Ghost town in Nebraska sued for taxing farmers
Rock Bluff, Nebraska was a sizeable town 150 years ago. Situated on a bluff overlooking the Missouri River about 30 miles south of Omaha, Rock Bluff was incorporated in 1856, and boasted of three stores, a port, two blacksmith shops, three churches, a post office, more than 100 homes and it's county's first high school.
Town officials, convinced a boom was imminent, annexed thousands of acres into the village's incorporation limits. The boom, though, bypassed Rock Bluff when the railroad bridge across the Missouri River was constructed at Plattsmouth, 10 miles north. By 1910, not much was left of the town. Today, Rock Bluff is no longer listed on a Nebraska map (not even on Mapquest) and consists of corn fields, 12 single family homes, and an old school building called Rock Bluffs School (yes, with an "s"). It has no government, provides no services, nothing indicating it's even a community.
But here's my point. The town (or what's left of it) includes 600 acres of prime farmland that a judge has ruled should be valued and taxed at $1,750 an acre because it's in the "city limits." If it were outside the limits, the value would only be $1,300 per acre, presumably because it's further from any non-existent magnet site. Because Rock Bluff never took official steps to dissolve itself, it legally still exists; therefore the farmers should be paying taxes on $450 additional value per acre -- what adds up to taxes on an additional $270,000 per year. Hence the farmers are suing to "secede" from a city that currently exists only on paper and in history.
But there's another twist. Omaha exurbs are beginning to encroach on this area. A major subdivision of 1,700 people lies one mile away from the city limits and county officials just approved a new project within the incorporation consisting of a campground with 24 R.V. spaces. Officials say thousands of acres are now ripe for development because of suburbanization and the magnetic, panoramic views of the river.
So...the boom is coming, 150 years later. Maybe Rock Bluff should tax those farmers after all.
Wednesday, September 26, 2007
Tuesday, September 18, 2007
Aerotropolis: the new Central Business District
The development of urban areas has often been defined by transportation. Ports were the primary determinant of development in the 18th century. Cities such as New York City developed because of its legacy of the ports. The 19th century saw the railroad industry develop cities such as Chicago as a world-class city. Cars, trucks, and the massive highway system pushed the suburbs to every major and minor city during the 20th century. John Kasarda, a professor at the University of North Carolina and an airport consultant, says that the air travel will determine the next major American city in the 21st century. Kasarda, in The Rise of the Aerotropolis, argues that airports will no longer be a place to transport passengers and cargo, but will become the new central business district composed of shopping, dining, and commercial services of all types.
Access is key for companies attempting to compete in the 21st century. The ability to transport people and cargo quickly is just the competitive advantage corporations need to compete in the speed-driven, global economy.
As the distribution hub of North America, Memphis is in a unique position to establish itself as an aerotropolis. One may assume that this is a far-fetched idea if one takes a drive through the Memphis metropolitan airport area. The main strip of Winchester Road is littered with C-class apartments and mom-and-pop shops. The next major street of Brooks Road is more famous for its strip clubs than for its world-class corporations such as Smith-Nephew.
Despite this, the airports importance to the local economy is unmistakable. According to a study by the Sparks Bureau of Business and Economic Research/Center for Manpower Studies at the University of Memphis, the airport has a $21.7 billion impact on the local economy and one in four jobs are linked to it. Dr. Kasarda called Memphis the lone aerotropolis in the United States with “the world's top air cargo city by a wide margin.”
As an international traveler, I can personally testify to the fact that the aerotropolis is alive and well in many cities around the world; Singapore and Amsterdam are great examples. As a Memphian, I can only hope that my hometown is able to take advantage of this latest trend and make Memphis THE AEROTROPOLIS of North America.
Monday, September 17, 2007
Advantage Memphis?
We’re in good company -- the folks at Smart City Memphis read Ed Glaeser, too. Inspired by his musings in “Urban Colossus” about small advantages that grow through agglomeration economies they posted this question of the week: Knowing that small advantages can become huge economic advantage, what should Memphis be keying on?
