tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-73940915300127697612024-03-27T04:02:48.467-04:00Old UrbanistCharlie Gardnerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07317335121565650040noreply@blogger.comBlogger169125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7394091530012769761.post-10111194747283437252016-08-27T21:12:00.003-04:002021-05-25T08:44:07.768-04:00The Curated LandscapeIt's an observation frequently made in urbanist circles that European towns and cities have starker divides between urbanized and undeveloped land than those of the United States, contributing the perception that American cities are more "sprawling" than the urban areas of the old world.<br />
<br />
As Let's Go LA wrote in a <a href="https://letsgola.wordpress.com/2013/10/04/what-do-you-mean-by-suburb/">must-read post</a> from a couple years back, however, there is a great variation in patterns of urbanization in various regions of the US. While some parts of the country do feature land-intensive residential development, other areas are very compact. I tried to address the reasons for these differences in <a href="http://oldurbanist.blogspot.com/2015/12/lot-sizes-regional-trends-and-causes.html">a post from late last year</a>, speculating that lot size on the city fringe, in the contemporary American context, is mainly a product of 1) agricultural land values and 2) availability of groundwater, which allows housing to be built (typically at low densities) in the absence of city sewers. In areas where the value of land for agriculture is lower yet groundwater is abundant, such as the Southeast US, very large lot sizes are observed. In inland California, by contrast, where the climate and soil are optimal for high-value agricultural products and water is more scarce, cities are highly compact and lot sizes are small.<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-5dc9Y_dRCq0/V4oYbrtzvyI/AAAAAAAACDw/sQR1QJaWiRoyVZ3QtHNd1ST7OlCPbrntQCLcB/s1600/Density.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="205" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-5dc9Y_dRCq0/V4oYbrtzvyI/AAAAAAAACDw/sQR1QJaWiRoyVZ3QtHNd1ST7OlCPbrntQCLcB/s400/Density.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Compact <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tulare,_California">Tulare</a>, California,<br />
compared to <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuscaloosa,_Alabama">Tuscaloosa</a>, <span style="font-size: 12.8px;">Alabama.</span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
This all helps to highlight the differing attitudes of Western European countries towards the agricultural and/or rural landscape as compared to the United States. At risk of gross oversimplification, it is possible to carve out two competing visions of landscape preservation/conservation, one which I'll call the European, and the other the American:<br />
<ul>
<li><b>European: </b>Appreciation of agricultural land for its cultural/aesthetic heritage, as reflected, for instance, in Britain's <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Town_and_Country_Planning_Act_1947">Town and Country Planning Act of 1947</a>. The notion of rural land as a public resource is also reflected in <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_to_roam">freedom to roam laws</a>, which are largely unknown in the US. Farming is heavily supported by the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_Agricultural_Policy">Common Agricultural Policy</a>, which provides funds <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_Payment_Scheme">directly to small farmers</a> rather than price supports for commodities, to the extent that land which would otherwise <a href="https://www.agrar.hu-berlin.de/de/institut/departments/daoe/gg/ihe/Veroeff/GMFUS_Report_land_market.pdf">revert to forest</a> or be sold for development is kept in agricultural production. The appearance of compact European towns of tile-roofed houses dotted among crop fields and pastures is no accident, and instead is the result of public policy determined to "curate" legacy farm landscapes.</li>
<li><b>American: </b>Appreciation of dramatic wilderness landscapes with little or no evidence of human habitation, as reflected in the aesthetics of the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hudson_River_School">Hudson River School</a> of painting (not to mention <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob_Ross">Bob Ross</a>) and, currently, in the US national park system. Agricultural land, with a few major exceptions (see <a href="http://urbanup.net/cities/kentucky/lexington-kentucky/">Lexington, KY</a>), is generally not given significant, independent aesthetic or cultural value that is recognized in public policymaking. Although loss of agricultural land is often mourned, few states or cities have policies that address the subject in a coherent and comprehensive way. <table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-0FEj7vxdRpI/V7ZCdkTdLKI/AAAAAAAACE4/-6cntQdpzUwWNKGNLJu6dmiFYvCGDFGvwCLcB/s1600/ross_kinkade.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="127" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-0FEj7vxdRpI/V7ZCdkTdLKI/AAAAAAAACE4/-6cntQdpzUwWNKGNLJu6dmiFYvCGDFGvwCLcB/s400/ross_kinkade.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">At left, Thomas Kinkade; at right, Bob Ross, embodying the "cabin in the woods"<br />
aesthetic that is still influential in much of American thinking on housing.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
</li>
</ul>
These differences in policy appear to have resulted in significant differences not only in land use, but in employment as well. Although the percentage of Americans involved in agriculture is today only <a href="http://www.bls.gov/emp/ep_table_201.htm">1.4 percent</a>, with a total of around <a href="https://www.agcensus.usda.gov/Publications/2012/Preliminary_Report/Highlights.pdf">2.1 million farms</a>, France by itself has some <a href="http://www.nationsencyclopedia.com/economies/Europe/France-AGRICULTURE.html">730,000 farms</a> in only 6 percent of the total land area, with 7 percent of its population employed in agriculture. It is difficult to judge the relative productivity of this farmland, but looking just at the value of <a href="http://www.investopedia.com/financial-edge/0712/top-agricultural-producing-countries.aspx">food exports</a>, France is at $68 billion as compared to the United States' $118 billion.<br />
<br />
The European policy on agriculture is directed more at preserving farmland and subsidizing employment in agriculture, among other purposes, than it is in restricting the low-density spread of the automobile-based town or city, but the one is merely the flip side of the other. In the absence of the limitations described above (high agricultural land values and scarce water), the condition often referred to as "sprawl" -- which I would prefer to spell out concretely as a leapfrog-like pattern of land-intensive, pod-like, low-density development -- seems to be a common condition in the context of high car ownership.<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-xGgJDeiSZIg/V7ZoNL6jHKI/AAAAAAAACFI/F_hF7epbUQgVjoxRmHqBy-DMuulOuPk7QCLcB/s1600/countryside.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="281" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-xGgJDeiSZIg/V7ZoNL6jHKI/AAAAAAAACFI/F_hF7epbUQgVjoxRmHqBy-DMuulOuPk7QCLcB/s400/countryside.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">French villages and agriculture, south of Paris. From Google maps. </td></tr>
</tbody></table>
There are artificial means to imitate the above limitations, and they have been deployed with effect in some North American cities in the form of urban growth boundaries, as for instance in Lexington, KY, the state of Oregon and in Toronto, Ontario. Rarely, though, does policy directly pertain to the subsidization of the activities that the boundary is intended to protect. In Lexington, for instance, although the growth boundary was intended to preserve the area's legacy landscape of horse farms, tax subsides are offered to owners of large parcels <a href="http://www.kentucky.com/news/local/watchdog/article61658432.html">regardless of whether any agricultural use is being made of the subject property</a>.<br />
<br />
The influential American environmental movement, on the other hand, has left little doubt as to the landscapes it favors protecting. The Sierra Club's website doesn't seem to have any<i> </i>recognition of agricultural land, instead focusing almost entirely on <a href="http://content.sierraclub.org/ourwildamerica/">wilderness</a>, although most true wilderness is not under threat of urbanization. The <a href="http://www.nature.org/">Nature Conservancy</a> does mention agricultural land, but as a <a href="http://www.nature.org/ourinitiatives/urgentissues/land-conservation/global-agriculture/index.htm">potential threat to natural resources</a>. Although many of the goals of these organizations are important and praiseworthy, the focus on nature, rather than the agricultural landscape, undermines their position with respect to urban policy and planning. The Sierra Club has recently come under criticism in urban circles for <a href="http://www.santamonicanext.org/2014/10/westside-chapter-of-sierra-club-breaks-rank-on-greenhouse-gas-emissions-reduction-strategy/">appearing to support exclusionary zoning in certain contexts</a>, while the Nature Conservancy's urban affairs expert seems to be <a href="http://blog.nature.org/science/2015/09/30/environmentalists-development-houses-zoning-urban-sprawl-suburbs-conservation/">at pains to make the case for dense urbanism</a> <a href="http://blog.nature.org/science/2016/03/10/why-stopping-urbanization-impossible-misses-environmental-point-cities-conservation/">to a skeptical audience</a>.<br />
<br />
I mention these examples, though, to reinforce the contrasting visions above. The American imagination has traditionally been drawn to wild spaces rather than to the symbiosis between food and land (represented in the French term <i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terroir">terroir</a></i>). Although the notion of locally-sourced food products has lately gained some traction, this has not translated into much if any public policy, and has has further been confused by cheerleading for the oxymoronic "<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urban_agriculture">urban agriculture</a>" (although the very idea of local and/or urban agriculture could be interpreted as a pining for a sort of <i>terroir</i>)<i>. </i>A few New Urbanist developments have emphasized the connection between agriculture and urbanism, such as <a href="http://realestate.heraldtribune.com/2013/09/10/new-urbanism-takes-root-in-the-red-georgia-clay/">Serenbe</a> in the outer reaches of Atlanta, but these are few and far between and have not been above <a href="https://blackwalnutdispatch.com/2012/04/17/the-creepy-and-pretentious-sustainable-community-of-serenbe/">criticism</a>. Local land trusts have embraced preservation of agricultural uses, but these organizations lack the scale necessary to guide policy at the regional level.<br />
<br />
None of this is to argue that the United States, or any other country, would necessarily benefit from European-style agricultural regulations. What may be worth exploring, though, is the questions of how agricultural economics affects urban form, and to consider how public policy in this area relates to goals for urban development. Being the focus neither of urbanists nor environmentalists, agriculture has largely escaped significant land-use scrutiny in the United States. It deserves more attention.<br />
<br />
<br />Charlie Gardnerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07317335121565650040noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7394091530012769761.post-31933418705519022152016-03-02T10:17:00.002-05:002016-05-06T14:36:25.702-04:00Lot Dimensions: Past, Present and FutureA while back I devoted <a href="http://oldurbanist.blogspot.com/2015/03/single-family-zoning-its-all-about-lot.html">an entire post to lot sizes</a>, one that despite its subject matter was fairly well-read. Another related topic, which I did not address in much detail, is lot dimensions, a subject which in some ways is just as important as the overall sizes of lots.<br />
<br />
Let's start with some basic principles. In general, those lots which are easiest and cheapest to build on would be expected to be the most valuable. Approximately rectangular lots are easier and cheaper to build on than lots in irregular shapes, and within those constraints approximately square lots are easier and cheaper to build on than narrow and elongated ones.* We should therefore expect to see the residential areas of most cities composed of roughly square lots, and in fact this is exactly what can be witnessed in, for instance Japanese cities, with lots in the Tokyo development shown below of 32' x 38' (all images from Bing Maps):<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-re2QhccPu14/VtT2hG39pjI/AAAAAAAAB-M/Xv_3be9K67s/s1600/TokyoI.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="241" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-re2QhccPu14/VtT2hG39pjI/AAAAAAAAB-M/Xv_3be9K67s/s400/TokyoI.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
<br />
To maintain a favorable ratio of private to public land, the roads in such a scenario must be quite narrow, as I mentioned in the previous post, and that is what is generally seen in Japanese cities.<br />
<br />
In American cities, by contrast, the common historical pattern has been both wide blocks and streets. In order to respond to high demand for housing, therefore, the solution has been to slice lots thinner and thinner. Although this does increase the number of lots per block, it adversely affects their utility, leaving the builder to construct a very long and narrow house. An example is from an older neighborhood in Buffalo, NY -- a neighborhood more than a century older than the one above -- with lots of 30' x 175':<br />
<br />
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<a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-ytOGLtFeWFg/VtT59PypmBI/AAAAAAAAB-Y/YonzKGmp6YA/s1600/BuffaloI.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="217" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-ytOGLtFeWFg/VtT59PypmBI/AAAAAAAAB-Y/YonzKGmp6YA/s400/BuffaloI.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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Why, it could be asked, were these blocks made so wide? What sort of development was anticipated? Why were the blocks not subdivided with additional streets, as famously happened in Philadelphia? Instead of any of these options, it appears most lots were densified vertically, through the construction of two and three-family wooden houses.<br />
<br />
And yet, even were each lot built out as a three-story, three-unit home, the density would be <i>less </i>than in the Japanese example, and without one single-family detached house. Not all blocks in Buffalo are so wide, but few are much narrower.<br />
<br />
For comparison, let's examine the blocks of Detroit, a city long known for its prevalence of single-family detached housing. Lots here (a neighborhood of the 1910s or 1920s) are 34' x 125', a more reasonable dimension that's helped the city maintain its high share of single-family housing. Note also the presence of alleys here through the center of the block. <br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-TFMsvdBryxs/VtVpI4jl22I/AAAAAAAAB-o/8a1z6UrsQ1M/s1600/DetroitI.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="191" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-TFMsvdBryxs/VtVpI4jl22I/AAAAAAAAB-o/8a1z6UrsQ1M/s400/DetroitI.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
<br />
As the development of American suburbs progressed during the 20th century, the width-to-depth ratio continued to moderate. Here, in Levittown, from circa 1950, lots are 60' x 110' with no alleys. The blocks are visibly narrower than in the Detroit example:<br />
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<a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-jTicLLkUhCg/VtVv7TWzOGI/AAAAAAAAB-4/HBlz7rsNlcU/s1600/LevitownI.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="222" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-jTicLLkUhCg/VtVv7TWzOGI/AAAAAAAAB-4/HBlz7rsNlcU/s400/LevitownI.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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Finally, in some of the developments of the 1960s and 70s we see what are approximately square residential lots. Here, for example, is Herndon, VA, with lots of 90' x 105'. Interestingly, the ranch houses still "sprawl" across the wide lot, continuing to create the visual effect of a more or less solid wall of houses to a person going past:<br />
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<a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-vqFMeqw8dhc/VtVxpKMLhXI/AAAAAAAAB_E/67JWbYv_Na8/s1600/HerdonI.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="183" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-vqFMeqw8dhc/VtVxpKMLhXI/AAAAAAAAB_E/67JWbYv_Na8/s400/HerdonI.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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Having the distance between the side walls of houses as a fraction of that between the fronts and backs of houses is a common feature of American residential developments in all eras, it seems.<br />
<br />
There appears to have been a reversion to Levittown dimensions in the subdivisions of the 1990s and 2000s, with the New Urbanism even reintroducing deep narrow lots in the pre-1950 style in its more recent developments.<br />
<br />
-------------------<br />
<br />
I'd posed the question above of why the earliest lots were made to be so inefficiently long and narrow. Land values obviously compelled the narrow widths, but why had blocks been made so wide in the first place? Were the surveyors of the 19th century under the impression that American homeowners, like the villagers of Tsarist Russia or medieval western Europe, would be tending to "<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dacha">dacha</a>"-style backyard gardens for sustenance? <br />
<br />
Perhaps. John Reps, in his <i>The Making of Urban America</i>, confirms that some of the earliest planned settlements in North America intended individual house lots to be used for gardening purposes:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"If it can be tentatively concluded that the New Haven [Connecticut] plan, with its generous provision for open space, was no sudden inspiration of the moment, there is no ready explanation for the source of its form or dimensions. ... The large residential blocks did not long retain their original form. Intended to provide generous garden plots adjacent to residences, these deep squares were eventually divided into four smaller blocks by new streets running at right angles from the midpoints of their sides. . . ." <i>The Making of Urban America: A History of City Planning in the United States</i>, p. 130.</blockquote>
Were the blocks of a city like Buffalo, laid out as early as 1804 by <a href="http://www.buffaloah.com/h/ell/chaz/lay.html">a man from rural Bucks County, Pennsylvania</a>, similarly designed to provide an urban facsimile of the rural farmstead in what was then wilderness of Western New York? Whatever the reason, the blocks were poorly-suited to the industrializing city that emerged a few decades later. The legacy of these blocks with their very narrow lots was only gradually discarded over the next century or more.<br />
<br />
---------------------<br />
<br />
Rather than building very narrow multifamily structures on these narrow lots, which in general have not fared well in Buffalo and which have simply vanished from large swathes of the city (as have, to be fair, many of Detroit's single-family houses), what other options are available? There are a few related possibilities, assuming we limit ourselves to single-family structures. For example:<br />
<ul>
<li>As in New Haven and Philadelphia, build new streets into the blocks to create new, smaller blocks with more reasonable dimensions.</li>
<li>Allow condominium development to stretch back from the street in rowhouse and/or detached form, which would allow numerous owner-occupied units on each lot.</li>
<li>Where alleys exist, allow new houses (i.e. ADUs, accessory dwellings, "granny flats," etc.) to be built along them.</li>
</ul>
The first of these was historically the most common option for cities, but which appears almost entirely absent in Buffalo for reasons that are not clear. In any event, given the abandonment of large sections of certain Buffalo neighborhoods, it is easy to visualize how the first option might work. Consider, for instance, combining three of the above lots and building on them like so:<br />
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<a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-hPM5ecGNNVI/VtbQRc_GX_I/AAAAAAAAB_c/bl5guA2W2RM/s1600/Houses_row.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="213" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-hPM5ecGNNVI/VtbQRc_GX_I/AAAAAAAAB_c/bl5guA2W2RM/s400/Houses_row.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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Where three lots once hosted perhaps three duplexes with two two bedroom units each (the Buffalo "2/2"), there are now eight fairly large (1800 sq. ft.) single-family homes, or, if homes were divided by floor, as many as sixteen one and two-bedroom units. A small lane (or really narrow street if you prefer) runs in between the homes, and cars can be parked alongside houses. The backyard is heavily truncated, but there is enough space for a small patio. If the above design were extended to another three lots on the opposite side of the block, the lane would become a small through-street, helping to open up the large blocks. Further, if the houses were made slightly smaller, I think it would be possible to fit in ten rather than eight. You can do the math.<br />
<br />
This style is largely what Nathan Lewis has called "<a href="http://www.newworldeconomics.com/archives/2011/061211.html">single-family detached in the traditional style</a>." As an infill strategy, it is uncommon in the older cities of the Eastern US, but may have promise in circumstances like those in Buffalo where deep lots leave a large amount of unusable land. A condominium development would look much the same, similar to what can be seen here in Stamford, CT on similarly deep lots:<br />
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<a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-ULHdO6JTCSM/VtbXG0UilZI/AAAAAAAAB_s/eYgusSByW78/s1600/StamfordI.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="191" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-ULHdO6JTCSM/VtbXG0UilZI/AAAAAAAAB_s/eYgusSByW78/s400/StamfordI.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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Houston, in particular, has countless examples of this sort of townhouse or compact single-family infill development, especially in and around the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montrose,_Houston">Montrose</a> neighborhood. A <a href="https://www.google.com/maps/place/Houston,+TX/@29.7516946,-95.3867883,418m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m2!3m1!1s0x8640b8b4488d8501:0xca0d02def365053b!6m1!1e1">Google maps tour</a> of the area will reveal the various ways such developments can be planned and arranged.<br />
<br />
The ADU approach is so well-known I need not provide any examples of it here, but it is obviously less practical in situations where there are no alleys, as in Buffalo, which if lots were to be legally separated would require either complex shared driveway arrangements or the use of <a href="http://www.landrushnow.com/what-is-a-flag-lot">flag lots</a>, impractical where the lot is already so narrow.<br />
<br />
There is much more that could be done with multifamily housing, but that will need to wait for another post.<br />
<br />
*As Nathan Lewis has noted, long, elongated houses are inefficient users of resources, requiring more wall length per square foot than a square house. These dimensions are also less favorable for energy conservation, as there are more points for heat to escape.<br />
<br />
Related posts:<br />
<ul>
<li><a href="http://oldurbanist.blogspot.com/2015/03/single-family-zoning-its-all-about-lot.html">Single Family Zoning: It's All About the Lot Sizes</a></li>
<li><a href="http://oldurbanist.blogspot.com/2015/12/lot-sizes-regional-trends-and-causes.html">Lot Sizes: Regional Trends and Causes</a></li>
</ul>
Charlie Gardnerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07317335121565650040noreply@blogger.com19tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7394091530012769761.post-43228005552250287522016-02-27T08:17:00.000-05:002016-02-29T15:23:23.307-05:00American Zoning as an Expression of NativismIt's possible to advance many explanations for the rise of zoning in the United States in the 1920s: <a href="http://www.lehman.edu/deannss/geography/publications/JLME_Maantay.pdf">classism</a>, <a href="http://www.asu.edu/courses/aph294/total-readings/silver%20--%20racialoriginsofzoning.pdf">resurgent racism</a>, reaction to rising vehicular traffic, the failure of restrictive covenants and many more. While all of these reasons, among others, have some explanatory power, for me they fail to adequately account for the unique and distinguishing features of American zoning as described by author <a href="http://oldurbanist.blogspot.com/2015/01/sonia-hirt-on-origins-of-american-zoning.html">Sonia Hirt</a>, namely, the establishment of exclusively residential zones as well as the creation of single-family detached zones.<br />
<br />
A possible alternative explanation is that these specific features were motivated by and in reaction to many of the same conditions that gave rise to the immigration restriction movement which came to prominence at nearly the exact same time. For example, the village of Euclid's zoning ordinance, which led to the Supreme Court case of the same name, was adopted in <a href="http://www.casebriefs.com/blog/law/property/property-law-keyed-to-cribbet/introduction-to-the-traditional-land-use-controls/village-of-euclid-v-ambler-realty-co/">November 1922</a>, slightly more than a year after the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emergency_Quota_Act">Emergency Quota Act</a> of 1921 was enacted. Restrictionist currents were running very strongly throughout the nation at the very time that cities busied themselves passing zoning laws. <br />
<br />
Now, one fact that may surprise is that immigrants at the turn of the century actually had higher homeownership rates than the native population. This chart, compiled by economist <a href="http://eml.berkeley.edu/~webfac/eichengreen/Sutch.pdf">Richard Sutch in a recent paper</a>, depicts homeownership by city size in 1900 among the native-born and foreign-born, showing that the foreign-born had substantially higher homeownership in virtually all cities and city sizes apart from New York (the entry point for many immigrants), where the difference was nonetheless small:<br />
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<a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-h_TM-Yqh0tY/VtEEgy8jsQI/AAAAAAAAB9Y/wAiEAqEBWC8/s1600/1900_cities.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="243" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-h_TM-Yqh0tY/VtEEgy8jsQI/AAAAAAAAB9Y/wAiEAqEBWC8/s400/1900_cities.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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How, or why, did the foreign-born achieve relatively high rates of ownership? Sutch speculates that immigrants valued property ownership due to "the importance of acquiring a life-cycle stock of wealth because of an inability to rely upon distant family members, the larger community, or co-ethnic neighbors for protection in old age." Contrarily, in <i><a href="http://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/F/bo3643264.html">From Cottage to Bungalow</a></i>, Joseph Bigott writes about ethnic savings and loan entities in turn-of-the-century Chicago and how these offered greater financial flexibility, in some sense, to new immigrants.<br />
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What seems to be generally agreed on is that immigrants, more so than natives, embraced small multifamily dwellings and home commercial uses, whether as simple as a chicken coop in the backyard or as elaborate as an entire storefront added onto a single-family home. Jacob Wegmann, writing in <i><a href="http://dspace.mit.edu/bitstream/handle/1721.1/37424/123191174-MIT.pdf?sequence=2">What Happened to the Three Decker</a></i>, quotes a developer as noting that the small multifamily dwelling provides "a way for working class folks with no established assets to obtain an owner-occupied residence." Additionally, he writes:</div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"[I]mmigrant families, many of them already the owners of small businesses, were likelier to be undaunted by the extra risks and work posed by being small landlords, such as the need to build up cash reserves to cover loan payments in the event of vacancy of the rental apartment. Additionally, partially due to Chicago’s characteristic clustering by nationality, many immigrant families have an extensive network of acquaintances from the same ethnic group to draw upon as a pool of potential tenants, and for whom credit and character checks can be undertaken in a verbal, informal manner via social contacts."</blockquote>
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The small business and the multifamily dwelling were, in that sense, the gateway to prosperity for many immigrants, as well as a gateway to homeownership, around 1900 and <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/06/business/port-chester-ny-is-transformed-by-immigration.html?_r=0">continuing even today</a>. Given that reality, I think the observer of history should find it very odd how central a position American zoning gave to the exclusion of commercial uses from residential areas and the banning of multifamily uses from large areas of entire cities, particularly when other countries not so well-known for their elevation of so-called property rights embraced neighborhood commercial as a desirable and positive social good. </div>
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-duWEC2aUzMs/VtGIxr3td9I/AAAAAAAAB9o/jXGAmD-8Hkg/s1600/pc_willett.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="163" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-duWEC2aUzMs/VtGIxr3td9I/AAAAAAAAB9o/jXGAmD-8Hkg/s400/pc_willett.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Small SF and multifamily housing with added restaurant/retail, Port Chester, NY.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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I do not know what the position of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Bassett">Edward Murray Bassett</a>, the father of American zoning, was on immigration. His autobiography is virtually impossible to obtain. His writings available online do not directly mention it. I would perhaps give him the benefit of the doubt. The motives of many of his contemporaries, however, are not in doubt, as Seymour Toll wrote in 1969 in <i><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Zoned-American-Seymour-I-Toll/dp/0670796972">Zoned American</a></i>: </div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"The [laundry] controls were an expression of the hatred and antipathy which San Franciscans were directing against the Chinese, trying to force them to quit the city. The immigrant is in the fiber of zoning. He first appeared as an Oriental. In early twentieth-century New York he is seen as a southeastern European, the lower East Side garment worker who presence in midtown Manhattan created one of the decisive moments in the history of zoning."</blockquote>
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None of this is terribly new or controversial. A connection that hasn't been made as clearly is how single-family zoning and the total exclusion of commercial uses were specifically targeted at the immigrant businesses and housing options described above. A newly-arrived immigrant (and most people in general) did not have the capital to construct an entire "mixed use" building. After some time, though, he might be able to add a very small commercial addition onto an existing building, as shown in the photo above, or convert the first floor into a storefront. Zoning would forbid this development in two ways: first, by instituting setbacks, and secondly by eliminating commercial uses altogether. Even native residents needed commercial uses in close proximity, but these were to be relegated to special corridors where competition would be greater and immigrants would have more difficulty gaining a toehold. </div>
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With respect to residential buildings, the banning of small multifamily buildings from much of the city foreclosed the route to homeownership previously mentioned. A century after New York's zoning code was adopted, the numbers have flipped, and the native born are much more likely to be homeowners than the foreign born (67% to 52%, <a href="https://www.census.gov/prod/2013pubs/acsbr11-15.pdf">according to the Census</a>). The <a href="https://www.irs.gov/publications/p936/ar02.html">financial benefits of homeownership</a>, moreover, have been concentrated in the hands of the upper middle class, the original backers of zoning.</div>
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It is only antipathy to immigrant populations that I think can explain these dual features of almost all American zoning codes, and their absence from the codes of most other countries. The apparent trauma of early 20th century immigration led Americans, or at least a vocal portion of them, to shred their traditional respect for individual property rights and institute special zones which reflected native middle-class values and conceptions of proper living conditions. The loss of neighborhood shops, or affordable rentals, were unfortunate but necessary casualties of this process. Elsewhere in the world, the process of commercial conversion can still be watched unfolding, as below in Mexico.</div>
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-IgKSf7wlfSE/VtGdJBX1JiI/AAAAAAAAB94/b4eiUtIFmMw/s1600/mexico.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="237" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-IgKSf7wlfSE/VtGdJBX1JiI/AAAAAAAAB94/b4eiUtIFmMw/s400/mexico.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Shopfront in setback, contemporary Guadalajara suburbs, Mexico.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
