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Changes in the global economy, telecommunications and transportation systems are causing cities throughout the world to look at large-scale development projects as a way to restructure land uses and stimulate the local economy. For example, large, well-located areas previously occupied by railroad facilities and related transportation and industrial uses have been left abandoned in many mid-sized cities as more goods are now shipped in containers from a small number of major ports and terminals.
Statutory restrictions on state-owned enterprises have limited options to release these underutilized lands to the private market or to develop them as public projects. With increased privatization and the removal of restrictions, these properties would appear to be ideal locations for successful public/private development partnerships. However, while such monumental urban developments may seem like a panacea, they also raise many concerns about implementation and unanticipated impacts on other neighborhoods of the city, as well as competition with other cities.
Cordoba is representative of cities engaged in strategic planning to restructure local land uses under conditions of a changing macroeconomic and institutional environment. One of the key questions for these cities is to what extent can a major new development, in this case a teleport, effectively stimulate economic diversity and revitalize a neglected area.
Conditions in Cordoba
The City of Cordoba, with a population of approximately 1.3 million people, is strategically located in the geographic center of Argentina and has well-established linkages to the capital of Buenos Aires and to major cities in Chile, Brazil and Uruguay. Cordoba has long been an industrial center focusing on the production of cars, planes, trains and machinery, as well as consumer goods such as food, shoes, clothing and leather products. More recently, the city has expanded its service sector for both local and regional needs.
As Argentina has experienced economic stabilization and restructuring of its economy, Cordoba has gained greater potential to become a thriving center of Mercosur, the regional business district of south central South America. However, one of the city’s most vexing obstacles remains its competition with Buenos Aires.
Like many Latin American cities, Cordoba is also experiencing increased decentralization, movement toward a polycentric urban structure, and related socio-economic problems. Several years ago the city embarked on a strategic planning process that involved a broad cross-section of constituencies and resulted in a 1996 plan that identified some immediate economic development needs and other matters requiring further analysis and implementation.
As part of an ongoing collaboration between city officials and the Lincoln Institute, a seminar held in Cordoba in April 1997 examined the regulation and promotion of the land market. (1) One high-priority idea that emerged from those discussions related to the development of a teleport on underutilized central-city land. A committee formed to address the planning and implementation of such a facility included municipal officials, private sector business interests and members of the local university community.
The teleport envisioned for Cordoba is a mixed-use development comprising office space, convention facilities and hotels along with other ancillary land uses. The provision of state-of-the-art office facilities is considered a key objective to meet the city’s needs as both a regional center and a national location for some firms. These facilities will have elaborate telecommunications infrastructure and will be developed with a combination of public and private sector investment. One of the first projects is to be a hotel developed by the municipality within an historic structure.
The proposed location for the teleport is a 40-hectare site in the center of the city adjacent to the Suquia River. The site includes old railway lines and has good access to major roads linking the Mercosur region. The land is currently in both public and private ownership, and it is anticipated that some land transfers will be required to undertake the project.
Observations and Recommendations
To help the committee finalize its plans for the teleport, the city of Cordoba and the Lincoln Institute organized a second seminar in April 1998 to discuss concerns about implementation of the project. Comparative case studies of large-scale public/private developments in Toronto, Canada, and Sao Paulo, Brazil, provided useful perspectives on the problems and challenges faced by those cities and offered lessons for examining the design and likely prospects for the proposed teleport.
A key consideration is the teleport’s large scale relative to the existing local market, which suggests, at the very least, that the project needs to be phased in to ensure orderly development. Related to the project’s size are its impacts on other land in the city, including sites that have the potential for similar types of development. The relative attractiveness of the chosen site may adversely affect development of non-residential land uses in other designated growth areas of the city. At the same time, it is important to understand the depth and strength of the market for the specific uses intended for the proposed teleport site.
A related concern is the project’s potential negative impacts on existing and expanding residential neighborhoods in the area. On the other hand, the success of the teleport development could benefit the neighborhood if the residents are integrated into the planning and implementation process.
Among the lessons to be learned from other cities’ experience is the value of having a manageable set of objectives, and some seminar participants feared that the Cordoba committee was being overly ambitious. A second lesson regards the need for extreme care in selecting the location for a major new development. While the target location for the teleport was not considered deficient in any specific respect, it had not been selected as the result of a systematic analysis. Rather, this is a case where the city is trying to take advantage of an opportunity to develop a plan for an available site that urgently calls for reuse.
A third admonition came from the private sector, which has special needs in terms of access, infrastructure and costs. Some qualified market research can shed light on a host of issues including the extent to which Cordoba could hope to compete with Buenos Aires as a local or regional headquarters for domestic or international firms. Clearly the intended private sector beneficiaries must be involved directly in the conceptual development and planning of the project.
Several weeks after the seminar, the city commissioned a study to aid the implementation strategy for the teleport based on these concerns and recommendations. The study will also investigate potential instruments to effect land value capture to provide infrastructure financing and mechanisms to structure the kinds of public/private partnerships that appear to be necessary for the success of the teleport project.
A final general observation is that officials in Cordoba, or any city considering large-scale urban development, need to move rapidly beyond the study phase and establish training and other support systems for local leaders and practitioners to enhance their capacity to manage the project. Skills and experience are needed to assess the functioning of land markets, develop requisite technical capabilities, negotiate with the private sector, and oversee financial management, utility regulation, property taxation, land regulations and their complex interactions. The challenge in any such undertaking is to balance sufficient planning and research with the need to take advantage of development opportunities as they arise and to learn from the process as it evolves.
David Amborski is professor in the School of Urban and Regional Planning at Ryerson Polytechnic University in Toronto. Douglas Keare, a senior fellow of the Lincoln Institute, has experience with strategic planning for large cities in developing countries.
1. See “Strategic Planning in Cordoba,” Douglas Keare and Ricardo Vanella, Land Lines, September 1997.
Figure 1: Questions for Large-scale Developments
These topics and questions guided the seminar discussions in Cordoba, and they may be useful to other cities considering large-scale development projects on underutilized urban lands.
Understanding the Land Market: How will the local land market respond to large-scale public interventions such as the proposed teleport? What is the demand capacity for state-of-the-art office buildings in the region? What are the potential mechanisms for intervening in the land market to enhance the chances of success for this type of project?
The Urban Impacts of Large Projects on Underutilized Land: What are the impacts of this type of large-scale project on adjacent lands and competitive locations within the metropolitan area? How can infrastructure use be optimized? What alternatives could be explored to change the existing zoning structure?
Instruments of Promoting and Financing Private Investments in Urban Regeneration Projects: What financial instruments can be used in this type of development in conjunction with private sector participation? What instruments for private investments have been most successful? How can these be used with public/private partnerships? What benefits, disadvantages or complications might result from these partnerships?
Mechanisms of Redistribution and Land Value Capture: How can incremental land value be identified and estimated? How can land value capture schemes be used up front to finance the infrastructure for this project? What alternative instruments may be used for this purpose? What institutional reforms or partnerships might be necessary to implement these schemes and to serve as incentives for further development?
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Una versión más actualizada de este artículo está disponible como parte del capítulo 5 del libro Perspectivas urbanas: Temas críticos en políticas de suelo de América Latina.
México está comenzando a crear un entorno propicio para utilizar las plusvalías para fines del desarrollo. Las recientes reformas constitucionales y jurídicas han permitido un proceso más claro para la adjudicación y comercialización de la tierra. Los mercados de bienes raíces están suplantando gradualmente los rígidos arreglos para la tenencia de la tierra que hicieron surgir los mercados informales caracterizados por acuerdos confusos, a menudo arbitrarios, y por los altos costos de las transacciones. El sector privado se está enfocando hacia las áreas de viviendas de bajos ingresos y los arreglos entre el sector público y privado que buscan un desarrollo urbano equilibrado y sostenible.
El Estado de México ha lanzado un programa integral, llamado PRORIENTE, para promover la interacción entre el gobierno, las empresas y la comunidad con el fin de administrar y financiar conjuntamente el desarrollo urbano en la región oriental del estado. PRORIENTE tiene como visión la creación de “nuevas ciudades” alrededor de la megalópolis de Ciudad de México, que se caractericen por un crecimiento equilibrado entre la densificación demográfica, las actividades generadoras de ingresos y la protección del medio ambiente. La creación de empleos en los mismos asentamientos nuevos y en sus alrededores es un objetivo social y económico primordial del programa.
Dado el patrón intrincado de intereses involucrados, PRORIENTE ha adoptado un enfoque intersectorial e interjurisdiccional. De hecho, PRORIENTE requiere que el Estado de México tome la iniciativa para coordinar las políticas e instrumentos fiscales y de tierras entre el gobierno federal, el gobierno de oposición del Distrito Federal recién elegido y los numerosos municipios que en su mayoría están en control de los partidos de oposición.
PRORIENTE enfrenta enormes desafíos:
En vista de estos obstáculos y desafíos, los dirigentes de PRORIENTE han adoptado un enfoque participativo y negociador cuyos resultados empiezan a ser visibles. Las empresas han integrado conglomerados a gran escala capaces de cubrir las enormes necesidades de capital y tecnología de gestión que tiene la región. El gobierno federal, el Distrito Federal, los municipios y las comunidades son bienvenidos en la mesa de negociación para participar en un proceso continuo que nutre un programa en expansión y no una política o meta institucional específica.
El Instituto Lincoln reconoce que este proyecto constituye una excelente oportunidad para estudiar la compleja función de la tierra como factor estratégico para el desarrollo urbano en toda América Latina. En abril pasado, el Instituto coordinó un seminario sobre mercados urbanos en la ciudad de Toluca y sigue ejerciendo su función como caja de resonancia para los legisladores y oficiales ejecutores de políticas del Estado de México y demás actores públicos y privados que participan en PRORIENTE.
Además, un equipo del Instituto Lincoln coopera actualmente con otras instituciones y profesionales para intercambiar experiencias internacionales en lo que refiere al proceso de creación de políticas y el aspecto operativo del programa PRORIENTE. Se presta atención especial a la sustentabilidad y posibilidad de duplicación de las estrategias que facilitan la transición desde sistemas restrictivos de tenencia de la tierra, gestiones con deficientes impuestos a la propiedad y recursos fiscales sumamente centralizados, hacia mercados inmobiliarios competitivos e iniciativas locales para el uso de la tierra que fomenten el desarrollo. El Instituto utilizará esta experiencia en México para diseñar cursos en otros países que se encuentran en situaciones semejantes.
Fernando Rojas, docente invitado del Instituto Lincoln, es académico en el campo jurídico y analista de políticas públicas en Colombia. Anteriormente ha sido docente invitado en el Centro David Rockefeller para Estudios Latinoamericanos de la Universidad de Harvard. Alfonso Iracheta es secretario técnico de PRORIENTE y director de planeación del Estado de México.
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Driven by an awareness of population expansion and the difficulties that follow growth, Oregon’s Departments of Transportation and of Land Conservation and Development created the “Smart Development” program. The state retained Leland Consulting Group and Livable Oregon to define the goals of Smart Development, to identify obstacles to its execution and to enjoin the development community in discussions about how to implement its goals.
Smart Development is land use that:
In examining over 60 projects across the country that attempt comprehensive solutions to problems of urban growth, the consultant team looked at examples of “new urbanism,” as well as infill development, subdivisions, affordable housing, adaptive re-use and neighborhood revitalization. While common factors exist among all projects, none of the ones that are successful for their developers satisfy all Smart Development goals at once. The good news is that careful attention to local market conditions and demographics can result in successful projects that do satisfy many of these goals.
Why Smart Development Raises Financing Questions
Projects that satisfy some goals are unlikely to satisfy others because the goals may have different land use solutions which—when built in current markets—are in conflict. Proponents of neotraditional, transit-oriented, small-lot, pedestrian-oriented, mixed-use and grid-platted development have bundled these styles as a single concept. Developers and lenders do not understand the markets, values and risks for these hybrid products.
