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The Role for State Preemption of Local Zoning

Urbanists have increasingly turned to state-level preemption as a tool for reducing the barriers to new housing supply, recognizing the improved incentives for land-use policy relative to the local level. In a piece for the Atlantic Cities, Nolan sums up the potential for preemption to address current inefficiencies in urban policy. In addition to being a pragmatic tool to increase the supply of housing where it’s needed most, state-level preemption of local land-use rules is grounded in the American system of federalism that relies on higher levels of government setting limits on the extent to which lower levels of government can legislate or regulate away individuals’ rights. As legal scholar Michael Greve explains in The Upside-Down Constitution, American government is designed to rely on the threat of residents (and their tax base) leaving jurisdictions that enforce exploitative policies. When residents are free to enter and exit jurisdictions, the places that provide the policy environment, business opportunities, and quality of life can expect to gain residents at the expense of those that don’t. The opportunity for residents to “vote with their feet” by choosing to live and work in the places where they can best pursue their own version of the good life is essential to the American system of competitive federalism. When jurisdictions must compete with each other for residents and wealth, they tend to enact policies that support broad-based prosperity. Absent this competitive pressure, policymakers are more likely to implement policies that privilege special interests because they face a diminished threat of their tax base leaving the jurisdiction. Preemption can play an important role in supporting competitive federalism as opposed what Greve calls cartel federalism — when special interests and policymakers benefit at others’ expense. For example, with the 14th Amendment, the federal government restricted the potential for state governments to […]

A Guide to Urban Development [Guia de Gestão Urbana]

Caos Planejado, in conjunction with Editora BEI/ArqFuturo, recently published A Guide to Urban Development (Guia de Gestão Urbana) by Anthony Ling. The book offers best practices for urban design and although it was written for a Brazilian audience, many of its recommendations have universal applicability. For the time being, the book is only available in Portuguese, but after giving it a read through, I decided it deserved an english language review all the same. The following are some of the key ideas and recommendations. I hope you enjoy. GGU sets the stage with a broad overview of the challenges facing Brazilian cities. Rapid urbanization has put pressure on housing prices in the highest productivity areas of the fastest growing cities and car centric transportation systems are unable to scale along with the pace of urban growth. After setting the stage, GGU splits into two sections. The first makes recommendations for the regulation of private spaces, the second for the development and administration of public areas. Reforming Regulation Section one will be familiar territory for any regular MU reader. GGU advocates for letting uses intermingle wherever individuals think is best. Criticism of minimum parking requirements gets its own chapter. And there’s a section a piece dedicated to streamlining permitting processes and abolishing height limits. One interesting idea is a proposal to let developers pay municipalities for the right to reduce FAR restrictions. This would allow a wider range of uses to be priced into property values and create the institutional incentives to gradually allow more intensive use of land over time. Meeting People Where They Are Particular to the Brazilian experience is a section dedicated to formalizing informal settlements, or favelas. These communities are found in every major urban center in the country and often face persistent, intergenerational poverty along with […]

Market Urbanism MUsings May 3, 2017

1. Announcements: Get ready for Market Urbanism at #FEEcon June 15-17 in Atlanta.   Market Urbanists can use the code MU40OFF to get 40% off.  We’ll have several other exciting announcements over the next few days.  We can’t wait to see you there! If you are in New York, Market Urbanism is pleased to be a partner of Smart Cities NYC ’17: Powered by People, May 3-6. (smartcitiesnyc.com).  The offer code SCNYC100 gets market urbanists a $100 ticket discounted down from the $1,200 standard price. Sandy Ikeda has a short clip in the film Citizen Jane: Battle for the City.  Go see it!! Sandy Ikeda‘s Annual Jane’s Walk in Brooklyn Heights is this Sunday at 12:15. Vince Graham, former Chairman of the South Carolina Transportation Infrastructure Bank and friend of Market Urbanism published an op-ed in the Charleston Post and Courier: Unhealthy S.C. appetite for roads demands a diet 2. Recently at Market Urbanism: Market Urbanist Book Review: Cities and The Wealth of Nations by Jane Jacobs by Matthew Robare It seems like just about everyone who has ever set foot in a major city has read The Death and Life of Great American Cities and most professional urban planners have embraced at least part of her ideas. But that was not the only book she wrote and the others deserve attention from urbanists. Government-Created Parking Externalities by Emily Hamilton Developers are not responsible for creating a traffic congestion externality. Rather, city policymakers create this externality when they provide free or underpriced street parking. They cause drivers to waste time and gas sitting in traffic. Parking is not a public good that needs to be publicly-provided; it’s both rivalrous and excludable. Richard Florida and Market Urbanism by Michael Lewyn Florida writes that part of this “crisis” is the exploding cost of housing in some […]

