Earth Day is in a week, and the latest UN report on climate out last month should give us renewed urgency and motivation on climate action.
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| Front page, Oregonian, last month |
It should also remind us that our goals are for real outcomes, not merely theoretical ones on paper. The current approach to Climate Friendly Areas, which the City is branding Walkable Mixed-use Areas, still seems underpowered. Here is more on that.
Focus on Real Outcomes over Theoretical Potential
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| Methods Guide |
We'll start with the question about how the CFA/WaMUAs are designated. Here is the basic problem again.
There are two approved analyses, formally designated "prescriptive" and "outcome-oriented."
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| 1000 Friends letter Jan. 11th, 2023 |
Back in January, 1000 Friends of Oregon sent a letter to Cities suggesting some gaps in the prescriptive method.
They wrote that the method
could dramatically overestimate the housing capacity of potential CFAs because it makes unrealistic assumptions about future densities and redevelopment and, consequently, will produce much less real capacity for housing in climate friendly areas than is needed to meet GHG reduction goals.
This is exactly what is happening here in Salem. The current proposed CFA/WaMUAs depend on a wildly fantastical forecast. It uses "unrealistic assumptions" and is nearly certain to "produce much less real capacity...than is needed."
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| Max capacity for downtown and West Salem? (This is a composite from the technical memos) |
Haven't we Done Enough Already?
A reader criticized the critique of the City's method here, saying
you are not taking into account, or have decided to discount, all of the mixed use zoning the City created as part of Our Salem...the city has already created exactly what you are asking it to do regardless of the land’s “official” designation.
It is absolutely true that we are discounting the mixed use zoning created by Our Salem! The City has not created exactly what we are asking for. We've been arguing this from the start.
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| The preferred scenario is a rounding error on our current trends. It is not meaningful improvement. |
The basic plan in Our Salem doesn't come close to a 50% reduction by 2035 (the year for the preferred scenario modeling). Compare this image to the blog header image, which adds comment.
There should be no mystery about continued doubt and criticism here of the framework in Our Salem. Our Salem offers a little bit of progress, but not nearly enough. Only if you are content to give the City a participation trophy is Our Salem enough. But if you actually want to hit the targets, as the City says they do, we are still very behind.
Consider some debate in Seattle also.
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| Seattle Times, front page July 2021 |
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| A resident and climate journalist critiques. see the whole thread |
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| Much of the proposed change is for arterial corridors Our Salem map |
And then consider the way nearly all of the new mixed-use zoning in Our Salem is concentrated, as climate analyst David Roberts says, "funneling...new growth into narrow corridors built around car sewers."
More Retrospective Analysis and Future Iteration: Measure and Report on the Outcomes
Other recent attempts at mixed-use zoning on more "main street" configurations, in the 2018 State Street Corridor Study, as well as the mixed-use zoning in the close-in West Salem "code cleanup" project, have been sluggish to redevelop.
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| MU-I and MU-II zoning on State Street (City map) |
If the City is going to tout Our Salem as some great success, at the very least we should have a near-term kind of forensic analysis of why State Street and the Edgewater District have not started redeveloping in a mixed-use mode.
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| ULI report counsels patience |
The recent Urban Land Institute report on close-in West Salem suggests things are not going to redevelop as quickly as we would like under the current configuration and policy conditions. Consider also the pace of redevelopment at the former Boise site, at the former Fairview site, and at the former State Hospital site (and prospects for a forthcoming redevelopment at the former Truitt Bros. cannery site). This is all evidence to doubt the numbers in the City's initial analysis of CFA/WaMUAs.
All this is also a likely call for more policy to support redevelopment.
Something the City does not do enough is review and iterate. If the initial policy conditions adopted by Council do not seem to be doing the job, then the City should escalate to the next level of policy support/intervention.
We rarely see this positive kind of feedback loop.
What do we need to do to ensure the CFA/WaMUAs are a success and meet the target? None of the planning cycles, and also not the Climate Action Plan, embrace any iteration explicitly. With our measurements and data, are we on track? If not, what additional steps should we take?
We need formally scheduled cycles of measurement, review, and iteration.
(The new article at OPB, "Portland crafted a building code aimed at walkable, green neighborhoods. Developers say it’s part of the housing crisis," talks about the need to review SDCs and other fees and requirements, some of which may need to be dropped or altered to address current exigencies.)
Math: Targets and Rate of Change
In a post on our Strong Towns group a person says:
we both over-estimate the power of zoning to create harm and overestimate the ability of zoning to achieve positive change.If we overestimate harm from zoning, and overestimate the amount change from a given quantity of rezoning, then we should be comfortable with rezoning the maximum possible in order to improve the odds we hit our targets.
