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Politics & Government

Expert: Executing the Town Center Plan Essential to Columbia's Future

A guest lecturer from the Brookings Institute told a citizen group that if Columbia doesn't evolve to become more walkable, it risks becoming irrelevant and declining over the next century.

"Columbia has gone flatline over the past 20 to 30 years,” said Chris Leinberger,  in a lecture that he gave before an audience of approximately 450 citizens on June 1 titled 21st Century Development Trends: How Will Columbia Measure Up?

The lecture took place at the Spear Center in The Howard Hughes Corporation Building in Town Center and was jointly sponsored by HHC and Columbia Association as part of an ongoing community-building effort, and in follow-up to a recently-approved Town Center development plan.

“For the 6,000 years that we've been building cities, we have generally built walkable-urban except for the last 60 years when we added drivable-suburban. Those have been the sum total of our models, but America is about to enter a third phase of design and development,” said Leinberger, a noted land use strategist, teacher, developer, researcher and author with the Brookings Institute and University of Michigan.

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This new model will be a mix of the two, according to Leinberger. 

“I would like to see a more walkable Columbia,” said Inge Hyder, the original owner of a Longfellow townhouse that she bought 42 years ago and still occupies. “I liked being here because I enjoyed seeing so many original Columbians.”

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The pendulum swung from walkable designs that featured mixed-use zoning and mass transit to suburban ones marked by discrete zoning and more cars beginning right after World War II, when a massive population shift from cities to suburbs began in conjunction with increased vehicle manufacturing, according to Leinberger. “The peak of the industrial age was in 1970; 40 percent of all American jobs were related to the automobile that year.”

“Columbia is the pinnacle of the drivable suburban option,” said Leinberger.

Nonetheless, Leinberger predicted that if Columbia doesn’t evolve to become more walkable, it risks becoming irrelevant and declining.

A recently approved Town Center development plan calls for greater density and mixed use.

“I’m glad Leinberger thinks that the proposed Town Center plan is going to work if we just follow it,” said Hyder. “I think we should do this, but I want to keep as many trees as possible in Symphony Woods.”

“From what was said, it’s certainly good to hear from a leading expert that the Downtown Columbia plan will position the area well for the future,” said William Mackey, Jr., chief of comprehensive and community planning for the Howard County Department of Planning and Zoning.

Leinberger theorized that the pendulum is swinging back toward walkable designs as the current generation of young adults, known as Millennials, who tend to marry less often and have children later in life, seek the convenience and vitality of a more urban lifestyle.

“In the next 20 years, only 14 percent of households will have kids,” Leinberger pointed out.

“When Columbia started, the median age was 11, now it's 39,” said Phil Nelson, president of CA.

Numerous, densely populated clusters of 400 acres or less in size and surrounded by single-family homes within a comfortable walking distance will be common throughout the rest of this century, according to Leinberger.

Leinberger told the audience not to count on funding retirements by selling large-lot, single-family homes, “Unless you want to sell them right now.”

He predicted that many suburban areas will become blighted slums and home to the poor over the next 90 years.

“I thoroughly enjoyed the lecture. I always appreciate it when speakers present data to make their case,” said Mackey.

Economy and Environment

“The move from walkable to suburban was market and policy based, including government subsidies,” said Leinberger, who favored new policies that would support walkable designs, but admitted such designs pose challenges.

“The market wants walkable urban but they are [difficult] to create. We got really good at driving NASCARS; now we have to learn how to fly jets,” said Leinberger.

“We overbuilt large-lot, single-family housing by 37 million homes. We don't need to build another large-lot single-family home for the next generation,” said Leinberger.

Leinberger even blamed suburban sprawl, at least in part, for the Great Recession, which he said was created by a mortgage crisis, especially in the “ ‘Drive until you qualify’ suburban fringes.”

The problem with suburban development, according to Leinberger, is its inefficiencies. “Thirty-five percent of the American economy’s asset base is the built environment, and it's on the sidelines. This has caused the economy's anemic growth.”

If Americans were to embrace a walkable lifestyle and thereby eliminate one car from each household, our standard of living would go up, according to Leinberger.

In spite of these challenges, or perhaps because of them, “The most expensive housing in the country today on a square foot basis is walkable urban. This became the case over the past 10 years and it’s the first time since the 1960s,” said Leinberger. “In some markets, walkable urban developments are commanding a 60 percent premium over similar places located within as little as a quarter-mile. People only want to walk about 1,500-3,000 feet.”

Leinberger explained that 25 percent of suburban household income goes toward purchasing and maintaining cars versus only 9 percent in walkable areas. “Dropping one car out of a household will increase mortgage capacity by $100,000,” said Leinberger.

Fewer cars would also mean a healthier planet, according to Leinberger.

“If we ever want to get serious about the environment, we have to get serious about the built environment. Seventy percent of energy is used by the built environment.  Greenhouse gasses are directly related to the built environment. CO2 and energy consumption is five times higher in the drivable suburbs than the walkable urban areas,” said Leinberger.

Regional shopping malls will be a casualty of this movement, according to Leinberger. “None have been built in past eight years and none will be. Many are being converted to walkable, open-air places.

“The good news is that this shift will drive the economy. It will mean the transformation of the suburbs. Transportation will be overhauled. Moving from suburban to walkable will cut energy consumption by 75 percent and will lead to energy independence. We will save all the money we spend on defending the oil lanes that originate in the Middle East,” predicted Leinberger.

“This will start an upward spiral of housing values and will include single-family housing nearby. There will be a demand for hundreds of walkable urban places in the U.S. That means these walkable places will be established in suburban places, like Columbia,” said Leinberger.

Leinberger pointed to downtown Bethesda, Silver Spring and Arlington as examples of what’s possible.  He said that 65 percent of walkable urban places have rail transit, and that rail transit as well as sports complexes, especially baseball stadiums, are catalysts to establishing walkable communities. 

“We need free light rail service like they have in some cities,” said Hyder.

John E. DeWolf, a recently-appointed senior vice president of HHC, told the audience “We have a bright future and this is a key part of that future.”

Dewolf, who headed development operations in Columbia, Howard County, Alexandria, Va., and Princeton, N.J., said that the current real estate market was “The most rapidly changing of my 30 years in this business.”

Bully on Columbia’s Future

Leinberger was optimistic about Columbia’s future.  He said it has a great location between Baltimore and Washington, D.C., and it is a “Best in class of drivable suburban sprawl.”

He also said that CA is remarkable and a major asset. And that Columbia has always given great community input, thereby making the right things easy to do.

Developing walkable centers must be managed well, according to Leinberger. “You, here, have one of the best management organizations [CA] of any place in the country. And it doesn’t hurt that most of the land that needs to be developed is owned by one entity [HHC].”

“Jim [Rouse] was always so far in front of the rest of the world. He invented regional malls, lead the new town movement, championed master-plan communities, and started urban festival markets,” said Leinberger. “Walkable urbanism is the next step in Jim Rouse's vision of what would be.”

“I knew Jim Rouse. I think he would agree that walkable urban development is the way to go,” said Hyder.

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