TAP Architect talks about 'smart growth' for OKC

[Pete]

He makes a lot of great points and I'm glad to see some organized activism and leadership in this area.

Sounds like he's got the Mayor's ear.




Sustaining growth: OU architecture professor stresses need for more efficient design in downtown OKC, surrounding areas by Kevan Goff-Parker
The Journal Record


5/12/2006 OKLAHOMA CITY - Hans Butzer, principal of design at TAParchitecture, said Thursday he's heartened by comments made by Oklahoma City Mayor Mick Cornett during the fifth annual Mayor's Development Roundtable.

"It sounded as if we were reading from the same script," Butzer said, who recently gave a lecture titled "Building a Great City: Now's a Good Time" at Oklahoma City University. "Mayor Cornett spoke about how Oklahoma City and its surrounding communities, like Midwest City and Bethany, can become more efficient in providing services like police, fire, utilities and trash service. I'm very excited."

And Butzer, an associate professor of Architecture and Urban Design at the University of Oklahoma who teaches sustainable design, has a right to be energized. He takes such issues as urban sprawl and inefficient planning to heart.

In 2003, Butzer led an OU research design class focused on developing a medium-density, mixed-use vision for a 35-acre area of downtown Oklahoma City. The team tackled downtown Oklahoma City's sustainable-development issues. Today local developers use the comprehensive vision, known as the Triangle, as a basis for further exploration. Butzer said the Triangle represents development that is place-specific and resource-efficient.

"A part of my research at OU is an extension of my practice in Germany," he said. "It has to do with trying to encourage greater efficiency in the way we design our city and design our buildings. A city like Oklahoma City strikes me as being inefficient in how big it is as compared to its population."

Butzer said he doesn't enjoy paying taxes and finds it frustrating when his tax dollars are inefficiently spent or when they are used to subsidize development that harms Oklahoma City's fiscal, physical and environmental well-being.

"Forethought in the design of Oklahoma City's periphery seems to be lacking," he said. "Inefficient development contributes to worsening health conditions of the population, which in turn can contribute to high health care costs. It seems we continued to develop at the periphery, and it doesn't seem like we're stepping back."

He said one of the jobs of the architect is to measure small-scale decisions relative to the larger picture.

"It is inevitable that when we see sprawl, you can't stop it, but development at the periphery can be done in a more efficient manner so that the rate of inefficiency starts dropping," Butzer said. "The downtown Oklahoma City area is so fertile with redevelopment sites, which, for starters, allows for us to capitalize on MAPS and MAPS for Kids investments. You are starting to see this widely published now - the high-quality, mixed-use lifestyles that even give people the option of walking to work in the downtown area."

He said it is imperative when one does dense development that green spaces like parks are included and that developers follow LEED (Leadership, Energy and Environmental Design) guidelines.

"A lot of the sites that we are looking at developing on and planning for include brown-field and gray-field sites," Butzer said. "They are sites that have previously been built upon or that might contain some ground contamination that once they are cleaned up, can be used. We don't want to eat up farmland or destroy habitat."

He said challenges, of course, do remain in forging the future of downtown Oklahoma City, including higher development costs.

"What we try to do in our work is to look at the cost at a larger scale," he said. "The price of adding utilities when you add a house in suburbia, you end of paying more in the long run. Roads aren't maintained as well, police and fire protection diminishes and the city keeps creeping outwards."

He said such sprawl sometimes causes the core of a city to fail first, followed by layers of maintenance and infrastructure.

"Who pays for all that and maintains it?" Butzer asked. "It's a huge piece of the puzzle. What I see in downtown Oklahoma City is an opportunity to work with existing infrastructure and keep building with higher density, as opposed to proposing new neighborhoods at the city's periphery."

He said the rising cost of fuel and the ongoing need for wider, longer highways mean that Oklahoma City's transportation opportunities need to be expanded through options like commuter rail.

"Sprawl is going to continue, but we can certainly slow it down and be more efficient," Butzer said. "One way to do this is to improve transportation options, especially for people who live at Oklahoma City's periphery. Ultimately higher density and more efficient design in both downtown and at the city's edge will contribute to a healthier, more efficient Oklahoma City lifestyle."

Butzer's presentation was a part of the "Smart Growth" series, sponsored and organized by Sustainable OKC along with the Vivian Wimberly Center for Ethics and Servant Leadership at OCU.

[Patrick]

If the city wants to stop sprawl, it's simple. Stop issuing building permits outside a certain radius. Duh!

