Peter Steinbrueck: Our fractured metropolis (Text of the keynote from NPI’s 2011 gala)

Edi­tor’s Note: Fol­low­ing the con­clu­sion of our Spring Fundrais­ing Gala a few days ago, we have been asked if we could make the text of Peter Stein­brueck­’s keynote speech avail­able. He has kind­ly agreed to do so; what fol­lows are a pol­ished ver­sion of his pre­pared remarks, deliv­ered on April 28th at the Com­mu­ni­ty Cen­ter at Mer­cer View on Mer­cer Island. We are most grate­ful to Peter for tak­ing time out of his busy sched­ule to head­line our third gala. 

More to come: Next week, we antic­i­pate record­ing a pod­cast with Peter to answer ques­tions from read­ers and sup­port­ers. It’s not too late to sub­mit a ques­tion for the pod­cast! You can do so either by leav­ing a com­ment in response to this post, or by direct­ing a ques­tion for Peter to @nwpro­gres­sive on Twitter.

The Unit­ed States, with over eighty per­cent of the pop­u­la­tion liv­ing in urban regions, is one of the most urban­ized coun­tries in the world, and third largest.

Yet these days, with all the enor­mous eco­nom­ic, envi­ron­men­tal, and social chal­lenges we face, it is hard to see how and where we will accom­mo­date the addi­tion­al 120 mil­lion more peo­ple the U.S. is expect­ed to grow by over the next forty years. Still, cities are increas­ing­ly seen as the hubs for inno­va­tion, places to expe­ri­ence urban vital­i­ty — and as a panacea to our glob­al eco­nom­ic woes.

As Bruce Katz of the Brook­ings Insti­tu­tion argues, region­al economies are what will make the U.S. com­pet­i­tive again with oth­er devel­op­ing nations… if we can rec­og­nize our inter­de­pen­den­cies, link up, and fos­ter eco­nom­ic ties among metro areas.

Har­vard eco­nom­ics pro­fes­sor Edward Glaeser, in his recent book, Tri­umph of the City, espous­es envi­ron­men­tal pro­tec­tion through city-building.

“If you love nature, stay out of it,” he extols.

In the com­ing years, the Amer­i­can hous­ing mar­ket is expect­ed to see few­er house­holds with chil­dren — just over two peo­ple per household.

This means many more, but small­er, house­holds will be needed.

So all those mil­lions of new­com­ers are sup­posed to live in the con­crete urban jun­gles and shiny tow­ers, right?

As aging baby boomers dump their over­sized homes, a mas­sive shift to rentals is begin­ning to occur. We may even see McMan­sions con­vert­ing to mul­ti-fam­i­lies —  hmmm, per­haps a good thing? — if local land use con­trols will allow them.

We might not need so many tow­ers then!

Anoth­er wor­ry is dis­as­ter readi­ness and resilience. In addi­tion to some of these demo­graph­ic changes, cities are going to have to get used to respond­ing to more fre­quent dis­as­ters, whether from earth­quakes, tsunamis, flash floods, bush fires, or  oth­er severe weath­er cat­a­stro­phes relat­ed to the cli­mate crisis.

As they say, “change is com­ing,” yet by and large, cities in the U.S. are hand­cuffed by state gov­ern­ments through restric­tions at every lev­el on land use, self-reg­u­la­tion, and rev­enue rais­ing. (For a more in-depth dis­cus­sion about this prob­lem, check out City Bound, by Ger­ald Frug and David Barron).

Out­side of major cities, the metro regions, where most peo­ple live, fair even worse when it comes to reach of reg­u­la­to­ry author­i­ty and rev­enue col­lec­tion. Very few full ser­vice metro or region­al gov­ern­ments with any land use con­trol even exist in the U.S. (Port­land, San Fran­cis­co, and Min­neapo­lis are some of the few).

In West­ern Wash­ing­ton, home to hun­dreds of local gov­ern­ments, our juris­dic­tion­al bound­aries have very lit­tle to do with how we live and even where we work. Just think about it — how often do you cross the bound­aries of the city or town where you live to go to work, to recre­ate, or to shop?

Three or four times a week, or three times a day?

Though we don’t iden­ti­fy as such, we are all region­al cit­i­zens liv­ing in a giant, invis­i­ble region­al city. The Seat­tle metro region is a large and mul­ti-faceted area encom­pass­ing 5,894 square miles and includes thir­ty-one cities and towns, and dozens of employ­ment cen­ters. What do you call home?

