Category Zoning

infrastructure, planning, Zoning

Culs de sac for safety?

At Cato At Liberty, Randall O’Toole provides a list of recommendations for reversing Rust Belt urban decline in response to a study on the topic from the Lincoln Land Institute. He focuses on policies to improve public service provision and deregulation, but he also makes a surprising recommendation that declining cities should “reduce crime by doing things like changing the gridded city streets that planners love into cul de sacs so that criminals have fewer escape routes.” This recommendation is surprising because it would require significant tax payer resources, a critique O’Toole holds against those from the Lincoln Land Institute. Short of building large barricades, it’s inconceivable how a city with an existing grid of streets would even go about turning its grid into culs de sac without extensive use of eminent domain and other disruptive policies. O’Toole is correct that the grid owes its origins to authoritarian regimes and that today it’s embraced by city planners in the Smart Growth and New Urbanist schools. But while culs de sac may have originally appeared in organically developed networks of streets, today’s culs de sac promoted by traffic engineers are hardly a free market outcome. As Daniel Nairn has written, the public maintenance of what are essentially shared driveways “smacks of socialism in its most extreme form.” Some studies have found that culs de sac experience less crime relative to nearby through streets, perhaps in part because they draw less traffic. However, it’s far from clear that a pattern of suburban streets makes a city safer than it would be would be with greater street connectivity. Some studies find that street connectivity correlates with greater social capital. O’Toole’s promotion of social engineering through culs de sac to create a localized drop in crime at the expense of a city’s residents’ social capital is […]

Emily Hamilton
February 20, 2014
16 Comments

Economics, Zoning

Ranking State Land Use Regulations

Yesterday, the Mercatus Center released the third edition of Freedom in the 50 States by Will Ruger and Jason Sorens. The authors break down state freedom among regulatory, fiscal, and personal categories. At the study’s website, readers can re-rank the states based on the aspects of freedom that they think are most important, including some variables related to land use and housing. The available variables include local rent control, regulatory takings restrictions, the Wharton Residential Land Use Regulatory Index, and an eminent domain index. Using only these “Property Rights Protection” variables, Kansas ranks as the freest state, followed by Louisiana, Indiana, Missouri, and South Dakota. Texas, sometimes cited as the state without zoning, comes in at 18th. The least free state is New Jersey, with Maryland at 49th, followed by California, New York, and Hawaii. This result — states with some of the most expensive cities being the most regulated — is unsurprising. In the places with the freest land use regulations, where a developer would be able to build walkable, mixed-use neighborhoods without going through a burdensome entitlement process, there isn’t demand for dense development. This may be one reason why the Piscataquis Village project, an effort to build a traditional city, is happening in a sparsely populated Maine county because new development of this sort is simply not permitted near any population centers. As Stephen recently pointed out, public opinion in New York tends to see city policies as wildly pro-development: In spite of the popular impression of New York as a builder-friendly city that’s constantly exceeding the bounds of rational development, the city’s growth over the past half-century has been anemic, and has not kept pace with the natural growth in population. This ranking of New York near the bottom of the index demonstrates what urban economists already know — new development […]

