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Category planning

Urban[ism] Legend: Is Houston really unplanned?

by Stephen Smith It seems to be an article of faith among many land use commentators – both coming from the pro- and anti-planning positions – that Houston is a fundamentally unplanned city, and that whatever is built there is the manifest destiny of the free market in action. But is this true? Did Houston really escape the planning spree that resulted from Progressive Era obsessions with local planning and the subsequent grander plans of the post-WWII age of the automobile? Michael Lewyn, in a paper published in 2005, argues that commentators often overlook Houston’s subtler land use strictures, and recent developments in the city’s urban core reaffirm this. It is definitely true that Houston lacks one of the oldest and most well-known planning tools: Euclidean single-use zoning. This means that residential, commercial, and industrial zones are not legally separated, though as I will explain later, Houston remains as segregated in its land uses as any other American city. But single-use zoning is not the only type of planning law that Houston’s government can use to hamper development. As Lewyn lays out in his paper, minimum lot sizes and minimum parking regulations abound in this supposedly unplanned City upon a Floodplain. He discusses a recently-amended law that all but precludes the building of row houses, a stalwart of dense urban areas (the paper is heavily cited and poorly formatted, so I’ve removed the citations): Until 1998, Houston’s city code provided that the minimum lot size for detached single-family dwellings was 5000 square feet. And until 1998, Houston’s government made it virtually impossible for developers to build large numbers of non-detached single-family homes such as townhouses, by requiring townhouses to sit on at least 2250 square feet of land. As Siegan admits, this law “tend[ed] to preclude the erection of lower […]

Happy Park(ing) Day 2008

I guess I must not be hip enough to have known about this beforehand, but there’s a very interesting citywide event happening here in New York today called Park(ing) Day. All throughout New York City, people are reclaiming parking spaces for their street-side enjoyment. It’s a very novel idea that helps convey a very important economic point: the opportunity cost of public parking spaces. Of course, the users are gladly feeding the meters, so who could complain? Who says we can’t let the market decide the highest-and-best use for the spaces?! parkingdaynyc.org Here’s a video from last year’s event:

The Market, Zoning, and Freedom.

J. Brian Phillips wrote a great post at Houston Property Rights about liberal property rights in Houston, but what Brian had to say applies to every place. Here’s a snippet, but the entire post deserves a reading: when developers and builders see a need for greater density, they respond accordingly. And they can respond relatively quickly because they do not need to spend years seeking the approval of those who do not own the property. The market is a dynamic place. Each participant is motivated by his own self-interest, seeking to find the best use for his abilities and assets. When the market is unfettered, individuals can act as their judgment dictates, even when others think their ideas are folly. They need not convince the ignorant, the short-sighted, or bureaucrats. They need only convince those who choose to deal with them– their investors, their employees, and their customers. And each of these are motivated by their own self-interest. Those who seek to impede the market, which means impede the voluntary choices of individuals, are motivated by something entirely different. For all of their rhetoric about protecting the public or promoting the common good, their real goal is control. Their real goal is control over the men and women who build and produce. His writing concisely conveys many great points, and then he wraps it up with a rallying closing: no individual has a right to demand that others provide for his sustenance or happiness. He cannot compel others to provide for him, just as others cannot compel him to provide for them. He cannot force others to sacrifice for him, nor can others force him to sacrifice for them. That is not anarchy, that is the rule of objective law. That is freedom.

Another On “Conservatives” and Urbanism

While I sympathize with the theme and agree with regards to roadway spending and “conservative” hypocrisy, a recent article in the progressive The American Prospect takes a narrow-minded view of politics and urbanism, while throwing around broad generalizations about evolution and global warming to support their assertions: The Conservative Case for Urbanism In fact, one doesn’t have to be concerned about climate change at all in order to support such policies; values of fiscal conservatism and localism, both key to Republican ideology, can be better realized through population-dense development than through sprawl. Tom Darden, a developer of urban and close-in suburban properties, said Wednesday, “I’m a Republican and have been my whole life. I consider myself a very conservative person. But it never made sense to me why we would tax ordinary people in order to subsidize this form of development, sprawl.” Darden told the story of a road-paving project approved by North Carolina when he served on the state’s transportation board. A dirt road that handled just five trips per day was paved at taxpayer expense, with money that could have gone toward mass transit benefiting millions of people. “Those were driveways, in my view, not roads,” Darden said. I agree with Darden. However, so-called “progressives” fall into the same narrow minded trap when they support public transportation as a solution to global warming that “conservatives” fall into when they try to protect their auto-centric lifestyle. Many are really calling for more of the same top-down overspending on transportation infrastructure that will require a taxpayer bail out at some time in the distant future. Where is the rational voice trying to slow down overspending on all energy-reliant, sprawl-creating, redistribution of productive resources? While existing transit may be less bad environmentally in comparison to highways when looked at from a […]

