Four the future - December 28

This edition: bicycle highways, rural land institutionalization, phosphorus pollution reduction, and a planning failure.

• Bicycle Highways
  Source: The New York Times, 091228
  Summary: While American planners are beginning the process of considering a national highway bike infrastructure, the city of Copenhagen is creating segregated bike highways between the suburbs and the city center. Several technologies are being considered to help create pelotons (groups of riders moving together); GPS and RFID could be used to trip traffic lights in their favor. Highways are not the first element of a strong bike system.
  Opinion: The Centennial Trail is our highway in Spokane, though it's not always in the most effective location for commuting. It also connects to the North Idaho Centennial Trail (pdf map, 1.5MB). But, that just gives us the responsibility to make the branches grow from this trunk. Liberty Lake has its own trail system, connected directly to the Centennial Trail, and I am personally aware of people who use it as a commuting asset. The Liberty Lake community supported the concept to such a degree that they taxed themselves through a Transportation Benefit District and used city general fund to build missing sections of the trails and provide matching funds for state grants resulting in a highway overpass. Other neighborhoods would benefit from a biking plan.
  
  


• When the land's worth more than the trees
  Source: The Oregonian, 091226
  Conservation groups hope to buy forestlands to manage
  Source: The Oregonian, 091227
  Summary: This two-part feature story documents the process and effects of Real Estate Investment Trusts and how they have been instrumental in destroying rural communities for the purpose of storehousing institutional cash reserves for tax-avoidance purposes. Due to the real estate bubble, the land under the forests has become more valuable than the trees. The problem grew slower in strong growth management states, such as Oregon. Forest loss in Washington is 10 times faster than in Oregon. Conservation groups are hoping to use the popping of the bubble to gain ownership of private lands to protect them from inappropriate conversion to urban uses.
  Opinion: Encouraging local economic development is difficult because you must assemble both the labor and the means of production simultaneously. History is littered by efforts to create remote utopian towns which are self-sustaining and prosperous. All failed; they only survive by changing their goals. Given the difficulty to leverage a community into economic stability and the significant national conversation about the importance of creating jobs, one would think that considerable, coordinated effort would be applied to make it happen. However, one must wonder how a planner encourages long-term local economic development when the national government interferes by having a tax code which encourages not working for your money over working for your money. After all, why would you work for your money? It's hard to do and you get taxed at a higher rate. As long as the capital gains tax rate is lower than the income tax rate, rural job creation will be hampered because it's better to merely own an asset, especially if a glut of surplus cash raises prices, than put it to work (provided you're not the last one to dump the land as the bubble bursts). Planners must account for this bias when they're attempting to perform this kind of work. They can help mitigate the federal policy by putting in place enforceable growth management policies which preserve resource lands, in part by preventing subdivision. Subdivision of resource lands is ultimately self-defeating because eventually it's so subdivided that it becomes unproductive. At that point, it's not a resource land anymore.


• Filters show promise in river cleanup
  Source: The Spokesman-Review, 091227
  Summary: Municipal wastewater treatment plants emit phosphorus-rich effluent into the Spokane River. Standards will be strengthening to reduce this pollutant. The City of Spokane has been testing various technologies for phosphorus reduction, and there is optimism. Blue Water Technologies, a local company, has been operating a system in Hayden for years. It has sold systems in the Midwest and South Korea. At least 20 American municipal systems were identified in 2007 which achieve the required standards.
  Opinion: Chalk it up to human ingenuity that we have the ability to take out more phosphorus, a highly hydrophilic (water-loving) ion, than is present in the Spokane River as it enters the State of Washington. Unfortunately, innovation and politicians don't always mix. This technology has been available for several years. I received a briefing on it years ago because one of the dischargers, Liberty Lake Sewer & Waster District, wouldn't give Blue Water Technologies a public hearing. Spokane County's current commissioner majority has been publicly supporting more expensive technologies which do not solve the problem while disparaging these proven techniques. Too often, engineering firms have an interest in the type of technology that is used, either because they hold the patent or they want all their plants to be identical because it reduces design costs. Worse yet, they may be driven by the possibility to get Design-Build-Operate-Maintain (DBOM) contracts which allow them to operate a public facility. This gives them profit while the public takes on the risk. The company to which Spokane County granted the contract refused to put their name on the discharge permit: if they make a mistake, they're immune. Only the ratepayers, and the environment, suffer. As awareness of these newer technologies becomes more widespread, we have to count on unbiased experts to become louder, because the public won't voice strongly on these highly technical issues.


• Neighbors fear swales plan
  Source: Portland Tribune, 091228
  Summary: The proposed stormwater swale installation along 44th Avenue in Portland, Oregon, has run into a snag because neighbors oppose the construction. They are not opposing it because of the benefits its designed to produce, but because of other effects the swales will have on transportation, public safety, and delivery of public services.
  Opinion: This is a planning mistake of the first order. One of the fundamental requirements of good planning process is to engage the people who are affected by the plan. After all, they know things that planners don't about the particular character and habits of a neighborhood. Whether the swales are effective or not is a secondary issue at this point. The community must be engaged if planning is to be useful, and all this incident has caused is a rift between a group of people attempting to solve a stormwater management problem and the people they're meant to serve. It's time for the advocates to go back, review the planning method, and start over.