Emily Hamilton
March 29, 2013
6 Comments

Zoning

Many Market Urbanist Elements in DC’s Zoning Rewrite

Yesterday at Slate Matt Yglesias pointed out the poor logic behind AAA’s opposition to the elimination of some parking minimums in the DC zoning reqrite. AAA is not alone, joined by many DC residents who oppose the rewrite that will introduce some deregulation in parking requirements and zoning. The rewrite includes a few basic changes, and Greater Greater Washington provides excellent coverage of each: Eliminate parking requirements for some transit-rich neighborhoods Permit homeowners in some neighborhoods to rent out accessory dwellings such as basements or carriage houses Remove the 30-foot width requirement for developing alleyway homes Allow more cornerstor commercial development in residential neighborhoods Simplify the Planned Unit Development approval process Initially, the plan included a proposal to switch from parking minimums to parking maximums, but fortunately this proposal was rejected in favor of allowing developers to build parking based on what they think will be profitable, allowing for a freer market in parking. Now, those who assert that eliminating subsidies to driving amounts to a “war on drivers” are left without basis for their argument. I am not too enthusiastic about the zoning rewrite because it doesn’t go nearly far enough in permitting a greater supply of housing. It makes no significant changes to allowable floor area ratios, only permitting greater density by tinkering around the edges. However, as the zoning update is focused on simplifying the zoning map and allowing some increased freedom for developers to build what they think consumers want, it is in many ways a step toward market urbanism. It will benefit some homeowners and their renters by permitting accessory dwelling rentals. Additionally the attempt to simplify the Planned Unit Development process could improve rule of law in DC development and take steps toward leveling the playing field for developers. Perhaps the most significant element […]

Book Review, Zoning

A Trial of Zoning

A recent Wall Street Journal op ed combines two of my favorite topics: Franz Kafka’s The Trial and the inefficiencies of zoning. Roger Kimball explains the roadblocks he has faced in trying to repair his home after it was damaged in Hurricane Sandy. He writes: It wasn’t until the workmen we hired had ripped apart most of the first floor that the phrase “building permit” first wafted past us. Turns out we needed one. “What, to repair our own house we need a building permit?” Of course. Before you could get a building permit, however, you had to be approved by the Zoning Authority. And Zoning—citing FEMA regulations—would force you to bring the house “up to code,” which in many cases meant elevating the house by several feet. Now, elevating your house is very expensive and time consuming—not because of the actual raising, which takes just a day or two, but because of the required permits. Kafka would have liked the zoning folks. There also is a limit on how high in the sky your house can be. That calculation seems to be a state secret, but it can easily happen that raising your house violates the height requirement. Which means that you can’t raise the house that you must raise if you want to repair it. Got that? Disaster rebuilding efforts highlight the impediments that bureaucracies create for economic development, but they are far from the only time that land use regulations create kafkaesque obstacles for property owners. In The High Cost of Free Parking, Donald Shoup explains that parking requirements can create a similar effect. When a business owner goes out of business and wants to sell his property, it’s likely that the next owner will want to operate a different type of business in the location or that parking requirements will have […]

Emily Hamilton
January 17, 2013
6 Comments

parking, planning, Uncategorized, Zoning

Irrelevant real estate trends

Earlier this week Wendell Cox wrote a piece at New Geography arguing that projections for increasing demand for multifamily housing relative to single family homes are incorrect. He was criticizing a study by Arthur Nelson that predicts increased demand for multifamily housing relative to single-family housing in California between 2010 and 2035. So far, Cox points out that this hypothesis is not being fulfilled; between 2000 and 2008 slightly over half of newly occupied housing units were single-family homes on conventional lots (larger than 1/8 acre), not indicative of a shift in preferences toward multifamily housing. Cox emphasizes that his data is based on revealed preferences rather than forecasts or surveys which may indicate a false preference for denser housing. However, he does not acknowledge that these preferences he cites are not revealed in a free market. The mortgage interest tax deduction biases home buyers toward larger homes, the complex entitlement process for dense infill development restricts supply of denser housing, and the the zoning and parking requirements that regulate development all shape revealed consumer decisions. Both Cox and Nelson seem to base their views of consumer preferences heavily on introspection, assuming that over time more Americans will come to share their preference for suburban or urban living respectively. And they both take the same approach of looking at the real estate trends aggregated across the entire state. This is an interesting question for academics, but not a particularly relevant area for real estate markets. Real estate is local, and state trends are not likely to apply to many cities and neighborhoods. The average home sold in California went for $309,000 at $195 per square foot last month. However this statistic is meaningless for West Hollywood residents where the average sale price was $378 per square foot. It’s equally meaningless […]

