Uninspired Architecture not just a Boise Plight

For years people have complained about all the “brown boxes” in Boise’s downtown, but no, we’re not the only one complaining about our drab architecture. A gleaming, 54 story glass box now graces the L.A. skyline, the first skyscraper completed in that city since 1992 - and the critics don’t like it. Says L.A. Times architectural critic Christopher Hawthorne:

As far as architectural ambition goes, though, the building makes a faint, even passive impression, despite the diverting patterns on its facade. It is more focused on operating as a glossy vertical marker for L.A. Live — and the tower is hard to miss from any of downtown’s freeways — than on exploring a fresh or idiosyncratic path for high-rise design in L.A.

Maybe the city of Los Angeles would like to trade L.A. Live for our Grove Hotel?

Read the whole story at the L.A. Times site.

Of Gadflys and Guardians: A Tribute to Dave Frazier

People who read this blog regularly know that I like to use Dave Frazier from the Guardian as a foil, and he’s an awfully good sport about it - and that’s just plain and simply because he’s a good dude.

Dave and I strongly disagree on the level of fiscal authority that should be accorded to Idaho’s municipalities. He likes the current set up where cities have to ask the state and the voters permission to do what is routine in the rest of the United States. I’d like to see cities in Idaho have broader authority. I think his arguments over the airport bond issues, and fire station financing were malarky (the Judges however agreed with him, not me). And, I think his no-growth vision for Boise and the Valley is wrong headed.

But I like Dave Frazier. He’s a nice guy. He’s a fun guy to have coffee with and can talk about a lot of subjects. If you spend any time at the Vista Moxie you know this. Dave is also a damn fine citizen. He cares about this place, devotes a lot of time to watchdogging local government, and has a hell of a following on his Guardian Blog, which I read regularly.

Dave sent me a note asking why I called him a “gadfly” in a previous post - he took it as an offense, and for that I apologize. But I meant it to mean a person who upsets the status quo by posing upsetting or novel questions. Dave is every bit of that. He’s a thorn in the side of city government, and that is ok. In fact it’s important. Boise would be a better place if we had a hundred more people that were engaged as Dave (I just hope they’d all agree with me, though!).

You keep being a gadfly, Frazier, and next time I see you coffee is on me.

David v. Goliath III: Blanchard v. Glaeser “No one lives in the West”

The road less travelled

According to his bio, “Ed Glaeser is the Fred and Eleanor Glimp Professor of Economics at Harvard, where he also serves as Director of the Taubman Center for State and Local Government and the Rappaport Institute for Greater Boston. He studies the economics of cities, and has written scores of urban issues, including the growth of cities, segregation, crime, and housing markets. He has been particularly interested in the role that geographic proximity can play in creating knowledge and innovation. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Chicago in 1992 and has been at Harvard since then.” An obviously brilliant and esteemed urban economist, you’ll see why I find his article “Put Transit Where the People Are” so bizarre. From the article:

MASS TRANSIT needs mass to work: enough people must live and work near train stations and bus stops. Densely populated Eastern Massachusetts should therefore be a prime location for public transportation. . . Despite the difficulties trains face in urban Boston, the Obama administration is pushing a new transportation agenda that promises high-speed rail in unlikely spots like Alabama and Oklahoma.

Dr. Glaeser continues:

So far the Obama administration’s transportation spending has gone overwhelmingly to highways in states with plenty of roads relative to people. Per capita federal transportation spending in the 10 densest states, which include Massachusetts, is less than half of spending in the 10 least-dense states. This policy follows an established formula, but it makes little sense. Congestion problems are most severe in the dense areas that get less funding.

Ok - that sounds plausible. Cities that are more dense should get more funding. But here he comes again with his misreading of the west:

Now the administration wants Americans to envision high-speed rail lines in the wide-open spaces of Texas.

Ok. So I think we get it. He is convinced that there is no one in the west, and that there isn’t sufficient density in the west to build rail. That’s his first argument. So let’s dissect that.

Unless legendary urban historian Carl Abbott is wrong, here is the reality: the west is plenty dense. In his latest book, How Cities Won the West: Four Centuries of Urban Change in Western North America, Abbott writes:

“Densities of western cities are surprisingly high. It remains surprising to many people that Los Angeles is more densely populated than Detroit, Cleveland, or Pittsburgh. There were forty-nine metro areas in the United States with one million or more people in 2000. Ten of the twelve most densely populated were western - Las Vegas, Los Angeles, San Diego, San Francisco, Phoenix, Sacramento, Seattle, Portland, San Antonio, and Salt Lake City.” Pg 229-230.

