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what about singles?

Both smart growth supporters and sprawl apologists focus on the needs of families with children: sprawl defenders argue that only suburbia can accommodate the desires of parents, while some smart growth types argue that cities should require lots of two- and three-bedroom units downtown because families need a lot of space. But a current exhibit at the National Building Museum in Washington suggests that this focus is a bit misguided.  The exhibit points out that nearly 30 percent of U.S. households are singles living alone.  Judging from all the planning-media blather about families, one might think that the housing market is focused on their needs, and that 30 percent or even more of the housing stock consisted of single-sized units. But the exhibit points out that in fact, less than 1 percent of housing units are studios, and about 12 percent are one-bedrooms.  So family-oriented units are in fact overrepresented in the housing stock. Larger units may  not dominate downtown, but they start to dominate pretty close to downtown.  For example, when I looked at zillow.com I discovered that downtown Pittsburgh is dominated by one-bedroom units, but in zip code 15203 just south of downtown, 3/4 of housing units available for rent or sale have two or more bedrooms, including 80 out of 115 rental apartment listings.    In zip code 15202 just northeast of downtown, 34 of 60 rental apartment listings, and 71 percent of all rental listings have two or more bedrooms. Of course, Pittsburgh is a pretty family-oriented city.  But even in Washington’s 20036 zip code (a wealthy downtown neighborhood) 1/3 of all listings are for two or more bedrooms.  And if you go just two subway stops north to Cleveland Park (zip code 20008) 108 out of 174 listings have two or more bedrooms. What about […]

United against dynamism

The battle lines being drawn for the SB 827 debate is perhaps the clearest example ever of the strange bedfellows that align on land use politics. Tenant rights activists stand in opposition to preemption of local land-use regulations with landlords and owners of suburban single family homes. In The Future and Its Enemies, Virginia Postrel develops a dynamist-stasist lens for understanding policy debates. Dynamists are generally accepting of new ideas and innovation. They view the freedom to experiment as integral to the learning process that allows quality of life to improve over time. Rather than focusing on the distribution of income that results from innovation, dynamists’ concern is that life is getting better for everyone, most importantly the lowest income people. Stasists occupy the other end of the divide and come from two different perspectives. First, they may appreciate the privileges that the current law provides them. They don’t want to see the social upheaval that greater economic mobility could bring about. Second, they may be technocrats who do have a vision for a future that they think will be better than the present but want to achieve it only through a government-led plan. Each opposes the decentralized processes consumers and producers use to solve their own problems. The dynamist-stasist division applies to all areas of economic activity, but “not in my backyard” is the stasist “rallying cry.” Postrel’s framework is useful for understanding why opposition to upzoning unites groups that seem to have opposing politics. In the case of SB 827, stasists include technocrats who want to see increased access to housing, but only if new housing is rent controlled, subsidized, or government built, and traditional NIMBYs. Pessimism about change unites stasists of all stripes. They’re united in their view that new housing supply will result in worse neighborhoods rather than better ones. People who don’t want to […]

Why Walkable Cities Enjoy More Freedom

If you happen to visit Egypt and find yourself in the famous Tahrir Square, you might be puzzled: how could this space accommodate two million protesters? In fact, the square looked different at the time of the Arab Spring, up until the new military government ringed its central part with an iron fence. A similar transformation happened with the Pearl roundabout in the capital of Bahrain where demonstrators used to gather — it was turned into a traffic junction. In my hometown, Moscow, the square where millions called for the end of Soviet rule in 1991 now houses an hideous shopping mall. For a pro-liberty movement to raise its head, Twitter is not enough: face-to-face contact is crucial. That is why when oppressive governments want to destroy civil society, they destroy public spaces. Street markets, green squares and lively parks (think of the iconic Hyde Park corner) are places where citizens meet, negotiate and slowly learn to trust each other. Joseph Stalin knew it well, hence he made sure that city dwellers had no public spaces to socialise in. The results were devastating: chronic mistrust that post-communist societies are yet to overcome. Today, 30 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the levels of social capital in Dresden and Leipzig are still lower than in Munich and Hamburg, which bears its economic as well as political costs. One study shows that residents living in walkable neighbourhoods exhibit at least 80% greater levels of social capital than those living in car-dependent ones. That is something to consider, given that only a half of Brits know their neighbour’s name. The economic benefits are also clear: improved walking infrastructure can increase retail sales by 30%. London has witnessed it on Oxford Street where the creation of a Tokyo-style pedestrian crossing led to a 25% increase in turnover in the adjacent stores. In the […]

new report on SROs

Once upon a time, New York City’s poor single people were usually not homeless because they lived in little apartments with shared bathrooms and kitchens.  These units are called “single room occupancy” (SRO) units in plannerese. (When I was young, people used less flattering terms such as “fleabag” and “flophouse” to describe the nastier SRO buildings). What happened?  Why are so many people sleeping on the streets of Midtown?  A recent paper by NYU’s Furman Center partially answers the question, by discussing the obstacles to SRO construction.  For decades, New York’s housing law has made SROs almost impossible to build, in a variety of ways:  By flatly outlawing SROs, unless they are built with government or nonprofit involvement Through anti-density regulations that limit the number of dwelling units in a building; Minimum parking requirements (though these are an issue primarily in the outer boroughs). The paper recommends allowing market-rate SROs, limited density deregulation, counting SRO units as affordable housing for purposes of the city’s inclusionary zoning ordinance, exempting SROs from minimum parking requirements, and government subsidies for SROs.  