</div>
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I am not certain, though, that the alliance against shops and multifamily dwellings was ever as unified as it was made out to be. Then, as now, the loudest and shrillest voices probably carried the day. Many natives would have liked to have run businesses out of their homes as well, although the importance of multifamily housing a means to ownership waned with the arrival of new forms of mortgage finance in the 1920s and especially 1930s. </div>
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While times have changed, the rolling back the restrictive laws of the 1920s would pay dividends even today. </div>
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Related posts: </div>
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<ul>
<li><a href="http://oldurbanist.blogspot.com/2014/07/where-zoning-went-wrong.html">Where Zoning Went Wrong</a></li>
<li><a href="http://oldurbanist.blogspot.com/2015/12/single-family-zoning-in-seattle-and.html">Single-Family Zoning in Seattle and the Limited Logic of Euclid</a></li>
</ul>
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Charlie Gardnerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07317335121565650040noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7394091530012769761.post-60581844853216452832016-02-20T07:02:00.000-05:002016-02-20T07:02:06.490-05:00Rehabilitating WalmartWalmart has been in the news more than usual of late, with the announcement that it was <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/16/business/walmart-to-close-269-stores.html?_r=0">closing 269 of its stores</a> as well as <a href="http://money.cnn.com/2016/01/21/news/companies/walmart-stores-washington-dc/">backing out of building two stores</a> in lower-income areas of Washington, D.C. Add this to Walmart's stock price decline of <a href="http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2016/01/04/why-wal-mart-stores-inc-tumbled-nearly-30-in-2015.aspx">nearly 30% during 2015</a>, and the picture begins to look somewhat bleak. Although Walmart's financial prospects for the future are an interesting topic, it's the chain's position within urban environments that has been relatively little explored. <br />
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To set the context, it's crucial to note that Walmart has become in essence a bloated grocery chain, with <a href="http://time.com/money/4194112/why-walmart-express-failed/">56% of its sales</a> coming from groceries. The growth in the grocery sector has been achieved in spite of the fact that Walmart earns <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/wal-marts-biggest-business-getting-crushed-2015-9">by far the lowest customer satisfaction rating</a> for its supermarket offerings of any major chain. Moreover, the grocery business is more localized then the variety store<br />
business. According to <a href="http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0094119012000630">one recent study</a> on the market effect of Walmart on the supermarket business:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"We find that Wal-Mart’s impact is highly localized, affecting firms only within a tight, two-mile radius of its location. Within this radius, the bulk of the impact falls on declining firms and mostly on the intensive margin. Entry of new firms is essentially unaffected. Moreover, the stores most damaged by Wal-Mart’s entry are the outlets of larger chains. This suggests that Wal-Mart’s expansion into groceries is quite distinct from its earlier experience in the discount industry, where the primary casualties were small chains and sole proprietorships that were forced to exit the market." </blockquote>
It seems that, for grocery purchases, most consumers are unwilling to undertake longer journeys than necessary even for somewhat lower prices. Walmart's use of the "Supercenter" business model, however, means that it is impossible extend those two-mile radii over an entire metro area. Moreover, the dependency on low land prices for these stores means that Walmart is often absent from entire central areas of cities. <br />
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In San Antonio, for example, there is not a single Walmart establishment in the central 50 square miles of the city. By contrast, local chains like <a href="https://www.heb.com/">H-E-B</a> and independent groceries have the flexibility to open stores within central areas. The abandonment of Walmart's "Express" stores with the recent closings seems to have spelled an end for an attempt to compete with these smaller urban groceries.<br />
Further, these supermarket chains have been edging in on Walmart's own territory, with chains like Kroger <a href="http://www.commercialappeal.com/business/kroger-to-feature-clothes-housewares-in-new-hernando-store-ep-1208008140-323626021.html">beginning to stock clothing and a wider range of household items in their most recently opened stores</a>. The competition from Amazon has been <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/23/business/walmart-plays-catch-up-with-amazon.html?_r=0">widely reported on</a> as well.<br />
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From an urbanist perspective, it's easy to cheer all this news and condemn these stores as destroyers of local business and magnets for the car-dependent, but does it need to be this way? I'm not so sure. The person who can find no redeeming qualities in big-box stores ignores a central fact of the modern US retailing industry, and to his or her peril. If the conclusion is that these stores are incompatible with urbanism, then a large portion of the retail business will be relegated to the car-dominated realm.<br />
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Could we instead imagine, rather than a mall anchored by a big box store, a <i>community </i>supported by one of these same stores? There is no need to imagine, as such spaces already exist. In a suburb of Madrid, for example, here is a Carrefour hypermarket (the local equivalent of a Walmart or Target, at center) surrounded by a residential development and with no surface parking:<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-JZFR-iPUXqE/VpJy27yI3EI/AAAAAAAAB2w/sXp7mzegt7Y/s1600/tres%2Bcantos.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="247" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-JZFR-iPUXqE/VpJy27yI3EI/AAAAAAAAB2w/sXp7mzegt7Y/s400/tres%2Bcantos.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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Although there is some underground parking, there is no surplus, and hundreds or thousands of surrounding residential units are within walking distance of the market. Rather than detracting from small business, the pull of the market draws traffic down arteries past other businesses, providing them with needed foot traffic. It should be noted there is rapid transit in close proximity as well, just barely visible in the lower left hand corner, and there is also a network of segregated bicycle paths.<br />
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There are historic precedents for this sort of urbanism in the form of the souk or <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bazaar">bazaar</a>, itself a sort of mall at the center of a walkable city, as well as the ancient Roman forum, which was often little more than temple in the middle of a two-story arcaded and enclosed shopping mall. Some structures, such as <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trajan%27s_Market">Trajan's market</a> in Rome, were in fact enclosed malls of shops and offices with an appearance very similar to those of today.<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-2UGnJtnuEZg/VpwYAzjdmVI/AAAAAAAAB40/ZBPU9sFoDq4/s1600/trajan_market.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="301" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-2UGnJtnuEZg/VpwYAzjdmVI/AAAAAAAAB40/ZBPU9sFoDq4/s400/trajan_market.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 12.8px;">Trajan's Market in Rome, one of the first "dead malls." Via Flickr.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
In a sense, the big box store offers unusual possibilities for walkability, and yet these have rarely if ever been taken advantage of within the United States. Although there are some urban big box stores, the number of consciously planned "Walmart-oriented developments" appears to be close to zero (<i>but wait -- see below</i>). Although there are many master-planned developments which incorporate retail, none are anywhere near as integrated as the above Spanish example.<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-yOLfFpyC8Og/VptuoWeyhlI/AAAAAAAAB4I/LoIjmKpkrUU/s1600/phoenix.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="231" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-yOLfFpyC8Og/VptuoWeyhlI/AAAAAAAAB4I/LoIjmKpkrUU/s400/phoenix.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 12.8px;">A Target and supporting retail in Phoenix, AZ.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
The typical Walmart or Target is designed around the assumption that near 100% of customers want to arrive and will arrive by driving, but this is also a self-limiting business model that virtually eliminates quick or impulse shopping trips, or trips by those without access to a car. It is easy to envision how a combination of higher quality and more local food shopping options plus online shopping could threaten to weaken these chains' business model.<br />
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A greenfield Walmart or Target truly integrated with its surroundings and embracing the possibilities of pedestrian access -- even if it required these companies to dabble in residential real estate -- could have tremendous upside. Using a five-minute walkshed, a sufficient density could be obtained using some of the residential forms visible in the Phoenix image above to provide the store with a reasonable portion of the customer base needed to economically sustain it. Moreover, it would just be a more pleasant environment in which to live.<br />
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The challenge of incorporating parking, which would still be needed in lesser amount, was resolved in the Madrid example by a partially underground lot. An alternative, rarely explored, is to place parking on the roof of a building. The added construction expense might be compensated for by surrounding residential land use.<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-c5_N9ZBUOq0/Vpt99Go29bI/AAAAAAAAB4Y/ZJ9jS7bLTO4/s1600/wholefoods.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="202" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-c5_N9ZBUOq0/Vpt99Go29bI/AAAAAAAAB4Y/ZJ9jS7bLTO4/s320/wholefoods.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 12.8px;">Rooftop parking at a Whole Foods in Washington, D.C.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<i>This just in: </i>just before I planned to publish this piece, Washington Business Journal <a href="http://www.bizjournals.com/washington/breaking_ground/2016/02/first-look-at-newcitydc-the-massive-next-phase-in.html?ana=twt">published renderings</a> of a newly-planned development in Washington DC that incorporates almost all the principles I discussed above:<br />
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<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-25R0zI47lCk/VshQ7oKkLuI/AAAAAAAAB78/vg8Agv96TRY/s1600/NE%2BDC.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="231" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-25R0zI47lCk/VshQ7oKkLuI/AAAAAAAAB78/vg8Agv96TRY/s400/NE%2BDC.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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Note the parking on the roof and the use of what would have been the surface parking area for shops and residential on <a href="http://oldurbanist.blogspot.com/2011/03/thinking-small-narrow-streets-movement.html">narrow streets</a> (!) closely integrated with and with easy walking access to the "big box" store at lower right in the rendering. I have to think that this is the way forward for the big box store. This design format makes allowance for car trips but embraces walkability as well. It will be interesting to see how this project fares and if the concept catches on in other cities.Charlie Gardnerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07317335121565650040noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7394091530012769761.post-63305763798945310842016-02-11T12:49:00.000-05:002016-02-12T09:39:51.135-05:00NIMBYism Under the MicroscopeChris Bradford has a <a href="https://clubnimbyblog.wordpress.com/">post</a> at his <a href="https://clubnimbyblog.wordpress.com/">new blog</a>, also picked up at <a href="http://www.citylab.com/housing/2016/02/nimbyism-define-club-chris-bradford/461946/?utm_source=SFTwitter">Citylab</a>, urging a better understanding of the so-called NIMBY phenomenon. Chris' thesis, as he sets it out, is that "NIMBYism is about monopolizing access to neighborhood amenities." This is somewhat different from other perspectives which view NIMBYism (a term I use due to lack of substitutes) as an attempt to protect property values, to exclude undesirables or to guarantee privacy. As Chris writes:<br />
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<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"There are plenty of neighborhoods ... in which the value of neighborhood amenities is capitalized into home prices. These are neighborhoods with valuable amenities that lack close substitutes and which are, for lack of a better word, “under-zoned.” Homeowners in these neighborhoods have strong incentives to obstruct increases in zoning entitlements and to agitate for down-zonings in order to protect the value of club membership. And they do."</blockquote>
The post is very timely for me, as the city I live in is currently considering a proposal to upzone a single-family residential area around a commuter rail station that is surrounded by neighborhood commercial uses. I won't get into the specifics of the location or the local politics, as the story could be repeated a thousand times across American towns and cities, but suffice it to say that the comments from neighborhood residents on a petition opposing this proposal are enlightening and, I think, strongly supportive of Chris' thesis. I've excerpted a few of them below:</div>
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<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"I've lived here for 31 years and you are and in some ways already have destroyed the essence of our quaint village of [Anytown]." </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"I'm signing because our lovely [Anytown] is being destroyed, one building at a time. Please stop this madness. The only people benefitting from all this construction are the builders and developers." </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"Stop the intrusion to our community of apartment buildings and additional retail businesses. Our neighborhood is over-saturated. Traffic is horrendous, parking is limited, schools are over-crowded." </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"We have everything within walking distance; movie theater, skating rink, pet store, library, ice cream shop, restaurants, a great ball field. This is why our residents have chosen to live here for that small community feel. We do not need anymore apartments."</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"I grew up in [Anytown] and it is a charming village and should remain that way. The streets cannot handle the traffic that would be created from any further development."</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"[E]nough is enough. Think about the tax paying homeowners and not the greedy developers."</blockquote>
</div>
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There is the clear sense here of a valuable amenity, a "quaint," "lovely" village with "everything within walking distance" that has been subjected to competition from new residents. Because I always prefer a helping of data with my anecdotes, I charted out all the "NIMBY" comments -- more than 80 of them in this case -- based on the concerns they raise in the chart below:<br />
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<a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-Ngeus3gRAoE/Vrvmrk2ekfI/AAAAAAAAB6Q/dZ9lDAEB3lU/s1600/NIMBY.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="327" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-Ngeus3gRAoE/Vrvmrk2ekfI/AAAAAAAAB6Q/dZ9lDAEB3lU/s400/NIMBY.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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Increased car traffic is far and away the most mentioned concern, with overpopulation/overcrowding second, neighborhood character third, school overcrowding fourth and parking fifth. Notably, there were no comments<i> </i>citing home values or privacy concerns. One or two comments did refer obliquely to people deciding to sell in response to the arrival of apartments, but these were linked to changing neighborhood character (a less family-friendly environment) rather than falling neighborhood property values, and implied greater rather than lesser demand.<br />
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Again, I think this is strongly supportive of Chris' thesis. The neighborhood in question is "under-zoned" relative to its capacity, particularly in light of transit access, and enjoys amenities that are underutilized. The repeated references to traffic, strain on schools and overcrowding are simply different ways of stating opposition to more intensive use of neighborhood amenities by additional residents. Issues such as increased noise, crime, anxiety over renter populations and similar concerns were cited much less often.<br />
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The tone of the comments also provides a window into NIMBY psychology. Comments are rarely measured in their language and frequently employ hyperbole. The majority are devoid of any optimism, and one gets the overriding sense that there can be no positive change, only a constant battle against further decline and decay. This NIMBY mindset, pessimistic in the extreme, appears to be behind the despairing tone evident in much of the commentary. It may be that these attitudes are most prevalent in those areas where upzoning would be most beneficial for precisely the reasons Chris mentions. <br />
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Overall, these sorts of findings suggest that addressing concerns over property values may have little impact in many cases of neighborhood opposition to densification. Understanding what motivates this opposition will require looking closely and in good faith at the concerns that are raised.</div>
Charlie Gardnerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07317335121565650040noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7394091530012769761.post-84814435569199001302016-01-14T08:20:00.001-05:002016-01-14T11:55:57.997-05:00Homeownership Postscript: An Even Grimmer AppraisalIn a <a href="http://oldurbanist.blogspot.com/2016/01/is-decline-in-homeownership-rate-even.html">recent post</a>, I pointed out how, when adjusted for age and life expectancy, homeownership in the United States is lower than is has been for many decades. In the comments, it was further pointed out that not only is homeownership itself lower, but that free and clear ownership has been on the decline as well.<br />
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There is some data available here, enough to put together a chart over time first using the non-adjusted homeownership rates (blue is homeownership, red is the percentage of all homes that are owned without a mortgage):<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-EETgwE5wjH4/Vpd9sPubS-I/AAAAAAAAB3M/8XShChqzCL0/s1600/free%2Band%2Bclear%2BI.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="195" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-EETgwE5wjH4/Vpd9sPubS-I/AAAAAAAAB3M/8XShChqzCL0/s400/free%2Band%2Bclear%2BI.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
As can be seen, there has been a dramatic change over time, with over a majority of owned homes being owned free and clear in the 1920s and 1940s, and thereafter steadily declining to the present figure of just under 30 percent. The increase in the 1940s may be related to <a href="http://oldurbanist.blogspot.com/2013/02/was-rise-of-car-ownership-responsible.html">the effects of wartime rent control</a> and the shift in cash investing to real estate during those years.<br />
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Today, the majority of these non-mortgage encumbered homes appear to be owned by <a href="http://articles.latimes.com/2013/jan/10/business/la-fi-free-and-clear-20130110">senior citizens</a> who have paid off their 30-year mortgages. In light of this, and the <a href="https://www.census.gov/newsroom/releases/archives/2010_census/cb11-cn192.html">growth of the over-65 demographic</a> since the 1940s, it should be somewhat surprising that this statistic has declined.<br />
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Here is the same analysis using my age-adjusted homeownership figures (1920 is omitted):<br />
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<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-aeP2N86VsRc/Vpd_6ebbg2I/AAAAAAAAB3Y/ObIxmf2Vgds/s1600/free%2Band%2Bclear%2BII.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="193" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-aeP2N86VsRc/Vpd_6ebbg2I/AAAAAAAAB3Y/ObIxmf2Vgds/s400/free%2Band%2Bclear%2BII.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
In addition to the above, of the majority of homes that are encumbered with mortgages of all types, the percent of equity in those homes has been steadily falling as well, as shown on the below <a href="http://www.doctorhousingbubble.com/americans-that-own-home-with-no-mortgage-free-and-clear/">chart</a>:<br />
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<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-_gToQluFOeI/VpeBNeMAjYI/AAAAAAAAB3k/ae4UAw4XNVo/s1600/HouseholdPercentEquityQ32012.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="260" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-_gToQluFOeI/VpeBNeMAjYI/AAAAAAAAB3k/ae4UAw4XNVo/s400/HouseholdPercentEquityQ32012.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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The chart speaks for itself, with a decline in the 1950s and 1960s likely related to a growing use of the 30-year mortgage with its lower down payment requirements, a stabilization through the early 1980s, and a precipitous decline during the cresting and burst of the housing bubble in the late 2000s. <br />
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The implied conclusion here, that a dramatic expansion of debt has been necessary just to maintain the illusion of a stable homeownership rate (setting aside the explosion of debt in the 2000s necessary to support <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/21/business/worldbusiness/21iht-admin.4.18853088.html?_r=0">an <i>increase</i> in homeownership</a>), puts an even more negative spin on the figures from the preceding post. In short, a decline in homeownership has until the past few years been masked by shifting demographics and an increase in household debt.<br />
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One last point here is that although homeownership fell back to its earlier baseline (in non-adjusted figures) following the real estate bubble, equity has not risen back to to the prior 60-70% range, even in spite of the many institutional cash buyers on the market. The debt legacy of the bubble appears as though it will be around for many years to come.<br />
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<u>Related posts</u>: <br />
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<li><a href="http://oldurbanist.blogspot.com/2011/01/affordable-housing-part-ii.html">"Affordable Housing," part II</a></li>
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Charlie Gardnerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07317335121565650040noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7394091530012769761.post-45946811897144175542016-01-03T10:33:00.001-05:002016-01-06T05:52:01.383-05:00Are Millennial Families Really Seeking a Car-Based Suburban Lifestyle?A <a href="https://medium.com/migration-issues/how-the-city-almost-came-back-fea851a11b08#.juv0pat25">recent article</a> by Lyman Stone makes the argument that the return to cities observed during the late 2000s, rather than being primarily a reflection of increasing preferences for urban living, was a temporary phenomenon caused by a bubble in suburban real estate which for a brief time made city renting significantly less expensive than suburban buying. Under this theory, there was no great change of preferences among the so-called millenial generation or others, but only a temporary price inversion caused by fleeting and unsustainable cost factors.<br />
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The general idea that land rents are higher toward city cores, and lessen in a concentric pattern outwards from the center, is not new. As the "bid rent theory," it was developed by <a href="http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674730854">William Alonso in the 1960s</a>, and has applicability to cities from the distant past all the way down to the present. Modifying but not necessarily contradicting this theory is the concept of the "<a href="http://www.radicalcartography.net/?cityincome">favored quarter</a>," in which bid rents are determined by cardinal direction from the core rather than by distance alone. In contemporary cities, both the bid rent and favored quarter can be easily found and mapped.<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-t8Uede1MVno/VoksoLKrYyI/AAAAAAAAB1U/SkU_9Lvj8Bc/s1600/dallas.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="251" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-t8Uede1MVno/VoksoLKrYyI/AAAAAAAAB1U/SkU_9Lvj8Bc/s400/dallas.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Income distribution map of Dallas/Fort Worth by <a href="http://www.radicalcartography.net/?cityincome">Bill Rankin</a>.</td></tr>
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In general terms, the bid rent theory holds that commercial uses will compete more intensively for space in central areas, resulting in higher density (and higher cost) housing forms as residential uses are forced to bid against non-residential uses for scarce land. By contrast, the favored quarter may represent a wealthy neighborhood using the zoning power or self-rule to insulate itself from non-residential or high-density residential competition, thereby securing what is in effect a subsidy for a valued central location. This sort of <a href="http://oldurbanist.blogspot.com/2014/07/where-zoning-went-wrong.html">abuse of the zoning power</a>, at city-wide scale, has been the subject of a tremendous debate in recent years.<br />
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None of this is new or particularly controversial. The bid rent theory does not presume anything about residential preferences, so far as I am aware, though we might imagine that the same proximity and centrality that is attractive to commercial uses is also appealing to residents who could enjoy that same immediate proximity and centrality as a major amenity. At the same time, the hustle and bustle of commercial uses are repellent to those who, for their residential spaces, crave some degree of quiet enjoyment. Central areas are also likely to be disfavored by those, such as young families, who value large living spaces and high quality public schools above even immediate conveniences where both preferences cannot be met simultaneously.<br />
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In <a href="http://oldurbanist.blogspot.com/2014/04/nyc-suburban-demographics-choice-or-fate.html">a post a while back</a>, I also doubted as to whether these underlying preferences had changed, and that inflated costs in suburban areas and/or foreclosures, had driven higher demand to rent in urban areas. This is not really contradicted by the <a href="http://www.realtor.org/sites/default/files/reports/2013/2013-community-preference-analysis-slides.pdf">National Community Preference survey</a>, which continues to show that people highly value the single-family home <i>and </i>immediate, walkable convenience:<br />
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The most undersupplied areas, relative to demand, are the "suburban neighborhood with a mix of houses, shops and businesses," the "small town," and the "rural area." These patterns seem to be <a href="http://www.citylab.com/housing/2014/05/what-millennials-wantand-why-cities-are-right-pay-them-so-much-attention/9032/">amplified for the millenial generation</a>, with a particular emphasis on <a href="http://www.realtor.org/news-releases/2015/07/millennials-favor-walkable-communities-says-new-nar-poll">walkable neighborhoods</a>. Oversupplied, relative to preference, are the mostly residential suburb <i>and </i>city (although I suspect many of the "city" residential areas are largely "suburban" in character). I do not know exactly how "small town" differs in form from the mixed suburban area, but one imagines the category to be inspired by the fictional New England village of Stars Hollow from the <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0238784/">Gilmore Girls show</a>, with its vaguely New Urbanist mix of houses and shops with quirky and eccentric independent proprietors immune from the long arm of Walmart:<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-jHedrjixYOs/VoflER5JtSI/AAAAAAAAB08/w_Pe61TPVJc/s1600/Stars-Hollow.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="250" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-jHedrjixYOs/VoflER5JtSI/AAAAAAAAB08/w_Pe61TPVJc/s400/Stars-Hollow.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://betweennapsontheporch.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/Stars-Hollow.jpg">Stars Hollow</a> set, and also, I believe, for Hill Valley from Back to the Future.</td></tr>
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The allegedly unrealistic image of the town in the show has been critiqued <a href="https://thecompletistblog.wordpress.com/2014/06/06/stars-hollow/">here</a>, but I still think the popularity of the series has something to tell us about the environments and lifestyle people idealize, even if the particular example in the show may not be economically plausible.<br />
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Lest we imagine that these choices are in fact economically or spatially incompatible, or that what is being sought is the unobtainable single-family house in Central Park, this is the essence of Japanese market urbanism: an extremely compact assemblage of small single-family homes (and some apartments) that is pedestrian and bike friendly. This must be the case, since lower densities will result, for the majority, in the perception of a "residential-only" neighborhood. Naturally, Japanese-style development (as described by Nathan Lewis <a href="http://www.newworldeconomics.com/archives/2011/061211.html">here</a>) is one thing which the American cities have almost entirely failed to provide, although a few neighborhoods here and there, generally developed before 1930, provide a reasonable facsimile.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-SpOMP-AvOgQ/Vokw9yjjoWI/AAAAAAAAB1g/_bzdRDpu084/s1600/tokyo.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="252" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-SpOMP-AvOgQ/Vokw9yjjoWI/AAAAAAAAB1g/_bzdRDpu084/s400/tokyo.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Tokyo neighborhood.</td></tr>
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Quite a bit has also been written as to whether the millennial generation will, in time, leave urban areas, as though there was some question as to whether this particular age bracket would buck the trend of all groups before it. As Joel Kotkin <a href="http://www.newgeography.com/content/004084-the-geography-of-aging-why-millennials-are-headed-to-the-suburbs">wrote two years ago</a>:<br />
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"The millennial “flight” from suburbia has not only been vastly overexaggerated, it fails to deal with what may best be seen as differences in preferences correlated with life stages. We can tell this because we can follow the first group of millennials who are now entering their 30s, and it turns out that they are beginning, like preceding generations, to move to the suburbs.<br />
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These trends can be seen on a nationwide basis. Among the cohort of children under 10 in 2007, the number who lived in core cities as of 2012, when they were 5 to 14 years of age, was down by 550,000. Families are the group most likely to move either to the suburbs or smaller towns. This movement, plus the high degree of childlessness in large urban cores, suggests that many of those who are leaving the core cities in their early 30s are parents with young children."</blockquote>
Now, for families with young children approaching kindergarten age who lack the resources for expensive private tuition, school quality emerges quickly as an important preference, subordinating almost all other concerns. But this does <i>not </i>mean that these families do not desire an urban lifestyle, or, by their housing choices, are rejecting such a lifestyle. The survey data seems to broadly refute that idea. Rather, the cruel spatial economics of exclusion favor low-density, restrictively-zoned places for "good schools," and American cities offer few other intermediate options. Abandoning an urban life, with its high costs, is a sacrifice for one's children rather than, necessarily, a pursuit of an ideal. The choice is reinforced by the <a href="http://www.realtor.com/advice/get-3-big-tax-breaks-buy-home-2015/">panoply of incentives</a> the US tax code offers to those who would buy rather than rent. Many other families with financially limited choice, <a href="http://oldurbanist.blogspot.com/2014/06/the-problem-with-schools-and-housing.html">shut out of suburban options by restrictive zoning and other exclusionary policies</a>, must remain in urban areas regardless of their preferences.<br />
