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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 […]

Book Review: The Public Wealth of Cities

The Public Wealth of Cities by Dag Detter and Stefan Fölster proposes a series of reforms to improve municipal finances. The authors lay out guidelines for creating urban wealth funds (UWFs) and argue that financial stability is key to societal success.   Detter and Fölster first call for basic financial competency. According to the authors, most cities don’t even know what they actually own. Real estate and equipment are often owned directly by individual departments with no central record to provide a bird’s eye view of a city’s assets as a whole. When this is the case, good asset management becomes impossible because no one knows what they’re managing.   The authors also point out the need for cities to decide what is and is not a commercial asset. Where administrators designate an asset as commercial, maximizing ROI should supersede all other objectives. That doesn’t mean everything a city owns has to be managed to turn a profit, but where a piece of real estate or a facility is meant generate income, it ought to be managed explicitly to that end.   Professional financial planning is Detter and Fölster’s third major prescription. They argue that cities should hire professional asset managers to oversee their portfolios and that these managers should be shielded from the democratic process. They go on to make a very public choice argument that elected officials have inappropriately short time horizons and that pressure to please constituents can lead to decisions at odds with the long term sustainability of municipal finances. After developing that line of reasoning, they provide Singapore as an example of a municipality that does this pretty well.   In terms of the ideas presented, I loved the book. It touches on the organizational challenges of getting municipal finance right while speaking to what execution has […]

Liberty Machines™

During an urbanist twitter free-for-all last week, the thoroughly awesome term “liberty machines” was used to describe the virtues of the car. The claim was made that cars let individuals go wherever they want, whenever they want and are therefore a ‘freedom enhancing’ form of transit.  This isn’t the first time I’ve heard this argument in libertarian(ish) circles. But it doesn’t tally with my experience and I’m not sure it makes any sense even within its own premise. A Personal Anecdote and a Couple Thoughts When I learned to drive way back when, it was in the great state of Texas where driving is basically a necessity. In that context, getting my license (and being economically fortunate enough to have access to a car) was certainly liberating for me after a fashion. Thinking back, though, I enjoyed far less mobility as a car bound teenager in suburban Houston than I do now living in Oakland, California. I walk to the grocery, take BART to work, bike to the gym, catch a Lyft to go out, and/or drive myself when the occasion demands. Most of my trips are multimodal and the integration of transit modes affords me far more freedom of movement than car use alone ever could. The biggest reason for this is that single occupancy vehicle use doesn’t scale as a stand alone system. Unpriced roadways are prone to hitting congestion points and, as readers of this blog are probably aware, adding lanes doesn’t help. When roads become clogged, and there are no viable alternatives, a reliance on cars becomes a constraint. And to respond to the idea that mass transit relies on government subsidies and car use does not…the technical term for that would be factually incorrect. Mass transit is more than capable of paying for itself and let’s just say highways don’t […]

Mini review: Vanishing New York, by Jeremiah Moss

I recently read a highly publicized pro-NIMBY book, Vanishing New York.   The author, who goes by the pen name “Jeremiah Moss” tells a simple story: throughout New York, gentrification and chain stores are on the march, making the city rich and boring.  The story has an element of truth: obviously, there are some places that have gentrified, and there are some places (mostly notably Times Square) that have lots and lots of banks and chain stores. But on balance, the book’s relationship with factual reality is a bit uneven.  Much of the book complains about the evils of gentrification. But in fact, even in Manhattan the poverty rate is 17.9 percent, about three times that of most New York suburbs. Moss also claims that the city is getting whiter, but even Manhattan is 40 percent black and Hispanic, and New York City as a whole is 54 percent black and Hispanic. By contrast, in 1980 the city was only 45 percent black/Hispanic, and in 1940 it was over 90 percent white. Moss seems to think that the city is being taken over by chain stores. The last time I walked through the East Village (one of the neighborhoods he writes about) I found about one or two such stores per block, or about 5 or 10 percent of all storefronts.  My guess is that Moss thinks about chain stores the way many racists think about racial minorities: because they assume one is too many, 5 percent seems to them like a takeover. Moss is all for immigration from foreign nations, but constantly complains about newcomers, especially parents; he uses the word “stroller” like anti-Semites use the term “international bankers”- as a code-word for a dreaded enemy.  He has a problem with college students too (complaining about “NYU’s presence… [having] spread […]

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