I look forward to seeing some comments with your ideas. As for me, I think there’s reason to believe that we must have some small advantage in some subcategory of the broad term “music.” Maybe it’s a combination of musical heritage, music industry infrastructure, musically inspiring urban decay (in a good way?), and general affordability. (That would make a great Chamber of Commerce Slogan.) I’m not sure what the exact advantage is, or how Memphis might capitalize on it, but consider this piece about how Portland has become America’s Indie rock Mecca.
Portlander Taylor Clark shares his thoughts on why a growing number of successful musicians who got their start in other places have chosen to settle in the Rose City. Read it if you have the time, but I’ve tried to distill his theories to four mains reasons here:
- Indie rockers come to Portland because they want “to live in a place where they could walk like gods among mortals.”
- For Indie rockers, Portland is a comfortable place to live. It has “laid-back weirdness,” which, in part means “you can venture into public dressed like a convicted sex offender or a homeless person, and no one looks at you askew.” Other related reason include “the people are nice,” “the food is good,” and “creativity is the highest law.”
- “Housing is affordable, especially compared with Seattle or San Francisco.”
- Indie rockers love Portland because “the city produces very enthusiastic rock crowds.”
Nothing earth shattering there. Maybe this kind of success needs to happen “organically,” but if it is possible to create it, why not here? Laid back weirdness? Well, we’ve got laid back, and we’ve got weirdness, so why not “laid back weirdness?” Housing is affordable in Portland? No, it’s not. I spent four years there not too long ago. Housing is affordable in Memphis. And we’ve got plenty of mortals for gods to walk among. Better still, here they can walk among mortals along streets that some of their gods walked back in the day. As for the enthusiastic rock crowds, I haven’t been in a real rock crowd since my daughter was born 4 years ago, but I’d imagine Memphis could muster up a mosh pit with the best of them, right?
Going back to my earlier point about the musical inspiration of life in a gritty city, consider this comment on Taylor piece by Slate reader “Anse”:
“I remember Tom Waits once said the reason he preferred to stay in cheap hotels when he was on tour wasn't just because he could save money; lower-class neighborhoods had more stories. Luxury was an obstacle to getting to the root of things.”
Tuesday, September 11, 2007
Word of the Day (September 11, 2007): Resilience
Intertwined with other more obvious concerns in the aftermath of 9/11 emerged a new set of worries about the future of cities and urban form. Prior to that day, urban planners and economist considered the primary threats to the advantages of proximity that made dense urban concentrations work to be the declining cost of moving goods and people, along with advances in information technology. But discussions of the impact of telecommuting on urban form were suddenly replaced with dialogues about the impact of terrorism.
Many worried that refugee firms displaced by the loss of office space in lower Manhattan would never return from the places they had moved to in New Jersey or Connecticut. Others (including noted urbanist James Howard Kunstler) argued that the lesson of the day was that skyscrapers were inherently dangerous (and unnecessary), or that density itself put people in harm’s way. For safety’s sake, “don’t bunch up,” urged historian Steven Ambrose. “In this age of electronic revolution… it is no longer necessary to pack so many people and office into such small space as lower Manhattan. They can be scattered in neighboring regions and states, where they can work just as efficiently and in far more security.” (For more overt “sprawl as defense” arguments go here or here. For a response go here.) Some worried about the impact of hardening security on the culture of city life. Perhaps surveillance would erode freedoms and encroach on public spaces to the point of stifling the interaction that helps makes cities vibrant.
A feeling emerged, that these new concerns might team up with the effects that had previously been chipping away at the benefits of proximity, exacerbating the diffusion of density and the transformation of urban form. At the time there was broad public discussion of whether cities as we knew them might be doomed.
Before we ever considered whether these fears were founded – before we could sift through the data that emerged in the months and years following the 9/11 attacks that would empirically describe the impacts of terrorism on urban form – we collectively stopped thinking about the issue. Life went on, and after a period of thinking about the impact of 9/11 on everything, we simply stopped.
