Reviews and Comments

(Reprinted from transportationist.wordpress.com/2011/12/08/deconstructing_busytown_1/ )returnreturnMy first understanding of how places work probably came from the book What Do People Do All Day? by children’s author Richard Scarry. The Busytown in which this book (and others) are set faded from my consciousness until my son was born, and we decided to go shopping for books again. Rereading the book from an adult (and planning and transportation professional’s) point-of-view provides a new perspective on the Scarry memes that have shaped the neural networks of millions of young minds. How many youth are inculcated in the idealized place of Scarry? Estimates suggest that over 300 million copies of Scarry books are out there, no small set of infected brains.returnreturnI was raised on the 1968 version, and have acquired the abridged (and apparently censored) 1976 version for my son. A number of people have critiqued Scarry for his implicit sexism, a large number of women work at home or other traditionally female occupations (teacher, nurse). The Scarry world-view is traditional, and I won’t pile on in that regard. But the world is traditional in other ways as well, and that is its view of the city.returnreturnScarry moved to Switzerland in 1968, and if nothing else, Swiss architecture permeates the old town center of What Do People Do All Day. The Town Hall of Busytown on the cover is nothing if not Tudor. There is a small gate through which a small car is driving. Something to note about the vehicles in Busytown is that they are all just the right size for the number of passengers they carry. The Bus on the cover is full, with a hanger-on. The taxi holds one driver in the front and one passenger in the rear. The police officer (Seargant Murphy) is riding a motorcycle. When he has a passenger, the motorcycle always has a sidecar. Similarly, each window in town has someone in it, sometimes more than one person. Of course, this is a busy town, so the activity makes sense. The cover of this includes the grocery store, butcher, and baker (no supermarkets in 1968 Busytown), one block in front of Town Hall. One thing to note about the Butcher is that he is a pig, and clearly butchering sausages. Anthropomorphism is a standard feature of children’s books, so that shouldn’t disturb us. The cannibalistic autophagia: a pig serving one of his own (presumably sometimes to other pigs, though on the cover the customer is a mouse), does disturb. It is a common feature of American restaurant signs to feature a smiling animal (e.g. the happy pig chowing down at a rib shack) encouraging you to come in and eat. One is somehow more comforted with ads of cows holding signs saying “Eat mor chikin!” (remarkable more not for the misspelling, but for the fact that cows can write at all with their hooves).returnreturnOn the cover, the post office is just behind Town Hall, a hotel next to that is shown inside on detailed pages. The police station is located next door to the Town Hall (separated by the town gate and a newsstand), a detective agency on the second floor, and a watch-repairman upstairs from that. If the police don’t give you satisfaction, you can go upstairs and hire your own private investigator. So public buildings seem to share space with private businesses. Just left of the town hall is a residential building (perhaps medically oriented). Left of that (on the back cover, which is continuous with the front), and across the street are the public library and school.returnThe building to the right of the police station, separated by a small plaza, includes a café, printer, newspaper, and bookstore on the ground floor, a photographer, secretary, and telephone operator on the second floor, and an artist studio, story-writer, and poet above that. A very high density mixed use collection of small businesses all themed around communication.returnreturnPage 4 shows another picture of the town center area, though not obviously connected to the first picture. There is a building with a music teacher and dance studio. To the right of that across the street is a building with a bank and drug store on the ground floor, and upstairs includes a dressmaker, beauty parlor, and realtor, and on the top floor, the medical complex including dentist, doctor, and optometrist. Even in Busytown, the medical professionals co-locate. Perhaps they are sharing a receptionist (like in the Bob Newhart Show), it is hard to say.returnreturnNext door and across an alley is a barber, and upstairs (up a hill, so the second floor has ground access as well) is a hardware store. Home Depot has yet to arrive. The top two floors are residential, the “Ritz Apartments”. Across the street is an automobile showroom, in the style found outside North America where it features only one car in the window and there are other uses in the building. Behind that is the fire station.returnreturnWe learn on later pages that some businesses appear more than once. Grocer cat seems to have at least two small food stands, the stand on the cover is clearly different than the one on page six. There is also more than one bank, the downtown bank on page four (run by a raccoon) is in a large building, but there is another bank on page seven, with a different (this time pig) banker.returnreturnWe discover that town includes a tailor and a blacksmith shop (who fixes tractors). There are construction workers in town, who work in the field at construction sites. The infrastructure of the house they are building is surprisingly accurate, including water and sewer, and forced air heating. The electrical is governed by a fuse box, while the telecommunications wires each room with a fixed-line telephone (this was 1968 after all).returnreturnWe follow a letter from Betsy Bear (in Busytown) to Grandma Bear (in Workville) The postmaster in Busytown sorts letters by hand into cubbyholes sorting them by destination; all letters to Workville are put in a bag and on a plane. Though there are no apparent zip codes, one letter carrier in Workville is named Zip. After some confusion, Zip delivers the letter to Grandma’s house. Grandma is delighted to have received the felicitous missive from her granddaughter. The post office still sells airmail stamps for only 8 (cents?), and postmarks are applied by hand, but the post office today works