CRMS Special Digest 

The Contrasting Views.
One of the most common topics on blog sites and newsgroups here and  
around the world is "What does the end of cheap oil mean to the future  
of our cities?"

As usual, those who combine a yearning for catastrophe with a hatred  
of the motor car and the suburban lifestyle (The Kunstler  
Katastrophists) have leapt to their own "self evident" conclusion.  
They are convinced the suburbs are no longer viable and will be  
abandoned and left to decay into extensive ghost towns, home only to  
vermin and weeds.

All those millions of people who inhabit the metropolitan areas of  
Los Angeles, San Francisco, Houston, and even Auckland and  
Christchurch, will up-stakes and surge into downtown neighbourhoods  
where they will take up residence in high rise slabs from which they  
will be able to walk and cycle to work – or of course catch their bus  
or train.
These Kunstler Katastrophists presume that in a few years time we can  
completely rebuild our cities as replicas of the nineteenth century  
cities people like Dickens wrote about with such great affection. Here  
is Kunstler in full "optimistic" flight:

"The US economy is crumbling because the way we conduct the activities  
of daily life is insane relative to our circumstances. We've spent  
sixty years ramping up a suburban living arrangement that has suddenly  
entered a state of failure, and all its accessories and furnishings  
are failing in concert. The far-flung McHouse tracts are becoming both  
useless and worthless in the face of gasoline prices that will never  
be cheap again. The strip malls and office "parks" are following the  
residential real estate off a cliff. The retail tenants of all those  
places are hemorrhaging customers who have maxed out every last credit  
card. The lack of business is now leading to substantial layoffs. The  
airline industry is dying and will probably cease to exist in its  
familiar form in 24 months. The trucking industry is dying,  
threatening the entire just-in-time distribution system of things that  
even people with little money to spend still need, like food."

All this because US gas prices may soon reach $5/gallon. Mr Kunstler  
does not seem to realise that we New Zealanders, like many others  
round the world, have been living with $5/gallon petrol for years, and  
have even survived $10/gallon petrol for close on two years. Yet  
Kunstler and many like-minded catastrophists state with total  
confidence that once gas hits $10/gallon all Americans will simply  
stop driving – and start rebuilding their cities.

Fortunately, the simple sums suggest otherwise. Look up the population  
of your nearest city. Look up the housing replacement rate, and figure  
out how long it will take to transform present day Seattle or Auckland  
into a remake of 19th Century London. Then think about the costs of  
all the new buildings, all the new infrastructure, and the lost asset  
value of all those abandoned suburbs.

Many of us believe that long before anyone has to consider such a  
drastic reshaping of our built environment new technologies and some  
minor behavioural shifts will make such disruption totally unnecessary.

The alarmists respond that we do not have the time.

However, we can develop new technologies and produce new products at  
high speed if we have to. Consider the rapid development of technology  
during WWII – jet engines, radar, V2s, computing and much more. By the  
end of WWII it was taking only five days to build a Liberty Ship in  
the US dockyards. When I first went on the Internet in 1994 there were  
only 70,000 of us in the club. Now there are over 1.6 billion of us.

Of course we have the time. After decades of paying about $5/gallon  
for our petrol, the NZ urban landscape looks much like America's  
although the average vehicle size may be somewhat smaller.

Now that we are paying $10/gallon for petrol, sales of small, more  
efficient, cars are booming, and a few more people are cycling to  
work, car-pooling or taking public transport. But, hardly anyone,  
except our local Katastrophists, are talking about giving up their  
autos altogether or proposing that we rebuild our cities within the  
constraints of Extremist Smart Growth urban form.

The most obvious change in behaviour is a boom in drive-away theft  
from petrol stations. Barrier arms or similar hardware will soon put a  
stop to this.

Our Densities are Higher and uses more Mixed than in the US.
Since the seventies, New Zealand has generally had 'enabling' Urban  
Planning rules which have allowed mixes of high, medium and low  
density housing and mixed uses of retail etc. Lot sizes have ranged in  
size but there would hardly be any suburbs built exclusively for  
single family homes on 1 acre lots. Consequently Auckland's density  
per sq mile is about double that of most US cities of similar age and  
size. But we are already "densified" and further density increases are  
being strongly resisted because the kerbside parking is already in  
short supply and inner city districts are noticing the increased  
congestion, noise and loss of amenity.

One effect of $10/gallon gas is that public transport prices are  
rising steeply too, and Councils are raising rates to keep up with the  
necessary subsidies. Some people seem to think that public transport  
runs on fairy dust.

Our auto ownership is about the same as the US, we drive somewhat  
shorter distances on average but generally spend more time driving up  
and down hills.

Of course we are now grizzling and complaining about the price of  
petrol. But the US need hardly fear any massive revolution while their  
gas remains at only half the price of ours.

US consumers are reacting to a dramatic change in price. Many of those  
cyclists are still prepared to pay more for their litre of bottled  
water than they are prepared to pay for a litre of gas.

A Force for Decentralisation
Americans are responding to this change in price by reducing their  
driven mileage. (Americans drove 11billion fewer miles in March 2008  
than in March 2007. ) Significantly the most dramatic reductions are  
taking place in the rural areas. My own experience suggests this is  
because the reductions are much easier to achieve in rural life. We  
tend to co-operate when it comes to long trips, we can more freely  
plan our times of day, and we spend no time at traffic lights, in  
gridlock, or looking for parking spaces. When gas prices are high, such  
waste is infuriating.

