Mosiman’s latest news release for his boss, Mayor Pave.
And the Wisconsin State Journal’s rightist editors are hearing footsteps…..
Posts Tagged ‘Mayor Pave’
Mayor Pave Outsources Press Officer Position to Wisconsin State Journal
Tuesday, August 24th, 2010How Bad Planning Reduces IQ…and Pay
Tuesday, April 13th, 2010Mayor Pave and his minions are always lamenting the loss of economically successful people to the ‘burbs or complaining about ‘those people’ who do settle here. I’ve long maintained that if he & his developer buddies were to begin building the city in a more urban form, thus conducive to urban social interactions, we would see an invigorated economy, higher incomes and other good tidings. And we wouldn’t have to resort to racist/classist/scapegoating rhetoric. In fact, it was that promise — a cool city — that got this mayor elected in the first place. But somewhere along the line he got derailed onto the track bound for Rockford (the perennial worst city in the country).
Meanwhile, the research is rolling in that justifies the will of the people ca. 2003….
This NYT article delves into the latest research on the power of cities to generate higher incomes than low-density places. It all comes down to good old fashioned face-to-face communication.
Robbie Webber provides a marvelous illustration as to how this works in day to day life. She’s a geographer, so of course she gets how proximity & design empowers us as it convivializes our urban landscape!
So not only is Mayor Pave saddling us with low-density, car-friendly, cul-de-sac & strip mall development fit for a successful 1950s economy, he is also laying the groundwork for another rust-belt disaster in terms of personal income decimation.
We need a new mayor who understands the power of place for our well-being. And we definitely don’t need an Orange County Republican running our economic development planning.
P.s. I’m working on a post of how Green Kathleen is doing Mayor Pave one better in her constant rubberstamping of sprawl across the county.
Mosiman Promotes the Pave
Wednesday, March 31st, 2010The editorial board got in on the action today as well.
I guess Mayor Pave scored an editorial bifecta as it were.
Both pieces read like they came straight from the mayor’s office. Mosiman’s read like a newsrelease stenographed straight onto the front page. The editorial read just like a blog post by Mayor Pave himself. Oh, wait, there it is, the exact mayoral blog post copied almost word for word by City Stenographer, Dean Mosiman!
Mayor Pave & the rightists at the Wisconsin State Journal seem to be very much in goose — er, lockstep: Pave Here, Pave Now! Pave, baby, Pave!
Exhibit A: Mayor Pave's Bloated Roads to Nowhere
Of course, Mosiman and the rightist editors glossed over Mayor Pave’s highway expansion budget which is increasing at 10 times the rate of inflation + population growth. TEN TIMES! It is interesting how, in the minds of the manly-men on the WSJ editorial board along with Stenographer Mosiman, fiscal conservatism never seems to apply to road expansion.
In academe it’s called cognitive dissonance. I call it hypocrisy.
The Dying Mainstream Media can’t die fast enough.
P.s. I’m getting a kick out of the street sweeping happening at 10 PM tonight in my neighborhood; I wonder how much that is costing in overtime! Is it happening because the mayor will be up for election next spring and my ward votes more than any other ward in the city? Or is it just that robotic reflex: Must. Serve. Cars. Must. Serve. Cars. Must. Serve. Cars. Must. Serve. Cars. Must.
Schadenfreude for Suburbia
Tuesday, March 30th, 2010After getting hit upside the head with reality, the really smart people at the Brookings Institution have finally figured it out (from the LA Times article in the first link):
There are dozens of places like Willowalk, and they are turning into America’s newest slums, says Christopher Leinberger, a visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution. With home values at a fraction of their peak, he said, it no longer makes sense to live so far from the commercial centers where jobs are concentrated.
Gee, ya think? Nothing like a little rear-view mirror analysis to make it in the big time think tanks!
“We built too much of the wrong product in the wrong locations,” Leinberger said.
Gosh, I wish I could be paid to hang out & be that smart!
Even the really, really smart people in academia* have figured it out:
Thanks to overbuilding, demographic changes and shifts in preferences, by 2030 there could be 25 million more suburban homes on large lots than are needed, said Arthur C. Nelson of the University of Utah. Nelson believes that as baby boomers age and as younger generations buy real estate, the population will abandon remote McMansions for smaller homes closer to shops, jobs and the other necessities of life.
