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Category planning

Covenants as a substitute for Euclidean zoning

Recently, Adam, Stephen, and I did a podcast with Jake at The Voluntary Life about The Voluntary City. The book is a collection of papers on free market solutions to urban challenges, and we will post a link to the podcast here when it’s available. In one chapter of the book, Stephen Davies discusses covenants as an emergent solution to the externality challenges inherent between neighbors using their property as they see fit. Since this topic came up in the comments of a recent post about neighborhoods built before Euclidean zoning was widely adopted, I thought it deserved further discussion. A couple of commenters suggested that because properties in Baltimore’s Roland Park neighborhood were sold with deed restrictions attached, the development there was not “organic.” My word choice was ambiguous, but in the post I meant it to signify that the development occurred in response to a market process as opposed to a regulatory regime. Private contracts governed land use as opposed to municipal rules. Davies explains that covenants first came into widespread use in England, as the country was urbanizing between 1740 and 1850. Because developers could achieve higher values for their land by ensuring complementary uses between adjacent property owners, they put covenants in place to restrict the land uses that would be permitted within a community. Some of these covenants even went so far as to specify house’s architectural details. He writes: Covenants were used in almost all urban development of the period and for a long time thereafter. Whenever a piece of land or the power to use that land was transferred from one party to another, the transfer, whether a lease or a sale, would normally contain a number of specific stipulations, or covenants. Covenants (literally, treaties) were legally binding agreements between the parties that […]

A Tale of Two Densities

I was catching up on posts over at The Old Urbanist, and came across his astute analysis of setbacks that many of you probably saw a while back. Focusing on the requirement for large front lawns in many towns across the country, Charlie Gardner writes: Whether this reflects a continuing market preference is unclear, since nearly all municipal zoning codes in the United States require large setbacks (see, e.g.,Charlotte), depriving homeowners of any choice in the matter.  The pattern has been replicated so relentlessly across the North American continent that alternative single-family residential designs may simply have been scrubbed from the collective imagination. Gardner and others attribute this bland landscape in large part to Frederick Law Olmsted, and he certainly did support increased greenery in urban areas and lawns that run seamlessly across property lines. However, I think it’s important to distinguish between Olmsted’s vision and the land use regulations that have imposed some version his ideal on American suburbs. Olmsted did promote planned communities, but only local governments have had the authority to make his vision law. In thinking of Olmsted’s planned communities of communities built in Olmsted’s style, Baltimore’s Roland Park immediately comes to my mind. This turn-of-the-century neighborhood was one of the country’s first suburbs. Of course Roland Park is far from an urbanist neighborhood, and it’s easy to fault Olmsted for overlooking the crucial civic aspect of drawing neighbors to the sidewalks and streets for spontaneous interaction. However, (and I realize this may be a minority opinion), I think that it is a lovely neighborhood, and it’s even relatively pedestrian friendly. Clearly, it has little in common with the “snout house” suburbs that Gardner discusses in relation to setback requirements. Part of Roland Park’s charm is that it achieves the feeling of being a green enclave because it lies among denser […]

Clear case of the damages inherent in policy uncertainty

Current policy evolution in Los Gatos, CA demonstrates the power that urban planners have to alter property rights.  The Silicon Valley municipality is currently debating whether or not to upzone a parcel where a developer would like to build 550,000 square feet of office space, replacing 250,000 square feet of an older office park. The lots, located near the Netflix headquarters, are thought to be the potential site for the company’s needed expansion. However, the Bay Area is already home to ample vacant office space, so the developer would like the alternative option of building multifamily housing in the location. In response to this request for a change in zoning that would allow either use, the planning commission chairwoman said she was “blindsided” by the owner seeking permission for options to use the land in various ways. In today’s world of master plans that dictate acceptable uses for each parcel of a city’s land, asking for the freedom to build different types of buildings, rather than approaching a commission with a plan in place for a specific zoning change, may seem out of line. In reality the owner is simply seeking permission to put his land to its most efficient use given future uncertainties. Entrepreneurs profit by seeing through these uncertainties to put resources to their most profitable uses, but in the market for land, policies limit their ability to do so. In curent conditions, in which developers are not building much new office space unless it is pre-leased, the planning commission has the power to determine the land’s expected value by requiring the owner to commit to a plan before moving forward with redevelopment. This is a classic Coasean case of the care that policy makers must take in assigning property rights. Russ Roberts and Richard Epstein did a […]

