Another Defense for Farmland Preservation

By Gene Krebs. When I first started in the smart growth arena back in 1997, few seemed to realize the value of farmland.  It was often considered a blank pallet for development.  I tried to explain that farmland holds value beyond simply land preservation in and of itself.

A lobbyist actually once told me that she had been in the grocery store, and there was plenty of food.  Therefore there was no need to preserve farmland, and in fact, that land would be better used for housing.  I tried to explain that, when looking in the long term, not only would there be the possibility of global food shortages, but also the housing market was vastly overbuilt to the point where it would become a false economy.  Ever pour water on a rock?  It looks wet but nothing has soaked in?  That was my impact with her.

In addition to all these reasons to preserve farmland, a recent article from the Wall Street Journal entitled "Resource-Rich States Surge" makes the financial case for the value of farmland and the need to preserve it.  Not only does this article explain the obvious, detrimental effects of overbuilt housing, but more importantly it shows that commodity-rich states, including primarily those with farm earnings, are faring the best.

The most relevant quote from the article states, “In the third quarter, commodity-rich states continued to gain ground compared with other states. Overall farm earnings, for instance, grew 12% on average in the period, which made South Dakota, Kansas and Minnesota among the nation's fastest gainers in overall income during the quarter.”

Therefore, farmland adds tremendous value to the states prudent enough to preserve it.  It even gives a competitive edge.  Hopefully Ohio can learn from this and acknowledge the importance of farmland preservation.

Walk Score and Bike Score

By Gene Krebs. Increasingly, realtors are having people ask them about the walkability of neighborhoods when showing houses.  There are new walkscores now out for the cities in Ohio, and you can go here to find out where your Ohio city ranks.  Also, you can enter your address in the box at the top and it will tell you your score for your home.  My farm back near Morning Sun Ohio has a score of Zero!  By comparison, German Village in Columbus has a walkscore of 83!  Let us know what your walkscore is for your home!

Additionally, there are now plans to develop a BikeScore.com website.  In the process, WalkScore.com has opened up a forum asking the question “What are the most important factors to include in a Bike Score calculation?” Contribute your own ideas and vote for suggested ones.  Currently,  the top vote-getters are “Bike lanes and paths, hills and elevation, and traffic density and speed limits.”  Go to BikeScore.com to participate.

State Budgets: Day of Reckoning

By Gene Krebs. On Sunday night my wife and I watched a very thought provoking piece on 60 Minutes entitled "State Budgets: Day of Reckoning".  I strongly recommend you watch this clip if you want insight on the pending fiscal collapse of our state and local governments.  We have been spending way too much on certain aspects of government in a manner that is duplicative and unnecessary.

The reason governance reform is so difficult is because we must meet certain basic needs while also keeping our core costs down in order to compete with other countries.  But the trouble is that we waste vast amounts, and to make matters worse, our states and localities are data deserts, which prevents us from making informed decisions about what can and cannot be cut.

In the video, CBS interviewed Meredith Whitney, a fiscal analyst from Wall Street who correctly forecast the housing disaster several years ago.  She now claims we are heading for another collapse for state and local governments, but she can’t get enough good data to tell exactly how bad it will be.  This lack of good, hard data is something Greater Ohio has been echoing for several years, along with warnings of the pending fiscal collapse.

Watch the video, and let us know what you think.  How far should reforms go?

The S.C.O.R.E. Report

By Gene Krebs. Ohio is a data desert.  Recently an important tool to correct that was introduced.

Secretary of State Brunner has been working for some time on a data compilation for citizens available on a single web site, called S.C.O.R.E..

The right and the left of the political spectrum agree on the need for better transparency and accountability.  To prove the right is also involved, look at HB 420 of the 127^th GA by Brinkman.  We testified in support of the bill and had an amendment incorporated requiring the Administration to be more transparent with data.  They ignored this aspect of the law, and refused to prepare the required reports.

Better data is needed for better transparency.  The SCORE report takes data from domain of the ruling elite and places it at the disposal of Bobby and Betty Buckeye.  Previously only members of the General Assembly or the Administration had regular access to this type of data; starting now all citizens can access it.

This is also good for business, as business responds to certainty, and this data gives businesses looking at Ohio fewer blind spots.

This is a good thing for Ohio.

Greater Ohio visits Manchester, England

By Lavea Brachman. Learning from Manchester's strategies.

