http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304299304577347890053618010.html

By ELIOT BROWN

Co-op City, the nation's largest cooperative housing complex, is in discussions with federal, state and city housing officials to secure a new $600 million, low-interest mortgage that would likely keep Co-op City as part of a middle-income housing program for years to come.

Built in the late 1960s and early 1970s, the sprawling 15,000-unit Co-op City complex in the northeast Bronx has been known as a middle-class stronghold. Moderate- and middle-income families can buy units at discounts to market rates through a state program known as Mitchell-Lama.

But after properties have been in the Mitchell-Lama program for around two decades, their residents can decide to leave the income-restricted program and open their doors to anyone. That allows co-op members in neighborhoods with high property values to cash in through the sales of their apartments.

A new $600 million mortgage for Co-op City in the Bronx, above, could keep the complex as part of the Mitchell-Lama middle-income program.

Such moves became common at other Mitchell-Lama co-ops during the real-estate boom years, which caused government housing officials to worry about the shrinking number of apartments in the city earmarked for middle-income families.

At Co-op City, residents considered exiting from Mitchell-Lama in 2002, a move requiring a two-thirds approval vote. But residents shelved discussions when there wasn't strong backing, and Bronx real-estate values made the economics difficult. Advocates of Co-op City's exiting from Mitchell-Lama—an act known as privatization—have been unable to rally widespread support since.

But should the $600 million refinancing plan now being discussed go forward, it would likely quell such talk from making a return for years. The terms being discussed with federal and local officials call for requiring the property to stay in Mitchell-Lama, says Alan Wiener, a managing director at Wells Fargo & Co., which would issue and oversee the mortgage.

"During this loan, Co-op City has to stay affordable, so you're going to preserve the affordability," Mr. Wiener says.

The management company that runs the day-to-day operations on behalf of the Co-op City residents is recommending the loan, in part because the new financing would be expected to lower interest payments by around $4 million a year, says Herbert Freedman, a principal at Marion Scott Real Estate Inc. His company manages the property and is involved in the discussions about the loan.

Still, the possible new financing has attracted criticism from some co-op members who support privatization and don't want their hands tied. "I would be against it," says Gary Geleski, a public-school teacher and seven-year resident who has urged leaving the program. "They shouldn't have that much power to lock us into that type of agreement."

The loan under discussion is part of a program from the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development aimed at multifamily properties—one that was extended to cooperatives in 2010.

Under the terms being discussed, HUD would back $530 million of the loan, while city and state agencies would back $70 million that would be the first to be lost if the loan defaulted, according to multiple people involved with discussions.

It would be a 35-year self-amortizing loan, they said.

Drought expands throughout USA

Notice,
not drought in Western NC.



http://www.usatoday.com/weather/drought/story/2012-04-11/mild-winter-expands-usa-drought/54225018/1

Still reeling from devastating drought that led to at least $10 billion in agricultural losses across Texas and the South in 2011, the nation is enduring more unusually parched weather.

A mostly dry, mild winter has put nearly 61% of the lower 48 states in "abnormally dry" or drought conditions, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor, a weekly federal tracking of drought. That's the highest percentage of dry or drought conditions since September 2007, when 61.5% of the country was listed in those categories.

Only two states — Ohio and Alaska — are entirely free of abnormally dry or drought conditions, according to the Drought Monitor.

The drought is expanding into some areas where dryness is rare, such as New England.

"Conditions are starting to worry us now," said Keith Eggleston , a climatologist with the Northeast Regional Climate Center in Ithaca, N.Y.

According to the U.S. Geological Survey, stream flow levels are at record or near-record lows in much of New England. The Drought Monitor lists all of Vermont as "abnormally dry," just six months after the state's wettest August on record that stemmed mainly from disastrous flooding by the remnants of Hurricane Irene.

So far this year, Connecticut has endured its driest January-March period ever, Weather Channelmeteorologist Jonathan Erdman reports. This followed the state's wettest year on record.

The drought is mainly an agricultural concern in the Northeast at this point, says Eggleston. While agricultural conditions in the Northeast could be perilous if the dry weather continues as the growing season kicks off, water shortages for the public shouldn't be an issue, as most reservoirs were near or at capacity due to the early-season snowmelt and thaw, and to wetter conditions in the past, the Drought Monitor reported.

The rest of the East is also very dry. "We expanded the drought intensity and coverage in the Southeast and up and down the East Coast," said meteorologist David Miskus of the Climate Prediction Center in Camp Springs, Md., who prepared this week's update of the Monitor. "Georgia is one area we'll really have to watch," says Miskus. More than 63% of the state is now in the worst two levels of drought, the highest percentage of any state.

Wildfires and brush fires have been common along the East Coast from New England to Florida in recent weeks because of wind and the dryness and windy conditions.