(Um….something the likes of Tim Wong, James Howard Kunstler and Yours Truly have been warning about for decades.)
But look at those numbers: twenty-five MILLION excess suburban homes!
Yet despite the ever darkening outlook for suburbia, Mayor Pave and his Venti Sicofanti continue to embrace the ugliness and economic devastation that is the bucolic 1970s cul-de-sac.
Mayor Pavescapes: New subdivisions in SW Madison, stuck in the 70s forevermore!
*My first thesis proposal on exactly these issues – back in 1991! – was dissed because it wasn’t an academic enough topic. It was a derided as a journalistic theme. The predictive nature of the thesis was troubling to the rear-view mirror academic types. (So I went on to finish the MS by doing yet another boring regional geography….About things that, ahem, had already happened.)
Bitter? Me? Nah! But gosh, if I’d just waited another 15 years or so, I coulda had a nice, cush job at some rich think tank or a professorship, thinking big thoughts about things that, um, already happened! Coulda, shoulda, woulda!
Oh, and the guy who derided it as a journalistic theme? He’s likely to be put in the dock for abusing monkeys. Grad students, monkeys, whatever. So I’ll take that as a measure of cosmic justice!
P.s. Thanks, P, for leaving the LA Times article open on the computer for me this morning!
Paving As Disease Vector: Road Salt in Drinking Water –> Heart Disease
Friday, January 22nd, 2010Our paving proclivities have many well-known deleterious effects on our environment (urban heat island, capping off aquifer recharge areas, energy intensive construction, car promotion, ugly places, etc). Direct health effects on humans can be somewhat difficult to establish (e.g., high correlation between chronic diseases and car-mandatory, over-paved places, but direct causal links sometimes too diffuse to nail down).
But one emerging health threat might end up being the biggest direct killer of them all: Road salt in drinking water (You didn’t think the salt just magically disappeared come March, did you?). The New York Times just published an article about the mounting scientific & public health concerns about salt in our diets vis-a-vis hypertension.
And think about it: the more the city paves, the more it must de-ice. And that means more road salt forevermore.
And that salt does eventually make its way into our drinking water.
Though road salt was never mentioned in that NYT article as a possible culprit, hydrogeologists and water utility operators in the US and Canada have been alerting us to the rising levels of NaCl in our drinking water sources for some time. This 2001 article from Stormwater: The Journal for Surface Water Professionals surveyed studies from across the US and Canada about road de-icing practices and the resulting build up of NaCl in drinking water supplies. They came to this conclusion:
Applying road salt in deicing operations could create significant adverse health, environmental, and infrastructure problems. Equally troubling is the fact that New York State applies up to 298 tons of road salt/lane-mi./yr. in the unfiltered drinking-water—supply watersheds for more than 9 million citizens. This level of salt use jeopardizes the health of consumers having heart or kidney disease, destroys protective vegetation and soil, and corrodes automobiles, bridges, and other infrastructure.
Apparently Canada has even declared road salt a toxic substance for the very same reasons:
Based on the available data, it is considered that road salts that contain inorganic chloride salts with or without ferrocyanide salts are entering the environment in a quantity or concentration or under conditions that have or may have an immediate or long-term harmful effect on the environment or its biological diversity or that constitute or may constitute a danger to the environment on which life depends. Therefore, it is concluded that road salts that contain inorganic chloride salts with or without ferrocyanide salts are “toxic” as defined in Section 64 of the Canadian Environmental Protection Act, 1999 (CEPA 1999).
Wow. And according to that same Health Canada report, here’s how it happens:
Road salts enter the Canadian environment through their storage and use and through disposal of snow cleared from roadways. Road salts enter surface water, soil and groundwater after snowmelt and are dispersed through the air by splashing and spray from vehicles and as windborne powder. Chloride ions are conservative, moving with water without being retarded or lost. Accordingly, all chloride ions that enter the soil and groundwater can ultimately be expected to reach surface water; it may take from a few years to several decades or more for steady-state groundwater concentrations to be reached. Because of the widespread dispersal of road salts through the environment, environmental concerns can be associated with most environmental compartments.
