Shifting Urban Development towards VillageTowns?

November 11, 2011

A guest says:

I agree that those who are concerned about sustainable development need to look at what's already been done vis a vis car-oriented development, already built subdivisions, etc.  To only be talking about "new" sustainable developments is much easier--because it is always easier to "start over," as it were.  Easier to start over than fix what's there already.  However, space is space and space is precious.  If given a choice between keeping open space open and building a ecologically friendly "town," give me open space every time.  I would rather go the extra mile, jump through all the hoops, pay the extra buck and really tackle the problem developments that we already have.  One way to do that is to jump into the fray of the world of real estate;  advocates for sustainable development would raise the money and buy the parcels and then get to work.  At the same time, these groups need to buy up open space on the fringes of the urban core to ensure that such parcels remain open.  In this way choice is limited--redevelopment closer to the core makes more sense.  There are a lot of wealthy people out there who would invest in such developments--not all are "fat cats motivated by greed."  Yes, zoning laws need to change--legislative change has to occur as well, but this way is quicker.     

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December 8, 2010

A guest says:

Dear Claude, John, and wryan,

Thanks for your detailed response to my post and subsequent comments, wryan’s whose I have responded to on Polis. Indeed through Polis we have been trying to figure out these past few days why the comment you were posting Claude did not appear on-line, and as I just saw this thread on the Sustainable Cities Collective site I wanted to take the opportunity to respond to a few points.

First off, my post is based on a presentation I saw Claude give and reading several pages of the website, not on the VillageTown books, so in that way I appreciate the feedback clarifying certain points (i.e. it was not made clear that the $250,000 price tag is on average). It is very true that one cannot get a full picture with all the details of an initiative from a presentation, and I fully recognise that and appreciate having the information.

Responding to your point that the VillageTown conversation is about an alternative to new building, and is not about the other conversation on fixing what was wrongly built (i.e. the already existing built environment). I recognise the problems you raise with the latter in terms of scale, economic value of land, politics that seek to further car-based design, but I would say that this existing system is already starting to collapse under its own weight, and it is time for significant change to begin. I don’t see this as us talking past each other rather than having a dialogue; you are correct in that no one can do everything. VillageTowns, nor the Transition Town Movement, nor any other of the multitudes of alternatives out there provide a magic sustainable solution to our urban development challenges.

This connects into the next point, your response to my comment that ‘it appears that the VillageTown approach has been developed through a narrow lens with little reflection on how it connects into bigger social change movements, such as Transition Towns and Degrowth, that seek broader societal transformation…’. From my experience learning about and observing Transition Towns Brixton, London, a fear-based paradigm was far from the foundation of the initiative, but rather joy, and the recognition that transformation away from a pure capitalist, fossil fuel-based economy is exciting and liberating. In my opinion climate change, fossil fuel depletion and economic crisis are realities, and are not about engender fear – it is accepting and being positive towards an alternative future. The Degrowth movement is similarly doing a lot of amazing things on this front, and gatherings are not filled with doom and gloom but a sense of positive organising and transformation towards a more socially just and sustainable world. I definitely recommend learning more about Degrowth (it has been having a big impact in Europe) as I think it can bring some interesting thinking and reflection to VillageTowns.

Transition Initiatives, as all alternatives do, have their challenges to work through as you noted – and as I stated earlier there is no magic bullet, vested power interests exist and need to be overcome everywhere. My point was not to say that you did not know about Transition or others, but to say that there is a gamut of alternatives towards more sustainable urban development and that VillageTowns is just one of them for a particular context (new suburban development). In the presentation I saw, the VillageTown concept was however not discussed in light of other alternatives towards sustainable urban development. To me this appears to be a difference in our points of view. I do think they are part of the same conversation. I also think it is important to have a clear ideological affiliation, which you note that the VillageTown model tries to avoid. And that it IS easy to think romantically about the concepts of community and citizenship, something that happens far too often. I won’t go into all of these here as this is already long enough, but the point is that we all have our opinions on such issues. Hopefully can one day have a conversation in person about them.

