Institute of Urban and Regional Development

Transportation systems are the glue that binds together American cities. From the first boulevard, through the horse-drawn streetcars of the 19^th Century, through the electric trolleys of the early 1990s, to the freeways of the post-World War II era, transportation investments have long played a defining role in guiding the growth and development of metropolitan areas. What is today called the “transportation-land use connection” has been the object of study by geographers and economists for more than 150 years, and the focus of attention for developers and speculators for even longer.

This report explores the transit-land use connection from the transit side. Drawing on data for five urban rail transit systems here in California (BART, CalTrain, Sacramento Light Rail, the San Diego Trolley, and Santa Clara Light Rail), it uses statistical models to clarify the relationships between transit investments, land uses, and property values. Four types of transit-land use/ property value relationships are considered:

- Relationships between rail transit investments and single-family home prices;

- Relationships between rail transit investments and commercial property values;

- Relationships between rail transit investments and station area land use changes; and,

- Relationships between rail transit investments and metropolitan-scale land use changes

In the policy context, this report responds to policy questions. The first is fiscal in nature; the second relates to issues of development policy.

New data gathered by the Census, larger computers, and significant advances in the statistical and mathematical treatment of demographic variables make it possible to conceive of a system of National Interregional Demographic Accounts. Such a system of accounts would subdivide the nation into a number of areas, possibly as fine as counties, and provide a complete picture of their population changes through births, deaths, migratory flows from all other localities and from abroad. It would be superior to the individual analyses and projections of particular localities by recognizing the interdependence of all localities, linking intimately the past and future history of each with those of the rest of the system. This system of accounts could be used to make projections of the national distribution of population under alternative birth rates, and it would serve to test the direct and indirect consequences of a variety of alternative national growth policies.

This report focuses on two concrete developments. One is the historical process that produced the Bay Area Rapid Transit District in 1957 and the district's particular regional rapid transit plan, approved by the voters of Alameda, Contra Costa, and San Francisco counties in November, 1962. The other is the process that produced the Alameda-Contra Costa Transit District in 1955 and 1956, and the particular transit service this District began operating in 1960. The relation between the two districts, the latter is contained within the former's territory, is one of the central concerns.

These developments are analyzed as contingent outcomes of a regional transit movement that was active during this period. Several aspects of this movement's history are analyzed. Its origins are located in the context of postwar automobile-based suburban growth and the decline of privately owned interurban transit. Government-owned interurban rapid transit, in addition to freeways and off-street parking, are discussed as the transport means sought by business and political leaders in downtown San Francisco and Oakland to maintain and enhance their competitive positions and to gain shares of postwar economic growth.

The composition of movement leadership groups is described; the informal and formal regional organizations they created are analyzed with particular reference to the internal conflicts which delayed the movement's progress in the early years, and then caused it to fracture and partially disintegrate during the latter period. These conflicts are interpreted as instances of urban mercantilist politics. Existing central business districts were in competition with each other while they were also in competition with growing suburban commercial zones. Transit was a controversial political terrain on which the many places in the region sought to gain competitive locational advantages.

The movement sponsored a pioneering venture in regional transportation planning; the central planning innovation was a regional rapid transit system designed to function in a metropolitan area where land use patterns had been and would continue to be shaped by the motor vehicle. The important roles of private consulting firms and representatives of private financial capital in the public works planning process are high-lighted.

Several alternative transit system designs were technically feasible and were advocated by various interested individuals and groups. The political and economic reasons why some technical features, such as an underwater tube, were adopted, and others, such as the bus rapid transit, were rejected are discussed; the priorities of an alliance between downtown Oakland and San Francisco account for many of the technical choices made.

In addition to its internal, mercantilist dimension, two aspects of the movement's situation are considered. One of these is its relation to the three major privately owned interurban transit companies in the region. The decline of Key System, which was controlled by national City Lines from 1946 through 1960, and its consequences are traced in detail. The role of the California Public Utilities Commission, which closely regulated privately owned transit companies, is analyzed.

The other aspect is the relation of the transit movement to the large-scale program of freeway and bridge building conducted by state government agencies. The movement's progress was intimately linked with bridge location controversies that raged during the period; the political and design connections between transit and freeways are explored, particularly with regard to the San Francisco freeway "revolt" of 1959.

This report examines recent experiences in the U.S. with transit-supportive developments – projects which, by design, give attention to the particular needs of transit users and pedestrians. The study focuses mainly on experiences in the suburbs and exurbs of large U.S. metropolises, which in most cases are served only by bus transit. Assessments are carried out at three levels – individual sites, neighborhoods, and communities. Since in the course of the research we found fewer U.S. examples of transit-supportive developments in bus-only suburban-exurban environs than popular accounts might have us believe, the study gives particular emphasis to implementation issues – how recent market and regulatory factors have influenced the transit-supportive design movement.

