Progress Lost, Progress Redefined, Progress Regained—How Location Efficiency Performance Measures Are Being Used to Achieve Economic Security
Scott Bernstein, President – Center for Neighborhood Technology Thursday, March 22, 2012, 7:00 p.m. Room 1700, Harbour Centre – SFU Vancouver 515 W. Hastings Street, Vancouver ADMISSION: Free, but you must reserve a seat at: www.sfu.ca/reserve
A new index of combined affordability of housing + transportation, which cost households at least half of their available income, are being tested by federal agencies, metropolitan organizations, states and local governments. The results are encouraging. Agencies taking combined affordability into account have shifted billions of dollars in long-term commitments from highways to transit; provided incentives for locational preference in in subsidized housing; and awarded capital intended to demonstrate the efficacy of place-based integrated resource strategies.
Location-efficient neighborhood residents felt only one-quarter the economic “pain” felt due to gas prices by those in average neighborhoods, while those in the least-efficient places experienced their region’s highest foreclosure & bankruptcy rates.
Look forward to seeing everyone there.
I find the framing of this from the point of view of the residential zoning a bit limiting. It sounds as if the location of neighborhoods is independent of anything else, like you can just pick them up and place them somewhere else.
Instead the issue is more one of monotony. Location-efficient just means you can walk 15 minutes to a pedestrian-friendly cluster of narrow streets and 4-6 stories, thus http://imgur.com/d0qI1 This is a zoning issue. It’s as much (or more) about what’s (allowed) near you, as it is about what you’re near.
It’s not that certain people live far away from where the action is; it’s that having action (economic activity: stores, businesses etc.) is illegal near them. I’d argue that no climactically hospitable spot on the map is inately locationally-inefficient: it depends what’s happening there, how compact, populous, educated and attractive to the 1% the place is.