The Ground Floor

Celebrating Parking

This post was written for The Ground Floor by Robert T. Dunphy, Transportation Consultant and Emeritus Fellow, at the Urban Land Institute.

Parking is the Rodney Dangerfield of transportation--it gets no respect. Other than parking books by ULI and a limited number of sources, industry advocates and a few parking wonks, the topic has received little critical attention from analysts or designers.

Parking one’s vehicle is normally relegated to vast expanses of surface lots, nasty parking garages, or left to back alley operators. So a new exhibit at the National Building Museum in Washington, D.C., House of Cars: Innovation and the Parking Garage, the first major exhibition to explore the history of this familiar structure , is an exciting opportunity for those interested in opening conversations about innovative designs and parking solutions for the future, and "how it can be a valuable component of responsible and sustainable city planning." The idea for the exhibition was brought to the Museum by Shannon Sanders McDonald, author of The Parking Garage: Design and Evolution of a Modern Urban Form, published by the ULI.

The presenting sponsor of House of Cars: Innovation and the Parking Garage is the National Parking Association, headquartered in Washington, D.C. "We are honored to be the presenting sponsor of this exciting exhibition," said Martin L. Stein, President, whose organization has served the industry since 1951.

House of Cars explores how the parked car has changed our built environment. Since cars spend most of their time at rest, parking facilities are probably more important than roads. For commercial developments, the amount of space required for parking exceeds that for businesses and shoppers, so parking is the bigfoot of development.

This exhibit reminds us of the days before DIY when parking required attendants to negotiate storing and retrieving vehicles. Eventually, ramping systems were developed that allowed customers to park their own cars, increasing convenience and eliminating labor. The exhibition concludes with a look at the future of parking, featuring "green garages" innovative designs.

The exhibit is on display through July 11, 2010 at the National Building Museum, and a traveling exhibition will accompany the NPA in their upcoming conventions. If you can’t make it to Washington, catch it elsewhere, a great opportunity to rethink an important urban design challenge--how we find places to park cars, so necessary to making places work, without making them hostile to visitors.

Putting the "UD" Back in HUD

Editors note: U.S.Department of Housing and Urban Development Secretary Shaun Donovan addressed the 2,500 attendees at ULI’s recent Spring Council Forum in Atlanta, emphasizing the need to "put the 'UD" back in HUD," by re-emphasizing HUD's role in fostering urban development, and revamping HUD to make it more effective in catalyzing sustainable growth. Below is an excerpt from his remarks.

I come to you today at a time of great crisis.  But as we work to turn this economy around, at the same time we are looking to the horizon, to lay the foundation for further growth. I believe that in crisis there is great opportunity. 

I would like to share my vision for the role HUD can play in creating the most sustainable communities and quality places across the country.  HUD can and will be a vehicle to advance sustainable growth in our metropolitan areas. Together, with the partnership of all of you, I know that we can make our vision of sustainability a reality for our communities and this nation.

Let’s be honest--HUD has become the Department of Subsidized Housing, and that must change.  We’ve got to put the "UD" (urban development) back in HUD.  At the outset, the design, location, and quality of housing have a dramatic effect on the quality of place.  The evidence proves that the concentration of low-rent housing in marginal areas--mostly inner city neighborhoods--has damaged the economic health and vitality of people and places across this country.  The "UD" in HUD reflects the understanding that many places in the United States are cut off from economic mainstream and need access to new initiatives and funding sources to jumpstart private market activity.  This is especially relevant today. 

As we look at the patterns of foreclosure across the country today, it is no coincidence that most of the neighborhoods with the highest foreclosure rates are some of the least sustainable places in this nation. (This includes) both the newer suburban areas that are disconnected from transit options, as well as the older urban centers, where residents are disconnected from educational and employment opportunities.  It is clear that there is a larger lesson to be learned from the current mortgage crisis about sustainable communities. There is also a larger lesson to learn about how HUD must change, given the larger scale demographic and credit shifts that have occurred in our country since HUD’s founding (in 1965). 

Now, more than ever before in our history, we live in global economy where capital is mobile and quality of place drives the free flow of capital.  People are increasingly moving to diverse places and capital is following.  In turn, quality of place, quality of life, and strong neighborhoods are becoming economic drivers for states and localities.  Cities have found new functions and roles in this global economy, partly because of an economy fueled by innovation, with new importance on institutions of learning and research.

