Midwestern Consulting

The Economics of Place - buy at Amazon.com

New from the Michigan Municipal League:  The Economics of Place: The Value of Building Communities Around People

This is a collection of essays about planning the future of Michigan in general and Detroit in particular. Re-invention, re-vitalization, re-generation, re-population (maybe resurrection is more apt) is necessary to redefine our economy and redevelop our state. Creating a “sense of place” is at the core of this change and the authors readily illustrate that vibrant places will attract talent and bring economic growth.

Planetizen reviewed this book  and described it as an “arts-driven regeneration plan for Michigan like a modern day Magna Carta…”

This book may be more of a sourdough starter than a Magna Carta, but it is an important collection of thoughts.  But an “arts-driven” plan is too narrow in scope.  The early stages of the plan should focus on developing a mixture of land uses at a higher density that will create and support local jobs and services.

A chapter in the book written by Dr. Soji Adelaja and Mark Wyckoff, “Why the economics of ‘place’ matters” explains that “the term ‘sense of place’ is used to describe not so much physical geography or the attributes of that geography, but the emotional response one has to a special allure and warmth when at a location that has unique and attractive amenities.”  This article is about the role of “place” as it relates to economic development. Particularly interesting is a chart comparing the old and new economy with respect to place, and tables of examples of “place-based strategies to attract certain target populations and businesses.

In Detroit, where it’s so bad that it’s good, is an extreme example of a city in distress that is struggling in the early stages of regeneration. If you do not accept the notion that plowing Detroit under is the best alternative, redevelopment strategy should include rebuilding the population with new jobs, housing, infrastructure and amenities.

When a city’s population, economy and government is as seriously degraded as it is in Detroit or Flint, a key question is what comes back first, residents or retail? Simultaneous development of housing and services may provide the framework for sustainable re-development.  In Dan Gilbert’s ‘Big Bang Theory’ for Detroit, both have to come on line at the same time.  (See the video: Dan Gilbert’s vision for downtown Detroit retail from Crain’s Detroit Business).

Governor Snyder said recently that Detroit can and should return as a manufacturing based economy that opens its arms to immigrants.  That can be part of the vision that includes elements of a technology or knowledge based economy, and one that is partially “arts-driven” as suggested in “The Economics of Place”.

Soil is a key element of our ecosystem

Matt Power, Editor-In-Chief of Green Builder Magazinewrites in the March 2012 issue about how typical construction practices destroy soil ecosystems during development of new buildings.  Stripping and mass grading, “attack(ing) a piece of land the way a three-year-old goes after a lump of Play-Doh”, typically divides the soil into one pile for topsoil, one pile for subsoil and one pile for sand.  “Abused, misunderstood, poisoned and taken for granted, soils deserve better. They’re essential to life, more complex than you can imagine, and in serious need of stewardship”, Power writes.  And soil ecosystems are very difficult to restore.

Power summarizes soil expert Mark Fulford’s message that “modern society- agriculture in particular- has gone astray.”  Industrial agriculture following WW II is based on mining rather than biology, with the result that crops are “grown in a chemical soup” instead of in soils. 

Typical construction site management reflects the same attitude toward the soil.  Rip it up, pile it up, spread it out, compact it, re-spread soils and top it with turf treated with petroleum based nitrogen. Fulford calls that “carpeting a collapsed ecosystem.” His point is that there is no way to effectively restore the soils that natural processes produce in human terms at an extremely slow rate, at the rate of up to one inch per one thousand years. There is also no way to restore the amount of air in the soil that the roots need to thrive.   

The best way to protect soil ecosystems is to disturb them as little as possible.  A few key points taken from “Sustainable Landscape Construction” by J. William Thompson and Kim Sorvig with a few added comments include:

• Preserve and protect every tree (not usually feasible, so minimize removals)
• Use moveable, pervious pavers (or permeable paving)
• Minimize utility access damage (and think about what kind of backfill material makes sense)
• Plan staging carefully (minimize the limits of disturbance)
• Listen to the weeds.  This refers to “Weeds and Why They Grow”, a classic 116 page guide by Jay McCaman published in 1994.  By reading that, you get a free and quite accurate picture of the real qualities of the soil on a particular site. The idea is that observing which weeds grow where is a highly efficient way of identifying what the soils are lacking.

If soils have to be disturbed, the goals of restoration should include increasing carbon and air content.  Fulford says that increasing soil organic carbon can “sequester enough carbon to get us back to the pre-industrial level…”

Our understanding of soil ecology has evolved but our typical construction practices have not.