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Seen in this context, I do think the New Urbanism has tapped in to something important in the American psyche. Only, as Nathan Lewis <a href="http://www.newworldeconomics.com/archives/2010/100310.html">has written about</a>, it has generally (but <a href="http://oldurbanist.blogspot.com/2011/08/alys-beach-new-urbanism-samples-old.html">certainly not always!</a>) done so too literally, using lackluster American examples as inspiration rather than successful ones from abroad. I do not think the American imagination is so literal, though. Stars Hollow passed as a New England town even though it bears no resemblance to the <a href="https://www.google.com/maps/place/Guilford,+CT/@41.5762159,-72.3320406,3a,66.8y,292.52h,86.8t/data=!3m4!1e1!3m2!1sTmUk0He6Rt7YDtSpmyQwEA!2e0!4m2!3m1!1s0x89e62cdcb42e44ef:0xe84723be04b2d639">typical Connecticut small town</a> with its large central green and sprawling layout. What was important was not the specific form, but rather the walking lifestyle, the spontaneous interaction and the community as a whole. The set simply provided the urban form necessary to sustain the belief that this lifestyle was possible for the characters.</div>
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If a real-world development does not offer a sufficient density, or sufficient flexibility in terms of mixing of uses, these things will not occur, and you will have little more than a film stage set. Imitate a Japanese neighborhood, on the other hand, and you may have more success. Perhaps clad the buildings in Georgian and Colonial facades for the tastes of American buyers, but leave the form alone. Do not obsess over mixing of uses or "apartments over the shop" -- these things take time and happen gradually, not all at once and from the beginning. A suburb built to this form, odd as it may seem, will meet the stated preferences of American buyers, families included. The demand is certainly there.<br />
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The New Urbanism, whatever its failings, has at least recognized the situation, changed the conversation and opened new possibilities not only in terms of building, but regulatory reform and making possible traditional forms of urbanism under contemporary <a href="http://formbasedcodes.org/definition">city codes</a>. This blog is intended as a sort of continuation of this new conversation using a slightly different vocabulary. </div>
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As to what such a new neighborhood might look like, Nathan Lewis has already written at length, but in another post, I'll reiterate some of his findings along with an example that could be done today.</div>
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Charlie Gardnerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07317335121565650040noreply@blogger.com11tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7394091530012769761.post-26581546476719686292016-01-01T16:40:00.001-05:002016-01-02T11:41:39.166-05:00Is the Decline in the Homeownership Rate Even Greater Than Thought?One of the most heavily reported stories of the post-housing bubble economy has been the decline in the American homeownership rate, which has supposedly <a href="http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-07-28/u-s-homeownership-rate-falls-to-lowest-since-the-1960s">fallen</a> to levels not seen since the days of the Lyndon Johnson administration. Although ownership data is often broken down every which way, including <a href="http://www.cbsnews.com/media/the-11-top-states-for-home-ownership/">regionally</a>, across <a href="http://www.citylab.com/housing/2015/07/latino-incomes-are-rising-so-why-are-their-homeownership-rates-dropping/399806/">ethnic</a> and <a href="http://www.marketplace.org/2013/09/12/wealth-poverty/income-upshot/behind-data-home-ownership-income-bracket">income</a> groups, <a href="http://dqydj.net/historical-homeownership-rate-in-the-united-states-1890-present/">over time</a>, by <a href="https://www.census.gov/prod/2013pubs/acsbr11-15.pdf">immigration status</a> and by <a href="http://www.citylab.com/housing/2015/10/where-should-millennials-rent-or-buy-in-the-us/411841/">age bracket</a>, one analytical quirk I've noticed is that the non-age comparisons are rarely themselves controlled for by age.<br />
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This is highly significant, since homeownership is, obviously, heavily correlated with stage in life. While only around 33% of 29-year-olds own homes, by age 39, this number leaps to around 49% (according to age bracket data from the 1990s to present). This fact has major consequences for comparisons among nearly every demographic group, but even more so for comparisons over <i>time</i>. How so? Consider that a major age-related change since the 1940 Census has been an increase in the <a href="https://www.census.gov/newsroom/cspan/1940census/CSPAN_1940slides.pdf">median age</a> of around 10 years due to a decline in the birth rate and a substantial increase in <a href="http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0005148.html">life expectancy</a>.<br />
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What is the significance of these changes for the homeownership rate? The chart I prepared below uses <a href="http://thereformedbroker.com/2015/03/11/homeownership-rates-by-age-group/">averages of ownership by age bracket for 1994 and 2014</a> to estimate interval changes and make a complete graph showing that, in general, the rate increases until around age 66 (one would think related to post-retirement home sales) and then gradually tapers off thereafter, while still remaining well above the overall average. <br />
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<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-N2P-UJKbgyY/VobpLSakk2I/AAAAAAAABz0/bdHuU0OKMh8/s1600/Ownership%2BIV.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-N2P-UJKbgyY/VobpLSakk2I/AAAAAAAABz0/bdHuU0OKMh8/s1600/Ownership%2BIV.jpg" /></a></div>
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As a result, the older a population grows, the higher its homeownership level should be, all else being equal. Intuitively, it should be shocking that today's homeownership rate is comparable to that at the height of the baby boom era, when the national median age was only 28. The Census Bureau has apparently <a href="http://www.housingwire.com/articles/33192-the-us-homeownership-rate-is-much-worse-than-you-think">made some adjustments</a> to more recent ownership data to reflect changes in age structure, but I was interested in doing the same for the decennial data going back many decades.<br />
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The data has been adjusted to account for 1) changes in the <i>median age</i>, normalized to 2014, to reflect that an older population is centered around a much higher ownership level, and 2) changes in the <i>life expectancy </i>independent of median age, to reflect that the older people live, the higher the homeownership level is likely to be. First is a plot of the <a href="https://www.census.gov/hhes/www/housing/census/historic/owner.html">non-adjusted decennial Census data</a> (<a href="http://www.census.gov/housing/hvs/files/currenthvspress.pdf">plus 2014</a>), showing the familiar pattern of a large jump in the 1940s due in part to wartime rent controls, a slowdown in the 1960s, and a general stagnation since that time. <br />
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<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-PBd3-Wr4mFs/VobjlcQftXI/AAAAAAAABzE/sF02pECZfn8/s1600/Ownership%2BI.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-PBd3-Wr4mFs/VobjlcQftXI/AAAAAAAABzE/sF02pECZfn8/s1600/Ownership%2BI.jpg" /></a></div>
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Once we account for the demographic changes, however, it becomes obvious how the aging of the population has masked a major decline since 1970. The chart below shows the data adjusted for change in median ages only. Note also how the slowdown in the 1960s has disappeared and been replaced by a substantial increase, as the population was growing younger during that time. This is more consistent, I think, with the conventional wisdom that the 1960s were a boom time for new buyers as much as the 1950s were.<br />
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Finally, if we account for life expectancy as well, the trends are further amplified, showing that, in age-adjusted terms, today's homeownership rate is lower than that of 1940, which was itself a low point only a little above where it had been in the depths of the Depression. A peak is reached around 1970, after which there was and continues to be a decline (the upward blip in the mid-2000s is not represented here).<br />
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<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-j7Ko87p4Hss/VobpcOZcCRI/AAAAAAAAB0E/aa8C4rC8ONU/s1600/Ownership%2BIII.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-j7Ko87p4Hss/VobpcOZcCRI/AAAAAAAAB0E/aa8C4rC8ONU/s1600/Ownership%2BIII.jpg" /></a></div>
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My attempt at analysis here is definitely not the last word in examining this data, and no doubt there are flaws, but it at least leaves open the possibility that today's homeownership rate, in the context of age adjustments, is lower than it has been for a very long time, at least as long as 80 years and perhaps as far back as 120 years or more. With more data on earlier Censuses and a more rigorous approach more refined and complete results could be calculated, but I would doubt whether the overall picture would be greatly different.<br />
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The question as to why homeownership peaked around 1970, in these charts, and declined thereafter, is one which has been discussed in many other and related contexts. <a href="https://twitter.com/NathanNWE">Nathan Lewis</a> has <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Gold-The-Once-Future-Money/dp/0470047666">written extensively</a> about the abandonment of the gold standard. Ben Ross has <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Dead-End-Suburban-American-Urbanism-ebook/dp/B00IYIDX2W">discussed the changes in land use policy</a> in the 1970s, including the rise of environmentalism, which threw up new barriers to development and reduced the supply of new housing coming to market. Seeking a full explanation would be far beyond the scope of this post, but I think it is noteworthy that the results are broadly consistent with other economic markers, including <a href="http://www.epi.org/publication/causes-of-wage-stagnation/">inflation-adjusted income</a>. <br />
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Finally, it it may be interesting to compare these trends with those of Europe, as shown on this graph which I grabbed from Twitter (via <a href="https://twitter.com/antonyslumbers">Antony Slumbers</a>):<br />
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<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-d3FUuyPJF5I/VobutwgPXSI/AAAAAAAAB0U/OldxG7zik10/s1600/Ownership%2BV.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="382" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-d3FUuyPJF5I/VobutwgPXSI/AAAAAAAAB0U/OldxG7zik10/s400/Ownership%2BV.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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Although the US continues to have a lower homeownership rate than the Eurozone, and far lower than many individual countries, I suspect this difference may disappear or even reverse once median ages are taken into account (the median age of the Eurozone being over 41).<br />
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Spreadsheet with data and charts <a href="https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/13_XEWEQkljl14BKuCR3adSWF9tqHfRzkgEWtUdgAQ3E/edit?usp=sharing">here</a>.<br />
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<u>Related posts</u>:<br />
<ul>
<li><a href="http://oldurbanist.blogspot.com/2013/02/was-rise-of-car-ownership-responsible.html">Was the Rise of Car Ownership Responsible for the Midcentury Homeownership Boom in the US?</a></li>
<li><a href="http://oldurbanist.blogspot.com/2013/05/homeownership-unemployment-and-economic.html">Homeownership, Unemployment and Economic Growth: Looking at the Trends</a></li>
</ul>
Charlie Gardnerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07317335121565650040noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7394091530012769761.post-10454034359753202072015-12-27T09:11:00.000-05:002016-01-05T15:45:09.030-05:00When the Market Built Housing for the Low IncomeIn a <a href="http://cityobservatory.org/what-filtering-can-and-cant-do/">recent post</a>, Daniel Kay Hertz examines residential filtering, the process by which housing units depreciate and therefore become available to lower-income buyers or renters over time. In particular, Hertz examines a Stuart Rosenthal article on the phenomenon which I have examined critically <a href="http://oldurbanist.blogspot.com/2012/01/friday-read-affordable-housing-filtered.html">here</a> and <a href="http://oldurbanist.blogspot.com/2011/10/note-on-gentrification-and-preservation.html">here</a>. Although he makes the very good point that the filtering process is not operating in unhindered fashion in many large American metros, he also makes the claim, which I have seen in many other contexts and by other authors, that "very little private housing in the United States was originally built for low-income people."<br />
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Although this may be somewhat accurate so far as it only applies to formal housing developers, throughout the history of American cities and indeed most other cities in the world, a large portion of the housing stock came from the informal economy, most of it purpose-built for indigent migrants or very poor laborers. This was the case even in some of the largest and wealthiest cities in the Western world until fairly recently. <br />
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In the typical city, such housing would (and is) either be found on the outskirts or on very low-value urban sites, such as floodplains, rocky ground or steep slopes. Infrastructure was poor and public services were minimal or nonexistent.<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-217Tak5hc6c/VlHBELrNdoI/AAAAAAAABrI/xjNYcF04MSY/s1600/Dutch-Hill1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="242" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-217Tak5hc6c/VlHBELrNdoI/AAAAAAAABrI/xjNYcF04MSY/s400/Dutch-Hill1.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">American Favela: The "Dutch Hill" area of midtown Manhattan in 1863. Source <a href="http://blog.nyhistory.org/the-shantytown-nineteenth-century-manhattans-straggling-suburbs/">here</a>.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
Rather than filtering down, these rudimentary settlements had and have a tendency to "filter up" internally, as residents gained a foothold economically and improved their dwellings. For most Americans, the best-known of these types of areas are the so-called "Hoovervilles" of the Depression era, when the unemployed and rural migrants occupied low-value or underused land near city centers:<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-SZHnM2I3DN0/VlHgATF2PqI/AAAAAAAABrY/3ckXSKvTzS0/s1600/SeattleHooverville.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="248" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-SZHnM2I3DN0/VlHgATF2PqI/AAAAAAAABrY/3ckXSKvTzS0/s320/SeattleHooverville.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: 12.8px;">Seattle, WA in the 1930s. </span><a href="http://www.legendsofamerica.com/photos-washington/SeattleHooverville.jpg" style="font-size: 12.8px;">Source</a><span style="font-size: 12.8px;">.</span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
These crude shacks offered little more than shelter from the elements, but they were the result of people in dire situations doing the best they could with what they had available. Governments then and now refused to accept this reality and, rather than trying to improve the conditions within these settlements, generally favored mass eviction and demolition. In an interesting twist, this style of development has been rediscovered by contemporary American cities (particularly Seattle), and, without apparent irony, has been <a href="http://www.kgw.com/news/tiny-house-village-for-homeless-taking-shape-in-seattle/7975754">rebranded as the</a> "<a href="http://seattle%2C%20wa%20in%20the%201930s.%20source./">tiny house village</a>."<br />
<br />
Beyond housing for the very poorest of the poor, American cities through at least the 1920s built in bulk for the lower end of the income scale. This housing took several forms:<br />
<ul>
<li>As noted above, shanty housing built by those with little or no experience in construction.</li>
<li>Small, temporary and/or transient housing, such as <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flophouse">flophouses</a>, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boarding_house">boarding houses</a> and other manner of SRO rentals.</li>
<li>Small <a href="http://oldurbanist.blogspot.com/2014/08/demise-of-duplex.html">multifamily housing</a> wherein a person of some means would build a home with one or two attached apartments which could be let out at low cost. Often these apartments would be sub-let to boarders who might occupy a single bedroom.</li>
<li><a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=4il1AwAAQBAJ&pg=PT390&lpg=PT390&dq=self-built+housing+history&source=bl&ots=iUYs9XBCqX&sig=UCHoOf1Ibm17I52LVTsBbndy2T4&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwicpZuHlvzJAhUERSYKHUWrCVIQ6AEINDAD#v=onepage&q=self-built%20housing%20history&f=false">Self-built housing</a> of a higher quality, which might be built from a <a href="http://www.searshomes.org/index.php/tag/finding-the-houses-that-sears-built/">Sears housing kit</a>, or by a person with some background in construction. One <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=4il1AwAAQBAJ&pg=PT390&lpg=PT390&dq=self-built+housing+history&source=bl&ots=iUYs9XBCqX&sig=UCHoOf1Ibm17I52LVTsBbndy2T4&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwicpZuHlvzJAhUERSYKHUWrCVIQ6AEINDAD#v=onepage&q=self-built%20housing%20history&f=false">study</a> estimates as many as 1 in 5 American homes were self-built in the 1920s.</li>
<li>As noted in the comments, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Company_town#Present-day_company_towns">company towns</a> and other housing built by large businesses for their workers to inhabit. </li>
</ul>
The first, second and third of these options were virtually outlawed starting in the 1920s and in the decades following. What changed during and after the 1920s was not the market's willingness or ability to continue constructing such housing, but society's tolerance for housing of perceived low quality or of profitable use. The Housing Act of 1937, for instance, was not so much concerned with ensuring <i>affordable </i>housing for the poor, <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=yE8JO1MgATgC&pg=PA61&lpg=PA61&dq=decent,+safe+and+sanitary+housing+roosevelt&source=bl&ots=mM1qpv9sbs&sig=duTuOZ-U9Juh0bufQQcdd0VtGaI&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwi1wOj6kqTJAhVM7yYKHWmXCEsQ6AEIVDAJ#v=onepage&q&f=false">but rather</a> with "the provision of decent, safe and sanitary dwellings for families of low income and the eradication of slums." Single-room rentals did not fit into this well-meaning but upper middle-class vision.<br />
<br />
The "eradication of slums" element of this strategy was more faithfully carried out then the provision of dwellings, and in the process much of the evidence of the low-income neighborhoods of the pre-1950 period was obliterated. Municipal archives may contain photographic documentation of the condemned neighborhoods, as in the case of Nashville, below, showing a street of tin-roofed shotgun houses and very modest bungalows built in the early 20th century for lower-income tenants. All were "eradicated" in the 1960s along with much of the surrounding neighborhood and their residents dispersed elsewhere. That many of these neighborhoods were demolished or saw demand for them fall to near zero, with resultant abandonment, should not cause us to forget they ever existed.<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-eZc_ZWVXlNc/VlG9rcTThhI/AAAAAAAABrA/44zAqwNmXns/s1600/MDHA%2BR69%2B486A%2BResidential.tif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="255" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-eZc_ZWVXlNc/VlG9rcTThhI/AAAAAAAABrA/44zAqwNmXns/s400/MDHA%2BR69%2B486A%2BResidential.tif" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Nashville houses circa 1960; all demolished in urban renewal. Courtesy MDHA.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
It might not be going to far to say that the traumatic process of urban renewal instigated an involuntary filtering, as residents of the poorest areas were literally displaced -- cast out of condemned homes -- and forced to seek new housing from among a diminished housing stock. These people probably did move into somewhat higher-quality housing, but at higher cost and possibly in more crowded conditions as well. <br />
<br />
But what of the fourth type of housing, the proper self-built house? As it turns out, there was a crackdown on this type of housing as well for reasons that seem to have had less to do with ensuring decent and sanitary housing and more to do with disreputable and exclusionary motives. The impetus for these changes may have been the mobility provided by the automobile. I'll quote from <a href="http://www.press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/896412.html">one book</a> at length which describes one town's legislative action against black self-builders in Ohio, including one Eddie Strickland:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="background-color: white;">"In 1946 ... in a series of irregular meetings, the council [of the town of Woodmere, Ohio] passed a building code aimed at restricting do-it-yourself builders, among whom blacks were a prominent group. The code mandated a maximum one-year time limit for the construction of new homes, forbade secession of work for any period longer than forty-eight hours, and prohibited the use of secondhand building materials. Finally, the code required builders to post a $1,000 bond to ensure compliance.</span>.... </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="background-color: white;">"By lifting construction standards (and allegedly enforcing regulations in a discriminatory manner), Woodmere officials raised the cost of home building in the village and substantially limited settlement by working-class blacks. Moreover, the passage of similar building restrictions throughout the county helped limit the number of African American suburbanites in the Cleveland area. The trend had an apparently chilling effect on the attendance of blacks at the weekly land auction in Cleveland, where a number of families had formerly purchased suburban land for delinquent taxes.</span><span style="background-color: white;">...</span> </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="background-color: white;">"Far from being an isolated event, Strickland's confrontation with authorities in Woodmere reflected a national trend toward regulation of the suburban fringe that hastened the decline of working-class suburbanization in the postwar decades. In Cleveland and other metropolitan areas, the proliferation of suburban municipalities led to the extension of land-use regulations to formerly unregulated areas. Zoning and building codes curtailed informal home building and inflated the cost of a suburban home. Racist application of these regulations closed the door on development for blacks, and the enforcement of sanitary regulations led to the demolition of existing black housing and restrictions on domestic production.</span> </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Excerpt from <a href="http://www.press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/896412.html">Places of Their Own: African American Suburbanization in the Twentieth Century by Andrew Wiese</a></blockquote>
Disputes over self-built homes continue to arise today in remoter regions, as seen in the <a href="http://www.becketfund.org/yoder/">recent lawsuit brought on behalf of Amish homebuilders</a> in upstate New York who were being required by local codes to submit architectural plans and install other expensive features in their self-built farmhouses. The elimination of the self-built home as an affordable option in much of the country, in conjunction with zoning regulations limiting small multifamily housing, setting minimum lot sizes and imposing other similar restrictions, completed the elimination of the lower rung of prior housing options. Left were only the newer <a href="http://oldurbanist.blogspot.com/2014/05/mobile-home-impediments-and.html">mobile/prefab home</a>, which partly stepped in to fill the gap that had been left, and the filtering process, which though demonstrably effective was not always rapid enough to insure a sufficient quantity of housing nor sufficiently cheap housing, especially in cities with high residential demand.<br />
<br />
Of these two options, mobile homes were heavily restricted in where they could be located, and urban renewal <a href="https://reason.com/blog/2011/09/28/the-tragedy-of-urban-renewal-t">destroyed huge quantities</a> of filtered housing, i.e., "blighted" homes. The result is a market which appears, artificially, not to create low-income housing options. <br />
<br />
Is this article a call for the return of flophouses, then? Not in the sense of the negative and unsanitary associations of that term and other like it, but in the sense of a government which recognizes that these older types of housing represent the market's effort to meet vital needs, and that regulation can help meet these needs in a safe and sanitary way without taking an adversarial approach toward them. These market approaches can be complementary to public housing investments and other public assistance programs, as well, rather than being seen as inferior alternatives. The <a href="http://www.kgw.com/news/tiny-house-village-for-homeless-taking-shape-in-seattle/7975754">tiny house village</a> movement mentioned earlier is one such manifestation of this approach, and shows that the political obstacles need not be insurmountable. <br />
<br />
<u>Other and related reading</u>:<br />
<ul>
<li>Daniel Kay Hertz, <a href="http://cityobservatory.org/the-immaculate-conception-theory-of-your-neighborhoods-origins/">The immaculate conception theory of your neighborhood’s origins</a></li>
<li><a href="https://www.blogger.com/Friday%20Read:%20Affordable%20Housing,%20Filtered,%20not%20Subsidized">Friday Read: Affordable Housing, Filtered, not Subsidized</a></li>
<li><a href="http://note%20on%20gentrification%20and%20preservation/">Note on Gentrification and Preservation</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.kgw.com/news/tiny-house-village-for-homeless-taking-shape-in-seattle/7975754">Tiny house village for homeless taking shape in Seattle, 12/24/15</a></li>
</ul>
Charlie Gardnerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07317335121565650040noreply@blogger.com16tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7394091530012769761.post-8694220996879568622015-12-25T10:53:00.003-05:002015-12-26T16:41:02.443-05:00That 70s Urbanism, Part II: Fixing Urban RenewalOn Twitter, <a href="https://twitter.com/capntransit">Cap'n Transit</a> appreciated my focus on <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stamford,_Connecticut">Stamford</a> in the previous post, so to continue on the prior topic with an ongoing focus on the 1970s, I'll return to that city to offer some perspective on the past as well as some ideas for the future. <br />
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Best known as an office escape for New York-based banks and other companies, the city actually has a history nearly as old as New York itself and, before urban renewal, had a street pattern as intricate as lower Manhattan's old Dutch footways. The <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_and_New_Haven_Railroad">New York and New Haven railroad</a> cleaved the town in the late 1840s, and in the part south of the tracks polluting factories cropped up along the waterfront and canal. In the 1950s, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interstate_95">Interstate 95</a> ripped another path through the heart of the city, though partly following the railroad right-of-way. <br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-J_rlX2Zh61U/Vn8H0MQ8k0I/AAAAAAAAByo/Ynv-Efxnl5s/s1600/urbanrenewal.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="227" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-J_rlX2Zh61U/Vn8H0MQ8k0I/AAAAAAAAByo/Ynv-Efxnl5s/s400/urbanrenewal.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Stamford's downtown in the midst of renewal, 1979. <a href="http://contentdm.fergusonlibrary.org/cdm/singleitem/collection/urc/id/2894">City of Stamford</a> via Ferguson Library.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
Finally, a massive <a href="http://www.stamfordhistory.org/stamford-urban-renewal.htm">urban renewal project</a>, initiated in the 1950s but only carried out in full in the 1970s, destroyed the bulk of the city's downtown area and resulted in the demapping of many streets, even including the primary stretch of Stamford's Main Street. These streets were replaced by high-speed "stroads," and the office buildings that replaced the fine-grained fabric of the city took the form of glass and granite monoliths perched over parking lots, serving as fortresses against the miasma presumably thought to be swirling on the near-empty sidewalks. A large enclosed <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stamford_Town_Center">three-anchor mall</a> was constructed over several blocks of condemned buildings.<br />
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<div>
<b>Reworking 1970s Urban Renewal</b></div>
<div>
<br />
The age of massive urban renewal on the scale that Stamford pursued is over, by and large, some <a href="http://hub.jhu.edu/gazette/2013/january/east-baltimore-changes-development">planning projects</a> in Baltimore excepted. Stamford is unlikely to ever engage in another project of such scope. As I noted in the previous post, however, a city like Stamford can still use those elements of 1960s and 1970s planning to its advantage if it plays its cards correctly.<br />
<br />
The 1970s as I wrote were an early golden age of pedestrian infrastructure as reflected by several key elements which are broadly applicable to today's cause of walkability, although not all are today well-regarded:<br />
<ul>
<li>Mass transit (obviously - the 70s witnessing a revival of heavy rail systems)</li>
<li>Generous use of elevators in public space</li>
<li>Escalators and moving walkways</li>
<li>Pedestrian tunnels, skyways and covered sidewalks</li>
<li>Pedestrianized streets</li>
<li>Enclosed malls and other shopping areas</li>
</ul>
In addition to the above, Stamford has in the last 20 years enjoyed a resurgence of the "<a href="http://oldurbanist.blogspot.com/2015/06/fall-and-rise-of-euro-block.html">Euro block</a>" apartment form throughout the downtown area, in addition to an earlier boom in townhouse-over-garage condominium construction. Although Stamford will not be Barcelona anytime soon, good things can be and should be happening, but the downtown is as car-dominated as ever. How about a plan for incremental improvement?<br />
<br />
The plan I put forward has several components, some inspired by Jane Jacobs, some by Jeff Speck, some by Nathan Lewis and Japanese city planning, and by others too numerous to mention:<br />
<ol>
<li>Extend the enclosed shopping area in the train station</li>
<li>Narrow several of the downtown streets by sidewalk widening and use of bike lanes</li>
<li>Use eminent domain and existing public land to open several new narrow streets</li>
<li>Provide arcaded pedestrian streets where appropriate</li>
<li>Open the mall to the street and re-open Main Street</li>
<li>Use the under-capacity mall and Target parking lots for long-term parking for downtown residents in lieu of parking requirements</li>
</ol>
In most cases, new streets are built on existing public land and would require little or no condemnation. Some simply represent streets which were uprooted and de-mapped during urban renewal. Most vital to these is the continuation of narrow Summer Street down to the UBS building. The street narrows to only about 16 feet at its southern extremity, and should be continued at that width further south, ideally as a shared space or even pedestrianized shopping street that will provide a safe and attractive walking path from the train station (a moving walkway probably veers too far into parody/Seinfeld territory). As a 16' street, it could possibly be arcaded as well. The street would terminate at the UBS building into an existing pedestrian pathway that leads to the train station.<br />
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This image, rotated counterclockwise, shows how the new street would appear lined by Euro block apartments and shops, leading with only a couple of curved turns directly to the train station, which has an existing underpass lined with a few shops passing underneath I-95. This line of shops would be carried across past I-95 and along the path in front of the UBS building, possibly incorporating an anchor store:<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-Sjr3TnY9bDM/Vn1X-c96GHI/AAAAAAAAByE/ZXweqIVMQw0/s1600/new%2Bsummer.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="159" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-Sjr3TnY9bDM/Vn1X-c96GHI/AAAAAAAAByE/ZXweqIVMQw0/s400/new%2Bsummer.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: right;"><br /></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
</div>
<div>
<b>Patching Up the Mall</b></div>
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In the previous post, I showed one way the mall could be opened to the street by demolishing one of the car access ramps:</div>
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-zkUpKGBfZ3g/VnZFkD_b4zI/AAAAAAAABu0/7AVUL7xobwQ/s1600/mallbefore.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="116" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-zkUpKGBfZ3g/VnZFkD_b4zI/AAAAAAAABu0/7AVUL7xobwQ/s400/mallbefore.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">At present, left, and after new entrance.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