The top 100 metropolitan areas alone house two-thirds of the American people and generate three-quarters of the U.S.gross domestic product. Cities are regaining their status, but in the context of 60 years of suburban and now exurban growth. More residents of small towns now find themselves part of the large labor markets that metropolitan areas represent.  As the boundaries of urban, suburban, and rural are blurred, the problems once seen as urban problems are now suburban and rural problems as well. 

HUD can play a role in helping metropolitan areas contest these challenges holistically, and end the legacy of city versus suburb that has had a racial dynamic as well.  The fact is that the economic geography and spatial landscape of the United States has altered considerably, and HUD must alter too.

We must partner with state and local governments, nonprofit organizations, and the private sector to support innovation. Local areas have been setting in place the structures and the foundations for future growth and we at HUD must support those efforts.  Ultimately, HUD and the federal government have to get out of the way and be a resource for localities that want to think in a more integrated way about their planning.  We have already started this kind of thinking and effort.

In our budget, we are changing the way we do business.  Our goal is simple: to rebuild what is a powerful agency, to advance not only our national agenda, but economic, environmental, energy, and social goals as well.  First, through an energy innovation fund that will invest in private financial instruments that will help capitalize the upfront costs of energy-efficient construction and retrofits, and by capitalizing savings that those retrofits will produce long-term into mortgage and equity financing. 

Our budget also includes the establishment of a sustainable communities initiative.  This will catalyze a new generation of metropolitan and rural efforts to integrate transportation, housing, and land use planning. To ensure that this collaboration occurs at HUD and other agencies, we created new a new Office of Sustainable Housing in Communities. This office will coordinate the efforts we are undertaking with the Department of Transportation (DOT).

The average American working family today spends close to sixty percent of its budget on housing and transportation costs. This is simply not sustainable, given the way that our metropolitan areas are expanding and developing.  Together with DOT, we will lower these costs and expand families’ choices for affordable housing and transportation by better coordinating our investments at the federal level.  Specifically, HUD and DOT, in the federal fiscal 2010 budget, will encourage regions to develop integrated housing and transportation plans that help reduce traffic congestion and increase transportation mobility. 

The goal of this initiative is not only to develop plans, but to set a vision that is tailored for metropolitan markets, and which brings federal housing, transportation, and infrastructure investments together in an integrated manner that supports the broader region. 

In our budget, we also recognize the need to continue the effort started under the successful Hope VI program to alleviate a concentration of poverty in inner city neighborhoods, fostered by poor planning.  This effort will help directly to achieve our goal of creating a geography of opportunity for all Americans.  We are requesting a substantial investment that will extend transformation projects beyond public housing and link housing with schools and early childhood innovation.  The funding will also be used to assist the construction of low income housing. 

In recent years, visionary and outreach are words that would have not been associated with HUD.  Many ask if we at HUD are really up the challenge of making this transformation a reality. The answer is yes, but only with your support and partnership in achieving our goals. HUD can be a vehicle for advancing sustainable growth patterns, but I think that our vision can only be achieved in partnership with the private sector.  That is why it is critical to bring on the best leadership from the public, nonprofit, and private sectors to assist in this transformation of HUD. 

For far too long, HUD has been a federal agency that focused on policy and programs, not people and places.  But under my leadership and with your partnership, HUD will become a federal partner that works with you, not against you, to foster creativity and innovation and encourage states and localities to do the same. 

In this moment of national crisis, we will put the "UD" back in HUD as we work to fix the housing crisis, and to more broadly create sustainable livable communities across the country.

NIMBY: Groups are Getting Smarter

In the recent edition of Forbes, the article "Nimby Wars" discusses how corporations are bringing in consulting groups who employ previous political campaign managers to fight zoning battles.

"Charging up to $300 an hour in an average $250,000 project, the Hingham, Mass. firm pulls in $30 million a year deploying political and media experts and lawyers on behalf of casinos, colleges, grocery and retail chains, medical groups, utilities and heavy industries."

Don't forget to check out the Forbes reader comments to this article.

Food for Thought

This post was written for The Ground Floor by Stephen Blank, senior resident fellow of Finance at the Urban Land Institute.

Steve Felix, head of Marketing for North America at Aviva Capital Management, Inc., publishes a blog in which he shares his perspective on the real estate industry and capital markets (and just about everything else). The following is a slightly "edited" (for clarity) version of his blog of October 4, 2008 in which he commented on "what he heard at the Pension Real Estate Association conference":

1. Liquidity is on the minds of almost all institutional investors.
2. Funny how quickly open-end funds turned from having a queue to get in to a queue to get out.
3. Some institutions are increasing their allocation to real estate to take advantage of dislocation or distress opportunities.
4. Is there [greater] liquidity in other asset classes vs. real estate?

