Here is a link to a document that I’m going to bring. (PDF file).

The document has a bunch of good links to studies and strategies for shrinking cities. This is a known thing and there is a lot on it. The scope of the problem can be seen quite clearly n a few images. Here is a graph of Clinton’s population at each decennial census.

Below are two images. (Click on them for larger versions.) These two photos are taken at the same scale from Google Earth. The top is Clinton. The shaded area is a rough outline of the core of the city from Camanche Avenue in the south, Mill Creek Parkway on the west, up to Cragmore Dr. at the north and the river on the east.

The bottom picture is this area (rotated 180° to fit better) projected onto a same scale map of Chicago. Clinton’s core area covers Chicago from the Congres Expressway (I-290) along and west of the Kennedy Expressway, all the way up to Irving Park Road. Clinton, with a population of 26,700 has an infrastructure footprint nearly as big as the entire North Side of Chicago which has the advantage of having twenty times the population.

More states than ever have either implemented or are considering various methods of reform, from limited distribution for medical purposes to outright legalization. In Iowa the Pharmacy Board will make a recommendation on February 17 to legislators on whether or not to move forward with a medical marijuana program in Iowa.

A bill introduced in the California state legislature last spring would have legalized and taxed the plant as a way of repairing the state’s hideously dysfunctional budget. The bill garnered more support than one would expect but did not pass

Now a pro-reform group in California states that it has more than enough signatures to get a legalization measure on the ballot in 2010.

Advocates of the Regulate, Control, and Tax Cannabis Act say they have gathered more than enough signatures to qualify the initiative for California’s November 2010 ballot. The measure would allow people 21 and older to grow marijuana for personal use and to possess up to an ounce. It would also allow licensed suppliers to grow and sell marijuana (up to an ounce at a time) to adults. Public consumption and consumption in the presence of minors would remain illegal. (The text of the initiative is here.) The measure’s chief backer, Richard Lee (operator of Oaksterdam University and Coffeeshop Blue Sky in Oakland) told the San Francisco Chronicle “the petition drive collected more than 680,000 signatures in two months, less than half the time allowed for such a drive.” Supporters need 433,971 valid signatures to get the initiative on the ballot. The Chronicle notes that “a recent California Field Poll suggested that a majority of California voters, 56 percent, support the idea of legalizing and taxing cannabis.”

Meanwhile the overall attitude towards pot has softened to the greatest extent in 30 years. Support for marijuana legalization is at an all time high (no pun intended) according to a recent Gallup survey.

Gallup Marijuana Legalization trend

It looks like we will probably see reform of marijuana laws in this country in our lifetime. First by state and region and finally, probably the federal government will bow to the inevitable. It is important to keep in mind what the end result will look like. Unlike many pro-reform advocates, I do not support the “make it legal and tax it like cigarettes and booze,” policy.

When you make something like tobacco and alcohol legal and commercially available you create an industry. That industry is then in the business of creating addicts. Oh, they’ll never admit such a thing. But let’s be honest with ourselves. The business of tobacco and alcohol companies is selling as much of their product as possible. What other result could there be?

But pot is different. It is a very hardy weed. Even a pretty incompetent gardener can grow a healthy, productive marijuana plant. It requires no post-processing. Just dry and smoke. Therefore legalization of marijuana requires no pot industry. It just requires allowing people to grow it for their own use.

A rational policy would look something like this: It is legal to grow up to a dozen plants for personal use. It is illegal to sell more than a quarter of an ounce at a time or a quarter of a pound in total for an individual or group. Certain growers will grow for pharmaceutical company end-use, either in large or small quantities by contract and state or federal license. Agricultural and industrial use of low THC strains will be encouraged. Smoking will have the same restrictions on place and manner as tobacco. Smoking in front of minors is prohibited, or outdoors within 500 feet of a school. Operating under the influence is right out and carries the same penalties as driving under the influence of alcohol.

There you go. No invasive new regulations, no huge bureaucratic infrastructure to support and pay for. Just let people grow it and use it for themselves and their friends and family. Large scale production for medical end-use will be regulated, probably by the FDA or Ag department. The net savings in law-enforcement and incarceration costs would instantly add several tens of billions of dollars to state and federal budgets. And it would instantly set back the Mexican drug cartels that are a pox upon the body politic and society of our neighbor to the south.

Would there be associated problems with increased use? Quite probably. But would those societal and economic costs outweigh the costs to society and our economy of the criminalization and incarceration policies under which we currently labor? The evidence says no.

My neighborhood scores 57 out of 100, Somewhat Walkable. There are some questions regarding the quality of the mapping data they are relying upon. For example: the closest grocery store is listed as Circle K, which for non-natives is a gas station/convenience store. A proper grocery store, Jewel is less than half a mile away though. I confess I’ve rarely walked there although the wife often bikes there in summer. And the closest movie theater is listed on WalkScore as, The Showboat Theater, a summer stock theater that doesn’t show movies. Although… not a bad idea.

The nearest restaurant is listed as the KFC, which has been shuttered for over a year. Besides, I think fast-food places should get a lower score than a proper restaurant. Just glom McDonalds, Taco Bell, BK, etc. together and whenever the map indicates one give it say 60% of the score of any other listed restaurant. Although that probably wouldn’t account for say, a local hot-dog place.