Hence, while none of us can be sure about future human behaviour, my  
own research and my own experience, suggests that high gas prices are  
a further force for decentralisation. Kunstler is sure we shall all  
rush to the city centre. Some people will, of course, but they will be  
watching many  households moving in the opposite direction.

Freeman Dyson's book "The Sun, the Genome and the Internet" identifies  
many present and future forces for decentralisation. My current  
position is that high gas prices are more likely to decentralise more  
people than centralise them. But no human behaviour is uniform. Some  
people will go downtown and some – probably more – will go to rural  
centres. Many will go to more remote locations for "the sea change,  
the tree change and the ski change."

Some people are convinced that this outmigration will be strongly  
resisted by the existing folk and even more so by people like me who  
will want to protect our piece of paradise. Not so – as long as the  
planners don't force us all to crowd into high density settlements  
with no room to swing a cat or grow our vegetables. And they will  
probably try.
When we moved to Northland eleven years ago there were  few people in  
the Kaiwaka area and services were basic. Now we have a French  
restaurant, an Italian bread shop, a bundle of local newspapers,  
excellent butchers and delicatessens, the school rolls are growing and  
the medical services are better and nearer and so on.

Most New Zealanders of my generation grew up in the country and we are  
returning to our roots. The media like to make much of a few hopeless  
cases who want to "de-moo" the cows and so on but I have never had any  
problems of that kind and frankly we are the ones who are driving many  
of the new rural crops such as olives, wine, truffles etc. and the new  
tourism establishments and so on.

The Iron Horse will prevail
For most of human history people have had access to private point-to- 
point history using things called horses, camels, mules, asses, lamas  
or whatever. Christ rode into Jerusalem on the current equivalent of a  
VW. Then, in the 19th C trains and trams allowed the development of  
far-flung cities in which large numbers of people could get into the  
central city for work. (The Manhattan model). The trouble was the  
horses, which dominated short distance urban trips, caused dreadful  
pollution of air water and soil, not to mention the stench at a NY  
gridlocked intersection in mid-summer.

The car was a miracle. It got rid of the pollution, and released huge  
amounts of food to feed people.
In 1910, 40% of the grain grown in the US went to feed horses. This  
"extra" grain fed the population explosion which followed.

So the car the was the real "Iron Horse" – not the train.

Modern trains are at a higher level of technology than the nineteenth  
century trains but their new technologies only increase their speed  
and reduce their pollution. They do not overcome the fact that trains  
cannnot provide the flexibility of rubber-on-road transport such as  
buses, cars, and taxis – or indeed, of the family horse.

Anyhow, the rubber-on-road system is about to go through a development  
phase which will leave the train in (on) its tracks, or stuck at the  
station.

The next generation of cars will be a computer with four wheels.
Many people in many different research centres are working on new  
technologies which will mean you will be able to drive your car to the  
motorway where it will link to a position over an underground cable  
which will guide the car – you will be able to take your hands off the  
wheel and read, and even use your cellphone. The same cable may use an  
induction system to supply power to your electric drive system. (You  
will of course charge your electric car up in your garage overnight).
Then, when you get near to your destination you will put your hands  
back on the wheel, leave the motorway, go back on to the surface  
street and complete the trip. If there is no parking you will get out  
of the car and tell it to go park itself and it will. When you leave  
your business you will phone it up to tell it to come and pick you up  
and it will.
That it what we mean when we say the train is 19th century technology  
- it is stuck and cannot make the leap into the 21st century.
No one can be sure that this total package will prevail but there are  
so many options being developed that cars will certainly leap to new  
levels of effciency and effectiveness over the next few years. If this  
seems like science fantasy image convincing your great-grandparents of  
the reality of modern computers on your desk and the power of the  
internet.

Behavioural change

There will be some changes of behaviour at the margins. People who are  
tired of congestion may make their move to the regional centres  
earlier than they might have, while their children might move to a  
downtown apartment.
But the technology will change much more rapidly than urban form and  
land use can change. If need be we shall electrify the private vehicle  
fleet and supply nuclear power and the car will be cheaper to run than  
ever.
There will be more telecommuting.
There will be more hi tech car pooling using GPS, iPhones and the  
Internet.
A few more will cycle and ride in trains and buses but the changes in  
travel mode will not be dramatic.

The worst thing that can happen is that our cities move from being  
"Opportunity Cities" to "Panic Cities" that insist on controlling  
where and how their people should live, based on knee-jerk reactions  
to change and a total lack of confidence in people's ability to  
innovate and adapt.

That is what we are all so good at – provided no "wise elites" decide  
to make our decisions for us.

Joel Kotkin and the Opportunity City

The Centre recommends that anyone concerned with the future of our  
cities, and the path to growth, development and productivity, read  
Joel Kotkin's new essay at:

http://www.houston.org/pdfs/kotkin/KotkinReportwithlinks.pdf

The essay looks long but that is because it is beautifully presented  
with many pages of splendid photographs and a multitude of charts. In  
spite of its apparent length I read it on-screen during a coffee break.

We should be asking ourselves why our cities seem to be turning  
working class people and immigrants into warring underclass tribes,  
rather than into middle-class citizens which is the great achievement  
of the real Opportunity City.

My NBR column today (Friday) looks at these issues from another  
viewpoint.


Funding.
It's that time of year again. 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!