One keynote [address] was delivered by Frederic Mishkin, an American economist and academic at the Columbia Business School. He was also a member of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System from 2006 to 2008.

1.   I'm as scared as I've ever been in my life about the economic situation.
2.   Sub-prime losses will be more than $1 trillion.
3.   What caused this?
a. financial innovation
b. asset price bubble
c. deterioration of balance sheets of financial institutions
4.   If you 'nail' the S.O.B.'s on Wall Street, you may do harm to the economy in general.
5.   A "let's get those rich bastards" attitude will destroy the economy.
6.   Restoring confidence is everything in solving the financial crisis.
7.   If we really screw this up, like the Japanese did, it'll take 10 years to recover.
8.   Medicare needs trillions to fix it; $700 billion—that's chump change.

Some stuff from another panel:

1.   I don't see a commercial real estate depression like the early 1990s.
2.   Opportunistic investors will be compensated for separating the 'good' bonds and loans from the 'bad' ones.
3.   The transfer of assets will be of biblical proportion.
4.   Going down to the lower levels of the capital structure you can buy at distressed prices where there is no distress.
5.   It's likely that a whole number of hedge funds will close up by December 31, 2008.

And [at] another panel:

1.   Global recession is a reality.
2.   The downturn will last 16 months.
3.   We are going to see the opportunities of a generation.
4.   I don't want to be the last man standing.
5.   Not only is the sky falling, it's gone lower than the earth's crust.
6.   Sixteen of the 20 headlines in the Wall Street Journal could have been the headline of your career.
7.   Panic is not necessarily wrong when it comes to making investing decisions.
8.   We see great opportunity in distressed residential mortgages.
9.   We can talk about whether GE will survive is almost unfathomable.
10. This is a generational change in America.

Construction Spending Falls Slightly

Ken Simonson’s May 29 -- June 3 issue of "The Data DIGest," reported that construction spending in April totaled $1.12 trillion at a seasonally adjusted annual rate (SAAR), down 0.4 percent from March and 3.9 percent from April 2007, the Census Bureau reported on Tuesday. Public construction spending slipped 0.3 percent for the month but rose 6.8 percent from April 2007; private residential spending plunged 2.3 percent and 21 percent; and private nonresidential spending climbed 1.6 percent and 15 percent.

Simonson, who is the chief economist at the Associated General Contractors of America, also noted that among private nonresidential categories, growth was notable for lodging, 7.6 percent and 45 percent; manufacturing, 3.5 percent and 25 percent; power, 2.9 percent and 33 percent; and office, 0.5 percent and 15 percent. Commercial (retail, warehouse and farm) construction was up 1.9 percent for the month but only 0.3 percent compared to April 2007.

The largest public category, educational, fell 0.3 percent for the month but rose 7.3 percent compared to April 2007, while highway and street construction inched up 0.1 percent from March and 5.2 percent from April 2007. New private single-family construction tumbled 4.4 percent for the month and 38 percent from a year ago; new multifamily rose 0.4 percent from March but slumped 13 percent from April 2007.

Price increases continue for construction materials. In the past few days, Simonson's Data DIGest readers reported immediate price increases for asphalt and aggregate; roofing products and metal wall panels, effective June 1-August 1; "a steel guardrail increase of 40 percent since February [and] rebar for concrete barrier jumped 23 percent in the last 30 days;" "a serious round of increases [for vinyl chloride resin for polyvinyl chloride (PVC), which] will impact pricing for plastic pipe, vinyl siding, vinyl flooring, and vinyl window pricing."

Former ULI Chairman New Dean at School of Design

Effective October 1, Marilyn Jordan Taylor will take over as dean of the School of Design at the University of Pennsylvania.

A partner in charge of the Urban Design and Planning Practice at Skidmore Owings & Merrill LLP, Taylor is the first woman to serve as chairman of the firm, is internationally known for her involvement in the design of large-scale urban projects and civic initiatives.

During a 35-year career with Skidmore Owings & Merrill, Taylor has led many of the firm’s largest and most complex projects around the world. She was also the first architect and the first woman to serve as chairman of ULI, where she championed a renewed focus on cities, sustainable communities and infrastructure investment.

