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DC Approved 4,000 New Housing Units This Year, But Is It Enough?

Twitter tells me that earlier tonight, “not-ruling-it-out” possible future mayoral contender (and local smart growth demigod) Tommy Wells held his inaugural book club meeting; the book discussed was Ed Glaeser’s Triumph of the City. DC’s chief planner Harriet Tregoning was also there, and while she’s been relatively good to the cause of density in DC, the kinds of people who would show up to a Tommy Wells Triumph of the City book club probably want a bit more out of her, so I presume (again, I wasn’t there) that she ended up being one of the least radical people there. One person tweeted regarding the book club: “Building permit data says DC on track for 4,000 new housing units this year,” which I presume was a statement made by someone defending DC’s supply expansion efforts….

e. e. cummings the urbanist

A post of Stephen’s from a year ago got a few hits today. I reread it and recalled a poem I studied in high school by e. e. cummings: plato told him: he couldn't believe it(jesus told him;he wouldn't believe it)lao tsze certainly told him,and general (yes mam) sherman ; and even (believe it or not) you told him:i told him;we told him (he didn't believe it,no sir) it took a nipponized bit of the old sixth avenue el;in the top of his head: to tell him I actually have no idea what this poem is about, but I’m going to suggest that perhaps e. e. cummings did not support the destruction of New York’s private mass transit to meet government ends.

Book Review of The Heights: Anatomy of a Skyscraper

I’m reviewing The Heights: Anatomy of the Skyscraper by Kate Ascher as part of a TLC Book Tour. Other bloggers are also reviewing the book, and you can find links to their reviews here. I received a complimentary copy of the book, and I’d like to send it to a reader if anyone is interested in reading it. If you’d like it, just comment saying so by Monday, December 5th. If multiple readers would like it, I’ll pick one at random. _______________________________ The Heights reads like a textbook for Skyscrapers 101. It’s full of interesting skyscraper facts along with diagrams and timelines. I learned a lot from the book, having no background in architecture or engineering. For someone who has studied these subjects though, I imagine that this book would be too elementary. However for me, it offered a useful overview of the history and science of skyscrapers. Ascher details the process of planning, constructing, and owning skyscrapers, from the details of different types of foundations to building maintenance. She explains some of the challenges that skyscrapers present that I might not have thought about. For example, buildings with unusual designs that do not have straight sides must be designed with mechanisms for reaching the windows for cleaning and maintenance. She also explores skyscraper financing. I was surprised to learn that the bulk of the cost of owning a skyscraper comes not from construction, but rather from cleaning and maintenance over the life of the building: Although the annual cost of maintenance pales in comparison to the cost of constructing a building, over the life of a building — which can be upward of 100 years–it is much more significant. Holding aside capital replacement and reinvestment, the cost of the initial structure itself represents only about 5 to 10 percent of the total cost of owning […]

Zoning in NYC, Then and Now

New York City’s Department of City Planning claims that the original 1916 zoning code allowed enough building stock growth to accomodate as many as 55 million people in the city. Readers can probably guess that today’s code is a bit less liberal, but Columbia University’s Center for Urban Real Estate put some numbers on it for the Times: 765 million square feet of development allowed in Manhattan, and 4 billion throughout the five boroughs. An apples-to-oranges comparison suggests that for every ten people that NYC planners sought to accomodate in 1916, today’s code only leaves room for one or two. …

NYC Officials Take Notice of Astronomical Subway Construction Costs

New York City’s subway lines – the engines that keep the city’s real estate market moving – are notoriously expensive to build. Tunneling projects in New York routinely clock in at five to ten times the cost of their Asian and European counterparts, putting the city’s measly 20-30% aboveground union construction premiums to shame. New York has finally restarted work on the century-in-the-making Second Avenue Subway, but MTA capital construction president Michael Horodniceanu says that anything beyond the initial Upper East Side segment “will be for our children or grandchildren.” And Bloomberg’s 7 train to Secaucus, or those fabled Utica and Nostrand extensions?…