remarkably like that of 1968.returnreturnThe firefighting system differs from today through the use of fire-alarm boxes, rather than 911. The advantage of boxes of course is the built in locational information, which was not available until recently with land-line phones, and still is not available on many mobile phones (For that matter, my phone company does not even have effective caller-id, especially after they transfer me seven times). If someone pulls the level of fire-alarm box number 3, that helps send the firefighters on their way. The firefighting equipment is similar to that of today, the trucks are the iconic red, though there is a lot of equipment deployed for a small house fire (at least five vehicles)returnreturnThe medical system we learn about through Abby’s visit to the hospital for a tonsillectomy. Doctor Lion, who has both a practice and hospital visiting rights, performs the surgery. However Abby’s mom can’t stay, it turns out she is about to give birth to a baby brother for Abby. Mom came to the hospital in an ambulance, the old station-wagon style ambulance. I hope they have good insurance, still they will see bills and statements for months.returnreturnThe Pig family takes a train trip to visit relatives. The day of the trip Daddy buys tickets at the train station. Note that there are no advanced purchases required, and there must be space on the train. The train looks quite crowded in the picture, so maybe daddy lucked out and got the last available seats. The station has a newsstand, and porters help passengers with their luggage. A vendor sells snacks on the platform. The trip requires a transfer (not only are they taking a train, they are taking two trains). The second train is much more modern, and has a sleeping car, dining car, and mail car, and is powered by a diesel-electric locomotive. The train has a conductor who collects the tickets. The mail is thrown off the train at the local train station without having to stop. There are at-grade crossing, protected by gates, but the gates are not machine controlled. The amount of labor involved in this trip must make it expensive. Eventually the pig family’s overnight trip ends when they arrive at the Wiener Schnitzel station.returnreturnAs a professor who teaches transportation engineering and planning, I took a special interest in the chapter “Building a new road”. It begins “Good roads are very important to all of us.” And of course, they are. The problem it seems is that Busytown and Workville are connected by a bumpy, crooked, dirt road, which becomes a mud pit when it rains. The towns are not that far apart (despite the fact that Betsy in Busytown needed airmail to send a letter to her grandmother in Workville, but perhaps the planes are needed because the road was so bad). The mayors of the two towns talk to the Chief Road Engineer and agree to pay him to build the road. So road construction seems to be private, or at least on a contract basis with some other agency (a state department of transportation?). A great deal of modern construction equipment is used to build an asphalt road with an aggregate base. The bridge though is stone construction, and seems very labor intensive. The road itself rides smoother and is paved, though it still seems crooked, perhaps there were difficulties in right-of-way acquisition – this could have been a problem if the road were privately owned, though one might think that a public agency would have acquired the right-of-way first through eminent domain. The road, a two-lane, signal controlled, undivided highway, with streetlights, signs, and guard rails, provides a rest area with a snack bar (managed by a mouse or rabbit serving pork, at least there is no cannibalism) and gas station. The signs are non-standard (for either the US or Europe), and this might create some confusion and be the cause of future incidents. As is true of all Richard Scarry stories, the dividing line painter truck manages to run off the road. In the end, there proves to be a great deal of induced demand, as there is a rush to use the road when it opens, and the police are required to keep order.returnreturnIn other chapters we learn about agriculture and forestry (including a water-powered saw mill), as well as ocean travel. Not content with just one book, Scarry, like many fantasy and science fiction writers, milks his universe with multiple titles. These may give insight into the evolution of urban form since 1968.returnreturnBusiest People Ever, released in 1976, gives us further scenes about town. We see a street with a bakery, watch shop, toy store, dress shop, and a one-screen movie theater. The architecture appears American from the early twentieth century, a lot of “taxpayer” blocks with single story construction. Another street scene has a church, across the street from a TV shop and bookstore. The next block has a police station, delicatessen, and candy shop. This street ends on a block with a sporting goods store and optician. The road line painter is of course drawing crooked lines. The final two blocks of this shopping district feature a drugstore next to a hardware store, hat shop, and florist, and a building with a shoemaker, electric supplies, and groceries. These are apparently different buildings than found in 1968, or are in a different business district (since we no longer see the Tudor Town Hall).returnreturnAnother area has a fishmonger across the street from a two story building with jeweler, sign painter, umbrella, ice cream, antiques, and tailor on the ground floor, and artist, sculptor, lawyer, dancing school, singing lessons, and window washing upstairs. One gets the feeling this is a low rent area, after all, does the window washer need a high-rent location? Well, no comic books stores or karate studios.returnreturnThe train station has gotten much bigger, there was clearly a growth spurt in town. In another business district there is now a drive-in bank, a second school, another post office, which takes up two storefronts, music shop, and a restaurant. The people of Busytown may be eating out more. Across from the restaurant there is also a coffee shop, next to a bike shop. Lest you think the residents are health nuts though, this is next to another auto dealership. On the next block is an office of another local newspaper; Busytown c. 1976 can support two