Says Aman­do Car­bonell, Senior Plan­ning Fel­low at Harvard’s Lin­coln Land Institute:

We live in regions — ter­ri­to­ries defined pri­mar­i­ly by func­tion and only rarely by juris­dic­tion. The places where we work, live, shop, recre­ate, and social­ize con­sti­tute a ter­ri­to­ry that sel­dom cor­re­sponds to a sin­gle town or city. Region­al plan­ning is con­cerned less with the exer­cise of juris­dic­tion and more with the search for new forms of habi­ta­tion based on a clear com­mit­ment to advanc­ing sustainability.

Even if we do live and work in the same town, the eco­log­i­cal fall out of our day-to-day liv­ing pat­terns will be felt upstream and down­stream through­out the region. (For more, read Peter Calthor­pe’s The Region­al City).

And now, my cen­tral point: A region­al approach is par­tic­u­lar­ly appro­pri­ate for man­ag­ing land use, water, util­i­ties growth, and trans­porta­tion, and for address­ing the cli­mate cri­sis. Take Seattle’s auda­cious goal of achiev­ing car­bon neutrality.

Absent from the car­bon analy­sis are con­tri­bu­tions from exter­nal, yet urban-gen­er­at­ed sources such as SeaT­ac Inter­na­tion­al Air­port, where GHG emis­sions, large­ly from jet take-offs and land­ings (4,650,000 met­ric tons), are equiv­a­lent to near­ly sev­en­ty per­cent of Seat­tle’s total annu­al out­put (6.770,000 met­ric tons).

If the goal is to seri­ous­ly cut car­bon emis­sions and advance urban sus­tain­abil­i­ty, all this focus on den­si­fy­ing the urban core of the hub city may be gross­ly mis­placed. Take Van­cou­ver, B.C., for exam­ple… they’re eas­i­ly twen­ty years ahead of us in both plan­ning for cen­ter city urban den­si­ty, and seri­ous region­al planning.

Still, even with an impres­sive jun­gle of dense res­i­den­tial high-ris­es — one of the dens­est urban cores in North Amer­i­ca — the metro Van­cou­ver area has out­stripped the City of Vancouver’s growth rate by more than four times that of the cen­ter city.

There’s noth­ing par­tic­u­lar­ly wrong with the strong urban growth empha­sis, it’s just the typ­i­cal city is way too small an area, and with mar­gin­al impact on the region­al urban ecosys­tem. Though cities by them­selves can have an impact (because polit­i­cal­ly, they can address issues in ways that coun­ties and unin­cor­po­rat­ed areas can­not), cities are still insep­a­ra­ble from the metro area they lie within.

My sec­ond point: There is more than one type of “sus­tain­able lifestyle,” and to solve the cli­mate cri­sis, we do not all have to live in the urban core, or even the hub city. Sub­ur­ban cities and towns, where most peo­ple in the Unit­ed States live, need to be seen as a large part of the solu­tion. For too long, the sub­urbs have been the favorite whip­ping boy of den­si­ty urban­ites and big city-cen­tric elitists.

High-tow­ered city life is not the only envi­ron­men­tal option; a region­al solu­tion can offer a range of lifestyles and com­mu­ni­ty types– with­out com­pro­mis­ing, and pos­si­bly even improv­ing urban/regional ecologies.

“We now lead region­al lives, and our met­ro­pol­i­tan form and gov­er­nance needs to reflect the new real­ty,” says Peter Calthor­pe, archi­tect, author, and co-founder of the Con­gress of New Urbanism.

A well planned and func­tion­al­ly effi­cient region that com­bines aggres­sive con­ser­va­tion strate­gies, good tran­sit sys­tems, green tech­nolo­gies can offer many types of sus­tain­able lifestyles.

Turn­ing now to the issues and chal­lenges of clean­ing up Puget Sound, it was over twen­ty years ago in May 1989 that Sen­a­tor War­ren G. Mag­nu­son (in his final address to Con­gress), warned of the per­ils of allow­ing oil tankers into Puget Sound.

He said:

Puget Sound is one of the most beau­ti­ful places in the world. Its con­tri­bu­tion to Washington’s econ­o­my, envi­ron­ment, and spe­cial qual­i­ty of life can­not begin to be calculated.

