New Urban Development: Looking Back to See Forward

Preface

ix PREFACE It’s not unreasonable for you to ask right here and now: What is this book about? It’s about intentions, it’s about objectives aimed at achieving those intentions, and it’s about the decisions made to result in the intended objectives . Rarely do intentions, objectives, and decisions all align in any field of endeavor. The field of endeavor in this book is urban development. I wrote this book to help urban land-use policymakers align their intentions , their decisions, their objectives, and what results. The results are determined by the way the rules and actions of elected officials and their staffs affect the economics of the urban areas they govern and serve. That is why it was necessary for me to begin by looking back to enable you to understand the way public laws and actions have influenced the economics of urban America in the past. Based on what we observe in the past, you and I can better see ahead so we can suggest the necessary changes in the laws and planning practices that shape the use of land. To observe how real estate regulations and planning practices interact in urban places with the economics of those places, I looked through two “scopes.” One scope was in the form of the writings of the many scholars from whom I learned so much about urban economics and planning practices. My academic education and the resulting debt I incurred to those who provided it began at the University of Cincinnati under the wise and patient tutelage of professors Robert Wessel, Alfred Kuhn, and the other professors in the department of economics, as well as Dean William L. C. Wheaton, under whom I taught at the University of California, Berkeley. The other scope that enabled me to see into the workings of regulatory authorities and urban economic activity resulted from my forty-five years as an urban economic consultant. The insights provided by our clients, the many other land use professionals we have worked with, and my colleagues at Gruen Gruen + Associates (GG+A) together brought into clear focus the many nuances of urban economics behavior and the way planning laws are written and administered . Examples of what my personal experiences as a consultant and unrepentant “city guy” have enabled me to see I share with you in the chapters of this book. In the ten years that I wrote this book, I have not only played the author’s trick of stealing time from my family, but I often interrupted Nina, my professional partner and my wife, to get the benefit of her surgically precise insights to clear confusion away from my own view of urban phenomena. Aaron Gruen and Andrew Ratchford have borne the burden of answering questions and conducting analysis for this book in addition to their work at GG+A. Judy Lofton has been in charge of preparing the manuscript as it went through many changes. I have long benefited from discussions about suburban development and other urban issues with my friend Robert Bruegmann, professor of art history, architecture, and urban planning at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Nevertheless, in substantiation of the dictum that good deeds rarely go unpunished , I imposed the reading of an early draft of this book on Robert; his suggestions greatly improved the next draft. I owe a particular debt to George Lefcoe, University of Southern California Law School, who drew on his encyclopedic knowledge of urban legal literature to answer my questions and point me toward relevant literature, whether or not he shared my view on the subjects at hand. My good friend Leanne Lachman’s insightful views of changes in demographics and real estate institutions kept me in focus on those matters. Mark David Menchik, formerly a staff member of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), currently working at the National Research Council, and John Wilkins, artistic director of Last Planet Theatre and senior adjunct professor of English at the California College of the Arts, read and provided very useful comments on early drafts. Professor John M. Quigley, Department of Economics, University of California, Berkeley, read a revised draft and provided suggestions that were all reflected in the book you now read. This book benefited from the suggestions of Susan M. Bielstein, executive editor at the University of Chicago Press, and two faculty members who read one of the earlier drafts. Professor Joseph Gyourko, director of the Zell...