papers. We speculate these two papers will eventually merge.returnreturnAnother road is under construction; the interstate era is upon us. The road includes a gas station with two pumps now, and the road features a roadside emergency telephone. The port still does not have container ships though. The airport gets flights from Swissair (RIP) as well as air cargo flights, and seems much busier.returnThe book Busy, Busy Town, published in 1994, reworks many of the same themes. In our world 26 years after the creation of Busytown, and 18 years after Busiest People Ever, the library now shares a building with the bank, some offices, a writer and a painter. We discover that “The best writers write children’s books”, though I think the best writers write about children’s books.returnreturnOn Main Street (which is clearly marked), the drug store, hardware store, shoe repair and grocery store share one block. A laundry, candyshop, bookstore, and barber share a second. These buildings are only one story though. Maybe suburbanization has struck, this could be Main Street Extended, it clearly illustrates a different urban landscape from the old Tudor town center area. We explore the post office, school, home, the hospital (we find Dr. Lion still practicing). The people who keep Busytown clean now include now include a recycling crew, as well as junkman. We learn that “Someday the garbage dump will be a lovely picnic ground.” Again, there is a fire, there are home fixer-uppers. The interesting thing is that first, they all showed up for work the day that Mother Cat called them, and second they are all coordinated, so that the as the plasterer is finishing, a painter can follow up within no-time, and then a paperhanger puts on wall-paper, all without stepping on each other’s toes. We learn about lumber, wood-working, farming, and the streets of Busytown. The streets have many street cleaners, but still the infrastructure is in disrepair. There are water pipes and electric wires under the street needing fixing, a worker breaking the street with his jackhammer, and another worker using asphalt to repair potholes. On the surface, there is a hotdog vendor and ice-cream man in his truck.returnA large variety of trucks and cars populate the streets of the city. Just like their infrastructure, the people of Busytown have difficulty maintaining their fleet. (Perhaps it is the lack of opposable thumbs afflicting the populace). Many cars are broken-down and found at a service station that both sells gas and services cars, which is definitely a throwback to an earlier era. The railroad operates coal-powered locomotives on a single-track system that uses signal controls. The harbor is also a busy place, however containerization does not seem to have hit, items are off-loaded with an on-boat crane, and they are not in large containers. There is inter-modalism, as the machines are loaded directly onto flatbed rail cars.returnreturnThe past 26 years saw a major upgrade to the Busytown Airport, including a jet pilot wearing a space-helmet. Unconcerned, the pilot allows Lowly Worm into the cockpit, a security breech that would no longer be tolerated.returnreturnApparently there is a supermarket now in addition to the grocery stores. The butcher at the market (maybe the same pig, maybe a different one) is grinding hamburger. At least it isn’t pork. The baker is also a pig, but the other workers seem to include both cats and rabbits. Maybe the supermarket is really just a cooperative of local merchants, rather than a national chain. Evidence for this includes a cash register that is the old-fashioned style: it does not include a UPC scanner.returnreturnBusytown requires police in town to help give order to their chaotic lives. The police in town direct traffic (the traffic signal infrastructure is inadequate or broken), find lost children, give parking tickets, chase speeders, and tend to auto accidents. Four out of five of their daily jobs are related to highways.returnreturnThe world of Busytown is indeed busy. The port and airport indicate a city of between 500,000 and 1,000,000 people, though clearly a town that large would have more stores, perhaps we only see a glimpse into the retail activity. Scarry creates other less well defined places in his other books. They are more American in style, but less coherent somehow than his Busytown books. Raised on Scarry, I came to associate place with having a certain set of activities. The local shopping area should have a butcher, a bakery, a hardware store, etc. Busytown is however stressful. While no one is murdered, there is a fire in almost every book, lots of traffic crashes among well-known members of the community, and many hospital visits.returnreturnIs Busytown a Spontaneous City? One could argue it is. Clearly there is a dynamic evolution of Busytown’s urban form over the period from 1968 to 1994. New businesses are opened, a supermarket seems to replace some older food vendors (butcher, baker, grocer). Forms not known at the time the town was founded (and judging from the architecture, the old town is at least 19th century, and possibly earlier) rise to prominence. While the town is slow to take up some technologies (computing, containerization), air travel is advanced. The town is also slow to abandon some older forms (passenger rail service with coal powered trains). The physical network also changes, roads are being built, the newer ones better than the old ones. Roads can be built quickly it seems, the mayors go to the road engineer and one page later, construction has begun. If someone has a whim, they can probably find a store or service that will meet it, so they can spontaneously choose to undertake an activity. Daddy buys train tickets the same day of the trip. In order to accommodate spontaneity, of course, the railroad had to be there. The town is created and recreated in a spontaneous way, yet it feels very ordered, the town is the right size for its population. The people act in a spontaneous way, which may get them in trouble, but the police are available to restore order when necessary. In short, it feels balanced, options are available, but only as many as the town can support. Ideas, like new roads, can be quickly implemented, though one wonders why it took until 1968 to pave a major road to a nearby town and 1976 to get a freeway.