Market Urbanism MUsings March 31, 2017

  1. Announcements John Morris has started an alternative Facebook group called Flyover Urbanism: A Market Urbanist Group for Flyover Country 2. This Week at Market Urbanism Emily Hamilton Market Urbanism is Still underrated New data keeps coming in that shows that increases in housing supply tend to be followed by declining rental rates, even in the cities facing the highest demand. Nolan Gray Towards A Liberal Approach To Urban Form A liberal approach to urban form accepts that reasonable people can disagree over the ideal urban arrangement. Wrapped into every grand vision and design regulation are particular normative preferences that many may not share. Should retail and residential be separate? Should every apartment receive at least one hour of direct sunlight? Should everyone live on a one acre lot? Jeff Fong Building A Better BART BART owns acres of surface parking spread out across the system. If it were to redevelop these parking lots into high density, mixed use developments, it could copy the MTRC model and create a high yield stream of revenue. Sandy Ikeda The Other Broken Window Whether you quickly mend a broken window, bend over to pick up a piece of trash, or intervene when someone disturbs the peace depends in part on your personal ethics, of course. But it also depends very much on whether your neighbors will applaud or laugh at you for doing it. 3. Where’s Scott? Scott Beyer remains in Portland, and this weekend will visit Eugene and Corvallis. His Forbes article this week was Portland’s Urban Growth Boundary: A Driver of Suburban Sprawl If bustling cities prevent what can be vaguely defined as “sprawl” on their nearest virgin land, it’s not like the people will go away and the sprawl will stop. It may resurface in even more remote places. This is counterproductive both for [density] advocates, and […]

Building A Better BART

In 2016, voters in San Francisco, Alameda and Contra Costa county approved a $3.5 Billion dollar bond to keep BART moving. Funds from the bond will be used to replace aging infrastructure throughout the system, but even three and half billion dollars will scarcely keep us running in place. Maintaining what we have long term—and eventually improving on what’s already in place—means finding a sustainable revenue stream for the system and reimagining how we fund transit in the Bay Area. Hong Kong vs the Bay Putting BART on permanently firm financial footing doesn’t mean reinventing the wheel. Commuter rail systems in East Asia figured out how to run profitably decades ago. And there’s no better example of what BART could be than the Metro Transit Railway Corporation (MTRC) in Hong Kong. The MTRC operates 130 miles of track (roughly equivalent to BART). It transports over 5 million passengers a day (about 10x BART’s daily ridership). And it posts a 99.9% on time rate (let’s just say…way the hell better than BART). MTRC System Map   The MTRC is able to maintain its first-in-class service levels because it doesn’t skimp on the upkeep. It employs approximately 5,000 technicians who physically inspect every inch of track once every three days. The rolling stock is given a similar level of attention. And the entire system is overseen from a state-of-the-art control center where management can identify problems in real-time. The result of all this preventative care is a transit system that reliably performs at scale and sets the global standard for commuter rail. All told, the MTRC spends an impressive US $700 million a year on maintenance and improvements. But perhaps the most amazing thing is that this $700 million comes out to less than 40% of the MTRC’s yearly revenue. Value Capture Finance […]

Market Urbanism MUsings March 24, 2017

1. Announcements I’ve posted a link on the homepage giving more info on the Market Urbanism programming at the upcoming FEE Conference, which is in Atlanta, June 15-17… The YIMBY party announced it will hold its 2nd annual conference, occurring this year in Oakland, July 13-16… And recently another YIMBY group popped up: YIMBY Denver! 2. This Week at Market Urbanism Michael Lewyn wrote Where the permits are & The “Foreign Buyers” Argument A common argument against new housing supply is that in high-cost cities such as New York, demand from foreign buyers is so overwhelming as to make new supply irrelevant. A recent study (available here) by two business school professors suggests otherwise. Emily Hamilton Conflicting Affordable Housing Policies Recently I presented on a panel at Chapman University on the future of housing in Orange County. Our panel highlighted the tensions between housing programs designed to help low-income and homeless households and those designed to help middle-income households. Sandy Ikeda wrote Addressing Local Knowledge & a book review on The Future Once Happened Here & Of Maps and Modernism In a sense, it may seem silly to criticize a map for being abstract, since, well, that’s what maps are supposed to do or else they would be useless.  But there is such a thing as being too abstract.  Maps should not abstract from what is essential to its purpose, which is to facilitate travel. 3. MU Elsewhere Emily‘s speech at Chapman University can be found at the 19:30 mark of this link Nolan Gray’s piece last year on Houston’s partial embrace of Market Urbanism was republished on FEE.org. He also published a to-do list for HUD secretary Ben Carson at Forbes. Carson could direct HUD officials to craft and disseminate model zoning reform legislation to the states. As urban history geeks may know, conventional “Euclidian” zoning […]