When we surveyed lenders about the factors that affect their decision to finance Smart Development projects, they explained unequivocally that financing of innovation required clear limits on the risk the lender could accept. While factors such as preleasing and on-site management were considered important, lenders strongly preferred working with a developer who had a track record, financial capacity and experience in the product type.
Lenders also expressed doubts about the willingness of the secondary market to lend on innovative projects. The problem is not innovation in physical design itself, but lenders’ anxieties about FannieMae’s “pass-through” requirement: the bank is financially responsible for the project through foreclosure of the asset. FannieMae support does not insulate the bank from the risk of default. Since banks do not want to own real estate, innovative project types that cannot show strong track records cause anxiety that is not allayed by securitization.
Overcoming the Obstacles
There are three technical obstacles to financing Smart Development:
A fourth obstacle is financial, relating to the first phase provision of new infrastructure.
Appraisal and Comparables: Standard appraisals usually focus on the housing product without accounting for the economic value produced by higher quality infrastructure, adjacent services, pedestrian amenities, and access to transit. By comparing only housing units, appraisals allot them the value that they would have in adjoining subdivisions that contain none of the amenities. Yet, new projects that we reviewed were often higher in price than the surrounding market. The quality of new designs may justify pricing, but appraisals based on the local area did not support the same percentage of purchase price as for nearby units. Smart Development projects also required proportionately higher cash down-payments, making the units harder to buy (and harder for the developer to sell).
It must be emphasized that Smart Development features are positive attributes that have long-term effects on value. Appraisal is regularly performed involving regression equations to model the economic value of positive externalities and could be applied to this area to produce new standards for evaluation of Smart Development. This process needs research but is well within the professional purview of the appraisal community.
New Market Studies: Smart Development, with its sophisticated land use and concepts such as inclusion of retail into subdivision development, attracts different demographic groups than standard development. Income levels per capita are higher, household sizes are smaller, and the use of transit and other services per person is often greater.
To overcome feasibility and appraisal obstacles, it is useful to consider Smart Development not as a single market concept but as a series of land use solutions that incorporate traditional real estate products in innovative ways. The market for the products can then be assessed in the same way as existing similar land uses that have attracted the demographic groups noted above—older neighborhoods with the sort of land use proposed in these projects. Through this method it is possible to avoid the pitfalls of “trend” studies that are unable to assess the market for new products.
Presentation of Smart Development to Lenders: The business plan for new products describes how products were arrived at in response to market niches and supporting demographics and sales potential. Every aspect of the business is revealed: project principals and roles; financial structure; applied start-up capital; reserves for operational deficits; and projections of revenues, cash flows and profits. The plan illustrates potential risks and suggests mitigations for risk should conditions not meet expectations.
Presentation of real estate development is typically done through market trend studies and architectural drawings. Neither of these modes addresses the issues raised in a business plan. It may be worthwhile for proactive lenders to consider offering assistance with business planning and presentation of innovative projects to alleviate the anxieties of capital investors and loan boards.
First Phase Financial Feasibility: In many western U.S. cities, grid street plans were built by the city and then builders provided the houses. After World War II, American cities stopped creating streets and the developers began providing the local infrastructure. The major public infrastructure dollars were funneled through federal agencies into regional infrastructure improvements (freeways) which sped private development into fringe areas.
It is now understood that highways and major arterials do not eliminate congestion but rather act as a subsidy for congestion-producing development. New requirements for grid streets, pedestrian amenities, sidewalks and parking strips with trees can make development either unaffordable to median buyers or financially infeasible, and there are no local support mechanisms equal to the magnitude of highway funding.
If the goals of Smart Development are serious social goals, then some level of first phase credit enhancement in exchange for fulfillment of social goals is appropriate. Such credit enhancement would serve to produce land use with the long-term benefits of lowered social cost through reduction of congestion and auto use and a better quality of life.
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Edward H. Starkie, principal, and Bonnie Gee Yosick, associate, conduct economic analysis and research on downtown redevelopment for Leland Consulting Group, 325 Northwest 22nd Street, Portland, OR 97210; 503/222-1600.
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From the earliest days of the Republic, civic boosters have prodded American governments to develop large-scale physical facilities—mega-projects, we label them—ranging from canals and railroads in the nineteenth century to rail transit systems and convention centers today. Until the mid-twentieth century, such projects tended to involve modest public expenditures by contemporary standards and they rarely caused significant disruption of the existing urban fabric.
This pattern altered abruptly in the 1950s and early 1960s. Central city economies had, with rare exceptions, stagnated through the Great Depression and World War II, and they continued to do so in the early postwar years. Local business and political leaders concluded that if central cities—particularly those developed prior to the auto age—were ever to thrive again, they would require major surgery. Specifically, they needed to clear slums to provide large downtown sites for redeveloped office districts; to facilitate high-speed automotive movement between suburban and central city locations; and to provide larger airfields with attractive terminals for the nascent commercial aviation industry.
Recognizing that they could not finance these expensive projects with locally generated funds, urban leaders campaigned aggressively for federal assistance, and they were successful in obtaining considerable amounts of funding. We attribute their success mainly to the following factors: (1) public confidence in government was unusually high in the postwar period; (2) business leaders generally accepted the need for government activism to sustain prosperity; and (3) although cities lacked the political clout to secure expensive programs on their own, they were able to participate in much broader coalitions—most notably, those focused on housing (which expanded to include urban renewal) and highways. Urban aviation advocates were less successful, but as aviation traffic boomed they were able to fund new airports and expand old ones by relying primarily on revenues from landing fees and terminal leases.
During the late 1950s and the 1960s these efforts combined to produce an unprecedented wave of urban public investment. While often successful on their own terms, these projects tended to be highly disruptive as well, destroying in particular vast amounts of low-income housing and urban parkland. Project advocates maintained that the public should accept such impacts to advance the greater good. Robert Moses, New York’s famed master builder, never tired of citing a French proverb: “You can’t make an omelet without breaking eggs” (Caro 1974).
During the late 1960s and early 1970s, however, neighborhood activists allied with those involved in the emerging environmental movement against the full panoply of mega-project programs that had come into being during the 1950s. They succeeded not just in blocking large numbers of planned expressways, renewal schemes and airport projects, but also in securing the adoption of numerous statutes, regulations and judicial doctrines, thus strengthening the hands of critics in urban development controversies. For a time it seemed to most observers that the era of mega-project investment in cities was over.
“Do No Harm” Planning
The forces committed to mega-projects have proven highly resilient and adaptive, however. While the character of such investment has changed dramatically since the 1970s, its volume has remained high. Nevertheless, mega-project advocates have had to work within new constraints; they have had to learn the art of making omelets without leaving a residue of broken eggs. We label this art, as exercised in the domain of urban land use, “do no harm” planning. Its essential components are the selection, siting and design of projects to minimize disruptive side effects, and the aggressive mitigation of any harmful impacts that cannot be avoided entirely. Most obviously, governments have ceased clearing slums and building expressways through developed neighborhoods, and only one major new passenger airport—in Denver—has been constructed since the early 1970s.
Public investment in facilities such as rail transit systems, festival retail markets, sports stadiums and arenas, and convention centers has surged. Within the transportation sector, moreover, investment priorities have shifted toward the reconstruction of existing highways, new construction on suburban fringes and airport terminals rather than runway improvements. The great advantage of such projects is that they are relatively easy to site either at some distance from existing development or in older commercial districts that have few preservationist defenders.
Where cities and states have gone forward with major highway and airport projects, they have taken extraordinary steps to minimize social and environmental impacts. The new Denver airport, for example, is on a previously rural 53-square-mile site 25 miles east of downtown. Its location and scale were determined primarily by two considerations: land assembly without the disruption of existing residential enclaves; and future airport operation without significant noise impacts overflowing the airport boundary. Boston’s $14.6 billion Central Artery/Tunnel project, known colloquially as “The Big Dig,” appears very different, in that it is located in the heart of downtown, but it is virtually identical in its do no harm planning orientation. It is almost entirely underground as it passes close to built-up areas (replacing a previous elevated roadway); it has been threaded into the urban fabric without the taking of a single home; and it will add significantly to the city’s parkland.
Common Themes
In addition to do no harm planning, our review of mega-projects built over the past two decades identified the following themes as particularly salient.
Business Support
While insufficient by itself, strong business support has generally been an indispensable condition for mega-project development. Within the business community, leadership has almost invariably come from enterprises with deep local roots, particularly in real estate ownership, development and finance. The strongest supporters of Denver’s new airport, for example, were those who owned property with commercial development potential near the new site; downtown businesses concerned that the city’s existing airport was too small to allow for the region’s continued development; and the banks and financial service firms that had lent money to many of the city’s property owners and developers. Similarly, the most active and effective support group for Boston’s Big Dig has been the Artery Business Committee, a coalition of those who own major buildings adjacent to the artery’s corridor and several major employers with historic roots in downtown Boston.
Public Entrepreneurs
In addition to well-mobilized constituencies, aggressive, deft government officials have been indispensable to the success of recent mega-project proposals. Indeed, it was frequently they who originated project ideas and first sparked the formation of supportive coalitions. Even when others initiated, they commonly took the lead in crafting strategies, tactics and plans; in lobbying for state and federal aid; in securing other types of needed legislation and regulatory approvals; and in dealing with project critics.
Though business groups initiated some projects, they seemed more frequently to “invest” in proposals originated by public entrepreneurs. The business constituents were by no means easy marks, of course. Like venture capitalists in the private sector, they considered a great many ideas brought to them by public entrepreneurs (and others), but invested only in those few that looked particularly good for their enterprises, were to be carried out mainly or entirely at public expense, and had a reasonable chance of securing the myriad approvals required.
Illustratively, Boston’s Big Dig was conceived by Fred Salvucci, a transportation engineer who had become active in battles against planned highway and airport projects during the 1960s and then served as transportation secretary for twelve years under Governor Michael Dukakis. During the first Dukakis administration (1975–1979) the main constituencies for a new harbor tunnel (business) and for depressing the central artery (neighborhood and environmental groups) were at loggerheads. While temporarily out of office from 1979 to 1983, however, Salvucci concluded that the politically feasible strategy might be to marry these projects, while also relocating the tunnel to an alignment far from a neighborhood that it had historically threatened. This strategy in fact resolved the local controversy, and prepared the way for a successful campaign for massive federal aid, led again by Salvucci with critical business support.
Denver Mayor Federico Peña broke a similar type of logjam that had persisted for years over whether to expand Denver’s existing Stapleton Airport or build a new facility on a large site outside the city’s borders. Concluding that the obstacles, both political and environmental, to expanding Stapleton were insuperable, but that city ownership and operation of any new airport remained a critical objective, he negotiated successfully with adjacent Adams County for a massive land annexation. To achieve this objective, he accepted conditions protecting county residents from significant airport noise and guaranteeing Adams County most of the tax benefits that would flow from economic development around the new airport. With local agreements in hand he, like Salvucci, then led a successful campaign for special federal assistance.
Mitigation
Do no harm plans avoid substantial neighborhood and environmental disruption but it is impossible to build a mega-project with no negative side effects. The commitment of do no harm planning is to ameliorate such impacts as much as possible, and to offset them with compensatory benefits when full direct mitigation cannot be achieved. The boundary between mitigating harm and providing net benefits to protesting groups is often indistinct, however, so the norm of mitigation provides leverage as well for skilled activists whose demands are at times tangential to the mega-projects whose budgets they seek to tap. Mega-project champions in turn reflected on the fate of such projects as New York City’s proposed Westway, which failed because of what seemed at first a minor legal challenge. They were deathly afraid of litigation and were frequently willing to make very expensive concessions in return for agreements by critics not to sue.
During permitting for the Big Dig, for example, Boston’s Conservation Law Foundation (CLF), a group whose signature strategy was litigation for environmental purposes, threatened to sue unless the state committed to accompany the highway project with a multi-billion dollar set of rail transit investments, mainly for expansion. CLF’s rationale was that the transit projects would prevent the new road from filling up with traffic, which in turn would generate more air pollution. Modeling done for the project (as well as data from other regions) showed that the Big Dig would not in fact have significant air pollution effects, and that investing in rail transit extensions would be a particularly inefficient way to offset pollution effects if they did occur. Nonetheless, both Democratic and Republican state administrations acquiesced to CLF’s demands because they did not want to risk litigation, which at the very least threatened project delays and might also have imperiled the breadth of local consensus in support of the Big Dig.