Additionally, entrances could be punched into the mall at various other points on the exterior, as most parking is actually above the mall, and shopping can be accessed at most points directly from the street.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div>
<b>Narrowing Other Streets</b></div>
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<br /></div>
<div>
Atlantic Street, onto which this mall entrance faces, should be narrowed from three to two lanes throughout its length with a bike lane added. A shared space arrangement with bollards (bollards inside the bike lane) would be an ideal treatment. A new street of 16' or so (not shown) should be run past the facades of these buildings, through the adjacent park, under the mall and into the remnant stub of the old Main Street. Half of the overly-large park (really a paved square) should be sold off to private parties to construct new buildings along the southern boundary of this new street, leaving a still-large triangular square bounded on all sides by rights-of-way. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
The city should also use its power of eminent domain to open new streets and to complete those discontinuous fragments that already exist. The below map shows existing streets in red, pedestrian paths in orange, and suggested new streets in yellow:</div>
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-dBtiypuq8Co/Vna0PoBqJ7I/AAAAAAAABvU/ueH4VacuGbQ/s1600/newroads.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="275" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-dBtiypuq8Co/Vna0PoBqJ7I/AAAAAAAABvU/ueH4VacuGbQ/s400/newroads.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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These new streets also include a pedestrian bridge over Mill River at the upper left, the new 16' street referenced before curving through the park, a new arcaded street through the mall, and two streets creating a three-part division of a large, partly unbuilt block at the right. Other segments have been added here and there, and the continuation of Summer Street is visible in the center right.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div>
<b>Transportation</b></div>
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<br /></div>
<div>
Regarding transportation, despite the likely high cost, it may be desirable to create a second stop in downtown Stamford at either Canal or Elm Streets or along East Main Street. This would help convert the train system into a small localized rapid transit system, and has parallels elsewhere on the line with New Haven's <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_Street_Station_(New_Haven)">State Street station</a>, Bridgeport's planned second <a href="http://www.bridgeportct.gov/content/89019/89751/94961/270044.aspx">Barnum station</a> and Fairfield's <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fairfield_Metro_(Metro-North_station)">Metro station</a>. </div>
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<br /></div>
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A full infill station, complete with station house, was built in West Haven for $80 million, though the Bridgeport's station's cost appears to be nearly double that. Since Stamford is the last stop for many express trains, it would not unduly interfere with express train operation. An Elm Street or East Main Street station serving the Cove neighborhood and providing a secondary downtown route might be very popular and would not require much parking. There is ample room for it, and the existing overpasses dating from the turn of the century, will need to be replaced sooner or later.</div>
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-MPA4MZUCp2k/Vnan-1DGRbI/AAAAAAAABvE/N_4515Bx058/s1600/proposed_stations.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="237" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-MPA4MZUCp2k/Vnan-1DGRbI/AAAAAAAABvE/N_4515Bx058/s400/proposed_stations.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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<br /></div>
<div>
Optimistically, a plan like this would have a ten-year time-frame from initiation of planning to start of operation. <br />
<br />
<b>Parking</b><br />
<b><br /></b>
Parking is always one of the thorniest issues in downtown planning, but Stamford, for better or worse, is "blessed" with an abundant supply of garage parking. In particular, the mall parking lot and the Target parking lot are greatly under-used. In light of this parking supply, if parking minimums cannot be abolished entirely, the city should offer fee in lieu of parking to any residential developer who secures a parking arrangement with one of these local operators. The number of spaces required to be secured should be as low as politically feasible. <br />
<br />
It goes without saying that on-street parking rates should be dramatically increased in the downtown area. The city is currently attempting to raise additional revenue by <a href="http://www.stamfordadvocate.com/news/article/Stamford-restaurants-must-pay-for-outdoor-dining-6687245.php">imposing new fees</a> on outdoor dining spaces, yet the parking adjacent to it continues to be greatly underpriced. Although I am generally opposed to on-street parking in areas with high pedestrian volumes, a Shoup-inspired approach that used increased fees for civic improvements could be a positive change.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div>
<b>What Not to Do</b></div>
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<b><br /></b></div>
<div>
Stamford is currently undergoing a <a href="http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052970203554104577002103465447454">major redevelopment project</a> in the Harbor Point area, a former mixed industrial and residential area in the South End of the city, west of the canal. Although purportedly the handiwork of planners, the haphazard arrangement of streets and commercial spaces creates an environment which at best, is reasonably pleasant, but which at worst is less than the sum of its parts. </div>
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Here are some examples of the decent, the bad and the ugly. One of the newest areas features a semi-shared space street (interesting) with use of bollards (good), yet the space is overly large (not good) the architecture is completely cold and indifferent (not good) and the scene is altogether too busy with too many plantings (not good). There are a couple of restaurants along the street to the left with outdoor seating, which greatly helps to enliven the area in the warmer months.</div>
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<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-GjoITQ5ugHo/Vnb5Qw7hG3I/AAAAAAAABvs/zFA-sCz64c0/s1600/sford1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="149" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-GjoITQ5ugHo/Vnb5Qw7hG3I/AAAAAAAABvs/zFA-sCz64c0/s320/sford1.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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For contrast, here is a street in between two apartments, lined with garages and electric equipment. This is an unpleasant and even dangerous street to walk down, and it is right off the main park square!<br />
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<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-1MAwIu7E_Dg/Vnb5Q9IBUII/AAAAAAAABvk/az4FHhCAxNU/s1600/sford2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="152" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-1MAwIu7E_Dg/Vnb5Q9IBUII/AAAAAAAABvk/az4FHhCAxNU/s320/sford2.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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Most unforgivably, in another area close by, is this facade on the local neighborhood commercial main street. I generally try to steer away from strong language so that readers may make up their own minds, but this is simply atrocious. The street level must be done better than this.<br />
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<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-6In6J90ILk0/Vnb5QwGkJZI/AAAAAAAABvo/ZiCBMxIkGXk/s1600/sford3.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="159" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-6In6J90ILk0/Vnb5QwGkJZI/AAAAAAAABvo/ZiCBMxIkGXk/s320/sford3.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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There are many other changes large and small that one could consider throughout Stamford as a whole, and the city does seem to be engaged in a process of gradually narrowing intersections by bumping out sidewalks, thereby improving pedestrian safety. With several recent and well-publicized deaths of pedestrians, this needs to be an immediate focus and priority. Zoning needs to be reformed as well, but that is a <a href="http://oldurbanist.blogspot.com/2014/01/the-zoning-straitjacket-part-ii.html">post that I have already written</a>.</div>
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Charlie Gardnerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07317335121565650040noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7394091530012769761.post-41812559765099857492015-12-21T21:55:00.000-05:002015-12-22T10:54:39.640-05:00That 70s Urbanism<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-AhvqPHKDXl0/Vnigt66Wr5I/AAAAAAAABwM/_BexA776-b8/s1600/bham.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="200" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-AhvqPHKDXl0/Vnigt66Wr5I/AAAAAAAABwM/_BexA776-b8/s200/bham.jpg" width="190" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">1970s suburb, Birmingham, AL.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div>
The 70s, as much as any decade from the 1920s to the 1990s, has gotten a bad rap in contemporary urban planning circles. It was the golden age of the suburb and the nadir for many urban areas around the United States, not to mention a boom time for highway construction and the development of very low density suburbs on non-gridded street patterns. Surely there is nothing we can glean from this time period that has applicability to the urbanism of today?</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Well, this is perhaps not entirely true. The 1970s, as well as the decade before it, arguably represented the first time in the urban history of America that planners self-consciously pursued entirely pedestrianized environments, although the inspiration for these areas went back to flights of imagination <a href="http://www.popsci.com/sites/popsci.com/files/styles/medium_1x_/public/import/2013/images/2010/05/cityfuture.jpg?itok=83ItFHQ5">from the 1920s</a> if not earlier, and the 1950s saw the genesis of several of these ideas, at least in their embryonic forms. I refer not only to pedestrianized main streets, but to the five great pedestrian creations of the age: the <b>enclosed shopping mall</b>, the <b>international airport</b>,<b> </b>the <b>vacation resort</b>, the <b>convention center</b>, and the <b>network of tunnels and/or skyways</b>. Each of these represented a vision, if incomplete, for pedestrian-only circulation and commerce on a grand scale, often on the footprint of a small town. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
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Do I jest? No. The future, if the human imagination is a key to the future, was pointing toward pedestrianism in the 1960s and especially 1970s. This was, after all, the age of Paulo Soleri's implicitly pedestrian-centric <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arcology">arcology</a>. Gas prices were soaring by the early 70s. The <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1939_New_York_World%27s_Fair">1939 World's Fair</a> vision of high-speed highways was out, and a more refined tecnho-utopianism involving futuristic megastructures was in. The great majority of the buying public rejected this vision for their private lives, but as the success of enclosed malls shows, they gladly embraced it in many other contexts -- in commerce, for employment, in travel and for recreation. </div>
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-7NbqbbE8XG8/Vni7FBvjU-I/AAAAAAAABxQ/1c7mMHbe3wg/s1600/CIM-62-J300.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="136" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-7NbqbbE8XG8/Vni7FBvjU-I/AAAAAAAABxQ/1c7mMHbe3wg/s400/CIM-62-J300.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The arcology: no highways here, or at least, not the central element! <a href="https://arcosanti.org/sites/default/files/images/CIM-62-J300.jpg">Source</a>.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div>
The tunnel system of Houston and the skyway system of Minneapolis, both begun in earnest in the 1960s, were built out through the 1970s. Enclosed mall construction, which <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southdale_Center">began in 1956</a>, was in such a boom that four enclosed malls opened from 1969 to 1980 in the city of <a href="http://mall-hall-of-fame.blogspot.com/">Toledo, Ohio</a> alone. Air travel multiplied through the 1960s and airports were expanded on an unprecedented scale. The very idea of the convention center, although it had been around for decades, attained gargantuan scale by the latter half of the 20th century. </div>
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<br /></div>
<div>
The hostility toward these type of environments in recent years, has, it seems to me, been based on two primary grounds: 1) the environments, being private and privately controlled, are <a href="http://thedmonline.com/millennials-avoid-malignant-malls/">corporate and sterile</a>; and 2) although the environments themselves may be pedestrian, they are <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=4AwOp6sJl3oC&pg=PA268&lpg=PA268&dq=malls+car+dependent&source=bl&ots=bO7_tQqKk2&sig=CG9uq61hSnz1gm9I1PtUlkHI7Mo&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjOnPenuu7JAhUD1xQKHQlcDmM4FBDoAQgbMAA#v=onepage&q=malls%20car%20dependent&f=false">dependent</a> for their business on car-driving customers. Of these two critiques, however, the second is not inherent to the form of the structures themselves. Rather, a pedestrian environment such as a tunnel system or an enclosed mall is, as the cities of Japan or Korea bear witness, a <i>better </i>partner to transit and walking trips than it is to car transport. That the United States largely squandered its opportunities to integrate these structures and systems into its transit networks is an indictment of city planning, but not necessarily of these forms themselves. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
The Japanese, arguably the best city-builders in the world, have not missed this point, and typically have built shopping malls either adjacent to or, in the case below, on top of railway stations:</div>
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-rgnPgy0PFoA/Vniva26RjuI/AAAAAAAABwc/Q5Scq_svYwU/s1600/keihan%2Bmall.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="228" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-rgnPgy0PFoA/Vniva26RjuI/AAAAAAAABwc/Q5Scq_svYwU/s400/keihan%2Bmall.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Osaka's <a href="http://www.keihan-mall.jp/">Keihan Mall</a>, over the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ky%C5%8Dbashi_Station_(Osaka)">Kyobashi</a> railway station. Bing Maps.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div>
In the case of American cities, even where the option is obvious and available, no such plans are made. In <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stamford,_Connecticut">Stamford</a>, Connecticut, where nearly the entire downtown was condemned and bulldozed in a vast urban renewal scheme, the new enclosed mall built by the city's hand-picked developer was inexplicably not located next to the city's heavily-used Metro North railway stop:</div>
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-8gv7WnDkxOw/VnixlyOmHiI/AAAAAAAABwo/ZR4rywopnH8/s1600/stamford2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="300" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-8gv7WnDkxOw/VnixlyOmHiI/AAAAAAAABwo/ZR4rywopnH8/s400/stamford2.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The mall, at top right, and station, at bottom left. Bing Maps.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div>
What were they thinking, one could ask. Note also the very low value placement of the interstate highway just north of the railway line, although this area probably had higher property values than the south side of the tracks at the time of the highway's construction. In truth, the Stamford planners had given up entirely on any idea of pedestrian circulation outside the new megablocks. The curated spaces within the new mall were designed to be accessed by car alone, and the structure to this day presents a fortress-like appearance to the outside. The decision cannot even be explained by a desire to exclude train riders, who then and now tend to be well-heeled commuters to New York and are in general better off than most.</div>
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<div>
Had the planners of the 1970s left the city alone, and simply redeveloped the train station as a mall, who knows what might have happened by today? Yet these questions need not be hypotheticals. Cities have the power to make these changes today. Stamford cannot move its mall, but it can consider a new infill station closer to it. It can consider how to improve pedestrian mobility. It can revamp its bus network. It can do many things to address past mistakes, but it must be able to understand its mistakes, and even more importantly understand how these creations of the 1960s and 1970s can be a force for good, not merely magnets for a car-driving public.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div>
There are a few easy steps that can be taken at first. If Stamford wants to fix its mall, tear down one of the car ramp entrances, already duplicated by two others, and install a prominent pedestrian entrance, like so:</div>
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<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-p0nE8NEd4CI/Vni3lV82EoI/AAAAAAAABw4/Yi7WjjlfnC8/s1600/mallbefore.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="117" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-p0nE8NEd4CI/Vni3lV82EoI/AAAAAAAABw4/Yi7WjjlfnC8/s400/mallbefore.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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Easy? In the grand scheme of things, yes. Expensive? Not terribly. A bolder step would be an entirely new infill station, one closer to the mall, perhaps at one of the locations highlighted with a green arrow:</div>
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<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-M_uK4jb3FZ4/Vni4d6AIlmI/AAAAAAAABxA/1wWIsuvOM4k/s1600/proposed_stations.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="237" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-M_uK4jb3FZ4/Vni4d6AIlmI/AAAAAAAABxA/1wWIsuvOM4k/s400/proposed_stations.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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Plan a new station. New Haven <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_Street_Station_(New_Haven)">already did it</a>, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Haven_(Metro-North_station)">twice</a>, and Bridgeport is <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barnum_(Metro-North_station)">doing it</a>, so this need not be some impossible fantasy. The overpasses need to be replaced anyways, so merge the projects. Use the gains in real estate value to improve pedestrian connections. Narrow the streets. Add bike lanes. It need not be that difficult!</div>
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If hostility toward the idea of enclosed malls, or skyway systems, or convention centers is retained, however, then cities may or may not succeed at revitalization, but they will squander again an opportunity to use these forces for good rather than ill.</div>
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Other reading:</div>
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<br /></div>
<div>
See <i><a href="http://mallville/">Mallville</a> </i>by Andrew Price for a related perspective on the traditional city aspects of the American mall.</div>
Charlie Gardnerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07317335121565650040noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7394091530012769761.post-75696536503208112132015-12-19T14:36:00.001-05:002016-05-07T13:28:22.188-04:00The Old(er) Way of City PlanningI've been reading through the 1912 "<a href="https://archive.org/stream/planofcityofhart00carr#page/48/mode/1up/search/family">Plan of the City of Hartford</a>" by the legendary firm Carrère and Hastings, a document which encapsulates some of the best conventional wisdom of that or any era in terms of planning, but which also foreshadows some of the profession's darker moments later in the century.<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-E6Yjke3u57k/VnNuiKO_75I/AAAAAAAABt4/KuCMPaGZWtw/s1600/hartford%2Bv%2Bdresden.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-E6Yjke3u57k/VnNuiKO_75I/AAAAAAAABt4/KuCMPaGZWtw/s400/hartford%2Bv%2Bdresden.jpg" width="240" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">An ambitious comparison: Saxony's Dresden <br />
as model for Hartford, CT's Capitol area.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
There are many noteworthy aspects of the report, most prominently the heavy influence of European <br />
laws and physical plans, and in particular plans of the cities of the German and Austrian Empires, an influence which would permanently fade after 1914. Many of the cities featured in photographs as models for American cities to be followed were, only three decades later, obliterated in bombing campaigns, resulting in a physical destruction to complement the ideological and academic shifts in focus.<br />
<br />
Although the laws of foreign countries provide as much to learn from as ever, as highlighted in Sonia Hirt's <a href="http://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/book/?GCOI=80140100178220">latest book</a>, the report is significant to me for its focus on what was once called the street plan, a plan of such antiquity that it preceded zoning plans by millennia, going back to the Romans and further, and which was famously employed by American planners in such cities as <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commissioners%27_Plan_of_1811">New York</a>, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oglethorpe_Plan">Savannah</a> and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%27Enfant_Plan">Washington, D.C.</a> Rediscovering these plans has been a research focus of planner Paul Knight, who has devoted a <a href="http://www.masterstreetplan.com/">website</a> to the subject (I highly recommend his presentation on the subject, along with co-contributors available in PDF <a href="http://www.masterstreetplan.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/2013-04-17-Restoring-Master-Street-Plans-APA.pdf">here</a>).<br />
<br />
The street plan, in antiquity and down nearly to the present day, was considered part and parcel of infrastructure along with sewer needs, fresh water and other necessities. Not only major arteries, such as the old Roman inter-city roads, were considered as an object of central planning, but minor residential streets as well. The 1912 plan explains the main rationale for this apparent micro-management as follows:<br />
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<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-RHHyL9WSYxY/VnNcOhOFZFI/AAAAAAAABtM/F51RPpCKu5E/s1600/1912streets.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-RHHyL9WSYxY/VnNcOhOFZFI/AAAAAAAABtM/F51RPpCKu5E/s1600/1912streets.jpg" /></a></div>
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Reasonable enough? One can read evidence of the practice of street development in the municipal proceedings of the era in a time before the existence of subdivision regulations, here as it turns out from Hartford's own <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=6ChEAQAAMAAJ&pg=PA373&lpg=PA373&dq#v=onepage&q&f=false">Common Council Board in August, 1912</a>:<br />
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<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-GF4J-0KtCtI/VnNiNXCLNhI/AAAAAAAABtc/JThsFZ-5hjk/s1600/jhcrozier.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-GF4J-0KtCtI/VnNiNXCLNhI/AAAAAAAABtc/JThsFZ-5hjk/s1600/jhcrozier.jpg" /></a></div>
In other words, while the developer would propose a street alignment, this was considered by the city planners in the context of the city plan itself, which at the time would have included a street plan. Thus, for a developer to obtain approval of his proposed street, it would likely be to his benefit to have it agree with the city's pre-existing plan. Thomaston Street, which exists today, <a href="https://www.google.com/maps/place/Thomaston+St,+Hartford,+CT+06112/@41.7931301,-72.7007436,17z/data=!4m2!3m1!1s0x89e654b70f5f2ca7:0x64da5ac7ec628fcc">fits seamlessly</a> into Hartford's irregular, but generally continuous and interconnected, street pattern. The street would also be a public one, but the plan was in conformity with the city's own plan for growth, and with such extensions happening incrementally, the city was unlikely to be overburdened with long-term maintenance obligations by such a development process. Note also that Mr. Thomas named the street after himself, or so it seems -- apparently naming rights were vested in the developer, as a sort of added incentive.<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-qxY1X5FQBrI/VnWuJnXIJCI/AAAAAAAABuM/qZp1GJLmmaU/s1600/knight.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-qxY1X5FQBrI/VnWuJnXIJCI/AAAAAAAABuM/qZp1GJLmmaU/s400/knight.jpg" width="309" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Paul Knight's <a href="http://www.masterstreetplan.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/S325-APA-Conference-Poster-2013.pdf">illustration</a> of street-plan led vs. zoning led urban development.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
But what of Carrère and Hastings' own plans? A picture is worth a thousand words in this context, and fortunately the authors left us with some detailed renderings for street grid expansions. Here the city "general plan," which as can be seen is a street plan, is presented in its entirety:<br />
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<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-62nwfS08HtM/VnNsNP6SLwI/AAAAAAAABts/hac2RnDCgMc/s1600/streetplan.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="326" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-62nwfS08HtM/VnNsNP6SLwI/AAAAAAAABts/hac2RnDCgMc/s400/streetplan.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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There is no zoning here, and no historic preservation overlay, although the heights of buildings were automatically limited relative to street width. Notably are the large ring boulevard, cast as the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vienna_Ring_Road">Ringstrasse</a> or <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unter_den_Linden">Unter Den Linden</a> of Hartford, but which equally appears to anticipate a grade-separated highway encircling the city. Overall, the map delineates the public realm of the city: the streets, parks and certain public buildings, those things which were considered appropriate objects for planning.<br />
<br />
Note also the newer planned areas to the corners of the map. In contrast to the irregular grid of existing Hartford, these areas are drawn in a style which is clearly influenced by German neo-medievalist planning fashions of the day, but which again are also anticipating the curvilinear, limited access suburban developments of the late 20th century. Nonetheless, the areas <i>are</i> drawn in in complete detail, with all, or at least most, subsidiary streets represented.<br />
<br />
The planners note that Hartford was undergoing a period of small multifamily development, but are disappointed at the limited options for ownership under current laws. One wonders whether they had pondered a condominium style of ownership, which at the time was still many years in the future. In the absence of such laws, the only realistic option was for the freestanding house (common in Hartford) or the rowhouse (very uncommon in the city).<br />
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What is sobering to realize from the vantage point of a century later is how utterly the City Beautiful movement, as represented by this crowning document, failed in its efforts to ape the grandeur of the European city, and how thoroughly it succeeded in anticipating the primacy of the car and the rash of road-widenings and "stroad" construction that would follow in its wake. After 1914, in fact, much of even the desire for inhuman-scale grandeur would fade, to be replaced by cold engineering and mechanical precision. Dresden was never again to appear as a serious model for Hartford or, most likely, any other American city, and certainly not after 1945.* And the street plan? It was eliminated, either folded into "comprehensive plans" or dissolved into subdivision regulations that, using 1930s <a href="http://oldurbanist.blogspot.com/2011/05/friday-read-history-of-street-standards.html">FHA standards</a>, encouraged the excessively wide streets that the Hartford planners warned of. In most cities, only the zoning plan survives, with no separate street plan at all. Streets, many of them private, take selfish, non-connected forms, with the result that greater and greater volumes of traffic are channeled onto fewer and fewer roads which must therefore take on ever-increasing dimensions to handle the load.<br />
<br />
In a few fast-growing American and Canadian cities, such as Toronto and Dallas, something of a street-plan led growth pattern is visible, and in most Mexican cities such a process continues today. But in other cities, there still may be something to take away from these old plans despite their failures.<br />
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*Dresden's historic center is currently undergoing a <a href="https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neumarkt_(Dresden)">major rebuilding project</a>, indicating that Dresden may be built again, from scratch, before the original City Beautiful plans are fully realized in Hartford.Charlie Gardnerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07317335121565650040noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7394091530012769761.post-80203840833559279372015-12-12T15:37:00.000-05:002015-12-12T15:37:04.485-05:00Lot Sizes: Regional Trends and CausesIn <a href="http://oldurbanist.blogspot.com/2015/03/single-family-zoning-its-all-about-lot.html">a prior post</a>, I examined minimum lot sizes as a general concept with reference to a few examples. Another way of approaching the subject is to examine regional and national patterns and trends on lot sizes. Although the subject doesn't get a great deal of attention, and Census information is not as detailed as one might like, it is possible to cobble together some statistics.<br />
<br />
Based on data from the MLS as compiled by Realtor.com, here is a map showing the median lot size of properties offered for sale in each state (for 2012). As we'd might guess, the patterns reflect both complex historical influences as well as current degree of urbanization:<br />
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<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-q7154FaaFbg/VRdEl0TeyPI/AAAAAAAABfQ/vzbzno_WZaY/s1600/median_lot_sizes.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="300" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-q7154FaaFbg/VRdEl0TeyPI/AAAAAAAABfQ/vzbzno_WZaY/s1600/median_lot_sizes.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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More relevant to current debates over urban expansion and development are the median lot sizes of <i>new </i>homes, as compiled by the Census. Unfortunately, <a href="https://eyeonhousing.files.wordpress.com/2013/10/3rdblogfigure1lotsizenew1015132.jpg">the data</a> is not broken out by state, but the regional trends are nonetheless interesting and helpful:<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-zNiyJcrWbuU/VRdGojiPS2I/AAAAAAAABfk/MiktNe0qmiA/s1600/new_SF_lotsizes.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="278" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-zNiyJcrWbuU/VRdGojiPS2I/AAAAAAAABfk/MiktNe0qmiA/s1600/new_SF_lotsizes.gif" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: right;"><a href="https://eyeonhousing.files.wordpress.com/2013/10/3rdblogfigure1lotsizenew1015132.jpg">Source</a></td></tr>
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As far as I can tell, rather than primarily being the product of planning and development policies, these differences are substantially driven by <a href="http://i1132.photobucket.com/albums/m564/Kalpa2/chartsKalpaBigPictureAgriculture/2-155.png">agricultural land values</a> as well as <a href="http://water.usgs.gov/edu/qa-home-wherefrom.html">groundwater availability</a>. Federal land ownership may also play a role in some western states. A map of well-water supply is below, showing a fairly good correlation with lot size:<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-xKD52bLhBi0/VmwcpOcUHDI/AAAAAAAABsY/OHY48G48Ilg/s1600/map-pctdomestic-state.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="280" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-xKD52bLhBi0/VmwcpOcUHDI/AAAAAAAABsY/OHY48G48Ilg/s400/map-pctdomestic-state.gif" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: right;"><a href="http://water.usgs.gov/edu/qa-home-wherefrom.html">Source</a></td></tr>