As water levels continue to decline in bone-dry southern Florida, the South Florida Water Management District has issued a water shortage warning from Key West to Orlando.

One of the causes of the winter dryness was a weak La Niña, a climate pattern in the Pacific that affects weather in the USA and around the world, Miskus reports. La Niña tends to bring dry conditions to the southern tier of the nation.

The Southwest and Southeast had a very dry winter, but the southern Plains had a much wetter winter than expected, Miskus says. The rain eased drought conditions in eastern Texas. The state dropped from 100% in the four categories of drought in late September to 64% this week. Much of western Texas remains in extreme to exceptional drought.

Trouble also looms for water-dependent California. The state Department of Water Resources said last week that water content in California's mountain snowpack is 45% below normal.

"An unusually wet March improved conditions, but did not make up for the previous dry months," said DWR Director Mark Cowin. "The take-home message is that we've had a dry winter and although good reservoir storage will lessen impacts this summer, we need to be prepared for a potentially dry 2013."

California has above-average reservoir storage as the summer approaches, thanks to runoff from last winter's storms, the DWR reports.

Lastly, other areas that bear watching, according to Miskus, are the northern Plains and upper Midwest, due to the lack of snow this past winter. He says that while farmers there are welcoming the dry conditions to aid in spring planting, they will be hoping for rain later on in spring and summer.

Noahpinion: Federal income tax is the enemy of urbanism

A nice post contemplating the city/country balance/bias.

Noahpinion: Federal income tax is the enemy of urbanism: Finishing my dissertation this year has forced me to come out of my troll-cave and interact a lot more with my econ department. And that ha...

David Wann and the New Normal

I was delighted to find that David Wann, author of one of my favorite books Affluenza, has also authored a book on communities.   

http://www.amazon.com/Reinventing-Community-Stories-Walkways-Cohousing/dp/1555915019/ref=pd_sim_b_4

I first encountered the New Normal while preparing presentations for Susan Wachter.  The concept nicely summarizes the immediacies of the environmental and financial crises that have become more and more apparent.   Wann includes an explanation of the New Normal in his Amazon.com biography:   

FROM "THE NEW NORMAL:"

The 12 New Normal Paradigm Principles

1. The challenges we face are not just technical - they are social, biological, political, and even spiritual challenges. For example, green technologies won't be sufficient if our current value system keeps pumping out too much stuff, and settling for sloppy services. Even green over-consumption is over-consumption, which results in more transactions and "throughput" than the planet's living systems can handle without collapse.

2. Technology is no longer the limiting factor of productivity - resources are. Deeper wells can't pump water that's no longer there; larger boats and nets can't harvest more fish when fish populations have been wiped out.

3. Major historical shifts occur when a majority of the population understands that is is easier to adopt a new way of life than prop up the broken one. Therefore, the "bad news" we've heard over the past three decades is not really negative, but rather useful evidence that systemic change is necessary.

4. In our search for a new way of life and the products that will help achieve it, we are exploring whole new ways of thinking and designing. We are choosing not just hybrid cars, but hybrid systems that provide food; mobility, wellness, shelter; energy and employment synergistically. The overall goal is not arbitrary, anything-goes growth - often burdened with dysfunction, illness, and waste- but growth/improvements that meet essential needs fully.

5. New systems of accounting will track productivity in terms of quality, not just quantity. For example, exemplary companies now track tons of cement or sheets of paper produced per unit of energy (not just per dollar invested). Similarly, to evaluate the overall productivity of farming, the new metrics will track the nutritional value of the food and the health of the farms it came from, not simply bushels of grain or pounds of beef.

6. Decisions will be made and priorities set using far wider criteria than price, profit, and prestige. For example, living capital - life itself - should unquestionably have a higher priority in decision-making than transitory material capital.

7. We can't change the realities of resource scarcity and population increase, so we need to change our way of life instead. For example, we are a social species that uses status to organize the group, but there are many other ways of awarding status besides material acquisition, such as trustworthiness, knowledge, kindness, and integrity. The new normal reminds us that a leaner way of life is healthier.

8. Designers can't assume that energy will be abundant, or that discretionary time will continue to be scarce. In the future, we will use more human time and energy and less fossil fuel energy. We will once again participate in activities such as walking rather than driving; operating window covers to maintain desired temperatures in homes and offices. "Totally automatic" may be a desirable goal for robots, but not humans.

9. A sustainable economy maximizes the productivity of resources in addition to people. Writes Paul Hawken, "When you maximize the productivity of people, you use fewer people, but we have more people than there are jobs. Basically we are using less and less of what we have more of, and with natural capital, using more and more of what we have less of." That kind of economy doesn't make sense. Why not move toward full employment of a part-time workforce, giving us enough income as well as more time for living? To fund public services and infrastructure, why not tax fossil fuels and pollution, not work?

