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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.

Suburban Market Gardening

I filmed this video about Whisper Farms in suburban Pasadena, California. It’s an ordinary home that’s been pressed in to service as a for-profit market garden. My friend Kirsten Dirksen was kind enough to edit it in conjunction with her website  www.faircompanies.com 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. When we look at the challenges of feeding more people with fewer resources, this kind of distributed hyper-local production makes tremendous sense. Most North Americans live in suburbs. Most suburbs have substantial amounts of sunny land right next to where people live. There’s already water being used to grow ornamental landscapes. Lawns are the largest single crop in the country. Growing food instead makes sense, particularly if different people specialize in different crops. Producing food in this manner eliminates the costs associated with transporting food from remote farms to population centers. Cities themselves are a rich source of waste materials that can be turned to organic feedstocks for agricultural production and soil amendments. Provisional labor is abundant. So are local paying customers. No one is suggesting that a California mortgage can be paid by selling lettuce at the farmers market. But most “real” farms are dependent on non-farm income from a family member who works in town as well. Suburban market gardens aren’t much different. This is one piece of a larger set of responses to how to work around concentrated industrial agribusiness. [Originally published on the blog Granola Shotgun]

Planning As A Question Of Scale

This post was inspired by Nolan Gray’s “Jane Jacobs’ Hayekian Critique of Urban Planning” and the discussion it recently sparked over at Strong Towns. 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. And, in what’s a very even-handed article, he goes on to make room for some amount of centralization where decentralized planning just seems to break down. He’s right on that point as well. But after reading Mr. Gray’s article and the discussion it sparked over at Strong Towns, I think we can take the conversation a little farther. Instead of a binary choice, we should be speaking in terms of a spectrum with centralization and decentralization on opposite, theoretical ends. Once we think in those terms, we can approach questions of planning as questions of determining what issues are best addressed at what scale (individual, neighborhood, district, municipal, regional, etc). Looking at India’s or China’s Wenzhou, we can see how hard it is to produce certain kinds of city-wide infrastructure through decentralized market coordination. In the specific areas where relatively decentralized coordination produces sub-par results, it makes sense solve problems via a single entity with responsibility for an entire urban area. The point here is not that municipal or regional planners are ever better at confronting knowledge problems than market participants; it’s that, in some places, transaction costs render decentralized coordination nearly impossible, so the potential benefits of better-leveraged local knowledge never even have a chance to appear. In these situations, any plan is better than no plan, and below a certain scale, no plan is what we end up with. And where transaction costs aren’t too high we should […]

High Rent Sucks. Let’s Build More Houses.

LA rent sucks. It’s way, way too damn high. Let’s fix it. If you rent, you’re probably already on board. You gotta pay the man on the 1st of the month, every month, and that sucks. But what if you are the man? You’ve got the sweet house, the trophy husband, the picket fence. Even then, you should still be upset. Here’s why this matters, to everybody: High housing costs are hamstringing the whole American economy. To the tune of a TRILLION dollars a year. $3,000 for every man, woman, and child. Short and sweet – the places where the rents are too damn high tend to be places where people are more productive and can make a lot of money (think entertainment in LA, tech in SF, or finance in NYC). But because the cost of living is so high in those places, lots of people choose to move to places where it is cheap instead. If we drove rents down, and people started moving to where the best jobs are, the US economy would grow by $1-2 trillion a year. That’s more money for you, more money for me, and more money for Uncle Sam. High rents are trapping us in our cars, breaking up families, and literally driving us into obesity and early death.  Remember those high-paying jobs in our most productive cities? Well some people want them even though they can’t afford to live near them. So they drive, and they drive far. And when more people drive, and the farther we drive, the more cars there are on the road (cars on road = # of people driving x distance they drive). Then we’re all stuck in traffic. Sitting in our damn cars for hours in traffic makes us fat, gives us less time at […]

Market Urbanism MUsings May 6, 2016

1. This week at Market Urbanism: Emily Washington ties Adam Smith‘s ideas to urbanism in Mercantilist logic and land-use regulation Adam Smith taught the world that mercantilism impoverished 18th-century nations by erecting barriers to trade and reducing opportunities for specialization and economic growth. Regulations that restrict urban development likewise reduce opportunities for innovation and specialization by limiting cities’ population size and density. Dan Keshet Taylor Swift Spurns Country Music’s Longtime Attitude Towards Cities Taylor Swift, on the other hand, can portray a positive side of cities: cosmopolitan places to escape bad relationships, meet new people with different life experiences, and grow your dreams. Let’s Go L.A., an anonymous new contributor, adds Zoning, Buildings Codes, And Low-Quality Housing quality can be used to convey a wide variety of characteristics. Something can be low quality in the sense that it is hazardous to human health and safety, or something can be low quality in the sense that, while functional, it doesn’t meet the aesthetic preferences of the neighbors. Stephen Smith quoted about Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn at Washington Post 2. Wednesday was Jane Jacobs‘ 100th birthday, giving market urbanists much to walk and talk about. These include numerous Jane’s Walks that will occur this weekend in numerous U.S. cities: Nolan Gray discussed Jane Jacobs and Friedrich Hayek on the Strong Towns Podcast Emily Washington talked about Jane Jacobs on the Cato Daily Podcast Sandy Ikeda is hosting his annual Brooklyn Heights Janes Walk this weekend An urbanist friend of Jeff Fong dedicated a song to Jane Jacobs Stephen Smith is never afraid to point out the NIMBY tendencies of Jane Jacobs on twitter: It’s Jane Jacobs’s 100th birthday!! To celebrate, I will tweet out some of her most NIMBYrrific quotes. — Market Urbanism (@MarketUrbanism) May 4, 2016 3. Where’s Scott? Scott Beyer spent his third week in San Antonio, and will travel tomorrow to the Mexican […]

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