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Why Autonomous Vehicles != Endless Sprawl

There’s been an ongoing debate in urbanist circles about whether autonomous vehicles (AVs) will damn us to perpetual sprawl and super commuting. I don’t believe that they will. In the first place, the business conditions under which AVs could conceivably induce more sprawl are unlikely. And in the second, there are numerous other factors that will affect the future of urban development in the US. That’s not to say we won’t double down on past mistakes, but it won’t be AVs that single handedly bring about that future on their own.  No One Wants To Sell You a Self Driving Car For AVs to even begin to induce more sprawl, they need to facilitate super commuting. For that to happen at any significant scale, they need to be ubiquitous and privately owned. And that is something I don’t think we’re going to see for one simple reason — it’s a product no one is selling. Ole Muskie notwithstanding, no one with capital to burn thinks selling private AVs is a winning strategy (with good reason). Given the accumulated R&D costs of the last several years, the price a firm would need to charge for the first generation of personal AVs would be astronomical. Moreover, a company selling personal AVs would give up on mountains of valuable data generated as the vehicle racked up mileage. Trip data feeds back in to improving the ability of AVs to navigate and data about consumer habits is valuable as well. We should also remember that the state of AV technology is still quite…meh. And in the absence of a step function improvement in the technology, the fastest way to get to market is to restrict the problem space. That means means a driverless TNC service that can be limited to trips in certain areas […]

The “Old People Need Cars” Argument- Myth or Fact?

The needs of the aged are often a political football in disputes over transportation policy.  On the one hand, defenders of low-cost parking and other car-oriented policies argue that older people all need cars because they can’t be bothered to walk.  On the other hand, smart growth types argue that we will all be too old to drive someday, so we need to end the reign of car dependency. One way of examining the issue is to find out whether seniors in fact drive more than everyone else.  Happily, the 2016 American Community Survey comes to our rescue here.  In Manhattan where I live, there are just over 129,000 senior-headed households with no car, and just over 36,000 with a vehicle available.  So contrary to car-lobby conventional wisdom, only about 22 percent of senior-headed households have a car.  How does that compare with other age groups?  On the one hand, only about 25,000 out of 200,000, or 12 percent, of millennial-headed households (that is, households headed by someone under 35) have a vehicle.  But among Manhattan households headed by persons between 35 and 64, about 28 percent (just over 109,000 out of just over 386,000)  have a vehicle- more than senior-headed households, to my surprise. So I rate the “Old People Need Cars” claim as Mostly False: most seniors here in Manhattan don’t have cars, even though they are more likely to own cars than millenials.  On the other hand, the latter fact suggests that seniors are rarely physically incapable of using cars.

The Case for Subsidizing Deed Restrictions

Houston skyline

In most of my discussions of Houston here on the blog, I have always been quick to hedge that the city still subsidizes a system of quasi-private deed restrictions that control land use and that this is a bad thing. After reading Bernard Siegan’s sleeper market urbanist classic, “Land Use Without Zoning,” I am less sure of this position. Toward this end, I’d like to argue a somewhat contrarian case: subsidizing private deed restrictions, as is the case in Houston, is a good idea insomuch as it defrays resident demand for more restrictive citywide land-use controls. For those of you who haven’t read my last four or five wonky blog posts on land-use regulations in Houston (what else could you possibly be doing?), here is a quick refresher. Houston doesn’t have conventional Euclidean zoning. Residents voted it down three times. However, Houston does have standard subdivision and setback controls, which serve to reduce densities. The city also enforces high minimum parking requirements outside of downtown. On top of these standard land-use regulations, the city heavily relies on private deed restrictions. Also known as restrictive covenants, these are essentially legal agreements among neighbors about how they can and cannot use their property, often set up by a developer and signed onto as a condition for buying a home in a particular neighborhood. In most cities, deed restrictions cover superfluous lifestyle preferences not already covered by zoning, including lawn maintenance and permitted architectural styles. In Houston, however, these perform most of the functions normally covered by zoning, regulating issues such as permissible land uses, minimum lot sizes, and densities. Houston’s deed restrictions are also different in that they are heavily subsidized by the city. In most cities, deed restrictions are overseen and enforced by parties to a deed, typically organized as a […]

Three Lessons from Nashville’s Building Boom

Nashville has enjoyed some of the country’s fastest job growth for several years as healthcare and tech startups have made the city home. Unsurprisingly, this economic boom has coincided with a large increase in population, greater demand for real estate, and rising house prices. But Nashville’s policy environment has moderated price increases relative to what many in-demand cities have experienced. Nashville policy has made it possible for housing developers to build both up and out in response to this new demand. However, an expansion of historic preservation efforts that have so far failed to prevent demographic change could stall the new housing supply that has maintained the city’s relative affordability. Nashville’s experience offers three lessons for other cities: 1. Legalize Housing and It Will Be Built  Since 2010 the Nashville Metropolitan Statistical Area has grown by more than 400,000 residents, or 20 percent. Davidson County, home to Nashville at the center of the region, has grown by nearly 65,000 people, or 10 percent. Like other Southern cities, its easy to build new suburban housing in the Nashville region, and most of this population growth has been accommodated by building out. What’s unusual is that Nashville is also accommodating significant infill. In 2010 the city enacted a downtown rezoning. It eliminated parking requirements and increased by-right height limits. The new code is essentially a form-based code. Nearly all uses except for industrial are allowed in the center city. Dozens of new office, hotel, and residential towers have delivered since the new code was implemented, and many more are under construction. Since the new code has been in place, population in the two census tracts affected by upzoning has grown from about 7,500 to about 10,000. Forthcoming research from my colleague Salim Furth shows that Nashville’s recent low-density growth has been comparable to what we’d expect […]

Are Houston’s Deed Restrictions “Basically Zoning”?