The absence of gentrification causes displacement

Some progressives believe that gentrification causes displacement of poor people, that new market-rate housing causes such gentrification, and thus that new housing must be kept out of low-income neighborhoods. The first of these claims is based on the assumption that absent gentrification, low-income neighborhoods would be stable places.   But this is not the case.  Often, a city’s poorest neighborhoods are those losing population most rapidly. In St. Louis, for example, the city’s low-income, crime-ridden northside wards are rapidly losing people: the city’s 3rd Ward lost 28 percent of its population between 2000 and 2010 alone, and other northside neighborhoods also lost over 10 (and in a few cases, over 20) percent of their population in the 2000s.   The city’s racially integrated, somewhat poor Near South Side also lost over 10 percent of its population in the 2000s.   By contrast, the city’s gentrifying downtown and midtown actually gained population, while the white working/middle class Far South Side were somewhere in between. Similarly, in Atlanta, the affluent northside and racially integrated downtown and midtown gained population in the 2000s, while much of the city’s all-black south side and far northwest side are losing population.  These declining neighborhoods tend to be poor: for example, zip code 30315 (Lakewood Heights on the southside) has a 38 percent poverty rate and lost 16 percent of its population in the 2000s.   Zip code 30314 (Vine City and other northwest neighborhoods) has a poverty rate of 34 percent, and lost about 18 percent of its population. And in Chicago, the toughest neighborhoods also export people. The city’s downtown gained over 40,000 people since 2010, while the city’s traditionally impoverished Far South Side lost nearly 50,000.  In fact, nearly every major part of the city outside the Far South Side either gained population or lost no more than […]

The Disillusionment of the American Planner, or How We Became Mark Brendanawicz

Mark Brendanawicz of NBC's Parks and Recreation

Spoiler Warning: This post contains minor spoilers about Season Two of Parks and Recreation, which aired nearly 10 years ago. Why have you still not watched it? Lately I have been rewatching Parks and Recreation, motivated in part by the shocking discovery that my girlfriend never made it past the first season. The show is perhaps the most sympathetic cultural representation of local public sector work ever produced in the United States. The show manages to balance an awareness of popular discontent with “government” in the abstract— explored through a myriad of ridiculous situations—with the more mild reality that most local government employees are well-meaning, normal, mostly harmless people who care about their communities. This makes the character of Mark Brendanawicz, Pawnee’s jaded planner, all the more interesting. It’s conspicuous that even in a show so sympathetic to local government, the city planner remains a cynical, somewhat unlikable character. Unlike Ron Swanson, Brendanawicz at one point meant well and has no ideological issues with government; he regularly suggests that he was once a true believer in his work, if only for “two months.” Yet unlike Leslie Knope, he didn’t choose government. In his efforts to win back Anne, Andy chides Brendanawicz as a “failed architect,” an insult which seems to stick. Brendanawicz ultimately leaves the show as an unredeemed loser: after taming his apparent self-absorption and promiscuity, he prepares to propose to Anne, only to have her preemptively break up with him. When the government shutdown occurs at the end of Season Two, Brendanawicz takes a buyout offer, and resolves to go into private-sector construction. Leslie, who had once adored him, dubs him “Brendanaquits,” and we never hear from Pawnee’s city planner again. It isn’t hard to see why Brendanawicz was unceremoniously scrapped: he was ultimately a call-back to the harsher world […]

Density Is How the Working Poor Outbid the Rich for Urban Land

multifamily housing

The great failing of modern land-use regulation is the failure to allow densities to naturally change over time. Let me explain. Imagine you are trying to sell a property you own in a desirable inner suburban neighborhood in your town. The lot is 4,000 square feet and hosts an old 4,000 square-foot home. There is incredible demand for housing in this area; perhaps the schools are good, or the amenities are nice, or the neighborhood sits adjacent to a major jobs center, meaning that residents can walk to work. I’ll leave the reasons to you. Who do you sell it to? You have at least two options: First, you could sell it to a wealthy individual, who would use the entire property as his home. He is willing to pay the market rate for single-family homes like this, which in this case is $300,000. Under current financing, he would likely have a monthly mortgage payment in the ballpark of $1,300. Second, you could sell it to a developer who intends to subdivide the house into four 1,000 square foot one-bedroom apartments, renting each of them at a market rate of $500 to service workers who commute to downtown. After factoring in expenses, her annual net operating income would be around $20,160. Assuming a multifamily cap rate of 6.0.%, this means that she could pay up to $336,000 for your property. Based on this analysis, who do you sell it to? The answer is obvious: you will sell it to the multifamily developer who will subdivide and rent out the house, not necessarily because you’re a bleeding heart urbanist, but in order to maximize your earnings. As rents in the area rise, the pressure to sell to a buyer who would densify the property will only grow. The prospective mansion buyer […]

