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Stephen Smith

Stephen Smith

I graduated Spring 2010 from Georgetown undergrad, with an entirely unrelated and highly regrettable major that might have made a little more sense if I actually wanted to become an international trade lawyer, but which alas seems good for little else. I still do most of the tweeting for Market Urbanism Stephen had previously written on urbanism at Forbes.com. Articles Profile; Reason Magazine, and Next City
  • Joined: May 21, 2025
  • Articles: 282
  • Comments: 41

When “affordable housing” is just a random middle class housing subsidy

Affordable housing and inclusionary zoning are complicated subjects and it’s hard to sum up all my thoughts and objections to the schemes in one post, so I’m going to take the death-by-a-thousand-cuts approach. Today’s installment: income eligibility levels. Now, the stated intent of affordable housing set-asides has always been a bit unclear to me. The cynic in me thinks it’s just a way for politicians to buy votes with public money by essentially randomly redistributing from the many (market-rate renters and buyers) to the few (the lucky handful to win the lotteries for coveted subsidized units). The stated motivation, though, seems to range anywhere from a combination of helping the poor find housing to having a little bit of housing diversity, even if that “diversity” means upper-middle class alongside upper class. In my experience, though, the programs end up overwhelmingly fulfilling the latter goal. The latest example I’ve come upon, which doesn’t seem too out of the ordinary, is from a project called Tivoli Square in the Columbia Heights neighborhood of  DC, which looks like it’s associated with the big development corporation-driven DCUSA project (As an aside, DCUSA was basically a huge urban mall in what was an obviously gentrifying neighborhood. The city ended up spending a large amount of money on a parking garage that now mostly sits empty, and they’ve been having trouble renting the retail spaces set aside for local businesses. It’s also architecturally pretty ugly, and houses way more national chains than the rest of the neighborhood. Politicians hail it as a success, but in my opinion it’s the worst thing to happen to Columbia Heights since urban renewal.) Anyway, the zipcode’s median household income in 2009 was $57,393, and the project had a 20% set-aside for some combination of low- and medium-income. The upper limit for “low income” ranges from $50,000 for […]

The effects of the Bloomberg rezonings

Here’s a chapter in a book (you can read a lot of it for free) by the same authors of the NYC parking minimum study, but this time on the practical effects of the Bloomberg rezonings. Here’s an excerpt from the conclusion: This study helps to shed light on the land use consequences of this tension between citywide goals and the political and administrative realities often emanating from neighborhood concerns about development by analyzing the cumulative impact the rezonings the City enacted between 2003 and 2007 had on residential development capacity. By identifying lots that were affected by these zoning changes and estimating the resulting change in residential development capacity, we find that the net impact has been a modest overall increase in the City’s residential capacity. Consistent with the City’s desired development patterns, this modest increase has overwhelmingly been concentrated in neighborhoods near rail transit stations. We also find, however, that about half the capacity added near rail stations from upzonings was effectively canceled out by downzonings of lots near transit. While these downzonings may be important to protect neighborhoods from new development that existing infrastructure cannot support or that is inappropriate for other reasons, they may limit the City’s ability to grow, or force growth into other neighborhoods, including, perhaps, those that are even less well served by rail transit (or otherwise less suitable for development). The analysis only took into account maximum FAR, and did not consider parking minimums, height limits, or open space requirements as limiting factors. Those are, however, difficult to factor into analyses, since they influence development by adding costs rather than imposing hard limits, and the extent to which those costs inhibit development is dependent on future market conditions that are beyond the scope of any model.

From the comments: “Architects always ask, with a haggard look in their eyes…”

In response to yesterday’s post about landmark districts, one commenter said that it wasn’t a good example of landmarking gone awry, since the project was approved, apparently without controversy. Of course, he’s right – even the Landmarks Preservation Commission isn’t going to turn down an incredibly tasteful four-story neoclassical flagship store of a major American retailer in place of an unremarkable, run-down, two-story post-war building – the risk premium on this project was probably very low. But change any of the variables – have the new building be a bit taller or more modern, or, god forbid, have it replace a pre-war building – and all of the sudden you’re going to end up paying extra for the uncertainty. (And in fact, it’s highly likely that the only reason Ralph Lauren could afford to build such a store in that location in the first place was because the land was devalued by its restrictive landmarking and perhaps zoning.) As one commenter, whose email address suggests he works in real estate finance, puts it: It is always difficult and costly. Think of a few months delay. There is also the uncertainty. With zoning, you can build “as of right.” So, as long as you follow the law, you can spend vast amounts of time and money and care planning your project. With [the NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission], there is no certainty. That’s another ball game. Architects always ask, when you speak to them about your project, with a haggard look in their eyes, if the property is landmarked. It’s like having a high strung and unpredictable spouse who could blow up your project at any point, for any reason, and for none.

