It’s illuminating to reflect on Marin’s ongoing dilemmas from a different perspective. Having just left the United Kingdom and Holland for Norway, here are a few observations.
London and Amsterdam are enormously prosperous cities historically with high-density housing and world-class public transit. Despite their density, real estate prices and rents are comparable to equally prosperous New York and the Bay Area.
“Prosperous” is what these boomtowns have in common. Good, well-paying jobs necessarily bring floods of highly compensated young professionals to work in vibrant places.
The frustration for those who aren’t in high-demand professions or businesses is the same everywhere. It’s not unique to Marin, Palo Alto or San Francisco. When the demand is great and the length of every boom is inherently limited, no region can build itself out of the scarcity phenomenon.
More market-rate housing will just expand their place as chock-a-block expensive job-centers concentrating on high-wage 21st Century industries.
To find lower-cost housing everywhere the answer is moving to low-wage/low-cost communities like Manchester in England’s Midlands or California’s Central Valley, where low-paying jobs lead to ample low-priced housing. It’s no different in booming Sydney, Barcelona or San Diego.
The way to achieve “affordable” subsidized workforce housing is to concentrate on that segment. Building more market-rate apartments like Corte Madera’s much-derided Tam Ridge Apartments simply enriches developers while their minimal affordable component is just a feel-good token.
Amsterdam is the cycling nirvana that bike advocates have long pushed America to emulate.
The Netherlands’ largest city is table-flat; the ideal topography for bikes. Bergen in progressive Norway is as hilly as Southern Marin and cycling is rare.
Dutch cycling isn’t limited to the young and fit. Most bike trips in Holland are for work or shopping, not for exercise. Holland demonstrates cycling is a viable alternative in Marin’s flat town centers, the Ross Valley and even Novato. Concentrate bike infrastructure there instead of aspirational follies on the Richmond-San Rafael Bridge’s upper deck.
In Holland few children seem to be cycling due to aggressive adults and motor bike riders who are permitted to use bikeways.
Public transit in London and Amsterdam is comprehensive but traffic remains intolerable, particularly in the British capital. Like expensive housing, traffic congestion, crowded buses, trams and subways go with the turn in prosperous metropolitan areas.
I’ve long admired London Transport as the world’s best system but complaints about the Underground, as with New York’s subway, are ever-present. It’s the inevitable consequence of old, well-utilized systems operating at over-capacity.
Everywhere renewable energy is the norm. Approaching Amsterdam by air from England I spotted a wind farm close to the Dutch shore. Solar is common while coal is an anachronism. Here, climate change isn’t a political issue associated with one party or state television; it’s simply a modern fact that all agree needs to be addressed.
Arriving in London, an American Embassy advisory told us to “keep a low profile.” It was reminiscent on the 1960s, when traveling Americans pretended to be Canadian to avoid caustic comments about U.S. involvement in Vietnam.
Today the cause is President Trump’s visit. Trump is loathed in Europe except by the authoritarian right.
Happily for travelers, most Londoners sense that if Americans have the interest to visit they are unlikely to be Trumpicans. The British have disposed of the notion that the U.S. is a dependable ally, reluctantly realizing their best way forward is developing alliances with more reliable partners. Trust takes years to build, but was just lost in a New York second.
Columnist Dick Spotswood of Mill Valley writes on local issues Sundays and Wednesdays. Email him at spotswood@comcast.net.