As part of a series on continuing observations from Greater Ohio's visit to two European cities, Greater Ohio is blogging about a visit to Manchester, England as part of leading a study tour to learn about European urban/regional revitalization strategies.

A symbol found etched into the tiles of the Manchester Town Hall and on other buildings sprinkled throughout the city is that of the “worker bee,” which in its elegant simplicity tells the story of Manchester.  As the true cradle of the industrial age, Manchester’s reputation was as a working class city where hard work and activity were and still are valued.  Building on this historic work ethic, we observed that Manchester has “re-founded” itself, pulling itself up by its bootstraps with an entrepreneurial spirit; a “can do” attitude that features pragmatic strategies linking the city core’s fate with its suburbs; as well as extremely engaged and capable public leadership that values and actively spawns partnerships with the private sector.

While the national government in England plays a significantly different and primarily central role than in the United States, Manchester can be viewed as a model for our cities’ recoveries in several ways. First, like Leipzig, it has linked neighborhood revitalization with an economic development strategy that is starting to bear fruit.  This linkage includes a version of cluster development or a sector strategy, such as targeting the media sector.  Second, also like Leipzig, it has actively pursued massive demolition of low quality housing stock (called “terraced housing”) built in the early 1900’s for workers in the mines, the mills and other old industries.  And Manchester has taken these proactive revitalization efforts a step further with its “if you build it, they will come” attitude that includes positioning itself as England’s “second city” after London.  It burnished its image as a sports center by going after the 2000 Olympics (which they did not actually hope to win but merely leveraged to put itself on the map with its hubris of trying) and then actually hosting the 2002 Commonwealth Games and building a sports center where massive amounts of vacant buildings once stood in the heart of one of the poorest and devastated neighborhoods in the city.  And I thought that Americans had the corner of the market on image-making!  This is a city that is proud of its industrial past and chooses to feature it as an asset rather than cast it aside.

As with Leipzig, we observed some contextual differences and distinctions in governance structure from ours in the states. Additionally, some redeveloped areas in Manchester that are touted as successes appeared to be lacking in key qualities, such as open and green space, mixed uses, and/or walkable retail.  However, the leadership, overall vision-driven and opportunistic approach to revitalization was extremely impressive.

Future blogs will cover “drill downs” on such topics as the central role of Manchester’s private sector in the region’s redevelopment; more details on the “leadership factor” that played such a crucial part in both Manchester and Leipzig’s efforts; fleshing out strategies used commonly in both places to link the cities and their respective regions in physical restructuring and economic development planning; “integrated planning” strategies that are also common to both cities; identifying strategies and projects that were less than successful or produced undesirable results; detailing apparent distinctions between Europe and the States; and observations about the role of state and federal policy in framing these redevelopment efforts, among others.

Livable Cities Report by The Economist

By Gene Krebs. I recently discovered a very interesting report by the British publication The Economist entitled "Livable Cities: Challenges and Opportunities for Policymakers".  It examines what makes a city livable through an international lens.

It is interesting to read since it is written from a different perspective than most American publications.  For example, the whole structure of the article varies from the typical Brookings Institution report.  Additionally, there are more than one or two odd spellings.

Among the people interviewed for this long piece is Gerald Frug, famous to lawyers for his textbook on local government law (which sits on my non-lawyer bookshelf).

Please share your comments on this report and let us know what you think.

Greater Ohio visits European "Cities in Transition": Leipzig, Germany and Manchester, England

By Lavea Brachman. Leipzig: Initial Observations and Key Takeaways

As a part of the Greater Ohio Policy Center's partnership with the German Marshall Fund, announced earlier this year, I had the pleasure of visiting two European cities this past week -- Leipzig, Germany and Manchester, England – with a group investigating these two cities’ revitalization strategies and practices to glean lessons for our cities.  These two European cities share many qualities with American cities, like Cleveland and Youngstown and so many other Ohio cities, including such distinguishing factors as an industrial past, a significant decline in population (“shrinkage”) as well as increased unemployment and poverty rates and other distress indicators.  This blog is the first in a series of occasional blogs entitled, “Lessons from European Cities,” that will appear over the next few months describing revitalization strategies and lessons to be learned for similarly situated American cities from these two European cities.