Emily Hamilton
November 16, 2012
7 Comments

Economics, housing, Zoning

The Renewed Debate on Inclusionary Zoning

Stephen Smith and I co-wrote this post. In case you haven’t been following Stephen elsewhere, he’s also been writing at The Atlantic Cities and Bloomberg View. This year, some of the first apartments and condos subject to inclusionary zoning laws in DC are hitting the market, stoking debate over development laws that the city adopted in 2007. The inclusionary zoning requirement is currently stalling the city’s West End Library renovation with Ralph Nader leading efforts to include an affordable housing aspect with the library project. Inclusionary zoning advocates often base their support on the desirability of mixed-income neighborhoods, while challengers argue that inclusionary zoning is an inefficient way to deliver housing with unintended consequences. Heather Schwartz, who studies education and housing policies at the RAND Institute, says that one important feature of this policy tool is that it gives low-income families access to high-income neighborhoods while at the same time limiting the number of low-income residents in a neighborhood. She said, “Since IZ is a place-based strategy that tends to only apply to high-cost housing markets, it can offer access to lower-poverty places than housing vouchers and other forms of subsidized housing have historically done.” David Alpert, editor-in-chief of Greater Greater Washington, a local urban planning blog, offers another argument in favor of inclusionary zoning, “a policy that builds support for both greater density and affordable housing,” he said in an email. “Much of the opposition to greater density involves a feeling that it is just a ‘giveaway’ to developers who make the profit and impose some collateral burden on a neighborhood, but many people are more supportive of the density if it serves an affordable housing goal.” While inclusionary zoning proponents may see its ability to introduce just a few low-income residents to a higher income neighborhood as an […]

Emily Hamilton
October 10, 2012
12 Comments

Zoning

Selling the Rights to Greater Density

At Next American City, Mark Bergen has an interesting long-form piece on municipal infrastructure financing. He argues that the property owners who benefit from public policies, such as infrastructure investment, should be required to fund these policies. He suggests infrastructure improvements should be paid for with Tax Increment Finance or value capture (PDF). I don’t necessarily agree with his infrastructure funding prescriptions, and may take these up in a future post. What I found even more interesting, though, is his suggestion that developers should pay for zoning changes. The basis for this proposal comes from the Georgist land tax. Because in urban settings, land’s value largely comes from the amenities surrounding it, landowners do not have the exclusive rights to this value, according to Henry George. The suggestion that developers should pay for the rights to build on the land they own is based, Mark explains, on a policy from São Paulo, called Certificates of Additional Construction Potential (CEPAC). These bonds, representing rights to build, are transferable and are publicly traded. He quotes Gregory K. Ingram of Lincoln Institute of Land Policy: “They’re essentially selling zoning changes,” explained Ingram. Crucially, the building fees have not eaten away at developers’ profits. By some accounts, the rates of return for real estate in the districts increase. […] The notes, sold by municipalities, are one of the world’s most innovative public financing techniques. Across many sections of São Paulo, if a developer hopes to build or do nearly anything with her property — adjust its uses, expand outward or upward — she must first buy a CEPAC. On a fairness level, selling zoning changes seems wrong to me. Current zoning policies are an arbitrary starting point, so it doesn’t make sense that developers should have to pay for permission to change a policy that […]

Emily Hamilton
August 15, 2012
9 Comments

planning, sprawl, Zoning

Tokyo’s surprising lack of density

Wendell Cox has received his fair share of criticism from this blog, but his post last week about Tokyo’s surprising lack of density is very interesting. Sure, Tokyo’s suburbs are dense enough to be connected by job centers by rail, but the core is almost completely low- and lower-mid-rise, and thus not very dense: Tokyo does not have intensely dense central areas. The ku area [historic core] has a density of 37,300 per square mile (14,400 per square kilometer). This is well below the densities of Manhattan (69,000 & 27,000) and the ville de Paris (51,000 & 21,000). Only one of the ku (Toshima) exceeds the density of Paris. And then the suburbs themselves aren’t as compact as they could be: Further, according to the Japan House and Land Survey of 2008, Tokyo has a large stock of detached houses, by definition lower density. Nearly 45 percent of the Tokyo region’s housing is detached. One-third of the dwellings within 30 kilometers (18 miles) of the core are detached. This figure rises to more than 60 percent outside 30 kilometers from the core and 85 percent between 60 and 70 kilometers (37-43 kilometers) from the core (Figure 2). Some might see this as a validation of New Urbanism (which is sort of a bastardization of Old Urbanism), whose response to tall building enthusiasts like myself, Ed Glaeser, and Alon Levy is that “dense doesn’t have to mean tall.” And it’s true – Tokyo manages a relatively high density with very few tall buildings. But there are costs that Tokyo bears for its lack of height and downtown density. First and foremost are the high housing prices. Imagine New York City if Midtown and the Upper East and West Sides were still tenement neighborhoods, and everyone living and working above the sixth floor […]