So we won’t experience the full effect of Mayor Pave’s paving spree on our heart health for a few years, though we do know that salt concentrations in Wisconsin’s drinking water have been going up right along with increased salt applications.
The [US Geological Survey] study found the rising levels were consistent over the past two decades with more use of road salt and the expansion of road networks and parking lots that get deicing.
More paving = More salt.
More salt = Decreased heart health.
How many reasons do we need to scale back the paving?
Pick Up an Isthmus! Then read more about Jevons Paradox here….
Wednesday, January 20th, 2010If you are coming here because of my article in the Isthmus, and for the first time, welcome!
[Regular readers: Please pick up an Isthmus Thursday, because I'll have an Op-Ed in there. I'll try to post the direct link once it is up there. Update: here's the link. If you like it, please consider clicking the "recommend" box, just to the right of the article. ]
The Op-Ed deals with entropy & ethics* as it has been playing out in the political arena here in Madison. For reasons of space constraints and unity of theme, I kept it pretty narrowly focused on the issue of over-paving, the resultant forced car use and the resulting increased overall energy use citywide, despite all the hoopla surrounding the mayor’s groovey-green gizmos sprouting atop fire stations around the city.
I make the case that the big environmental issue facing us all is the issue of Jevons Paradox,
the proposition that technological progress that increases the efficiency with which a resource is used, tends to increase (rather than decrease) the rate of consumption of that resource.
In other words, as we get more efficient, we end up burning even more. Wants, now easily attainable through efficiencies, become needs.
Mayor Pave’s glorified solar panel sitting atop a “green” building, set in the energy intensive carscapes of suburbia, is just one example of Jevons at work. Some might call it cognitive dissonance. Some might call it greenwashing. Others hypocrisy. I’ll just blame Jevons. (For now.)
Other examples….Take for instance the US car fleet and the Corporate Average Fuel Efficiency (CAFE) standards. From 1970-1990 we doubled the average MPG of the “fleet.” Guess what we did in the meantime? We drove more than twice as much on a per capita basis. Same with houses. In 1970 the average house size was 1200 square feet. And they were seives; energy hogs in the extreme. At least on a per square foot basis. By 1990 the average new home was twice as efficient, on a per square foot basis. But guess what happened? The average home not only got twice as big, there were fewer people living in each house! In both cases we actually moved backward in terms of total per capita energy expenditure despite having gotten more efficient in a technological sense.
Now we’ve got mainstream enviros telling us that we’ll be just fine if we just get more solar panels on roofs, if we just all bought Toyota Piouses. But we’ve seen that movie before…double efficiency…more consumption…double efficiency again…more consumption….
That we have made such technological progress and are relentlessly consuming ever more, More, MORE! tells me that something is missing from the dialogue — ethics.
I would suggest that a radical overhaul of our ethic — personal, professional, community — is in order. We will have to start with a big, heaping helping of plain, old self-control. [Gasp!] Thus, at the personal level, when we make an investment in, say, an energy efficient furnace, we shouldn’t then use the savings to buy a giant professional-grade refrigerator, add onto the house, pump out a second or third kid, or go jetting off somewhere. At the policy level, when our politicians vote to build green buildings, they shouldn’t site them in car-only neighborhoods. Hell, they shouldn’t create car-only neighborhoods at all.
We’ll also have to agree that there are no silver bullets, no messianic miracle fuels (no, not even solar, nor switchgrass), no groovey-green fixes (no, not even windpower; and here) that will get us all the way back down to 350 (ppm CO2 in the atmosphere). Every form of concentrated energy has its limitations and drawbacks.
Even if we were to discover a messianic miracle fuel that was cheap, easy to produce, burned nothing and created no pollution, think about what we would do with all that energy. First think of all the wasteful ways we use the limited energy we do have. Now imagine that it is unlimited. I reckon we’d pave the world. Why? Because we could.
Thus, self-control will be the key ingredient in getting us down from our current 387 ppm — on a trajectory to 700 — to 350 and cleaning up the other environmental messes we’ve already made….