Bottom-up Federalism
A naïve observer of American politics might assume that the federal government distributes grants to achieve national goals. In fact, however, the grantor-grantee relationship is usually much more complicated than that. Recipient jurisdictions are typically active participants in the coalitions that bring new programs into being and provide them with critical support each budget season. The programs of aid for mega-project investment that we examined were all distinguished more by their openness to local initiative than their sharp definition of national purpose. If grantee jurisdictions had a great deal of influence collectively on program structure, moreover, they had even more when it came to projects, and they were able to exercise it individually.
Every project we studied was initiated by subnational officials and interest groups, and it was they who took the lead at every stage in the decision process. While limited in their discretion by federal program rules, they were alert as well to opportunities for securing waivers, statutory amendments and add-on funds, with the assistance of their congressional delegations. Stated another way, when federal aims are diffuse and weakly defended, principal-agent theory (as applied to the intergovernmental system) needs to be read bottom-up rather than top-down.
High and Rising Costs
Do no harm designs and related mitigation agreements have tended to produce projects that are vastly more expensive than their historic predecessors. According to Brian Taylor (1995), the average cost per centerline mile of urban freeways rose by more than 600 percent in real terms from the 1960s to the 1980s, and costs were even more extreme in some of the mega-projects we examined. Whereas Taylor found that urban freeways cost on average about $54 million per centerline mile (in 2002 dollars) in the 1980s, for example, the Big Dig cost $1.9 billion per centerline mile. Judith Grant Long (2002) reports in a similar vein that the average cost of new stadiums and arenas more than quadrupled in real terms from the 1950s to the 1990s, and we have calculated that light rail development costs increased by nearly two-fifths from the 1980s to the 1990s.
Both older and more recent projects have been marked by a consistent pattern of substantial cost increases between authorization and completion. The projected cost of Boston’s Big Dig, for example, has roughly tripled in real terms since its approval by Congress as an interstate highway project in 1987. The cost of Denver International Airport more than doubled from the late 1980s, when it received voter approval and its federal funding commitments, to its completion six years later.
While a full study of this issue was beyond the scope of our work, we judge that the consistent pattern of underestimation has two primary causes. First, project advocates have very strong incentives to estimate optimistically as they seek political commitments of support. Second, mega-projects are often so complex—both technically and in terms of the mitigation agreements that will often prove necessary to keep them on track—that early cost estimates are typically little more than guesses within very broad ranges.
Locally Painless Project Funding
The hallmark of successful mega-project financing is that projects should appear costless, or nearly so, to the great majority of local voters. The easiest way to achieve this result is to rely on funding from higher-level governments. Where such aid is unavailable or insufficient, the challenge is to identify other sources of revenue to which local voters are generally insensitive—which means, above all, avoiding local property and income taxes and spreading the burden beyond host city residents.
This challenge became increasingly salient after 1970 with rising antitax sentiment, the end of federal renewal aid, and the surge in capital spending for such facilities as stadiums, arenas and convention centers, for which federal aid was only rarely available. In the growing domain of mass transit, moreover, federal matching ratios have tended to decline since 1980.
The revenue strategies adopted to deal with these challenges have been varied and ingenious. New terminals and runways at major airports have been funded largely by increased landing fees, lease payments, and (since the early 1990s) ticket surcharges authorized by the federal government but imposed locally. Stadiums, arenas and convention centers are commonly funded by taxes that fall mainly on nonresidents, such as taxes on hotel rooms, car rentals and restaurant bills. Where broad-based taxes have been unavoidable, the preferred method has been incremental add-ons to sales taxes, which typically require voter approval. Voters have often said no, but sales tax increases provide large amounts of revenue when they are adopted—and when they are not, project advocates routinely come back with revised plans. In Los Angeles and Seattle, for example, transit advocates responded to referendum defeats by scaling back their rail plans and allocating some of the projected revenue to bus service and local road improvements.
Looking to the Future
Almost two decades ago, when New York City’s ambitious Westway project died even though its backers had helped pioneer the do no harm planning and design paradigm, then-Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan wondered whether it had become so difficult to build public projects that “Central Park could not conceivably be built today” (Finder 1985). Recent history suggests, however, that the mega-project impulse remains strong. The pertinent question is not whether the U.S. political system can still generate mega-projects but whether the projects that go forward are typically worth their costs to taxpayers.
In general, economists are skeptical about the cost-effectiveness of the most prominent mega-projects, from the Big Dig to the scores of rail transit systems, professional sports facilities and convention centers, built over the past 25 years. Project advocates invariably retort that the economists miss intangible project benefits such as fostering community pride and (in the case of transit, particularly) strengthening the likelihood of smart growth practices in new development. The national coalitions in support of highway and airport improvements, which economists tend to rate more favorably than other types of projects, have argued vociferously that current environmental rules and opportunities for critics to litigate are too onerous and should be relaxed.
There is no easy resolution of these issues because they involve tradeoffs between important, deeply held values. However, our review of a half-century of public works projects in urban areas has left us with three clear impressions. First, states and localities should be required to bear half or more of the cost of projects they undertake, because great windfalls of earmarked money from higher levels of government tend to overwhelm serious local deliberation. Second, strong environmental regulation helps ensure that local pro-growth coalitions do not leave fouled environments or devastated neighborhoods in their wake. Finally, while referenda are in general a flawed instrument of policy making, the evidence seems to suggest that the requirement of voter approval for major local projects tends to have a salutary effect on the bargaining between business groups that stand to benefit financially from the proposed investments and the more general interests of local taxpayers and residents.
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Alan Altshuler and David Luberoff are the coauthors of Mega-Projects: The Changing Politics of Urban Public Investment. Altshuler is the Stanton Professor of Urban Policy at the Kennedy School of Government and the Graduate School of Design (GSD) at Harvard University, and director of the Kennedy School’s Taubman Center for State and Local Government. Luberoff is the Taubman Center’s associate director and an adjunct lecturer at GSD.
References
Caro, Robert A. 1974. The power broker: Robert Moses and the fall of New York. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.
Finder, Alan. 1985. Westway: A road that was paved with mixed intentions, losing confidence and opportunities. New York Times, September 22, sec. 4, 6.
Long, Judith Grant. 2002. Full count: The real cost of pubic funding for major league sports facilities and why some cities pay more to play. Ph.D. dissertation, Harvard University.
Taylor, Brian. 1995. Public perceptions, fiscal realities, and freeway planning: The California case.
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A conservation easement is private land, held by a private nonprofit corporation (typically a land trust) or a government agency. Though conservation easements are perceived as a win-win land protection strategy, there are several downfalls in their design—requiring this fairly new real estate law to come under increased scrutiny.
Conservation easements leave the land in private ownership and often achieve the goals of land protection without regulation or adversity, and usually without any government oversight. There is often concern that the terms of the conservation easement will be honored and that the conservation easement holder will have the capacity and resolve to monitor, enforce and defend the restrictions of the conservation easement in perpetuity, as conservation easements promise.
Because conservation easements are privately held property, most states have no public registry for conservation easements, no particular legal structure and no public review, transparency or accountability concerning their design, monitoring, enforcement, defense or stewardship.
This article identifies issues with the current practices for conservation easements and seeks solutions for the future of the conservation easement. Should their be standards enforced by federal or state governments? Should more responsibility be placed on the land owners? How would new regulations affect the use of the land? If conservation easements are to serve future generations as is their promise, they will have to resolve the issues they face.
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No recent happening in land conservation rivals the deployment from coast to coast of conservation easements. Beyond tax and other public subsidies, one of the driving forces favoring this phenomenon is that conservation easements are perceived as a win-win strategy in land protection, by which willing landowners work with private land trusts or government agencies to provide lasting protection for portions of the American landscape. Conservation easements leave land in private ownership, while allowing the easement holder (the land trust or agency) to enforce voluntary, contracted-for, often donated but increasingly paid-for restrictions on future uses of the easement-encumbered property. Conservation easements are often welcomed as achieving the goals of land protection without regulation or adversity, and usually without any government oversight.
At the same time, the rapid increase in the use of conservation easements raises the concern that they may present something of a time bomb that requires preventive action. Most of the laws and conventions concerning conservation easements were created at a time when no one could have foreseen their explosive growth and complexity. These laws and conventions require well-considered approaches to reform, lest we ultimately risk losing the public benefits that we thought conservation easements would secure in the future.
Definitions
A “conservation easement” (in some states referred to as a conservation restriction or similar term) is a set of permanently enforceable rights in real property, held by a private nonprofit corporation (typically a land trust) or a government agency. These rights impose a negative servitude (in other words, a set of promises not to do certain things) on the encumbered land, and they are permanently enforceable by the easement holder. Conservation easements are a relatively recent invention of real estate law and are enabled by statute in virtually every state.
A “land trust” is a loosely defined concept that usually includes at least two basic elements. First, it is a private, nonprofit charitable corporation incorporated under the laws of a state and qualified as tax-exempt and entitled to receive tax-deductible donations under section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code. Second, depending on state law, a land trust’s mission, but not necessarily its exclusive or even primary one, is the conservation of land.
The Public Stake in Conservation Easements
Why should the public, and therefore its government at all levels, care about how conservation easements are created and managed? One reason is that virtually every conservation easement is associated with a significant public subsidy. Although most easements are donated by private landowners to private land trusts, they almost always result in public subsidies in the form of income tax deductions to the easement donors. In many cases a further subsidy comes in the form of reduced real property and estate taxes in the future. Increasingly, conservation easements are being purchased with public money, sometimes on a grand scale involving millions of dollars.
The public should care about how its money is being spent, whether it is being spent for something of long-term public benefit, and whether it is being spent efficiently; that is, the public should be interested in whether it is getting a fair public bang for its buck.
Beyond the public’s financial investment, its interest in conservation easements as a form of charitable trust transcends the interests of the private parties to the transaction. Further, some conservation easements guarantee public access to the property, such as for hiking or scenic enjoyment, giving the public an added stake in the long-term security of the easement. In the case of conservation easements granted by developers as a quid pro quo for regulatory permits, these easements may also comprise a public investment because they are part of the consideration in exchange for the right to proceed with a project that may cause environmental harm. Finally and not least importantly, the public has an abiding concern in the orderly future of legal understandings and the stability of interests in real estate.
In sum, when a conservation easement is created there is a legitimate public interest and concern that the terms of the easement will be honored and that the easement holder will have the capacity and resolve to monitor, enforce and defend the restrictions of the easement in perpetuity, as conservation easements promise. Indeed, the very purpose of state and federal laws that support and subsidize the creation of conservation easements is that the public interest is intended to permanently benefit from them.
Trends and Problems
Rapid growth. The attractiveness of conservation easements is demonstrated by the explosive growth of land trusts established to accept easements. Land trusts have become a big business in America, both for their vast holdings of conservation easements and other properties and for their increasing memberships and finances. Even so, many land trusts have come into existence only during the past 15 years and operate at a local level. While land trust creation continues to increase rapidly, an important policy question is whether the ever-expanding number of small land trusts throughout the nation is something that is good for our (and their) future.
The Land Trust Alliance (LTA), an organization that serves many land trusts nationwide, reported in its national census that between 1998 and 2003 the number of local and regional land trusts increased 26 percent from 1,213 to 1,526; the number of conservation easements held by these land trusts grew from 7,400 to nearly 18,000; and the area covered by these easements expanded from nearly 1.4 million acres to more than 5 million acres (Land Trust Alliance 2004; see Figures 1 and 2). In addition, there are a number of national organizations, such as The Nature Conservancy and the American Farmland Trust, that hold additional thousands of conservation easements. Untold thousands of easements also are held by federal, state and local governments.
Often land trusts and government agencies alike focus on, publicize and celebrate the accumulating numbers of conservation easements in their portfolios, as well as the numbers of acres that they cover, without equivalent regard for the quality of the easements or of the lands they protect. Since conservation easements bring with them long-term and costly responsibilities for the holder in monitoring, stewardship, enforcement and defense, this focus on numbers can be short-term thinking that leads to long-term problems.
