Opinion: ’15-minute’ neighborhoods, parking minimums and flood control money

I just read an excellent paper called “The Questionable Economics of the 15-Minute City” by Rachel Meltzer, a professor of planning and urban economics at Harvard. To quote her, “The economics of the 15-minute city don’t really work.” Her analysis points out that any kind of establishment, whether it is a supermarket or an urgent care clinic, has fixed costs. So, the “catchment area” needs to be big enough to have enough customers to cover those costs. Also, many stores have become bigger and contain a wider variety of goods than 20 or 50 years ago. Thus, any given area is now served by fewer stores with more goods per store.

Looking at Boulder, we see these economics at work. For example, we have about 10 grocery stores, and over the last years, we’ve had two supermarkets close and a couple of new ones open, that I can think of. And they are mostly distributed geographically. So, even with all the planned growth in East Boulder, we probably won’t add more than one. The economics just won’t support more. Being able to walk a few minutes to the neighborhood grocery store is not going to happen. The same with hardware stores, where we’re now down to a few. And the same for drug stores, etc.

The other issue is whether people will walk to go shopping anyway. In my observations around town, I almost never see people pushing carts or carrying bags from supermarkets back to neighboring residential areas. Students are the only group that seems to consistently walk, like from New Vista or Fairview to nearby shopping hubs. Plus, we now have delivery services, online shopping, etc., all of which make the “15-minute neighborhood” concept even more irrelevant.

The city council is also considering eliminating parking minimums. Our Legislature last year passed HB24-1304, which forbids cities from requiring a minimum number of parking spaces for certain multi-unit housing developments. But strangely, it allowed one space per unit for projects that contain “regulated affordable housing.” Apparently, cars owned by folks living in subsidized housing take less space and have less impact than those owned by others.

Boulder is considering instituting its own parking rules, apparently to go further than the state law. The city’s announcement stated that the proposed strategy would “eliminate off-street parking requirements for all uses citywide.” So, shopping centers, office developments, large employers, etc., could sell off their parking lots and replace them with buildings. Leaving aside the obvious problems, this ability to sell off parking lots runs counter to the city’s interest in promoting car-pooling, which is the most efficient way for many of Boulder’s nearly 70,000 in-commuters to get to and from work. (RTD is no solution, at least not without a massive tax increase, since it’s only 4% fare funded.)

The city document also states, “Developers and property owners would instead provide the number of parking spaces they determine is necessary for the building users.” But developers might just max out their development potential and let their neighbors fight over on-street parking. That’s exactly why we have parking minimums right now, because developers will NOT provide what’s necessary without it. And, of course, the city presumably has an interest in ensuring that people can get around in bad weather, to buy a week’s worth of groceries, to go to the doctor’s office, or be mobile if they have an injured leg or are older or infirm.

On the council’s March 6 agenda is “emergency” approval of the bond funding for the CU South giant dam project. A friend who’s been following this estimated that the city has already spent almost $13 million to date on design, etc. Add in this $66 million bond issue (based on years-old cost estimates), that’s already almost $80 million. This could increase by millions more when the final design is done, plus there’s the potential additional cost for trenching across U.S. 36 to put in the drainpipe, so the total could approach $90 million. (Plus, the time cost of these traffic delays would likely equal centuries of flood closures.)

The city says this dam will “protect” around 600 structures. $90,000,000 divided by 600 yields an average cost of $150,000 per structure. Based on the city’s example cost estimates, floodproofing these buildings is likely far cheaper than the dam and has minimal environmental impacts. And, critically, floodproofing provides protection if the storm is over the Shanahan Ridge, Viele Lake, and/or Bear Creek areas, because that runoff could bypass the dam, or if a large storm overtops the dam.

 


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