Cities, continued...

Riffing on the last post, I came across this article today from my home town newspaper, in which it appears a Raleigh developer is proposing the construction of the city's tallest building. News like this always excites me, as I'm a bit of a Triangle cheerleader, and I always enjoy evidence that North Carolina is arriving, but I think the reactions of City Council members reveal a great deal about city growth in general. Consider, for instance, this quote, from councilwoman Janet Cowell:

I would rather see ten 10-story buildings," she said. "That would be the kind of density that people of Raleigh would want. A 32-story building could retard development because it could jack up real estate rates so high that it would set precedent and everyone would think, 'I'm going to build a 32-story building.' How many of those are we going to need? We're going to have a 32-story building surrounded by a bunch of empty lots.

I have several thoughts on an attitude of this kind.

1) Since when do builders base their attitudes on precedents? How many buildings the size of the World Trade Center went up after it was built? Developers are concerned with bottom lines. That statement is dumb.

2)It's interesting to hear her reference desired density. Raleigh and the Triangle have battled for a decade at least with the problem of sprawl. In response to this, developers have been encouraged to build dense, mixed-use structures whenever possible, but most of these, planned for low-density neighborhoods, have come under intense opposition from local residents. Now we have a dense development planned for downtown, where everything is supposed to be dense, and the council is favoring lower densities.

3)Further, the Triangle has begun the process of establishing a regional light-rail line to alleviate the traffic problems caused by growth and sprawl. The project's critics routinely cite Raleigh's low population density as a reason that this line will fail. Understand that Raleigh has already ponied up money for this project, the success of which will depend upon dense neighborhoods around stations, several of which are downtown. Shouldn't the council be all for denser development around these stations, simply to improve the odds of success for their investment?

4)Of course, vanity projects can be uneconomical and drastically harm local real estate markets, but this is not government inspired construction plan, and Raleigh's not much for vanity anyway. Plus, the building is 32 stories tall. The Sears Tower it ain't. It looks like market-driven development to me.

5)Which leads to my final point. The Triangle area is consistently one of the fastest growing regions in the nation, and has been for over two decades. The metropolitan area will top 1.5 million people in the next year or so, and given demographic patterns, including inter- and intra- national migrations, it seems a safe bet that the Triangle is only going to get bigger. A lot bigger. In the early years of Washington, DC's Metro, the problem of poor ridership was a boondoggle for the system and its planners. After 20 years, half a million commuters rely upon Metro to get to work everyday, and the system is struggling to deal with the crush. The construction of suburban stations was ridiculed for the same density arguments that plague Raleigh's rail line, but today we see that transit planning fuelled and shaped construction. Density followed transit. In short, sensible planning and statistical awareness seem to suggest that one should support denser development in the Triangle whenever it is feasible.

Of course, the problem of local politics, or any politics, is that the voters of today have a say in things, not the voters of tomorrow. Poor city planning takes place for the same reason that Social Security and the environment are in danger: the residents of the future are underrepresented relative to the residents of the present (that, and uncertainty). This raises many questions about how to incentivize politicians, what are the responsibilities of an elected official (or a voter) toward future generations, and things of that nature. Luckily, common sense occasionally triumphs. In a city where congestion and sprawl are painfully visible to every commuter, it seems likely that planning for density will seem like a no-brainer. Let's hope Raleigh decides to place another silhouette on its skyline.

Collective Intelligence

This post is not about the CIA. Rather, on favorite blog Ahab's Dream, James MacDuff gives me another opportunity to shamelessly plug my thesis. MacDuff cites a line from the Canadian film, "Les Invasions Barbares," which is, "intelligence is not an individual trait, but is a collective phenomenon, national and intermittant." I take this to mean that intelligence is best realized when surrounded by other, complementary intelligences. In other words, and if you're an economics freak and read my dissertation you'll get this, and otherwise you've already clicked away, concentrated intelligence (or human capital) leads to knowledge spillovers that push growth (economic, technological, societal) forward. What MacDuff and the film are really saying is that cities with smart people are what drive progress. I couldn't agree more.

Pain in the 'Kraine

Of all the angles from which to view the situation in the Ukraine, two seem to me to be the most interesting. The first is the general demeanor of the crisis. This is the Ukraine, where current President Leonid Kuchma allegedly ordered a hit on a critical journalist, which is supposed to be under the thumb of crypto-fascist Vladimir Putin, in a region of the world where political bloodshed is the rule, and the only clashes we've seen are between rival party colors (and I find orange can complement blue nicely). Despite the alleged resurgence of statist tendancies in larger ex-SSRs, the pro-Yanukovich forces have proven to be decidedly impotent in their attempts to bring about their desired election results. True, one would hope elections would be pristine the first time around (though who are we to talk), and true, one would hope clandestine operatives wouldn't poison the opposition candidate, but I for one am surprised that the parties in the election are awaiting court decisions and considering political solutions, and, perhaps the attention being paid to the electoral process in the Kraine will push Russian voters to be more demanding of their own democracy.
The second interesting issue, I believe, is the potential devolution of state power to an autonomous eastern region of the country. My pal Tim Cooper writes that the West should be concerned about such a prospect, but I'm not so sure. One's natural inclination is to try and determine what sort of devolution would occur in the Kraine. Would it be the Velvet Divorce or Kosovo? There are plenty of reasons to think any such arrangement, whether provincial autonomy or an outright national split, would never take place or never succeed, but there are also reasons why it might prove positive in this case. The primary one is that any separate western state would be a prime candidate for EU entry. As we saw with many other eastern European states, the prospect of an invitation to the lucrative European club is a powerful incentive to improve a nation's political and economic structures. Such an eastern incursion of legitimate democracy and economic health could be a powerful symbol to struggling slav nations, and could actually help ease regional tension by blurring traditional markers between "Europe" and "Russia." There are risks, to be sure, such as emergent violence between separating regions, or an Eastern Kraine much more closely aligned with, and perhaps absorbed by, Russia, but I think these tend to be overstated. Western powers tend to be extremely nervous about disturbing the Russian bear, but Russia is a power in steady and perhaps intractable decline. Faced with the prospect of a Europe of 400 million on its western border and a resurgent China of over a billion on its southern, Russia is looking marginalization directly in the eye. EU membership is at the moment, unthinkable for Russia, but will become less so in the next twenty years. I think a Ukrainian split is actually an opportunity to bring Russia closer to the European sphere, and that is an absolute good.