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| Centre Digests | |
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Two Activities, Two Items, and One Entertainment in this Digest. Activities. Activity 1: Return from Houston. Activity 2: Preparing for Board Meeting. Items. Item 1: Last two NBR Columns. Item 2: We are in for a long recession. Entertainment 1: The New Girl Order Funding: Even a Dollar Helps! Activity One: Return from Houston. It will take some time to pass on all we learned from this wonderful conference. For one thing, I have had to catch up a couple o hundred emails and phone messages and while dealing with these I have to watch new ones mount up. But such is life in the wired world. Also there was so much quality material it will take time to sort it into digestible packages. The organisers will also take some time to get everything up on the American Dream Web page where the papers can be accessed by links. In the meantime there are two summary reports already posted - one by an attendee and another by a journalist. Steven Greenhut, of the Orange County Register, wrote an excellent summary that you can read at: The engineer's summary is best found by Google searching under Houston+American Dream+McShane because this gets you to the right page of the blog. Gonzalo Camacho is a Bolivian now working in Houston as a Transport Engineer. He is quite a fan. And I have to be a fan of anyone who writes: Talking about smart growth. One of the most fantastic presentations from Owen McShane which was supported by a later talk given by Wendell Cox. Mr. McShane is the Director of the Center for Research Management Studies in Auckland, New Zealand. What would we think if we were told that the most efficient form of living is the single family residence that is so common in the suburbs of Houston? Per Mr. McShane studies it shows that, based on CO2 emissions, the most environmentally friendly form of housing is NOT the urban multi family dwelling but the urban single family home. His presentation Why Planned Integration of Land Use and Transport will Not Achieve its Goals is posted on the internet. Once the power point presentation is up on the American Dream site I will link to it in a later Digest. The Power Point contained the references to Halle Neustadt which is discussed in Mr. Comacho's same blog. You can watch the many presentations on DVD. The Coalition has a complete set of about a dozen two-hour DVDs for sale for US$5 each plus shipping. For a list, see The tour of Houston was a major highlight of the conference. For a tour description, photos, and other conference highlights, see Next year's conference will be in Seattle, where the American Dreamers will look at commuter rail, a streetcar, light-rail construction, and other transportation issues. I hope to see you there! There is so much to tell about the Houston conference but it is best to release it in reasonably sized chunks. Activity Two: Preparing for Board Meeting. The Centre is having a board meeting on the 4th and I would appreciate any ideas to put on the agenda for discussion. Our major project is writing a reformed RMA to recapture the original intentions of the Act and to modify it to reflect what we have learned from this attempt to integrate environmental and land use law. Our intention is use the Act to assert the importance of secure property rights and the right to compensation, and all that flows from those two positions. If you have any thoughts on such a reform package, or on any related issues, which you would like raised at this meeting please let me know as soon as possible. Item One: Last Two NBR Columns. Column One: Affordable housing – How to get it. There should no longer be any argument about the need to release more land for housing in New Zealand if we want to make housing as affordable as in times past. However, while increasing the number of available lots is the necessary condition, it is not sufficient. We must also reduce the cost of those lots. One way would be to write a clause into the RMA requiring Councils to provide two “classes” of lot, especially in greenfield and rural areas. At present a swarm of consultants have persuaded councils that new lots need to be fully certified before sale, mainly to prevent Councils from being liable for downstream failings or difficulties. The end result is that new lots require a specified building platform, a geo-tech (foundation) report, a certified street crossing, a certified driveway, a stormwater management report , a sewage treatment report, and a soil stability report – and any other report the consultants and staff can dream up to increase their revenue flows. The end result is a collection of costs, which are out of the reach of most families, especially those on low incomes, and hence these people can neither produce new sections nor buy them on the market. They are priced out of both ends of the supply and demand chain. Incredibly, by the time a dwelling gets a building permit it may have had three reports on its on-site sewage treatment plant. The solution is obvious and proven. When we buy a car we can purchase one with a warrant of fitness and registration, or we can buy it “as is – where is.” For more go to: http://www.rmastudies.org.nz/index.php/columns/56-columns/167-330rmaasistex Column Two: The Commissioners' Dilemma. The Royal Commissioners reporting on Auckland Governance have an unenviable task. They have been asked to solve a problem without being given the tools to do the job. Anyone who has been following the debate about reorganizing Auckland’s local body administration would have to be aware of the widespread belief that getting the boundaries in the “right place”, and getting the “right number” of mayors and councillors, will solve Auckland’s