World City Profiles: European Villages Are Showcases Of Old Urbanism

There is always the lurking suspicion that great urbanism is a museum piece, something we cannot recreate. We have to console ourselves with guarding what’s left. Even then, some feel it unfit for ‘modern life,’ that humans cannot live as their recent ancestors had. Urbanists tend to celebrate cities and spaces of great renown, which makes remaking our own little corner of the world seem futile. I spent a year living in Europe–visiting Belgium, Italy, Spain and France, among other places–and found that the best places were not the big cities, but old villages, often very wealthy in times past. And it’s easy to miss what’s special about these quiet gems: the little streets and paths within them that people call home. A newly-built mall in Leuca, Italy showcases an older design sensibility   A bike tour led me to several towns in southern Italy—among them, Castro was my favorite aesthetically, with warm, immaculate streets around the center that were nonetheless devoid of many people. Castro, Italy Castro, Italy   Long before going to Europe, I had seen this meme photo:   Lo and behold, one such camera appeared right above where I parked my bike.   But overall, Bari’s old city was my favorite, with all the life coarsing through its streets. Families would open their doors and put out folding chairs in the streets. They made the streets their living room, while literally airing their dirty laundry in the rafters between buildings. Bari, Italy A quiet street in Leuven, Belgium—perhaps my favorite of all A Flemish parking lot—the Grand Beguinage, Leuven, Belgium    Reims, France In Reims, I got to tour some underground cellars that formerly stored champagne. With cool temperatures, high ceilings and lush moss lining the walls, I thought—I’d love to live here! Should people be banned from […]

Yglesias Gives Best Tweetstorm Ever

Matthew Yglesias has a group of tweets that begin with this: Someone needs to give me an Oscar one of these years so I can subject America to a tedious discussion of land use regulation. — Matthew Yglesias (@mattyglesias) February 27, 2017 “In the movies, there is no minimum lot size or maximum lot occupancy; we fill provide as much or as little parking as we want.” — Matthew Yglesias (@mattyglesias) February 27, 2017 “Fences is a powerful reminder that single-family zoning is not enough to make the American dream a reality.” — Matthew Yglesias (@mattyglesias) February 27, 2017

Market Urbanism MUsings February 24, 2017

  1. This week at Market Urbanism: Four Warnings For Los Angeles On Measures S I’m not going to rehash arguments for or against the measure.  Instead, I’m going to offer several warnings based on the experience of Davis, CA, which passed its own Ballot Box Zoning Measure in 2000. World City Profiles: Ancient Rome Really Knew How To City by Matt Gangemi Now imagine a modern implementation of a Roman city. The narrow streets would be well-lit and safe, the apartments would be ranging from affordable to extravagant, the tiny shops would provide jobs to many that live above, and dense office buildings would provide jobs for many more. Well-planned parks and amenities would provide endless entertainment and chances for social interaction, while the pub on your block may connect you with your nearby neighbors. 2. Announcement Gangemi’s post above on Rome gave us an idea for what could be an ongoing and sporadic MU series—“World City Profiles”. That is, readers who live in or visit international cities could write photo blog posts about the brilliant urbanism in those places, peppering them with historical context, and commentary on how America’s design codes make such development illegal here. Given our disperse audience–and your frequent traveling–this could make for an illustrative series. PM me or Scott Beyer if you have a submission 3. Where’s Scott? Scott will spend his final weekend in the San Francisco Bay Area visiting its many notable suburbs, including Berkeley, Napa, Palo Alto and more. Then he’s heading to Portland, stop #12 on his 30-city tour. His Forbes article this week explains how Measure S Would Grip Los Angeles In A Housing Shortage The city is the nation’s homeless capital, and just passed a ballot measure that would dedicate $1.2 billion in bond revenue to fund 13,000 supportive units. But it […]

Only In California: Twisting an Anti-Exclusionary Law To Rationalize Exclusion

As a Market Urbanism reader, you are hopefully fluent in the problems of exclusionary zoning.  If you’re new to the term, there are some good pieces on the topic here and here.  Basically: exclusionary zoning is the use of zoning to price people out of a community.  The classic example is minimum lot sizes or minimum unit sizes: cities only zone parcels big enough to ensure low-income families cannot afford the housing.  When subsidies for affordable housing require specific unit attributes, like reduced parking ratios, a community can simply require parking ratios above that threshold (although states can move swiftly to stamp out such practices). States have also responded to exclusionary zoning practices with a wide array of policy interventions known collectively as “anti-snob laws.”  One key component of California’s anti-exclusionary efforts is called the Regional Housing Needs Allocation (RHNA).  The law requires each jurisdiction in the state to produce a Land Inventory (or Adequate Sites Inventory, or Sites Inventory, or Buildable Land  Inventory) that demonstrates the jurisdiction possesses space to accommodate anticipated housing needs at adequate densities.  Read “adequate densities” as dense enough to produce affordable units. Scott Wiener, the state senator representing San Francisco, is pushing to give the RHNA some real teeth. The most contentious component of the process is the definition of “need” for each jurisdiction.  The state calculates anticipated need based on population and jobs projections for each region.  Regional councils of government (COGs) are then empowered to distribute the regional need to each jurisdiction within that region.  Need is quantified in terms of units, and these needed units are further categorized into four groups: units affordable to Very Low Income, Low Income, Moderate Income, and Above Moderate Income households. Regional agencies had some flexibility in making these allocations in the past.  Thanks to SB 375, which passed in […]

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