how much of Prince Charles' intellectual energy comes from right here, through one of the founders of the new urbanism movement, Andres Duany, and his colleagues. Interesting that so much brilliance in re-thinking urbanism was born in Miami. Next time you are stuck in traffic, fuming, look no further than crony capitalism congealed around fast buck development to understand why.

Here are Prince Charles' ten principles:

1
Developments must respect the land. They should not be intrusive; they should be designed to fit within the landscape they occupy.

2
Architecture is a language. We have to abide by the grammatical ground rules, otherwise dissonance and confusion abound. This is why a building code can be so valuable.

3
Scale is also key. Not only should buildings relate to human proportions, they should correspond to the scale of the other buildings and elements around them. Too many of our towns have been spoiled by casually placed, oversized buildings of little distinction that carry no civic meaning.

4
Harmony − the playing together of all parts. The look of each building should be in tune with its neighbours, which does not mean creating uniformity. Richness comes from diversity, as Nature demonstrates, but there must be coherence, which is often achieved by attention to details like the style of door cases, balconies, cornices and railings.

5
The creation of well-designed enclosures. Rather than clusters of separate houses set at jagged angles, spaces that are bounded and enclosed by buildings are not only more visually satisfying, they encourage walking and feel safer.

6
Materials also matter. In the UK, as elsewhere, we have become dependent upon bland, standardized building materials. There is much too much concrete, plastic cladding, aluminium, glass and steel employed, which lends a place no distinctive character. For buildings to look as if they belong, we need to draw on local building materials and regional traditional styles.

7
Signs, lights and utilities. They can be easily overused. We should also bury as many wires as possible and limit signage. A lesson learned from Poundbury is that it is possible to rid the street of nearly all road signs by using ‘events’ like a bend, square or tree every 60-80 metres, which cause drivers to slow down naturally.

8
The pedestrian must be at the centre of the design process. Streets must be reclaimed from the car.

9
Density. Space is at a premium, but we do not have to resort to high-rise tower blocks which alienate and isolate. I believe there are far more communal benefits from terraces and the mansion block. You only have to consider the charm and beauty of a place like Kensington and Chelsea in London to see what I mean. It is often forgotten that this borough is the most densely populated one in London.

10
Flexibility. Rigid, conventional planning and rules of road engineering render all the above instantly null and void, but I have found it is possible to build flexibility into schemes and I am pleased to say that many of the innovations we have tried out in the past 20 years are now reflected in national engineering guidance, such as The Manual For Streets.

Public meeting on loathsome extension of the Dolphin Expressway TODAY … by gimleteye

All the proposed alternatives extend outside the Urban Development Boundary (UDB)!!!

The Miami-Dade Expressway Authority (MDX) is hosting a public meeting, TODAY, Thursday, Sept. 4th from 6-9 p.m. at the Miami Baptist Church to discuss the expansion of the Dolphin Expressway. 

After being stuck in traffic commuting, it is hard to say how many citizens will have the energy left to attend a meeting -- especially since the board members of the MDX and those running the meeting have already made up their minds to extend the expressway.

We've written years of stories how the 836 extension is a political event, paying off the big land speculators who have been stuck with their investments outside the urban development boundary ever since the housing crash.

Dear Readers, to be informed of what is at stake, go to our archive. In the top left corner of this web page, inside the search button type in "836" and click search. That's all you have to do. Three numerals: 8-3-6.

This is their moment, the Great Destroyers think, and because the Republican legislature and Gov. Rick Scott dismantled the one state agency charged with growth management, they might be right.

If you can, please attend the meeting and submit your comments. MDX will provide comment cards, so you can walk in and out anytime between 6 p.m. and 9 p.m. If you can't, send your comments to 836swextension@mdxway.com

Don't let them get away with arguing this is about "relieving traffic congestion". Bullshit.

https://www.facebook.com/events/1458000827806483/?ref_newsfeed_story_type=regular&fref=nf

The Political Event of the Year in Miami-Dade: Expansion of SR 836 … by gimleteye

The blog TransitMiami highlights what is at stake in the September 4th rollout by MDX of the expansion plan for the most congested roadway in South Florida: SR 836. "Will Miamians allow MDX to realize its Southwest Highway Dream"? The timing is noteworthy, coming a week after the election for county commissioner in the affected South Dade district.

Eye On Miami has been following the 836 expansion project for many years. In our search bar, just type in "MDX" or "sprawl".

Years ago we concluded -- with no special skill set other than observation at land ownership patterns -- that highways are political events first and foremost. If you want to know the politics of sprawl, just follow the money train to the county commissioners who approve it.

On August 26, a few days from now, the most important election affecting taxpayers in Miami-Dade is the District 8 county commission seat.