Lack of uniformity. The terms of conservation easements are infinitely variable. Calling something a conservation easement tells one nothing about what protections it affords or even what legal boilerplate it includes. Many conservation easement advocates extol the virtues of this flexibility, since it allows the landowner and easement holder to tailor each easement to their mutual interests.
However, this increasing variability of conservation easements inevitably will result in more problems over time for both easement holders and future successions of landowners in understanding, undertaking, monitoring, defending and upholding all of the legal rights and responsibilities of each easement. Heightening this effect is the fact that many conservation easements are increasingly negotiated, nuanced and complex agreements, leaving even legal experts challenged in easement preparation, interpretation, oversight and enforcement.
Valuation issues. The valuation problem for conservation easements arises in two forms: the opportunity for excessive claims of income, estate and property tax deductions or reductions; and uncertainty as to the societal and cost-benefit calculus of each easement. The valuation of donated conservation easements has become a major cause for alarm by the Internal Revenue Service, which says that it will be applying an increasingly watchful eye on the deductions taken for these donations. However, part of the problem may be that the IRS has not been precise enough in stating how conservation easement appraisals should be undertaken.
Even if the IRS adopts a more rigorous approach to easement appraisal in the future, it will never be in a good position to determine whether each easement, for which a charitable deduction is taken, is worthy in terms of conferring a public benefit commensurate with the public subsidy. That task must be undertaken by others, starting with the land trust or other easement holder and embracing some degree of broader public participation.
Lack of legal standards. While conservation easements are intended to be permanent servitudes on privately held property, most states have no public registry for conservation easements, no particular legal structure and no public review, transparency or accountability with respect to their design, monitoring, enforcement, defense or stewardship. Accordingly, there may be a growing disconnect, or perhaps it is a correlation, between the massive deployment of these new interests in real estate, their nearly infinite variability and the multitude of new-born land trusts that hold them on the one hand, and the largely undisciplined laws and conventions that govern them on the other.
In sum, potential legal and other reforms should be considered to respond to many diverse issues related to conservation easements.
This state of affairs, already evident in many thousands of conservation easements, cannot serve future generations well. Under the present laws and conventions, how can we expect holders of these easements and succeeding generations of landowners to understand, no less attend to, the often subtle differences in their terms and to comply with, uphold, defend and enforce conservation easements forever?
Although the nearly exponential trends in the deployment of conservation easements may be heartening to many in the land conservation community, they also pose equivalent challenges that require critical examination and consideration of reform. The evident solution is to create standards for conservation easements and their holders that are more uniform, explicit, publicly transparent and rigorous. Doing so would be in the long-term best interests of those in the conservation easement community and the public at large.
Potential Solutions
Among the general approaches to reform are changes to federal tax laws; greater state oversight of conservation easements and their holders; increased self-regulation by the land trust community; consolidation and networking of land trusts; and greater supervision of conservation easements and their holders by funding sources. The purpose of advancing these reform ideas is to create more predictability and stability in the design and long-term management of conservation easements, so there can be a greater degree of assurance that these new inventions of real estate law will deliver on the promises that they make to future generations.
The most universal approach to reform would be to create more rigorous IRS standards for conservation easements, their appraisals and their holders, so there is greater assurance that their public subsidy will result in conservation easements that are permanently monitored and enforced. A second and complementary approach would be for the National Conference of Commissioners, which gave birth to the Uniform Conservation Easement Act in 1981, to reconvene and consider the issues that went unresolved in its earlier work. A third approach would be for each state to consider amendments to its conservation easement enabling act that respond to these issues. Finally, the Land Trust Alliance is already making efforts to inform and encourage its members to take affirmative but voluntary action to resolve many of these concerns.
Even while considering needed change, these reforms should not impose unreasonable transaction costs on conservation easements. The goal is to select reforms that are efficient in making a difference. At the same time, it is important to consider the tremendous and increasing public subsidies of conservation easements, their opportunity costs and potential effects on government regulatory and land acquisition programs. This scrutiny is not a condemnation of conservation easements, but rather is aimed at articulating issues and possible reforms that can make easements deliver their promises.
Conclusions
This should be an uneasy time for those in the conservation easement community. Because of alleged abuses widely reported by the media, both Congress and the IRS are investigating easement practices by their donors and holders. Congressional proposals are emerging to substantially reduce tax incentives for donations of conservation easements. The time is right to explore potentially useful reforms of all kinds in order to avoid throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
The principal source of many issues with conservation easements is the laws and conventions that govern these interests in real estate, which were created at a time when no one could have anticipated the explosive growth of easements and land trusts. While national organizations like the Land Trust Alliance have shown outstanding leadership in devising and promoting standards, practices and other assistance for land trusts, these standards are purely voluntary, and land trusts have no legal obligation to follow them. Moreover, in some cases the worst problems with respect to long-term management of conservation easements involve understaffed or inattentive government holders.
How dire is the future of conservation easements? Just as conservation easements are intended to endure, each of the problems reported here will have its day, and some already have. When evaluating the effectiveness of conservation easements under the prevailing legal structure, perhaps the best answer is that the jury will be out for 100 years, but one should be sufficiently concerned about a possibly adverse verdict to consider these issues and ways to resolve them.
If conservation easements are to serve future generations as is their promise, they will have to live up to three essential principles.
With these principles in mind, there are many approaches to resolving the issues presented by conservation easements. However, to fashion the solutions one must first acknowledge the problems. If ever we are to take action to assure the future of conservation easements, the time to do so may never be better, nor easier, than now.
Jeff Pidot is a visiting fellow at the Lincoln Institute, on leave from his work as chief of the Natural Resources Division of the Maine Attorney General’s Office, a position he has held since 1990. He has been an active participant in the land trust movement in Maine and has a wealth of experience with conservation easements in both his professional and volunteer work. While at the Lincoln Institute, he is researching and writing about the challenges of conservation easements and reforms that may be considered to meet these challenges.
His working paper, Reinventing Conservation Easements: A Critical Examination and Ideas for Reform, is available on the Institute’s website.
Reference
Land Trust Alliance. 2004. National Land Trust Census. November 18 http://www.lta.org/census/index.shtml
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Faculty Profile of Fernanda Furtado
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Eduardo Reese, arquitecto que se especializa en planeamiento urbano y regional, es el subadministrador del Instituto de la Vivienda de la Provincia de Buenos Aires, Argentina. En cargos profesionales anteriores, fue asesor técnico para los planes maestros de más de 20 ciudades en argentina; Secretario de Políticas Socioeconómicas del Ministerio de Desarrollo Humano y Laboral de la Provincia de Buenos Aires; asesor al Consejo de Planeamiento Urbano de la Ciudad de Buenos Aires; y Secretario de Planeamiento en la ciudad de Avellaneda.
Reese es docente en el Instituto del Conurbano de la Universidad Nacional del General Sarmiento en Buenos Aires. Actualmente es profesor de gestión urbana en el programa de grado en urbanismo en dicha universidad. También enseña desarrollo urbano en programas de maestría de la Faculta de Arquitectura, Urbanismo y Diseño de la Universidad de La Plata, así como en universidades de Mar del Plata y Córdoba. Además, dirige el plan maestro de la cuenca Matanza-Riachuelo en Buenos Aires.
Land Lines: ¿Cómo se involucró usted en el Programa para América Latina del Instituto Lincoln?
Eduardo Reese: Mi relación con el Programa se remonta a 1997, cuando estábamos elaborando el plan de la ciudad de Córdoba, que incluyó la formulación de diferentes proyectos urbanos de gran escala. En ese momento el Instituto colaboró activamente para ampliar el debate de los impactos de estos proyectos sobre el mercado de suelo y, consecuentemente, en la configuración de la ciudad. Posteriormente, me fui integrando en diversas actividades del Instituto, y hace cuatro años asumí la coordinación de los cursos anuales de Gestión del Suelo en Grandes Proyectos Urbanos, a partir del fallecimiento de Mario Lungo, quien había dirigido ese programa desde su inicio.
En el 2004, el Programa y el Instituto del Conurbano de la Universidad Nacional de General Sarmiento, realizamos en conjunto el curso Mercados de Suelo: Teoría e instrumentos para la gestión de políticas, el cual fue la primera actividad del Programa para América Latina y el Caribe que implicó un programa de formación de siete meses para 50 alumnos argentinos. Esa experiencia educativa ayudó a formar una masa crítica de técnicos y profesionales con una visión innovadora y diferente respecto de la gestión de las políticas de suelo. El impacto de ese curso se ha reflejado en decisiones de políticas urbanas en diferentes municipalidades (tales como San Fernando y Morón en el Gran Buenos Aires); en la constitución en Argentina del Movimiento de Reforma Urbana en 2005; y en cambios académicos en el mismo Instituto del Conurbano.
Land Lines: ¿Qué rol puede jugar un proyecto urbano en la calidad de vida de una ciudad en el contexto latinoamericano?
Eduardo Reese: Las grandes operaciones o proyectos urbanísticos sobre sectores definidos de la ciudad (tanto en áreas centrales como en las periferias) han sido grandes protagonistas del urbanismo contemporáneo en el último cuarto de siglo. En América Latina se cuenta hoy con un amplio muestreo de experiencias y proyectos, aunque todavía se requiere una reflexión teórica más rigurosa. Algunos ejemplos importantes son los proyectos del Portal del Bicentenario en Santiago de Chile; los proyectos urbanos integrales en Medellín, Colombia; las operaciones urbanas en diferentes ciudades de Brasil; y el proyecto de reestructuración en el sector Oeste de San Fernando, Argentina.
Sin embargo, es importante aclarar que las grandes operaciones urbanísticas son un instrumento de intervención en la ciudad que ya tienen muchos años no sólo en los países centrales, sino también en nuestras sociedades. En Buenos Aires, por ejemplo, la apertura de la Avenida de Mayo y de las diagonales, proyectada hacia 1880 y llevada a cabo en las décadas siguientes, implicó importantes impactos, tanto en lo físico-espacial como en lo social, económico y, fundamentalmente, en el campo simbólico. Este enfoque de múltiples impactos permite, sin duda, asimilar la operación de Avenida de Mayo a un gran proyecto urbano contemporáneo, pero también generó un gran debate sobre quién debía financiar la operación y quién se apropiaría de las rentas de suelo generadas. En última instancia, la Corte Suprema falló que la municipalidad no podía financiar las obras con la plusvalía generada, porque las rentas eran enteramente de los terratenientes. Durante muchos años, este caso fue un precedente en relación a la intervención estatal en el proceso de valorización de suelo generado por un gran proyecto público.
Land Lines: Usted tiene una mirada muy crítica del reconocido proyecto de regeneración urbana Puerto Madero, en Buenos Aires. ¿Qué haría de manera diferente en otras grandes áreas de redesarrollo?
Eduardo Reese: Puerto Madero es un caso emblemático de proyectos urbanos que promueven un modelo de planeamiento urbano segregado y que hoy en día se “exporta” a otras ciudades y países como instrumento básico para poder “competir” por las inversiones internacionales. En este proyecto el Estado adoptó una posición de sumisión frente al mercado y permitió la construcción de un barrio exclusivo para sectores de altísimos ingresos. Es un ejemplo notorio de una política pública diseñada explícitamente para privilegiar a los sectores más ricos sin recuperación de las enormes valorizaciones del suelo que fueron producto de esta misma política pública.
Más aún, a fin de garantizar a los inversionistas la sobrevalorización de las propiedades que compraron, el emprendimiento tiene una serie de características que la “recortan” (física y socialmente) del resto de la ciudad, creando con ello rentas aún mayores debido a la segregación. Puerto Madero no tiene un muro explícito, como los condominios cerrados, pero tiene múltiples acciones y mensajes implícitos, explícitos y simbólicos que señalan claramente que ese lugar está fuera del alcance para la mayoría de la sociedad:
En definitiva, Puerto Madero es la clara demostración de urbanismo y política pública de distribución regresiva: un “ghetto” libre de problemas para ricos.