[BDP]

Efficiency... what a novel concept!

[SoonerDave]

Inefficient development contributes to worsening health conditions of the population, which in turn can contribute to high health care costs.

So stripmalls cause cancer? What, exactly, is the correlation implied here? People being driven en masse to urban complexes will make them all healthy? Puh-leeze.

The price of adding utilities when you add a house in suburbia, you end of paying more in the long run. Roads aren't maintained as well, police and fire protection diminishes and the city keeps creeping outwards

Translated: Take away people's choices to select their place of residence and/or standard of living because someone else wants to herd us all into programmed, planned cities at the behest of Al Gore and his band of environmental thugs.

Oklahoma City's transportation opportunities need to be expanded through options like commuter rail.

Everyone who would like this alternative is more than welcome to explore it AND implement it, provided the users bear 100% of the cost burden.

I'm sorry, guys, but this is nothing more than the same old "suburbs are evil, downtown is nirvana" rhetoric that tries to villify people for selecting a non-urban lifestyle, then tries to attach a moral imperative to it by loose association with vague "environmental" doubletalk.

If someone wants to devote a section of downtown to some new type of living community, hey, that's great. If that's their choice, power to them. Just as some people like to live in the suburbs, some like to live downtown, and the difference is what makes is great. If you don't like the suburbs, that's great, too. But neither side should be trying to impose public policy (or worse, expend substantive tax dollars) that coerces or compels either one.

-SoonerDave

[floater]

So stripmalls cause cancer? What, exactly, is the correlation implied here? People being driven en masse to urban complexes will make them all healthy? Puh-leeze.

It has been proven; spend most of your time in the car, and your body will pay for it.
http://www.rand.org/news/press.04/09.27.html

FOR RELEASE
Monday
September 27, 2004


RAND STUDY FINDS FIRST LINK BETWEEN SUBURBAN SPRAWL AND AN INCREASE IN CHRONIC HEALTH AILMENTS

Suburban sprawl is linked to the incidence of many chronic health ailments, according to a new RAND Corporation study issued today.

“This is the first study that analyzes suburban sprawl and a broad range of chronic health conditions,” said Roland Sturm, a RAND Health economist and co-author of the study. “We know from previous studies that suburban sprawl reduces the time people spend walking and increases the time they spend sitting in cars, and that is associated with higher obesity rates. This probably plays an important role in the health effects we observe.”

Researchers found that people who live in areas with a high degree of suburban sprawl are more likely to report chronic health problems such as high blood pressure, arthritis, headaches and breathing difficulties than people who live in less sprawling areas. The differences between people living in the two types of areas remained even when researchers accounted for factors such as age, economic status, race and the local environment that might explain the differences.

The findings suggest that an adult who lives in a more sprawling city such as Atlanta willhave a health profile similar to someone four years older — but otherwise similar — who lives in a more compact city such as Seattle, according to researchers.

The findings appear in the October edition of the journal Public Health, in an article titled: “Suburban sprawl and physical and mental health.”

“To improve our health the study suggests that we should build cities where people feel comfortable walking and are not so dependent on cars,” said Deborah Cohen, a RAND researcher and physician who co-authored the study. “This study gives the public a way to personalize the issue of sprawl in a way that hasn’t happened before.”

Researchers found the unhealthful impacts of suburban sprawl disproportionately affect the poor and the elderly, who often have fewer resources to make up for the limitations created by their environment.

In contrast, the study found no link between suburban sprawl and a greater incidence of mental health problems.

Many researchers have proposed that suburban sprawl results in social isolation that may lead to more mental health problems among suburbanites. But RAND researchers found no differences in the rate of depression, anxiety and psychological well-being among people who live in urban and suburban settings.

Researchers conducted their study by using information from Healthcare for Communities, a survey funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation that queried a nationally representative group of adults about a variety of issues related to their physical and mental health in 1998 and 2001. The study analyzed information from more than 8,600 people in 38 metropolitan areas across the nation.

A more sprawling area has streets that are not well connected (cul-de-sacs are not as well connected as a grid), more separated land use mix (shopping, schools, work, and residential areas are far from each other), and a lower population density.

Regions that had the worst suburban sprawl include: the Riverside-San Bernardino region of California; Atlanta; Winston-Salem, N.C.; West Palm Beach, Fla.; Bridgeport-Danbury-Stamford, Conn.; Knoxville, Tenn.; Rochester, N.Y.; and Detroit.