Incumbent Lynda Bell is supported by every major developer, contractor, and material supplier with an interest in the 836 highway extension. What the politicians say is that the expansion will relieve traffic congestion. What we say, is that the expansion will liberate millions of dollars of speculative land investments by politically connected developers made during the housing boom -- money that has been dead in the water since the crash.

For the same reason Bell's supporters were enthusiastically behind the Marlins Stadium deal, they are even more directly impacted by the 836 extension. Their strategy: re-elect Bell then immediately roll out the 836 extension so it can become a focal point for the governor's race.

That's why, a week after the District 8 election MDX is hosting a rollout for the highway extension.

Why is the timing important? We already know that Gov. Rick Scott will approve anything so long as he's re-elected. His supporters from the Growth Machine will be anxious to call in their IOU's, ASAP. TransitMiami's concern that this "public rollout" is a pro-forma routine is well-founded.

The 836 issue is a harder one for Crist who, when he was governor, keenly felt the pressure from the same interests. He is the candidate boxed in by the 836 rollout in early September.

Now if Daniella Levine Cava wins on Tuesday and defeats the Lynda Bell / Sprawl / Growth Machine, things could get interesting. That would be a very big hiccup for the nomenklatura.

Click "read more" if you don't know what nomenklatura means.

Part Two: Big Bad Sprawl Is Back ... by gimleteye

On the celebration side: for the first time in the county Comprehensive Master Development Plan, climate change and sea level rise are called out and the plan will require that development decisions and infrastructure planning take them into account.

The plan updates the coastal high-hazard zone to the latest data. (Not sure if this means the Terry Murphy/VNS effort to throttle accurate sea level elevations throughout the county has made it into county plan or not...) The plan calls for exploring new sources of revenue for transit projects, including MDX revenues and road impact fees (Not sure if this paves the way for a whole new group of carpetbaggers -- the old ones, dressed in new suits -- calling for the expansion of SR 836 to Lennar, DR Homes and Parkland). It provides for dredging of Miami River tributaries. It promotes housing design that supports conservation and preservation of areas with specific historic, architectural and cultural value. For parks, it requires the county to develop a plan that assures that every resident can walk or bike to a park wherever they live so that there is equity in the distribution of park facilities in all neighborhoods.

 These EAR amendments were advertised and the text and map changes were available for review on the County’s website. One might hope for stronger language (more ‘shalls’ and ‘requires’, fewer ‘considers’ and ‘take into accounts’), but community activists and environmentalists have few friends among elected officials.

At a previous workshop the Growth Machine, predictably, questioned the Department’s population projections. Generally the higher the projection, the more pressure to move the Urban Development Boundary and (surprise) they thought the projections too low. It brought back the awful memories from 2005 when attorney Jeffrey Bercow and the same phalanx of subcontractors and planners assaulted the county planning department for failing to recognize that the building boom was based on a permanent, rapid inflow of population. The famous Neisen Kasden powerpoint presentation showing endless blue skies requiring endless expansion of build-able area. Awful.

The Growth Machine are now using outlier statistics (like the boom years) in a series (or imagine basing future population projections on out-migration after Hurricane Andrew, or, if calculation Miami’s household income figures were based on an average that included all the Miami Heat Players and Norman Braman rather than on a median, average income.) To the extent there is a plan for the future, it is all in the hands of county number crunchers; especially now that state standards for changing growth management have been burned in a dust broom closet in Tallahassee.

“Who knew?” that well paid lobbyists would take advantage of the governmental processes and the innocence (?) of the Planning Advisory Board members to dramatically expand the Urban Expansion Area to – get this – include the lingering development of Parkland? (See, Part One and if you want to understand the politics and political influence behind Parkland, use the Eye On Miami search engine.)

The staff-based EAR amendments made some changes in the UEAS and one UDB change. The UDB expansion involved the area at the NW corner of the Turnpike and State Road 826. This is a pretty big expansion but completely predictable after the unfortunate, untimely approval of the Beacon Lakes complex that left this area as an enclave. (Search on “Beacon Lakes”, too.) On the other hand, this site has been identified as a nesting site for wood storks – an endangered species. Then, on the other hand, the builders and developers are lobbying to have the wood stork removed from the endangered species list.

That’s how it always went, but it’s going faster now that arguments for “jobs” are a solvent on anything glued together over the past half century to protect our environment.

Most dangerous wetlands creature (photo by Mark Renz)

Other adjustments to the UEAs could remove areas for expansion that have development constraints. Yes – we do not want to expand into areas that are part of wellfields, Everglades Restoration areas and coastal high hazard areas. It is only smart to remove these from consideration. But, making the argument that the EAR throws the whole land use map into play, the lobbying lawyers made a case to EXPAND the UEA.