The Little-Known History of “Light and Air”

“Light and air” is a very common excuse that people give for why we must have basic zoning laws, and while nowadays a lot of people mean it simply in an aesthetic sense – another way of saying “I like to be able to look out a window and not see another skyscraper 50 feet away” (though for some reason when said interaction happens on the second or third floor, it’s okay?) – the origins of it are very interesting, and I believe crucial to understanding today’s urban plans. Of course, the ideas that turn-of-the-century planners had about disease and density turned out to be totally incorrect – privacy and being able to look out a window is nice, but the lack thereof is not a great health risk. As Robert Fogelson writes on pages 125-26 of Downtown: Skyscrapers were also a serious menace to public health, advocates of height limits charged. As early as the mid 1880s, they said that tall office buildings were turning the streets below into dark, damp, and gloomy canyons. During the winter they blocked the sun, leaving the cold streets even colder. During the summer, wrote American Architect and Building News, they acted as “storehouses of heat,” driving up the temperature after sunset, making the once cool and refreshing nights unbearable. The skyscrapers also shrouded the nearby buildings in darkness, forcing the office workers to rely on artificial light – which, it was believed, put a strain on the eyes. Worst of all, the skyscrapers deprived both the streets below and the adjacent buildings of fresh air and sunlight. To Americans who still held that disease was a product of the “miasma,” the noxious vapors that permeated the cities, the lack of fresh air was bad enough. To Americans who believed in the new […]

Duany bashes LEED standards

Andrés Duany, leader of the New Urbanism movement, comes out against LEED standards: He said that high-density development in urban locations which entail less reliance on private cars should get a free pass on energy efficiency or energy generation standards.  “Don’t make apartment dwellers install solar power,” he said.  “They are doing their part just by living densely and driving less.” […] Duany also had choice words for government land use and building officials. In New Orleans, he said that government standards for rebuilding added costs that just about exactly offset the amount of assistance the government was going to provide, so “no one can rebuild.”

David Alpert calls out Virginia Tea Party group as land use statists

David Alpert at Greater Greater Washington has been on top of a story out of Virginia about a Virginia Tea Party group and its bizarre and seemingly anti-free market opposition to a state law forcing local governments to make room for dense growth. The law – which was passed a few years ago by Republicans, as David notes – included a few provisions, but the one in question, which a longtime Northern Virginia Republican is seeking to overturn, required each locality to designate an “urban development area” in which it would allow medium density development. It appears that the original plan was to have an urban growth boundary too, outside of which development would be much harder, but I’m not sure that was included in the version that passed. But whatever the rest of the law contained, Del. Robert G. Marshall and Virginia’s Campaign for Liberty are only opposing the provision that forces localities to provide upzoned land “sufficient to meet projected residential and commercial growth” for the next decade or two. I’ve read the bill (it’s relatively short), and the provision in question doesn’t even put a floor on density in the zoning area or cap the amount of parking allowed – all it does is force local governments to allow developers to build at higher densities. Here is, as far as I can tell, the strictest condition on the UDAs, which also have to allow mixed uses and smaller lot set-backs: The comprehensive plan of a locality having a population of 130,000 or more persons shall provide for urban development areas that are appropriate for development at a density on the developable acreage of at least eight single-family residences, 12 townhouses, or 24 apartments, condominium units, or cooperative units per acre, and an authorized floor area ratio of at least 0.8 […]