Regions with the least amount of suburban sprawl include: New York City; San Francisco; Boston; Portland, Ore.; Miami; Denver; Chicago; and Milwaukee.

Funding for the study was provided by the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

RAND Health is the nation’s largest independent health policy research organization, with a broad research portfolio that focuses on health care quality, costs, and delivery, among other topics.

About the RAND Corporation
The RAND Corporation is a nonprofit research organization providing objective analysis and effective solutions that address the challenges facing the public and private sectors around the world.
************************************************** ***************

The SoonerDaves of Oklahoma City are no different from the New Yorkers who think the Times Square of porn shops and peep shows is better than today's. To them, that was the "real" Manhattan. Oklahoma City is swimming in crummy suburban housing choices. That's the "real" Oklahoma City -- according to them. I don't think so. Let's hope the sanity of improving NYC's image transfers to those in Oklahoma City.

[BDP]

Dave, the key word is efficiency. I didn't read anywhere that sprawl it causes cancer, but it does strain the infrastructure, part of which is the health care system.

Oklahoma City is HUGE, especially compared to the amount of people that live here. Therefore, it costs us more per person for every inch of road, every centimeter of cabling, and every yard of piping to bring service to these areas. That is at the expense of other public services. Sprawl IS big government wastefulness.

It's all in the opportunity costs. Since we obviously don’t want to keep raising taxes to support our ever sprawling infrastructure, we have to give up the opportunity to have things like trauma centers, bigger centrally located hospitals, or other health care assistance for the sick. The effect is that we are subsidizing suburban sprawl at the expense of a comprehensive public health system or other public services. Our desire to put more and more space between each other results in OKC being less competitive in public infrastructure per capita.

It's simple efficiencies. One road, one pipe, one cable that services 10 times as many people is cheaper to build than 10 roads, 10 cables, and 10 pipes that serve the same amount of people.

But, you have the solution. Those that want isolate themselves need to build their own infrastructure. If they want their own semi-private roads and want their houses to be an acre apart, let them pay for the excess and let the city spend it's money on maintaining the hundreds of square miles of infrastructure that it is already committed to maintaining. If you want your tax dollar going further or less taxes and less government at that, removing the public strain of sprawl would go a long way towards that.

No one is suggesting outlawing the suburbs. They’re just saying that it is a huge expense for the city that makes it less competitive and creates a disposable community. That’s all.

[Pete]

To me, the biggest casaulty from sprawl (besides the fracturing of neighborhoods and often the lack of real cohesive community) is the difficulty in creating and maintaining beautiful public spaces and general beautification issues.

As much as we all agree that OKC needs more trees, parks, fountains, etc., where exactly do we begin when we have people spread out over such a huge area?

It becomes an undertaking almost too big to tackle which is why I think we do so little of it. And even if we do invest very heavily on some projects, apart from downtown I'm afraid the huge majority of citizens and visitors would never see it.

The are massive parts of town -- especially the newer areas -- with very little landscaping, public art or even good maintanence of weeds and trash.

If we could just get developers to fill in within certain boundaries, all those things become much more acheivable through more focused resources and you can start to create what everyone would consider a beautiful city.

[BDP]

where exactly do we begin when we have people spread out over such a huge area

Right in the middle. I hope this is a focus of the river. It would be great to have a large green park in the middle of everyone, so it truly becomes a city park, not just a neighborhood park.

I agree the neighrborhoods could use some more in general, but I think it would be great to have one centrally located flagship park for the entire city.

[SoonerDave]

RAND STUDY FINDS FIRST LINK BETWEEN SUBURBAN SPRAWL AND AN INCREASE IN CHRONIC HEALTH AILMENTS

More wonderful junk science designed to prove a previously-conceived causal relationship when nothing more than a postive correlation has been established. Here's the marvelously unscientific conclusion drawn:

This probably plays an important role in the health effects we observe

.

The material drawn from this "report" is not a controlled study, it is inference upon inference drawn from *other* sources:

Researchers conducted their study by using information from Healthcare for Communities, a survey funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation that queried a nationally representative group of adults about a variety of issues related to their physical and mental health in 1998 and 2001. The study analyzed information from more than 8,600 people in 38 metropolitan areas across the nation.

Which inherently means the conclusions drawn from the "study" are absolutely pointless.

And its authors and sponsors? The Robert Wood Johnson foundation has its own links to support of such delightful things as Narconon and a past supporter of Hillary Clinton's universal (socialized) health care system, which is nothing more than an adjunct to the extreme-left's desire to "makeover" America.