Nonetheless, I appreciate this dialogue and the time you all have taken to make it happen. I also truly do look forward to seeing how VillageTowns evolve in practice – this is the most important in the end, as we can have thousands of theories and thoughts on how things might go, but never know until we do it. Best of luck to you John, Claude and rwryan on putting it into the world.

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December 7, 2010

A guest says:

I consider myself a colleague and friend of the author of How to  Build a Village Town, Claude Lewenz.  However like Claude himself I am working to bring one into existence near where i live in Northern California pro bono (that is as an unpaid volunteer for the Good) because I became convinced when I read his first book on the subject that the ideas he put forward were both fantastically promising and also realistic and possible. 

As I have gone more into this world of the notion of the VillageTown, and as the conventional solutions around us have been crackking, paralyzing, and falling, I have been more and more convinced of the correctness of my original instincts.  I also understand that there is a tendency for many of us to mis trust someone who says they are working for the good--there is much trickery in the world.  And I understand that there is a widespread tendency in all of us, rooted I think in a deep form of jealousy and grief at our own paralysis,  to attack those who step forward and seek to lead or speak out. I do not know if this particular negative review of his ideas of the VillageTown has any roots such as these, but it may have. But I hope instead that the negative reviewer has just not done the homework that we should all do before going "public" on this miraculous world-wide-web.

Claude is not perfect--he is human--but he knows that, thankfully.  I have spend time with him and I know he is actually dedicated to the Good and his ideas are very well worth studying.   And I I have decided to dedicate my remaining life to bringing the VillageTown into existence relying on my assessment of Claude Lewenz and the ideas he sets forth in How to Build A VillageTown.  One of the key reasons I have done this, besides the fact that the ideas stir a deep vein in my soul is the knowledge that Claude knows that the ideas are mostly not new or his, but rather what he has gathered, and that they are subject to correction as we go forward. 

He is in short a man whose writings are well worthy of consideration.  I too invite you to check them out. 

John Morgan, Village Steward

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November 26, 2010

Claude Lewenz says:

It’s a lovely Saturday morning in New Zealand; I’ve answered my email correspondence, and I was taking a break from writing a business plan when I did a Google search on "VillageTown". This blog came up, so I thought it might be helpful to answer as the author, although I should acknowledge that the previous commentator, wryan, did an excellent job and in far fewer words than I will write.

The review wrote: “While this approach is interesting as a replacement for building new suburbs, industrial estates and so forth, one of my big concerns is how we use the already existing built environment, that is how we can reclaim, reinvent and reuse the large amounts of built areas that exist at present”

Reclaiming the existing built environment promises to be a job of much greater difficulty for many reasons. First, and fundamentally, it is scaled wrong. The impact of 50 years of car-scaling society is overwhelmingly large. It's easy to talk about, but when one gets down to the details of grid and cul-de-sac streets, acres of off-street parking, building function, effects of zoning segregation, driving-distance location of daily destinations including schools, work, shopping and recreation, private agendas of politicians, political donors, public officials and their unions, the framework of the local economy and the vested interest of chains, franchises and brands that benefit from a car-based design, it becomes apparent the existing system will probably have to collapse under its own weight before significant change can begin. Second, each building and parcel of subdivided land has economic value; each ones owner may not want to change unless they get paid market value. And finally, no one can do everything. The review focuses on a different problem. If we had a permanent ban on any new construction of suburbs, malls, industrial and office parks, then its proposed conversation makes sense. But as long as that system continues (and it is today only in a temporary slow-down because of the credit freeze), the VillageTown conversation is about an alternative to new building, and is not about the other conversation on fixing what was wrongly built. We are talking past each other rather than having a dialogue.

“In this light, it appears that the VillageTown approach has been developed through a narrow lens with little reflection on how it connects into bigger social change movements, such as Transition Towns“

I am acutely aware of many alternative movements including Transition Towns. I was invited to the first meeting that formed the movement in New Zealand and kept up a working relationship and friendship with its leader, who lives on Waiheke Island as I do. At the inaugural meeting, when it came my time to speak, I said I did not understand how one can build communities on the foundation of a fear-based paradigm. To quote the link the review provided “A Transition Initiative (which could be a town, village, university or island etc) is a community-led response to the pressures of climate change, fossil fuel depletion and increasingly, economic contraction.”. Global warming is fear-based, that the climate will cook, land will flood, species will become extinct, and humanity will suffer. Peak Oil is fear-based, that our world and wealth built on private and mass transit fuelled by petroleum will run out. Economic Collapse is fear-based, that the good times will be over, that the middle class will fall back into poverty, and the poor will starve. It is true that fear motivates people, but it does so like adrenaline - pumps you up to perform heroic tasks and then you crash.

