Physical Address

304 North Cardinal St.
Dorchester Center, MA 02124

Month June 2008

How to Obscure Reality to Make Planners Seem Important

Regular reader, Bill forwarded this article from the New York Daily News calling it an “outstanding collection of anti-density and anti-market propaganda presented (as always) as objective journalism.” The article is riddled with misconceptions (aka Urbanism Legends) about zoning and development and is a perfect example of the quality of journalism that touches on city development issues referenced in today’s earlier post, Journalists and Cities. Let’s spot the more egregious statements from City and residents aim to keep Rockaway low-density: “The hope is to spur investment by maintaining low-scale development that fits into the area’s historic character. Similar zoning changes in Bay Ridge, Park Slope and the West Village along the Hudson River inspired great growth.” hmmm, restrictions inspire growth? Rockaway’s last zoning change came in 1961, allowing multifamily homes to be built where single-family homes once stood. The results were rapid development and streets butchered by an ungainly mix of large and small apartment buildings and homes. Wait, growth is bad? “We don’t have the space to be densely populated, and the owners of these big buildings don’t even live here” more space :: more density? not the equation I learned “Home prices should begin a steady increase if this zoning gets us better transportation.” This “zoning” that brings transportation sounds even nicer than the tooth fairy, and just as real. “I don’t know if the new upzoning of 116th St. will work, but I do know that the old, low-scale zoning on 116th St. did not bring in the amount of new businesses and investment required to improve the area.” Then again, density is good for retail… To ensure that parking does not become a problem, Gaska worked with Burden’s city planners to ensure that each new development has parking for at least 85 percent of the residents, […]

Journalists and Cities

Here’s a link to an interesting article by Scott Page at Planetizen called A Journalistic View of Cities Scott discusses how mainstream journalists are poorly equipped to write appropriately on urban issues aside from than architecture. I was reading the New York Times Magazine special architecture issue a few weeks ago when something jumped out at me. On the intro page to the issue of the “Mega-Megalopolis” one of the by-line says “How does an architect plan for a city with no history? Or a city that just keeps growing?” Interesting questions particularly given the fact that to charge architects with the task of planning our cities is affording too much power to a profession that simply doesn’t have it. Nor do planners for that matter. I’ve made it no secret in this blog that cities are the product of thousands of decisions made by individuals, organizations, leaders, businesses among others. We have the opportunity to guide some of those decisions and make more informed choices but the days of Hausmann and Napoleon who transformed Paris in the span of a few decades are coming to a close. Yes, yes, I know that China and a handful of other places are building cities ridiculously fast today and I also know that starchitects are generally charged with the task of creating large master plans to guide this government-sponsored development. I think we also know how unique a situation that is. Architects are flocking to build in China and Dubai precisely because of this unique opportunity. Where else can you feel like Robert Moses or Albert Speer, able to shape a city in a single bound? But what struck me most about the architecture issue is that the public’s perspective on cities today is written primarily by architecture critics. (emphasis mine) What’s […]

Social Networking With Market Urbanism

Last week, a reader submitted a Market Urbanism post to Reddit, a social networking site. The submission generated quite a bit of traffic from the economics category on Reddit.  It was #3 on the hot list for economics for a while that day. Seeing what kind of traffic that can be generated from Social Networking, I created accounts at the main sites I am familiar with: Here are links to connect with Market Urbanism at Reddit, DIGG, and del.icio.us. I am not so well versed in the best ways to do this type of social networking, so leave a comment of you have any advice on how make the best use of social networking…

Urban[ism] Legend: Zoning Creates Density

This post will be the first of many of an ongoing feature at Market Urbanism entitled Urbanism Legends. (a play on the term: “Urban Legends” in case you didn’t catch that) In many public forums and in the blogosphere, I consistently encounter myths about land development and Urban Economics. These myths typically look at how policies may benefit or harm a specific person or groups of people. However, as with many popular economic misconceptions, these viewpoints fail to look at how a particular policy may affect other, less visible people. These less visible people are the ones who William Graham Sumner called “The Forgotten Man” in a famous 1883 lecture. These myths are plentiful, and I expect the feature to be stocked with myths to dispel well into the distant future. In many different contexts, I have heard people argue that liberalizing zoning restrictions will cause “over development” or high density development filled with low income people. Even in relatively low density areas, people make the sensationalist argument that if zoning restrictions were lifted, high rises would be built in their community, creating congestion and overburdening infrastructure. On the other end of the spectrum, I have even heard free-market advocates argue against Smart Growth and other urbanist concepts using several Urbanism Legends. They argue that Smart Growth goes against the market and causes density to increase in urban areas. They are correct when they refer to Urban Growth Boundaries that restrict development in outlying areas. Strangely, these market advocates rarely applaud Smart Growth proponents advocacy for loosening zoning restrictions in infill areas. They have argued that the upzoning discourages single family homes, which is the desired living arrangement for most people. And that the market should allow for more single family homes. The reality is that zoning can not create […]