The end conclusion? This is a patently worthless "study" whose scientific "conclusions" constitute "proof" of their stated goal about as well as "proving" that everyone who drank water 100 years ago is dead, therefore the water must have killed them.


[/quote]The SoonerDaves of Oklahoma City are no different from the New Yorkers who think the Times Square of porn shops and peep shows is better than today's. To them, that was the "real" Manhattan. Oklahoma City is swimming in crummy suburban housing choices. That's the "real" Oklahoma City -- according to them. I don't think so. Let's hope the sanity of improving NYC's image transfers to those in Oklahoma City.[/quote]

Wonderful - since I refuse to accpet the agenda, I'm aligned with someone who endorses NYC Porn? Give me a physical break. I'm delighted to live in a suburb of Oklahoma City with some of the finest housing in the area within a simple, four-to-five-mile radius, with close availability of parks, grocery stores, health care and related amenities. Could you share your definition of "crummy?"

-SoonerDave

[Pete]

Right in the middle. I hope this is a focus of the river. It would be great to have a large green park in the middle of everyone, so it truly becomes a city park, not just a neighborhood park.

I agree completely BDP, and it sounds like there is a lot of support for this idea.

Also, the new downtown boulevard and area between the old and new Crosstown Expressway, the area immediately to the north of the airport, and gateways on both ends of I-40 & I-35 would be other places to get high bang-for-the-buck.


Still, that leaves a huge chunk of he rest of the city that is in serious need of beautification, and the ineffeciencies of massive sprawl make that task much more daunting than need be.

[floater]

More wonderful junk science designed to prove a previously-conceived causal relationship when nothing more than a postive correlation has been established.

Wonderful - since I refuse to accpet the agenda, I'm aligned with someone who endorses NYC Porn.
-SoonerDave

I would hardly call material from RAND junk science. As far as NYC porn, you missed the point -- it's about correcting bad market behavior for the betterment of a city. Drive around the southside and you'll see crummy housing - the stuff built in the 1980s in additions such as Southridge, Mashburn on 104th between Western and Penn, all the housing north of 89th betwen May and Walker to 79th. Combine forgettable, lookalike architecture, overuse of the same materials, mediocre construction, and neighborhoods without sidewalks, and you have crummy housing.

And BDP is right -- the point of the article is inefficiency. It is not efficient for a city to be extending utility lines and services for those who would rather be alone (which is what you usually get -- I know, I've lived here in the suburban southside by necessity since 1982). If you like paying higher taxes for such operations, that's fine, but you're not the only one paying higher taxes.

[SoonerDave]

I would hardly call material from RAND junk science.

The origin of the study does not imply its sufficiency or credibility as acccurate or sound. When a study cherry picks information from *another* study, and then in essence says "after we adjusted it for race, age, and socioeconomic status, we concluded it must be urban sprawl," that's indicative of *classic* junk science, whether it comes from RAND or Captain Kirk. It *is NOT* proof - of anything. It "demonstrated" precisely what it was *designed* to demonstrate before the first piece of data was abused.

the stuff built in the 1980s in additions such as Southridge, Mashburn on 104th between Western and Penn, all the housing north of 89th betwen May and Walker to 79th. Combine forgettable, lookalike architecture, overuse of the same materials, mediocre construction, and neighborhoods without sidewalks, and you have crummy housing.

Now *that's* an issue on which you and I can find at least some common ground - but I would contend it is an issue *separate* from that of "urban sprawl." I'm not as concerned with the "lookalike" element as I am the poor fundamental construction in many of those areas, ...(Heck, we could start a different thread on bad builders), but don't throw the baby out with the bathwater...south of 89th is starting to see some really nice housing... I would suggest that it is poor control and/or oversight on the materials used and inspection of what's being built that worsens that problem. The solution, however, isn't to unilaterally condemn suburbia and those who live in it as some sort of "subspecies" just because they don't embrace *urban* lifestyles.

And that's what bothers me the most about this entire discussion. The notions being espoused by this "designer" are not merely being posed as an alternative use of downtown, they are hand-in-hand being used to *villify* suburban life, as though he attaches some sort of moral superiority in *his* way of living.

That's ridiculous, if not intolerant.