The Transition Network movement is new and unproven, just as the VillageTown idea is new, and over time, I expect TN will shift from fear-based to aspiration-based or people will tire of it and look elsewhere for hope. The biggest challenge Transition Network faces however, is that most of its advocates lack clout. There is an entrenched establishment making lots of money doing things the way we always have done. Thus while Transition is a spark, it has a long haul ahead of it to change the policy of vested interest who own the power plant. Again, TN is another conversation. We need many parallel conversations.

“…a proposed house in one of these new areas costing $250,000. This price tag makes me wonder how diverse such areas would end up being, perhaps instead creating neo-ghettos of privileged people able to ‘buy in’ to such a development.”

The reviewer apparently missed the word "average" when focusing on the price tag of $250,000, and I am wondering if the reviewer actually read the books? If the review is based on a talk or web site, which can never go into detail, then such a review can generate more heat than light.

In this instance, the reviewer formulated a counter-argument that misses the mark, somehow missing the word “average”. If the average home price is $250,000, this does not mean all homes cost that, or that the least expensive house costs that. It means that some homes will be cheaper – and we hope to offer homes that sell for under $100,000, and other homes will be more expensive – which may even include mansions since an integrated society includes all income and asset levels including rich people. Overall, however, the question of pricing is more complex and requires a more thorough review…

For a start, there is a cost to building homes, and for the most part, it represents the largest investment in most people's lives. If one rents, someone else paid the cost. In all cases, someone has to pay, and the price of construction is not cheap, especially in highly regulated countries with high labor rates.

Price is determined by land price, bureaucracy costs, improvements, size, amenities, and in the case of a VillageTown it should be lower thanks to the efficiencies of scale when many homes are built at the same time. The proposed profit plan for VillageTowns is very different than the conventional developer model. It seeks to align the interest of the builders with those of the future villagers. It does not use the developer model. Thus, if possible, start-up funds are borrowed rather ventured, and profits after the reinvestment premium remain with the VillageTown corporation, which is owned by the villagers. Those profits are then used to raise quality of living while lowering cost of living.

Some of these profits go to assure a permanently diverse community representing a wide range of socio-economic peoples. While it is easy to talk about providing for people who earn less and are less privileged, in fact the track record of most initiatives is dismal. Most low-income housing comes with a stigma and often an expensive tax-supported bureaucracy to manage it (sometimes badly and without dignity). VillageTowns proposes creating parallel markets that are integrated with the rest of the community, so the price is permanently lower by preventing privileged buyers - the comfortable class - from buying such homes thus making them unaffordable by buyers in the target group.

It also proposes that VillageTowns should include a walk-to industrial park where blue collar workers actually make things, and parallel to that, the VillageTown provide blue collar housing that such workers can buy, knowing their jobs are permanently secure. There was a time when a male high school graduate could find a job working with his hands, buy a home and start a family. Now, those jobs have been exported to third world countries with low pay, long hours, unsafe conditions and lax or non-existent environmental protection. The high school graduate today gets a job in a big box store selling those third world goods, with no job security, with home ownership in a strong community unlikely, and when the family is started, a likely chance it will result in a break down where the children are raised by a stressed solo-parent.

When I visited Spain to give a talk there in September, our host suggested I take a look at the Mondragon Corporation where 85,000 blue collar workers used a capitalist model to create secure jobs for themselves at reasonable pay. While it uses the language of the left, it uses the capital models of the right. From a pragmatic perspective, it demonstrates that blue collar work can compete against third world countries and stay in business. Having said this, it is important to appreciate that in the VillageTown model, we try to avoid any particular ideological affiliation. The people who will form each village are provided a framework where they make the decisions. Thus, if blue collar workers want to try the Mondragon model, they are encouraged to do so. But equally, if entrepreneurs want to try the venture capital model, they are equally supported. In either case, it's their life, their money and their future. Our job is to enable them and to offer a framework that enables such industry to remain sustainable in the VillageTown over the long term.