Houston Neighborhood

Houston doesn’t have zoning. As I have written about previously here on the blog, this doesn’t mean nearly as much as you would think. Sure, Houston’s municipal government doesn’t segregate uses or expressly regulate densities. But as my Market Urbanism colleague Michael Lewyn has documented, city officials do regulate lot sizes, setbacks, and parking requirements. They also enforce private deed restrictions, which blanket many of the city’s residential neighborhoods. A deed restriction is a legal agreement among neighbors about how they can and cannot use their property. In most cities, deed restrictions are purely private and often fairly marginal, adding rules on top of zoning that property owners must follow. But in Houston, deed restrictions do most of the heavy lifting typically covered by zoning, including delineating permissible uses and design standards. Whenever I point out that Houston has relatively light land-use regulations (and is enjoying the benefits), folks often respond that the city’s deed restrictions are basically zoning. This couldn’t be further from the truth. Before I turn to the essential differences, it’s worth first observing how Houston’s deed restrictions are like any other city’s zoning. First, like zoning, Houston’s deed restrictions are almost universally designed to prop up the values of single-family houses. Despite the weak evidence for a use segregation-property values connection, this justification for zoning goes back to the program’s roots in the 1920s. Many of Houston’s nicest residential neighborhoods, like River Oaks and Tanglewood, follow this line of thinking, enforcing tight deed restrictions on residents that come out looking a lot like zoned neighborhoods in nearby municipalities like Bellaire and Jersey Village. Second, both zoning and Houston’s deed restrictions are enforced by government officials at taxpayer expense. In most other cities, deed restrictions are overseen and enforced by a private group like a homeowners association, […]

FEEcon 2018

Market Urbanism at FEEcon 2018 Hyatt Regency Atlanta June 7-9 SPEAKERS AGENDA PRICING TRAVEL REGISTER Market Urbanism is returning to partner with the Foundation for Economic Education to present an entire track of six sessions focused on Market Urbanism at the second annual FEEcon Conference. June 7-9 2018 Wherever you live, your city uses regulations to restrict what can be built and for what purposes buildings can be used. FEEcon’s Urbanism, Development, & Your Neighborhood track is a joint effort by Market Urbanism and FEE to shed light on the vast spectrum of land use and transportation regulations that often diminish neighborhood communities, cause traffic congestion, and constrain housing supply to create affordable housing crises across the world. This track provides you with the intellectual tools you’ll need to make a case for liberty in your own backyard. https://youtu.be/RoIOi66S3PQ FEEcon is the premier gathering of freedom lovers from all walks of life, with professional networking opportunities, inspiring panel discussions, and fun for everyone – all sponsored by FEE and held at the landmark Hyatt Regency Atlanta. Choose from 50+ sessions and 8 distinct learning tracks all designed to provide real skills for professional success, combined with a solid grounding in economic, ethical and legal principles that you won’t get anywhere else. FEEcon will inspire and empower you to set your path and change the world! FEEcon will run from Thursday evening, June 7th, through Saturday evening, June 9th, 2018. All events are at the gorgeous Hyatt Regency in downtown Atlanta. Register at FEEcon.org Market Urbanism Speakers Patrik Schumacher Patrik Schumacher is partner at Zaha Hadid Architects and founding director at the AA Design Research Lab. Alain Bertaud Alain Bertaud is an urbanist and a senior research scholar at the NYU Stern Urbanization Project. Bertaud previously held the position of principal […]

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.  

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.

Cities Should Not Design for Autonomous Vehicles

Coauthored with Emily Hamilton Last week, the autonomous vehicle company Waymo began testing cars in Chandler, AZ with no employees sitting in the front seat. While Waymo is busy creating systems of vehicle-mounted sensors that allow cars to safely navigate existing urban infrastructure and obstacles, some cities are pursuing plans to build “smart streets” that broadcast information about roads and potential hazards to autonomous vehicles. The American history of auto-centric infrastructure demonstrates that building specific infrastructure for autonomous vehicles may have long-lasting negative consequences. Waymo’s cars rely on both detailed maps and car-mounted lidar sensors that “see” the world around them in order to follow their route and to to avoid collisions. While the current technology is very safe, car-mounted sensors remain imperfect. As Tim Lee points out, there are reasons that Waymo launched in Chandler: its sunny weather, wide streets and minimal pedestrian traffic. Fully autonomous vehicles will need even better sensors than those that are currently available to drive safely in snowy conditions and in places with less regular streets that may confuse a vehicle’s sensors. Some analysts have advocated for publicly-provided smart streets and smart intersections that could limit the need for vehicle-mounted sensors and, perhaps, speed the adoption of autonomous vehicles. My colleague Brent Skorup has this view: Car-mounted sensors often confused by road materials (a shift from dirt to gravel or asphalt), reflective buildings, bridges, or even the weather. Roadside sensors not only mitigate these problems, but also reduce the computing load on car-mounted systems, because the vehicles have to make fewer snap decisions. There’s a way to get this information to vehicles quickly and accurately. Just as lawmakers and city planners started laying asphalt, installing streetlights, posting speed limits, and zoning property to accommodate Henry Ford’s cars, we need to design roads and infrastructure […]

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