The roots of anti-density sentiment

Matt Yglesias, Kevin Drum, and Ryan Avent have been discussing the political economy of anti-density regulations, and I have a lot of comments, but I’m not sure I have the time (or, really, the patience) to air all of them. So, we’ll see how long this post gets. First of all, I think all this talk of federal policy is misguided. Writing about the federal government sells well in journalism since it reaches the widest audience, but even taking into account the feds’ massive power grab over the last century, the real action is still at the local level. Local property tax distortions favoring single family homes are widespread and egregious, but orders of magnitude more ink gets spilled about the relatively ineffectual mortgage interest tax deduction. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac’s refusal to fund mixed use developments is unfortunate, but it’s nothing compared to the almighty parking minimum. So while obviously the rural-biased Senate isn’t doing urbanism any favors, the nation’s Greatest Deliberative Body is next to meaningless when compared to lowly municipal governments. Secondly, I think that historically speaking, Ryan Avent is starting his analysis a few decades too late. He cites the Great Migration(s) of blacks out of the South and the law-and-order backlash as a reason that American politicians fear density, but the real anti-density legislation began around the turn of the century, decades before the black boogeyman hit the scene. And while the federal highway projects that Ryan cites were bad for cities, they were really the final nail in the coffin – urban business associations welcomed them as a cure for decentralization. In other words, cities were already in decline by the time the interstate highways started papering over neighborhoods. The real germ entered the system decades earlier. In my opinion, at least, the […]

This is how gentrification happens: Northwest DC and the height restriction

Lydia DePillis wrote the Washington City Paper’s cover story on the case for Congress overturning DC’s height limit, which should be very familiar to readers of this blog. It’s got some interesting history in it (DC’s height limit was apparently influenced by George Washington’s personal aesthetics, despite the fact that he never governed from the city), but the part that was really interesting to me was the part where she discusses what the new limitations should be. It’s not politically practical to advocate for lifting the limit without reservations, as we here would like, and there are the usual caveats and equivocations (“What if additional height were granted on a competitive basis, and awarded for the best design?”). But the part that really stood out to me was this graphic (click on the image and scroll to the bottom of the linked page to see a bigger version), outlining where Lydia thinks the height restrictions should be lifted: Anyone familiar with DC geography will notice that the area most insulated from change – Northwest DC – is the richest part of town, full of desirable white neighborhoods. The areas where DePillis advocates lifting the height limit – neighborhoods east of the Anacostia River figure prominently in the graphic – are far blacker and poorer than the rest of DC. Sure, there are pretty buildings in NW and a lot of ugly ones in Anacostia, but there are also beautiful homes off of Benning Road and shitty ones in Burleith. (Which, I should add, could desperately use some taller buildings, given its proximity to the perpetually housing-strapped Georgetown University and its rather ugly architecture compared to Georgetown proper.) This tactic of upzoning poor black neighborhoods while leaving white neighborhoods unchanged is very common, and I realize that Lydia is just trying […]

The economics of redevelopment and the shape of socialist cities

Earlier today I read an article by Daniel Garst about Bejing’s awkward population distribution that reminded me of a journal article about the general shape of socialist cities that I read a while back. Garst talks about Beijing being a “circus tent” when it comes to density, with population density increasing as you travel away from the city center, in contrast to the “pyramid” style of most cities, with high densities in the center and lower densities around the periphery (see chart for a visual representation). This immediately made me think of an article by Alain Bertraud and Bertrand Renaud called “Socialist Cities without Land Markets,” where they describe exactly this phenomenon, and explain it as a failure of administrative urban planning. Here’s an excerpt: As their economy and their population grow, cities expand through the progressive addition of concentric rings, similar to the growth of trees in successive seasons. New rings are added to the periphery as the city grows. With each ring, land use reflects the combined effects of demography, technology, and the economy at the time when the ring was developed. Wile this organic incremental growth is common to all cities, in a market city changing land prices exert their pressure simultaneously in all areas of the city, not just at the periphery. Land prices exert a powerful influence to recycle already developed land in the inner rings when the type and intensity of the existing use is too different from the land’s optimum economic use. Thus, changing land values bring a built-in urban dynamism as ceaseless variations in land prices put a constant pressure on the current uses of land and trigger changes to new activities and/or densities. Under the administrative-command economy, the absence of land prices eliminated the main incentive to redevelop built-up areas by […]

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