Land Lines: En la medida en que las municipalidades compiten por inversiones externas, ¿es posible reconciliar esto con objetivos alternativos tales como prioridades ambientales y sociales?
Eduardo Reese: El problema de nuestras ciudades no es la falta de planeamiento, sino el actual orden excluyente de las políticas y del urbanismo. No puede haber una ley para la ciudad formal y un conjunto de excepciones para el resto. Es necesario crear un nuevo orden urbanístico y jurídico en América Latina respecto al derecho a la ciudad, la distribución equitativa de los beneficios de la urbanización, y la función social de la tenencia de suelo.
Land Lines: ¿De qué manera la municipalidad de San Fernando, en el Área Metropolitana de Buenos Aires, ofrece una alternativa a este enfoque?
Eduardo Reese: San Fernando es un municipio ubicado en la zona norte del Gran Buenos Aires, a 30 km de la ciudad de Buenos Aires, con una superficie continental de 23 km² y una población de 156.000 habitantes. Tiene un frente litoral al Río Luján de 5 km de extensión sobre su desembocadura en el Río de la Plata donde se concentra una gran cantidad de actividades productivas vinculadas con la náutica. Este sector del municipio tiene una ubicación privilegiada, con altos valores inmobiliarios y está dotado de la totalidad de los servicios urbanos.
El plan urbano y el modelo de gestión del suelo se comenzaron a elaborar en el 2003 a través de un convenio entre el municipio y el Instituto del Conurbano de la Universidad Nacional de General Sarmiento. En el año 2005, un seminario de capacitación del Instituto Lincoln ayudó a ampliar las ideas tradicionales sobre manejo de suelo que abundaban en los grupos profesionales locales y llevó a una serie de decisiones importantes:
La política urbana en San Fernando se enfocó en una serie de estrategias de acción que incluyeron (1) asegurar el acceso a nuevos espacios públicos sobre el río para fines recreativos, deportivos y comerciales, especialmente para ser aprovechados por los sectores pobres; y (2) la regularización comprehensiva del sector oeste de la municipalidad, donde se concentra los mayores niveles de pobreza.
Para implementar estas estrategias, fue necesario aumentar los recursos fiscales para inversión pública de dos maneras: a través de la apropiación de la rentabilidad del uso del suelo o tierra municipal sobre el río a través de la creación del consorcio Parque Náutico de San Fernando, S.A. (PNSFSA); y con la participación de la municipalidad en la plusvalía a partir de una reforma tributaria municipal. (PNSFSA es una empresa creada por la municipalidad de San Fernando para administrar las tierras del dominio municipal en la costa ribereña del sector este de la ciudad, conocida como Marina Park).
La experiencia de San Fernando se basa en un conjunto de herramientas de gestión orientadas a la redistribución de rentas urbanas para construir una ciudad más equitativa. El suelo se considera como un activo clave dentro de una estrategia más amplia de desarrollo local y, por lo tanto, la gestión depende de una combinación de instrumentos de planeamiento, administrativos, económicos, fiscales y legales orientados a fortalecer el papel del sector público. El eje central de las políticas es la búsqueda de equidad en la distribución de los costos y beneficios de la urbanización, dentro del contexto desafiante de la creciente presión sobre el suelo en toda el área metropolitana de Buenos Aires.
Land Lines: ¿Qué cambios habría que realizar en el sistema educativo para la capacitación de los planificadores urbanos?
Eduardo Reese: Primero, es necesario incorporar una mayor comprensión del funcionamiento de los mercados de suelo en el contexto actual de las ciudades de los países en desarrollo. Segundo, hace falta un análisis más crítico de los instrumentos teóricos, metodológicos y técnicos para llevar a cabo el diagnóstico e intervención en asuntos de suelo urbano. El curso sobre mercados de suelo de 2004 que mencioné antes buscó desarrollar este tipo de materiales para permitir que los estudiantes cubrieran las diferentes escalas y dimensiones del problema.
Land Lines: ¿Qué tensiones existen entre intereses públicos y privados en el planeamiento urbano?
Eduardo Reese: Esta es una pregunta crucial porque toda la historia de la gestión territorial en nuestras ciudades ha tenido un hilo conductor: el derecho de la propiedad privada del suelo juntamente con la estructura de la propiedad han entrado siempre en conflicto con la actividad urbanística que es una responsabilidad pública. En ese sentido siempre habrá una tensión entre intereses públicos y privados en la construcción de la ciudad.
A mi juicio, los proyectos urbanos en América Latina tienen la responsabilidad de contribuir a la creación de nuevos espacios de uso y goce público, a la inclusión social, a la generación de empleo, a la equidad en el acceso a los servicios para todos, a la sostenibilidad ambiental y a la redistribución de las rentas urbanas generadas por el proyecto. Los cuatro casos mencionados antes de Chile, Colombia, Brasil y Argentina muestran que estos beneficios son posibles en muchos países.
Sin embargo, y lamentablemente, en una gran cantidad de casos en América Latina los proyectos urbanos se han justificado como necesarios para atraer inversiones y/o consumidores y asegurar o reforzar las ventajas competitivas dinámicas de la ciudad. Estos insospechados objetivos positivos a veces se usan como un mecanismo para legitimizar intervenciones que profundizan la segregación socioespacial de las ciudades. Estos efectos adversos del mercado no son fatales para las ciudades, sino que son el resultado de elecciones políticas perversas.
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The use of computer models in the planning of land use and transportation and for the analysis of urban housing markets has a long and variable history. One pioneering application of a large-scale computer model that linked land use and urban transportation was the 1960 Chicago Area Transportation Study. It used a spatially disaggregated model that included a detailed transportation network and embodied the classic land use, trip generation, modal choice, and network assignment steps of urban transport planning.
Applying a more analytic approach to predicting land use patterns, an influential model formulated by Ira Lowry for Pittsburgh in 1964 used economic base theory to distribute export-oriented economic activity. This was followed by the allocation of residences and population-serving employment within the metropolitan area to derive work and shopping trip patterns.
More attention to spatially disaggregated models of urban housing markets followed in the early 1970s in the form of the Urban Institute Housing Model (representing decadal housing market changes) and the National Bureau of Economic Research Urban Simulation Model (a microanalytic model annually projecting the behavior of 85,000 households identified by workplace and residential locations). Both models were used to analyze the impact of housing allowance programs and were applied more for policy analysis than planning.
In the late 1970s, the focus turned to the development and application of sketch planning models, particularly in transportation. While these models were still spatially disaggregated, they used tens instead of hundreds of traffic zones, and transport networks were represented in less detail. Such models were adapted to represent transport-related outcomes beyond network flows, including vehicular emissions, exposure of populations to air pollution, vehicle miles of travel, and energy consumption. These smaller models migrated from mainframe computers to personal computers in the 1980s, easing their application. Their data needs were still great, but many of them made more systematic use of available spatially disaggregated census data, aiding the transfer and calibration of models among locations.
In the past two decades, the advent of geographic information systems (GIS) and the development of software to visually display data in three dimensions have been transforming the use of computers in planning. GIS-compatible data are now available from satellites, census sources, and government agencies. Local municipalities have moved rapidly to combine their data on property records with data on crime, transport, and demographics, and such municipal data files are often available on the web. While the availability of GIS data has clearly increased, variations in formats, definitions, and coverage can make it challenging to combine information from different sources into a unified data set for a metropolitan region.
The use of three-dimensional displays of spatially disaggregated data has transformed the presentation of data and model results. These techniques, including 3D maps at the metropolitan level and the ability to “fly through” a street or neighborhood at the project level, facilitate community consultation. They also make it much easier for nonspecialists to understand and participate in the process and interpret the results of alternative planning scenarios.
Along with the advances in data and its presentation, computer software has become easier to use and more widely available on open source platforms. While the codes of many earlier computer-based planning tools have been available in the public domain, using them generally has required high-level programming skills. As more of these tools are presented in user-friendly formats and integrated with other modules, the use of computer-based methods to compare and contrast alternative development scenarios will be more accessible than ever. Indeed, many planning agencies are now able to use scenario planning tools to produce alternative possible futures that provide a foundation for discussions and public consultations to identify which outcomes are desirable and which are to be avoided.
As reported elsewhere in this issue of Land Lines, the Lincoln Institute is supporting the use of various types of planning tools for research and evaluation on the effectiveness of policies intended to improve land development outcomes.
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Por cada nota periodística sobre turismo que muestra el paraíso caribeño de Barbados, con sus aguas tranquilas besando las playas de fina arena, hay también una noticia inquietante sobre un huracán en ciernes. Las Antillas Menores, un archipiélago de islas pequeñas que forman una media luna en el este del Mar Caribe, han sido siempre particularmente vulnerables, inmersas en las volubles aguas del Océano Atlántico. En 1776, el huracán Pointe-à-Pitre azotó la colonia francesa de Guadalupe y mató a 6.000 personas, resultando ser la tormenta atlántica más mortífera de la historia hasta ese momento. Cuatro años más tarde, el Gran Huracán de 1780 golpeó con más fuerza aún, tocando tierra en Barbados y después haciendo estragos en las islas vecinas, matando a casi 20.000 personas y destruyendo las flotas de Gran Bretaña y Francia en el punto álgido de la Revolución Norteamericana. Dos siglos y docenas de tormentas más tarde, el Huracán Iván, si bien no tan mortífero, devastó Granada en 2004, dejando su parlamento en ruinas y dañando el 85 por ciento de las estructuras de la isla.
En décadas recientes, los cambios climáticos han intensificado las amenazas para la región. Las estrategias empleadas en los EE.UU. cuando el Huracán Katrina o la Supertormenta Sandy no son particularmente relevantes para estas islas frágiles pero dinámicas de las Antillas Menores, desde Puerto Rico en el norte a Trinidad y Tobago en el sur. Con economías dependientes del turismo y una cantidad extremadamente limitada de suelos desarrollables, particularmente en las islas montañosas, este popurrí de países independientes, territorios dependientes y colonias extranjeras comparte un desafío común en el uso de su suelo: cómo manejar los patrones de desarrollo inmobiliario orientados a la costa y al mismo tiempo controlar la amenaza creciente del ascenso del nivel del mar.
Hay una isla en la región que sobresale por su capacidad excepcional para reconocer y prepararse para la crecida de la marea: Barbados, una isla con forma de pera, se ha convertido en un líder del Caribe en gestión integrada de la zona costera, la práctica contemporánea de integración de sectores, niveles de gobierno y disciplinas para administrar la zona costera, tanto en el agua como en tierra firme. El uso de suelos costeros y la gestión medioambiental son siempre temas contenciosos en una pequeña isla. Pero, como señaló una vez el exSecretario General de la ONU, Kofi Annan, en analogía con el boxeo: “Barbados golpea con mucha más fuerza de lo que corresponde a su peso”. A casi 50 años de su independencia, este país isleño ha utilizado una combinación de previsión, respaldo internacional y capacidad local para desarrollar instituciones de planificación y prepararse para un futuro incierto.
Del azúcar a los amantes del sol
Hoy en día, Barbados es famoso como destino turístico internacional de alto nivel, con sus playas de característica arena blanca, agua cálida de color aguamarina y sol abundante a lo largo de sus 100 kilómetros de costa. Casi 300.000 personas viven en esta isla de 430 kilómetros cuadrados; el 44 por ciento de la población vive en zonas urbanas, centradas en Bridgetown, y a lo largo de las costas desarrolladas del sur y el oeste. Con un PIB per cápita de US$23.600 y alfabetismo casi universal, Barbados está en el puesto 38 del mundo, y primero del Caribe, según el Índice de Desarrollo Humano de 2013 del Programa de Desarrollo de las Naciones Unidas. Sobre la base de su arena y oleaje, el 80 por ciento de US$4.400 millones de PIB de Barbados proviene del turismo y las industrias de servicios.