Cities and the Market Process: Part 3

This series looks at some of the ways that people organize themselves to live alongside each other in cities. Part 1 looks at inherent problems with top-down planning, and Part 2 looks at the costs of local governments sanctioning collective choice. From this negative start, I’d like to turn to some of the advantages that make humans well-adapted to living in the urban environment, starting with some of Adam Smith’s insight in The Theory of Moral Sentiments. Economists are often criticized, sometimes rightly so, for viewing people as perfectly rational and narrowly self-interested. Of course we are not. We all have unique motivators and preferences, which is what allows for the division of labor that we see in cities. One of the most important motivations, or “moral sentiments,” that we have comes in our desire for others to fare well and be happy. As Smith puts it: Upon these two different efforts, upon that of the spectator to enter into the sentiments of the person principally concerned, and upon that of the person principally concerned, to bring down his emotions to what the spectator can go along with, are founded two different sets of virtues. The soft, the gentle, the amiable virtues, the virtues of candid condescension and indulgent humanity, are founded upon the one: the great, the awful and respectable, the virtues of self-denial, of self-government, of that command of the passions which subjects all the movements of our nature to what our own dignity and honour, and the propriety of our own conduct require, take their origin from the other. This innate desire that most people have to relate to and be respected by those in their community makes people well-suited to city living. As Smith describes it, we generally seek approval from the “man within the breast,” […]

The Progressive Reaction Against NYC’s First Subway

nycsubway.org has an amazing trove of transit history, and I just got done reading “The Impact of the IRT on New York City” by Clifton Hood, on the effects of New York‘s first subway rapid transit line, first opened in 1904. There’s so much in it to recommend, but one of the interesting themes is the Progressive reaction to the real estate development that the line (he mostly deals with the IRT Broadway Line) sparked. Progressives were originally big supporters of the subway, on the grounds that it would encourage suburbanization and decentralization, putting people in their own homes, which they believed imbued better moral character than rented accommodations in tenements and large “apartment houses….

TGIF Links

1. A reader from Vancouver wrote in to let Stephen and me know about a proposed policy to tax foreign investors at a higher rate than local property owners. Support for this policy is growing among residents, and with a mayoral election this Saturday, some are hoping to get candidates to endorse the policy now. Of course the higher tax rate would be done in the name of affordable housing for Vancouver natives. Hmm, with this one I’d say that the road to hell is paved with questionable intentions. 2. In other Vancouver news, recently upzoned parcels have sold for three times their previous value. 3. Two NYC taxi medallions sold for over $1 million each this week. On Marketplace, David Yassky, chairman of the city’s Taxi and Limousine Commission said that he believes the fundamentals are solid in the medallion market. When the supply of your commodity is rigidly fixed, you’re already halfway to strong fundamentals. 4. A University of Connecticut study finds that growth in the number of a city’s parking spots is inversely correlated with population growth rates. 5. Some have questioned whether the abismal state of American infrastructure is a fact or just something that everyone knows and repeats. Gizmodo points out that in the United States we have a road system that built with cheap initial construction but expensive and ongoing maintenance costs. 6. Roberta Brandes Gratz at The Atlantic Cities speculates that Jane Jacobs’ female perspective led her to be able to see the small-scale, bottom-up activities of cities more effectively than men, who tend to look at cities from the macro level. Not sure where this leaves Hayek.

Some Belated Thoughts on The Gated City

Several bloggers have already provided reviews of The Gated City by Ryan Avent, including Aaron Renn at The Urbanophile, Rob Pitingol at Greater Greater Washington,  and Lloyd Alter at Tree Hugger. I’ve finally had a chance to read it and would thoroughly recommend it. I often support increased density on the grounds that this is what the market wants. To me, that’s still reason enough to support the repeal of many land use regulations, but Avent offers a vision of density that is perhaps more compelling to more people. Because the division of labor is limited by the size of the market, cities offer many amenities that are not supported in less dense places. The diversity of food, art, shopping, sports, and movies is all much greater in cities than in small towns because larger markets allow for more specialization. Of course taste is subjective; many people prefer the quiet of the suburbs to the chaos of the city. However we can see that currently, many people want to move to cities but are unable to by looking at vacancy and rental rates. Avent also points out that cities provide a sort of employment “insurance.” He uses the example of a Vietnamese chef losing his job. If the restaurant where he worked is in a large metropolitan area, he will be able to find another job in a Vietnamese restaurant. On the other hand, if he lives in a small town, he will likely have to seek employment in a more generic restaurant where he won’t  be able to charge a premium for his specialized skills. This is true for jobs in many industries. If I were to lose my job in economics research, I’d much rather be searching for a new job here in DC than in a state with one think tank, for […]

Meet Me At The Corner Of Mises & Jane Jacobs!

I'On Village, South Carolina About three years ago Adam wrote about the the story of I’On Village, a New Urbanist development build about a decade ago five miles outside of Charleston, and the difficulties that Vince Graham faced trying to build it. For one, the project had to be scaled down in some pretty significant ways: [The developers] worked to decipher what kind of plan would be supported by those council members who voted against the application….

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