Granted they did not – this time – ask to go all the way to the Everglades, but what they did is bad enough. Of course they say, with false sincerity, that the actual UDB expansion would only occur if and when the time is right and the data calls for the expansion.

Hmm – could that be when the financing is all in place? Yes people have invested in this area. Yes they did so expecting that they would be able to develop it. But YES that is called speculative investment – gambling – and there is no vested right to anything but the current land use.

It’s hard to fight off the speculators, when so little was done to hold any accountable after the housing crash. You see, the small homeowner gets foreclosed with a computer algorithm in a heartbeat. The big developers and their big loans with banks get white glove treatment in comparison. The banks are desperate to “monetize” their stale mortgage inventory. They don't foreclose (think, Jorge Perez) because they don't want their own careers marred by signing off on millions if not hundred of millions of losses.

Depending on how much cash they have burned through in the recent past, the builders and developers may just want to get out at the highest price today, before sea levels rise and wash it all away. PT Barnum would have been right at home in 2013.

Anyhow, one Miami Dade activist writes, “You may have the money – you may have the patience – but we can be patient too. And we will bring out all of our green shirts to fight you on this. You are out of line thinking that this will be a cake walk.”

Think back to all the tax dollars you spend to support patterns of growth that clearly we cannot afford. Why should you care? As the wise woman once said, if you don’t do politics, politics does you.

Suburban Sprawl In South Florida: a game of musical chairs ... by gimleteye

"Every time we get close to the 24 hour mark, they move the goal post," Girard said.

An interesting story from the Florida Keys about real estate development, where the collision of economic imperative and the need to protect fragile natural resources is like a test tube for the rest of the state.

For decades, Florida environmentalists have waged mostly fruitless battles to get at the core problem: too many people, inefficient regulations, and not enough protection for the environment. Meanwhile, growth has overwhelmed the culture and characteristics of the place that made it attractive in the first place.

The single brake on Keys development has nothing to do with the environment -- or, only in a tortured way. Decision makers decided in the 1980's that the threshold limit on growth should be pegged to the time it would take the last resident of the Keys who wanted to evacuate in the case of a hurricane bearing down. 24 hours is the legal limit.

Developers, of course, have done everything in their power to show ways and make tax dollar investments to get more people out of the Keys, within that 24 hour limit. Including, as the environmentalist said, above, "Moving the goal posts."

Moving the goal posts is exactly the tried and true technique of legislators throughout the state in order to foment more growth and more people.

Gov. Rick Scott accomplished the ultimate "move the goal posts" on arrival to the Governor's Mansion. He simply allowed the legislature to kill off growth management, under the banner of "jobs, jobs, jobs".

The anti-regulation jihad, though, waged by the radical right wrecked Florida. Places like Homestead and Florida City stand out as examples where local kingpins and big farmers couldn't wait to sell their properties for zero lot line housing, turning the potential of a gateway community to important national parks into trash.

The unions and building trades were also complicit; using their membership fees to support corrupt politicians while, at the same time, forcing their members into so-called affordable housing far from places of work, in soul-less communities bearing names of extinct animals or lost habitats. Sprawl literally took the heart out of Florida.

Miami-Dade's version of suburbia, tattered through the housing market crash, is no different in any other Florida county where land was inexpensive and the thresholds to growth knocked down by insiders: wetlands, open space, and property edging the Everglades, or the Caloosahatchee, or St. Lucie. Name your special place in Florida: it's been combed over and picked for sprawl.

Nothing could alter the formula, famously depicted by Bush cheerleader Al Hoffman. "It's an unstoppable force!", Hoffman told the Washington Post a decade ago. Not the worst real estate collapse since the Great Depression, changed the fact. Right now, plans are afoot to move the Urban Development Boundary in west Miami Dade to accommodate more growth.

Weary environmentalists are heading to the battle lines, again.

There is no 24 hour clock in Miami-Dade as there is in the Keys. But there is one goal post that no county commissioner or governor will be able to move in our not-so-distant future. Implacable seas are rising, and in Miami-Dade County they will come in from the west, first.

Well before that time, the insurance industry will step in and blow its referee whistle. ... I can hear the bitter howling even now, when suburban sprawl stops in South Florida, leaving the last man without a musical chair, standing. (read the Keys article, below)

Tony Goldman, Developer ... by gimleteye

One of the First of Goldman's Wynwood Walls

I didn't know Tony Goldman, but I knew his work: finding profit in rehabilitating parts of Miami's urban core. The Miami Herald reported on Goldman's formula for success in Miami, after having made a fortune buying up dilapidated buildings in NYC's SoHo: "Flush with cash, Goldman came to a similar conclusion about Miami Beach during a visit in 1985. He’d already invested in Coconut Grove, and began buying one Art Deco property a month for 18 months along Ocean Drive. “I go into an area five to seven years before it happens,” Goldman said in 1986. “I like the smell of a property, and I like to be able to afford it. Advance real estate is undervalued. Miami Beach is undervalued.”