Puget Sound is the sec­ond largest marine estu­ary in the Unit­ed States. From land, the sea still holds much beau­ty. Yet keep­ing it clean is eas­i­ly the sin­gle biggest, most intractable envi­ron­men­tal chal­lenge fac­ing Wash­ing­ton State today.

The icon­ic Chi­nook salmon, along with twen­ty oth­er marine ani­mals, are endan­gered. Our dwin­dling pods of orcas are among the mam­mals most con­t­a­m­i­nat­ed with PCB on Earth, and entire marine ecosys­tems are dying off.

Mil­lions of pounds of tox­ic pol­lu­tion flow into Puget Sound every year — most­ly from storm water runoff and com­bined sew­er over­flows, car­ry­ing dead­ly poi­so­nous chem­i­cals from urban areas to the sea.

In one of the so-called “green­est” states in the coun­try, why can’t we stop pol­lut­ing Puget Sound?

Well here’s why: The Puget Sound basin, home to 4.4 mil­lion peo­ple, is bor­dered by nine­ty cities and towns and an unfath­omable maze of over­lap­ping juris­dic­tions and reg­u­la­to­ry agen­cies. They share in com­mon a local econ­o­my (aero­space, soft­ware, glob­al ship­ping) and net­worked urban infra­struc­ture (air­ports, roads, util­i­ties, ener­gy, water, food dis­tri­b­u­tion network).

Yet no one agency con­trols this infra­struc­ture, and as Kathy Fletch­er, founder of Peo­ple for Puget Sound says, “[O]ur biggest chal­lenge now, is the frag­men­ta­tion of deci­sion-mak­ing and lack of enforce­ment of exist­ing regulations.”

It’s been over four decades since Sen­a­tor War­ren G. Mag­nu­son first warned of a loom­ing “envi­ron­men­tal cat­a­stro­phe” fac­ing Puget Sound.

Today, it’s not the oil tankers but unman­aged urban­iza­tion –that is the sin­gle biggest threat to the health of the Sound.

The spread of hard imper­vi­ous pave­ment, the pro­lif­er­a­tion of cars, trucks, and steady increas­ing amount of miles trav­eled in auto­mo­biles (mea­sured in VMT) is, more than any oth­er source, respon­si­ble for the con­tin­u­ous poi­son­ing of Puget Sound and its trib­u­taries, which is where our com­mu­ni­ties are located.

If we allow Puget Sound to atro­phy, so too, will our econ­o­my, and our way of life in the North­west. Con­sid­er this: By 2040, the region is expect­ed to grow by near­ly two mil­lion more peo­ple — two mil­lion more people!!

My third point: Puget’s Sound’s fail­ing health is symp­to­matic of our frac­tured metrop­o­lis — and the marine die-off will con­tin­ue until there is a Puget Sound-size solu­tion to deal with this enor­mous problem.

So what can be done about it?

Imple­ment­ing a bold plan for the future requires coor­di­na­tion and con­sol­i­da­tion of local pow­er. We might start with rec­og­niz­ing our com­mon inter­ests, build­ing strong polit­i­cal coali­tions and strength­en­ing our col­lec­tive polit­i­cal might in Olympia.

Instead of wait­ing for our frac­tious semi-dys­func­tion­al state leg­is­la­ture to solve all these prob­lems, how about we form a region­al con­gress of local gov­ern­ments that would per­mit us to bet­ter work togeth­er to advance region­al interests?

Rather than let pow­er divid­ed us through infight­ing and turf wars, cre­ate an insti­tu­tion for intra-local pri­or­i­ty set­ting and inter-local deci­sion-mak­ing that can empow­er us in Olympia?

Puget Sound’s ill-health can­not wait anoth­er 30 years.

I pro­pose we form a new Con­gress of Puget Sound, con­sist­ing of demo­c­ra­t­i­cal­ly elect­ed rep­re­sen­ta­tives of munic­i­pal­i­ties that could be a strong, com­mon voice for the region while pre­serv­ing local inde­pen­dence at the munic­i­pal level.

Local rep­re­sen­ta­tives from Belle­vue, Tuk­wila, Bre­mer­ton and oth­er towns and cities would still set the agenda.

If the Euro­peans can do it through the mech­a­nism of the E.U., com­pris­ing twen­ty-sev­en nations, then we sure­ly can!

Thank you very much.

QUESTIONS FOR PETER? Leave a com­ment below!