Projects Taylor led with Skidmore Owings & Merrill’s Urban Design and Planning Practice include Columbia University's Manhattanville Master Plan, the East River Waterfront Master Plan, the reclamation of Con Ed's East River sites for mixed-use development, the new research building at Memorial Sloan-Kettering, and the new urban campus for John Jay College.

She also founded and leads Skidmore Owings & Merrill’s Airports and Transportation Practice, working on projects such as Terminal 4 at JFK airport, Continental Airlines at Newark and the expansion of Washington’s Dulles airport. Her international projects include SkyCity at Hong Kong International Airport and the Ben Gurion Airport in Tel Aviv. Taylor’s transit work has ranged from the award-winning Changi Airport Station in Singapore to the Transit-Friendly Land Use Handbook for New Jersey Transit.

In addition, Taylor has served as a member of The Partnership for New York City, president of the New York City chapter of the American Institute of Architects, and as a visiting professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Design. She is a founding member of the New York New Visions Design and Planning Coalition, and serves on the Advisory Board of the Penn Institute for Urban Research.

Moving Beyond 'Drive until you Qualify'

In a joint effort by the Chicago-based Center for Neighborhood Technology (CNT) and Washington, D.C.-based the Brookings Institute, an interactive mapping web tool -- the Housing + Transportation Affordability Index -- was developed to measure the true affordability of housing by applying transportation costs.

The tool provides housing and transportation costs as a percentage of income on a neighborhood-level basis for 52 metropolitan areas using 2000 U.S. Census data and analysis of household transportation costs.

Urban planners, policy-makers, and transportation and housing advocates measure housing affordability as 30 percent or less of household income. However, housing affordability is not always what it seems.

As Scott Bernstein, president for CNT explained during a presentation today at the Brookings Institute, the old adage of "drive until you qualify" is really no longer an appropriate measure of housing affordability. As gas prices increase along with suburban sprawl, much of the population is paying as much for transportation as they are housing.

Harnessing the Sun

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) will invest up to $13.7 million over three fiscal years (2008 – 2010) in 11 university-led projects focusing on developing advanced solar photovoltaic (PV) technology manufacturing processes and products. Combined with a minimum university and industry cost share of 20 percent, up to $17.4 million will be invested in these projects.

University projects have the potential to significantly reduce the cost of electricity produced by PV from current levels of $0.18-$0.23 per Kilowatt hour (kWh) to $0.05-$0.10 per kWh by 2015 -- a price that is competitive in markets nationwide, the DOE said. President Bush’s Solar America Initiative aims to make solar energy cost-competitive with conventional forms of electricity by 2015.

Each participating university will work with an industry partner to ensure the projects retain a commercialization focus and that results are quickly transitioned into market-ready products and processes.

Queen Noor of Jordan: A Woman on a Mission

This post was written by The Ground Floor contributor and ULI director of media relations, Marge Fahey.

Queen Noor of Jordan is on a mission to bring economic growth, sustainable development, and enhancement of human development through adequate health care and freedom of conflict and oppression to the Middle East.

"Democracy gives us the ability to achieve these goals in a local and global context," she told attendees at ULI’s fall meeting.

The queen acknowledged that her background in urban planning (she holds a B.A. in architecture from Princeton) was the best training she could have received for the work she is now doing.

Her love affair with the Middle East began in the 1970s when she went to Iran and saw conditions that led her to consider switching careers to journalism. Instead, through a quirk of fate, she moved to Jordan, consulted for King Hussein, fell in love with the late King and made the Middle East her home.

She was able to influence development in Jordan and improve conditions for the people. "I moved to the Middle East 30 years ago and was overwhelmed by the suffering," she said.

The Right Leader for the Right Reasons

ULI members got a lesson in leadership on the closing day of the Institute’s annual fall meeting from an expert on the subject –- Bill George, author of Authentic Leadership and True North. According to George, executive leadership in the United States has been slipping over the past several decades because "we have been choosing the wrong leaders for the wrong reasons," opting for those with charisma, rather than character; and basing decisions on image, rather than integrity.

True leadership, George said, is rooted in taking responsibility, not making money or power, and on a firm commitment to customer service. "If you don’t create better value for your customers, your competitors will, and you will be out of business," he said.

He urged ULI members to offer younger employees opportunities to lead and advance. "They are knowledge workers who probably know more than you do. They need an opportunity to make a difference…People have a right to the sense that they are making a difference with their work. When they feel that way, they will give you their hearts, not just their heads. Leadership in the 21^st century is about leading with a clear sense of purpose, not about getting people to follow you."