What Is Livability?

Document

Cited in

Author	Chuck Kooshian
Position	Senior policy analyst with the Center for Clean Air Policy and a city and regional planner
Pages	25-25

SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2010 ❧ Page 25

Reprinted by permission from The Environmental Forum®, Sept./Oct. 2010

anoTher view

extend service into wealthy suburbs

where people have three cars in ev-

ery garage and rarely ride trains or

buses.

Land-Use Policies

Despite the failure of the alterna-

tive transportation policies of the

1970s, today’s livability advocates

want to renew ef‌forts to get people

out of their cars. ey claim future

increases in automotive energy ef-

f‌iciencies and alternative fuels will

not be enough to meet carbon

emission targets. So they propose to

substantially rebuild American cit-

ies to higher densities, with a great-

er mixture of uses, so people won’t

have to drive as much for routine

tasks like commuting, shopping,

and going to school.

ese so-called smart-growth

policies are extraordinarily coercive

and costly. Americans overwhelm-

ingly prefer to live in single-family

homes with yards, but auto crit-

ics charge that such low densities

make people “auto dependent.”

To discourage such housing, smart

growth calls for cities to adopt

urban-growth boundaries in one

form or another. Inside the bound-

aries, cities are to be densif‌ied with

an emphasis on mixed-use projects

that combine housing and shops in

the same neighborhoods or build-

ings. Outside the boundaries, land-

owners lose the rights to build on

their own land so as to prevent peo-

ple from escaping the cities.

Oregon planners, for example,

put 97 percent of the state in zones

that forbid people from building a

house on their own land unless they

own 80 acres, they actively farm it,

and they actually earned (depend-

ing on soil productivity) $40,000

to $80,000 a year farming it in two

of the last three years. Meanwhile,

inside the state’s urban-growth

boundaries, planners rezoned many

neighborhoods of single-family

homes for apartments, with zoning

so strict that, in some cases, if your

expanded opportunity richness of‌fer

the additional benef‌it of resilience,

making it possible for people to con-

tinue carrying out their life-activities

with comfort and satisfaction in the

absence of abundant and cheap nat-

ural resources. For many, especially

those already struggling economi-

cally, the auto-oriented built envi-

ronment provides very few options

when gas prices skyrocket.

Confronting change need not

be agonizing. Many will agree with

the economist Jef‌frey Sachs when

he notes, “e ultimate solutions to

climate change are workable, cost-

ef‌fective technologies which permit

society to improve living standards

while limiting and adapting to

changes in the climate.” Livabil-

ity encompasses much

more than adapting to

climate change — but it

is an important part of a

broad-based response.

Since transportation

plays such a prominent

role in general wel-

fare and happiness, it

shouldn’t be surprising

that lawmakers have made livability

a concern of federal transportation

policy. And for reasons of system

performance and stability, sound

transportation policy cannot af‌ford

to emphasize automobiles to the ex-

clusion of all other modes. A truly

ef‌f‌icient system makes the optimal

use of every mode available.

Life is complex, people are diverse

in their wants and needs. Transporta-

tion and land-use policies, like other

domains under the social contract,

are most successful when they recog-

nize this and f‌lexibly accommodate

complexity and diversity rather than

seeking to conform to a single man-

tra or doctrine.

Chuck Kooshian is is a senior policy

analyst with the Center for Clean Air Policy

and a city and reg ional planner.

T here is pleasure in move-

ment — whether under

one’s own power or being

conveyed by plane, train

or automobile. But for

practical purposes, transportation’s

role is that of a means to many ends.

ese ends themselves are the shape

and substance of our lives: work,

play, home, school, friends. eir

setting can be rural, urban, or subur-

ban according to personal preference

and individual circumstance.

With my town planner hat on, I

think of “livability” as the richness of

opportunity for these life-activities,

and the ease of traveling from one to

the next. In the public realm, oppor-

tunity richness corresponds to land-

use policy and mobility to transpor-

tation policy. e two are

intimately related.

We humans make a

built environment for

our own convenience.

Since life and societies

are dynamic, the built

environment is subject to

constant re-working and

updating as circumstanc-

es change. In many American locali-

ties, auto-oriented development is

no longer providing the quality of

life that many desire, and so these

communities (of their own initiative)

are altering their policies and public

investment to encourage elements

that were overlooked or neglected

in the previous era: well-connected

neighborhoods that have sidewalks

and bike paths; a f‌ine-grained land

use mix with nearby schools, parks,

and businesses; quality transit choic-

es; and attractive civic spaces.

With my climate change analyst

hat on, I think of livability as the

capacity of individuals, households,

and communities to thrive and plan