Economics, Zoning

Rent control by any other name

Earlier this week, David Alpert wrote a piece at Greater Greater Washington on the benefits of inclusionary zoning and why economists should support it. I would counter that IZ as designed in DC is not an efficient program for providing affordable housing, and to the extent that it does provide significant numbers of price-controlled housing units, it will necessarily have many of the negative attributes of rent control. IZ works by requiring developers to provide below-market cost units in addition to market rate housing, and providing them with “density bonuses” in exchange. The problem with this is that building more units in itself makes housing more affordable. Obviously I understand the many political obstacles to allowing more residential development, but I don’t think that introducing units that are permanently price-controlled is the appropriate price to pay for this political concession. As Walter Block writes at the Library of Economics and Liberty: Economists are virtually unanimous in concluding that rent controls are destructive. In a 1990 poll of 464 economists published in the May 1992 issue of the American Economic Review, 93 percent of U.S. respondents agreed, either completely or with provisos, that “a ceiling on rents reduces the quantity and quality of housing available.” Similarly, another study reported that more than 95 percent of the Canadian economists polled agreed with the statement. The agreement cuts across the usual political spectrum, ranging all the way from Nobel Prize winners Milton Friedman and Friedrich Hayek on the “right” to their fellow Nobel laureate Gunnar Mydral, an important architect of the Swedish Labor Party’s welfare state, on the “left.” Myrdal stated, “Rent control has in certain Western countries constituted, maybe, the worst example of poor planning by governments lacking courage and vision.” Consumers and producers in the IZ market will face the same […]

Development, housing, Zoning

Look beyond Fourth Avenue in Brooklyn for solutions to a lack of retail

Robbie Whelan’s got a column in today’s Wall Street Journal on Brooklyn’s Fourth Avenue, which is something I’ve been thinking a lot about since I moved to Brooklyn earlier this year. If you don’t recall, last year the City Council passed a zoning amendment to require new residential developments on the transit-rich, pedestrian-unfriendly avenue in South Brooklyn to include a certain amount of ground-level retail, to appease the ghost of Jane Jacobs and to stop burning the souls of all who walk the avenue. Robbie’s column is outwardly critical of the city (he blames “bad decisions by Amanda Burden’s City Planning Department”), but on another level, he’s just cheering on what DCP already did (“the city finally got wise and passed another zoning change last year”). But walking down Fourth Avenue, and seeing all the vacant retail storefronts in apartment buildings sprinkled around the neighborhood from the last development cycle, it seems obvious that the real problem is a lack of demand, which Robbie derides as “the profit-above-all-else motive of some developers” (“some”…ha!). Namely: the neighborhoods around Fourth Avenue are too auto-bound and not dense enough to support the retail and pedestrian traffic that would make Fourth Avenue a vibrant place. (The lots bordering Fourth Avenue may one day grow dense enough to support retail without the help of their side streets. But for now, only mid-rise development is allowed, so I don’t see Fourth Avenue being self-sustaining any time soon.) Perhaps the biggest problem is the industrial zoning around the Gowanus Canal and Bay, a few avenues over from Fourth Avenue. Capital has replaced labor in U.S. non-service-sector jobs over the last century, and the only business that can take advantage of the zoning around Third Avenue are auto-oriented (manufacturers these days ship their goods by highways, not canals!). […]

Trending now