So are high housing prices an asset? Well, it depends who you ask. If you are Google, and looking for regions with a large pool of prospective talent, then they probably are, and the cities benefit from increased property tax revenue. If you’re a city without a large workforce capable of affording expensive places to live, then pricing them out of the market doesn’t make much sense. (Which is why it doesn’t happen, housing prices are set by markets, not cities, who can only influence them.)

Do higher housing costs “induce a negative spiral in which high costs drive further and further specialization in the most high value added activities for a region, in effect narrowing the economic base”? I have no idea, they might contribute to that. I’ve got to think that higher prices are less a cause of economic diversification than an effect, though.

They have a specific mandate to mantain and enlarge the genome, which is critical especially for agricultural production (creating hybrids that combat diseases or pests or draught). it’s an everyday practical extention of the doomsday vault up in Norway.

there was recently an article in wired about how this system is being used to combat ugandan wheat rust which could potentially threaten the entire world supply potentially. also, npr “on point with tom ashbrook” recently interviewed a lady who gave a great rundown of the workings of it and argued that it is woefully underfunded and unloved for the critical function it provides.

i would agree with f.a.d’s last sentence wholeheartedly. if you frame the argument in terms of native v. non-native then you end up in a philosophical/semantic debate. but if it’s about maintaining or even enriching biodiversity (and eo wilson would say that is critical) then i think the argument is a lot clearer and the question becomes what strategies and tactics to implement.

as an aside, i dig ailanthus. also, mammoth is sounding a lot more bldgblog-esque after that glacier/island/storm week…

I think its helpful in the native vs. non-native debate to approach it in terms of systemic relationships or ecology–aspects we often can’t physically see, rather than focusing on isolated species. Once aggressive invasives come to dominate an environment, the relational structure of the system typically breaks down, reducing overall complexity and resiliency, and has already been mentioned, often produces monocultures. An Ailanthus forest in North America may look like a forest, but from an ecology point of view its really not because it will not contain the same richness and functional processes.
I can appreciate the logic of a world of weed ecology (humans being the weed par excellence) based on a palette of species perfectly adapted to our ‘disturbance’ mode or operating (which may be turn out to be relatively short and terminal from a broader time frame), but what we lose in this is immense and largely unknowable like climate change - which will further complicate the idea of nativity as biomes have begun to drift around the surface of the globe.
I would argue that the continuation and maintenance of diverse,complex ecologies (rather than aesthetics) is worth fighting for.

But those at the ICA do have a similar attitude: defensive, and burdened with an unstated assumption that nature is more or less static on the long term. That is clearly not true. Whither the mastodon?

But then we have to consider whether humans are causing the ecological shift. After all, that depends on whether you interpret humans to be part of the ecology or somehow separate. Looking back and forth between the XIIIe (or even the VIIIe) and an emergent slum in Madras, I think that’s an open question.

I was thinking if you expanded the timeframe, perhaps in terms of geologic time, “native” species wouldn’t exist, but all are in a continuous migration transported by the earth’s processes.

Chicago’s Central Area Action Plan projects job growth of only 3,000 jobs annually through 2020 in a very expansive central area. There are already a few hundred thousand jobs there, so this is not particularly high growth. Cook County, IL as a whole actually has 70,000 fewer jobs today than it did in 1990.

My hunch is that this effect has some validity, but it induces a negative spiral in which high costs drive further and further specialization in the most high value added activities for a region, in effect narrowing the economic base. This might raise incomes and property values, but it won’t generate much if any job growth.

You see the same affect in Silicon Valley as in Chicago, btw. Between 1990 and 2009 San Mateo County and Santa Clara County combined added only 80,000 jobs, a CAGR of less than 0.5% This is in one of the most booming zones in the country.

Unfortunately it seems all his published works are in Portuguese.
This is a good talk he gave to RIBA
http://www.gleeds.tv/index.cfm?video=642
And of course his TED Talk
http://www.ted.com/talks/jaime_lerner_sings_of_the_city.html

He really seems to be making a name for himself going around the world preaching the value of BRT and human centered cities.

The point that he made re: implementation was interesting. Early on he said the business community wasn’t happy with his plans for pedestrianization, very similar to Sadik’s issues with local business-men complaints.

So he literally did the first couple of interventions over weekends when the businesses were closed so that they couldn’t stop it. They got there Monday and work was done. Sort of like Sadik’s DOT approach to overnighting Broadway.

As for my county’s plans for BRT. I think the issues are twofold. One do to concurrency planning requirements they are running into a situation where they need to either build more main roads/transit connector or they won’t be able to develop certain areas of the county further. So the choice is either increased congestion (which would be the end result of new roads anyways) or some sort of mass transit. Plus, there is a few commissioners etc who are into the idea of Peak Oil/resiliency.

I think they are actually getting some Federal transit funding for the introductory portions of the planning etc.