Pero esta evolución ha sido reciente, y forma parte de un patrón similar de desarrollo en todo el Caribe, consecuencia de los movimientos independentistas y la llegada de la aviación comercial. Originalmente habitada por una población nativa amerindia, por primera vez en 1627 se asentaron en Barbados los ingleses, quienes rápidamente la convirtieron en uno de los productores principales de azúcar del mundo. La historia colonial de Barbados es inusual para la región; a diferencia de muchas otras islas del Caribe, colonizadas por múltiples potencias europeas, Barbados permaneció bajo bandera británica hasta su independencia en 1966, adoptando el seudónimo de “Pequeña Inglaterra”.
La economía colonial fue un modelo clásico de comercio para enriquecer a la metrópolis. Los ingleses importaron esclavos africanos para trabajar en las plantaciones de caña de azúcar, refinerías de melaza y destilerías de ron. Como resultado, el 90 por ciento de la población actual de Barbados es de ascendencia africana. Después de la independencia, la cosecha de azúcar, ya empobrecida, que sufría las fluctuaciones comunes de todo monocultivo, se hizo aún menos confiable a medida que la presión para liberalizar el comercio llevó al Reino Unido y más tarde a la Unión Europea a ir reduciendo lentamente los subsidios y precios preferenciales.
Al mismo tiempo, Barbados invirtió con fuerza en sus servicios de turismo, lo cual modificó el foco de su desarrollo. Históricamente, la isla fue en su mayor parte rural, con plantaciones de caña de azúcar en el interior del país, que también era el lugar donde vivían los esclavos y más adelante los aparceros itinerantes que cargaban con casas móviles de madera tipo “chattel”, la arquitectura vernácula de Barbados. En la costa se encuentra Bridgetown, el puerto principal, donde un río navegable desemboca en el mar, y otros pueblos más pequeños y villas de pescadores. Un puerto de aguas profundas excavado en 1961 también sentó las bases para la llegada de cruceros. El número creciente de turistas necesitaba de hoteles, balnearios, restaurantes, tiendas y bares, todos a escasos metros del mar. Este impulso llevó al desarrollo de franjas costeras, entre el aeropuerto y Bridgetown, en la costa sur y a lo largo de la costa oeste, donde las aguas son más calmas y se encuentran los encantadores poblados de Holetown y Speightstown. Para la década de 1990, el Aeropuerto Internacional Grantley Adams de Barbados recibía vuelos regulares de British Airways desde Londres en uno de los pocos jets Concorde supersónicos existentes.
La respuesta local a la crecida de las aguas
Ubicada un poco al este del arco principal de las otras islas del este del Caribe, fuera del cinturón de huracanes del Atlántico, Barbados tiene una ventaja meteorológica. Si bien sigue siendo susceptible a grandes tormentas, experimenta muchos menos huracanes que sus vecinos del noroeste. Sin embargo, cualquier amenaza a las playas y corales que rodean Barbados podría tener consecuencias devastadoras, dada la dependencia económica de la isla de su costa. Su bienestar se ve amenazado por el lento aumento del nivel del mar, asociado a las posibles mareas tormentosas si la isla sufriera incluso sólo tangencialmente un huracán importante. El Grupo Intergubernamental de Expertos sobre el Cambio Climático (IPCC) tiene pruebas concluyentes de que tras un período de varios siglos con casi ningún cambio, se ha producido un aumento en el nivel mundial del mar en el siglo XX, y que esta tendencia se está acelerando en el siglo XXI. En agosto, el IPCC dijo que los niveles del mar podrían crecer más de un metro para el año 2100.
Los pequeños países-isla, que nunca han contribuido significativamente a las emisiones de carbono, sufren un impacto desproporcionado debido al cambio climático mundial producido por la industrialización moderna en el resto del mundo. Los cambios en los patrones climáticos han producido una gran cantidad de tormentas importantes, un aumento de las temperaturas mundiales, y el derretimiento de los hielos polares, contribuyendo al aumento en el nivel del mar. Mientras que los países industrializados más grandes, como los Estados Unidos, China y los países de Europa Occidental, también han sido afectados por el aumento en el nivel del mar, la proporción vulnerable de estos países es minúscula en comparación con las áreas susceptibles de Barbados. La incapacidad del mundo desarrollado para comprender el impacto y las consecuencias de su comportamiento, como lo demuestra la inacción política en temas como los acuerdos de intercambio de créditos de carbono (cap-and-trade), ha forzado a los países en vías de desarrollo a actuar ahora o confrontar un futuro lleno de peligros.
Paradójicamente, el historial imperial de Barbados —con frecuencia una carga en los países poscoloniales— ha sido una ventaja, ya que la isla tiene una historia prolongada e ininterrumpida de planificación urbana y rural al estilo británico. Como el Reino Unido, Barbados está dividida administrativamente en parroquias, y las leyes modernas de desarrollo se basan en la Ley de Planificación Urbana y Rural (Town and Country Planning Act) de Gran Bretaña de 1947. Cuando declaró su independencia, Barbados estableció su propio plan maestro con la Orden de Desarrollo de Planificación Urbana y Rural de 1972. En la actualidad, toda la construcción en la isla es supervisada por la Oficina de Planificación de Desarrollo Urbano y Rural (Town and Country Development Planning Office, o TCDPO), y el jefe de planificación urbana reporta directamente al primer ministro.
El desarrollo inmobiliario de la isla está guiado por el Plan de Desarrollo Físico de 1988. Desde la enmienda al documento de 2003, se ha producido un giro hacia el desarrollo sostenible, no solo como lema, sino como una visión integral del gobierno de la isla. En un discurso dado en una conferencia en 2008, el anterior primer ministro, David Thompson, reseñó algunas de las ideas centrales del plan: proteger los recursos naturales, agrícolas y culturales; promover los centros y corredores de uso mixto para alentar una economía diversificada, mantener el centro de Bridgetown como eje financiero y comercial; y estimular el turismo modernizando las viejas propiedades costeras y desarrollando nuevos emprendimientos. El primer ministro actual, Freundel Stuart, ha continuado con este empuje de sostenibilidad, tal como lo demuestra su participación en paneles de alto nivel en la Conferencia de Desarrollo Sostenible Rio+20 de las Naciones Unidas el año pasado.
Hacia finales de la década de 1970, los dueños de propiedades individuales comenzaron a notar que la erosión costera afectaba sus terrenos. Los medios de comunicación comenzaron a insistir en este tema, de forma concurrente con el impulso del turismo, que se estaba convirtiendo rápidamente en la fuente principal de reservas de divisas extranjeras. Motivado por esta erosión costera —pero también preocupado por eventos catastróficos como huracanes, terremotos, marejadas, erupciones volcánicas y derrames de petróleo— el gobierno de Barbados inició un estudio de diagnóstico de factibilidad en 1981, con financiamiento del Banco Interamericano de Desarrollo (BID), como parte de su Programa de Conservación Costera. El estudio se centró en las costas oeste y sur, ya que estas áreas de la isla tenían el mayor potencial para la infraestructura turística. Al mismo tiempo, el gobierno estableció temporalmente una Unidad de Proyecto de Conservación Costera (Coastal Conservation Project Unit, o CCPU), que super-visó el estudio de factibilidad y llegó a una serie de conclusiones sobre las causas de la erosión costera y el daño a las propiedades de la costa. Por ejemplo, como la calidad del agua en el interior de Barbados era mala, su escurrimiento contaminaba el mar y dañaba los arrecifes de coral. Ciertos fenómenos naturales, como las marejadas provocadas por tormentas y los huracanes erráticos ocasionales, también causaban erosión. A su vez, las estructuras de defensa marina existentes habían sido diseñadas de forma deficiente. El estudio del BID sugirió que la CCPU siguiera vigilando las líneas de la costa, brindara asesoramiento al público sobre temas costeros y actuara de consultora de la TCDPO en cuestiones de desarrollo de la costa.
El nacimiento de la Unidad de Gestión de la Zona Costera
La Unidad de Proyecto de Conservación Costera continuó con su mandato por una década, y el gobierno de Barbados, con financiamiento adicional del BID, se embarcó en otro estudio, que recomendó el establecimiento de una unidad permanente para vigilar la zona costera. La Unidad de Gestión de la Zona Costera (Coastal Zone Management Unit, o CZMU) fue creada en 1996 para regular, hacer recomendaciones y educar a la población de Barbados sobre la gestión costera. La CZMU, que sigue recibiendo una gran parte de su financiamiento del BID, se aloja actualmente en el Ministerio de Medio Ambiente, Recursos Hídricos y Drenaje. Como lo sugiere su título, la CZMU gestiona la zona costera, definida como “la zona de transición donde el suelo se une con el agua, la región influenciada de forma directa por los procesos hidrodinámicos marinos, extendiéndose mar adentro hasta la barrera de la plataforma continental, y mar afuera hasta el primer cambio importante de topografía por encima del alcance del oleaje de tormentas importantes”. Por lo tanto, la unidad supervisa los arrecifes de coral alrededor de Bar-bados y todos los proyectos de ingeniería costera, y funciona como asesor de la TCDPO para el desarrollo costero en tierra firme.
La relación entre la CZMU y la TCDPO está marcada por temas del uso del suelo. Cuando la TCDPO recibe una solicitud para desarrollar la zona costera, se la envía automáticamente a la CZMU para su revisión y comentario. Como la industria turística se concentra principalmente en la zona costera de la isla, gran parte de las solicitudes de desarrollo inmobiliario de Barbados pasan por las manos del CZMU. La unidad inspecciona la solicitud para verificar que los retrocesos son correctos: 30 metros de la cota máxima de agua para los emprendimientos a lo largo de la costa, y 10 metros para aquellos a lo largo de los acantilados, medidos tierra adentro de la cota. Además de verificar los retrocesos, la CZMU analiza los requisitos de drenaje, zonas de amortiguamiento, restricciones de cercas y otras reglamentaciones. La CZMU luego hace recomendaciones a la TCDPO sobre la solicitud.
La Directora en Ejercicio de la CZMU, la Dra. Lorna Inniss, que tiene un PhD. en Oceanografía por la Universidad Estatal de Luisiana, alaba este proceso: “Nuestra colaboración interministerial es extremadamente cercana. Tenemos la capacidad para establecer y mejorar la estructura gubernamental que es inclusiva y consultiva por naturaleza”. El proceso gubernamental es admirable por su cooperación y tendencia a derribar silos; desafortunadamente, las recomendaciones de la CZMU son puramente consultivas y no tienen el poder vinculante necesario para que la TCDPO pueda obligar su cumplimiento. Las reglamentaciones de la zona costera no son retroactivas a las incontables propiedades construidas durante el boom del desarrollo de balnearios, y las sanciones para aquellos que las violan siguen siendo muy bajas. Este proceso es lo más cerca que llega Barbados a la evaluación de impacto medioambiental formalizada del modelo de los EE.UU., pero es un primer paso importante para el Caribe. La CZMU y la TCDPO han tenido más éxito al planificar el desarrollo futuro de bajo impacto a lo largo de la costa este más montañosa, por ejemplo, donde el Plan de Desarrollo Físico contempla la creación de un parque nacional.
La CZMU es más efectiva cuando implementa proyectos de ingeniería costera para proteger la línea de la costa y frenar la erosión de las playas. La técnica de conservación más natural es restaurar las dunas y manglares. La plantación de vegetación en las áreas costeras permite la formación natural de dunas y evita las inundaciones debido a marejadas de tormenta, mientras que los manglares absorben la acción de las olas. La alimentación artificial de la playa es una solución rápida y popular, pero es un arreglo caro y poco efectivo, ya que las corrientes y tormentas pueden erosionar fácilmente las playas rellenadas artificialmente.
La CZMU introduce también salvaguardas en la costa con varias intervenciones físicas, como rompeolas, espigones y malecones. Los rompeolas son estructuras de hormigón, enterradas cerca de la playa, que obligan a las olas a romper más lejos de la costa, para que no golpeen directamente sobre la arena. Los espigones son estructuras de roca que penetran en el mar para inmovilizar los sedimentos. Los malecones son el tipo más grande de inter-vención de la CZMU. Diseñados para proteger las áreas más pobladas, estos proyectos de construcción consisten en rocas grandes dispuestas en forma de escollera o una muralla de contención plana de hormigón que puede crear un espacio público atractivo tanto para turistas como residentes, como el Paseo Richard Haynes, financiado parcialmente por un préstamo del BID. Como estas técnicas pueden exacerbar a veces la erosión y requerir un mantenimiento más caro que las intervenciones naturales, su eficacia a largo plazo es discutida, pero en el corto plazo protegen la línea de la costa y la industria turística.