So we’ve busted Harvard/East Coast myth number one. But then there’s Glaeser’s contention that cars and planes are preferred over public transportation choices out west:

There is a reason why 48 percent of Amtrak’s passengers travel on only two routes: the Northeast Corridor and the Los Angeles-San Diego line. For travelers in the less-dense areas between the coasts, cars beat trains for modest distances and planes win over long hauls.

Glaeser of course leaves out the fact that many Amtrak lines in the west aren’t in operation any longer (could this be a reason the other lines get all the traffic?). A particular noteworthy example is the Pioneer Line that formerly ran from Seattle, through Portland, Boise, Salt Lake, Denver, Omaha, and Chicago. So the issue of the availability of western rail lines aside, Carl Abbott once again can enlighten us on the transportation preferences issue:

“Sacramento, Los Angeles, Denver, Dallas, Salt Lake City, and Phoenix built more limited rail systems after 1990, although some of them continue to expand (as in Denver and Phoenix). One consequence is that four cities of the western U.S. ranked in the nation’s top ten for percentage of journey-to-work trips made by public transit, with San Francisco/Oakland comparable to Washington D.C., Honolulu comparable to Philadelphia, and Seattle and Portland comparable to Pittsburgh.” pg 225

So I think we’ve scuttled that argument. Funny, though, Glaeser wasn’t the only Harvard guy recently to write such an article. Robert Samuelson wrote one very similar not long after, decrying the proposed building of a rail corridor from Houston to New Orleans where no one lives (Houston is the fourth largest city in the United States, and the “Texas Triangle” of Houston, Dallas, and San Antonio accounts for 7% of U.S. GDP). But recall that only a minuscule percentage of Harvard grads ever take jobs out west, so perhaps these fellas have never been out here amongst the cowboys, Indians, and sagebrush.

There are so many issues one could cover here. Glaeser admits that more spending won’t relieve congestion in the Eastern corridors, yet calls for more spending in those corridors. Samuelson also claims that there is no economic gain to be had from building rail which is completely unbelievable because U.S. history since the 1850’s cannot even be understood without contemplating the development of the railroad.

But just so all you Harvard guys are clear: yes - there are folks out west. Really. To close with a last fact from Carl Abbott:

“In the 2000 census of the United States, western metropolitan areas took eight of the top twenty slots. These eight super-cities - Los Angeles, the San Francisco Bay metropolis, Dallas/Fort Worth, Houston, Seattle, Phoenix, San Antonio and Denver - all had more than two million residents.” pg 9

And that, my dear Harvard friends, is like your own motto says, “veritas.”

David v. Goliath II: Blanchard v. Nelson on growth along the Snake River Plain

At the NewWest.net planning conference in June of this year, Professor Arthur (Chris) Nelson of the University of Utah raised some eyebrows when he outlined his predictions for the U.S. housing market over the coming decades, and his thoughts on what that meant for Idaho.

USC Professor Richard Green openly disagreed with Nelson’s projections as did BoDo developer Mark Rivers. The Calculated Risk blog also had some critiques, but nothing major.

Nelson’s analysis indicated that Idaho’s population would fill in along the Snake River Plain from it’s western edge in Ontario, OR, over to the eastern side of Idaho ending at Rexburg. For me it’s not how many people will move here, but where they will actually settle. Though Nelson believes growth will fill in along the I-84 corridor, evidence seems to contradict him indicating that growth will instead occur between the Wasatch Front, and move north to Rexburg - skipping the Boise Valley all together. There are good reasons for this.

Wealth is already leaving the Boise Valley for eastern Idaho and the Wasatch Front.

IRS data from 2006 and 2007 show positive migration to Ada County within Idaho. However, those migrating to Ada County from other parts of the state had average adjusted gross incomes of $33,337 annually, while those leaving Ada County for other parts of the state had annual incomes of $40,582. In total, residents worth $139 million moved to Ada County, and residents worth a total of $154 million moved out. That is a loss of $15 million in gross income for Ada County, to other parts of Idaho.

Additionally, in that same period, half of the top ten cities to which Boiseans moved were along the I-15 corridor with Provo, UT ranking first; Salt Lake City (2); Idaho Falls (5); Ogden, UT (7); and Pocatello (8). The more stable economic climate of eastern Idaho and Utah is but one reason why Boiseans are leaving.

There are strong sociocultural linkages between eastern Idaho and Utah.

It used to be said that Idaho had two capitals: Spokane, and Salt Lake City. Indeed, Coeur D’ Alene, ID is part of a two-state metropolitan statistical area (MSA) that includes Spokane and Coeur D’ Alene, and the Logan, UT MSA includes counties in southern Idaho. But physical proximity is not the only connection. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints exudes a strong cultural presence along the Wasatch Front and Eastern Idaho. With the presence of the new Temple in Rexburg and a growing BYU-Idaho campus there as well, the cultural linkages between eastern Idaho and Utah are only getting stronger.