Book Review: returnMegaprojects and Risk: An Anatomy of Ambition by Bent Flyvbjerg, Nils Bruzelius and Werner Rothengatter returnMega-projects: The Challenging Politics of Urban Public Investment by Alan Altshuler and David Luberoff return returnTwo recent books on the development and deployment of large projects have recently been released. Both books tackle Megaprojects, but from somewhat different points- of-view, one European, the other American; one disparaging, the other positive; one largely statistical-empirical, the other political-historical. We consider these books in turn.return returnIn Megaprojects and Risk, Flyvbjerg et al. examined the problems with the conventional megaproject development process from the perspective of risk management. Based on in-depth reviews of three large-scale European megaprojects, namely the Channel Tunnel, the Great Belt Link, and the Oresund Link, the book is structured into two major portions: identifying problem and proposing solutions to the problem of interest. returnreturnTo begin, the book identifies a common feature of the conventional megaprojects development, that is, despite the overwhelming costs overrun, below- projection revenue, and strikingly poor performance records in terms of economy, environment and public support, megaprojects grow continuously in number and scale around the world, forming the so-called megaprojects paradox. Understanding of this problem and its consequences are explored in the first six chapters, which document the costs overrun, demand overforecasts, and viability inflation of major megaprojects. The book then proceeds to use risk as an analytic frame and identify the main causes of the megaprojects paradox to be inadequate treatment of risk, and more fundamentally, the lack of accountability toward risk. In particular, it is argued that megaprojects normally involved great magnitudes of uncertainties, making risks returnunavoidable, and decision makers and the public would be deceived about the project outcomes in absence of proper risk analysis. Hence, the book proposes acknowledging and managing project risks as a solution to the megaproject paradox. The book attributes the problem of optimistic appraisal to the failure of the decision making process to acknowledge and manage risk, that is, decisions are made based on decision makers and the general public’s misinformed visions about the outcomes of projects. However, one can explore further the causes of this problem since even if risks information were brought to the decision makers, optimal appraisal would not necessarily be reduced as long as incentives to produce optimistic estimate of viability are stronger than the disincentives. In fact, sensitivity analysis is normally included in feasibility studies, indicating the availability of information about associated risk. Ignorance of risk information in optimistic appraised projects could then be attributed to lack of incentives to treat the risk. returnreturnRisk management is not sufficient in order to fundamentally address the megaproject paradox. The concept of risk provides an instrument to analyze the problem. And lack of accountability to manage risk is identified as the key problem that leads to the megaproject paradox. However, the problem of risk management is a representation of an underlying cause: the institutional arrangement of the decision making process, that is, those who make decisions need not necessarily to be responsible for the risk of decisions made. Fundamentally addressing the megaproject returnparadox hence lies in better institutional arrangements such that decision makers are also in the position of taking the risks of decisions made, which would create incentives to produce responsible decision making. returnreturnTransparency is one instrument of accountability proposed in this book to be employed in project development. An assumption of this approach is to take the role of government as one that represents and protects the public interest, and hence transparency requires the possibility for the public to verify this assumption at all times. While in principal this assumption is true, in practice government’s functions deviate greatly from it, especially in the megaproject development process when the initiatives of projects are often a bottom-up process representing localized interests returnthat are narrower than public interests. As a consequence, difficulties might arise when implementing the transparency strategy in terms of verifying government’s role of protecting the public interests. returnreturnThe idea of allocating risks to those best suited to manage them also serves an equity function, in the sense that it reverses the common practices of transferring costs of risks to the ordinary citizens, who are in the weakest positions to protect themselves. returnreturnOne feature of the book is that it documents in detail the megaproject paradox based on information about hundreds of projects in twenty nations and cross five continents, which makes a rich resource for those who are interested in this topic and issue. The inherent connections between the identified problems and the proposed solutions, however, are not as strong and obvious in this book. returnreturnUnder the similar title of Mega-Projects: The Changing Politics of Urban Public Investment, Alan Altshuler and David Luberoff examine the megaproject phenomenon from the perspective of public investment politics. Concentrating its returncoverage on three project types of highway, airport, and rail transit systems, the book studies cases of American large public works projects following the presentation of the history of American public investments and the leading theories of urban politics. In particular, the book starts with narratives and empirical research of large public megaprojects through the history of urban public investment over the past century. This is followed by a review of leading theories of urban and American politics, examining how well theories can explain the facts observed through history. returnreturnCommon themes are drawn from the projects narratives and then most relevant theories are integrated with projects under study to pursue better understanding of the megaproject politics. Based on the review of previous megaproject developments, the book concludes with speculations on the future of urban mega-projects. One feature of the book is the broad perspective it provides on the topic of megaprojects development in terms of the time span and theoretical scope. The history provides readers with a unique view of the patterns and trends of megaprojects developments at a macro level, integrating that with major policy shifts over time, insights could be drawn about the fundamental forces that drove the trend of project developments. Meanwhile, the wide spectrum of theories provides arrays of perspectives of how decisions are made and public choices are shaped. returnreturnWaves of megaprojects developments over the past half-century reflect the back and fourth interplay between the demand for megaprojects and the opposition to such projects from those