A proposal - Mothballing infrastructure.

You'll note that there is a lot of vacant land around this abandoned house. This is because the city of Detroit has bulldozed many of the vacant structures in the area, eliminating traces of urban blight. But why did this have to be so? The answer lies in the problem that all cities have - no one has yet developed a good plan to shrink a town or city when both businesses and people abandon it.

Cities such as Youngstown Ohio have decided to Mothball infrastructure by removing many derelict structures, and ending utility service to many of the cleared areas. If no one lives in the areas, they can be treated as park land or cemeteries.  This involves much less effort than providing police, fire, and other city services to sparsely settled areas. Given that Detroit has lost more than half of its population with the decline of the local automotive industry, it only made sense that Detroit go down this path.

What happens to the few remaining residents that want to make a go of it in these  areas? It might make sense to condemn their properties, and build them new houses in areas where there is a dense enough population to make it worthwhile to provide services to these areas. Instead of being the only occupied house on a block with derelict structures, the same person could be in the middle of a safe and vibrant community.

It costs money to bulldoze properties.  It also costs money to maintain the underground infrastructure (sewers, etc.) in these areas. But vacant land is much easier to redevelop when population comes back to the city.

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This is only part of the equation.  How should we finance the clearing of land? American real estate development assumes that all properties will be standing forever. No one includes the tear down of  a house or factory after its useful life ends. When businesses have no more need for the land, it is often abandoned. When no jobs are to be found in a community, people abandon their houses and the land on which they stand. As a result, the land becomes blighted.

How do we solve this problem?  I keep working a thought experiment involving an insurance bond which covers the tear down of buildings and the clean up of land. For a small monthly price, insurers would hold in escrow enough money to finance a tear down and clean up, resulting in a "green" site.  The land would be certified free of toxic materials and would be usable for any residential or commercial purpose permitted by zoning codes. They would have to adjust the expected escrow fund (and charge the land owner for it) so that the expected cleanup could always take place.

Why should a third party control these funds?  To me, I don't trust government to do the job of maintaining these reserve funds. Nor do I trust individuals to do this job. We've seen what happens when government lets businesses pollute the land and not hold the businesses accountable for their actions?  Rare is the enforcement action which forced General Electric to clean up PCBs from the Hudson River.  Rare is the individual who'd bulldoze a vacant derelict home in Detroit (or other cities.)  We need someone to be responsible, and we need a market place solution. So insurance companies are good choices, as they can manage risk AND determine how much of a clean up fund is needed for any property.  

How do we get from here to there?  Is this just a pipe dream?  I'm not sure if there is even a way to implement this idea. But what would have happened to places like Detroit if property owners had paid for the tear down of their properties?

The Packard factory complex (part of which is shown in the above picture) has been vacant for over 60 years.  It has been scavenged for all valuable materials, and is undergoing rapid decay.  The place is a hazard.  But if this place were bulldozed and cleaned up, it would have made a great park, and nor be a blight on the community.  And given 1950's prices, the clean up for this complex would have been relatively cheap.  

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Once land is vacant, it can be put to many short or long term uses.  For years, there was a lot of vacant land near the Whitestone bridge in New York City. On one side of the bridge was a city park. On the other side was a cemetery and some other unused land.  This land has been changed into a golf course. (No, I will not identify the course or provide images of the place, because I detest the man who the course is named after.)  Even the Fresh Kills Landfill has been changed into a city park.

Along the Hudson River, there are many old factory buildings.  Many were left to decay. But with riverfront real estate at a premium, developers are paying to clean up the land and rehabilitate the structures. If these structures had been cleared from the land, we'd have developed the areas sooner - as it would have cost much less to do so. As a result, we'd likely have had more affordable living space in a region known for excessive prices.

I am not against preserving historical structures. But I am against them turning into dangerous places, and symbols of urban decay.  Given the choice, I'd tear down every unmaintained property, clean up the land, and give it away to people who will take care of the land. This would be much better than dumping the clean up cost on the people who remain in these areas.  In short, if you made the mess, you are responsible for its cleanup. We teach that to children.  Why don't we hold adults to the same standard?