At the origins of the research presented here lie a dramatic dilemma and a striking paradox.

The dilemma concerns teh apparent contradiction between the use of resources to foster economic growth and the necessity to provide public expenses to cover elementary human needs. In most of the developing world, the housing situation has continued to deteriorate in the largest metropolitan areas. This has been true even when the areas were experiencing periods of sustained economic growth, as was the case for most of Asia, and for Latin America until the 1980s. The growing proportion of squatters among urban dwellers all over the world is evidence of this dilemma. thus, housing appears to be a burden for development and a need almost impossible to satisfy for the majority of the population until much later stages of development, which may never be reached by a given country.

The paradox is that Singapore and Hong Kong, the two countries with the highest rate of economic growth of the last 25 years, are also the countries that have built the two largest public housing systems in the world during that period. Their public housing systems are the largest in terms of the proportion of the population housed by the government (in 1987, 46 percent for Hong Kong, 86 percent for Singapore). It may be argued that it is precisely their economic growth that has made it affordable for the government to spend so much for public goods. However, the public housing programs actually preceded the process of economic growth and went hand-in-hand with it throughout the period when the growth occurred. It can be reasonably proposed that there is a meaningful relationship -- and not just a historical coincidence -- between these two processes: namely, a high rate of economic growth and the building of a comprehensive public housing program. At least, such is the thesis that we put forward and that we will try to prove and to document in this monograph. To be sure, both countries are very specific. Both are city states and tiny in their physical dimension, but other developing countries have similar or smaller populations. For example, Hong Kong is more populated than all Central American countries with the exception of Guatemala. While size is an important factor, it does not determine the extent or even the form of a housing program: all the public housing estates of Singapore (which house 86 percent of the 2.6 million population) still occupy only less than 5 percent of the island's surface. However, we will not argue against the obvious specificity of the urban situations studied here. What we are concerned with are the economic, social, and political mechanisms that made possible these public housing programs and their positive interaction with the process of economic development. These mechanisms are what could be considered as potential elements for the formulation of housing policies in other contexts, not the actual forms and institutions of the public housing progress in the two city-states.

By way of contrast, we have studied the connection between housing policy and industrial development in Shenzhen, which lies across teh border from Hong Kong and is the most important of the Chinese Special Economic Zones. These economic zones have been set up by a socialist state, China, as a deliberate counterpoint to the successful Asian newly industrialized countries (three of them of primarily Chinese ethnic composition). In these zones, China is trying to reproduce the mechanism of participation in the international economy as the key for economic success. Interestingly enough, housing policy is the one element that the Chinese government has NOT replicated in Shenzhen. Instead, it has actually used housing as a profit-making mechanism whose benefits go to real estate companies, public or private, and through them, to the government revenues. Thus, in an approximate manner, we can shift the terms of our paradox (the connection between capitalist industrialization and nonprofit housing in Hong Kong and Singapore): Shenzhen provides us with the opportunity too analyze the effects of profit-making housing on socialist industrialization.

For our analysis, we conducted research over a period of four years, from 1983 to 1987, although with varying intensity during this time span. Manuel Castells conducted a pilot study in Hong Kong in 1983, supported by the Center of Urban Studies of the University of Hong Kong. Reginald Kwok started a study in 1985 of economic and spatial development in Shenzhen. Lee Goh combined professional work and reflection upon it as an architect at the Singapore Housing Development Board in 1979-82 and 1984-86. In 1986, the University of California's Pacific Rim Research Program, the Institute of International Studies, and the Institute of Urban and Regional Development at Berkeley provided their full financial and institutional support to the project. At this time the study became a full-fledged research program that engaged most of the time and the effort of the three researchers from the Fall of 1986 to the end of 1987. Manuel Castells in Hong Kong, with the cooperation of Reginald Kwok and the research assistance of To Lap-kee; renewed field work research by Reginald Kwok and To Lap-kee in Shenzhen; and field work in Singapore by Manuel Castells and Lee Goh. Data analysis and elaboration of the research proceeded throughout the whole period in Hong Kong, Singapore, and Berkeley, with the researchers moving around the Pacific in a truly international cooperative venture.

The work relied on data collected by three different procedures: (1) Personal observation and acquaintance with the subject; (2) a systematic search of secondary sources, in terms of monographs, statistics, and documents (the theses materials produced and deposited in the Universities of Hong Kong and Singapore proved precious in that sense); (3) in-depth interviews of key actors of economic development, housing policy, and policy-making in general. The interviews provided the main materials for the analysis. We conducted interviews in Hong Kong, Singapore, and Shenzhen, and even in London, where Reginald Kwok had to go to meet Hong Kong's retired governor, Sir Murray MacLehose. In total, nearly 100 focused interviews were conducted, with written notes taken in all cases. Interviews lasted between 45 minutes and two hours, with an average time of one and one-quarter hours. In addition to the interviews, about 40 planned visits to housing estates, neighborhoods, offices, and factories were also performed. A list of interviews for each city is presented in appendices to the corresponding chapters.