NYC 20-Somethings’ Stagnant Wages and Higher Cost of Living

I need help with this one. Is this a phenomenon of statistical cherry-picking or a true trend that should worry us? New York Observer – A Yoke for the White Collar New York’s college grads now hustle for jobs paying 1970s wages. Meet their coping mechanism—massive debt! A younger New Yorker could be forgiven for running up debt: Real wages for 20-something professionals in New York haven’t changed since the early 1970s. At the same time, the number of college grads competing for white-collar jobs has increased—as has the cost of everything from real estate to beer to MetroCards. image from article: Nigel Holmes: Source: Gotham Gazette, June 19, 2007 In 1970, 19.5 percent of New Yorkers in their 20s had college degrees, according to the analysis. By 2005, that percentage had more than doubled. By 2006, roughly one in three New Yorkers 25 and older had at least a college degree, according to N.Y.U.’s Furman Center for Real Estate and Urban Policy. For younger college grads, the job market has become ever more competitive and the monetary rewards stagnant. And yet they come. Something doesn’t seem right and I can’t put my finger on it. The statistics seem a little cherry-picked, but I have suspicion that some important demographic trend is being neglected. Sure, I can see where wages are stagnant, but as more college educated young people have moved to New York? Have shifts in immigration trends caused this? Or perhaps loss of manufacturing jobs that paid relatively well for young native New Yorkers? I think it’s safe to say that many more college students have flocked to New York in the past decade, and many college students are taking longer to graduate. Could part of it be that more 20-somethings in New York are spending more time […]

Subsidies and Taxes Favor Owning Over Renting

Paul Krugman asks a question that has been addressed at Market Urbansim: But here’s a question rarely asked, at least in Washington: Why should ever-increasing homeownership be a policy goal? How many people should own homes, anyway? Listening to politicians, you’d think that every family should own its home — in fact, that you’re not a real American unless you’re a homeowner. “If you own something,” Mr. Bush once declared, “you have a vital stake in the future of our country.” Presumably, then, citizens who live in rented housing, and therefore lack that “vital stake,” can’t be properly patriotic. Because the I.R.S. lets you deduct mortgage interest from your taxable income but doesn’t let you deduct rent, the federal tax system provides an enormous subsidy to owner-occupied housing. On top of that, government-sponsored enterprises — Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and the Federal Home Loan Banks — provide cheap financing for home buyers; investors who want to provide rental housing are on their own. (Krugman neglects to mention that landlords also deduct mortgage interest, passing some of the savings to tenants. However, landlords pay taxes on income and gains, which the homeowner usually does not.) Krugman then gives 3 downsides to society of encouraging ownership: First of all, there’s the financial risk. Although it’s rarely put this way, borrowing to buy a home is like buying stocks on margin: if the market value of the house falls, the buyer can easily lose his or her entire stake. I agree, sometimes these risks are better absorbed by the capital markets if the risks cannot be properly diversified through an individual’s portfolio. Owning a home also ties workers down. Even in the best of times, the costs and hassle of selling one home and buying another — one estimate put the average cost […]

Should Government Own Wilderness?

I found a link to a great article at FreeColorado.com. It doesn’t apply to urbanism specifically, but conceptually deals with privatization of publicly owned land. Free Colorado – Should Government Own Wilderness? The original article was from Grand Junction Free Press – Armstrong Column: Should the government own, manage wilderness? here’s a few quotes I enjoyed: Just how far do we want to push our free-market agenda? The short answer is all the way. A free market means that people’s rights to control their resources and associate with others voluntarily, so long as they don’t violate the rights of others, are consistently protected. It means that the initiation of force is outlawed. The alternative is coercion: taking people’s resources by force and and threatening them with jail for not doing what you want. We refuse to sanction the mixed economy, the current blend of some liberty and some socialist controls. We advocate liberty, all the time, without exception. Politically, of course, it’s usually easier to stop the government takeover of something new (such as a recreation facility) than to restore a government-controlled entity to the free market. Even though there’s no reason whatever for the national government to run trains or deliver the mail, the National Railroad Passenger Corporation (Amtrak) and the United States Post Office have resisted market reforms. Trains and mail remain largely socialized industries. It seems that organizations like the Sierra Club complain most loudly about federal wilderness management. Therefore, we suggest simply giving many federal lands to the Sierra Club or similar groups. We’re confident they would do a good job managing the land, and they’d be more open to charging fees for use and even drilling to pay for land management. The rest could be transferred to a privatized Forest Service or sold, with the […]

