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Market Urbanism MUsings March 18, 2016

1. This week at Market Urbanism: Nolan Gray‘s latest post, Liberate the Garage!: Autonomous Cars and the American Dream At present, zoning laws effectively prohibit entrepreneurs from using their garages for business. In many Americans cities, hiring employees, hosting visitors, putting up signs, and altering your garage for business purposes are all outright banned. As urban planner Sonia Hirt notes in her most recent book, these regulations reflect American zoning’s dogmatic insistence on separating work from home. These restrictions effectively mandate sprawl by forcing commercial uses and residential uses into segregated districts. More troublingly, these regulations fall hardest on low-income entrepreneurs by significantly raising the cost of starting a business. The article was cited at streetsblog, and Nolan discussed the article on KCBS radio San Francisco Michael Lewyn wrote his first Market Urbanism article, Rent Control: A No-Win It therefore seems to me that pro-rent control municipalities are caught in a no-win situation: if they adopt strict rent controls, they limit housing supply by making housing a less attractive investment. But if they adopt temperate rent controls, they don’t really control rents. 2. Where’s Scott? Scott Beyer is leaving Oklahoma City tonight for Houston to see the rodeo. This week, he delved into foreign policy, writing in Forbes about The Case For Another Cuban Boatlift. Since 1980, Miami has been one of the fastest-growing metro areas by population, and has become one of the best for startup activity and upward mobility. Along with other Latin American immigrants, Cubans have bolstered this, making up over a third of the city’s population…Well into the 21st century, Cubans had among the highest median incomes and homeownership rates of U.S. Hispanic groups. 3. At the Market Urbanism Facebook Group: Michael Hamilton is happy to see good news for once:  Arizona Senate Votes to Ban Cities from Banning Airbnb, Couch-Surfing Nick […]

Market Urbanism MUsings March 4, 2016

1. Where’s Scott? Scott Beyer spent his second week in the Oklahoma City area, finding a place in the relatively wealthy northern college suburb of Edmond, OK. This week he wrote for Governing about New Orleans‘ music noise issue, and profiled a man in Forbes who escaped Cuba by raft for Miami. There are over 1.1 million Cuban immigrants in the United States, and even more than other immigrant groups, they have clustered, with over two-thirds living in greater Miami. What unites this group is not dislike of their home country, but the need to leave the Castro brothers’ Communist regime. 2. At the Market Urbanism Facebook Group: Nolan Gray found another great Daniel Hertz article: Great neighborhoods don’t have to be illegal—they’re not elsewhere John Morris shared Donald Shoup‘s contribution to a Washington Post series on cities becoming less car-dependent  (h/t Nolan Gray) John Morris also found a post at Medium calling for repeal of segregationist zoning policies Jeff Fong shared a short podcast interview with Alain Betaud Sandy Ikeda shared Bill Easterly‘s research on the largely unplanned emergence over 400 years of single block in Soho Mark Frasier congratulates Zach Caceras‘ work seeding local reforms at Startup Cities Adam Lang‘s ongoing frustration with urban renewal in his Philadelphia neighborhood which we previously covered 3. Elsewhere: New Geography reposted Nolan Gray’s recent article on Jane Jacob’s Hayekian approach William Fischel will be speaking Tuesday at NYU about his new paper: The Rise of the Homevoters: How OPEC and Earth Day Created Growth-Control Zoning that Derailed the Growth Machine Chris Hagan‘s WBEZ radio piece about population loss in Chicago‘s North Center neighborhood due to restrictive zoning Nick Zaiac wrote Maryland Is an Over-Regulated Disaster: Here’s How to Fix It and published a report at The Maryland Public Policy Institute Commutes in the U.S. are getting longer, reports the Washington Post’s Wonkblog. 4. Stephen […]