I also think that part of the ethic will include good, old fashioned shaming. Polite Midwesterners will be horrified at the prospect, no doubt. Polite (though direct) Midwesterner Hans Noeldner has written extensively about the element of shaming in fashioning a new consciousness, and my buddy Tim Wong has been practicing it regularly on local listservs for years (Bikies, SASYNA-discussions@yahoogroups.com). And I’m not exactly quiet, either. Making it real, bringing it down from the policy level to the personal, Hans hammered the point home on the Madison Area Bus Advocates listserv:
We need to tell people that their choices and behaviors really matter. And that all of us have much to learn. Thus the most important thing is to challenge people to just get out there and begin occupying their communities as HUMAN BEINGS again. So long as well-meaning people remain behind that damned windshield, they will not learn the first thing about what we/collectively must do to create – not “walkable communities” – but “communities that walk”…and bike…and have enough people walking and biking to make transit viable.
Perhaps our message should be in-your-face: “Stop passing the buck! Habitat follows behavior.”
We need to tell people that their choices and behaviors really matter. And that all of us have much to learn. Thus the most important thing is to challenge people to just get out there and begin occupying their communities as HUMAN BEINGS again. So long as well-meaning people remain behind that damned windshield, they will not learn the first thing about what we/collectively must do to create – not “walkable communities” – but “communities that walk”…and bike…and have enough people walking and biking to make transit viable.
Perhaps our message should be in-your-face: “Stop passing the buck! Habitat follows behavior.”
Amen, Brother Hans.
And finally, those who end up getting shamed need to learn how to disassociate their person from their machinery. You are not your deathmobile, no matter how tightly you grip that steering wheel.
So sustainability, resiliency, green living — whatever buzzword you choose — is going to require extreme responsibility at all levels of government, all types of business enterprises, for-profits, non-profits, and yes, each and every individual in their daily lives whether at home, in their community or at work.
Maybe start by learning how to make your community more sustainable…like at the upcoming Sustainable Atwood “Big Picture” event on January 28, 2010, 7-9 PM at the United Way Building, 2059 Atwood Avenue.
And consider walking, biking or taking the bus there (bus lines #3 & 4 run within a block of this address).
It’s a start.
*I’d like to thank the Brothers Noeldner, Paul and Hans, for generating insight into these issues and how they relate to our current environmental dilemmas.
On Zombies
Wednesday, December 16th, 2009For several months I’ve been tagging various politicians as “zombie politicians” (Mayor Pave being Exibit A).
For a definition of what I mean by “zombie politician,” check out this excellent article at Truthout.org.
Edgewater: Mayor Pave v. Historic Neighborhoods
Sunday, December 6th, 2009Edgewater: Ugly beyond belief. Not just architecturally. Not just in scale & proportion. Not just in the way the developer bullied the neighborhood. Now we have a very ugly legal precedent brewing.
Indeed, the mayor is prodding the council to actually break the law. (More of his histrionics here.)
Fortunately, we have antidotes for such sociopathy in the form of civic-minded community leadership, well grounded in the ways of research, analysis and good will….
For starters, check out a clear-eyed view of Madison’s historic preservation laws brought to you by Brenda Konkel; details here & here.
Another former alder had this warning for current alders with regard to bully-proofing themselves.
Jay Rath at Isthmus has done a yeoman’s job of chronicling the Edgewater saga. He puts Madison’s historic preservation efforts in, well, historic context this week.
Civic leader Ledell Zellers lays out the moral case for historic preservation laws and the implications of breaking them (i.e., bulldozers coming soon to a neighborhood near you!):
Historic Districts in Peril—Speak up to help save Madison’s heritage districts.
The Hammes Co. has appealed the decision of the Landmarks Commission to reject the Edgewater proposal. The proposal was rejected on the basis of it not complying with either the requirements of the Mansion Hill preservation ordinance or the provisions allowing for a variance from the ordinance. The basis of rejection was that the proposed tower, because of its huge size (see attached), is not visually compatible with the small scale buildings with which it is “visually related”, nor with the historic district scale of buildings.