The result of this data-gathering enterprise is an extraordinary documentation that could have easily overwhelmed the analytical purpose of our research. We have made an effort to be succinct and focused in our analysis, but the courageous reader may find it useful to skip through the pages of this monograph and focus on those themes and propositions that are really at the core of our endeavour: that economic growth and the quality of urban life not only are compatible aspects of the development process but that they can be synergistic in their contribution to such process.

The study of New York’s biotechnology industry is published here in attempt to present the value of adopting a regional approach to the analysis of advanced technology industries, and to explore the extent to which distinctive economic policies are required, by both commercial and government organizations, to nurture the growth of industries based on knowledge rather than tangible resources. It presents evidence for the importance of focusing on the “region” as the unit of analysis in studies of industrial competitiveness, in addition to those of the nation or the individual firm.

This report summarizes the results of the comprehensive study of the biotechnology industry across the whole of New York state. A great deal of care was directed towards ensuring that organizations included in the study were properly classified and accurately documented; this has resulted in a body of information and an analytical framework which may serve as a benchmark for future studies of the industry and assessments of its evolving economic performance. The study has revealed a substantial, complex, and changing industry that is emerging with the potential to play a key role in the evolution of New York’s economy. There are a number of distinctive local biotechnology industry clusters within the state, each of which has special strengths, needs, and relationships to the surrounding community. Public initiatives or cooperative industry efforts to strengthen the position of biotechnology in New York will need to be tailored to the specific conditions that apply in each of the local clusters.

This purpose of this report is to provide a 20-year perspective into the land use impacts of BART. The analysis concentrates on historical changes in private residential and non-residential (e.g., commercial, industrial, office) land development for a sample of stations on various segments of the BART system. This report is admittedly not all encompassing. Other reports from the BART at 20 study are documenting BART’s impacts on residential values, population and employment growth, and other indicators of development trends. This report concentrates on documenting land use changes around specific stations, and, from these results, generalizing about the land use impacts of BART among classes of stations. For a sample of stations, differences in land use changes around BART stations and matched pairs of nearby freeway interchanges are also compared. Models are also presented that identify factors associated with station-area land-use changes. The report concludes by merging the results of individual station-area studies, and drawing policy inferences from these findings.

This study examines the potential for individuals trapped in dead-end jobs in the service economy to cross the Digital Divide into jobs in the knowledge economy. The conventional wisdom is that the lack of human capital entraps workers in dead-end jobs, unable to capitalize on the demand for high-skilled labor in an increasingly networked -- and exclusive -- society. Other approaches focus on the demand side, suggesting that information technology (IT) itself acts to exacerbate societal divisions and ultimately income inequality, particularly in high-tech regions. IT not only drives the bifurcation of the economy into high-end knowledge analyst and low-skill service jobs, but also creates a new networked system of economic organization that has few access points for those who are "switched off." The implication is that as globalization accelerates and IT jobs shift offshore, these patterns of bifurcation, inequality, and job inaccessibility will only grow worse.

The author argues instead that a low-wage future is not inevitable for disadvantaged groups. The downskilling of IT work, along with the rise of workforce intermediaries, creates an opportunity to move large numbers of low-wage workers into jobs with a career ladder, particularly at the peak of the business cycle. Although some entry-level work is disappearing offshore, the economy still offers opportunities for jobseekers with little college education to work in IT. Nonprofit training programs in the "second-chance" employment and training system play an important role in making the transition possible for those whom the educational system has failed. The majority of training program graduates remain in IT four years later, with a clear career trajectory ahead.

The question addressed in this paper asks how to measure the value of additional expenditures for transportation compared to the value of spending for education, health, recreation, or other social services. The relevance of the inquiry has been increased by the rising costs of transportation, by the further pressures on cost from such factors as energy and metropolitan growth, and by the mounting competition for scarce resources in a period of economic uncertainty and expanding consumer demands. The approach suggested for dealing with this practical but elusive question is based on statistical relationships between the movement of people and goods and levels of economic activity in this country and abroad. Both the history of transportation and present day comparisons among nations in different stages of development make it clear that transportation is an essential ingredient of economic progress: the rich enjoy a high degree of mobility and the poor suffer from lack of mobility. At the same time transportation is only the means by which societies achieve other objectives, and there is a limit to the resources that can be effectively allocated to movement rather than to other needs. Going beyond that limit means that the basic objectives of a society will be neglected.