Dealing With NIMBYs

NIMBYism is the biggest obstacle to the evolution of vibrant urban communities, but the incentives for some to use public forums to impose restrictions on neighboring properties are great. Local politicians often bow to the most vocal residents, often with minority opinions, to avoid making waves, but their impositions are at the expense of the overall community (and the environment). In a recent ULI post and on his own blog, Rob Goodspeed discussed NIMBYism: NIMBY (Not In My Back Yard) activism is as bad as ever and getting worse, according to startling new statistics from a consulting company that specializes in overcoming opposition to development. The third-annual Saint Index, a gauge of public opinion on urban development, found one-quarter of Americans say they or a family member have actively opposed a development project. That means Americans are twice as likely to oppose development than support it. Among the findings, 78 percent of Americans think there should be no new development in their community, 44 percent oppose new apartments or condominiums (up from 34 percent in 2006), and 69 percent say their local government is doing a fair to poor job on planning and zoning. In his blog Rob discusses varying definitions of NIMBYism: The key to understanding NIMBYism comes from political science, not the technicalities of zoning. NIMBYism occurs when a politically unrepresentative minority exacts unreasonable costs on the larger community, up to and including blocking otherwise supported developments. This definition comes from a provocative article by Morriss P. Fiorina titled “Extreme Voices: A Dark Side of Civic Engagement” that appears in this text. Rob discusses strategies and solutions for dealing with activists. I tend to agree that as much as we would like to just ignore them, they don’t just go away. The best strategy is to be transparent […]

Reason.org’s Staley Not in Favor of Property Rights if…

That is, he argues that private property should be subject to government planning restrictions if a developer building densely on its property creates a traffic burden on government roads. Wooten points out that any solution to Atlanta’s traffic congestion has to focus on roads, not transit or land use. In a more interesting twist, he takes local policy makers to task for approving higher density zoning without making the commitment to improving the road network to support it. Hmmm… Interesting point of view from a so called free-market organization that claims to support individual property rights over government planning. I think I’ll remove them from the blogroll. click, click, done Add Staley to the list of Free-Market Impostors.

EconTalk Podcast on Public Transportation

I regularly listen to Russel Robert’s EconTalk podcasts. This week’s podcast with Michael Munger from Duke University is particularly interesting, and possibly my favorite, along with the Milton Friedman interview. Photo by Flikr user Silvia Sugasti Professor Munger had just returned from Santiago, Chile with some great insight into their transportation system. Up until a few years ago, Santiago had a completely private systems of transit and buses. He claimed that there were 3,000 different private companies operating transportation. The unsubsidized system worked very well and was profitable, until the city took over the transportation industry and forbade private companies from providing any transportation services. At the time the City took over, the planners thought they could improve the system by directing people to the subway system. It didn’t work, and now it’s a mess. photo of crowds cramming into a subway station by flickr user Thokrates I highly recommend taking an hour during your next commute to listen to the podcast. EconTalk Podcast – Munger on the Political Economy of Public Transportation Michael Munger of Duke University talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about Munger’s recent trip to Chile and the changes Chile has made to Santiago’s bus system. What was once a private decentralized system with differing levels of quality and price has been transformed into a system of uniform quality designed from the top down. How has the new system fared? Not particularly well according to Munger. Commuting times are up and the President of Chile has apologized to the Chilean people for the failures of the new system. Munger talks about why such changes take place and why they persist even when they seem inferior to the original system that was replaced.

Hyde Park Chicago Before Zoning

photo by flickr user mandus I recently came across a great blog, Hyde Park Urbanist, which focuses on urbanism in the Hyde Park neighborhood of Chicago. Hyde Park is located along Lake Michigan on the South Side and is the home of The University of Chicago as well as Frank LLoyd Wright’s famous Robie House and Chicago’s Museum of Science and Industry. A recent article discusses how the area originally grew unhampered by zoning, with streets lined with businesses and shops. Then, urban renewal schemes disrupted the natural patterns of living. Presently, planners are seeing the folly of past ambitions. Unfortunately, we have to keep our eyes on the planners as they test out newfangled schemes for future generations to untangle. Hyde Park Urbanist – Before Zoning: this post is about what happened before zoning began to shape Hyde Park’s urban landscape. “urban renewal”, when the commercial heart of Hyde Park was suddenly ripped out. Planning in the late 1950s was primarily about separating residential, commercial and industrial districts. A couple generations later, most planners believe that residential and commercial uses can be combined along one block. That’s a lesson in itself. Half of today’s planning notions will look terribly wrong 50 years from today; we just don’t know which half. The commercial building patterns that Rossi describes occurred before zoning became mildly effective in the late 1920s. Those patterns can be seen as natural, in the sense that they were a response to the marketplace rather than the result of government fiat. (emphasis mine) I recommend checking out the Hyde Park Urbanist’s blog, especially for you Chicagoans…

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 […]

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