Our Transportation Infrastructure

The above image (from 2007) shows some of the decay in one of America's most iconic bridges. Given the "over building" of this bridge over 100 years ago, I am not afraid to drive across the East River using the Brooklyn Bridge. However, this is the tip of the iceberg when problems with our transportation infrastructure are involved....

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When the snow started to melt recently, many potholes began to grow in the region's roads. From Somers, NY to Carmel, NY on a recent trip, I was afraid to drive at posted speed limits, in part because the roads were in such a state of poor repair. And this, I consider to be a minor problem, compared to other problems across the country. In 2013, CBS News reported "Thousands of bridges around the U.S. may be one freak accident or mistake away from collapse, even if the spans are deemed structurally sound." In addition to the bridges which are poorly maintained, there are others which are vulnerable to accidents, and even more that are beyond their expected life span.  

Bridges alone, are not the whole problem. In the NYC region, for example, we have a network of parkways leading North and East from the city, many of which have dangerous entrances and exits - none of which would ever been built today. Add to this problem that these roads are not all "limited access" and have intersections (some with control lights, others without), and one can see danger lurking.  (Recently, a woman got stuck on the railroad tracks paralleling the Bronx River/Taconic Parkway in Valhalla, possibly as a result of the traffic control at the intersection, and the resulting railroad accident resulted in 5 deaths.) Sadly, there is only so much one can do to retrofit these roads to make them safer. As a result, we continue to live with greater risk from obsolete road design that can not be fixed.

Much of this infrastructure was built without being sure that an adequate income stream would be there to maintain these roads and bridges. The Federal Gas tax has not been increased in years - even though inflation and new technology keep pushing up the price of keeping these roads and bridges in shape. The same goes for many state taxes on gas - no one wants to increase taxes, and even indexing taxes to account for inflation would be a non starter in today's polarized politics. As a result, maintenance tends to get deferred, except where adequate tolls are charged. And then, much of this revenue gets allocated to other purposes.

In New York City, the price of a single ride on a bus or on the subway is going to be raised to $2.75. Although the MTA bridges and tunnels are being maintained with this money, much of it is being siphoned off to subsidize New York's mass transit systems. (Similar money siphoning is also being done at the PA for the PATH system and other pet projects.) And yet, the NYC subway is not in a state of good repair. If one looks at stations such as Chambers Street on the 7th avenue line, one will see (last I was there) one wall that hasn't been cleaned in many years, with tiles falling away from the wall. What else is going on behind the scenes that we don't know about?

I have not ignored the air traffic infrastructure. Three of our nation's most important airports are in locations that wouldn't make sense if one had 20/20 future vision: La Guardia, (Reagan) National, and San Francisco International. There is only so much one can do with these airports, as the flight paths go over some very sensitive real estate, and all have short and tricky landing approaches combined with short runways. Add to this, many airports have poor access via mass transit, and one has a Gordian Knot that makes travel extremely inconvenient....

When much of this infrastructure was built, people assumed that America would never stop growing, and that we would continue to be a nation of unlimited wealth. No one thought of establishing maintenance trust funds for all of this infrastructure - they expected to use current account cash flow - operating expenses, instead of planning for maintenance as capital expenses. (I hope I have my accounting principles correct, for purposes of this discussion.) One can not rescue a system by deferring maintenance - one only kicks a problem further downstream until some poor jerk can't avoid the blame for paying the full bill with interest.

Some cities have gotten creative - Youngstown, OH and Detroit, MI have taken the extreme step of eliminating the infrastructure in areas of town meant to be "decommissioned". This means, that entire city blocks will be razed, and vacant land left - so that the costs related to sparsely lived in areas can be eliminated. Roads will be left to decay, as they will not be maintained. Over time, new developments can pay the cost of rebuilding the infrastructure - but with those developments come the very people who will be paying the taxes to maintain it.

Cities, states, and nations need to maintain an adequate transportation infrastructure. They can no longer scrimp on mass transit, as people are moving back to the core cities without their cars. The Interstate highways need to be maintained, lest people nation wide are prepared to suffer delays in receiving goods attributed to road and bridge failure. The private railroads need to make money from investing in their own infrastructure, as we can not afford for many of the goods we depend on to be delayed. In short, because we are no longer a network of local economies, but one large, pulsing national economy, we need a reliable transportation infrastructure for all of America.