If this decision is overturned by City Council, it would essentially gut the provisions of the landmarks ordinance and open up all Madison historic districts for inappropriate development.
Your voice is needed if you care about Madison’s historic districts. What can you do?
· Email all alders NOW at allalders@cityofmadison.com to let them know you value our historic districts and you do not want an out of scale building to be built which the Landmarks Commission rejected as inappropriate; and
· Come to the City Council meeting and testify on Tuesday December 8 at 6:30 pm in room 201 of the City County Building.
· If you cannot stay to testify on Tuesday, please come and register in opposition to this out of scale, inappropriate project in our oldest heritage landmark district.
What are some of the issues?
· The Landmarks Commission in following their charge under the Landmarks Ordinance rejected the proposed Edgewater tower as too large for the Mansion Hill Historic district. The proposed tower is HUGE. The total gross floor area and gross volume of ALL four buildings combined in the “visually related area” (an area defined by ordinance) is 60% that of the proposed tower. On an individual basis the proposed tower is 3 to 16 times larger than each of the other buildings. It was this massive tower that the Landmarks Commissioners found violates the ordinance which was established in 1976 to protect Mansion Hill.
· Some people are arguing that building this building would create jobs. Get the size right for the district and go ahead with the project. But don’t build the wrong building in the wrong place simply to make work. The jobs will last for a short period. The historic district will be damaged forever. This mistake will loom over our lake forever.
· Commissions have a basis of knowledge on which they base decisions. The Landmarks Commission considered this issue and discussed it in detail for 7 hours. These are experts, informed citizens and one alder the mayor has appointed to look at details of the historic district ordinances and how they apply in specific situations. To disregard, devalue and dismiss such judgments undercuts the committee process which has been long established and long respected in Madison.
· The appeal ordinance requires that in order to overturn the Landmarks Commission the Council must find “that, owing to special conditions pertaining to the specific piece of property, failure to grant the Certificate of Appropriateness will preclude any and all reasonable use of the property and/or will cause serious hardship for the owner, provided that any self-created hardship shall not be a basis for reversal or modification of the Landmark Commission’s decision.” (Emphasis added.) The Hammes Company does not yet own the land. Other provisions of the appeal ordinance also appear not to be met. Simply because a tower of the size desired by the developer cannot be built it does not preclude any and all reasonable use of the property. Current owners are responsible for the deteriorated state of the 1940s Edgewater.
· The precedent which would be created should this proposal be approved will result in a wall of towers hugging Lake Mendota.
Please act to save the Mansion Hill Historic district…to save all Madison historic districts.
Ledell Zellers
510 N Carroll Street
Madison, WI 53703
ledell.zellers@gmail.com
Appropriate scale? Proportionality? Me thinks not.
My take on the whole thing? Ledell for Mayor 2011!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Mayor Pave Drives Off A Budgetary Cliff
Tuesday, November 24th, 2009Wisconsin State Journal headline screams:
“Madison to face budget deficit for the first time in at least 20 years.”
Wow. We had no idea this was coming, now did we?
As usual, Dean “the last journalist standing” Mosiman gives Mayor Pave a pass, and fails to address the root cause of the emerging budget catastrophe: Mayor Pave’s paving proclivities. (I guess sycophancy pays off).
For a better perspective on how paving has produced this very-predicted budget catastrophe check out this key quote from that abovelinked November 2008 Op-Ed regarding 2009′s budget:
This is a highway-heavy road budget, as anti-green as it gets. And when I say anti-green, I’m not necessarily talking about the tree-hugging kind. This budget is bad for our economy. The emphasis on cul-de-sacs, cars and sprawl sets us up for broken budgets forever.
Forever just started.
And forever is getting worse given 2010′s continued paving spree (more critique here).
Note to Madison’s pliant council: You can’t go on jacking up paving budgets by double digits, year after year, and expect to achieve responsible budgets. You simply cannot. Cut up the credit card (i.e., rein in all that roadbuilding debt), sharpen your pencils, and set up a budget that is within your means. You’ll find that supporting deathmobiling to the exclusion of all else just won’t be sustainable economically, much less environmentally.