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Market Urbanism MUsings May 27, 2016

  1. This week at Market Urbanism Brent Gaisford sums up How Los Angeles’ Rent Got So Damn High Three big things happened, two of them awesome, and one dumb. We decided living in cities was cool again (awesome), city centers are creating tons of new jobs (awesome), and we didn’t build very many new places to live in our cities (not awesome). 2. Where’s Scott? Scott Beyer spent his 6th and final week in San Antonio. His two Forbes articles this week were about how Subsidizing Light Rail Is Like Subsidizing The Landline Telephone and how Modern Zoning Would Have Killed Off America’s Dense Cities, which covered the New York Times research conducted by Stephen Smith If today’s regulatory climate had been applied a century or two ago, the American cities that people most want to preserve would be shells of themselves. And that was the point of the Times’ article, to show the fundamentally anti-urban nature of modern zoning regulations. 3. At the Market Urbanism Facebook Group Michael Lewyn‘s latest at Planetizen:  Does New Housing Create New Demand for Housing? Rick Rybeck shared his writing: Funding Infrastructure to Rebuild Equitable, Green Prosperity via Krishan Madan:  Will Bellevue Kneecap Development to Preserve Its Employees’ Views? via Bjorn Swenson:  The “Grandma Test” says “speak up” Marcos Paulo Schlickmann wants to discuss whether the technology is a barrier to entry to less tech savvy Uber/Lyft customers John Coppage at American Conservative: Co-living shouldn’t just be for big-city yuppies via John Morris: Housing Costs Too Much: A Responsive Series of Awkward Dinner Conversations via John Morris: [Pittsburgh] Terminal Bldg converting to The Highline with bike trails and green space via Krishan Madan: SF Now Has Highest Per Capita Property Crime Rate In The US via Krishan Madan: For First Time in Modern Era, Living With Parents Edges Out Other Living Arrangements for […]

How Los Angeles’ Rent Got So Damn High

[Research help for this article was provided by UCLA student Hunter Iwig] The rent in LA has gone up 30% in the last three years. What the hell? Three big things happened, two of them awesome, and one dumb. We decided living in cities was cool again (awesome), city centers are creating tons of new jobs (awesome), and we didn’t build very many new places to live in our cities (not awesome). Living in cities is cool again (awesome) In the 1950s and 1960s our cities stopped growing and people started moving to the suburbs. We kept it up for a long, long time. But something has changed in the last 10-15 years. More and more people prefer to live in walkable, urban areas. Today, 52% of Americans say they would like to live in a place where they do not need to use a car very often. For millennials, it’s even higher – 63% say they want the walkable convenience of cities. City dwellers do less environmental damage and cause less traffic, so that sounds like pretty damn good news. Cities are creating tons of jobs (awesome) New jobs used to be created in suburbs. But since the Great Recession until 2011, that’s changed – cities are where the new jobs are. And, surprise surprise, people want to move to places where they can get jobs. We’ve made it incredibly hard to build more houses in LA and other cities (not awesome) First, a quick primer. You can’t build anything you want wherever you want. Zoning and planning rules dictate what can be built on any given plot of land. In 1960, L.A. had a population of 2.5 million, but its zoning rules allowed for housing for 10 million if every lot was built to it’s maximum density. Today our […]

Market Urbanism MUsings May 20, 2016

1. This week at Market Urbanism: Emily Washington champions Market Urbanist ideas on The Federalist radio hour Tory Gattis contributed How Houston Can Grow Gracefully: Snow White And The Nine Dwarves Each of these “villages” could comfortably grow to as much as a million people themselves, which, when added to 2-3 million in Houston, gets us as high as 12 million people in the metro area. Adam Hengels wants to loosen up on exclusionary zoning before trying other schemes: Exclusionary Zoning and “Inclusionary Zoning” Don’t Mix Given that, by definition, zoning is exclusionary, Inclusionary Zoning completely within the exclusionary paradigm is synonymous with Inclusionary Exclusion. Anthony Ling contributed an article translated from Portugueses: Densifying Transit Corridors Is Not Densifying Enough Many factors justify TODs’ attractiveness to current planners, including that they make transit viable, increase the centrally-located housing stock, and satisfy residents of low-rise areas, who usually enjoy keeping their neighborhoods’ original features. Zach Caceres made sense of the philosophy of the late Zaha Hadid‘s partner: The Bottom-Up Urbanism Of Patrik Schumacher Markets and open exchange are a ‘robust information processing system’—the best that humans have yet found. Cities are also ultimately about structuring information. The built environment embodies generations of lessons learned by humanity, the evolution of a community reflected in its roads and walls, and the deliberate structuring of human affairs through architecture. Michael Lewyn found evidence that not many real people object to home sharing such as AirBnb: To Know Home-Sharing Is To Support It Only 4 percent of Americans think home-sharing should be illegal, and only 30 percent think it should be taxed.  52 percent think homesharing should be legal and untaxed.   Even among self-described liberals, only 38 percent think homesharing should be taxed. 2. Where’s Scott? Scott Beyer spent his 5th week in San Antonio. This weekend he’s visiting the Mexican border town of Nuevo Laredo, and the famed old […]