He explained that he’d gone into SoHo “when it was still raw. It had architectural integrity, a small scale and the community was obsessed with preservation. I see a vast similarity” to SoHo."

Goldman was right. I came to Florida at about the same time. In the late 1980's I found a small theater company to produce plays I had written and hoped to develop in emerging South Beach while working, at the same time, on Florida Everglades issues. I commuted from one small community that had retained its value, Key West, to Miami Beach.

Those ingredients: architectural integrity, a small scale and a community obsessed with preservation could have saved Florida's economy and the Everglades, too. It is a lesson that has imprinted on my experiences in the interim, as I became less involved in theater (and eventually turned off by Miami Beach) and more involved in communicating the essential irrationality of Florida surrendering its key economic assets -- the environment and a sense of place -- to suburban sprawl and the Growth Machine.

Developers like Tony Goldman created value at the same time they created profits. Their vision was the opposite of the zero lot line, platted subdivisions that bloomed like metatastic cancer across Florida at the same time.

Goldman's passing provides an opportunity to review. Today Tea Party activists charge through the political landscape like a bull in a china shop. One of their claims: that government should not pick winners and losers in the economy. But government -- in the case of Florida, that is primarily GOP government -- picks winners and losers ALL THE TIME.

In point of fact, the development model of suburban sprawl -- that is responsible for destroying Florida's economy and bringing down the national economy as well -- could not exist but for pressure by insiders promoting government subsidies. Roadways, like he SR 826 extension, are pushed toward lands owned by politically influential developers. These days, they have figured out how to put lipstick on the proverbial pig, renaming sprawl to fit the cliche du jour.

I regret that successful developers like Goldman who mined the urban core for profit did not also use their voices to advocate in public forums against the terrible subsidies and ultimate costs of suburban sprawl. Civic activists -- like the Hold the Line Coalition against moving the Urban Development Boundary-- could have used their help and still can.

What is remarkable is that developers like Tony Goldman succeeded in making profits and communities despite suburban sprawl.

When I first arrived in Miami in the late 1980's and began regular visits to rehearsals on Miami Beach, from my relatively fresh eyes the fact that Miami Beach had not been bulldozed seemed a joyous mistake. Walking down Ocean Drive, still dotted with SRO's and retirees gazing at the world from porches, I thought: "Thank God the bulldozers were all pointed the other way; outward from the beach." It did not escape my attention, either, that many of wealthy sprawl developers chose to live on Miami Beach where scale and community still existed and sow their evil spawn in Everglades wetlands where land was cheap and it was easier to "get things done" fast.

Driving my son to youth soccer tournaments in the wastelands of West Dade, it was simple to observe how the rush to build anonymous, soul-less places in Kendall and beyond had simply left Miami Beach behind. That's when Goldman came in.

Developers like Goldman intuitively understood the value of place and were rewarded for their hard work in bringing that value to life.

In remembering what Tony Goldman accomplished, it is also worthwhile to contemplate where Miami's politicians failed: succumbing to a builders' lobby, land use attorneys, and economic interests (US Century Bank comes to mind, its board of directors, and the unreformable majority of the county commission we frequently observe on Eye On Miami) who extracted massive wealth by commandeering government zoning and permitting to build cheap, crappy subdivisions in irreplaceable farmland and Everglades wetlands.

Tony Goldman will be remembered for South Beach and Wynwood. Although there will always be critics (and I am certainly a critic of what Miami Beach has become), no one can argue that Goldman built value. That is certainly something to applaud, through the cinders of a housing boom and bust that wouldn't have happened if only wiser minds had prevailed across America's blighted suburban landscapes.

More of Goldman's Wynwood Walls

Bogdanoff: a fresh-faced new Great Destroyer from Broward ... by gimleteye

For nearly a quarter century I have observed Florida's greatness whittled away, one land use decision at a time, to benefit speculators who manipulate politics to extract value out of wetlands and environmentally sensitive lands buffering the Everglades and Biscayne Bay. 

The formula: find land that is zoned for agriculture or as wetlands, hire lobbyist or "environmental land use law firm", secure a land use change through zoning councils and local government legislatures, build a rock mine or crappy subdivision, take a share of profits and contribute to political campaigns. Do it again, and again, and again.

When neighborhoods, community activists or environmentalists complain: accuse them of being elitist, closing the door behind them, how increased tax base is necessary to fund services, and when the economy turns to crap, how barriers to jobs need to be eliminated.