“It is easy to think romantically about the concepts of community and citizenship, and unfortunately most of what I have heard or read about VillageTowns falls into this trap.” 

Given what is discussed in this review, one must ask what the author actually has heard and read about the subject. In effect the review states that anyone with green consciousness should focus their attention on fixing the existing broken car-based systems, and that the reviewer misunderstands the core pricing and development framework, and therefore makes the incorrect presumption that this will become a neo-ghetto of privileged people. Thus, this rather negative concluding judgment by the reviewer unfairly writes off the idea and deprives anyone who may happen to read it, from actually getting a good critical assessment of the idea.

At all times, I and the other village stewards working on this project actively seek out critical review and feedback. The idea itself was honed over many years, at times using a practice known as “going into the dragon’s den”, meaning seeking out people who do not resonate with the idea so the idea’s weaknesses can be probed, and if exposed, changed. This is why I am taking the time to write this rather lengthy reply.

In October I gave a talk in Sonoma County, CA, and when it came to question period, the second person with his hand up did not ask a question, but instead suggested we modify the idea so instead of medium density housing it was four houses per acre, and that we transform the plaza into a food garden in the middle. Umm, that’s idea has already been put forward; it’s called Permaculture. It has its place, but it serves a different audience. Like this review, it was another example of two conversations competing for the same air space.

I would welcome a rewrite of this review, and if the reviewer cannot afford to buy a copy of the books, let me know. E-mail me and one of our stewards will send you a link where you can buy black and white copies at the printer’s price, or we can send you a PDF for free. We use the book sales to help raise funds (if you like the idea, buy a book, read it, then leave it at your favorite café with the words “Café Copy” written on the cover), but we did arrange for low-cost editions without color photographs for folks who can't afford to make a contribution (note as author I take no royalties and the publisher takes no fees - all net proceeds go to VillageTowns).

But we ask that if the reviewer does in fact draft a rewrite, please address the ideas that are actually put forward, so everyone is on the same page.

Thanks

Claude

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October 31, 2010

A guest says:

The Villagetown provides an alternative to building the next suburb.  You cannot fault Mr. Lewenz for not seeking to solve all of the world's problems, his current goal is to prove that this particular model works and can be used instead of the current model for new development.  The ideas that he offers will also be valuable for other people, such as the transition town folks, to achieve their goals, but it is not reasonable to fault him for focusing his efforts in a different direction from yours.  Once these efforts are up and running, he may well turn the to need to retrofit existing communities, or he may decide that his part of this work is finished and others should carry on the work.  You would benefit most from finding solutions to the problems you see instead of implying that Mr. Lewenz has ignored more important issues.  
It is also important to note that Mr. Lewenz is attempting to take a mainstream approach which can appeal to most people regardless of political affiliation.  He intentionally avoids the controversial issues which the transition movement focuses on in order to focus on individual quality of life, the reaults of which should be immediately evident to the individual, not on saving the world, though saving the world might eventually be a nice side effect.
Regarding housing cost, first take a look at Mr. Lewenz's ideas regarding Parallel Market Real Estate.  Consider that the thing that makes the idea appealing is the diversity, therefore the people interested in this particular model of living will only move a project forward if it will be affordable (and those who are interested in exclusive developments already have models such as gated golfing communities).
Now consider how housing costs will compare to the costs of living in current cultural and entertainment centers such as NYC and how costs will be affected by the creation of many VillageTowns,  i.e. A place like New York currently has a sort of monopoly on a certain kind of lifestyle.  Too many people trying to be a part of it contributes to overcrowding, sprawl, and high housing costs.  Many people would prefer to choose from one of the hundreds of VillageTowns that may one day exist.
One of my personal goals is to see these projects come to fruition so that those proven ideas can then be applied to the current towns that I know and love.  If individuals such as those in the Transition movement help to make VillageTowns happen, it will prove that changing our way of living is something that can appeal to all kinds of people.

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