A question for the blogosphere: How much affordable housing is enough?

Reading about a new ultra-luxury Far West Side rental project going up where over 40% of the apartments are going to have controlled rents (“affordable housing”), I’d like to pose a question to supporters of affordable housing mandates in the planning blogosphere (which includes pretty much the whole planning blogosphere): How high is too high? I’d also be interested to know why exactly the developers included so much affordable housing. I’m pretty sure there’s no program that requires that much affordable housing (the 80/20 state program obviously only requires 20%), but I think commenter Alon Levy is probably right when he suggests that various subjective review processes pressure developers into including more subsidized units than the government officially asks for. Tom Duane, a State Senator, has some testimony up on his website about the project that gives us a look into the mind of what seems to be a typical (at least for New York City) affordable housing-type NIMBY. Back in 2009, when he gave the testimony, the plan was for 50% of the 1,200 units to be kept at below-market rents “permanently,” but even that wasn’t enough for Duane. He was upset that “only” 40% of those units will have two or more bedrooms, and also wanted the amount of commercial space scaled back from two floors (i.e., an FAR of 2.0) to just one (1.0 FAR). Oh yeah, and he doesn’t like the 31-story tower and he wants the developer to really promise not to transfer the unused development rights elsewhere. Obviously, I oppose setting aside this much of new developments for affordable housing. People tend to think of different segments of the real estate market as distinct – how on earth could limiting the number of rich people on Far West Side make prices rise in Bed-Stuy? […]

Old Urbanist on the failure of Boston’s newest park

Old Urbanist is one of my favorite urbanist blogs (and not just because of the name), and Charlie’s got a post up about Boston that I think has a good market urbanist lesson in it. He describes how the formerly elevated Central Artery, buried by the Big Dig, was replaced with a park, with nobody seeming to understand that highways’ damaging effects comes from what they demolish – buildings, and lots of them. An excerpt: With no one able to agree on anything in particular, the environmentalists of the late 1980s stepped in to offer the compelling alternative of nothing, packaged under the name “open space,” and obtained a requirement that 75% of the land above the buried highway be set aside for it.  The realization has only recently sunk in that even “nothing” must be paid for, as the conservancy tasked with maintaining the Greenway has now proposed taxing abutting property owners to raise funds, the largesse of Boston’s citizens, already maintaining several very large parks in close proximity, apparently falling short.  Thus, land that, under private ownership, might have provided millions of dollars in tax revenue to the city, and hosted thousands of jobs and apartments, has become a money pit. The missed opportunity is even more tragic given that one of the very few neighborhoods in the United States laid out in truly traditional fashion, the North End, with its narrow winding streets and attractive mid-rise architecture, sits right next to the Greenway.  The blank side walls of 19th century townhouses, their adjoining buildings demolished for the Artery in the 1950s, cry out to be extended southwards by new neighbors.  The elusive vision is right there, a reality, not a fantasy, yet somehow it escaped the attention of Boston’s elected officials, planners, architects and the public itself. […]

Links: A private cable car line for Hamburg, a private downtown for Quincy, Mass., and no adaptive reuse for Brooklyn

1. Hamburg’s newly-revitalized port could get a completely privately-funded cable car line, if the city allows it. 2. Quincy, Mass., a few T stops away from downtown Boston, is getting a new downtown from a private developer, replete with infrastructure and dense development. It’s unique, however, in that the city supposedly isn’t giving the developer huge tax breaks and infrastructure subsidies (more here). Here is an article about a previous project by the same developer, Street-Works. Environmentalists, predictably, are perturbed. In any case, the project sounds promising, though I guess the devil’s in the details. Anyone know anything more about it? 3. In Brooklyn, near a bridge, almost 150 years old, doesn’t have a roof! – adaptive reuse opportunities like Dumbo’s Tobacco Warehouse don’t come along too often, even in New York, so it’s unfortunate that developers are only being allowed to build to two stories (if they’re allowed to build at all). 4. Other cities seem to have plenty of people willing to do it for free, but Berkeley’s City Council actually subsidizes its BRT-hating NIMBYs to the tune of tens of thousands of dollars under the guise of the “Community Environmental Advisory Committee.” It’s a shame that every metro area doesn’t have a transit critic like the Drunk Engineer, who I think is the best transit commentator in the blogosphere. 5. Randal O’Toole on TriMet, Portland’s transit agency, and its mismanagement. 6. “A Requiem for ‘High-Speed Rail’,” from New Geography.