The folks at the Beacon Council and other white glove economists regularly wring their hands at the need to diversify Florida's economy. What they fail to say-- but know perfectly well-- is that one generation at a time Florida capitulated to the Great Destroyers. Their free reign erodes any chance of attracting new jobs, unless those jobs are part of the pass-through economy. Nothing "sticks" in South Florida, because we have encouraged an urban/ suburban landscape that nothing sticks to.

Meanwhile the Great Destroyers name sport stadiums or educational facilities or performing arts centers to buy community credit and esteem. Not even Archimedes could criticize that equation.

Not even the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression has altered it. Instead, the crisis-- fomented by the Great Destroyers-- has been like a catalyst to epoxy resin; hardening their silos. For observers, keeping tabs on what the Destroyers do next is like watching a game of wack-a-mole; the one with a toy hammer. Kids hit one target only to find another pops up somewhere else on the board.

Amusing, if it didn't describe the way Florida's race to the political bottom works today. Florida GOP state senator Ellyn Bogdanoff from Broward is just the latest pop up, with her proposal for a new law to usurp local authority that has struggled for years to regulate the growth of suburban sprawl into Dade wetlands, farmland and open space.

Bogdanoff is the GOP's fresh-faced, new Great Destroyer for having the splendid idea to prevent local jurisdictions from exerting their own authority of changes to Comprehensive Development Master Plans. The CDMP is the "road map" for community growth. Changes to the Urban Development Boundary, for example, require a supermajority vote of the local county commission. That's a hard number to accumulate, for the Great Destroyers.

In the Rick Scott era, we are in a phase where every point in the legal process governing developer ambitions, the Great Destroyers are testing the boundaries. What Governor Scott approved-- either with forethought or simply because he had no clue how state government works when he purchased his way to the Governor's Mansion--was eliminate state regulatory authority for those community master development plans that every county and most municipalities are required to produce.

By taking the guards off their watches on the ramparts, now the Great Destroyers are pushing and probing at every point of entry to see how far they can push the regulations governing growth management in Florida.

It is perverse to watch the GOP--  the so-called party of liberty and anti-government authority-- regularly violate its own convictions, imposing its own set of rules on personal freedoms and, in this specific case of Bogdonoff's amendment (read, below, for details) state authority over local jurisdictions.

In the Miami Herald today, Representative Felix Diaz, a Republican from Miami, whines: “With the economy being what it is, we should not be creating barriers to investment in our community." What a crock of s#@t.


There is no mystery-- none at all-- about what drives Bogdanoff and the remnant lobbyist corps after the great economic washout, due in large part to overdevelopment of crappy subdivisions throughout the state of Florida. It is the same as it has always been: more crappy subdivisions. Eliminate supermajority votes to rezone land outside the Urban Development Boundary to benefit the speculators and campaign contributors.


Bogdanoff is just another in a long line of GOP wannabe's: the latest to shop in the second-hand clothing store of the Great Destroyers, trying from the rack what fits best even though it has been worn a hundred times before at dances in the chambers of the county commissions and state legislature or hallways where prying eyes can imagine what happens next.

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/03/04/2675824_p2/amendment-to-florida-bill-could.html#storylink=cpy

Ajamil Bermello: members of the Growth Machine nomenklatura ... by gimleteye

Nomenklatura: a category of people within the Soviet Union and other Eastern bloc countries who held various key administrative positions in all sphere's of those countries' activity: government, industry, agriculture, education, engineering and infrastructure development.

In Miami-Dade (and Florida) there is a parallel nomenklatura. Some key members of our own domestic nomenklatura are on parade through the effort to extend the Dolphin Expressway south on the western edge of the county, directly threatening Everglades National Park and benefiting land speculators who purchased property in anticipation of the growth of suburban sprawl: they are also key members of the nomenklatura and include Rodney Barreto, Ramon Rasco, Ed Easton and Sergio Pino.

This week, the board of the Miami-Dade Expressway Authority (MDX) unanimously approved adding the extension of the SR 836. Nearly 200 people voiced opposition to the project. Although it is not a done deal, changes to state law and agencies under Gov. Rick Scott and the anti-environmental GOP Florida legislature are going to make it quite difficult for citizens to stop the expansion that will expose many thousands acres of farmland to development pressure.

The local engineering firm, Ajamil Bermello, has put its shoulder to this wheels of progress.

Ajamil Bermello's Tere Garcia is providing public relations support for the MDX board. In response to opponents, she wrote recently in the professional, neutral tone that masks the frenetic investments of political energy to plow more highway in service of sprawl: "The extension of SR 836 is envisioned as a multimodal facility, used also by express transit buses, that would address the existing transportation needs of a vast community of thousands of existing residents living in the southwestern areas of Miami-Dade County west of the Turnpike. There will be no recommendation on MDX's behalf to move the Urban Development Boundary Line. Any alternative to be identified as part of the study must be evaluated considering all environmental requirements, sound engineering practices, be financially feasible and enjoy the support of those served."