that tended to be negatively affected. Throughout history and across different types of projects, it seems always true that the systems function in a returnway that some would benefit from a project while others have to pay for the costs. Hence the problem of balancing conflicting values would persist for megaproject development and “has no solution” as put by Altshuler and Luberroff. A realistic and meaningful approach to dealing with this situation would be to improve the process design so as to seek the wisest balance among multiple perspectives. Another interesting point brought up about the federal-local relationship in project development is the notion of “bottom-up Federalism” in chapter seven. Particularly, the book argues against the existence of national goals by federal government when granting funding assistances to local projects. Instead, the federal decision process is described as one dominated by local initiative and pork barrel returnbargaining. This explains why recent megaprojects normally fail any reasonable benefit-cost analysis and why the benefits-cost analyses of a project development process is, more often than not, at best of minor importance, at worst irrelevant. returnreturnThese two books tackle one subject, and both are worthwhile contributions to the literature. Altshuler and Luberoff, based in Boston, seem encouraged by the Big Dig (dismissing the cost overruns as a political problem of curiosity as to how it is resolved, rather than a social problem that has significant opportunity costs), which those of us in the rest of the country paying for it may not see as quite as worthwhile. The Big Dig is impressive: both as a piece of engineering and a work of politics, but there is always the risk biographers have of falling in love with their subject. In returncontrast, Flyvbjerg et al. seem to face the opposite problem, condemning the projects they analyze, denying the benefits that may not appear on the benefit-cost ledger. While tending to lean in favor of B/C analysis, it is clear that some improvements open up new pathways for technologies whose benefits cannot properly be assessed at returnthe present time. returnreturn If one thinks of the project (Big Dig or Channel Tunnel) not simply as a project, but as research and development for the future, developing new technologies for things like tunneling, having an apparent Benefit/Cost ratio below 1.0 might be justified. As noted by Altshuler and Luberoff, we have a mature transportation system. The projects described (new transit, new airports, new highways) are largely replacements, not new developments. It remains to be seen whether the technologies pioneered as part of megaprojects will open up new opportunities and enable the returndeployment of new networks. return returnReviewed by Wenling Chen and David Levinson, University of Minnesota return(Review originally appeared in Journal of Regional Science Vol. 44, No. 3, pp. 617–619.)

Transportation Networks and the Optimal Location of Human Activities: A Numerical returnGeography Approach. By I. Thomas. Northampton, Massachusetts: Edward Elgar, 2002. return returnTransportation Networks and the Optimal Location of Human Activities is based on previous work by Thomas and her colleagues located in various journals and what she identifies as the equivalent to a second doctoral dissertation. Therefore, the book is in essence a series of related papers, which extend each other by relaxing one constraint or another. Though not really written for the beginner, tacit knowledge required includes optimization and basic network analysis, the book may be suitable as a text used (with others) for advanced graduate students. The intended audience is clearly researchers and students of the location-allocation problem – where facilities should be sited on networks, and how many facilities are required. returnreturnTo begin, the book includes an extensive and valuable historical review of the location-allocation problem, including literature in the French language often not accessible to English-speaking researchers. What is most interesting about the book is its systematic treatment of alternative network topologies on the location-allocation problem. This begins in Chapter 3 “Optimal locations and transportation networks: the case of autarky”, which presents and tests the basic model using toy networks. The optimal location of facilities depends on whether a network is a grid, a radial, or a ring-radial structure, and on how far out is the ring-road. This is not surprising, but is worth documenting. Future research simultaneously locating point-facilities and networks (combining the location-allocation problem with the network design problem in some fashion) would then give us the “optimal” urban form, at least with respect to public welfare. Thomas consciously shies from drawing conclusions about optimal networks, and doesn’t explicitly provide the tools for the less shy reader to draw those conclusions (an overall social welfare index). However, by comparing the average distances associated with particular networks, with number of links (and by her gridded geometry - link distance) (presumably correlated with network cost), the research allows the reader to draw the conclusions. To do so, the reader must weigh largely fixed infrastructure cost and ongoing network distance (between nodes and located facilities). Inspection suggests that the ring-radial network meets trade-off best, but some further development in this area would be welcome. returnreturnAnother intriguing chapter is Chapter 9 “Optimal locations of health centres in Niger: rainy season versus dry season accessibility”, which applies a model to a real case; with the wrinkle that transportation costs vary seasonally (suggesting the best facility locations in one season differ from another). It is somewhat frustrating that the practical applications, which illustrate the value of the approach, are so far in the back of the book. returnreturnThe application chapters can be read independently of the analysis using toy networks. A notable feature of the book is the relative lack of equations. Aside from formulating the optimization problem near the beginning of each chapter, the results are presented. There are no detailed proofs or formulations of the methods of solving the optimization problem. In a sense, the methodology is missing. The author is claiming: I solved an optimization problem that gave me this unique solution. There is no evidence presented that the solutions are unique, and the author notes that some are local optima. Some additional detail, presented in an appendix, may have been useful for readers inclined in that direction. However, the lack of equations keeps the more qualitative reader from being distracted or losing interest. (It has been said that each equation loses returnhalf your readers, in that respect, the author will retain about half her readers in most chapters). returnreturnThe book, and the location-allocation problem in general, suffer from a preoccupation with idealized command-and-control governance. Rarely is a blank slate provided. The