10. Some products and resources - such as food, water and gasoline - need to be priced higher to ensure both full cost accounting and minimal waste. For example, gasoline should rightfully cost much more because its environmental and health effects are not currently accounted for.

11. Saving a civilization is not effortless and convenient; it takes focus, strategy, and engagement. Our generation's mission should be to create and maintain an economy based on fully satisfying finite needs rather than chasing insatiable, market-driven wants. Let's slow down and meet needs directly, delivering more value per lifetime.

12. Democracy may be our greatest social invention to date, but it can't work unless citizens are informed and have both political access and sufficient time to exercise their shared power.

FROM "SIMPLE PROSPERITY:"

Beginning when I was about four and continuing for several decades beyond that, a lumbering grizzly bear invaded my dreams whenever my life felt out of control -- at least a few times a year. The bear was a thousand pounds of snarling, razor-clawed mammal, blundering up the dark stairway toward my bedroom. I told my parents about the bear but they assured me he wasn't real. (Why then, I wondered, did he have so much power?)

Thankfully, somewhere in my late twenties, I began to get a grip. One very significant night, I leaped onto the stage of my own nightmare - a lucid dream they call it - and decided to try tickling the bear, of all things. Miraculously, it worked; the bear chuckled like a huge, shy, department store teddy bear! My unconscious mind had staged a coup, asserting my right and power to come out of the shadows and live fearlessly in the light -- never mind the horror of rejection slips or credit card interest rates that jump fivefold if you miss a payment by two and a half hours. The confused and defused bear plodded, mumbling, out of my life forever.

Tickling the bear became a life strategy (and I believe it can be a cultural strategy too, for taking back our power). It seemed like the bear's ghostly mission was to terrorize we humans who inhabit a harried, self-destructive Dream of too many choices, too many competitors, and too much to know. I wondered, even then, why didn't we just start out content and let that be more than enough? Why didn't we unplug from the fear, the shame, and the fantasy-based expectations, rather than chasing a Dream all our lives? Many remember how the Bomb hung over our lives in those days, but I suspect it really was the chasing that was making the country so nervous.
I look back at that night with a certain degree of pride. I had symbolically taken charge of my own life, exorcising a fear capable of immobilizing me in moments of insecurity. Since then, I've had the guts to speak up to corporate polluters; close-minded supervisors and would-be kings; spoiled scramblers for the money; control freaks and neighborhood bullies of my boyhood. By tickling the bear, I've played a role in defusing the nuclear bomb, flipping the switch on machines that steal our jobs and contaminate our food.Yes, the risks and threats of global climate change, genetic engineering, child abuse, deceit, corruption, and perverted power are staggering, but we are capable of finessing them. Ultimately, the bear becomes Gentle Ben when he's tickled because he finally understands that despite the dramatic, grizzled costume he finds himself in, he's really one of us.

Re-envisioning Slums and the new Commons

http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/stewart_brand_on_squatter_cities.html

Stewart Brand predicts that squatter cities will diffuse the population bomb that has been ticking for the past 150 years world wide.
It sounds ridiculous, but I have been thinking the same thing.  One-sixth of the world lives in squatter settlements according to Mr. Brand.
These folks are leaving the countryside while bringing the ingenuity of country living.  A country shack is charming at the density of 1 per acre.  Once you have 50 to 200 per acre, you have a "slum".
Slums are what Chicago and NYC were before the great depression and the first zoning laws.

However, city dwellers are recognized for democratizing gender roles, and increasing education.
What does this mean for "country values"?
I propose that this will rely upon how individual cities resolve their commons, their public realm.
Rises energy prices will force less reluctant cities to open up the commons to provide for more residents at once.
The crux is to create a commons that pluralistically includes country and traditional values alongside the ambitious cosmopolitan culture and habits.
Nothing is easy.  But this is what we must create as the inheritors of the most explosive human legacy in recorded history.

(Part of this will look like both more centralized transportation, and the disconnection of many suburbs from their parent cities).

Peñalosa's Testing of Hedonics in Bogota

Happiness Economics under Research in the UK.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/article766908.ece

Netherlands Researchers Test the "Broken Windows" Theory

http://articles.latimes.com/2008/nov/21/science/sci-graffiti21

Netherlands researchers test the "Broken Windows" theory.  (Thank you guest speaker Charlie Branas of the Epidemiology Department for bringing this up).

The researchers methodologically added graffiti and trash to select locations in select neighborhoods.
It resulted that the inverse of the Broken Windows Theory held true.  Graffit and Trash accumulated exponentially in accordance with the amount of trash and graffiti added by the researchers.  

A wonderful study in behavior science and city planning.  
I love this kind of study because it bolsters the idea of psychogeography introduced to me by the Situationist movement.  It also suggests that human behavior can be significantly sculpted and influenced by sculpting the built environment.
The eternal question:  how do we sculpt the built environment to encourage humane, respectful, and longterm ecological behavior?