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Mar

16

Affordability, Sustainablity and Livability: Thoughts on how we debate our future

Filed Under Innovation, Politics, Sustainability, The Bottom Line, Zoning | Leave a Comment

Originally posted on Facebook

After spending a lot of time in 2008 watching local land use debates and discussions I found myself feeling more than a little frustrated. Where was all this going? Council discussions seemed to lack focus on a broader agenda for the city. That agenda could be the Comprehensive Plan but that document has become a repository for ‘good ideas’ and political statements. One would often hear “sure put it in the Comp Plan; it doesn’t mean we actually have to do it.”

But what if someone asked me “what should our larger focus be, Roger?” I felt as though I needed to at least think through my answer. At the time it seemed to me that it all came down to making the city affordable to a wide range of people, supporting a self-sufficient and sustainable city and making the city livable.

So I proposed that we create a series based on these three ideas and solicit people’s best and most succinct thoughts on each topic. The Affordability, Sustainability, Livability series was born. Thanks to Shawna at the DJC we were on our way to at least sparking some discussion about the bigger picture. Seattle is missing a determined effort define what we want and measure our progress toward getting it–whatever it is.

That is why the whole series ends up being about definition and measurement. My experience thus far is there isn’t much enthusiasm out there for defining and measuring anything. Defining and measuring doesn’t make for great campaign slogans.”Vote for me and I will work to get us a clear idea of how far we have to go to effectively address the issues we face as a city!” Not exactly “I Like Ike!”

Unfortunately discussion on zoning, for example, tends to fall along party lines, not Democrat or Republican, but various interest groups claiming they will lose if certain legislation passes. Whether its a parking lot in Capitol Hill or incentive zoning its always a scrimmage between the developer who needs to get the project moving, the local neighborhood and parties on either side that see this particular project as representative of “what’s wrong with Seattle.”

If this does not substantially change our city will not be able to make progress on addressing big issues like the viaduct, climate change and the health of Puget Sound. And our city simply cannot prepare for coming growth amid such economic turmoil by having a house to house fight (see Edith Macefield) on issues like land use and housing. It will simply be a case of Bambi Meets Godzilla. We will be crushed by events and we’ll just have to live with whatever happens to our natural and built environment and our economy.

I hope that doesn’t happen.

If you have thoughts on livability (50 words) please submit to them to Shawna (shawnag@djc.com) by Thursday of this week. It would be great to have you and others you know weigh in.

Mar

2

Father knows best?

Filed Under Neighborhoods, Politics, The Bottom Line, Uncategorized, Zoning | 1 Comment

Friday night some friends and I went out to dinner to one of our favorite local spots.  The talk turned, inevitably, to the economy and to housing prices.  This dinner was kind of a goodbye to a friend who was making a career change brought on by recent economic changes.  Part of the changes included how to deal with paying her mortgage she acquired a year ago.

About two years ago I was trying to convince my dad, a renter almost his entire 64 years, that buying would be a good idea.  Twenty some years from now, I told him, you might want to move into a top of the line assited living set up.  Selling off that house would guarantee enough cash to live well until the end.

All my dad would say is “neither a borrower or lender be.” Was he right all along?

The national debate has turned to saving the American dream.  Some people including my friend are very frustrated with the idea that people who couldn’t afford mortgages in the first place are now the focus of another in a seemingly endless series of bailouts.  The Santelli rant certainly reflects the frustration of people still making payments on an asset that isn’t worth what it was.

American’s have about $10 trillion in mortgage debt.  It was only about 2 months ago that I suggested to someone that the best stimulus for the economy would be to pay off everyone’s mortgage–until I saw that figure.  But whose mortgages would we pay?

On the other hand some, like Richard Florida, suggest that we are seeing a silver lining in the darkening clouds.  Perhaps we will see the end of the suburb.  As experts like Nouriel Robuini (or Dr. Doom) continue to issue even more dire predictions about the economy one wonders if we might not see what we have been hoping for: a return to urban life.

There is a really great movie called Mr. Blandings Builds His Dreamhouse.   Its the story of Mr. Blandings (played by Cary Grant) who moves his family from their cramped Manhattan apartment to Connecticut.  The scenes of them struggling over space (modern cliff dwellers!) remind me of my own home–minus the maid, fireplace, kids and big closets.  But we can always dream.

Put it on your Netflix list and watch it.  Then watch it backwards.

Jan

6

Bag Fees Versus Bag Incentives

Filed Under Great City, Politics, The Bottom Line | 1 Comment

By Patrick McGrath

Bet on it: if you participate in a discussion about Seattle’s proposed plastic bag fee long enough someone will eventually wonder aloud why we can’t instead induce businesses to reward customers for using reusable bags. A fee just seems so negative, they say. Can’t we solve this problem positively? Maybe. But a quirk of human psychology makes the incentive route the steeper climb, assuming that the bill’s main goal is to reduce how many bags we synthesize, use fleetingly, and then discard.

Here’s why.

In 1991 two cognitive psychologists at Stanford published a theory* to describe a strange phenomenon that they and other researchers had noticed while studying consumer choice. Their names were Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman, and the phenomenon, called “loss aversion,” was causing trouble for the standard model of choice that psychologists and economists had been using up until then. Their theory drew on an experiment performed the year before in which researchers gave decorated mugs to a third of the undergraduates in a classroom, and asked them how much they would be willing to sell it for. They asked the remaining students how much they would pay to get one of the same mugs. The researchers found that the “owners” and the “buyers” valued these identical mugs very differently. The “buyers” said that, on average, they would pay about $3 for one. Sellers demanded around $7 to part with their mugs.

That experiment, and Tversky and Kahneman’s paper in 1991, illustrated an important principle: the satisfaction a person gets from acquiring something of value is lesser than the disappointment they feel should they lose the same item. In fact, later studies showed the ratio holds relatively constant at 1:2.  So for example, the pain of losing $1 is equal to the pleasure of gaining $2. This was counter intuitive; the standard model predicted that consumers would value a dollar equally whether it was coming or going.

If the 1:2 ratio holds true in the case of a bag fee, you’d need an incentive twice the size of the Council’s proposed fee to have the same effect on consumer behavior. Currently, PCC offers a $.05 refund to all customers who bring in their own bags. A laudable policy. But according to my unscientific estimate, this incentive packs only 12.5% of the wallop of a $.20 bag fee.

This hasn’t stopped other Washington cities from exploring resuable bag incentives. Well, maybe “explore” is too strong a word. In early November the Spokane City Council passed a non-binding resolution asking local businesses to offer small cash incentives to customers who bring in reusable bags. “This is much better than legislating it in a different way” declared Council member Michael Allen. By “different way,” I presume he was referring to mandatory fee legislation like Seattle’s, or the Irish bill that cut disposable plastic bag use by 90%.

Mr. Allen and the Spokane Council made at least one big friend with their resolution. In early November the American Chemistry Council, the plastics trade organization which spent $180,000 to challenge to Seattle’s ordinance, issued a press release celebrating the Spokane Council for its forbearance.

* Kahneman; Tversky. 1991. Loss Aversion in Riskless Choice: A Reference-Dependent Model. Quarterly Journal of Economics.