The Great Convergence
Decatur Metro | May 19, 2008OK, I don’t mean to freak anybody out, but I think that Paul Krugman is stalking me. Either that or we just think alike and have the same experiences.
Acckkk! There he is!
Just look at his latest op-ed piece in the NYT. (thanks Scott!) It’s like he’s read my posts about transportation and travel to Berlin over the past week and summed it up in a better-written, little package!
Here’s the scariest part…
“To see what I’m talking about, consider where I am at the moment: in a pleasant, middle-class neighborhood consisting mainly of four- or five-story apartment buildings, with easy access to public transit and plenty of local shopping.
It’s the kind of neighborhood in which people don’t have to drive a lot, but it’s also a kind of neighborhood that barely exists in America, even in big metropolitan areas. Greater Atlanta has roughly the same population as Greater Berlin — but Berlin is a city of trains, buses and bikes, while Atlanta is a city of cars, cars and cars.
And in the face of rising oil prices, which have left many Americans stranded in suburbia — utterly dependent on their cars, yet having a hard time affording gas — it’s starting to look as if Berlin had the better idea.
Changing the geography of American metropolitan areas will be hard. For one thing, houses last a lot longer than cars. Long after today’s S.U.V.’s have become antique collectors’ items, millions of people will still be living in subdivisions built when gas was $1.50 or less a gallon.
Infrastructure is another problem. Public transit, in particular, faces a chicken-and-egg problem: it’s hard to justify transit systems unless there’s sufficient population density, yet it’s hard to persuade people to live in denser neighborhoods unless they come with the advantage of transit access.”
Weirdness.
OK but seriously…since I live in one place and just visited the other, let me belabor Krugman’s comparison for a moment. Not only does Berlin have an enviable public transportation system and bike network as I mentioned previously, but as Krugman states, cars are generally smaller. Now we’re not talking about a city of smart cars and mopeds…we’re talking about lots of VW Golfs/3 series BMWs and not many SUVs.
Also, while Berlin is more compact than Atlanta, it has hardly any skyscrapers. Most buildings are shorter than 8 stories and small, street-level retail is abundant and strongly supported. This is an important example that a high-density city doesn’t have to look like midtown Manhattan, Midtown or the often-cited Buckhead. It can be 8 story commercial/residential and easily support smaller, street-level retail. Sound familiar?
Decatur’s plans are based on Berlin’s ideals. Now we just need the rest of Atlanta to follow suit.
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DecaturMetro,
I was thinking along similar lines when I was recently in Austria & Germany.
Prof. Krugman is spot on in his column. ATL has proved that you can not pave your way out of gridlock. Perhaps $200 pb oil will give our politicians the impetus to improve and enhance our infrastructure, but I’m cynical and doubt that we have the political fortitude (both nationally and regionally) to do so. “Drive until you qualify” seems pretty ingrained and in order for us to make something akin to a more public transportation model to work, we would have to change our zoning laws and tax code that promote sprawl.
All this said, you don’t need to have a large city for public transportation to work. Innsbruck, Austria (180k pop) has a fantastic tram/bus system that connects the city center to smaller villages in a 20 mile radius in the Inn valley. While over there, I could travel from city to city w/out having to drive. The trains were punctual, achieved good speeds, were clean and reasonably priced. I don’t see why we can’t fund a decent high speed rail system in this country that provides similar regional and long distance connections. There would have to be a level of a public funding/subsidy for this, but we do the same for our highways.
One last observation that is related to this – I don’thave statistics, but in general i would say europeans are less obese than americans. Many germans and austrians smoke like fiends and love their beer, yet in spite of that, I rarely saw obese folks. I have to think there is a link to our elevated obesity rates to our car dependency.
Yet many in your neighborhood, Ponce de Leon Heights, want to stop re-development of a mainly unused surface parking lot in order to protect your surburban ideal of a single family home on half an acre and a yard, isn’t that right?
I’m not saying that everyone over there wants to keep an empty parking lot, but the economic reality, and good planning, requires a pretty high amount of density over there doesn’t it? And I’d rather see some mixed use over there (housing, retail, etc) rather than just another office building which the developer has every right to do right now without getting any variances from the city.
Just saying ….
Bill, are you referencing 315 W. Ponce?
Because that’s more of a Clairemont Heights issue, than a Ponce de Leon Heights one. And from what I can tell, feelings in that neighborhood are pretty mixed about the development.
i hope my lack of sympathy does not seem compassionless. but i have no sympathy for the gas price whining. to me it seems that there is a perceived entitlement to a long commute, a big suburban home, and an inefficent car to go along with an inefficent life-style. no one ins entitled to these and the high gas prices will eventually make this country cleaner, less dependent on terrorist oil, and a more interesting place to live.
i say: jack it up!
Sorry about the mixup on neighborhoods.
Bill has his point; there is always ‘nimby-ism’ when development hits your own backyard.
I think in Atlanta we have a great opportunity to development our public transport nodes (ala Decatur, Avondale Estates, etc – Marta stops) to build up some mix of residential, commercial and creating both density while maintaining existing neighborhoods. A good example is what has gone on in Arlington, VA with development along the orange line of their Metro system. They’ve accomplished density, office, residential and commercial space, all while the pre-existing single family neighborhoods around remain. Granted, it’s not a cheap place to live, but I think that demonstrates their is a demand for this type of development.
I think we (“we,” meaning Americans) make a mistake by defining the transportation issue into a bi-polar debate – trains or buses versus cars, city versus suburban, public v. private.
Atlanta will never be Berlin nor Paris. I think it is a mistake to compare these “Old World” cities with our own in terms of transportation. How about Atlanta versus SF, Chicago or New York? These relatively old U.S. cities have enormous public transportation offerings and many “in-town” folks live without a car or one that sits parked for much of the day. At the same time, both cities are home to some of the largest numbers of daily automobile commuters in the States.
I think the debate should be how to maintain the mix of public and private transportation options that are sustainable and that provide the best quality of life possible. Some public, certainly. But also more efficient and lower impact private transportation …
Before I get labelled as a terrorist-supporting, Detroit-defending reactionary, let me share with you that I lived in Paris for 8 months without a vehicle and loved it!
But this experience was in the old arrondissements, not the larger Paris banlieu. Sure, there’s a nice network of suburban trains but the fact is that Paris and all other large Euro-capitals are surrounded by a great deal of sprawl and auto congestion themselves. When we are tourists in these lands, we don’t take a bus tour of the industrial or suburban districts, so we don’t see them as they wiz by from the TGV window. But they are there …
A visitor to Atlanta could have a similar experience if they took MARTA from the airport to Peachtree Center and used the public transportation network to navigate downtown and mid-town, even Decatur. We have a transportation problem but it is not because we have SUVs …
The answer to our problems has to include a more sophisticated management of workforce, telecommuting, virtual offices, etc. in addition to smart cars, “green development,” and public transportation. Petitioning to get folks to buy a condo in a mid-rise in mid-town, getting rid of their built-in backyard barbecue, and throwing away the keys to their car isn’t going to work.
I think we can provide for urban and suburban transportation needs while becoming more energy efficient. But try as we might, we’ll never be as “cool” as Europeans nor will Atlanta ever have Les Invalides, Le Tour Eiffel, Les Champs Elysees, etc … we’ll have to wow the world with Peachtree Street and Atlantic Station :).
P.S. Sorry for the long post … another side effect of living in Europe … long winded!