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The outlier value for New England in the median lot size map seems to fit the well-known historical account of agriculture in that region, where after the arrival of railroads carrying midwestern grain in the later 19th century, farms were rendered unprofitable and were abandoned en masse, leaving only stone walls -- <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Stone-Magnificent-History-Englands-Walls/dp/0802776876">250,000 miles worth</a> -- through new-growth forests as a sign of their former presence. During the height of this abandonment in the 1890s, some New England counties, like <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tolland_County,_Connecticut">Tolland County</a> in Connecticut or <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rutland_County,_Vermont">Rutland County</a> in Vermont, actually declined in population. Post-1950 tract homes in New England, built in forested, rocky terrain, prefer to sit Walden-like in their own little forest clearings, as though each homeowner were an 18th century pioneer carving out a homestead in the wilderness. Much of New England, as William Fischel also notes in <i><a href="https://www.lincolninst.edu/pubs/3551_Zoning-Rules-">Zoning Rules!</a></i>, with a wet and cool climate, is heavily well-watered, with the result that homes need not be clustered closely together.<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Ir_67bL4C6A/VSMbPoWgV-I/AAAAAAAABgM/_P5aJRxNrFw/s1600/Hartford_ex.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="285" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Ir_67bL4C6A/VSMbPoWgV-I/AAAAAAAABgM/_P5aJRxNrFw/s1600/Hartford_ex.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Outer suburbs of Hartford, CT.</td></tr>
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Where agriculture yields the highest-value crops on a per-acre basis, such as in the fruit groves and orchards of Florida or California, the smallest lot sizes are found. A list of the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_urban_areas">densest urban areas</a> in the United States is surprisingly dominated by small California cities, such as Davis, Woodland and Delano, most of which sit within the fertile farmland of the Central Valley. In Florida, meanwhile, the rapid development of The Villages retirement community has produced some of the densest single-family subdivisions in the entire country:<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-368e89dqtnI/VTvOOd5uODI/AAAAAAAABg0/EiMlKNiN4sk/s1600/villages.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="296" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-368e89dqtnI/VTvOOd5uODI/AAAAAAAABg0/EiMlKNiN4sk/s1600/villages.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The Villages: homes built for former residents of Hartford, CT.</td></tr>
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This ingenious map shows the distribution of cropland and pasture by type throughout the US, highlighting the concentration of agriculture in certain areas and its near-absence from wide swaths of the country, including the majority of New England, much of the southeast apart from coastal lowlands and the mountain and desert west:<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-wMU5BjfUkXM/VTvtgXDVJnI/AAAAAAAABhc/qqBz-0iA4JI/s1600/land-use-in-the-usa-percent-of-land-devoted-to-each-crop-in-2007-by-county-radical-cartography0.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="300" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-wMU5BjfUkXM/VTvtgXDVJnI/AAAAAAAABhc/qqBz-0iA4JI/s1600/land-use-in-the-usa-percent-of-land-devoted-to-each-crop-in-2007-by-county-radical-cartography0.gif" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: right;">Map by <a href="http://www.radicalcartography.net/">Bill Rankin</a>.</td></tr>
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In most of Europe and Asia, by contrast, pre-industrial towns and cities of necessity grew in immediate proximity to valuable agricultural land: <br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-zPYTIDPHGPM/VmyFMPsA3tI/AAAAAAAABso/ypnNKp-x7g8/s1600/china.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="273" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-zPYTIDPHGPM/VmyFMPsA3tI/AAAAAAAABso/ypnNKp-x7g8/s400/china.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Farm towns in Heibei province, east of Tangshan, China.</td></tr>
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A few exceptionally large cities of the ancient world imported grain by ship, but for the most part cities were dependent on their agricultural hinterlands. Until the early industrial era, the high value of this land for crops probably did not impose significant constraints on city expansion (as opposed to the limits of sanitation, transportation, the need for a defensible perimeter, etc), but in an age of rapid population growth and urbanization, the cost of land acquisition gained greater significance.<br />
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Where land has little value for agriculture, we should not be surprised to see greenfield development taking lower-density forms. <br />
<br />Charlie Gardnerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07317335121565650040noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7394091530012769761.post-5207628202770330252015-12-09T20:11:00.001-05:002015-12-09T20:11:13.282-05:00Urban Governance: Merger and FragmentationLet's consider two hypothetical cities. For convenience, I'll call them "Hartford" and "Nashville." Both are state capitals. Both are favorably located on bluffs overlooking large rivers and are surrounded by abundant buildable land. As of 1960, both cities proper had comparable populations, with Hartford at 162,000 and Nashville at 170,000. Hartford was in 1960 by far the wealthier of the two, being located in one of the richest states of the union and hosting the headquarters several of the nation's largest insurance companies, yet housing costs were reasonable in relation to Boston and New York.<br />
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From the standpoint of a 1960 observer, Hartford appeared to have the brighter prospects for population growth. Hartford's metropolitan area, represented by the county of which it was the seat, was in fact growing at a more rapid clip than Nashville's Davidson County, with a population increase of 28% during the 1950s compared to 24% for Nashville, even though Tennessee at the time had a <a href="http://trace.tennessee.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1211&context=utk_agbulletin">higher birth rate</a> than <a href="http://digitalcommons.uconn.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1011&context=saes">Connecticut</a> and Davidson was absorbing heavy in-migration from much of the central Tennessee region.<br />
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Around 1960, however, two developments reshaped the governance of both cities. In that year, Connecticut's <a href="https://www.cga.ct.gov/PS98/rpt/olr/htm/98-R-0086.htm">abolition of county government</a> went into effect, leaving only the state government and 166 town governments, one of which was the rump city of Hartford, a jurisdiction of 17 square miles. Only three years later, Nashville moved in the opposite direction, <a href="http://www.library.nashville.org/research/res_nash_history_metrohistory.asp">merging itself</a> with the 504-square mile Davidson County and forming a consolidated city-county government. <br />
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Since 1960, Hartford County has grown 23%, while Davidson County has grown 40%. By 2010, Nashville's urbanized area population exceeded Hartford's. As of 2014, Davidson County with 668,000 inhabitants held fully 62% of the greater Nashville urbanized area population. By contrast, the city of Hartford had lost population since 1960, and with only 125,000 residents held only 13% of the greater Hartford urbanized population. Nashville's downtown area is today booming with apartment construction, while Hartford has seen little multifamily development since the 1960s.<br />
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The factors in the success of Nashville relative to Hartford obviously are more complex than the arrangement of city government, and involve developments as varied as the economic rise of health care and higher education and the general increase in prosperity in the American south relative to the nation during the mid and late 20th century. Nonetheless, the relative fragmentation or centralization-by-annexation/merger of city governments is of major importance in how cities are run, regulated and taxed. For instance, consider that a home in Hartford today bears a tax burden more than three times that of a home of identical value in Davidson County.<br />
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For the 2010 Census, the list below shows the top and bottom 15 rankings for the population of cities proper expressed as a percentage of total urbanized area population (out of the top 50 largest urbanized areas):<br />
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The list of metros with the highest percentages of their urban population contained within their cities includes several of the fastest-growing and most economically resilient cities in the United States: of <a href="http://www.brookings.edu/blogs/brookings-now/posts/2014/04/4-texas-metros-top-10-economic-recovery-since-recession">Brookings' list</a> of the top 10 performing cities over the past several years, five are on this list. Only one metro on Brookings' list, Salt Lake City, appears on the bottom 15. <br />
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Simply because a metro appears on the low end of the rankings, however, does not necessarily mean that it is highly fragmented overall. Washington D.C., for instance, is surrounded by large and relatively powerful county governments, including Fairfax (1.1 million, 407 sq. mi.), Montgomery (1.0 million, 507 sq. mi.), Prince George's (890,000, 598 sq. mi.), as well as the smaller but populous Arlington County and city of Alexandria. Others, such as Bridgeport, CT, Providence, RI and St. Louis, MO do have a highly fragmented governing structure throughout the metro area, with a large number of small towns each guarding their own local taxing and land use prerogatives. County governments fractured into townships tend to replicate, in approximate fashion, the metro areas of non-county states such as Connecticut and Rhode Island. The proportion of people living within the central jurisdiction is suggestive of degree of fragmentation, however.<br />
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I can hear the reader say right now: but correlation isn't causation! While that is certainly true, and while I also bear in mind Jane Jacobs' <a href="https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Jane_Jacobs">comment</a> that a region "is an area safely larger than the last one to whose problems we found no solution," those who have studied this issue have found definite advantages to a more centralized form:<br />
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<ul>
<li><b>Zoning. </b>Although one might imagine that a multiplicity of jurisdictions might compete with each other for residents, thereby raising the net quality of life, what is observed instead is that jurisdictions attempt to compete for <i>wealthy </i>residents by imposing restrictive zoning regulations. This results in a zoning race to the bottom, as towns enact ever-stricter regulations to keep prices high. The result is high citywide housing costs relative to income. More centralized cities tend to have more permissive zoning.</li>
<li><b>Property Taxes. </b>A highly fragmented metro tends to have high property taxes as well, due to lack of economies of scale. Central cities often suffer the most, as they have the largest share of public or non-profit land, and must impose nearly ruinous taxes on the remaining devalued private land to cover basic municipal services. The taxes further drive down property values, resulting in a situation where (as with Hartford, see below), the situation nearly becomes unsustainable.</li>
<li><b>Education. </b>As I've written about before, overall educational outcomes in county-wide educational systems funded out of general revenues can be as good or better than even the best and most lavishly-funded local school systems. </li>
<li><b>Transportation. </b>In general, regional transportation planning would be expected to have a smoother political course in a centralized city.</li>
</ul>
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There are disadvantages too. Very local governments, for better or worse, can be (or at least are perceived to be) more accountable to the individual citizen. These governments may have long histories and impart to an urban area much of its character. Some of the advantages of the centralized form can be overcome through adopting elements of a centralized form, such as pooling of certain services, without relinquishing all local authority. </div>
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Still, where all else fails, consideration of more drastic measures may eventually become necessary. In its election just a month ago, Hartford elected a new mayor, Luke Bronin, who defeated the incumbent in an earlier primary. Although the local paper has wished him well, it closed a <a href="http://www.courant.com/opinion/editorials/hc-ed-tale-of-two-cities-20151103-story.html">post-election op-ed</a> with words that may soon need to be uttered more forcefully:<br /><blockquote class="tr_bq">
"The steep challenges facing Hartford and Bridgeport [which also elected a new mayor] raise the question of whether these cities, which have heavy costs and little property to tax, can continue to be viable. The canary in the coal mine on that may be New London, where Democrat Michael Passero, a city council leader and former firefighter, was elected to replace Mayor Daryl J. Finizio.<br /><br />At seven square miles, New London is the second smallest geographical municipality in the state. Like Hartford and Bridgeport, it bears a disproportionate amount of its region's social costs. </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
If the new mayors cannot make these cities work, we shall have to rethink them."</blockquote>
Whether Connecticut has the capacity to "rethink" the organization of its centuries-old towns is a reasonable question, as is the question of whether any such reorganization would work to solve central city ills. That the question is presenting itself at all, however, is indicative of the scale of the problems at hand.</div>
Charlie Gardnerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07317335121565650040noreply@blogger.com14tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7394091530012769761.post-5813001548753323362015-12-07T21:59:00.000-05:002015-12-09T20:38:42.654-05:00Single Family Zoning in Seattle and The Limited Logic of EuclidI'd wanted to write a few words about the recent <a href="http://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/get-rid-of-single-family-zoning-in-seattle-housing-task-force-says-in-draft-report/">controversy</a> over single-family zoning Seattle, but that debate has been addressed so well and thoroughly by other writers that I'm not going to rehash the details. Apart from the local politics of that debate, one thing that it has accomplished is to assist in highlighting exactly what single-family zoning means in an American context. <br />
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Although it sounds self-explanatory, the term "single-family home" has a distinct perception and legal meaning that goes well beyond the mere physical form of a dwelling. Through a series of court cases, including the <i>Euclid v. Ambler</i> decision, American courts have gradually allowed the enshrinement of this perception into law with hardly so much as a dissenting opinion. <br />
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Many of those debating single-family zoning in Seattle (and in other cities) take these various legal incidents for granted as an integral part of an area devoted to standalone houses, although they are conceptually and legally separable.<br />
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<i><b>The American Conception of the "Single-Family Home"</b></i><br />
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The typical American single-family home, and the zone within which it lies, are defined by (at least) five key legal elements which I've laid out below. I call this conception "American" in line with Sonia Hirt's analysis in her recent book, <i><a href="http://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/book/?GCOI=80140100178220">Zoned in the USA</a></i>, where she discusses how the single-family zone, as defined below, is a century-old American invention, and is rarely found in the land use codes and regulations in other countries.<br />
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Although the the debate generally focuses on the third of these (limitations on units), and sometimes the fourth, each of these supporting elements are essential<i> </i>to sustaining the American ideal of the single-family zone. Remove any of them and the concept breaks down.<br />
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That allowing some non-residential uses would transform single-family areas seems too obvious to mention, although the consequences of doing so are often greatly exaggerated. Many residential streets are simply not economically viable sites for commercial activity, and certainly not those which depend on a high volume of customers. <br />
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<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-J6WDApVeEuQ/VmZGuSZ8rhI/AAAAAAAABsE/-N1KSMNelog/s1600/CKjMqfoUEAADn-5.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-J6WDApVeEuQ/VmZGuSZ8rhI/AAAAAAAABsE/-N1KSMNelog/s320/CKjMqfoUEAADn-5.jpg" width="315" /></a>An abolition of minimum lot sizes, in fact, might be even more transformative. On the typical housing lot of 6,000 square feet bordering street and alley, three or more detached homes might be built. On Twitter, <a href="https://twitter.com/bruteforceblog">Mike Eliason</a> provided a photo of how this very result was feared by the incumbent homeowners of the 1920s (at right). These were single-family detached homes, to be sure, but they violated the perception of what a proper single-family home should be (aside from stirring up various other anxieties and prejudices).<br />
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Setbacks and FAR limitations predated limitations on units, and in conjunction with minimum lot sizes were used to achieve the same result, as well as to enforce aesthetic preferences (specifically, for <a href="http://oldurbanist.blogspot.com/2011/05/setbacks-suburbs-and-american-front.html">large front lawns</a>). With their intention of making impractical and uneconomical all but detached, one-family houses, they incidentally also forbid other types of single-family housing, including the ancient typologies of courtyard homes and rowhouses.<br />
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Limitations on units are the the essence of the single-family designation, and lend the category its name. This limitation often tests the bounds of rationality and common sense: on what ground, for instance, could one permit single-family homes on lots of 5,000 sq. ft. but prohibit a two-unit structure on 10,000 square feet? Occupancy limits, covered thoroughly by Alan Durning in a <a href="http://daily.sightline.org/2013/01/02/the-roommate-gap-your-citys-occupancy-limit/">series</a> at the Sightline website, are a means of closing a final loophole and preventing detached, single-unit homes from being adapted to multi-household use as dormitory-style SRO housing with shared kitchen or bathroom spaces.<br />
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<i><b>Zoning Ideology and Housing Prejudice</b></i><br />
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As should be clear from the above, the single-family zone, far from the straightforward concept that it it pretends to be, is a complex and artificial legal construct with many interlocking parts designed to forbid any deviation, no matter how slight, from the ideal. Nor is some universal concept which is simply given recognition in law: in many or most countries, the idea of regulating housing in such a manner is not even conceived of. In <a href="http://urbankchoze.blogspot.com/2014/04/japanese-zoning.html">Japanese zoning law</a>, for instance, only bulk and height are regulated, and no attempt is made to restrict how the space within the building envelope is divided into living quarters.<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-aObke-eLbcs/VhEqqT_2rEI/AAAAAAAABpY/55z225SpO7c/s1600/Multi-F.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="132" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-aObke-eLbcs/VhEqqT_2rEI/AAAAAAAABpY/55z225SpO7c/s400/Multi-F.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The phantom triplex: using the language of interior spatial<br />
division to imply differences in outward form.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
At the dawn of American zoning, there was some concern that this sort of regulation -- one which specified that having more than one unit in a structure was sufficient to make that structure a <i>different type of use </i>-- would be found to exceed a city's legislative power (this from Edward Murray Bassett's <i><a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/Zoning.html?id=CbErAAAAYAAJ">Zoning</a></i>):<br />
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At the time of Bassett's writing, courts had already upheld lot coverage maximums and height limits, which together could be deployed to greatly restrict net buildable square footage on any given lot. The question remained whether within this building envelope a city could restrict the number of units (kitchens, essentially). Bassett, a lawyer who always seemed to worry more as to whether courts would uphold his ideas than whether the ideas themselves were sound, was concerned that this would go beyond the legislative purposes for which zoning had been authorized by the states.<br />
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By the time the <i>Euclid </i>decision was issued by the Supreme Court in 1926, however, rhetoric was already triumphant over meaning, so much so that it rendered specious nearly all of the court's reasoning with regard to the exclusion of multi-unit structures. That reasoning, casually tacked on to the court's primary analysis regarding use-based zoning, is set out below: <br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"With particular reference to apartment houses, it is pointed out that the development of detached house sections is greatly retarded by the coming of apartment houses . . . . Moreover, the coming of one apartment house is followed by others, <i>interfering by their height and bulk with the free circulation of air and monopolizing the rays of the sun which otherwise would fall upon the smaller homes</i>, and bringing, as their necessary accompaniments, the disturbing noises incident to increased traffic and business, and the occupation, by means of moving and parked automobiles, of larger portions of the streets . . . ." (Emphasis added).</blockquote>
All the court is doing here is recapitulating its decision in <i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Welch_v._Swasey">Welch v. Swasey</a></i> in which it upheld restrictions on height and bulk (essentially, the establishment of a three-dimensional building envelope). It does not squarely address whether a city could restrict the number of units in buildings constructed within existing height and bulk limits.* It does not address whether a city could ban multi-unit buildings even where they are no denser, in units/acre, than single-unit structures. It does not address whether parking concerns are valid in an area where on-street parking is prohibited or where parking and traffic is managed by some other means than the one imagined by the court. In other words, Bassett's primary concern regarding the constitutionality of single-unit structures, as a separate use, goes entirely unaddressed. <br />
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Without a concrete controversy before it, the court had no need to utter the notorious words in the passage above, which as noted above were largely irrelevant to the actual issues in controversy surrounding multi-unit buildings. It would have sufficed to note, as the court actually did later in the opinion, that zoning ordinances must be assessed in detail rather than in generality. The court realizes this toward the very end of the opinion: "<i>In the realm of constitutional law especially, this Court has perceived the embarrassment which is likely to result from an attempt to formulate rules or decide questions beyond the necessities of the immediate issue." </i>This humble admission appears in the same opinion in which the highest court in the land slanders apartment buildings as "mere parasites."<br />
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The court did issue one opinion two years later striking down a zoning law in detail, in the slightly less well-known <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nectow_v._City_of_Cambridge">Nectow v. Cambridge</a> case, but afterwards fell largely silent on zoning. Bassett's question was not and has not ever been addressed by the Supreme Court, a fact which has been appreciated by a few authors going back at least as far as attorney Richard Babcock's 1983 article <i><a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00947598.1983.10394895#.VmZBdPmDGko">The Egregious Invalidity of the Exclusive Single-Family Zone</a>.</i> </div>
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<b><i>New Jersey's Reaction and the Final Triumph of Single-Family Zoning</i></b><br />
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A little-known postscript to <i>Euclid</i>, as described in William Fischel's recent <a href="https://www.lincolninst.edu/pubs/3551_Zoning-Rules-">Zoning Rules!</a> book, is that the pro-property rights New Jersey Supreme Court refused to be swayed by the <span style="font-family: inherit;">decision, instead adopting the narrow reading of it that I have suggested above. Prior to the issuance of <i>Euclid</i>, the lower court, following New Jersey precedent, had done the following in a process reminiscent of the Mount Laurel doctrine's "builder's remedy" from many decades later:</span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">"The Oxford Construction Company [applied] for a permit granting permission to erect four brick apartment houses upon a plot of ground located at the corner of Highland and Lincoln avenues, in that city. The application was refused upon the sole ground that the zoning ordinance of the municipality prohibited the erection of such buildings in that locality, no suggestion being made that their presence there would constitute a menace to the health, safety or welfare of the public. Thereupon, the construction company moved before the Supreme Court for the allowance of a writ of mandamus to compel the inspector to issue the permit applied for. Upon the final hearing of the cause, it appearing to the court that the presence of the proposed apartment houses in that locality would not endanger the public welfare, health or safety, a peremptory writ was directed."</span></blockquote>
The city appealed the decision claiming that this reasoning was invalidated by <i>Euclid</i>, but the New Jersey Court of Errors and Appears disagreed and upheld the lower court's result. In response to this decision, Fischel explains that the New Jersey constitution itself was amended to permit single-family residential as a zoning category. The text of that initial amendment, which seems to no longer appear in the constitution, is difficult to locate, but in any event the question at issue was not and has never been passed upon by the US Supreme Court. With New Jersey's pro-property rights judiciary having been outflanked by the people themselves, single-family zoning seemed triumphant.<br />
<br />
<b><i>The Ongoing Debate</i></b><br />
<br />
Ninety years after the <i>Euclid </i>decision, land use debates in the United States continue to be distorted by this same dichotomy between "single-family zoning" and "multifamily" areas. Rather than talking about housing in terms of units/acre, or total floor area, or some other similar metric, we tend to use purported building types -- whether single-family, duplex, triplex, ADU or other such classification. Yet these classifications are in a sense illusory. Whether a builder puts up three detached homes on a lot, three stacked units in a triplex, or three side-by-side units in rowhouse form really shouldn't matter a great deal to the regulator.<br />
<br />
The court's confusion on this point may have stemmed in part from the lack of a concrete controversy. The respondent, Ambler Realty, was seeking to use its property for industrial purposes, and had no intention of constructing any residential buildings, much less apartments. The dispute was an abstract one which only pertained to the value of the land. Had the court been confronted with a scenario in which an individual builder sought to construct a two-unit building conforming to height and bulk regulations within a single-family zone, it could not have evaded the question so easily.<br />
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Writing in 1983, Babcock assessed the situation as follows: "Today, there can be no justification under the police power for <i>compelling </i>the construction of single-family houses. The daring trial lawyer who chooses to litigate this issue will undoubtedly lose in the trial and intermediate courts. But he should prepare his record with the Supreme Court in view. Using as witnesses builders, demographers, engineers, planners, environmentalists, and land economists, he should build a record that once and for all demolishes the notion that the single-family detached house is to be forever isolated and protected."<br />
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Has this question been posed to any American court in the recent past? Perhaps not as directly as this, but there have been small victories here and there against unreasonable minimum lot sizes and minimum home sizes in the courts of various states. Victories have also been won, on occasion, under a fair housing rationale. A combination of the reasoning from these victories, in the proper context, might yet succeed in the courts of one state or other.<br />
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*As Alex Cecchini astutely notes in a <a href="http://streets.mn/2015/09/17/high-rises-and-the-transect/">recent post</a> at Streets.mn, if we assume that the preservation of natural light is a valid purpose under the police power, it is not clear why these concerns are better addressed in a scheme where single-unit structures and multi-unit structures are segregated then where, by contrast, multi-unit buildings are scattered among single-unit structures. In the former scenario, the multi-unit structures receive abundant light while shadowing only a small number of houses, whereas in the latter the multi-unit buildings all cast each other in shadow, resulting in a net loss in well-lit units. <br />
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Charlie Gardnerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07317335121565650040noreply@blogger.com13tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7394091530012769761.post-10705515144559842102015-06-28T23:28:00.000-04:002015-07-03T13:34:52.704-04:00Fall and Rise of the "Euro Block"In a <a href="http://urbankchoze.blogspot.com/2015/05/traditional-euro-bloc-what-it-is-how-it.html">recent post</a>, Urban Kchoze's Simon Vallee discusses the traditional "Euro block," that characteristic urban form of European cities from the late 18th to the mid-20th century. He makes the observation that although the earliest urban development in North American cities adhered somewhat closely to the European pattern, it gradually diverged over time, such that by the wave of industrial-era urbanization in the mid- and late-19th century, the form that apartment blocks took (where they were built at all) was quite different. <br />
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Since he focuses mainly on the process that produced these buildings, I wanted to instead examine the form of these various European and American block styles, looking at the particulars of design, density and scale, partly out of curiosity, and partly to see if it is possible to discern any design trends over time. A good starting point for comparison is a typical Euro block, in this case a Berlin apartment block from the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gr%C3%BCnderzeit">Gründerzeit</a> era, showing the characteristic form that prevailed throughout many of the larger cities of Europe from the late 1700s to the mid 20th century. <br />
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I can't pretend to know the exact process that went into the construction of these <a href="https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mietskaserne">mietskaserne</a>, but in general, the focus seems to have been on providing for spacious but enclosed courtyards as part of an integrated, block-wide plan. Although minimum courtyard sizes were established by German building laws in the late 1850s, these were regularly exceeded by the housing associations or <a href="http://www.enhr2011.com/sites/default/files/Paper-Kadriu%26Wendorf-WS11.pdf">cooperatives</a> that built the structures. Apartment buildings take interlocking forms, with each leaving a blank party wall for future neighbors to build against. The apartments have good access to natural light, and there are no narrow airshafts. They were unsanitary and massively overcrowded in the late 19th century, just as the tenements of Manhattan were, but seem to have avoided some of the worst design failings of the New York apartments. Moreover, the density and integrated nature of the design, combined with the lack of residential-only zoning, was such that <a href="http://preservedstories.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/Mietskaserne-1.pdf">each block was capable</a> of establishing small businesses to serve its own residential population. The specifics are set out below.<br />
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<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-sa352U7gwDM/VWCNnpGODrI/AAAAAAAABi0/8SVP5P-_OJc/s1600/berlin-raumer-prenzlauer.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="288" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-sa352U7gwDM/VWCNnpGODrI/AAAAAAAABi0/8SVP5P-_OJc/s400/berlin-raumer-prenzlauer.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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<u><span style="font-size: x-small;">Berlin Block</span></u><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;">Block Area: 2.23 acres Block Length: 482 ft.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;">Stories: 5.5 </span><span style="font-size: x-small;">Building Depth: 45 ft </span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;">Block Coverage: 78% </span><span style="font-size: x-small;">F.A.R.: 4.3 </span><br />