Market Urbanism MUsings: February 19, 2016

1. This week at Market Urbanism: Shanu Athiparambath has his first post on the blog via Scott Beyer: Economist David Friedman Says India Must Go Taller to Make Homes Affordable I remember my father saying that when he visited India in the 1950s and 1960s, bureaucrats in Delhi made arguments for restricting luxuries for the rich in air-conditioned luxury hotels where bureaucrats and American visitors held conferences. Emily Washington: Reforming Zoning in a Kludgeocracy While studying economics often leads people to think about the ceteris paribus effect of a policy change, in the real world, a policy will rarely be changed without resulting in domino effect of other changes in other policies and market outcomes because land-use policy is entangled with so many other policies. 2. Where’s Scott?: Scott Beyer is spending a final weekend in New Orleans before heading to Oklahoma City. This week, he wrote for National Review about rapid high-rise growth in the Miami neighborhood of Brickell. Starting as a low-slung neighborhood, it grew to become what it now is thanks to the city’s tolerance of unfettered growth. And rather than bringing Armageddon, as critics of rapid urban development might suspect, Brickell has become an economic powerhouse and an urban destination. At a time when so many other cities suppress development — and suffer the consequences – Brickell symbolizes a mentality worth restoring throughout urban America. 3. At the Market Urbanism Facebook Group: Nick Zaiac wants you to check out Cato’s new study related to immigration and housing affordability Tobias Cassandra Holbrook is interested in London’s growing skyline: Don’t listen to the Nimbies – skyscrapers can make London great again R John Anderson introduced the group to his latest post explaining where small urban developers should be looking to build  4. Elsewhere: New study confirms that boomers are clueless about where they like to live. h/t: Charles […]

Market Urbanism MUsings: Jan 29, 2016

[this is a pilot for a regular weekly series rounding-up the week’s happenings in the world of Market Urbanism.  I’d love to get your feedback in the comments or contact us directly.  If the response is positive, we’ll continue it.] 1. Here at Market Urbanism, Scott Beyer wrote about Charlottesville developer Oliver Kuttner for his series on America’s Progressive Developers.  Not uncommon in US cities, Kuttner faces ever increasing obstacles to innovative development: I do believe that every time you add an extra layer in city hall, you make interesting buildings less likely. 2. Scott was also quoted in The New Tropic about Miami gentrification: If you have a population increase and you don’t increase housing, people will get pushed out read the rest of the quote and article here. 3. At the Market Urbanism Facebook group: Nolan Gray shared some encouraging news about D.C.‘s new zoning code. Similar good news from Hartford, Connecticut! via John Morris China to build worlds largest Mega-City.  “What could possibly go wrong?” asks Mark Frazier. Trump thinks Eminent Domain is wonderful via Anthony Ling. 4. Elsewhere: Michael Lewyn at Planetizen: Right to the City Daniel Hertz at City Observatory: In some cities, the housing construction boom is starting to pay off Dan Savage jumps on the SFyimby bandwagon: When It Comes to Housing, San Francisco Is Doing It Wrong, Seattle Is Doing It Right, Cont. Jonathan Coppage at The American Conservative: Why San Francisco Has to Build Up Kim-Mai Cutler at TechCrunch:  A Long Game Chicago‘s proposed anti-Airbnb ordinance limits the number of nights a host can have guests, an additional 2% tax on top of Chicago’s 17.5% hotel tax, and possible jail-time for users!  Let’s hope the opposition triumphs. Strong Towns interviews @stuckbertha (that Tunnel Boring Machine that got stuck 1,000 ft under Seattle) during #NONEWROADS week 5. And finally, Stephen Smith‘s tweet of […]

What good is form-based zoning when you just keep everything the same?

“Form-based zoning” is something that I’ve never entirely understood. It’s always explained to me as regulating form not use, and generally the example given is that form-based zoning will require certain design aesthetics but not dictate whether something is used as a residence or a place of business or whatever. And instead of setbacks, FAR requirements, etc., it will dictate overall size (I guess with a height limit?). But while it seems marginally more pleasant to mandate parking lots go behind buildings, it doesn’t seem to me like zoning by “form” is inherently better than the status quo American planning tools. A planner can use a Euclidean designation to accomodate high-density development just as easily as he can use a form-based code to force suburbia on an area. In other words, the devil’s in the details, and just moving to a form-based code doesn’t really change anything if you don’t also allow for more growth overall After reading this paper (abridged ungated version as a .pdf here) on parking in Miami’s new form-based code – “Miami 21,” implemented in 2009 – I fear that I was right, and that form-based codes will probably end up looking just like the old ones: In general, there are minimal parking requirement changes in the Miami 21 form-based code. Lower minimum requirements or the establishment of appropriate parking maximums in existing, compact urban neighborhoods would protect the existing character of these areas and encourage the development of context-sensitive development that promotes walkability. Yet the proposed parking requirements in the Miami 21 form-based code still include relatively high minimums, even in the more urban transects This is partially a critique of DPZ’s SmartCode, which does not reduce parking requirements signi?cantly even in the more urban transects. Considering the level of public transportation service in its […]

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