From both cities, we learned generally about the importance of:  leadership (trite though it sounds), a sustained (decades-long) renewal vision and integrating physical rehabilitation with economic redevelopment efforts.  Leipzig -- a charming city with a cultural and political history as the home of Goethe and Bach and of the peaceful, so-called “Monday Demonstrations” that were a main impetus for the fall of the Berlin Wall -- leveraged the downfall of Communism in 1990 as a dramatic turning point to focus on internal revitalization.  Benefiting from several strong and visionary mayors, as well as a federal government that was inclined to invest in the decimated East German economy, Leipzig chose to address its challenges of a shrinking population and deindustrialization head on by developing an aggressive vacant property strategy that included selective demolition as well as data-driven investment in targeted neighborhoods, strategic use of historic assets and a comprehensive, regional strategic vision that included annexing some surrounding areas.

We saw a city whose historic beauty -- with its medieval city center, paved streets and old churches that avoided major destruction during World War II -- shines through and enabled the restoration, renovation and revitalization that have occurred.  Not unlike many of our older industrial cities, Leipzig has physically attractive “good bones” -- a necessary but not sufficient asset, though. Not only has Leipzig has benefited from strategic and comprehensive plans and from preservation efforts, but also from business attraction and workforce training tied to demand.

Certainly, the Leipzig story is not one of unalloyed success; nor can every success be perfectly transferred to the American context, because of the role of the European Union and other differences in governance systems and historic context.  However, there are many fundamental approaches that provide lessons.  Stay tuned for further download about Leipzig and Manchester, as well as lessons learned for the role of state policy and for development of practices in similarly situated cities in Ohio and throughout the Midwest.

Has Mayor Coleman Been Dealt a Good Hand?

By Gene Krebs. I just read Joe Hallet’s interesting article in the Columbus Dispatch on Mayor Mike Coleman.

Quick question: please name the five things that will eventually halt the growth of Columbus.

Answer:  PA, WV, KY, IN and Lake Erie.  I expect that Toledo will make a mad dash for the IN line to avoid having Columbus reach to MI.

Seriously though, Columbus, by rapid growth, has been able to “mask” its core problems.  If you look at Columbus from the 1950 footprint perspective, then it doesn’t look quite as rosy.  See the quote from this Community Research Partners report:

"Population loss. From 1970 to 2000, all the study cities, with the exception of Columbus, had a population loss ranging from about one-fifth to one-third of their 1970 population. During this time, the Columbus “older city” (within the city’s 1950 boundaries) lost 30% of its population."

Go to page 2-4 of the report for an interesting table that illustrates the data problem for Columbus.  As Columbus finds itself increasingly hemmed in, it must now fix its problems.  If, like Cincinnati, it had been forced to “live” within the 1950 boundaries, if would be viewed differently.

So, even though while on the surface it looks like Coleman has been doing an outstanding job, when compared to Mayor Plusquellic  in Akron or Mayor Williams in Youngstown, if this were euchre, he was dealt both bauers and one ace.  He should be able to make the trick.  Not a criticism of Mayor Coleman, but just examining his cards.

County Commissioner Association of Ohio

By Gene Krebs. Last week I was asked to speak at the County Commissioner  Association of Ohio annual conference on governance reform.  I was told that I should expect only 40 chairs to be filled, it was closer to 100.  Commissioner Dan Troy led off and gave the background for the Local Government Reform Commission he co-chaired.  I then presented a slide show that illustrated the long term fiscal problems in Ohio and at the county level.  The CCAO board took several positions at the conference that were very strong on governance reform.  I expect them to work with us to make Ohio a better place.

Leasing the Turnpike

By Gene Krebs. Recently the Columbus Dispatch reported on the possibility of Ohio leasing the turnpike.  I had a conversation about three years ago with a transportation consultant from Chicago on this topic.  He indicated that he knew the folks in that industry and thought Ohio could get $14 billion or so from a lease.  This was before the collapse of the capital markets, and I have no way of knowing the validity of his statement, other than that he is nationally regarded on transportation issues.

I do know that Indiana used the proceeds from their lease to create a fund for the other highways in Indiana resulting in much needed upgrades.  My farm is located only 4 miles from the state line, and I have noticed for most of my life how poor the roads are in Indiana.  No more.  Now they are rapidly matching or exceeding our quality of roads.  This is why INDOT will not be facing fiscal collapse for another 20 years, according to folks inside the Daniels administration, unlike ODOT, which is facing severe fiscal troubles.