Gaps in the transportation system separate the Boise Valley from eastern Idaho, and eastern Idaho from Utah. The gap between Utah and eastern Idaho, however, is shrinking more quickly.

Traffic patterns along Idaho’s highway system (seen below) show a consistent level of traffic between Ontario, OR and Heyburn, ID. Traffic drops off significantly, though, between Heyburn and American Falls. Traffic flows again pick up significantly between American Falls and Rexburg.

Lower traffic counts also show up on I-84 heading south out of Heyburn, and on I-15 heading south out of Pocatello, much like the reduced counts between Heyburn and American Falls. In this day and age of regional employment exchange will eastern Idaho ultimately align itself along I-84, or I-15?

If America’s foremost planners with the America2050 project have their way, the Pioneer rail line - which runs from Seattle to Chicago by way of Boise and Salt Lake City - will one day run again. But that line also contains another important spur: the link from Salt Lake City to Pocatello. As gas prices rise, airlines will offer fewer flights meaning Boise will inevitably end up with less air service in favor of airlines servicing larger airports such as Salt Lake and Denver. The rail link between Salt Lake and Pocatello, which also mirrors the west coast’s chief north-south land route between Mexico and Canada (CANAMEX) will exert strong pressure on the region to further develop in a north-south manner, and not throughout the Snake River Plain.

With white-collar job growth flat or shrinking in the Boise Valley and the economy in eastern Idaho more stable, strong sociocultural linkages between eastern Idaho and Utah, and a developing transportation network between eastern Idaho and Utah, evidence seems to suggest that the north-south corridor along I-15, rather than the east-west corridor along I-84 seems better poised for long-term economic and population growth. Alas, only time will tell.

What an engaged government looks like: Case study - Rail in California and Nevada

With the lack of participation by Idaho’s state level elected officials in many of the conversations that the community is having about transportation, planning, growth, sustainability, transit, etc., an article and a few photos from the western press really drove home the importance of an engaged legislature.

Last month, the Urban Land Institute and Boise State University convened a half-day conference on transit in the Boise Valley. One legislator attended.

The issue being discussed was how to get the rail line, which runs from the City of Nampa to the Micron plant in East Boise, operational for regional passenger service. We’re talking about one tiny little move toward rail transit - and we can’t seem to assemble any political leadership in the room.

There was no representation there from the Governor’s office. Neither the legislature nor the Governor have shown any interest in local option or other funding mechanisms to help the region get some kind of rail transit happening. Meanwhile, our federal officials are heading in the opposite direction and trying to get Amtrak to restore service to the Boise Depot. Our political leaders are all over the map.

So what’s going on in other parts of the country? Everyone else is experiencing the same confusion/apathy, right? Not exactly. Here, in images is what is happening in California:

The proposed high-speed rail network in California

Proposed high-speed rail line from Anaheim to Las Vegas

In case that is unclear, what is happening in California is that the state - through a combination of federal, state, local, and private money - is building a $45 billion, high speed rail network to connect the state. Because California is so organized, they are likely to get the lion’s share of the $8 billion that President Obama made available for regional rail projects.

This in turn spawned the proposal by Nevada to build a high-speed rail connection from Las Vegas to Anaheim. So while the all these grand plans are going on, we’re still sitting around here asking questions like “who’s gonna ride the thing?” Well, they asked that in Nevada too, and the poll below shows that 69% of people said they would ride the Vegas high-speed line if it were built.

A recent poll from the Las Vegas Sun-Times

The California system would link San Francisco with Los Angeles with train service in under three hours. How is it that a project spanning 800 miles and dozens of local governments and special districts, can get off the ground but Idaho can’t even get train service happening from Boise to Micron? Vice President Joe Biden sums it up:

“The reason why California is looked at so closely — it’s been a priority of your governor, it’s been a priority of your Legislature, they’ve talked about it, a lot of planning has been done,” Biden said.

Where Harvard grads fear to tread

Few Harvard grads are moving west

Saw this report a week or so ago and thought it interesting. As you can very nearly see from the infographic above, only California really got a significant number of grads from the last Harvard class. 13% of Harvard 2009 grads moved to California for work or grad school. Another 2.3% moved to other places in the West. The largest share of grads stayed right there in the Northeast Megaregion. What’s up with the Brahmins? They don’t imbue a sense of adventure among Harvard students anymore?

California asks, “When can you start?”

Whoever did the economic development commercials for California was on the right track, I think. The video features lots of well-known Californios riffing on workplace terms, e.g., “board meetings” in California means surfing, and skateboarding. This is a good start because it focuses on people, not companies, not economies, not capabilities, not demographics.