If persons x, y, and z want and like to live downtown, and have the means to make that choice work, that's GREAT. And if the city wants to help in some way by creating some special use districts to that end, I have no problem with that, either. By the same token, if I want to live outside that downtown core in a more suburban setting, it doesn't make me evil, it doesn't make me antisocial, it makes me someone with different tastes and personal preferences.

The point is, don't villify me for where I want to live, and won't villify you for where *you* want to live. And please don't attach some sort of implicit moral imperative that either one is better, unless you want to make clear whatever agendas live under your hat.

-SoonerDave

[Pete]

Dave, smart growth isn't about telling people where they can and can't live.

It's about not approving re-zoning of agricultural land to allow tract residentail housing and strip centers instead of developing and redeveloping property within the existing reaches of utilties, schools and roads.

Even in the most extreme example, you could still go buy a big chunk of property and live on it, but you would not be able to get that property re-zoned for hundreds of homes nor obtain the required building permits.


As it stands, there are lots of places you can't live in any city, including OKC, due to zoning laws. You couldn't go build a house in the middle of Will Rogers Park or on the shores of Lake Hefner, for example.

Sprawl relies heavily on the rezoning of property for tract homes and strip centers and in the case of OKC, that is usually done without much thought or planning.

[floater]

Most of the time when we talk of sprawl, it is not an attack per se on those living on the outskirts -- as you said, it's a lifestyle choice. But those choices have economic consequences in ballooning municipal budgets due to extension of services. I think the happy medium is to make such choice charged to the users (as BDP suggested); if a developer wants to build homes outside the edge, they should pay for the extension. They even could provide parks, sidewalks and bike lanes to curb criticism. I also think there should be a responsiblity to the innercity, but that's another thread.

[Kerry]

OKC isn't as big as many people think. The urbanized portion of OKC is only about 200 sq miles. If it were me I would de-annex everything that is outside the existing urbanized area. If you want people to move back to the urban core in mass and abandon the suburbs then restricting development in suburbs is not the answer. You have to create conditions that make WANT to move back into the urban core.

I hear a lot about how expensive it is for the city to provide services to homes constructed further and further out. How about this - every new home built within 10 miles of downtown OKC is exempted from property taxes for life. That would make a lot of people want to live within 10 miles of downtown. If it is cheaper for the city to provide services to home built in urban in-fill then those saving should be passed onto the homeowner.

Simply not issuing building permits is not possible and adding fees such as impact fees (popular here in Florida) doesn't do anything except make the house cost more. Give people a reason to do something and many people will do it. Not paying property taxes is a good reason for a lot of people.

[ImproveOKC]

Kerry, your suggestions are without merit. Deannexing the suburban areas isn't going to limit urban sprawl. Just ask the people in Tulsa. Tulsa only wishes it had annexed outlying growing areas as its tax base is extremely restricted.

People are going to continue to move further out and home builders are going to continue to build homes further out regardless of whether the land is controlled by the city. In fact, most of the people living in suburban areas would probably rather not have their land annexed as part of the city. They'd rather not pay high water bills, unnecessary waste bills, etc.
Many suburban people are happier with county services and most that you talk to will tell you they were happier before the city decided to annex their areas.

The only way to stop building in outlying areas is to stop issuing the permits to build.

[ImproveOKC]

Simply not issuing building permits is not possible

Of course it's possible. Set the mission of your city to restrict urban sprawl and agree as a city council not to issue any building permits beyong a certain radius. Simple as a vote of the council.

[Oki_Man5]

Of course it's possible. Set the mission of your city to restrict urban sprawl and agree as a city council not to issue any building permits beyong a certain radius. Simple as a vote of the council.

Without saying this concept would be plain-and-simple stupid, I will say that I hope it is put into effect; it would be the best thing that could ever happen for those who want their outlying lands deannexed from the city. Can you visualize the civil disobedience en masse that it would create when the literally thousands of property owners (Some even have enough money to take on the city.) awakened to find that the stroke of a vote by a group who is far away and has no idea the conditions they have created rendered their very valuable property to be worthless---Yeah! Hopefully it would become a class-action lawsuit over a "taking without just compensation" that would bring the city to its financial knees.

As Kerry said, the answer to urban sprawl when it comes to OKC is for the city to deannex all the lands outside that radius that ImproveOKC mentions; that way, the city could concentrate on its core. The outlying cities---MWC, Del City, Choctaw, etc. in the other three directions---are better equipped to work with people in outlying areas; they understand the needs of rural dwellers, and the rural dwellers have the same constitutional rights to property as those who reside in the urban areas.