Dada la vulnerabilidad de la isla a las tormentas, los proyectos de ingeniería pueden ser costosos. Inniss, sin embargo, explica: “Tenemos una política de consulta rigurosa a las partes interesadas, y no es simplemente una formalidad. Nuestra temporada alta es de noviembre a abril; en un proyecto reciente en Holetown, los comerciantes nos dijeron que era fundamental que el trabajo se completara antes de noviembre, así que nos apuramos para hacerlo. Cuando hay un espíritu de cooperación mutua, podemos obtener el apoyo del sector privado”. Con un poco de suerte, la CZMU podrá utilizar el capital político obtenido del sector privado en este tipo de proyectos, para conseguir que las reglamentaciones más estrictas sean vinculantes en el futuro.
Para poder obtener apoyo, la CZMU ha lanzado una campaña de gran envergadura para educar a la población de la isla, que a juicio de Inniss es la razón por la cual la CZMU es exitosa, tanto interna como externamente. “Comienza con un alto nivel nacional de educación y alfabetismo — más del 98 por ciento desde hace décadas”. El exsenador Henry Fraser concuerda con ella: “La gente pregunta por qué las cosas funcionan en Barbados. Principalmente se debe al énfasis puesto en educación desde que nos emancipamos. Y porque es un lugar pequeño y muy religioso, en el que la gente vive cerca, con respeto, tolerancia y una ética de trabajo mayor que en otros lados».
Para profundizar la base educativa del enfoque cooperativo de Barbados sobre la gestión de las zonas costeras, la CZMU distribuye un boletín, mantiene una fuerte presencia en los medios sociales, y produce un programa de televisión educativo que explica la historia geológica de la isla y técnicas para aumentar el nivel de conciencia sobre el aumento del nivel del mar y la importancia de la gestión costera. También patrocina muchas actividades, como el Día Internacional de Limpieza de la Costa, las Caminatas en la Playa a la Puesta del Sol, la Serie de Seminarios de Verano y un programa de residencia de verano para estudiantes del nivel secundario y terciario. También da conferencias para escuelas e instituciones educativas, ONG, organizaciones privadas y el público en general.
Próximos pasos y cooperación global
El BID sigue brindando un respaldo importante a los esfuerzos de Barbados. La ayuda más reciente prestada por el banco de desarrollo al país incluye un préstamo de $30 millones de dólares a 25 años plazo para un Programa de Gestión y Evaluación de Riesgo Costero. Inniss se entusiasma con la confianza implícita en este respaldo financiero, ya que es una señal de que el gobierno cree que la CZMU puede ejecutar un proyecto que generará el valor suficiente como para devolver el dinero prestado. “Será una estrategia de gestión de zona costera integrada, moderna y superior, con la participación de una serie de partes interesadas: el turismo, destilerías de ron, empresas de electricidad, puertos recreativos, navegantes, pescadores comerciales, el puerto, los buzos”, detalla Inniss. “Los dirigentes clave han reconocido que la gestión de la zona costera es importante no solo como un programa medioambiental sino también para hacer crecer la economía de Barbados”. Esperamos que otros países del Caribe hayan tomado nota, puesto que la propia Inniss ha proporcionado asistencia técnica a St. Lucia, Trinidad y Tobago, y St. Vincent y las Granadinas, inspirada a su vez por el modelo de Nueva Zelanda, Hawái y la Administración de Pesca y Océanos de Canadá para implementar estándares internacionales.
Por supuesto, hay todavía lugar para mejorar. Si bien la CZMU trabaja de cerca con la TCPDO en la planificación del uso del suelo, con los parques nacionales marinos para vigilar los ecosistemas, y con los ingenieros civiles del Ministerio de Obras Públicas, la Unidad no está completamente integrada todavía con el Ministerio de Agricultura y Pesca. Por ejemplo, reconoce Inniss: “Sabemos científicamente que el escurrimiento agrícola es el mayor contribuyente a los contaminantes marinos”.
En efecto, en una isla pequeña, el suelo y el agua están intrínsecamente interconectados. Mientras Barbados está cumpliendo su parte en la batalla contra el cambio climático mundial —otro préstamo del BID firmado al mismo tiempo que el financiamiento de la gestión costera establecerá un Fondo de Energía Inteligente para reducir la dependencia de combustibles fósiles— no puede quedarse sentada a esperar que los países más grandes actúen. Mientras que otras islas pequeñas en vías de desarrollo en el Océano Índico y el Océano Pacífico están contemplando la posibilidad de reubicar su población a otros países dentro de algunas décadas, los habitantes de Barbados piensan quedarse y proteger su pequeña porción del Paraíso.
Sobre los autores
Gregory R. Scruggs fue consultor de la Asociación Americana de Planificación para América Latina y el Caribe desde 2010 a 2013. En la actualidad está estudiando una maestría en estudios regionales de América Latina y el Caribe en la Universidad de Columbia. Contacto: gscruggs.apa.consult@gmail.com.
Thomas E. Bassett, asistente senior de programa en la Asociación Americana de Planificación–(APA), trabaja con una beca de la Asociación de Energía y Clima de las Américas para el Departamento de Estado de los EE.UU, así como también a nivel nacional en el Programa de Ayuda a la Comunidad. Contacto: thomas.e.bassett@gmail.com.
Recursos
Bassett, Thomas E. and Gregory R. Scruggs. 2013. Water, Water Everywhere: Sea level Rise and Land Use Planning in Barbados, Trinidad and Tobago, Guyana, and Pará. Lincoln Institute of Land Policy Working Paper WP13TB1. https://www.lincolninst.edu/pubs/dl/2282_1621_Bassett_WP13TB1.pdf.
Belle, N. and B. Bramwell. 2005. Climate change and small island tourism: Policy maker and industry perspectives in Barbados. Journal of Travel Research 44: 32–41.
Dharmartne, G. and A. Brathwaite. 1998. Economic valuation of coastline for tourism in Barbados. Journal of Travel Research 37: 138–144.
Inter-American Development Bank. 2010. Indicators of disaster risk and risk management, Program for Latin America and the Caribbean, Barbados. September. Accessed July 9, 2012. http://idbdocs.iadb.org/wsdocs/getdocument.aspx?docnum=35160015.
Phillips, M. R. and A. L. Jones. 2006. Erosion and tourism infrastructure in the coastal zone: Problems, consequences, and management. Tourism Management 27: 517–52.
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Many suburban areas in the United States are showing signs of deterioration, with foreclosed properties, vacant retail centers, and underutilized space. These landscapes have come to epitomize sprawl— places built for the car and accessed only by the car. But they also hold enormous opportunities for creative reinvention. A number of communities across the country are rescaling their suburbs into vibrant, walkable places built for people.
Reoriented for pedestrians, suburban neighborhoods can thrive and diversify to better support local economies, raise quality of life indicators, and improve local and regional environmental conditions. Even deteriorating suburbs plagued by disused structures and other dead zones have the potential to generate new housing infrastructure, transit access, open space, and local retail.
The University of Utah estimates that 2.8 million acres of parking lots and other greyfield areas are ripe for redevelopment, and 1.1 million acres are available in underutilized shopping areas, such as strip malls and vacant storefronts (Dunham Jones and Williamson 2009). Transforming these landscapes will be a 21st-century planning and development priority in the United States.
Many cities are steadily redeveloping and capitalizing on recent demographic trends supporting urban revitalization, but economically robust regions need flourishing suburban communities as well. Recent surveys by the National Association of Realtors and the American Planning Association found that a majority of potential homebuyers seek to live in walkable neighborhoods with a range of housing types and a mix of residential, business, and retail options. As baby boomers age and more of the millennial generation enter adulthood, an increasing number of Americans are leaving their cars behind to live in more centrally located, walkable environments. In 2012, roughly half the population preferred smaller houses in well-connected neighborhoods with places to live, work, shop, and play (National Association of Realtors 2011, American Planning Association 2014).
Despite this mounting evidence in favor of suburban redevelopment, many local leaders remain uncertain about how to begin. This article explores 10 ways that communities across the country have rescaled significant parts of their sprawling suburbs into thriving social hubs.
1. Share a Vision and Draft a Plan
Many communities start by imagining how they want to grow and then develop a plan to realize that vision. Do residents want more housing, a walkable entertainment center, a new arts district, or an urban farming zone? Is it most important to increase the tax base, reduce pedestrian and bike fatalities, or increase access to fresh food? Specific goals will help to steer redevelopment efforts.
Regional and neighborhood plans engage community members in a dialogue about where to target infrastructure investments and leverage redevelopment opportunities as they become available. Local governments can start with a small site—such as a vacant lot or city-owned building—and then build on that successful effort, generating the momentum to tackle an entire neighborhood, corridor, or even a cleaned-up superfund site. Building a shared sense of purpose for a place can be a powerful incentive for guiding future change.
Consider Midvale Slag and Sharon Steel, two adjacent superfund sites about 10 miles south of Salt Lake City in Midvale, Utah. Both underwent cleanup at approximately the same time, but only one is thriving.
In 2000, the Midvale City Council adopted the “Bingham Junction Reuse Assessment and Master Plan” for the 446-acre Midvale Slag site. City officials worked with residents, EPA officials, and other stakeholders to devise a strategy for redeveloping the site into a mixed-use commercial, residential, and recreation area. Now thriving, Bingham Junction created approximately 600 jobs, $1.5 million in annual property tax revenues, and a $131 million increase in the value of the site property (EPA 2011). Families have moved into new condominiums, and another 2,500 residential units are planned. Office buildings, a supermarket, and other stores have followed, and the community anticipates developing up to two million square feet of commercial office and retail space.
In contrast, the 250-acre Sharon Steel site, which did not have a redevelopment plan or future vision, remains vacant. Building on the success of Bingham Junction, however, city officials have begun the planning and visioning process.
2. Identify Assets
Many local governments struggle to determine where to focus their initial visioning and planning efforts. The following kinds of questions can help to identify which assets to leverage.
1. Is public transit available? If so, are there underutilized areas near or immediately adjacent to transit stops that could be redeveloped to enhance accessibility?
2. Where will existing infrastructure dollars be spent—for example, on roads, water, sewers, schools, civic structures, parks?
3. Are there vacant or underutilized parking lots, buildings, or strip malls near these infrastructure investments?
4. Which of these areas have redevelopment plans in place or neighborhood support for new development?
5. Which of these areas are near or adjacent to other public assets such as schools, libraries, parks, or open space?
6. Can any of these sites align with existing or emerging employment areas?
7. Are any of these properties available for redevelopment (i.e., are any owners willing to collaborate with the community on redevelopment goals and plans)?
This proposed assessment is not a linear, step-by-step process. Sometimes a site may become unavailable unexpectedly, or a federal grant may come through for road improvements on a major arterial. In other situations, an owner may be unwilling to cooperate, or a site may be deemed unfeasible. In any case, an assessment of existing conditions can help to target potential sites or neighborhoods as priorities.
3. Leverage Infrastructure Investments
To attract private investment and new development, local governments can make significant public investments, either by upgrading existing infrastructure or by investing in new infrastructure. Many cities and towns seize the opportunity to direct these investments to the neighborhoods they would like to revitalize. Research has shown that by leveraging public investments, communities can increase land value from 70 to 300 percent and can boost private investment, social capital, tourism, and retail activity by an average of 30 percent (Litman 2010). They can also achieve key “placemaking” goals, communally shaping public spaces to heighten their shared value.
Norman, Oklahoma, about 25 miles south of Oklahoma City, is an interesting work in progress. The town had $27 million to improve traffic flow and increase safety along a seven-block stretch of road that bisected a typical strip retail district with large parking lots on both sides of the street. The town came together to discuss how to use this money to make broader streetscape upgrades along with the necessary safety improvements. Business owners, university officials, and local leaders joined forces and engaged in strategic placemaking to discuss how they might create a walkable retail area.