Bermello Ajamil is part of the nomenclature that Occupy Miami and the rest of the Occupy movement ought to study. It takes a village to raise a child and confident engineers to wreck the village.

Willy Bermello, a founding partner of the engineering firm, famously tooted the housing boom in the Miami Herald in May 2005 at just about the same time much of the land in question in the SR 836 expansion was being purchased by nomenklatura friends: "This bubble is not latex," he wrote, "but stainless steel." The Herald provided no opportunity for rebuttal, showing its publisher also knew his place.

The point is that the worst economy since the Great Depression have not thwarted, changed, or modified the goals of the nomenklatura in Miami-Dade in the slightest. Ms. Garcia notes that the initial planning for the extension of SR 836 began in 2007: indeed, all that shows is that the nomenklatura have been intent-- from the start-- to build sprawl to the edge of the Everglades just like Broward.

In this scenario, the Urban Development Boundary turned out to provide the rationale for a generation of political influence peddling to destroy rules and regulations to protect the Everglades and local, rural communities.

So Ajamil Bermello and a cadre of Miami-Dade lobbyists attached to the Growth Machine continue to promote schemes and infrastructure "improvements" like the expansion of SR 836 that serve the same purpose they did during the run up to the worst housing market crash in a century: using infrastructure to sprinkle suburban sprawl on the landscape like confectionary sugar. Have we learned anything? No. There have been no penalties-- none-- imposed for the political and economic behavior that lead to so much carnage, and without penalties there will be no change in behavior. Is it human nature to impose the greed of a few over the lives of the many? Have we learned anything in this age of information engorgement? Never has information been more plentiful nor wisdom so scarce.

A year ago, Ms. Garcia (also on the board of the Greater Miami Chamber of Commerce) offered the following pitch to progress; building more highways like the SR 836 extension. Think of it as a study group in conformity, in which "public outreach" is every bit as staged as the stagecraft perfected by the nomenklatura in the Soviet Union or, for that matter, Cuba.

The MDX: Driving Miami into the abyss of more sprawl ... by gimleteye

The board of the Miami Dade Expressway Authority, or MDX, is in the midst of approving the extension of the Dolphin Expressway/ SR 836 south into farmland and open space and needs to hear from the public why that is a terrible, horrendous idea. What is at stake is including this project in the MDX 5-year plan. If approved by the MDX board, it will trigger another in a long list of skirmishes at the Urban Development Boundary; this is where the battle to protect the Everglades has been fought over the decades in Miami-Dade County. Unfortunately, the MDX board is poised to do the bidding of land speculators. The board includes land use lobbyists like chairman Felix Lasarte, Gonzolo Sanabria, Al Maloof and Maritza Gutierrez. 

Today is the deadline for public comments. It is worth a moment of time to write to MDX and express your own thoughts about more suburban sprawl next to the Everglades. As if the western edge of Miami-Dade County isn't littered with enough foreclosures and ghost suburbs to last a lifetime. Ask the MDX to withhold approval of this boondoggle from its 5-year plan (the project identifier is #83618). tgarcia@mdxway.com


The MDX is planning to expand the 836 Dolphin Expressway west toward Krome Avenue and then south to Tamiami Airport. In other words, a massive highway project to bail out powerful land speculators whose investments are gathering dust because there is zero demand for the suburban sprawl they helped scatter throughout Miami-Dade County. Ramon Rasco, Sergio Pino, Rodney Baretto, Ed Easton are just some of the shareholders who could extract value from their speculative investments-- made near the top of the real estate bubble-- and fatten profits for land they may or may not even be paying mortgages on. While these issues are beyond the purview of the MDX board, they provide atmospherics of environmental destruction familiar to Southeast Florida: build highways, build sprawl, wreck the Everglades, and make taxpayers foot the bill.


Big highway projects have always served to lubricate the relationship between politics and developers. Given the overdevelopment of Miami-Dade, this kind of project -- and the fraudulent underpinnings of the "extend and pretend" economy-- ought to rejected.


Sierra Club and Tropical Audubon Society write: "We ask the MDX board to remove the 836/Dolphin Expressway Southwest Extension (project 83618) from its 5-year plan. We question the necessity of the this project and am concerned about the impacts to residents, agriculture and America's Everglades. We believe this road is unnecessary and will actually will increase, not alleviate, congestion on SR 836. Commuters currently have the option of taking several highways into downtown Miami. The existing 836, the Florida Turnpike, the 874, the 878 and the 826. Most of these roads have been or are currently being rebuilt to handle greater capacity. Future and existing toll revenues should be used to maintain these roads and provide for public transit alternatives, not to build new roads into environmentally sensitive areas. The project will threaten Everglades National Park and nearby federally-protected wetlands. A new layer of highway extending away from the city will fuel sprawl because of its proximity to the Urban Development Boundary. This highway would attract development of agricultural and wild lands buffering the Everglades and pose a direct threat to the $12 billion federal-state Everglades restoration project."

