Sunday, April 29, 2012

120 Years Of Passover History, Indeed

The above photo, from the back of the boxes of Manischewitz matzoh that I ate during Passover earlier this month, is too perfect. The adorable family around the dinner table, the tradition of the seder, the fancy linens, the two small kids who are totally bored out of their minds. If there's any more historically and culturally accurate detail of Passover than the look on these kids' faces, I've yet to see it. (I imagine the seder is somewhere around the Hillel sandwich at this point. The service has already lasted for about 45 minutes, the food isn't quite in sight, and no one younger than 13 would want to eat horseradish and haroset on matzoh.)

Big high-five to Manischewitz for including this in their marketing.

Sunday, April 22, 2012

So Why Is The Rent Too Damn High?

Planning has always struck me as a politically liberal profession because it favors government intervention to order the built environment, particularly when it comes to patterns of urban development, so I have a keen interest in conservative viewpoints within the profession. In the Wall Street Journal two weeks ago, Wendell Cox, a former member of the Los Angeles County Transportation Commission, published an op-ed column arguing that California's strong legislative favoritism for multifamily housing is increasing housing's cost and compelling people and businesses to leave. "California has declared war on the most popular housing choice, the single family, detached home -- all in the name of saving the planet," he writes, but local governments' implementation of "intense land-use regulations," such as development moratoria, growth boundaries and impact fees have sent prices very far upward.

Well, Cox is probably right: In theory, an urban growth boundary makes land more expensive because there's less of it in supply. A moratorium on development, a more burdensome approval or regulatory process for new development, or a larger impact fee has the same effect for similar reasons. Urban growth boundaries are very good environmental policy because they limit development on previously unspoiled land, protecting natural habits; and they reduce vehicle emissions because the greater density pushes housing closer to jobs and encourages greater use of public transit. But no policy is wholly excellent and an uncomfortable effect of the boundary is its influence on land prices.

But then, the cost of housing in California probably isn't so easily explained by the state's preference for denser development. Expensive housing is partly a factor of higher incomes and California, whose economy has large concentrations in high-tech, finance and entertainment, has lots of people who are able to bid up the price of attractive housing. Housing also becomes more expensive when it's in a desirable place. Even if housing is more expensive in Los Angeles than in Jacksonville, many still choose the former because of its quality of life, which is partly better because of the environmental regulations that preserve the state's coastline, for example. Alternatively, the rush to remove limits on development becomes more complicated when one considers that the places with the most permissive approaches to new development during the early 21st century (particularly of the single-family type that Cox prefers), such as Las Vegas, Phoenix, Central Florida and Stockton, Calif., have found themselves with empty subdivisions, unhealthily depressed housing prices and metro economies that are among the country's worst.

As much as I liked Cox's column for its provocation, his concluding paragraph simply misses the boat: "Ali Modarres of the Edmund G. 'Pat' Brown Institute of Public Affairs at California State University, Los Angeles has shown that a disproportionate share of migrating households are young. This is at least in part because it is better to raise children with backyards than on condominium balconies. A less affordable California, with less attractive housing, could disadvantage the state as much as its already destructive policies toward business." This is pure social construct posing as fact. That cities declined during one generation of American history isn't proof that they're dead. That one generation of federal policy favored the suburb isn't proof that this wave of policy was the most successful ever. The city isn't inherently more harmful to children than the suburb and multifamily housing isn't inherently uglier or less practical than the standalone house. Neighborhood composition and design go a long way to determining that. However, Cox's opinion is the prevailing one, at least everywhere but in some urban settings, which is a momentous challenge for planners, designers and developers.

Update: Peter Calthorpe, one of the country's more-renowned urban designers and a founder of New Urbanism, takes down Cox's column here.

Sunday, April 15, 2012

It Takes Talent To Be This Bad

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Friday, April 13, 2012

26.2 Miles of Passover

For the second time in Secret Knowledge of Backroads' history, I've recruited a guest author. This time, it's my younger sister, Nina, writing about her dilemma this week to train properly for the Boston Marathon, which she runs on Monday, or to be kosher for Passover, which would be the observant thing to do. She smartly chose the former. The kid is training hard and in the home stretch, so don't sleep on her observations or her decorous solicitation for charity:

"Traditioooon, tradition!

"The next week will bring a number of firsts for me: it will be the first time that I run a marathon and the first that I choose not to observe the Passover diet. If you haven't already guessed, the two are related. On April 16, I will run the Boston Marathon (a holiday with traditions of its own, I'm learning), just a few days after Passover ends.

"Throughout five months of training, all kinds of leavened foods have been essential for fueling and helping me run a little bit farther than I thought I could. As my brother, the witty and insightful author of this blog [editor's note: one need not flatter me to be published here], put it, 'Nothing tastes as good during Passover, and you're always a little hungry.' He urged me to eat as I normally would because cutting bread, pasta, beans, and really most everything out of my diet a few days before a marathon would be silly and unhealthy. Eventually, I had to admit to myself that he was right. For a few weeks, whenever he asked what I would do, I said I wasn't sure. I knew that to be smart and capitalize on all my months of hard work, I really shouldn't keep kosher for Passover this year, but intentionally ignoring a defining ritual made me feel uncomfortable.

"I don't think Tevye would recognize me from his 19th-century shtetl, and I'm happy that I've moved far past mending, tending, and fixing, preparing to marry whomever Papa picks. But I value Jewish traditions -- as much as they've changed and morphed to accommodate my 21st-century life. Still, tradition connects me to a larger history; it is an important part of what defines my family and keeps us coming together around a table many times a year.

"Although I won't celebrate Passover as I normally would, I've taken this departure from tradition as an opportunity to think about and appreciate the holiday in new ways. One theme of Passover is rebirth, renewal, and new beginnings, and this resonates closely with one very large part of my marathon training that is bigger than food -- it's Summer Search! As part of running, I have been raising money for Summer Search Boston, a nonprofit organization that works high schools in the greater Boston area to find low-income sophomores who need help realizing their potential and helps them to do well in school, to apply themselves, to try new things to overcome challenges, to become leaders, to go on to college, to be a role model, and many other things.

"So this year, I'll be skipping the matzah, and that's OK. Instead, you can find me running full-steam ahead somewhere between Hopkinton and Boston wearing a fabulously bright Summer Search jersey. Cheer for me, I'll wave.

"If you'd like to donate to my marathon campaign and support Summer Search, click here. Think of it as a celebration."

Update: My sister finished the race in 4 hours and 55 minutes, in 88-degree weather -- the hottest April day in Boston that I can remember in my seven years living here.