Urban Mobility and Innovation with Anthony Ling at Stanford Graduate School of Business

I recently gave a talk on the topic of “Urban Mobility and Innovation” at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, where I am currently studying. I was positively surprised by the turnout for the event as there are currently few formal groups focusing on urban issues at the GSB. The reason I did this talk is because I have heard many people wanting to work in this field after graduation, despite not having a background in it. I believe that entrepreneurs and business leaders going into transportation, logistics and real estate markets markets could benefit significantly in their businesses by learning the fundamentals of urban development and planning. In this talk, I tried to explain how urban planning impacts new transportation technologies, as well as how new technologies are being adopted by city governments and regarded by urban planners worldwide. Some topics covered were: – How does urban planning limit or incentivize sustainable transportation? – Why are some cities walkable/bikeable and others not? – Why does mass transit fail in the US? – Solving traffic with tech: parking sensors and congestion pricing – Microtransit and low tech transportation: ideas from developing countries – The impact of autonomous vehicles and the Boring Company This event took place on Thursday, Jan 25, 2018 and was co-sponsored by the GSB Real Estate Club and the GSB Tech Club.

Is Zoning Popular? Reevaluating the Evidence

New Brunswick, NJ Zoning Map

In my regular discussions of U.S. zoning, I often hear a defense that goes something like this: “You may have concerns about zoning, but it sure is popular with the American people. After all, every state has approved of zoning and virtually every city in the country has implemented zoning.” One of two implications might be drawn from this defense of Euclidean zoning: First, perhaps conventional zoning critics are missing some redeeming benefit that obviates its many costs. Second, like it or not, we live in a democratic country and zoning as it exists today is evidently the will of the people and thus deserves your respect. The first possible interpretation is vague and unsatisfying. The second possible interpretation, however, is what I take to really be at the heart of this defense. After all, Americans love to make “love it or leave it” arguments when they’re in the temporary majority on a policy. But is Euclidean zoning actually popular? The evidence for any kind of mass support for zoning in the early days is surprisingly weak. Despite the revolutionary impact that zoning would have on how cities operate, many cities quietly adopted zoning through administrative means. Occasionally city councils would design and adopt zoning regimes on their own, but often they would simply authorize the local executive to establish and staff a zoning commission. Houston was among the only major U.S. city to put zoning to a public vote—a surefire way to gauge popularity, if it were there—and it was rejected in all five referendums. In the most recent referendum in 1995, low-income and minority residents voted overwhelmingly against zoning. Houston  lacks zoning to this day. Meanwhile, the major proponents of early zoning programs in cities like New York and Chicago were business groups and elite philanthropists. Where votes were […]

Mini review: Suburb, by Royce Hanson

Suburb: Planning Politics and the Public Interest is a scholarly book about planning politics in Montgomery County, a (mostly) affluent suburb of Washington, D.C.  The book contains chapters on redevelopment of inner ring, transit-friendly areas such as Friendship Heights and Silver Spring, but also discusses outer suburbs and the county’s agricultural areas. From my perspective, the most interesting section of the book was the chapter on Friendship Heights and Bethesda, two inner-ring areas near subway stops.  When landowners proposed to redevelop these areas, the planning staff actually downzoned them (p. 56)- and NIMBYs fought the planning board, arguing that even more downzoning was necessary to prevent unwelcome development. These downzoning decisions were based on the staff’s “transportation capacity analysis”- the idea that an area’s roads can only support X feet of additional development.  For example, Hanson writes that Friendship Heights “could support only 1.6 million square feet of additional development.” (p. 62).   Similarly, he writes that Bethesda’s “roads and transit could handle only 12 million square feet of new development at an acceptable level of service.” (p. 75) Thus, planning staff artificially limited development based on “level of service “(LOS) .  “Level of service” is a concept used to grade automobile traffic; where traffic is free-flowing the LOS is A.  But the idea that development is inappropriate in low-LOS places seems a bit inconsistent with my experience. Bethesda and Friendship Heights zip codes have about 5000-10,000 people per square mile; many places with far more density seem to function adequately.   For example, Kew Gardens Hills in central Queens has 27,000 people per square mile, relies on bus service, and yet seems to be a moderately popular area. Moreover, the use of LOS to cap density has a variety of other negative effects.  First, places with free-flowing traffic tend to be dangerous for […]

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