Municipalities can also leverage capital improvement investments against other community goals. With shrinking resources, local governments can no longer reasonably afford to achieve single-objective outcomes from their infrastructure investments. For example, the city of Lenexa, Kansas (a suburb of Kansas City), determined to be a more sustainable and livable community, and they used green infrastructure projects to help achieve that goal. Tapping funds from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, city officials implemented a range of street-level storm water improvements that achieved key placemaking objectives, such as creating open spaces and promoting walking, while addressing storm water problems.
4. Align Codes and Ordinances
Outdated, disjointed codes and ordinances are among the greatest barriers to rescaling suburban environments. These land development regulations—from zoning ordinances to street standards, parking requirements, site coverage, and height limits—are often responsible for existing transportation and land use patterns, and serve as the default legal structure for new development. The upshot is that building a walkable mixed-use neighborhood is often illegal, requiring the developer to seek variances or special permits, which can create uncertainty and delays in the development process or discourage redevelopment in the first place.
Research has found that government support for development in targeted areas is the strongest predictor of private investment (Hook et al. 2013). One of the easiest ways to support new growth is to change the codes and ordinances to legalize pedestrian-friendly development. New codes can be embedded in an overlay zone or a neighborhood plan to allow for the type of construction needed to transform an area.
A number of resources are available to help local governments determine where and how to change their codes, such as the SmartCode (www.smartcodecentral.org) form-based codes (http://formbasedcodes.org), the American Planning Association’s Smart Codes: Model Land-Development Regulation (https://www.planning.org/research/smartgrowth), or EPA’s Essential Fixes series (www.epa.gov/dced/essential_fixes.htm).
For example, Columbia Pike in Arlington, Virginia—a 3.5-mile urban corridor across the Potomac River from downtown Washington, DC—was rescaled after the county modified the underlying development codes and ordinances. Located in an urban county that grew explosively in recent decades, Columbia Pike, by contrast, had seen little development and minimal investment in the past 30 years. In the late 1990s, county leaders created a form-based code to foster transit- and pedestrian-oriented infill redevelopment in the corridor. The code is an optional code (also known as a parallel code); all the underlying zoning remains in place, but incentives such as expedited review and approvals encourage its use. Since adopting the code in 2003, the Pike has seen more than 1,000 new housing units and 240,000 square feet of retail built, and another 600 housing units and 21,700 square feet of retail have been approved.
5. Get the Streets Right
A community’s street network is fundamental to any redevelopment efforts. Typical suburbs have wide, high-speed travel lanes designed to move cars efficiently through the area. But the primary focus of any suburban rescaling effort should be on moving people, not cars, through an area. This goal can be accomplished by building wide, inviting sidewalks; installing lanes and parking for bicycles; creating buffer zones between people and moving traffic; developing interesting places to walk; and making it safe to cross the road. Well-conceived streets can also kick-start investment and the redevelopment process. However, in many suburban communities, which tend to be less competitive, the public sector may need to catalyze growth by making up-front investments with support for infrastructure and amenities to attract private-sector funds.
For example, Lancaster, California, a mid-size city about 60 miles north of Los Angeles, transformed a five-lane arterial into a Main Street by investing in a number of streetscape improvements. They narrowed and reduced travel lanes, and added on-street parking and street vegetation, which slowed traffic from 40 miles per hour to 15 miles per hour. The city’s investment of $11.5 million attracted more than $300 million in private investment.
6. Get the Parking Right
Parking is a challenge for any development, but it’s particularly tricky in suburban areas where the community is trying to pivot from auto-dependence to auto-independence. Conventional wisdom holds that parking is essential to retail survival; consequently, many suburban areas have an oversupply, owing to various code, design, or bank requirements. But any successful effort to rescale a suburb will require planners to balance today’s parking needs with a creative vision for a less automobile-dependent future.
Communities can assess how much parking is needed and explore alternate ways to supply it by requiring on-street parking, permitting shared parking, or de-bundling parking spaces from housing units (EPA 2006). To foster a pedestrian-friendly streetscape, it’s critical to eliminate or reduce surface parking, or to place it behind retail areas. Larger redevelopment projects may require a parking garage, but it should be located at the back of the site and not immediately adjacent to other transit opportunities. It’s increasingly common to “wrap” a parking garage with smaller housing units or offices to provide parking without interrupting the pedestrian streetscape.
As a neighborhood decreases its dependence on cars, it can repurpose parking garages by converting top floors into community gardens or bottom floors into low-rent business incubator space. One community in Albany, New York, transformed an old parking garage and car dealership into luxury condominiums.
By planning for future uses, a neighborhood can maintain the parking spaces it needs now while allowing the area to evolve and change without losing the initial investments made during the revitalization process. Local governments can also rewrite zoning and building codes to demand that garage developers meet the minimum adaptability requirements (Jaffe 2013).
7. Add More Green
Suburban landscapes have been described as “hostile” and “unhealthy” because of their wide, underutilized zones dominated by hard surfaces. But many communities are bringing nature back into these built environments and transforming the streets and alleys between buildings into attractive, thriving pedestrian hubs.
Trees, plants, open green space, and recreational pathways afford a respite for individuals, provide social gathering areas, improve environmental conditions, and create more livable streetscapes (Benfield 2014). Suburban sites can make it easier to integrate green into a new development project because they often offer more land and flexibility than urban areas. As a public investment, green space can also serve to attract private development initiatives.
Green spaces can be incorporated at three scales—at the regional, neighborhood, and site level. At the site scale, municipalities are beginning to use green infrastructure to manage storm water by absorbing it into the ground or capturing it for later reuse. These strategies create more beautiful places, increase pedestrian safety, calm traffic, manage water flows, and develop a constituency to support effective storm water management. (Much like potholes, a conspicuous clogged bio-swale on a local street is more likely to generate calls to city hall than an invisible underground pipe leak would.) These site-level approaches can also build momentum for larger-scale suburban transformation while creating bustling public spaces from parking lots, alleys, buildings, landscaped areas, rooftops, or streets. Imagine, for example, a sea of cascading greenery descending from the roof of a parking garage or a pedestrian plaza with planters, trees, tables, and chairs in a section of a former parking lot.
At the regional and neighborhood level, green space can connect natural areas and working lands while also providing critical ecological functions. Additionally, these connections can support multi-use paths and trails, habitat corridors, and other “green fingers” integrated throughout the region. Regional approaches focus on the movement of wildlife, people, and natural resources, such as water. Neighborhood strategies target connections to larger regional networks, creating connected public gathering places, open spaces, coordinated multi-use paths, and a bike infrastructure network.
The redevelopment of Stapleton Airport outside Denver, Colorado, incorporated green space at the regional and neighborhood levels. Approximately one-third of its 4,700 acres serve as new parks and open space for the project’s 12,000 residential units. Every home is within a 10-minute walk of open space. The centerpieces are the 80-acre Central Park and 85-acre Westerly Creek corridor. More than 27,000 trees have been planted, and the 6 million tons of concrete that once formed the airport’s runways have been incorporated into the newly created parklands. Not only did the redevelopment rescale the airport into a thriving pedestrian place, it is also generating $22 million in annual property taxes and $13 million in sales tax revenue (Swetlik 2013).
8. Change Land Use
Many suburban areas are littered with abandoned or underperforming big box stores and outdated shopping centers. By reusing these buildings as libraries, schools, housing, and even churches, communities can activate a dead zone and create demand for a location. They can also prevent or slow an expanding sprawl pattern by reducing the need to build new big box stores on undeveloped parcels. Without a broader redevelopment strategy, however, reuse of big box stores will not change the physical landscape to support significant pedestrian activity.
Suburban developers often have to assemble land parcels and navigate the demands of multiple landowners, especially in retail corridors with multiple strip malls and single-use retail outlets. As a result, many developers are attracted to old mall sites, which often have significant acreage, single owners, existing roads, water and sewer service, and adjacent residential housing. The existing mega-structure may be torn down and replaced with moderate-density buildings, a traditional street grid, and a mix of commercial and residential uses. For example, the redevelopment of the 100-acre Belmar Mall, in Lakewood, Colorado, reconnected the street grid. The pedestrian-friendly streets now support 1,300 new homes, one million square feet of retail, and 700,000 square feet of office space. This approach has drawn many suburban communities to create a town center or similar large-scale redevelopment on those sites.
The process of shifting from a suburban landscape to a walkable, thriving neighborhood takes time and may require public infrastructure investments. Recognizing this, some municipalities plan to roll out several stages of redevelopment over decades and provide immediate funds for infrastructure in order to leverage future investments. A critical component for successful staged developments is compatible local government planning and zoning. Long-term agreements or planned densification can be designed to require density increases or large-scale redevelopment activities within a particular time frame, allowing market supply and demand to coevolve.
One example of successful staged development is Potomac Yards in Alexandria, Virginia. The former industrial site was remediated in 1997 and developed according to then-current zoning as a traditional strip mall. Tenants signed a 15-year lease, which was typical for the time and the space. Over the next several years, city officials obtained funding to open a new metro station in the back of the mall, and several adjacent mixed-use, high-density residential developments were built as well. Land value in Potomac Yards rose significantly as a result. In 2010, the city council approved a redevelopment plan, which is slated to begin in 2017 and will dovetail with the opening of the metro stop. The strip mall will be torn down to make way for a new walkable mixed-use neighborhood with 7.5 million square feet of office, retail, and residential development.
9. Provide Catalytic Leadership
Rescaling suburban neighborhoods for pedestrians requires coordination and cooperation among municipal departments that normally operate independently. Transportation departments manage road systems, housing departments manage affordable housing, and public works departments build sewers. But no single department can implement the complex range of strategies and physical changes needed to transform a single-use residential subdivision or retail district into a walkable mixed-use neighborhood.
Catalytic leadership is equal parts mediation, facilitation, and leadership. It is based on respecting each department’s traditional approach while acknowledging that no single department will have the answer or data to resolve some issues. Catalytic leadership can build the trust and respect needed to foster more collaborative and innovative approaches to the challenges presented by suburban placemaking. It is essential to orchestrating these efforts, mediating among parties with differing agendas, and achieving desired outcomes on time and within budget.
The successful redevelopment of downtown Silver Spring, Maryland, benefited from such leadership. The area had been a dynamic retail center in the postwar years. But, like many suburban centers, it lost much of its vibrancy to enclosed malls during the 1970s, and subsequent attempts to rebuild the retail base failed. In 1996, the county decided to redevelop the area into a pedestrian-oriented, mixed-use, transit-oriented community. The county executive knew that slow permitting would hinder the project, so he created a Green Taping program, which draws input from the local staff responsible for enforcing the range of building and site codes (building, electrical, fire, mechanical, accessibility, zoning, signage, sediment and storm water management, subdivision plan review, and inspection codes and standards). At “round table” sessions, the participants identified and resolved cross-department issues for proposed projects in the redevelopment zone. By gathering in one room, representatives from all the departments were able to resolve design, zoning, and code barriers more efficiently. As a result, Silver Spring has transformed its suburban landscape into a thriving community with more than 750,000 square feet of retail and entertainment space, 500,000 square feet of office space, and nearly 2,000 residences.
10. Anticipate What’s Next
The process of rescaling suburban communities can be long and difficult, but there are a number of possible starting points—from visioning and planning, to making infrastructure investments, to building the first project. As municipalities begin, leaders should keep several issues in mind:
America’s evolving suburban landscapes represent enormous opportunities to creatively rethink the nation’s built and natural environments. Rescaling these places for pedestrians can help restore activity in the street and create lively, prosperous places to live and work.
About the Author
The incoming president and CEO of the Congress for the New Urbanism, Lynn Richards was the 2013 Lincoln/Loeb Fellow at the Graduate School of Design at Harvard University and the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy. Previously, at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), she held multiple leadership roles over 13 years including acting director and policy director in the Office of Sustainable Communities.
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