Could a Private Street Look Like This?

photo at Brooklyn Paper was attributed to Montague Street Business Improvement District Stephen at rationalitate occasionally brings up that truly privatized streets could be converted to other uses. I think it would be inevitable that on streets with many shops and cafes, such as Montague Street in Brooklyn, the shops may get together to form some sort of association to own the street. Perhaps on weekdays, the association who own the street would allow commercial traffic which benefits their businesses, and on nights and weekends close off the street for seating and pedestrians. I guess we’ll never know until some city is bold enough to try it. Brooklyn Paper – Montague on grass! The grassy plazas would not cut off traffic on the busy side streets. As such, the bike advocacy group Transportation Alternatives said that the plan would not wreck havoc on car traffic. In fact, it would bring more people to the street, mostly by subway, foot or bike. “It will also encourage Sunday sales for our merchants,” said BID Executive Director Chelsea Mauldin. “People can come out, pick up a coffee, read the paper, and enjoy the sunshine.”

Gramercy Park: Private Open Space

photo by flickr user wallyg Back in the days in the Wild Wild East of private land ownership and limited land-use restrictions, parks were actually created by market forces. The same forces that created and preserved Gramercy Park could easily be used to preserve Historic Landmarks and low density “neighborhood character”. NY Times – The Guardian of Gramercy Park Indeed, while a key to Gramercy Park — or, more precisely, an address that entitles one to such a key — is among the most coveted items of New York real estate, under Ms. Harrison’s stewardship, the park has become perhaps the least-used patch of open space in the city. Most days, in nice weather, one would be hard-pressed to find more than a handful of people in the park at once, and few linger. Gramercy is one of two private parks in New York City (the other, in Queens, is Sunnyside Gardens Park), and a key is required not only to enter, but to leave through a gate in its wraparound wrought-iron fence. Each of the 63 lots on which the current 39 buildings sit gets two keys, which residents (and guests at the Gramercy Park Hotel) may borrow from their doormen. In addition, residents of those buildings — but only those — may purchase keys for $350 per year; the keys are all but impossible to copy and cost $1,000 to replace. About 400 people now have keys, but many of them apparently sit unused in junk drawers in the grand foyers in the apartments overlooking the park. One sunny morning last week, as Ms. Harrison chatted with the Rev. Thomas F. Pike, rector of Calvary-St. George’s Church, there were three others in the park: a woman checking her BlackBerry, a custodial worker and a jogger. On a Saturday […]

Demographics + Transportation Costs + Lower Crime = More Urbanization

WSJ: Suburbs a Mile Too Far for Some Demographic Changes, High Gasoline Prices May Hasten Demand for Urban Living Messrs. Boseman and Wells embody trends that are dovetailing to potentially reshape a half-century-long pattern of how and where Americans live: The drivable suburb — that bedrock of post-World War II society — is for many a mile too far. In recent years, a generation of young people, called the millennials, born between the late 1970s and mid-1990s, has combined with baby boomers to rekindle demand for urban living. Today, the subprime-mortgage crisis and $4-a-gallon gasoline are delivering further gut punches by blighting remote subdivisions nationwide and rendering long commutes untenable for middle-class Americans. Peter Gordon contends that urbanism correlate less with gas prices than crime rates: Harry Richardson and Soojung Kim and I presented a conference paper earlier this year where we looked at the cycles of suburbanization-exurbanization since 1969. Our Figures 2a-2g and Tables 3-4 and 3-5 show the “rural renaissance” of the early 70s and how that reversed as the price of gasoline spiked in the early 1980s. But the following cycles of reversal of reversal and so forth did not track gasoline prices. The largest metros came back again in the late 1990s when gas prices were very low. The suburbanization-exurbanization-ruralization cycles that we found tracked the ebb and flow of crime rates better than gasoline prices. It makes sense to me. Those who prefer urban living had possibly been discouraged by higher urban crime rates of the past. Nonetheless, gas prices will have some long-term effect on where rational people choose to live. If crime continues to subside, could this be the perfect storm? Demographics + higher transportation costs + low crime –> high degrees of urbanization over the next decade. Let’s hope cities welcome the […]

Trending now

gentrification
Only 2 Ways to Fight Gentrification (you’re not going to like one of them)
The problem with “public” transportation
The Great American Streetcar Myth
O’Toole Under More Fire