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For contrast, let's examine a typical block of the same era from New York City, in this case from the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bushwick,_Brooklyn">Bushwick</a> neighborhood of Brooklyn:<br />
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<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-IwZd4Gl9yTk/VWCbTbcZJbI/AAAAAAAABjE/jelx6OZ0ATc/s1600/brooklyn-putnam-onderdonk.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="282" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-IwZd4Gl9yTk/VWCbTbcZJbI/AAAAAAAABjE/jelx6OZ0ATc/s400/brooklyn-putnam-onderdonk.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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<u><span style="font-size: x-small;">Bushwick Block</span></u><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;">Block Area: 2.07 acres Block Length: 468 ft.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;">Stories: 3 </span><span style="font-size: x-small;">Building Depth: 70 ft. </span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;">Block Coverage: 81% </span><span style="font-size: x-small;">F.A.R.: 2.4 </span><br />
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Although the Bushwick block is much lower density than the Berlin block due to a lesser number of stories, it actually has greater lot coverage and significantly inferior natural illumination. As the building depth is so much greater than in the case of the Berlin block, the architect has punched airshafts (approx. 8'x13') at intervals down the middle of the row in order to avoid a large number of completely windowless rooms. Although these airshafts collectively take up over 3,000 sq. ft., that space is inaccessible and unusable. The long, narrow interior courtyard is sectioned off into small fenced parcels that appear to have little recreational value. <br />
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Overall, despite the lower density, the Bushwick block must <i>feel </i>denser and more cramped than the Berlin block due to lack of natural light and paucity of common space. It is a design that cannot be scaled upwards, either, as much above three stories the airshafts will become useless for the lower floors. This block design, despite its obvious flaws, was replicated many hundreds of times over Brooklyn and Queens. Other common approaches included narrowing building depth, which further reduced F.A.R., or breaking up the block into duplexes and their variants, which again left a large amount of airshaft-like unusable space in between buildings.<br />
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New York's city planners were well aware of these issues in the late 19th century, as I've <a href="http://oldurbanist.blogspot.com/2012/02/narrow-streets-and-nyc-problem-or.html">written about before</a>, and attempted to address them through the "<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_State_Tenement_House_Act">New Law</a>" building mandates of 1901. Included among these regulations were minimum dimensional requirements for light shafts of 24', a dimension larger than that set by German building codes, yet still much smaller than the typical Berlin courtyard of 80'x38'. These dimensions appear to have been designed for purposes of admitting light, rather than for creating usable spaces.<br />
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<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-1u8ImYoEsWs/VWCx-16__PI/AAAAAAAABjU/JPkKG_fCPKY/s1600/broadway-164th.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="283" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-1u8ImYoEsWs/VWCx-16__PI/AAAAAAAABjU/JPkKG_fCPKY/s400/broadway-164th.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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<u><span style="font-size: x-small;">Washington Heights Block</span></u><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;">Block Area: 2.06 acres Block Length: 458 ft.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;">Stories: 5-6 </span><span style="font-size: x-small;">Building Depth: 75 ft. </span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;">Block Coverage: 72% </span><span style="font-size: x-small;">F.A.R.: 4.1 </span><br />
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The result of these regulations is in some ways even worse than the Bushwick block. The central courtyard space has shrunk to a narrow corridor which, while it might make a reasonably pleasant narrow street, is here relegated to being a concrete-surfaced no man's land. Interior open space constituting 28% of the block area, more than in the Berlin block, has been entirely squandered. This block represents the culmination of a half century of regulations purportedly intended to improve the arrangement of residential quarters, and yet the quality of mid-rise apartment design could hardly fall any lower. Richard Plunz, in <i><a href="http://www.amazon.com/History-Housing-New-York-City/dp/0231062974">A History of Housing in New York</a></i>, summarizes the efforts of New York architects and builders, as compared to those of Europe:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"In Europe by the turn of the century, the development of new prototypes for reduced [lot] coverage had reached a level of sophistication unknown in New York until the 1920s . . . In all cases, the European efforts far surpassed the scale and quality of anything that could be found in New York." <i>History of Housing in New York, </i>p. 138.</blockquote>
Plunz' assertion is a bold one, and could be quibbled with in the details, but one which seems essentially accurate. Compared to even the mietskaserne, the sullen apartment blocks of Washington Heights and the Bronx inspired little affection and did not retain middle-class residents or entice new ones. Following the failure of the New Law regulations to create blocks that rivaled the quality of even the average Euro block, New York planners and indeed the entire planning profession gradually abandoned the concept of the enclosed block, instead adopting either the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apartment#Garden_apartment">garden apartment</a> or the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Towers_in_the_park">tower-in-the-park</a> concept (the first such plan being drawn up in 1917, according to Plunz). Although both of these featured large quantities of landscaped space, very little of it was <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defensible_space_theory">private and enclosed</a>.<br />
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In most American cities, apartment blocks of either the European or New York types were rare, and apartment buildings outside central city areas tended to adopt garden apartment forms. The dense industrial cities of the northeast, for instance, accommodated virtually all of their population growth in the 1860-1920 period in <a href="http://oldurbanist.blogspot.com/2014/08/demise-of-duplex.html">cottages and three-deckers</a>, or in slightly larger, but standalone, apartment buildings. Oddly enough, the Euro block form was very well known and used in these cities at the time, but only for manufacturing plants, as shown in these old illustrations:<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-62hu0zVspUM/VYWJYXLK1gI/AAAAAAAABlU/qsd1kMeZUDc/s1600/Bport-Nhvn.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="400" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-62hu0zVspUM/VYWJYXLK1gI/AAAAAAAABlU/qsd1kMeZUDc/s400/Bport-Nhvn.jpg" width="292" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The Winchester Arms factory in New Haven, CT, top, and<br />
factories on the east side of Bridgeport, CT, via <a href="http://www.bigmapblog.com/">BIG Map Blog</a>. </td></tr>
</tbody></table>
The suitability of this form for residential use was belatedly discovered some one hundred years later. The Winchester Repeating Arms Factory, shown in an 1879 illustration above, is <a href="http://www.winchesterlofts.com/new-historic-apartments-coming-soon-new-haven/">undergoing conversion to an apartment block</a> that would not look out of place in contemporary Berlin. Bridgeport itself did eventually discover the cooperative ownership form for apartment complexes using a somewhat similar design, but not until almost <a href="http://blackrockonline.org/content/living-bridgeport-garden-apartments-black-rock">a century later</a>.<br />
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Revival of the concept is not limited to loft conversions of former industrial facilities, as the form has lately begun to proliferate throughout the Sunbelt cities. Simon notices this in his post, too, but I think the form-based similarities are worth exploring. Below is an apartment "complex" in Dallas, Texas, that is representative of a type found throughout Sunbelt cities. Even a glance at the overall layout immediately tells us that the form here is much closer to the 19th century Berlin block than to any of the New York examples shown previously: the building uses interior wings to define enclosed but spacious courtyards which serve recreational purposes.<br />
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<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-gJiFcGa2vvk/VWEjZkuClLI/AAAAAAAABjo/FAlqJ8mzC40/s1600/dallas-cole-hester.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="285" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-gJiFcGa2vvk/VWEjZkuClLI/AAAAAAAABjo/FAlqJ8mzC40/s400/dallas-cole-hester.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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<u><span style="font-size: x-small;">Dallas Block</span></u><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;">Block Area: 2.42 acres Block Length: 330 ft.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;">Stories: 3 </span><span style="font-size: x-small;">Building Depth: 75 ft. </span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;">Block Coverage: 81% </span><span style="font-size: x-small;">F.A.R.: 2.4 </span><br />
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Very often, decked parking garages are incorporated within these buildings in the familiar "<a href="http://oldurbanist.blogspot.com/2013/06/common-garage-parking-in-practice-part.html">Texas doughnut</a>" configuration, but using a ground level parking area, with courtyard placed over it, seems to also be popular. Were the buildings made taller and somewhat narrower, as in Berlin, an even better result could be obtained, but this might not be as economical in light of modern construction mandates for fireproof construction above a certain number of stories. <br />
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Are there any editorial comments to make in closing? The American experience with apartment-building seems to have been characterized by planning interventions that were about mitigating perceived shortcomings or excesses rather than pursuing any clear idea of good design. The Euro block form, in the absence of large developers or cooperatives with access to capital and who are able to design entire blocks from scratch, relies on top-down and forward-looking coordination of a sort which was generally absent in 19th century American cities. Its complete absence from the wealthy industrial cities of the northeast and midwest is conspicuous. In spite of that, the Euro block, with its restrained density, generous interior spaces and focus on harmony and aesthetic unity, is a form of urbanism well-suited to American sensibilities. Its rediscovery in the late 20th and early 20th shouldn't come as a great surprise.<br />
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Related links:<br />
<br />
<ul>
<li><i><a href="http://oldurbanist.blogspot.com/2012/01/friday-read-mixed-income-housing.html">Mixed-Income Housing: Prussian Style</a></i></li>
<li><i><a href="http://oldurbanist.blogspot.com/2011/07/blocks-of-new-york.html">Blocks of New York</a></i></li>
<li><i><a href="http://oldurbanist.blogspot.com/2012/01/city-blocks-spaces-in-between.html">City Blocks: The Spaces In Between</a></i></li>
</ul>
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<br />Charlie Gardnerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07317335121565650040noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7394091530012769761.post-18699178120180509192015-03-21T11:30:00.000-04:002015-03-21T11:35:18.723-04:00Single Family Zoning: It's All About the Lot SizesContemporary critiques of zoning take several forms. First, and probably most common, is the critique of strict use segregation in the Euclidean manner, with commercial and residential areas segregated to greater or lesser degrees. An increasing focus has lately been placed on the relative preponderance of single-family detached residential zoning within urbanized areas. A third line of critique, which has received somewhat less attention although it has been the subject of numerous academic studies over the years, looks at minimum lot size requirements within both single-family and multifamily zones. <br />
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Although it may seem like a minor subject next to the first two critiques mentioned, the second critique is incomplete without examining permitted lot sizes. For instance, even though a city may have substantial areas set aside for multifamily housing, if the minimum lot size per apartment unit (or <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Floor_area_ratio">floor area ratio</a> equivalent) is approximately equivalent to single-family zones, the density and/or affordability difference may be minimal. Alternatively, the single-family detached ("SFD") zoning designation, by itself, tells us little about the density of the area. Depending on the lot area required and right-of-way widths, SFD densities for a given household size can range from 300/square mile to as much as 25,000/square mile or more, all without the need for any party walls. </div>
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A few concrete examples can help illustrate the point. In the American context, despite the presumed consumer preference for SFD homes, neighborhoods of homes on very small lots and using narrow rights-of-way, such as are abundant in many other countries, are quite rare. In the entire New York metropolitan area, for instance, there are only a handful of such neighborhoods, mostly those intended as beachside retreats along the southern shore of Brooklyn and on the Rockaway Peninsula. One such neighborhood is shown here:</div>
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<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-xgw-qZ1LX6Y/VQR5t6eHKmI/AAAAAAAABdQ/KR49KfnXbvE/s1600/Gerritsen.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-xgw-qZ1LX6Y/VQR5t6eHKmI/AAAAAAAABdQ/KR49KfnXbvE/s1600/Gerritsen.jpg" height="285" width="400" /></a></div>
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This is <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerritsen_Beach,_Brooklyn">Gerritsen Beach</a>, in Brooklyn, showing parcels of 1,800 square feet on a right-of-way (property line to property line) of 28'. The 2010 Census gives a population density of over 17,000/square mile, about half of the average for Brooklyn, although this may be affected by the presence of second homes. As Nathan Lewis <a href="http://www.newworldeconomics.com/archives/2011/061211.html">has shown</a>, similarly scaled neighborhoods in Tokyo attain densities exceeding 30,000/square mile. Even so, it is about 80% denser than the densest SFD suburbs built in <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nassau_County,_New_York">Nassau County</a> during the 1940s-1970s. It is more than twice as dense as Levittown itself, and denser even than the three-decker neighborhoods of cities like Worcester, MA or New Haven, CT. The New York metro area has a conspicuous absence of neighborhoods of this density and type, with Census tracts swiftly falling off from around 25,000/square mile to 10,000/square mile.</div>
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Beach neighborhoods seem to be popular settings for this type of design, as a similar (but slightly lower) density is present in <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_Beach,_California">Long Beach, California</a>, shown below. Lots are around 2,400 square feet with a 40' right of way and alleys of 13' (comparable density appears to be achieved through presence of small apartment buildings): </div>
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<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-5qO1l3QWpsw/VQWmZALNmnI/AAAAAAAABeI/zpcWxj_stkw/s1600/long_beach.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-5qO1l3QWpsw/VQWmZALNmnI/AAAAAAAABeI/zpcWxj_stkw/s1600/long_beach.jpg" height="281" width="400" /></a></div>
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And here is <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Levittown,_New_York">Levittown</a> itself, with lot sizes of around 6,000 square feet and right-of-way (between outer sidewalk edges) of 50'. Population density is approximately 7,500/sq. mi.: </div>
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<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-5Iab4O9Ibys/VQS9OZfn3sI/AAAAAAAABdg/f0zyJ-uqd94/s1600/levittown.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-5Iab4O9Ibys/VQS9OZfn3sI/AAAAAAAABdg/f0zyJ-uqd94/s1600/levittown.jpg" height="302" width="400" /></a></div>
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The Levittown homes in their initial form, intended for the large families of the Baby Boom era, were actually somewhat smaller (<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/13/nyregion/13suburb.html?_r=0">800 sq. ft.</a>) than the 1920s vacation cottages of Gerritsen Beach (1,000 sq. ft.). The contrast of very small houses with lots the same size or larger larger than those typical of the pre-1940 period seems to have been characteristic of the time period, perhaps related to the increased cost of labor following the Great Depression combined with stable land values. The more spacious lots may have offered some compensation for the modest interiors.</div>
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At the extreme is the ultra-low density of interior but non-rural New England, showing 2- and 3-acre lot zoning (here, in <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Easton,_Connecticut">Easton, Connecticut</a>), accompanied by wetlands regulations, with population density of around 260/square mile:</div>
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Now, if a rapidly urbanizing country wished to offer the possibility of ownership of a SFD home to the greatest possible portion of its population, the obvious policy goal would be to allow construction of a SFD home on any size lot desired, and on streets as narrow as possible so as to minimize economic waste. The result is very much what we see in most of the wards of Tokyo as well as in Gerritsen Beach: very small lots but with practical (square-shaped) dimensions along narrow streets and no alleys. Where multifamily buildings are not prohibited, these will be interspersed here and there, sometimes occupying two or three lots.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
In practice, however, American zoning does <i>not </i>take this approach, with the sole exception of mobile home parks (which I've discussed <a href="http://oldurbanist.blogspot.com/2014/05/mobile-home-impediments-and.html">here</a>). Not only are lot sizes strictly regulated for SFD zones, generally to standards far in excess of what is needed for a comfortably-sized home, other policy measures are in place that make small lots difficult to build as a matter of economics, such as:</div>
<div>
<ul>
<li><b>Apparent aesthetic preference for large, widely space multifamily over densely packed single-family in multifamily zones. </b>Although small multifamily buildings have fallen out of zoning fashion, if they were ever popular, those zones that survive have some curious features. For instance, one Connecticut town's <a href="http://www.fairfieldct.org/filestorage/10726/11028/12429/12431/ZoningReg.pdf">code</a>, typical of the type, effectively grants density bonuses for building duplexes and triplexes over building two or three standalone houses on the same lot. In the densest zone it is possible to build a single-family home on 5,000 sq. ft. -- the smallest SFD lot permitted in any zone -- but a duplex requires only 7,500 sq. ft. and a triplex only 9,000. The policy intent here is not obvious, but implies aesthetic favoritism for retaining large dwellings with generous spacing even at the expense of the single-family ideal. </li>
<li><b>Minimum street widths.</b> Although these do not affect the lot size directly, mandated wide streets make small lots for SFD a less economical proposition. For instance, were the Gerritsen Beach lots placed along the Levittown right-of-way, each 1800 sq. ft. lot would look out onto 3,000 sq. ft. of sidewalk and roadway! The neighborhood, overall, would have a ratio of 1.2:1 of private land to right-of-way, or, in other words, only 55% of the land would be in private lots for sale. Levittown's ratio is a far better 3:1. With a 28' right-of-way, Gerritsen Beach's streets are already about as wide as economically possible in light of high land values, and streets of Japanese dimensions would yield a far better ratio.</li>
</ul>
The design differences produce some noticeable differences even at the very large scale. The <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tokyo">prefecture of Tokyo</a>, with population 13.2 million, has a homeownership rate of 45%. The city of New York, with population 8.4 million, has homeownership of 32%. Although the prefecture's density is lower than New York's (16,000 vs. 28,000/sq. mi.), Tokyo's outer suburban areas are so much denser than New York's that its metropolitan area density is higher. For the entire metro area, Tokyo maintains a 56% homeownership rate with 47% share of detached houses, as compared to New York with 52% homeownership and 36% SFD share. Los Angeles, to pick another example, has 49% homeownership with 50% SFD stock.<br />
<br />
A metro area of more comparable size to New York's, such as <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keihanshin">Kyoto-Osaka-Kobe</a>, has a homeownership rate of 58%, higher than the entire state of New York, and not much lower than far smaller American cities commonly associated with low-density SFD housing such as the Houston MSA (60%), Dallas (61%), Atlanta (63%) and Phoenix (63%). <br />
<br />
Interestingly, the issue of minimum lot sizes appears to be one on which there is general agreement between the Smart Growth faction and the defenders of suburbia, as Wendell Cox <a href="http://www.newgeography.com/content/002781-california-declares-war-suburbia-ii-the-cost-radical-densification">wrote some years ago</a> in response to critique from the Brookings Institute:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"I was even more surprised at the claim that I defend 'anti-density zoning and other forms of large lot protectionism.' Not so. </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Indeed, I agree with [Jonathan] Rothwell on the problems with large lot zoning. However, it is a stretch to suggest, as he does, that the prevalence of detached housing results from large lot zoning. This is particularly true in places like Southern California where lots have historically been small and whose overall density is far higher than that of greater New York, Boston, Seattle and double that of the planning mecca of Portland."</blockquote>
I think that Cox is correct here, but not even as correct as he could be. Large-lot zoning not only does not cause a prevalence of SFD housing, it limits it, as shown in the New York metro area. Los Angeles' metropolitan density is substantially higher than New York's (a <a href="http://www.citylab.com/commute/2015/02/a-new-index-to-measure-sprawl-gives-high-marks-to-los-angeles/385559/">point often raised to incredulous reaction</a>), but its share of SFD stock is much higher. To point out in response to an allegation that a city is heavily zoned for SFD that <a href="http://seattletransitblog.com/2012/01/24/majority-of-seattle-housing-units-are-multifamily/">a majority of its housing units are in multifamily structures</a> (in the case of Seattle, at the link) only underscores the point. <br />
<br />
Although most studies have found that minimum lot sizes do affect overall development density (that is, developers appear to build at or near the minimum lot size allowed), <a href="http://www.rff.org/documents/rff-dp-09-15.pdf">one study</a> of Maryland suburbs of Washington, D.C. found that, except in the case of areas with very large minimum lots sizes, developers were subdividing into lots larger than the mandated minimum, including in cases where planned unit development options left them with a free hand to build denser than the zoning code superficially allowed:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"We then examine the extent to which lot size is being constrained by regulation by comparing actual subdivision density to the allowable density under zoning rules. This analysis is done for three counties with different degrees of suburbanization. We find that only in the areas with the very large lot zoning does zoning seem to be constraining actual lot[] size. There is a good deal of excess capacity in the density that could be built, especially in the more densely zoned areas." <a href="https://www.blogger.com/Lot%20Size,%20Zoning,%20and%20Household%20Preferences:%20Impediments%20to%20Smart%20Growth?"><i>Lot Size, Zoning, and Household Preferences:Impediments to Smart Growth?</i></a></blockquote>
There might be no concern with low-density development at the fringes of metro areas except that such areas, once built up, are politically almost impervious to change. Some cities have implemented maximum lot sizes, but these are generally very generous and only apply in certain areas. The misunderstood achievement of the New Urbanism, and the Maryland suburb of Kentlands in particular -- whatever its faults in <a href="http://oldurbanist.blogspot.com/2011/06/suburban-follies-rear-alley.html">design detail</a> -- was that small lot single-family housing developments not only need not be qualitatively inferior to the 6,000+ sq. ft. tracts that characterized the post-1940 suburban era, and that they could even offer amenities that made them superior residential environments. Where regulatory mandates fail, leading by example can succeed. <br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-NXayJVdOeCI/VQ2CBKHgBOI/AAAAAAAABeg/mvu-tAEgeT4/s1600/kentlands.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-NXayJVdOeCI/VQ2CBKHgBOI/AAAAAAAABeg/mvu-tAEgeT4/s1600/kentlands.jpg" height="311" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Kentlands, with SFD lots from 5,600 to 2,600 sq. ft, and with ROWs ranging <br />
from 45 ft. to 12 ft. on alleys.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<i>Related posts</i>: None of mine, but Nathan has written several great pieces on the topic which you can find at his <a href="http://www.newworldeconomics.com/archives/tradcityarchive.html">website</a>.</div>
Charlie Gardnerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07317335121565650040noreply@blogger.com11tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7394091530012769761.post-86739908930727038762015-03-08T17:12:00.000-04:002015-07-09T11:42:26.004-04:00Auto Costs and Housing Costs, or, One Reason the Suburbs are So AppealingSimon Vallee has a <a href="http://urbankchoze.blogspot.com/2014/09/filtering-solution-to-question-of.html">post</a> from some time back about filtering vs. gentrification in which he analogizes the process of gentrification, in North America, to the car market in Cuba, noting that restrictions on supply will tend to boost prices and limit availability of a desired good. Although the comparison is intended to be illustrative, I think it also highlights a substantive difference which, in effect, subsidizes automobiles at the expense of housing. First, though, some background.<br />
<br />
Going back for a moment to the subject matter of a <a href="http://www.newworldeconomics.com/archives/2014/090714.html">Nathan Lewis post</a>, we can note that, land costs aside, the sticker price of manufactured housing as compared to a new vehicle is not as different as one might think. A two-bedroom manufactured home, for instance, of about the size of the average new home of the 1950s, costs only around $41,500 as compared to the price of a popular new sedan (I chose the Altima, one of the best-selling cars in the United States) at around $27,000:<br />
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<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-gVxakBTKyOg/VCicfQP6DaI/AAAAAAAABWM/R5GQENxhf0U/s1600/clayton.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="279" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-gVxakBTKyOg/VCicfQP6DaI/AAAAAAAABWM/R5GQENxhf0U/s1600/clayton.gif" width="400" /></a></div>
<br />
However, when car costs are compared to overall home values, including site-built as well as manufactured homes, a different story emerges. In 1940, the median home was valued at only 2.3 times the retail price of the average new car. By 2010, in spite of the crash in home prices, this ratio had risen to 6.4. Car operating costs have also generally fallen as fuel efficiency and vehicle reliability have improved. Median rents, not shown here, have grown at an even faster rate than home values.<br />
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<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-psBUL8iJrbs/VM1XVGc5fdI/AAAAAAAABbc/90aRFuT4wl8/s1600/homes_cars%2Bchart.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-psBUL8iJrbs/VM1XVGc5fdI/AAAAAAAABbc/90aRFuT4wl8/s1600/homes_cars%2Bchart.gif" /></a></div>
In short, over the last seven or so decades, car ownership (or leasing) has become dramatically less expensive relative to home ownership or tenancy. Partly this must be due to labor-saving technologies that have affected car production more than homebuilding: even manufactured homes still require extensive human labor, which has become much costlier (though more productive) since 1940, whereas the formerly labor-intensive car assembly process has been heavily automated and accelerated. The process of robotically assembling houses, or even <a href="http://www.3ders.org/articles/20150118-winsun-builds-world-first-3d-printed-villa-and-tallest-3d-printed-building-in-china.html">apartment buildings</a>, remains in its infancy. <br />
<br />
Are long-term, over-inflation increases in home values also linked to increases in land values caused by general urban population increase and restrictive zoning? It goes without saying that rural land values are lower than urban land values, and the Census homeownership figures show that housing values are lower, and homeownership higher, in more rural states in spite of lower incomes. Relatively poor and rural West Virginia has the nation's <a href="http://economistsoutlook.blogs.realtor.org/2013/08/27/homeownership-rates-top-and-bottom-5-states/">highest homeownership rate</a>, while 100% urbanized Washington D.C. has had its <a href="https://www.census.gov/housing/census/data/owner/owner_tab.txt">lowest</a> in every Census since 1930. As <a href="http://www.santafe.edu/about/people/profile/Luis%20Bettencourt">Luis Bettencourt</a> writes:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"There are several important consequences for general land use in cities. First, the
price of land rises faster with population size than average incomes. This is the
result of per capita increases in both density and economic productivity, so that
money spent per unit area and unit time, i.e. land rents, increases on average by
50% with every doubling of city population size! It is this rise in the price of land
that mediates, indirectly, many of the spontaneous solutions that reduce per capita
energy use and Carbon emissions in larger cities. Cars become expensive to park,
and taller buildings become necessary to keep the price of floor space in pace with
incomes, thus leading to smaller surface area to volume." <i><a href="http://www.santafe.edu/media/workingpapers/13-03-008.pdf">The Kind of Problem a City Is</a>.</i></blockquote>
Urbanization in the era of the automobile in turn causes frictions which lead to pressure for zoning. American municipal zoning, in its initial formulation and as is still practiced today, is fundamentally a device to politically manage these frictions by restricting the intensity of residential land use. Though not its stated purpose, it has the effect of increasing land scarcity that is already inherent in the urbanization process, and thereby provides a positive feedback mechanism that puts additional pressure on housing values. <br />
<br />
What does this all have to do with cars? As noted above, the cost of a manufactured home, in isolation, is only slightly more than that of a typical sedan. As urbanization increases, however, the increasing value of land makes cars, which do not have their land storage cost bundled into the sticker price (<a href="http://www.reinventingparking.org/2010/08/japan-style-proof-of-parking.html">unlike Japan does</a>, effectively), seem like a relative bargain. Some time ago, <a href="http://capntransit.blogspot.com/">Cap'n Transit</a> wrote a fascinating series on how New York came to tolerate and eventually permit free overnight on-street parking in the late 1940s and early 1950s. We would find it ludicrous if someone were to purchase a manufactured home and to drive it into Manhattan on a flatbed expecting the city to provide free land on which to site it, but that was how the story went with cars:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"This [middle-class] conception of the benefits of car ownership has always had a huge bait-and-switch component to it. In New York City in the 1940s it was no exception. When people looked at the price of a car, they didn't figure in $20-35 per month in garage rental. When they got their cars, many couldn't afford to pay and took their chances on the street. Garage owners now had to compete with free street parking and lowered their rates accordingly, which meant that they didn't have enough income to expand their facilities, and resorted to bribing the police. </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"These social-climbing drivers felt cheated, but they didn't take their anger out on the car dealers. No, they felt that the city owed them the free parking necessary to make their cars as affordable as they thought." <i><a href="http://capntransit.blogspot.com/2012/09/the-right-to-free-parking-in-1940s-new.html">The right to free parking in 1940s New York</a></i></blockquote>