I also don’t think it is able to take into account the quality of the sidewalks which in Clinton can be pretty bad and sometimes nonexistent on one or both sides of the street; or the crosswalks some of which have crossing lights that are very pedestrian unfriendly.

So, take these listings with a grain of salt. But it is certainly a step in the right direction. And my neighborhood is certainly better off than say, someone who lives up on Meadoview Drive, Score 26, Car Dependent, or Highview Drive by 13th Avenue North, Score 37, Car Dependent and the many developments further afield in Clinton.

Be that as it may, a new study (PDF link) by CEO’s for Cities shows that walkability has a direct impact on property values.

Remember, the researchers who did this analysis controlled for all sorts of variables that affect housing prices: the size and age of the home, the number of bedrooms and bathrooms, neighborhood incomes, the distance from major job centers, and so forth. So their results don’t stem from some spurious correlation — e.g., that walkable neighborhoods tend to be worth more because they’re closer to downtown. Nope, this is the real deal: in just about every metro area they looked at, walkability adds value to property. (Las Vegas, NV and Bakersfield, CA were the two exceptions. What’s up there?)

In part, there’s a straightforward economic rationale for spending more for a walkable neighborhood: reducing your car dependence can cut your transportation costs. This Reconnecting America study, for example, also found that housing is cheaper in distant suburbs and exurbs — the sorts of places where most trips require a car — but that every dollar saved on housing means an extra 77 cents spent for transportation. That’s the average, and there are probably some families who are able to drop a car (or more) by living in a walkable neighborhood; for them, paying more for walkability may be a money-saving proposition in the long run.

Regardless, what the CEOs for Cities study shows is that there is a real and measurable pent up demand for homes in walkable neighborhoods. For decades, sprawl apologists have argued that low-density suburban development was somehow “natural,” because it’s what homebuyers “prefer.” By now, though, it’s clear that many homebuyers are wiling to pay a premium for walkability. The real problem is that the demand for walkable homes exceeds the supply — which pushes up the price.

All of which just adds impetus to my belief that Clinton should stop allowing developments further afield than any existing or under-construction ones, and begin to look at giving more incentive and resources to infill in the city proper.

Check it out WalkScore. How does your neighborhood score? Share in the comments.

We were discussing in a meeting last week the fact that Clinton (like many small towns) after encouraging so much non-downtown development along the highway now has much, much more commercially zoned space than it can support. But it also lacks in reasonably priced housing, especially rental properties.

This is a model of one possible solution.

Me: Chrysler employs 60,000 people. That’s a rounding error in the total number of jobs lost since the current downturn started. GM employs 240,000 globally, approximately 98,000 U.S. Again, compared to the 2.5 million lost jobs since October, 2008 those aren’t particularly meaningful figures from a national economy standpoint. As Megan McArdle notes:

To put it another way, we could have taken the $8 billion or so we gave to Chrysler and given every one of the company’s employees $133,000 to start their own War on Poverty, while still providing much of their pensions through the PBGC. Of cours, the new Chrysler is going to cut many of those jobs, so the cost of actual jobs saved will probably top $200K per. For as long as the company lasts. Which most analysts do not expect to be long, given that their super secret surprise scheme for turning everything around is to have Chrysler sell retooled Fiats to a country with one-seventh the population density and almost twice the birthrate of Italy.

You: But we need a car industry in America!

Me: Buy a frakken’ Ford then. Nature abhors a vacuum. Where do you think all those automotive engineers are going to go? Without Chrysler and GM, many will eventually end up at Tesla Motors, Advanced Mechanical Products, (AMP, get it?) or Fisker. There is a brand new American Car Industry waiting to be born. We just have to bury the old, dead one first.

You: But what about the structural implications to the larger economy? What about all the parts companies that feed into the auto industry?

Me: Last time I looked, Toyota, Honda, Ford, Daimler, Porsche, Kia and Hundai all had auto plants in the U.S. They buy parts too. Also, see mention above about the green shoots of a new card industry waiting to be born. Look, it’s not going to be easy or painless. Loosing a loved one never is. But the old, dead trees have to be cleared away for the new shoots to see the sun and grow.

This isn’t the same as the financial industry. Lord knows I have issues with the work done to date on that crisis. But when someone like AIG goes belly up, all kinds of nasty knock-on effects start to happen. If Chrysler and GM were disappeared tomorrow there would still be millions of cars in the U. S. and they would all start the next morning and they would all need parts and service until they were replaced by something else in a few years.

Yes, letting them go is a blow to national pride and a huge kick in the nuts to the economies of Michigan, Ohio, etc. But propping up companies that have essentially been industrial zombies for the last 10 years anyway doesn’t do us any good in the long run.

It doesn’t get us a leaner, greener car industry that will be competitive and sustainable and will offer jobs to many of those who will be thrown out of work by the demise of GM and Chrysler. All the resources we could be using to do that are instead poured into the total life support measures of the brain dead legacy automakers.

As many economists have pointed out, we could take the same amount being used to bail out these companies (again! Chrysler for the second time!) and give huge direct cash payouts to the affected workers. Enough to pay for several years of mortgages, rent, tuition, etc while maintaining pensions through the Federal Pension Guarantee Corporation.

It’s time to let our beloved car companies rest in peace. We loved them in their prime but the quality of life for the past 15 years has been terrible. They deserve to die with dignity.