What this project would also do, is to reinforce exactly the growth pattern that failed Miami-Dade County, wrecked the Everglades, jeopardized thousands of acres of wetlands and farmland, and imposed billions in unfunded infrastructure costs on taxpayers. You don't get out of a ditch by digging the same ditch, deeper. But that is the kind of logic Miami-Dade lobbyists and appointees embraced, in the run-up to the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. Watch what they do, now.

Transit Miami Blog Talks About the UDB. By Geniusofdespair

Transit Miami has a very good post on the Urban Development Boundary vote at the County Commission last week.

They even used my map....

Commissioners Moss and Heyman: Good Work! By Geniusofdespair

Why we shouldn't move the Urban Development Boundary: 2 Miami Dade County Commissioners made the argument yesterday against sprawl on the West side of Miami-Dade (I saved you a few hours by editing, leaving you the best of the hearing):


Link to video.

Commissioner Moss makes a compelling argument. I really do like this guy.


Link to video.

Sally Heyman and Dennis Moss are 2 County Commissioners we can be proud of on this issue. I personally thank them for holding the line on urban sprawl. I also have to thank Commissioners Audrey Edmonson, Javier Souto and Jean Monestime.

HOLD THE LINE! County Hall Tomorrow. By Geniusofdespair

Hold the Line Tomorrow!

Wed., Nov. 30 - 111 NW 1st Street, 2nd Floor 2 p.m.

Ferro Investment Group II, LLC will seek to move the Urban Development Boundary (UDB) line in an application that converts 9.9 acres from agriculture to business and office.

Stand up to Sprawl and ask your elected officials to Hold The Line! Miami-Dade staff have recommended "deny and do not transmit" the proposed standard amendment to expand the 2015 UDB. This application would convert our valuable, agricultural land to office and retail. The EPA states that Miami-Dade County is at a critical point in converting too much of its agricultural land to development. Please attend and voice your opinions or contact your Commissioner!

Homestead is Number 1 in United States for Home Value Loss. By Geniusofdespair

Homestead is number one for something: It has the "worst decline in home values in the U.S." according to Bloomberg Businessweek.  Zillow did a survey for Businessweek of the 1,000 largest cities nationwide and Homestead was the clear winner.

This is proof that sprawl does not pay because Homestead is ground zero for sprawl in Miami Dade County...and it looks like maybe the entire country!!

My Summer Vacation in Pictures. By Geniusofdespair

Yes, these are the odd stops and/or highlights of my vacation:

This is the way most of the Shenandoah Valley looks (without the sprawl):

And again the Shenandoah Valley's changing landscape:

As far as my vacation goes...You can't always get what you want but if you try sometimes, well you might find, you get what you need.

James Kunstler reports from the Congress for New Urbanism: Out of Darkness

The following is reposted from Kunstler's popular blog: Clusterfuck Nation. It is particularly relevant to the debate on the future of suburban sprawl in Florida and Miami, the political and economic epicenter of the housing bubble boom and bust. The perpetrators are still in place, engines on idle and saving gas, hoping for the miracle to come: the revival of platted subdivisions in farmland and empty space all the way to the edge of the Everglades. The hucksters of Parkland, Florida City Commons, and Neighborhood Planning are all waiting to play.
Out of Darkness
By James Howard Kunstler
on May 24, 2010

