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The Planetizen News Brief - 4/2/09

2 April 2009 - 5:00am
Smart City Radio

The Planetizen News Brief is a weekly rundown of some of the most interesting and important news and issues of the past week.

The Planetizen News Brief airs every week on the nationally-syndicated radio program "Smart City", which is broadcast in cities across the U.S. Learn more about Smart City and listen to archived shows.

Full Transcript

Until recently, the American dream was thriving on America’s suburban fringes. These exurban areas far off from the city core with price tags too low to ignore blossomed during the housing boom. Homebuyers seeking that benchmark of the American dream were willing to make the long drive from their exurban homes to work. And they were even willing to take out mortgages they honestly couldn’t afford. So now that credit has crunched and the housing boom has busted, more and more of these exurban residents have gone from homeowners to renters. According to the Wall Street Journal, this is bad news for many of these exurban locales, as it amounts to populations of people grasping to hold on to what they once had, but with struggling local economies that can’t provide the services these residents need. Though there is some hope that the end of the recession will allow some of these renters to become homeowners once again, no one seems to be holding their breath for that day to come.

And as budgets tighten, companies across the board are getting creative in an effort to lure customers. This sale-mentality is even spreading to the world of infrastructure, where road contractors are heavily discounting construction bids to try to catch the eye of stimulus funded states. The New York Times reports that road and bridge projects in Pennsylvania had received bids that were 15% lower than what state officials had expected. Contractors in Utah have even handed that state bids 25% less than the expected amount. It’s a sign of bad times for the construction industry, which has been left with few building projects as the recession sets in. But the infusion of stimulus money directed at transportation projects has offered the industry a shining – and highly demanded – light. All this spells good news for states, who can now get more work done for their dollar.

So transportation projects are feeling the recession, and homeowners are definitely feeling the recession. The stimulus plan is providing some aid on both fronts, but it’s not going to be enough, according to Robert Puentes of the Brookings Institution. He recently testified before congress that the government needs to do more to link transportation, and housing and land use decisions. The way they interact means problems on just one side unavoidably affect the other. Puentes says housing and transportation need to be considered interdependent entities. With the economy struggling and both sectors in tough times, now is the perfect time to radically rethink how we deal with them.

Stories discussed in this week's Planetizen News Brief

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Short of erasing existing political and jurisdictional boundaries, citizens and officials need to develop the capacity to work across boundaries according to the "problem-sheds" of the land and water issues we face in the 21st century.
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