book solves optimization problems (referred to as simulations) – to find a static equilibrium. Admittedly this is a tractable problem. In their general form, these problems assume all locations for our public facilities can be simultaneously moved, rather than optimizing subject to historical path-dependence (I had 11 facilities, they (or most of them) need to stay, where should I put number 12, 13, …), which is how most public facilities really need to be located. The problem also assumes an omniscient central planner locating facilities, rather than a group of separate decision makers inter-dependently locating competing facilities. This is true for a class of problems in every society, regardless of the degree of centralization. McDonald’s, a capitalist icon, faces the same problems in restaurant locations, doing so centrally. However it does do so sequentially, and while it can sometimes take down failing locations, the fixed costs of location would have to be duplicated. An incrementalist, dynamic approach, returnincorporating the ideas of game theory, would increase the value of the problem in future applications, and is the direction I believe that research in general should head. return return returnThe book is similar in some respects to the methods that Stephen Wolfram proposes in the widely publicized A New Kind of Science, both books contain many graphs presented which show the resulting solutions. However it could fall prey to the same criticisms leveled at Wolfram’s text (though certainly not the critique of his arrogance, Thomas is modest in her claims). I had a professor once say to me “a monkey can do simulations”. The key, perhaps to being a researcher rather than a monkey, is to formulate the problem well. Thomas is clear on her formulation. Though I have used simulation myself in a number of cases, it is important to couple simulation with hypothesis and analysis. While there is extensive reporting of results, it remains a returnchallenge of this line of research to generate general conclusions, or robust predictive models that can be used in the absence of simulation. return return return returnDavid Levinson return(Review originally appeared in Economic Geography Vol. 79, No. 3, July 2003, p. 345-346.)

Review of Shoup, Donald C. (2005). The High Cost of Free Parking. APA Planners returnPress, Chicago 733 pp. $59.95 return returnWhen Donald Shoup buys or borrows a new book (and he must do this a lot), you can just see him running to the index, look up the word “parking”, and then make note of the relevant sentences, since every time the word “parking” has ever appeared in some other book, it seems, it is cited in this 733 page tome. Parking is a critical linkage between transportation and land use, and deserves more attention than it has historically received. This book, with its concomitant media coverage, has drawn focus to the topic. The ideas contained within are familiar to those who have read many of Shoup’s academic articles on the topic. His critique of the ITE Parking Generation (and Trip Generation) rates is classic, and should be noted by any planner who seeks “appeal to authority” as a justification for their actions or beliefs. return return“Appeal to authority” is however a technique Shoup frequently employs, when turning from analysis to advocacy, citing just about every urban critic’s rant against blacktop. According to Shoup, off-street surface parking is a Great Planning Disaster in the vein returnwritten about by Peter Hall (1982) in the book of the same name. The worldview suggests omnipotent (but obviously not omniscient) planners force minimum parking requirements onto defenseless developers, who have no choice but to comply. It only briefly notes the hassle and transaction costs of paying for parking at a meter (suggesting they are a thing of the past with new technologies). But those transaction costs (fumbling for quarters at meters) are much like the headaches with stopping at a toll booth before the advent of electronic toll collection, headaches which ultimately led to “free” roads paid for with gas and property taxes rather than toll roads paid directly by users. return returnClearly the parking requirements imposed by planners are a proximate cause, but are they really the underlying reason we have so much free parking? Alternatively, do we have lots of free parking because we (as a community) want spatial separation between our buildings in low-density suburbs, or do we have spread out buildings because we want space for free parking? One wishes that this question could have been answered somewhere in the text. Unpopular and uneconomic laws and regulations rarely last in democratic governments where legislators stand for elections whose campaigns are funded by developers. There are reasons the United States has “paved over paradise and put up a parking lot”, and the ill-informed planner seems more likely a tool rather than an agent. return returnHis insights about cruising for free or discounted curb parking are also important, and likely do produce congestion in some dense urban areas. The models presented have pedagogical value, though the idea of a planning course using this as a text may be a bit excessive. return returnThe idea of unbundling the charge for parking from the charge for the other uses of land is also seemingly attractive. We bundle things all the time to reduce costs and increase convenience (e.g. we generally buy the lot and the house together rather than conduct separate transactions). We bundle to achieve efficiency by putting the cost of parking into the cost of everything else we purchase at stores, or the cost of rent for offices. Without bundling in our economy, we risk drowning in a sea of small charges. This book essentially calls for a full employment act for meter readers, and if carried through, would quite possibly end any unemployment problems remaining in the US. return returnI read with interest his chapter on “Taxing Foreigners Living Abroad” (not only because I wrote an article for Access with an identical title about toll roads being used more frequently in places with many non-resident drivers), as a way of changing the political dynamic and property rights associated with the on-street parking lane by allowing neighborhoods (or business improvement districts) to retain the revenue from parking, thereby obtaining local buy-in. return returnThe solutions to the malaise are innovative, and in the end he reduces his many ideas to a three sensible reforms: charge fair-market prices for curb parking, return the revenue to neighborhoods, and remove requirements for off-street parking. return returnOne cannot disagree with many of the proffered solutions as having roles in specific crowded and high-density places, the kind of places most planners prefer. Yet the vast majority of the United States now possesses sufficient free off-street parking to make returnthese solutions irrelevant for decades to come. return return return returnDavid Levinson return (Review originally appeared in Journal of the American Planning Association Autumn 2005, Vol. 71, Iss. 4, pg 459, 1.)