problems and set the path to a glorious future. Nothing could be further from the truth. Many cities have faced the same kind of problems and looked to the magic formula of amalgamation to solve them. The Local Government reforms of the eighties were in many ways bold and necessary but the one programme which failed to deliver on expectations was the widespread amalgamation of smaller units into large ones. I, for one, look back on my time as a ratepayer within the tiny Newmarket Borough Council with great affection. I am surely not alone. The Mayor and Councillors were accessible and effective. Toronto is a recent example of the failure of amalgamation. The end result of that “Super City” reform is even greater dissatisfaction, and higher costs and rates. The problems of the Auckland Region are founded in numerous pieces of legislation, all of which are essentially outside the brief of the Commission. It is worth remembering the adage “Amalgamation gives us a larger area to govern than the one we couldn’t govern last time.” It is also noteworthy that France has a Mayor for every 300 people, but only five water companies manage all the water and wastewater on behalf of its 36,000 municipalities. The French understand that the economies of scale of business do not translate into democracy. For more, go to: http://www.rmastudies.org.nz/index.php/columns/56-columns/168-the-commissioners-dillemma Item Two: We are in for a Long Recession. The Houston conference confirmed what so many of us knew already. Those local councils, here and around the world, that have adopted Smart Growth or other policies which constrain the supply of land, and promote high compliance costs, are largely (indeed almost entirely) responsible for the housing bubble which has afflicted so many markets in the UK, the US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand and consequently are equally responsible for the bursting of the bubble and the consequent damage to the financial sector, local and national economies, and of course to the dreams of millions of families who are at risk of losing their homes and their life savings. One would think they would have learned and accepted responsibility and would be doing what they could to ease the pain and encourage a prompt recovery. One would be wrong. An economy in recession depends on a flexible and responsive economy to allow people to begin to re-invest in their future as soon as they recover from the bottom of the trough of despair. This response will require Councils here and elsewhere to reverse their policies and to do everything they can to not only increase the supply of land but to reduce compliance costs so that people do not need to take out a mortgage just to pay the compliance costs of manufacturing a new lot, or getting a new building consent. In cities and districts throughout New Zealand the costs of application, of consultants reports, of the peer reviews (totally unnecessary), reserve contributions, development contributions, testing and monitoring typically add up to $50,000 a residential lot. And Councils want these paid up front, prior to issuing any title, rather than out of sales. During the boom times, banks would finance these demands but are now reluctant to do so because sales may never eventuate and they do not trust the valuations of the present title to support the extra borrowing. Anyone who wants to build a new factory or commercial premises will be faced with development contributions typically totalling at least $100,000 before they even pour the footings. So if we don't want to wait several years for the recovery Councils and their advisers must realise that they need to pour oil onto the gears of growth and development rather than foul them with sand. The Centre sees people and small companies all round the country withdrawing from projects because the start up costs, which must be paid out of cash rather than borrowings or sales, are simply too much deadweight to bear. The only satisfaction to be had is that the same people who have caused this mayhem and seem determined to continue it will suffer alongside the rest of us because the cash flow to pay their salaries and consulting fees is turning from a flood to a trickle. Hopefully, councils will learn to love long term rating revenues rather than up-front levies – which are fines imposed on those who actually want to do things, and create jobs and wealth. Those hordes of folk who object to everything and impose a further round of costs on the productive few will continue to get a free ride. Unless we do something dramatic, we are in for a long period of stagnation before any recovery is possible. And many more planeloads of our "best and brightest' will migrate to more cooperative shores. Entertainment: As Peter Drucker said "It's Demographics, Demographics, Demographics." The New Girl Order, by Kay S. Hymowitz opens with: The Carrie Bradshaw lifestyle is showing up in unexpected places, with unintended consequences. After my Lot Airlines flight from New York touched down at Warsaw’s Frédéric Chopin Airport a few months back, I watched a middle-aged passenger rush to embrace a waiting younger woman—clearly her daughter. Like many people on the plane, the older woman wore drab clothing and had the short, square physique of someone familiar with too many potatoes and too much manual labor. Her Poland-based daughter, by contrast, was tall and smartly outfitted in pointy-toed pumps, slim-cut jeans, a cropped jacket revealing a toned midriff (Yoga? Pilates? Or just a low-carb diet?), and a large, brass-studded leather bag, into which she dropped a silver cell phone. Yes: Carrie Bradshaw is alive and well and living in Warsaw. Well, not just Warsaw. Conceived and raised in the United States, Carrie may still see New York as a