Focusing on actually meeting targets and goals points to another way we should want a broader distribution of CFA/WaMUAs.
Here's the basic equation:
(Number of eligible lots) x (annual rate of change on lots) x (years) = total amount of change.
In a discussion of zoning, if we want more new housing we have two variables: Increase the number of lots eligible for change or increase the rate of change.
Even though they aren't saying it explicitly, by keeping the new mixed-use zoning confined to arterial corridors, the City is in fact focusing on higher rates of change.
The City should make explicit the rates of change they are assuming. Informal conversation tends to a "zoning determinism," implying that lots with new zoning will necessarily change. But very many lots with new zoning don't in fact change. How long have our surface parking lots downtown persisted after fires or demolition? Two full generations in some cases. They could instead be housing and offices! That happens elsewhere also. Zoning is not destiny.
If we ramp up a smaller number of lots with a high rate of change, that will tend to look like old school urban renewal. This approaches what Jane Jacobs identified as a polar type in the "cataclysm of renewal and redevelopment."
A larger number of lots undergoing a smaller rate of change will tend to look more like the other polar type, incremental change. Smaller rates of change are also more realistic. Even though it is legal now to build smallplexes on lots formerly designated for single detached homes only, the conversion rate under current conditions will be slow. The conversion rate with our new mixed-use zoning on big arterial corridors is also likely to be slow.
Certainly we need to improve on both variables, eligible lots and rates of change, but in the most general terms, the least disruptive mode of change will be to make more lots eligible so that the rate of change doesn't have to be as drastic.
This also improves the odds that the aggregate total amount of change will hit our targets.
Then as we work on other policy support and find ways to reduce other costs in housing, larger numbers of eligible lots will make it more likely that some will pencil out and get built.
In our discussion of new zoning and designating CFA/WaMUAs, the City should make explicit the rate of change they are modeling.
That will be another way to assess how plausible it is we are to achieve the goals. The CFA/WaMUA process is meant, again, for real outcomes not merely to illustrate theoretical potential in a paper study.
More and Better Bike Lanes
Another reason to support a broader designation, with more of them and spread out over a greater area of the city, is that a CFA/WaMUA designation calls for higher standards on non-auto connectivity.
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| Overview |
While the language is non-specific in some places in the lists of regulations and requirements, in the glossary of the "Methods Guide" for bicycling "high quality" facilities are defined as "facilities that meet or exceed NACTO's bikeway design guidelines...."
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| Methods Guide |
Here is a NACTO grid on separation. Salem rarely meets these standards, even on new facilities currently being planned.
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| NACTO bikeway guidelines |
Worse, as we have seen with the adoption of a "hybrid" plan for State Street between 12th and 25th Streets, it's been impossible just to get substandard, vintage paint-only bike lanes on State Street.
In other places, like Second Street NW in West Salem, which might have been an extension of the Union Street path, bike facilities are still very secondary, fit in only after the primary aim of auto capacity (and with a subtext of future connectivity to Marine Drive) is satisfied.
More recently, the proposed Marine Drive enforces sidewalkification with a multi-use sidewalk rather than a dedicated kind of bike lane with separation.
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| NACTO white paper on micro-mobility |
With more and more battery-assisted micro-mobility, like bikes, trikes, scooters, rolling boards, we should instead be thinking about a new class of travel lane in the roadway, a low-impact vehicle lane. Asking people on foot to have to dodge those traveling by faster wheel is not fair to either side.
Instead of disadvantaging people on foot or on wheel, we should disadvantage those driving. That's the mode with the highest social and externalized costs, and the one we most badly need to curb. Or, to put it in positive terms, we need to make walking and rolling delightful, and stop focusing on trying to make driving more delightful.
Having a broader set of CFA/WaMUAs will help push the City towards real 21st century standards for mobility.
It will also partially compensate for the unlikely prospect that the City is going to retrofit downtown to NACTO standards any time soon. The City may talk about "high quality" facilities, but actually installing them is another matter. This is a real cost of the way the infrastructure bond was rushed and then locked in projects for the next 10 years. A slower process might have been more responsive to this exigency.
Asking the City for more Persuasive Proof
Even if you do not agree that Our Salem and the "prescriptive" analysis so far in the CFA/WaMUA process is underpowered, you should agree that the goal is a set of real outcomes and that the City has not demonstrated its proposals are likely to attain them. Change on paper, and with unrealistic assumptions, is not a recipe for real outcomes and success.
(See previous notes on Salem in Motion and the CFA/WaMUA process.)
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