To Know Home-Sharing Is To Support It

If you read elite commentary on the home-sharing industry (that is, Airbnb and its competitors), especially on the Left, you might think it is quite controversial.  However, a recent Pew survey suggests otherwise. According to Pew, very few people know very much about home-sharing.  Only 11 percent of Americans have used home-sharing services,  and 53 percent of all adults have never even heard of them.  Only 9 percent of Americans claim to have heard “a lot” about the homesharing debate, and 16 percent have heard “a little.”  Among people who have actually used home-sharing services, these numbers rise to 19 percent and 37 percent. But to the extent Americans are aware of home-sharing, they like the idea.  Only 4 percent of Americans think home-sharing should be illegal, and only 30 percent think it should be taxed.  52 percent think homesharing should be legal and untaxed.   Even among self-described liberals, only 38 percent think homesharing should be taxed.

The Bottom-Up Urbanism Of Patrik Schumacher

  [editor’s note: This article was originally posted at Medium.com, and republished with permission of the author, Zachary Caceres. Below are links to some of the Free Market Urbanism writings and speaking of Patrik Schumacher, Partner at Zaha Hadid Architects. Schumacher’s writing is often too dense for me to parse, but Caceres does a great job of breaking it down.] Free Market Urbanism – Urbanism Beyond Planning I Am Trying to Imagine a Radical Free Market Urbanism Illinois Institute of Technology Lecture On “Free Market Urban Order” The Bottom-Up Urbanism of Patrik Schumacher What is the “Radical Free Market Urbanism” of Patrik Schumacher? Here’s his deal as I understand it, gleaned from reading Schumacher’s nearly impenetrable essays. Schumacher believes that architecture and urban design is at a crossroads. The styles that animated the mid-20th century are dead, because they depended too much on central planning (the sort of zoning and design that Jane Jacobs hated). Modernism is dead and was the last truly coherent architectural design philosophy or style. But postmodernism isn’t really anything. He calls it the ‘garbage spill’ approach to urban design—where anything goes in such a way that you get an incoherent sprawling mess. Many modern American cities are like a Frankenstein of awful central planning and unstructured garbage spill. So he proposes Parametric Design, a new—and to Schumacher—coherent 21st century design style. Parametricism is a conscious adaptation of insights from complex systems theory to design. Fundamentally, parametric design is like a fusion of agent-based modeling with complex computation enabled by computers. These models are about tying elements together rather than imposing a vision from above. With so many linked dependent variables, the design takes on qualitatively different forms as you manipulate the independent variables. It’s like ‘emergence’ in biological systems. Parametric design makes plans easily editable and manipulable even after construction […]

Densifying Transit Corridors Is Not Densifying Enough

Curitiba One recent urban planning trend advocates for so-called “Transit-Oriented Developments”, or TODs. This is when cities allow already built-up areas to increase development along mass transit corridors, such as bus or rail lines. If such transit infrastructure didn’t exist, the potential development increase in these areas would be restricted. The TOD idea is mainly based on the Curitiba model, a city that allowed denser building and populations along Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) corridors. The above image shows the effects: high-rise buildings with minimum or absent setbacks along the corridors, and sharp decreases in density on adjacent streets, since these latter streets would theoretically use the BRTs less. The same logic is being applied for São Paulo’s new recently-approved Zoning Code: sharp density increases in allowed built-up areas along mass transit corridors, and more low-slung buildings further into the neighborhoods.   This TOD model is certainly better than previous ones, wherein dense development was restricted altogether, even when near mass transit. As I’ve previously noted, lower densities undermine the economic feasibility of transit networks, which rely on intense agglomerations. Many factors justify TODs’ attractiveness to current planners, including that they make transit viable, increase the centrally-located housing stock, and satisfy residents of low-rise areas, who usually enjoy keeping their neighborhoods’ original features. But I haven’t become a broad advocate of TODs because they disproportionately favor these low-rise residents, disregarding everyone who must be pushed into suburban peripheries. A TOD-driven approach has a correct logic of analyzing neighborhood scale, and trying to organize it likewise, based on transit and street availability. But it doesn’t account for the factthat every unit left unbuilt within a neighborhood will necessarily be built in the outskirts, generating longer commutes and higher infrastructure costs. Peripheral residents certainly are not the same as downtown ones, but they would still […]