spiritual home. But today you can find her in cities across Europe, Asia, and North America. Seek out the trendy shoe stores in Shanghai, Berlin, Singapore, Seoul, and Dublin, and you’ll see crowds of single young females (SYFs) in their twenties and thirties, who spend their hours working their abs and their careers, sipping cocktails, dancing at clubs, and (yawn) talking about relationships. Sex and the City has gone global; the SYF world is now flat. Is this just the latest example of American cultural imperialism? Or is it the triumph of planetary feminism? Neither. The globalization of the SYF reflects a series of stunning demographic and economic shifts that are pointing much of the world—with important exceptions, including Africa and most of the Middle East—toward a New Girl Order. It’s a man’s world, James Brown always reminded us. But if these trends continue, not so much. For the whole story go to: This story, forwarded by a colleague, was waiting in my mail box when I got home. It certainly struck a chord. When I first started flying business class to foreign destinations, back in the eighties, there was barely a woman in the cabin. We suspected that if there were were they were given a row to themselves to protect them from predatory old males. Just as they now give children their own seats. Then, after leaving the world of venture finance and licensing, I spent many years hardly flying at all, and never business class. Now my health means that I once more turn left on entry and enjoy the new pleasures – pods with flat beds, and better meals and entertainment systems which I never watch. But the other surprise – and a pleasant one – is that the cabin is half occupied by females of the new girl order. The overnight flight across the Pacific, in which one sleeps most of the flight away, means that their presence was scarcely felt. But on the flight from Los Angeles to Houston, a young woman sat at the window next to me and two other young women sat across the aisle. This was new. The young woman next to me proved to be one of those earnest folk who refuse a take-off drink, refuse any food or drink after take-off, and then slip into something comfortable – like a coma. However, just before the long sleep she did play with her lap-top and some papers and seemed to be connected to a team marketing a new chain of Italian restaurants in Houston. The pages and screen were full of those wonderful Italian terms for food and wine which conjure up Mediterranean fun, and fortune. She however, seemed to be immune to her "product". The two young women across the aisle were much more glamorous and projected the complete Texan image –blonde, brassy but sophisticated glamour. When it came to meal time, I was impressed by the Airline food and began to realise that Houston might have more to offer than oil and asked the flight attendant if she could recommend any good restaurants. It turned out that she did not live in Houston so couldn't help. However the blonde across the aisle joined in and explained that she was a "restaurant snob" and would be happy to write up a short list. She and her friend promptly did – and it proved to be an excellent guide. When we were waiting for our luggage at the carousel we chatted a bit and they finally decided to invite me to their club – which they kindly explained was "a gentlemen's club". I then explained that as I was not a gentleman I would probably not be admitted, and they went on their jolly way. These two working girls were a long way from those poor creatures who stand on street corners in South Auckland. On the return flight from Houston to San Francisco a somewhat more mature women was sitting beside me by the window. It turned out she lived in Houston but had just flown up from Brazil where she had given a paper at a conference, and was now on her way to San Francisco to repeat her presentation. She was based at the Houston Medical Centre where she was a lecturer in dental surgery. She turned out to be originally from Goa of Portugese-Indian parents and hence frequently taken for Mexican. The flight across the Pacific gave time to read and sleep but again, during the flight from Auckland to Whangarei a very smart young woman, dressed rather like the young Pole in the Hymowitz essay, was sitting across the aisle. She spent most of her time reading some papers in the Journal of Thoracic Oncology – which I translated as Lung Cancer, which makes it difficult to strike up a conversation. Finally, when I gathered up my case, I realised that the "little old lady" standing next to me had boarded the same flight as me in Houston and had been on the same flights right through San Francisco, Auckland and finally to Whangarei. It may be a man's world still – but the women are colonising fast. Every property developer needs to think about their changing market, and recognise who are now calling the shots. Spreading the Word The Anti-Spam legislation and the Electoral Finance Act makes it difficult to enlarge the Centre's mailing list other than by "word of mouth". So please feel free to send this message on to any friends, colleagues or associates whom you think may be interested in joining the circle. If they like what they read, ask them to ask me to put them on the list. Funding. Never has the Centre been asked by so many to do so much. And we try to oblige. However, everything costs money and the Government is remorseless in its demands for provisional taxes and GST. And many of our normal sponsors are seriously hurting from the downturn in property and development. We really don't want to fold our tent and creep away so your donations are essential to our ongoing efforts. The Centre donation form is attached. Remember – even a dollar helps!
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