There are therefore two clashing trends: as cities grow in size, the cost of a buying a car declines relative to increases in income and housing cost, yet the actual cost of storing a vehicle is, or should be, increasing rapidly, since cars, like houses, occupy a significant amount of valuable space. Rather than taking the common-sense Japanese approach of the <a href="http://shako%20shomeisho/">shako shomeisho</a> (proof of parking), however, American states and cities have engaged in onerous mandatory inclusionary zoning for cars (parking minimums), zoning exemptions (e.g. not counting garages toward FAR limits and allowing parking, but not housing, in mandated setbacks), tax exemptions (only <a href="http://www.cga.ct.gov/2012/rpt/2012-R-0086.htm">16 states maintain a personal property tax</a> that covers automobiles) and fringe benefits (the <a href="http://www.irs.gov/uac/Qualified-Transportation-Fringe-Benefits-under-ARRA">commuter parking benefit</a>), in addition to rent-free public housing for cars (overnight on-street parking). Whereas in 1940, buying and operating a car to escape urban housing costs simply shifted the balance of expenses, with a car costing almost half as much as the median home, in 2010 the prospect of doing so was much more economically feasible. No doubt many of those New Yorkers of the 1940s and 1950s eventually drove those cars out of their subsidized parking spaces and off to the far reaches of Nassau, Bergen and Westchester Counties, and who could blame them? <br />
<br />
Perhaps the biggest effect of all though, going back to the beginning of the post, relates to the obvious but important point that while housing production, and particularly in-city housing production, is subject to political constraints, car production is not (well, <a href="http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/1985/02/the-costly-truth-about-auto-import-quotas">mostly not</a>). There even seems to be a difference in Americans' moral characterization of those who build homes and cars for profit: while a search for the phrase "<a href="https://www.google.com/search?q=greedy+developers&oq=greedy+developers&aqs=chrome..69i57j69i60j69i65l2j69i60l2.2351j0j7&sourceid=chrome&es_sm=0&ie=UTF-8#q=%22greedy+developers%22">greedy developers</a>" returns over 60,000 hits, "<a href="https://www.google.com/search?q=greedy+developers&oq=greedy+developers&aqs=chrome..69i57j69i60j69i65l2j69i60l2.2351j0j7&sourceid=chrome&es_sm=0&ie=UTF-8#q=%22greedy+automakers%22">greedy automakers</a>" returns only 1,000. From that perspective, the so-called "<a href="http://usa.streetsblog.org/2011/08/05/cnt-busts-drive-till-you-qualify-myth-in-the-d-c-region/">drive 'til you qualify</a>" phenomenon, much <a href="http://usa.streetsblog.org/2011/08/05/cnt-busts-drive-till-you-qualify-myth-in-the-d-c-region/">questioned and criticized</a>, is an entirely reasonable response to this economic reality, particularly given widespread lack of highway tolls. <br />
<br />
Making a full accounting of the political choices that have been made with regard to both housing and transportation is a daunting task, but it does help illuminate the residential patterns we see without the need to resort to moral judgments about those choices.<br />
<br />
<i>Related posts</i>: <a href="http://oldurbanist.blogspot.com/2013/02/was-rise-of-car-ownership-responsible.html">Was the Rise of Car Ownership Responsible for the Midcentury Homeownership Boom in the US?</a>Charlie Gardnerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07317335121565650040noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7394091530012769761.post-78056618290482424592015-01-24T17:25:00.000-05:002015-01-24T17:25:21.173-05:00Sonia Hirt on the Origins of American ZoningI've written about Professor Sonia Hirt's work <a href="http://oldurbanist.blogspot.com/2014/07/where-zoning-went-wrong.html">previously</a>, so I was glad to find out several months ago that she had a forthcoming book, <i><a href="http://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/book/?GCOI=80140100178220">Zoned in the USA: The Origins and Implications of American Land-Use Regulation</a></i>, which would address in detail some of her (and my) major research interests. Hirt, who received her architectural training in Sofia, Bulgaria before earning a PhD in planning at the University of Michigan, has set out to answer the question which has plagued her since shortly after her arrival in the United States in the early 1990s, when she first encountered an American zoning code:<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"How could Americans, whose reputation for being independent and freedom-loving and respecting private property was worldwide put up with such tedious laws governing the building of their everyday environments and way of life?"</blockquote>
<br />
The question has been examined before, though perhaps not as directly, and Hirt's citations include many prior books and studies that I have also discussed on the blog, including Robert Fishman's <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Bourgeois-Utopias-Rise-Fall-Suburbia/dp/0465007473"><i>Bourgeois Utopias</i></a>, Jonathan Levine's <i><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Zoned-Out-Regulation-Transportation-Metropolitan/dp/1933115157/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1419799479&sr=1-1&keywords=zoned+out">Zoned Out</a></i>, Robert Fogelson's <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Bourgeois-Nightmares-1870-1930-Robert-Fogelson/dp/0300108761/ref=sr_1_4?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1419799507&sr=1-4&keywords=robert+fogelson"><i>Bourgeois Nightmares</i></a>, Kenneth Jackson's <i><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Crabgrass-Frontier-Suburbanization-United-States/dp/0195049837/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1419799587&sr=1-1&keywords=crabgrass+frontier">Crabgrass Frontier</a>, </i>Robert Fischel's papers on zoning<i> </i>and many others. Even Spiro Kostof and Besim Hakim (who has a <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Mediterranean-Urbanism-Historic-Building-Processes/dp/9401791392/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1419799741&sr=1-1&keywords=besim+hakim">new tome of his own</a> focusing on Mediterranean urbanism) receive prominent mentions as Hirt surveys some 4,000 years of land-use regulation reaching back to Hammurabi. Apart from addressing the question above, another of Hirt's major contributions with the book is to provide a broad-scope land-use comparison between American land-use laws and the laws of several other developed countries, including France, Germany, Great Britain, Russia, Sweden, Japan and Canada. <br />
<br />
One of Hirt's conclusions, that the United States is the only developed country of those surveyed, apart from Canada, to widely employ single-family detached residential zones that bar all commercial and multifamily uses, was anticipated by <a href="http://www.planetizen.com/node/65740">her previous work</a>. An equally important finding, in my opinion, is that the United States is the <i>only</i> country of those surveyed that does not conduct land use at the national or state level. Although the federal government and certain states have dabbled in land-use law with housing anti-discrimination policies and anti-snob zoning statutes, and a few (such as Oregon) have delved more deeply into regional planning, there is no national land-use law (despite the federal government owning <a href="http://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa-276.html">650 million acres</a> of land) nor does any state prescribe zoning categories that municipalities must follow. Hirt also surveys a wide range of US zoning ordinances and finds little evidence that, despite the zoning reforms of the past 20 years, including the emergence of form-based codes, there has been any revolution in American zoning practice either in substance or procedure.<br />
<br />
How this exceptionally American land-use system came into being during the late 1800s and through to the 1930s is the primary focus of Hirt's book. In chronicling this period, many apparent paradoxes present themselves: for instance, although the United States of the late 19th century prided itself on being the most democratic nation in the world, its citizens had a low level of trust in their elected municipal officials. The progressive municipal reformers of the time might therefore have campaigned for planning to be guided by state or federal governments, but instead pushed for non-discretionary municipal-level zoning. As Hirt observes, zoning reformers such as <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_Veiller">Lawrence Veiller</a> argued that "zoning rules should vary as little as possible in districts that were as large as possible and that zoning relief should be granted only under a very limited set of circumstances, if at all."<br />
<br />
But if the planning powers were delegated from state to city, and the city was to have little power to alter the apparently infallible choices of the initial zoning commissions, who was left to actually engage in city planning? No one, as it turns out. Planning commissioners were seemingly intended to be little more than curators of the city zoning map, and Hirt finds, as I have also noted, that zoning maps have changed relatively little in their basic allocation of space <a href="http://oldurbanist.blogspot.com/2011/09/vancouver-and-zoning-straitjacket.html">since the 1920s</a>. As I've <a href="http://oldurbanist.blogspot.com/2014/07/where-zoning-went-wrong.html">written about before</a>, the actual policy that zoning was intended to serve was almost an afterthought, and was primarily concerned with protecting the investments of wealthy homeowners. By default, and perhaps unintentionally, city planning (to the extent it existed at all) was turned over to the emerging highway engineering profession.<br />
<br />
American zoning policy, in sum, was a negative and reactive vision -- through its implementation, it viewed cities as incapable of honest and effective self-government, and by its actual regulations, it viewed urbanization as a threat to not only investments but to civic spirit and even the American way of life itself. As Hirt writes, "[t]he single-family home had the right to the city: it was always seen as being there first. It was the gracious host, the delicate victim, and the original citizen that was always haunted, followed, invaded, and taken advantage of by other housing types." In this sense, Hirt's book echoes the conclusions of Steven Conn's recent <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Americans-Against-City-Anti-Urbanism-Twentieth/dp/0199973660/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1421589581&sr=8-1&keywords=Americans+Against+the+City%3A+Anti-Urbanism+in+the+Twentieth+Century&pebp=1421589575476&peasin=199973660"><i>Americans Against the City: Anti-Urbanism in the Twentieth Century</i></a>.<br />
<br />
Has the American zoning system secured the benefits promised by its proponents? Hirt crunches the numbers and finds that the United States is distinct among Western nations neither in its rate of ownership nor its proportion of single-family homes (see below chart). Australia beats the US at its own game, having a higher levels of both detached and attached single-family homes with higher homeownership, despite even higher rates of urbanization. Hungary, with almost identical proportions of attached and detached single-family housing, has much higher homeownership. Interestingly, the chart shows no correlation whatsoever between proportion of single-family homes and the rate of ownership. The emergence of the condominium form of ownership, unanticipated by the zoning proponents of the 1920s, appears to have severed the link between detached homes and the homeownership rate.<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-SEaX4t1D5B8/VKfxGv2QCuI/AAAAAAAABaw/cMnu9ifsASc/s1600/hirt_rates.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-SEaX4t1D5B8/VKfxGv2QCuI/AAAAAAAABaw/cMnu9ifsASc/s1600/hirt_rates.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: right;">Source: Hirt (2014) and Japan Statistical Yearbook 2013.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
The American achievement appears to be the high proportion of <i>detached </i>single-family homes, which on this chart is behind only Australia, Croatia and Hungary, as well as the size of those homes. Hirt cites evidence from Fischel's work that, to me, shows that American focus on legal protections for the detached home form may have actually impeded growth in the homeownership rate by establishing excessively large minimum lot sizes. In Japan, by contrast, families are able to <a href="http://www.wsj.com/articles/tokyos-skinniest-houses-1420043290?autologin=y">purchase slivers of urban land</a>, which enables robust single-family homeownership levels in an intensely urbanized country. The same is true in Mexico, where homeownership, overwhelmingly of attached homes, is around 80%. <br />
<br />
It appears that, in the United States, despite rhetoric to the contrary, the exclusionary principle and the notion of ownership as investment are (or have become) the primary concerns of local planning and of national housing policy and finance rather than promoting homeownership. Those policies, though, are beyond the scope of Hirt's book and this post as well.<br />
<br />
--------------------------------------------------------------<br /><br /><i>Related posts:</i><br /><ul>
<li><a href="http://oldurbanist.blogspot.com/2014/07/where-zoning-went-wrong.html">Where Zoning Went Wrong</a></li>
<li><a href="http://oldurbanist.blogspot.com.au/2014/03/housing-dreams-american-and-mexican.html">Housing Dreams, American and Mexican</a></li>
<li><a href="http://oldurbanist.blogspot.com/2011/05/did-zoning-ever-conserve-property.html">Did Zoning Ever Conserve Property Values?</a></li>
<li><a href="http://oldurbanist.blogspot.com/2011/09/vancouver-and-zoning-straitjacket.html">Vancouver and the Zoning Straitjacket</a></li>
<li><a href="http://oldurbanist.blogspot.com/2014/01/the-zoning-straitjacket-part-ii.html">The Zoning Straitjacket, Part II</a></li>
<li><a href="http://oldurbanist.blogspot.com/2011/09/friday-read-zoning-here-and-in-france.html">Zoning, Here and in France</a></li>
<li><a href="http://oldurbanist.blogspot.com/2011/11/ever-since-euclid.html">Ever Since Euclid</a></li>
<li><a href="http://oldurbanist.blogspot.com/2013/02/was-rise-of-car-ownership-responsible.html">Was the Rise of Car Ownership Responsible for the Midcentury Homeownership Boom in the US?</a></li>
</ul>
Charlie Gardnerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07317335121565650040noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7394091530012769761.post-56408259821166413472014-11-01T17:40:00.000-04:002014-11-03T09:11:12.389-05:00Reconciling Bridges and Urbanism<span style="font-family: inherit;">Bridges have been a feature of urban design ever since <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nabopolassar">King Nabopolassar</a> spanned the Euphrates River with a causeway around 620 B.C, joining together the two halves of the city of Babylon and much later inspiring the title of a Rolling Stones album. That this innovation represented a major improvement over the ferry transportation that had formerly prevailed was evident to ancient observers such as the Greek historian Herodotus, <a href="http://www.fofweb.com/History/MainPrintPage.asp?iPin=MESP0742&DataType=Ancient&WinType=Free">who noted</a> that "u</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit; line-height: 17px;">nder the former kings, if a man wanted to pass from one of these halves to the other, he had to cross in a boat; which must, it seems to me, have been very troublesome."</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit; line-height: 17px;"> </span><br />
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<span style="line-height: 17px;">If the transportation advantages were clear at the time, the design challenges of incorporating bridges into a dense urban fabric presented difficulties that have continued to the present day. Apart from engineering challenges, the primary contextual concern is that a bridge high enough to avoid obstructing the flow of maritime traffic will typically be higher than the city itself, with the result that approaches to the bridge, if they are to accommodate wheeled traffic, will need to extend deeply into the city. Long approaches, however, disrupt and divide the urban fabric, undermining the very connectivity that the bridge was intended to provide.</span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 17px;">For a well-known example, consider the Brooklyn Bridge, which was built to a height sufficient to accommodate the masts of sailing ships that still plied the East River in the early 1880s, and which, like Nabopolassar's bridge, replaced ferry services. An engineering marvel, the bridge was nonetheless so massive that its approaches reached deep into the heart of Manhattan, overshadowing many blocks and requiring the demolition of others:</span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-18bag-pZV0A/VDrU81vKznI/AAAAAAAABXs/RWaWR_2L3Mk/s1600/bridges.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-18bag-pZV0A/VDrU81vKznI/AAAAAAAABXs/RWaWR_2L3Mk/s1600/bridges.jpg" height="296" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: right;">The Brooklyn and Manhattan bridges circa 1916. <a href="http://i55.photobucket.com/albums/g128/davidbellel/david2/david3/brooklyn-manhattan-bridge-1916-post.jpg">Source</a>.</td></tr>
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<span style="line-height: 17px;">Built some years before Robert Moses was even born, the bridge represented the first instance of an elevated roadway carving a swathe through a built-up area of Manhattan and dividing parts of the city from each other. In the years since the bridge was built, access ramps from the FDR Drive have further expanded the initial scar, leaving a gap of 360 feet in the city's fabric with limited crossing points. Although the arch spaces under the approach were creatively rented out as <a href="http://www.ediblegeography.com/brooklyn-bridge-champagne/">storage space for wine merchants</a> (the bricked-in warehouse spaces can <a href="http://thecavewinestorage.blogspot.com/2014/05/wine-and-champagne-storage-under.html">still be seen today</a>), the effect on the immediately surrounding neighborhood could hardly have been a great positive. The area sliced up by the approaches to the Brooklyn, Manhattan and Williamsburg Bridges became notorious as Manhattan's Lower East Side, and was some decades later subjected to some of the most intensive urban renewal in the city. </span><br />
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<span style="line-height: 17px;">In Europe, where watersheds tend to be smaller than those of North America, major rivers narrower and where many bridges had been built long before the advent of suspension or steel-frame technology, a much more complementary design has long prevailed. Rather than sending approaches deep into the urban fabric, European cities tend to raise masonry embankments directly against the river, allowing a bridge even of substantial height to discharge traffic directly onto riverfront streets. Bridges were also considered architectural works in their own right intended to be experienced on foot, and incorporated sidewalk lighting, statuary, benches and other pedestrian amenities.</span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-s0Zlroc-I7w/VEKPruSIzpI/AAAAAAAABYA/tdRERMOZRRQ/s1600/pont_neuf.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-s0Zlroc-I7w/VEKPruSIzpI/AAAAAAAABYA/tdRERMOZRRQ/s1600/pont_neuf.jpg" height="253" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: right;">Pont Neuf, Paris. Google Maps.</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-FAwEHiv5kLY/VEQIEFEm4xI/AAAAAAAABYk/pyFPxlbc_a4/s1600/toulouse.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-FAwEHiv5kLY/VEQIEFEm4xI/AAAAAAAABYk/pyFPxlbc_a4/s1600/toulouse.jpg" height="231" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
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Bird's eye view of another Pont Neuf, in Toulouse, with its entry point flush with a</div>
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25-foot embankment providing flood protection against the Garonne River. Bing Maps. </div>
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<span style="line-height: 17px;">Running along these embankments at just above water level are often found quays, which formerly served the shipping trade but which today have been converted to car expressways or recreational areas for cyclists and pedestrians (a notable conversion from the former to the later has </span><a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-24520146" style="line-height: 17px;">recently taken place in Paris</a><span style="line-height: 17px;">).</span><br />
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<span style="line-height: 17px;">In some famous instances, the city itself extended out onto the bridge, turning transportation infrastructure into a bustling city street with shops and homes. Among the best known of these are the former <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_Bridge#.22Old.22_.28medieval.29_London_Bridge">London Bridge</a>, the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ponte_Vecchio">Ponte Vecchio</a> and the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rialto_Bridge">Rialto Bridge</a> in Venice:</span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-HBKyLZuTpJ0/VEKeYidsBiI/AAAAAAAABYQ/wpMii5FQL80/s1600/1024px-Raguenet%2C_La_joute_des_mariniers-2_denoised.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-HBKyLZuTpJ0/VEKeYidsBiI/AAAAAAAABYQ/wpMii5FQL80/s1600/1024px-Raguenet%2C_La_joute_des_mariniers-2_denoised.jpg" height="248" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: right;">Pont Notre-Dame, Paris, depicted 1756. <a href="http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fichier:Raguenet,_La_joute_des_mariniers-2_denoised.jpg">Source</a>.</td></tr>
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<span style="line-height: 17px;">Paris seems to have had several such bridges as well, but most had their houses torn down in the late 1700s when the spatial demands of wheeled traffic began to make themselves increasingly apparent in the larger cities of Europe. The Pont Notre-Dame, above, was scraped clean of its tall dwellings in 1782, and the centuries-old bridge itself was replaced in the 1850s. London Bridge's houses, apparently allowed onto the bridge as a <a href="http://oldlondonbridge.com/chronology.shtml">means of producing rent</a> to offset the cost of bridge construction in the medieval period, were removed in the late 1750s at great expense to improve the bridge's level of service. The trend toward retrofitting cities around the needs of wheeled traffic would steadily accelerate through the late 20th century.</span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-4kNvz0ry_Kw/VEw6CrlGJ3I/AAAAAAAABY4/JyyO5usp81Y/s1600/DSC04078.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-4kNvz0ry_Kw/VEw6CrlGJ3I/AAAAAAAABY4/JyyO5usp81Y/s1600/DSC04078.JPG" height="400" width="300" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: right;">Source: Old Urbanist.</td></tr>
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<span style="line-height: 17px;">Some North American cities have bridges in approximately the European fashion, particularly where the city is located on a bluff overlooking a river or where the river is relatively narrow. Chicago, Milwaukee and San Antonio, in particular, have numerous such bridges over their relatively narrow rivers, and Austin has partial embankments overlooking a riverside trail. Des Moines, also, has a series of very European-looking bridges. Even if geography requires a bridge to enter a city at height, however, that does not mean that integrating it into the city need be impossible.</span><br />
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<span style="line-height: 17px;">For instance, even if the ground level cannot be raised to meet the bridge, buildings themselves may be constructed up to the bridge level. The photo at right shows this approach deployed along a Danube River bridge in Regensburg, Germany (actually, in this case, I believe the bridge may have been constructed to align with the second floors of existing apartments). With this method, similar to the built-upon bridges described above, the bridge adds a second linear dimension to the city rather than simply being a passive structure accessible only at its endpoints. </span><br />
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<span style="line-height: 17px;">Additionally, the long approaches themselves are demanded only by wheeled traffic. Where a bridge serves only foot traffic, it is possible to provide high clearance, even with masonry construction, and yet have little or no landward approach. This method was employed abundantly in the towns and cities of pre-modern China, such as <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wuzhen">Wuzhen</a>, below, where although the bridge appears to rise very steeply, the grade is quite a bit less than in the standard staircase, and the climb less arduous:</span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-seTT-_oySVQ/VFT7uMKKjQI/AAAAAAAABZM/AW6ELD6Mcpw/s1600/wizhen.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-seTT-_oySVQ/VFT7uMKKjQI/AAAAAAAABZM/AW6ELD6Mcpw/s1600/wizhen.jpg" height="300" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: right;"><a href="http://4photos.net/blog/the-city-of-bridges-in-china-wuzhen/">Source.</a></td></tr>
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<span style="line-height: 17px;">Steep automobile bridges are possible, but rarely seen, as in this example from Matsue, Japan, which fortunately has a fairly mild winter climate:</span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-XWRwock0LTc/VFT9X27NnMI/AAAAAAAABZY/74nsqMrpwd8/s1600/ejima_bridge.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-XWRwock0LTc/VFT9X27NnMI/AAAAAAAABZY/74nsqMrpwd8/s1600/ejima_bridge.jpg" height="223" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: right;"><a href="http://imgur.com/gallery/gIpXO">Source</a>.</td></tr>
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<span style="line-height: 17px;">The American approach, reflective of the <a href="http://www.newworldeconomics.com/archives/2009/112209.html">era of Heroic Materialism</a> in general, has typically been to see bridges as engineering projects first, architecture second, and an integrated part of the city third, if at all. Even where existing bridges with lengthy approaches have been converted to pedestrian use, long approaches are typically retained, or in some cases, even rebuilt. </span><br />
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<span style="line-height: 17px;">The <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Four_Bridge">Big Four Bridge</a> in Louisville, Kentucky, a rail bridge over the Ohio River which had its long approaches removed in the late 1960s, leaving only the central span, was inexplicably rebuilt with approaches even though it was intended primarily for pedestrians (a</span><span style="line-height: 17px;"> <a href="http://archive.courier-journal.com/article/20060510/NEWS02/605100422/Beginning-an-end-Big-Four">much simpler plan</a> requiring no land acquisition which would have involved a ramp directly around the final bridge pier was apparently rejected). On the Kentucky side, pedestrians must ascend a massive, circuitous and over-engineered ramp to reach the bridge: </span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-mxJhsh-XBbg/VFU3NL1X2ZI/AAAAAAAABZo/NZnGCKLJ7EA/s1600/bigfour.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-mxJhsh-XBbg/VFU3NL1X2ZI/AAAAAAAABZo/NZnGCKLJ7EA/s1600/bigfour.jpg" height="225" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: right;"><a href="https://maps.google.com/maps?ll=36.1597342,-86.7715741&z=17&cid=9025136483994557088&q=Nashville,+TN&output=classic&dg=opt">Google Maps/Shawn Conn</a>.</td></tr>
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<span style="line-height: 17px;">A switchback staircase leading directly to the bridge pier was present during construction for the convenience of workers according to Streetview imagery, but seems to have been removed now that the approach is complete!</span><br />
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<span style="line-height: 17px;">Nashville's downtown <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Seigenthaler_Pedestrian_Bridge">Shelby Street Bridge</a>, which never had its approaches demolished prior to its pedestrianization in the early 2000s, took a more sensible approach of adding a steel staircase and elevator, thereby taking advantage of the tremendous spatial efficiencies of pedestrianism while allowing people with bicycles, strollers or in wheelchairs to reach the bridge: </span><br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-H_s4-FBEkcU/VFU5-Ft0r2I/AAAAAAAABZ0/pD0ydbrFnpQ/s1600/shelbybridge.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-H_s4-FBEkcU/VFU5-Ft0r2I/AAAAAAAABZ0/pD0ydbrFnpQ/s1600/shelbybridge.jpg" height="240" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: right;">Google Maps.</td></tr>
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<span style="line-height: 17px;">In a first step toward directly integrating the bridge roadway with the surrounding buildings, the bridge and elevator are attached by an elevated walkway to the office building at the left. It is difficult to overstate the effect pedestrian infrastructure like this contributes toward making the bridge feel like a place, rather than an obnoxious intrusion into the life of the city.</span><br />
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<span style="line-height: 17px;">Turning bridge design away from the Heroic Materialist model of bridge-building toward a more pedestrian and city-oriented perspective is a long-term process that appears to be underway with bridge conversions, but many positive changes can done incrementally. Providing pedestrians with shortcut access points to bridge approaches, linking the bridge surface directly to surrounding buildings and even considering construction of new buildings flush with or underneath the bridge, can all help turn bridges into more than simply impressive engineering feats.</span><br />
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<span style="line-height: 17px;"><i>Related posts</i>: Jarrett Walker has a similar take on urban viaducts <a href="http://www.humantransit.org/2009/09/viaduct-love-in-berlin.html">here</a> (h/t to commenter Marc), and of course these observations could also be applied to other forms of elevated infrastructure to greater or lesser degrees.</span></div>
Charlie Gardnerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07317335121565650040noreply@blogger.com23tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7394091530012769761.post-84965766452827315562014-10-04T14:52:00.001-04:002014-10-04T14:52:31.506-04:00Housing Innovations in TexasCitylab recently posted an interesting <a href="http://www.citylab.com/housing/2014/10/in-americas-poorest-city-a-housing-breakthrough/380912/">profile of a new development</a> in Harlingen, Texas by Amanda Kolson Hurley. Having <a href="http://oldurbanist.blogspot.com/2014/02/cross-border-urbanism-from-texas-to.html">written</a> about this area of the country earlier this year, I was curious to take a closer look at the development, which appeared to take some design cues from the Mexican urbanism that is just a short ride away from this border region.<br />
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An aerial view of the development, La Hacienda Casitas, shows it set among mobile home parks that are very common in Harlingen. These homes, however, are site built, and use lots as small as 1,800 square feet, which is similar to the lots sizes found in the new developments of Matamoros, Mexico. Streets range from 16 to 22 feet wide, with some on-street parking:<br />
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<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-s4Ef5Tym2i4/VDABSFXH2dI/AAAAAAAABWw/j8Px_TOPYj0/s1600/harlingen.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-s4Ef5Tym2i4/VDABSFXH2dI/AAAAAAAABWw/j8Px_TOPYj0/s1600/harlingen.jpg" height="250" width="400" /></a></div>
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The more I looked around Harlingen, the more this particular development stood out: overwhelmingly, new development in the city consists either of mobile home parks or much larger suburban homes of the type found in sunbelt cities across the United States. It was a pattern I'd seen before, in <a href="http://oldurbanist.blogspot.com/2014/05/mobile-home-impediments-and.html">Bradenton, Florida</a>, where the city's zoning code divided single-family housing into two types: large lot, site-built suburban and small-lot, manufactured and/or mobile. Could land use in Harlingen be governed by similar provisions? <br />
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Fortunately, the city puts its zoning ordinance and map online in an <a href="http://www.myharlingen.us/default.aspx?name=pz.zoningordinance">easy-to-navigate format</a>, so finding residential lot minimums was not difficult:<br />
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<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-7pAD0ApERWk/VDAE4LR8TYI/AAAAAAAABXE/3m1OLrl-wvA/s1600/Harlingen_code.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-7pAD0ApERWk/VDAE4LR8TYI/AAAAAAAABXE/3m1OLrl-wvA/s1600/Harlingen_code.jpg" /></a></div>
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Here we see that Harlingen, like Bradenton, establishes a minimum lot size for lots in mobile home parks that is less than half that required in the single-family "R1" zone. In fact, the ratio between the two zoning categories is nearly the same in both cities (Harlingen: 6000/2400 = 2.5 vs. Bradenton: 7200/3000 = 2.4). Unlike Bradenton, Harlingen does not seem to establish minimum sizes for the dwellings themselves, although setback and lot coverage requirements impose effective maximums that are most restrictive on very small lots.<br />