If you want read about the impact of terror on urban form from an empirical perspective, the best place I’ve found to start is Peter Eisinger’s “The American City in the Age of Terror: A Preliminary Assessment of the Effects of September 11,” from the September 2004 issue of Urban Affairs Review. (You can download it here if you have a U of M user ID.) Eisinger gives a thorough review of academic thought about the future of cities in the period immediately following the attacks. Then, presenting evidence regarding the impact of the attacks on urban government and policy, urban economies, and city life, Eisenger explains why many of our immediate fears were unfounded. Eisinger concludes that “perhaps the biggest lesson so far about cities in the aftermath of the terror attacks is that they are resilient.”
And that is the word of the day: resilient. You can read it in Howard Chernick’s 2005 book Resilient City: The Economic Impact of 9/11. You can read it Lawrence Vale and Thomas Campanella’s The Resilient City: How Modern Cities Recover from Disaster. And you can read it James Harrigan and Philippe Martin’s “Terrorism and the Resilience of Cities,” which appropriately concludes, “the forces that lead to city formation also enable cities to be highly resilient in the face of catastrophes such as terrorist attacks, because they constitute a force for agglomeration that is very difficult to overcome.”
The benefits of proximity prevail, for now.
Many worried that refugee firms displaced by the loss of office space in lower Manhattan would never return from the places they had moved to in New Jersey or Connecticut. Others (including noted urbanist James Howard Kunstler) argued that the lesson of the day was that skyscrapers were inherently dangerous (and unnecessary), or that density itself put people in harm’s way. For safety’s sake, “don’t bunch up,” urged historian Steven Ambrose. “In this age of electronic revolution… it is no longer necessary to pack so many people and office into such small space as lower Manhattan. They can be scattered in neighboring regions and states, where they can work just as efficiently and in far more security.” (For more overt “sprawl as defense” arguments go here or here. For a response go here.) Some worried about the impact of hardening security on the culture of city life. Perhaps surveillance would erode freedoms and encroach on public spaces to the point of stifling the interaction that helps makes cities vibrant.
A feeling emerged, that these new concerns might team up with the effects that had previously been chipping away at the benefits of proximity, exacerbating the diffusion of density and the transformation of urban form. At the time there was broad public discussion of whether cities as we knew them might be doomed.
Before we ever considered whether these fears were founded – before we could sift through the data that emerged in the months and years following the 9/11 attacks that would empirically describe the impacts of terrorism on urban form – we collectively stopped thinking about the issue. Life went on, and after a period of thinking about the impact of 9/11 on everything, we simply stopped.
If you want read about the impact of terror on urban form from an empirical perspective, the best place I’ve found to start is Peter Eisinger’s “The American City in the Age of Terror: A Preliminary Assessment of the Effects of September 11,” from the September 2004 issue of Urban Affairs Review. (You can download it here if you have a U of M user ID.) Eisinger gives a thorough review of academic thought about the future of cities in the period immediately following the attacks. Then, presenting evidence regarding the impact of the attacks on urban government and policy, urban economies, and city life, Eisenger explains why many of our immediate fears were unfounded. Eisinger concludes that “perhaps the biggest lesson so far about cities in the aftermath of the terror attacks is that they are resilient.”
And that is the word of the day: resilient. You can read it in Howard Chernick’s 2005 book Resilient City: The Economic Impact of 9/11. You can read it Lawrence Vale and Thomas Campanella’s The Resilient City: How Modern Cities Recover from Disaster. And you can read it James Harrigan and Philippe Martin’s “Terrorism and the Resilience of Cities,” which appropriately concludes, “the forces that lead to city formation also enable cities to be highly resilient in the face of catastrophes such as terrorist attacks, because they constitute a force for agglomeration that is very difficult to overcome.”
The benefits of proximity prevail, for now.
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