ZONED OUT: REGULATION, MARKET, AND CHOICE IN TRANSPORTATION AND METROPOLITAN LAND-USE. By Jonathan Levine. Resources for the Future, 2006. 223 pp. ISBN 1-933115-15-7. return returnAre the problems of sprawl in metropolitan areas caused by free markets or government policies? Levine argues that density ceilings, by capping the amount of development in a given area, increase the amount of area that is developed, and is a prime, and too often neglected, culprit in the problems associated with sprawl, including returncongestion, air pollution, and even obesity. In nine chapters Levine takes aim not only at density, but also at the analysis of land use and transportation that has been put forth by the academic community. returnreturn Chapter 2, “Travel Behavior Research and the ‘Market,’” examines the analysis methods and assumptions of travel behavior researchers. Levine takes issue with the attempt to control for “self-selection,” arguing that self-selection is one way to better match persons with the locations that best satisfy their transportation and location preferences. He also criticizes researchers about considering policies that increase density without looking at the existing status quo in which density is limited by zoning regulations. When criticizing his colleagues, Levine does not fully explore what those academics he cites were responding to, claims by those in the New Urbanist community about the traffic benefits of new urbanism, associated with particular street patterns and land use configurations. Levine argues (p. 46), “The problem comes when the scientific conclusion—‘fail to reject the null hypothesis,’ which in the case of transportation and land use research is ‘no proven impact of urban form on travel behavior’—gets mapped onto a policy stance.” The alternative, which is all too often undertaken, is to develop policy without scientific input based on the claims of advocates (e.g., No growth neighbors or New Urbanists). returnreturn In Chapters 3, 4, and 5, “Market-like Interpretations of Land-Use Controls,” “The Harms of Regulatory Exclusion,” and “Is Zoning State Regulation or Property Right?,” Levine addresses the important question of whether density ceilings are a community property right or regulation, and argues that they are regulations that would be scorned by returnthose who endorse them if administered by a higher level of government. The rise of homeowners’ associations that Levine describes may in the long run make zoning moot, as private contracts between individuals would surely establish the community property right in zoning that current interpretation of the law may make ambiguous. return The implicit assumption throughout is that we have a democracy where only resident voters, who desire low density to maintain property values, have an input into regulation. The notion of regulatory capture (by the regulated—in this case, developers) is not raised. Nor is the notion of developer influence on local governments considered. In many jurisdictions, the largest financial contributors to political campaigns are developers; surely this buys them some influence. While the Coasian idea of negotiation resulting in the same final outcome concerning negative externalities (independent of the initial allocation) was brought up (p. 55), the ideas of the public choice school of returneconomics were not, and viewing both bureaucrats (who might retire to the private sector) and politicians (who need campaign financing) as distinct agents could help inform the reasoning. return returnreturn The Tiebout hypothesis, which suggests that people vote with their feet and choose the level of services and housing stock that best matches their “preferences and pocketbooks” (p. 69), is judged and dismissed as unable to provide sufficient market choices in an environment with regulatory exclusion by zoning. In particular the Tiebout returnframework ignores transportation costs that travelers may face if because of regulation they must commute longer. return Chapter 6 considers “The Limited Power of Smart-Growth Regulation.” Unfortunately, there are some analytical errors in the text, notably Table 6-1 (p. 111), which suggests that density floors (minimum density requirements) cannot work, because if they result in lower profits than other sites (without floors), developers will choose those other sites. What is neglected is the price of land. If a developer finds a site with a density floor that might result in a lower profit, he can simply bid less for the land to equalize profits. Only if the floor is so high that the profits are so low that the profit-equalizing price of land becomes negative will density floors ensure no development. returnreturn One wishes Levine had provided original empirical evidence that density ceilings do in fact substantially affect market behaviors (rather than encoding behaviors in law). The evidence he provides, from an opinion survey of developers, suggests that some developers believe they were constrained by regulation, but one might ask, what are developers going to say? A more robust analysis would test if, after controlling for other factors, areas with density ceilings in fact have statistically significant lower densities than area with higher (or no) ceilings. Alternatively, evidence about the number of locations where development is at the zoning ceiling rather than below, would have made the case more convincing. The larger point that density ceilings are more common than returnfloors in the United States, which must at some level affect ultimate densities, and restrict market