If the Devil created an anti-city, a place where people would feel least human, Atlanta would surely be that place -- despite the prayerful babble of tongues emanating from the evangelical roller rinks at every freeway off-ramp. One might think: Los Angeles, but that city at least came up with the amenity of valet parking, mostly lacking in Atlanta, where the suffocating heat slows the journey of blood from heart to brain.
My homeys, the New Urbanists, held their annual meeting at the "downtown" Hilton there this past week -- a most mysterious selection, perhaps due to an x-treme discount on room rates in a time of austerity. The New Urbanists first came together about twenty years ago as a campaign to reform the tragic fiasco of suburbia. By taking this on they were often labeled as enemies of the American Way Of Life and Christian Decency, but they are a valiant band. I'd guess that architects composed about two-thirds of the org and the rest included developers, planning officials, a few college professors and journalists. They were all out of the mainstream, especially of architecture, whose stock-in-trade had become the emperors new clothes.
The basic idea behind the New Urbanism was that the quality and character of the places where we spend our lives matters, and that the surrender of the entire American landscape to Happy Motoring was an historic aberration that had to be corrected if the USA was going to continue as a viable project. Among other things, they noticed that if people live in places that aren't worth caring about, sooner or later they end up being a nation not worth defending -- and this is on top of the daily personal punishments suffered by hundreds of millions of people dwelling in a geography of nowhere.
At the time they first got going, the idea of peak oil barely existed outside a small circle of geologists, so the battles were fought mostly on other grounds. They were up against a lot. The collective American identity was invested in the idea of the suburban utopia, and the sheer dollar investments in the infrastructure of it all -- everything from the interstate highways to the housing subdivisions to the strip malls -- was so massive that nobody wanted to think about changing it. What's more, a massive system had evolved for delivering what came to be labeled as suburban sprawl, especially the laws that regulated land-use, so that in most places in the USA it was illegal to build anything else but sprawl.
The New Urbanists were fiercely opposed, usually for stupid reasons by stupid people, but also by the mandarin architecture establishment, especially in the grad schools, where mysticism supported a set of theological rackets in the service of celebrity cults divorced from the public nature of things that get built. In the local planning boards, the New Urbanists were accused of being communists; in the ivory towers they were accused of being slaves to worn-out traditions -- like walking from home to work. They certainly proved one principle of the human condition: that even the best ideas will generate opposition.
The New Urbanists had to work within this system. They had to find allies among developers who aspired to create better places, and they had to get under the hood of regulatory system to rewrite the laws in thousands of municipalities. They got a lot of projects built, new neighborhoods and even whole new towns. Many of these places came out beautifully. Some of them were badly compromised in the fight to get them built. Some of them were rip-offs that amounted to little more than the usual suburban schlock with a little window-dressing.
It's a bitter irony that the most ambitious New Urbanist projects were made possible within the context of the housing bubble economy. For about a decade money seemed to grow on trees. Most of that money went into conventional suburban crapola and a small percentage of it went into New Urbanist projects, but when the bubble burst, it crushed all the players, regardless of the ultimate social value of what they produced.
I heard a lot of stories during the meeting in Atlanta last week but one really stood out. It was about the money and revealed a lot about what is going on in our banking system these days. A New Urbanist developer had gotten a small project going for a traditional neighborhood. Despite the global financial clusterfuck, the developer was able to meet the payments of his commercial loan. But the FDIC sent bank examiners around America and they told the small regional banks that if they had more than twenty percent of their loans in commercial real estate (CRE) they would be put out of business. The banks were ordered to reduce their loads of CRE by calling in the loans and liquidating the assets. Ironically, the banks only called in their "performing" loans, the ones that were being regularly paid off, because they were ignoring and even concealing the ones that weren't being paid.
The developer in question had his loan called in when the FDIC descended on his bank. He couldn't pay off the $3 million in one lump, of course. The FDIC's agents are going to seize and sell off his project if he can't get it refinanced in short order. He can't get it refinanced because there is now such a shortage of capital in the banking system that no one can get a loan for anything. Also, since it is now well-known that the bank failed, the vultures are circling above his project hoping to buy it for a discount, so even the few private investors who have money won't throw him a lifeline. By the way, the FDIC agents told him they are doing this because they now expect that virtually all commercial real estate loans in the USA will fail in the months ahead. Pretty scary story, huh? And he was one of the good guys.
I suppose it was a tragic thing that the New Urbanists made themselves hostage to the same banking system that was behind suburban sprawl. Apart from the personal stories of misfortune among them, the movement is still alive. In fact, they have emerged the victors in the long contest over how America will build itself, because it is now self-evident that suburban sprawl is an epic failure. Whether Americans like it or not, whether their identity is tied up in the suburban fantasy or not, we are faced with circumstances that now compel us to live differently.
Among other things, the most forward-looking leaders in the New Urbanist movement now recognize that we have to reorganize the landscape for local food production, because industrial agriculture will be one of the prime victims of our oil predicament. The successful places in the future will be places that have a meaningful relationship with growing food close to home. The crisis in agriculture is looming right now -- with world grain reserves at their lowest level ever recorded in modern times -- and when it really does hit, the harvestmen of famine and death will be in the front ranks of it.
This eighteenth Congress of the New Urbanism was held in the shadow of a banking system in extreme crisis and an epic ecological catastrophe brewing in the Gulf of Mexico. The three crisis of capital, energy, and global ecology will now determine what we do, not the polls or the marketing analyses or the whims of "consumers." The great achievement of the New Urbanists was not the projects they built during the final orgasm of the cheap energy orgy. It was the knowledge they retrieved from the dumpster of history. We really do know where to go from here. Whether the people of the USA have the will to take themselves there now is another issue.
Also in the background of this Congress was the bizarre organism of Atlanta, which represents in so many ways the behavior that can't continue in this country if we are going to remain civilized. A prankish destiny put us in the worst place at the worst time and the next time we meet America is going to be a different country.