What favelas can teach us about America

Anthony Ling, an excellent Brazilian blogger who also happens to be an avowed market urbanism, gives us an interesting look at the politics and economics of low-income housing in Brazil: In Brazil there is a vast regulation defining what are the minimum requirements to have a building approved by local authorities. The most common example is probably the Building Codes set by each city, but specific details imposed by planning, environmental and building departments of each city are added to the equation. The recently created Performance Standard also follows this same path, being enforced nationally. The explanation given to establish this regulation is the legal guarantee that every citizen will have a minimum quality of living. However, those who study public policy understand that the passing of a law does not miraculously create high standard buildings accessible to all and, like many other laws, produces effects opposite to those desired. The lower standard building prohibition does just that: tough regulation prevents entrepreneurs from building accessible housing for the poor. This results in government spreading the idea that entrepreneurs think only about attending the high class, and transforms itself as the hero that will build millions of popular houses, as [Brazilian Pres. Dilma Rousseff] did with the Minha Casa, Minha Vida [My House, My Life] program. I think this has a very close parallel in modern American cities with inclusionary zoning and affordable housing mandates. In Brazil, the government creates a housing shortage by having unrealistical building safety standards (which ironically, as Anthony explains, encourage slums that are completely unregulated) and then swoops in and acts plays the savior with its own housing projects. In America, the government creates the shortage through sprawl-forcing zoning codes. But unlike Brazil’s public housing, our politicians instead use rent control (rebranded as “inclusionary zoning” or […]

Aaaand the bike lobby finally descends into self-parody…

Since I’ve spent the last couple of days pounding the O’Toole/Kotkin/Cox trifecta pretty hard, I figured it was time for a left-wing target: bike lanes. To be honest, I’ve always been a little annoyed with the bike wing of the urbanist lobby, but it was this article in Streetsblog, “How Ad Dollars Help Explain the Media’s Bike Backlash,” that pushed me over the edge. An excerpt: Now national media outlets have picked up the bike lane story, tucking it inside the parallel narrative of a trumped-up “war on cars”. In this weekend’s Wall Street Journal, humorist P.J. O’Rourke, who often waxes nostalgic about the masculinity of the lost muscle car culture, derides cyclists as antiquated relics relying on a dead technology, as silly children playing in the streets who somehow represent an existential threat to “innocent motorists” in two-ton vehicles, and, of course, as pawns in an Orwellian plot by the Department of Transportation to enslave us all. O’Rourke and Wall Street Journal prefer that most Americans are instead enslaved by auto lenders. O’Rourke’s piece cannot be seen as a simple appeal to libertarian readers of the conservative paper of record; it must also be seen as desperate bid to retain the love of the automakers, who keep the wheels of the presses rolling, and who are appropriately frightened of the prospect of a transportation system that gives more people more choices in getting around. Could it be that the bike lobby actually has alienated the rest of America (and even New York), playing into stereotypes (Stuff White People Like #61) of spandex-wearing, pasty-legged effete liberals who think that the bicycle is a reasonable tool for, say, intra-Brooklyn house moves? No, says Streetsblog – it must be some sort of advertiser-driven conspiracy. (Does The New Yorker even have an auto section? How many car […]

Is O’Toole right that California is too dense to matter?

Remember my response yesterday to Randal O’Toole’s Cato article on parking, when I said that I could easily write a three-part series? Not a joke! (Though I might spare you and leave the trilogy unfinished. Maybe.) Today, I’d like to take on O’Toole’s comments on California, which he argues is too dense and hostile to automobiles to say anything about the real America: While New York City is very dense, its suburbs are not, so it is not the densest, or even the second or third densest, urban area in America. Instead, that title goes to Los Angeles, followed by San Francisco-Oakland and San Jose—the locations of most of Dr. Shoup’s other examples. Thanks to urban-growth boundaries that are now mandatory for California cities, whatever happens there is hardly representative of much of the rest of America. He also said something similar in a comment he left on a Market Urbanism post last August about an empirical paper that found that a large portion of the parking in Los Angeles County (population: 10 million) was built because of minimum parking regulations: I’ve said it before, but Los Angeles is hardly typical of the rest of the U.S. It is the densest urban area in the country (and not just the city is dense). Beyond that, my more important point is that developers build parking lots everywhere, not just where there are parking minimums. My problem here is that O’Toole is using the literal definition of “density” – that is, average density. But this is just a shorthand for what really matters when you decide whether you need a car or not (and developers decide how much parking they need to build to maximize profits): walkability and access to mass transit. We often use “density” as shorthand for auto-orientedness, but it […]

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