Exclusionary Zoning and “Inclusionary Zoning” Don’t Mix

Inclusionary Zoning is an Oxymoron The term “Inclusionary Zoning” gives a nod to the fact that zoning is inherently exclusionary, but pretends to be somehow different.  Given that, by definition, zoning is exclusionary, Inclusionary Zoning completely within the exclusionary paradigm is synonymous with Inclusionary Exclusion. What is Inclusionary Zoning? “Inclusionary Zoning” is a policy requiring a certain percentage of units in new developments to be affordable to certain income groups.  Sometimes, this includes a slight loosening of restrictions on the overall scale of the development, but rarely enough loosening to overcome the burden of subsidizing units. Many cities, particularly the most expensive ones, have adopted Inclusionary Zoning as a strategy intended to improve housing affordability.  Often, demand for below-market units are so high, one must literally win a lottery to obtain a developer-subsidized unit. Economics of Exclusion We must first acknowledge the purpose of zoning is to EXCLUDE certain people and/or businesses from an area.  Zoning does this by limiting how buildings are used within a district, as well as limiting the scale of buildings .  These restriction cap the supply of built real estate space in an area.  As we know from microeconomics, when rising demand runs into this artificially created upward limit on supply, prices rise to make up the difference. As every district in a region competes to be more exclusive than its neighbors through the abuse of zoning, regional prices rise in the aggregate. Since the invention of the automobile, and subsequent government overspending on highways, sprawl has served as the relief valve. We’ve built out instead of up for the last several decades and this sprawl has relieved some of the pressure major metropolitan areas would have otherwise felt. In fact, it’s worked so well–and led to the abuse of zoning rules for such a long time–that exclusionary zoning has become the accepted paradigm. Zoning is the default flavor of […]

How Houston Can Grow Gracefully: Snow White And The Nine Dwarves

A lot of people shudder when they see growth projections of the Houston metro area from the current 6.5 million to 9 or even 10 million people over the next couple of decades.  If traffic is this bad now, how can we possibly handle it?  Is there any way this can be handled gracefully, or at least less painfully? I think it can be if we look at it with the right perspective, and I call that perspective “Snow White and the Nine Dwarves” (yes, even the fairy tales are bigger in Texas – I considered “Asgard and the Nine Realms” of Norse mythology, but I think that’s too obscure a reference for most people). If you look at a lot of modest-sized cities, they can operate effectively on as little as two crossing interstates/freeways. As you can see in this map, Houston’s rapidly growing Grand Parkway outer loop is creating many more of these crossings along our radial spoke freeways. I think each of these crossings will essentially form the center of a new self-contained suburban village or edge city, with the nine “dwarves” being roughly (clockwise from north) The Woodlands Kingwood/Humble (already growing that way) Baytown Clear Lake/League City Pearland Sugar Land Katy Cypress Tomball If nine makes your head spin, I think most of the growth will likely center on the Big Two of The Woodlands (drawing from Tomball to Kingwood) and Katy (drawing from Sugar Land to Cypress).  Houston remains the center of the big amenities: professional sports, museums, performing arts, bars, live music/nightclubs, signature parks, the zoo, universities, festivals, high-end restaurants and shopping, etc. – thus “Snow White” (no snickering) I think each of these “villages” could comfortably grow to as much as a million people themselves, which, when added to 2-3 million in Houston, […]

Market Urbanism MUsings May 13, 2016

1. This week at Market Urbanism: Brent Gaisford contributed his first article, High Rent Sucks. Let’s Build More Houses and launched a new website: LA Rent Is Too Damned High Let’s upzone our cities and build more houses. And not just a few. A lot. Let’s build a lot more houses. Jeff Fong wrote a post inspired by a recent Nolan Gray piece, Planning As A Question Of Scale In Jane Jacob’s Hayekian Critique of Urban Planning, Nolan Gray argues for the futility of trying to master plan something as complex as an entire city. And he’s right. The last century’s Corbusian fantasies overwhelmingly ended in failure. Johnny Sanphillipo filmed a video about his small farm: Suburban Market Gardening  This sort of small scale local food production is generally ignored or labelled as irrelevant. It isn’t “agriculture.” It isn’t…. anything. It’s just eccentric hobbyists who like to play farmer. But I disagree. Michael Lewyn is skeptical rich foreigners are causing high housing costs: Are Billionaires To Blame? One common argument I have read in various places is that the high rent of New York and other large cities is a result of globalization and inequality (English translation: rich foreigners).  According to this theory, rich people have created a surge of demand so overwhelming that no amount of construction could possibly meet it. 2. Where’s Scott? Scott Beyer spent his fourth week in San Antonio. His Forbes article this week covered Puerto Rico’s business climate problem, focusing on the capital city of San Juan: Ricardo and Pamela were skeptical that one-stop permit shops would work in San Juan. The city would be too incompetent, settling for outdated technologies and low-energy employees. And special interests–such as existing businesses, entrenched civil servants and the gestores–would oppose streamlining the process. 3. At the Market Urbanism Facebook Group: via Logan Mohtashami: Build more houses […]

Are Billionaires To Blame?

One common argument I have read in various places is that the high rent of New York and other large cities is a result of globalization and inequality (English translation: rich foreigners).  According to this theory, rich people have created a surge of demand so overwhelming that no amount of construction could possibly meet it. It seems that if this argument were true, rent would be growing most rapidly in rich neighborhoods full of super-expensive skyscrapers, such as New York’s Upper East and West Sides. This week, NYU’s Furman Center helpfully came out with its latest report on housing in New York City. Page 6 of the report reveals that between 1990 and 2014, rent in the Upper East Side rose by 23 percent- about the same as the citywide average. Upper West Side rent rose by 38 percent- more than the citywide average, but less than ten of the city’s 50-odd other neighborhood clusters, including not only hipstery Greenpoint, but also not-so-nice areas like East Harlem. So this bit of data, although not conclusive, seems inconsistent with the “rich foreigners” theory.

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