choices, still holds. return returnChapter 7, “Developers, Planners, and Neighborhood Supply,” examines the supply-side issue. This chapter seeks to understand what people want, rather than justifying “smart growth” on weak correlations between smart growth and travel behavior. The author wants more smart growth, and seeks to demonstrate that others do as well by reporting the results of a study conducted in Boston and Atlanta. Not everyone’s preference can be satisfied. In order for me to live in an area with a dense population, others must do so as well, while in order for me to live in a low-density area, others must not do so. I can’t have density without people, other people are creating positive externalities for me if I want to live in an urban core; other people are creating negative externalities if I want to live in a rural/suburban setting. So my preference for high-density transit-oriented living with a coffee shop on the ground floor can only be satisfied if a sufficient number of other people have the same preference. Levine’s study returnclaims that 29 percent of Atlantans (and 40 percent of Bostonians) (p. 160) prefer transit and pedestrian-oriented neighborhoods, and that preferences in Atlanta in particular are unsatisfied. Though the details of the study were not presented in the chapter, if one were to take the results at face value, that should be enough to generate desired neighborhoods, if only the transit-oriented respondents could coordinate, and were not constrained by returnregulation. The final chapter summarizes the work and presents policy recommendations. Overall, the book is an interesting read, and raises some important topics and philosophical questions about the nature of property rights and the status quo. By turning on its head the conventional idea that sprawl is a market construct that the government should remedy, rather than a government construct that a deregulated market could change, he opens up some new policy alternatives that can be pursued to affect the urban landscape. returnreturn returnDavid Levinson returnUniversity of Minnesota return return (Review originally appeared in Growth and Change Volume 37 Issue 3 Page 492-494 - September 2006)

Review of film on which book is based.returnreturnWe saw Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth this weekend (July 17, 2006). I had actually already read the book, and was curious to see his Apple Keynote based presentation, just to see what state of the art is in presentations (not a bullet-point to be seen), as well of course to be warned that the world as we know it is coming to an end, and if I do nothing, it is my own damn fault. The movie basically stars Keynote, with Al Gore as a supporting actor.returnreturnLots has been said about if this Al Gore was what we saw in 2000, ... maybe he would have been elected President. I am not sure the average American really wants to hear about environmental problems though, but at least he wouldn't have been quite so stiff or in search of himself. He certainly could have pulled some votes from the left, but would he have lost the center?returnreturnUnfortunately, this movie is an eye-opener for people. I say unfortunately, for their eyes should have been opened before. The CO2 data is not new, though some of the pictures of receding glaciers are.returnreturnThe movie remains a brilliant piece of propaganda. (It is propaganda, not science, not even science reporting, since it is in the end a call to action, not merely information). Al Gore asserts consensus in the scientific community about the direction of global climate change (on average it is getting warmer and more carbon dioxidic) and in a bit of a shell game implies there is also consensus about the magnitude of change, and its consequences.returnreturnIn particular, it is worthwhile to consider the Daisyworld Model as a possible framework for considering consequences.returnreturnWhat happens when CO2 goes up? Temperature rises. What happens when temperatures rise? Things that thrive in a warmer environment are more successful. One question is, does that success then dampen the increase? I.e. does the life in the warm environment (e.g. the increased proliferation of life in what once was polar bear country, the giant frozen landmasses and sheets of ice of the northern hemisphere) then absorb more CO2, limiting the effect? The second question is: how long does it take? (And what people and what species get displaced in the meantime).returnreturnThe Figure used from the Vostok Antarctica ice core, which was also in the movie, correlates dust, CO2 and temperature over the past 400,000 years. Note that every increase is followed by a crash (there does not seem to be a secular trend). (Interestingly the rises are faster than the falls.)returnreturnSome of the variation is due to solar-earth variations, e.g. (Milankovitch cycles), clearly an exogenous source (the earth's weather and biology is not changing the Earth's tilt (we hope)), but that must be coupled with biological responses.returnreturnA manmade exogenous force (CO2) might be expected to have effects on climate as well, but perhaps those are self-limiting (see Daisy World or the cyclic evidence), or maybe they will run amok (see the planet Venus), we don't know. It is all very complicated.returnreturnThat doesn't mean we shouldn't act, but why do humans need propoganda and false certainties presented to us to act?returnreturnSo, see the film, and act. Or don't see the film and act. Or see the film and don't act. Or don't see the film and don't act. Those are your choices.