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How well the city holds developers to the limits I cannot say for sure, although most lots in developments platted within the last 20 years appear to be between 6,000 and 7,000 square feet. On first blush the "Planned Development" zone appears to provide some flexibility, but it requires the developer to own a parcel of at least five acres, leaving it unavailable to small-scale builders designing infill projects. Townhouses are also an option, but are not permitted by right in R1 zones.<br />
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In any event, the disparity between zones again appears to create a binary pattern of real estate prices, with new site-built homes on large lots averaging around $145,000, and manufactured homes only $45,000 or so. Thanks to zoning-abetted filtering*, some site-built homes can be bought for no more than $60,000 to $70,000, but these tend to be of very low quality or on much smaller lots that seem to have been grandfathered in under the present zoning code. This mandated land consumption obviously contributes to a low-density pattern of urban growth, and also illustrates how zoning's affordability and quality of life impact isn't limited to large coastal metros. Harlingen's affordability safety valve, the mobile home district, establishes what is in effect a physically segregated zone for low-income, market-rate housing where even the homes themselves are forbidden from being site-built.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-V4sHKzM460A/VDAnhiG2dZI/AAAAAAAABXU/j09pwup2EHY/s1600/Axtman_La-Hacienda-Casitas1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-V4sHKzM460A/VDAnhiG2dZI/AAAAAAAABXU/j09pwup2EHY/s1600/Axtman_La-Hacienda-Casitas1.jpg" height="203" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Homes in La Hacienda Casitas. Credit: <a href="http://www.bcworkshop.org/bcW/">bcWorkshop</a>.</td></tr>
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In light of all this, was the La Hasienda Casitas project an attempt to circumvent the code with a development of houses on tiny lots and narrow streets, thereby making occupancy (the homes appear to be rentals, at least for now) of new, freestanding and site-built homes available to low-income families of Harlingen? Kolson Hurley's article discusses the intensive coordination and grant-seeking between and among architect bcWorkshop and non-profit housing developer Community Development Corporation of Brownsville needed to bring the project to fruition, but I have to wonder whether regulatory barriers, rather than anything inherent in the design and construction of this project, is what is standing in the way of adoption of the style by for-profit developers.<br />
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*Zoning-abetted in that the restriction of centrally-located lots to single-family use effectively caps land values, allowing the physical deterioration of the housing stock to play the predominant role in establishing property values.<br />
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<i>Related posts</i>:<br />
<a href="http://oldurbanist.blogspot.com/2014/05/mobile-home-impediments-and.html">Mobile Home Impediments and Opportunities</a><br />
<a href="http://oldurbanist.blogspot.com/2014/02/cross-border-urbanism-from-texas-to.html">Cross-border Urbanism: From Texas to Tamaulipas</a><br />
<br />Charlie Gardnerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07317335121565650040noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7394091530012769761.post-82866066817504072872014-08-31T14:15:00.003-04:002014-11-02T18:19:16.862-05:00Demise of the DuplexThe New York YIMBY website has complied Census building permit data to reveal how construction of single-family and small multifamily dwellings in New York City's five boroughs <a href="http://newyorkyimby.com/2014/08/where-have-all-of-new-york-citys-small-builders-gone.html">has plummeted</a> since reaching a peak in 2004. Of the potential explanations advanced for this collapse, contextual downzoning appears to the most likely to me, as the decline began four years before the peak permit year of 2008. In general, however, small multifamily buildings have widely fallen out of favor not only in New York but across the country over the past thirty years and more.<br />
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Using the same Census data, this time calculating for all 50 states and the District of Columbia, it can be seen that small multifamily dwellings (those with between two and four units) fell from providing around ten percent of all new residential units in the early 1980s to a low of just under three percent in 2013. Even as multifamily construction has rebounded since 2009, increasing its share of all units from 21 to 34 percent from 2009 to 2013, these smaller multifamily units have actually continued to decline as a proportion of the total (the chart shows the number of units, not the number of structures):<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-6T5VJTW7HoA/VAKcnY90bfI/AAAAAAAABUw/xG9uSwr-SQE/s1600/3deckers.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-6T5VJTW7HoA/VAKcnY90bfI/AAAAAAAABUw/xG9uSwr-SQE/s1600/3deckers.jpg" height="285" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Triple deckers in Bridgeport, CT.</td></tr>
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The permit data only begin to capture what is, I suspect, a much longer-term decline in this housing typology. Anyone familiar even in passing with the larger cities of the Northeast will immediately recognize the heavy predominance of the type in their older neighborhoods, as represented by the wood-framed <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triple-decker">triple-decker, or three-decker, house</a>. Whether built up to a flat roof, as in the typical image of the Boston triple-decker, or with the third story sheltered under a pitched roof, these are large and bulky structures that generally provide three spacious units with windows on all sides. Despite the popular narrative of urban-dwellers fleeing cramped apartments for more spacious suburban homes, these units rivaled or exceeded in size the modest Cape-style single-family homes built in the 1940s and 1950s, were conveniently set on a single floor like the ranch houses that later became popular, and offered gracious architectural features such as bay windows and front porches that were often lacking in the new single-family homes. It would not be until the 1960s that the average new single-family home would significantly exceed the size of the ordinary triple-decker apartment.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-NwfoNfyNITM/U-wojtorWgI/AAAAAAAABT4/rh_5xWvSYkQ/s1600/BSN_MF.gif" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-NwfoNfyNITM/U-wojtorWgI/AAAAAAAABT4/rh_5xWvSYkQ/s1600/BSN_MF.gif" height="258" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>The vertical axis shows the number of two and three-family <br />structures sold over the past three years within the metro area</i>.</td></tr>
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Census data provides housing statistics both by year built and by housing type, but unfortunately does not combine these statistics, making it impossible to determine what proportion of the small multifamily stock was built at what time. A workaround can be had, however, by using year-built information from housing listed on the MLS, which should provide a neutral sampling of the overall housing stock. Performing this exercise for the Bridgeport-Stamford-Norwalk area, an area with housing from all eras of American history and continuing high demand, reveals an exponential increase in the type from the 1860s to the 1900s, then a slower increase to an all-time peak in the 1920s. Small multifamily construction collapsed during the Great Depression, along with most other housing construction, but unlike single-family construction did not rebound, even though the Bridgeport area experienced a manufacturing boom in the 1940s and early 1950s that attracted many factory workers. Instead, it continued a gradual descent into irrelevance by the 1980s and 1990s.<br />
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The appearance of these structures therefore coincided both with the industrialization of American cities and a wave of immigration from rural America and from foreign countries, with the particular architectural style of multifamily housing in New England perhaps influenced or inspired by the multiplexes common in French-Canadian towns and cities (a building type which <a href="http://urbankchoze.blogspot.com/2014/06/ode-to-multiplex-quebecs-traditional.html">Urban Kchoze's Simon Vallee has recently explored</a>). These buildings had particular appeal to new immigrants, who could with sufficient savings purchase such a building and rent the upper two floors out to other immigrant families (often, members of their own extended family) to defray the cost of housing or perhaps even earn some additional income. <br />
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Why these dwellings ceased being built after the 1920s, never to return in any great numbers, is a difficult question, but fortunately it is not one that I need to guess at. MIT graduate student Jacob Wegmann authored a 115-page thesis entitled <i><a href="http://dspace.mit.edu/bitstream/handle/1721.1/37424/123191174.pdf?sequence=1">What Happened to the Three Decker</a></i>, supervised by none other than Sam Bass Warner, which explores that very question and offers a series of possible explanations which are equally applicable to other forms of small multifamily structures:<br />
<ul>
<li>Above all, exclusionary zoning, particularly in the 1970s and later, that restricted small multifamily housing from being built in those places where it would have been most desirable.</li>
<li>Concentration of the real estate industry in the mid-20th century, resulting in the production of large-scale tract subdivisions that were able to exclude multifamily housing altogether.</li>
<li>Federal involvement in mortgage finance starting in the 1930s and an emphasis on homeownership paid for by way of extended mortgage terms rather than over a shorter period with the aid of rental payments from tenants.</li>
<li>Other regulatory barriers, including parking requirements, disability mandates from the ADA and state laws and enhanced fire safety requirements that have increased the construction cost for small, non single-family structures.</li>
<li>A negative image of small multifamily dwellings that had always simmered among the native middle-class and which intensified during the 1920s and later, and which contributed to attempts to exclude these dwellings from newer areas of cities.</li>
</ul>
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">The last point, although it may seem less important, does indicate to me a genuine underlying problem with the three decker or stacked duplex form. As an <a href="http://college.holycross.edu/projects/worcester/immigration/3deckers.htm">article</a> on Worcester's three-deckers puts it, "</span></span><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">to look at
a three-decker means</span> ... appreciating the attempts of three-deckers
to echo freestanding single-family dwellings even in the midst of an undeniably
urban setting and the effort to create an illusion of space for residents." </span></span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-Gpg0fxNx4pY/VANU_fgkNKI/AAAAAAAABVA/B7uBfS7knlk/s1600/bport_rents.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-Gpg0fxNx4pY/VANU_fgkNKI/AAAAAAAABVA/B7uBfS7knlk/s1600/bport_rents.jpg" height="216" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Bridgeport, CT rent map showing lowest rents in duplex/<br />
triple decker belt between downtown and outlying <br />
single-family neighborhoods. From <a href="http://www.trulia.com/home_prices/Connecticut/Bridgeport-heat_map/">Trulia</a>.</td></tr>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">That is, the small multifamily house was apologetically urban, and offered as its apology an attempt to mimic the outward form of the cottage or farmhouse style of housing prevalent in New England prior to the 1870s. This reticence to adopt an unambiguously urban form left such structures appearing to be second-best, a characteristic that was not shared by rowhouse neighborhoods or those composed of larger apartment buildings. The attempt to leave small gaps between buildings, rather than using shared walls, only served to emphasize the scarcity of space and lack of light and air as compared to larger lot single-family homes. The virtues of having natural light on all four sides of a dwelling, however, were very much real and have been appreciated for decades by the residents of these apartments.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">The limited appeal of these structures has had the upside of keeping them as relatively affordable housing options down the present day even in otherwise expensive cities. Neighborhoods composed of them are not immune to gentrification, but their form and physical location -- typically in the inner-ring areas once served by streetcar lines -- combines to keep their rents among the lowest in the metro area. </span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Although the building type has not come back into vogue, the notion of using a second residential unit on one's own property to help with mortgage payments has, through the <a href="http://bettercities.net/article/granny-flats-add-flexibility-and-affordability">New Urbanist revival of the so-called "granny flat"</a> (a concept which goes by countless names, but <i>never "</i>duplex"). The strategy of appealing to homeowners' financial interests rather than to the need for more low-cost rental apartments is politically astute and has probably helped the idea gain traction. In the meantime, in areas where demand is high, many <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/fairfax-county-seeks-ways-to-address-overcrowded-housing-issue/2014/07/27/775df60a-11bf-11e4-8936-26932bcfd6ed_story.html?hpid=z4">single-family houses continue to undergo illegal conversion to multifamily use</a>, indicating how the America of 2014, by banning the construction of small multifamily buildings and the division of homes into multiple units, once a commonplace process, is in some areas and in some respects doing an inferior job of housing the poor and recent immigrants than was the country of a century earlier. </span></span><br />
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Charlie Gardnerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07317335121565650040noreply@blogger.com17tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7394091530012769761.post-18760485005029751842014-07-27T15:14:00.000-04:002014-08-31T19:53:13.908-04:00Where Zoning Went Wrong<div class="im">
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">In previous posts on zoning, I’ve been pretty hard on the Supreme Court’s <i><a href="http://oldurbanist.blogspot.com/2011/11/ever-since-euclid.html">Euclid v. Ambler</a></i> decision, which upheld the use of single-use, and specifically single family-only, zones. In doing so, the nation’s highest court gave the formal stamp of approval to exclusionary zoning, holding among other things that cities were justified in excluding so-called “apartment houses” from residential zones.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">The fact that this dispute even reached the Supreme Court in the first place, however, indicates underlying policy choices that occurred somewhat earlier. Professor Sonia Hirt, who has done extensive research in the greatly underexplored comparative zoning realm, <a href="http://www.archive.spia.vt.edu/SPIA/docs/shirt/The_Devil_is_in_the_Definitions.pdf">has shown</a> how in Germany, a limited number of zoning categories are established at the federal level, with specific implementation left to local governments. Although localities can choose where to place these zones, they cannot create zones of their own. Simon Vallee (at Urban Kchoze) <a href="http://urbankchoze.blogspot.com/2014/04/japanese-zoning.html">has described</a> a very similar regulatory regime in Japan, where the national government has established a list of certain permissible zones that cities may use. Hirt mentions similar but even more permissive zoning arrangements in other countries such as Serbia, Greece and Bulgaria. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Notably, whether by coincidence or design, it appears that in none of these cases have state or national governments established single-family detached-only residential zones. In general, these countries establish only floor-area limitations, thereby allowing both single-family and multifamily housing in all residential areas, and also permit small offices and neighborhood commercial even in the most restrictive zones. Importantly, lot size and setback requirements appear to be modest or minimal.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">In contrast to the experience of most other countries, the United States, right from the start, delegated zoning<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-gioYylXAg-8/U9VK5v_V93I/AAAAAAAABSk/zimtXVVHVXw/s1600/munich_zoning.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-gioYylXAg-8/U9VK5v_V93I/AAAAAAAABSk/zimtXVVHVXw/s1600/munich_zoning.jpg" height="400" width="300" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Munich zoning map ca. 1900. From <a href="http://vc.lib.harvard.edu/vc/deliver/vcFullRecord?collection=maps&_collection=maps&inoId=1257&numCount=2&dispQry=munich%20in%20(Anywhere)%20and%20zoning%20in%20(Anywhere)%20&searchHistoryNumber=0&recordNumber=2&method=view&searchtype=reissue">Harvard Library</a>.</td></tr>
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powers from states to localities in spite of the fact that early 20th century American planners greatly admired the German zoning system. The best-known instrument of this delegation, although it was not the first, was the <a href="https://www.planning.org/growingsmart/pdf/SZEnablingAct1926.pdf">Standard State Zoning Enabling Act</a>, a document first devised in the early 1920s by Herbert Hoover’s Commerce Department.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">The Act was a curious document: although it spent many pages devoted to the legal proceduralism of planning commissions, it offered little guidance, and contained no requirements, as to how localities should actually zone. This intriguing and highly consequential omission was not due to lack of interest or expertise. Edward Murray Bassett, a principal author of New York's <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1916_Zoning_Resolution">1916 Zoning Resolution</a> and of much of the Enabling Act, authored a <a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=CbErAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA315&source=gbs_toc_r&cad=4#v=onepage&q&f=false">handbook on zoning</a> (entitled “Zoning,” what else) in which he laid out its purposes and proper role. Bassett’s work, one of many on the topic from that time period by such men as <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harland_Bartholomew">Harland Bartholomew</a> and <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s?ie=UTF8&page=1&rh=n%3A283155%2Cp_27%3AHerbert%20S.%20Swan">Herbert Swan</a>, establishes several major themes to distinguish zoning in the United States which were reflected in the enabling act and </span>which have characterized American zoning practice ever since<span style="font-family: inherit;">:</span></div>
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<li><u style="font-family: inherit;">Approval of the exclusion of commercial activity from residential zones</u><span style="font-family: inherit;">. Bassett seems to have assumed, without explaining further, that excluding all commercial uses from residential areas was a desirable and legitimate end of zoning. Furthermore, he casually elided any distinctions between noxious and harmless uses: "[In] a residence district a home owner may try to carry on a sweat shop or a restaurant or a junk yard. How shall he be prevented? ... The ordinance should make such act unlawful and make provision for ousting the unlawful use." (p. 327).</span></li>
<li><u style="font-family: inherit;">Failure to disapprove of the exclusion of multifamily from residential zones</u><span style="font-family: inherit;">. Although Bassett struck a cautionary note toward single-family zones, this appears to have been primarily because he feared (mistakenly, it turned out) that courts would strike down such zones as lacking justification (p. 323-324). This, in turn, might have cast doubt on the fledgling enterprise of zoning. Elsewhere, he advocated for such zones as a means creating preserves for wealthy urban homeowners (p. 323). Bassett also suggested the use of maximum lot coverage ratios as an alternative means of discouraging apartment houses, notwithstanding that such coverage ratios would also have the effect of discouraging single-family homes on very small lots.</span></li>
<li><u style="font-family: inherit;">Extreme deference to localities</u><span style="font-family: inherit;">. Bassett recommended that enabling acts transfer power to regulate the height, bulk and use of buildings to cities, apparently without any restriction on how these powers might be deployed in various zones. The states were to retain little or no power in the zoning area under his proposed arrangement, nor were they to provide any guidance except for the very vague suggestions within the Enabling Act. There was no reason presented for this policy choice, and transportation policy was in fact moving in the opposite direction at the same time, with states and the federal government playing larger roles in planning and building highway routes.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: inherit;"><u>Insistence on a "comprehensive" plan</u>. Although European zoning is often conducted on a block-by-block basis according to Prof. Hirt, and frequently leaves large central areas exempt from most restrictions, Bassett and other American zoning advocates insisted that courts would not accept such piecemeal or partial zoning, and that cities should therefore zone every inch of ground under their jurisdiction. Allowing different zones within small and otherwise similar areas was also assumed to be unconstitutional "spot zoning," and was not advised. Impliedly, these recommendations would intensify the use-segregated character and monotony of American zoning. Nonetheless, once the initial plan was in place, selective rezonings (almost always downzonings) of politically influential neighborhoods were carried out and continue to be carried out to this day.</span></li>
<li><u style="font-family: inherit;">Irreconcilable conflict between planning and zoning</u><span style="font-family: inherit;">. Bassett acknowledged that "[e]very vital growing city must change and the zoning plan must be capable of change," but quickly clarified that "a high degree of permanency or stiffness must be insisted upon." In other words, although zoning was adopted in the name of looking "mainly to the future," in Bassett's words, in practice, it would be highly resistant to alteration. To achieve this, Bassett included a proposal to limit the power of the city council to alter the zoning plan once it had been established by, in essence, subjecting every proposed zoning change to a referendum requiring 80% support of affected owners (see p. 330). What's more, </span><span style="font-family: inherit;">Bassett's logic against zoning changes used only examples of upzoning or increasing permitted uses (see p. 330). Downzoning was not critiqued.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: inherit;"><u>Heavy reliance on legal process as a substitute for sound policymaking</u>. Bassett, an attorney, was apparently aware that such permissive zoning powers might result in extremely restrictive regulations: "The letter of the ordinance and maps may be the extreme of hardship," he noted (p. 330). Rather than address this potential problem by advocating limits on zoning's restrictiveness at the start, Bassett suggested a Board of Adjustment with the power to grant variances. The obvious potential for abuse, graft and corruption in such an arrangement was noted by Bassett's contemporary, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_Veiller">Lawrence Veiller</a>, but the substance of Bassett's recommendations was included in the Enabling Act. Bassett dismissed these concerns out of hand in his book by noting that "it is the business of the mayor or appointing power to see that the board is made up of impartial and experienced men." (p. 331).</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: inherit;"><u>Rejection of aesthetic concerns</u>. The <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/City_Beautiful_movement">City Beautiful</a> movement of the late 19th and early 20th century, although it shared certain policy goals with the early zoning advocates, embraced a traditionally European emphasis on the outward appearance of the city. Architecture was considered an integral part of city planning, and planning literature frequently included lavish illustrations setting forth a compelling aesthetic vision for the city (what might be called a form-based vision). In Bassett's view, however, aesthetics could not even supply a rational basis for zoning regulations: "If [regulations] are employed ... for aesthetics or some sentimental object, courts will not support them," he wrote. In short, despite his professed admiration for European planning methods, Bassett was waving the white flag before a shot had been fired in the legal battle. Bassett was wrong again about how the courts would respond, but with most codes having been adopted under the erroneous assumption that such concerns were illegitimate, it would take until the mid-1990s, with the rise of the New Urbanism and the development of form-based codes, that architecture, aesthetics and form were given a more conspicuous role in zoning documents.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: inherit;"><u>Concern with protecting the wealth of well-to-do homeowners</u>. Although Bassett stated that zoning "endeavors to protect investments" as a general matter, the investments he cites as examples tend to be those of very wealthy individuals seeking to erect expensive houses ("A man who built a $40,000 home ... was considered highly speculative because in a few years he might have an apartment house on one side and a factory on the other" (p. 316); "[A] man might put up a fine residence ... and find that the council had changed it to business and he was likely to have a butcher store on one side and a grocery on the other" (p. 330). This was largely the extent of Bassett's social concern, such as it was, in his book. The interests of poor and middle-class residents, whether owners or tenants, went unmentioned by Bassett (in fairness, Andrew Wright Crawford, writing in 1920, claimed that zoning was "<a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=E2cAAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA29&dq=#v=onepage&q=poor%20man&f=false">for the protection of the poor man</a>," although did not address the exclusion of apartments).</span></li>
<li><u style="font-family: inherit;">Lack of comparative focus</u><span style="font-family: inherit;">. Although Bassett claimed to have been inspired to become involved in zoning matters after a visit to an urban design conference in Dusseldorf, his treatise dismisses European planning models early on as inapplicable to American constitutional government, thereby depriving readers of the chance to learn from non-American planning precedents. Bassett even goes so far as to claim that zoning New York took as long as it did because "there were almost no precedents to help," which was only true if one completely disregarded decades of European zoning practice.</span></li>
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<span style="background-color: transparent;">Zoning didn't remain an entirely localized concern by any means: the federal government would, only a decade or so later, become indirectly involved though FHA lending practices, and several states have since adopted regional plans, though not one of the 50, so far as I know, sets out zoning categories that cities must use. Federal fair housing laws would also become entwined with local zoning practice in the 1960s and later, but only incidentally. These original purposes, however, have endured with relatively little change and virtually no challenge over the following ninety-plus years. </span></div>
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I've quoted legal criticism of some of these doctrines in the past, but there was scholarly critique at the time, as well, from progressive authors, some of it quite strident, but most of it now forgotten. For instance, the German-born <a href="http://www.columbia.edu/cu/lweb/archival/collections/ldpd_4079009/">Bruno Lasker</a>, <a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=MoEbAQAAMAAJ&pg=PA663&lpg=PA663&dq=unwalled+towns+bruno+lasker&source=bl&ots=Eo47fzw3qJ&sig=bo1nx_IaEZtyr43vscPeIAzCoWw&hl=en&sa=X&ei=5RvDU7-3GcKdyASvsYGABg&ved=0CB0Q6AEwAA#v=onepage&q&f=false">writing in 1920</a>:<br />
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"<i>Whence, to ask a very simple question, do so many of the zoning commissions derive their sanction for dividing the physical make-up of the city into use districts that distinguish between the residential needs of different classes? ... Why, in this country of democracy, is a city government, representative of all classes of the community, taking it upon itself to to legislate a majority of citizens -- those who cannot afford to occupy a detached house of their own </i><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 16.866666793823242px;">—</span><i> out of the best located parts of the city area, practically always the parts with the best aspect, best parks and streets, best supplied with municipal services and best cared for in every way? Why does it deliberately segregate the foreign-born who have not yet become sufficiently prosperous to buy or rent a home under building regulations which preclude the possibility of inexpensive development and construction?"</i></blockquote>
Social justice inquiries like these evidently didn't keep a legal-minded pragmatist like Bassett or his allies up at night. What's more difficult to tell is whether, had the federal government not taken such an active role in promoting a vision of local government-based planning and zoning, a more European zoning model might have emerged in some states.<br />
<br />
<i>Related posts</i>:<br />
<ul>
<li>h/t to Daniel Nairn for the link to Bassett's book from his post <a href="http://discoveringurbanism.blogspot.com/2012/05/edward-murray-bassett-and-origins-of.html">Edward Murray Bassett and the Origins of Zoning</a>, which inspired this one.</li>
<li><a href="http://oldurbanist.blogspot.com/2011/05/did-zoning-ever-conserve-property.html">Did Zoning Ever Conserve Property Values?</a></li>
</ul>
</div>
Charlie Gardnerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07317335121565650040noreply@blogger.com27tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7394091530012769761.post-87297403898687148142014-07-02T23:21:00.000-04:002014-07-03T12:54:46.543-04:00Going Driverless, or NotA heated debate over the significance of Google's so-called <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_driverless_car">driverless car</a> has been raging over the past several weeks. On one side of the aisle are those hailing it as a "<a href="http://www.wired.com/2014/05/google-self-driving-car-prototype/">revolutionary</a>" technology that will dramatically alter personal mobility to the point of <a href="http://www.citylab.com/commute/2014/02/imagine-world-where-nobody-owns-their-own-car/8387/">eliminating private</a> <a href="http://www.vox.com/2014/5/28/5758560/driverless-cars-will-mean-the-end-of-car-ownership?utmcbttv=221&utmcbts=1401744601180">car ownership</a>. On the other side are those who reject the premise that the technology represents a groundbreaking shift, instead characterizing it as merely a "<a href="http://www.newrepublic.com/article/117943/googles-self-driving-cars-miss-problem-mobility-america">slightly different variation</a>" on current transportation modes that is "so incremental that it epitomizes our national short-sightedness, and failure of imagination, when it comes to improving mobility in America."<br />
<br />
It's difficult to imagine two more divergent positions on the significance of a new technology. Although I'm wary of attempting to forecast the future, knowing how likely it is that any predictions are likely to appear foolish or worse some years down the line, there are enough parallels, current and historic, that I think some general observations can be made here without wandering too far off into pointless speculation.<br />
<div>
<br /></div>
The human-driven motorized car, itself a recognizable variation on the 5,000 year-old horsecart, must have seemed like a rather mundane idea in the late 19th century — almost a throwback to horse-and-carriage travel that the railroads had put out of business — compared to steam railways, attempts at early aircraft and even the bicycle, which represented the first instance in history of a fast yet human-powered wheeled vehicle. The name for the early cars reflected this mindset, which some have used to argue that driverless cars are also being underestimated, as in this <a href="http://ideas.4brad.com/why-googles-ridiculous-looking-car-brilliant">blog post</a>:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"<i>One reason I will eventually move away from my chosen name for the technology — robocar — along with the other popular names like “self-driving car” is that this future vehicle is not a car, not as we know it today. It is no more a “driverless car” than a modern automobile is a horseless carriage. 100 years ago, the only way they could think of the car was not notice there was no horse. Today, all many people notice is that no human is driving. This is the thing that comes after the car</i>."</blockquote>
Could it be that these early observers were right, though? The very early car was slower than the steam trains, and its primary breakthrough was economic: by moving the horse out of the picture, and substituting the combustion of an oil, it became possible to maintain a personal carriage without the the constant care and expense needed for keeping horses. The earliest <a href="http://o.aolcdn.com/os/autos/photos/20130318_winton-ad_612mz.jpg">car ads emphasized the savings in cost, care and anxiety</a> from not having to keep a horse rather than advantages in speed. It took several more decades until the velocities enabled by combustion power and paved highways could be fully realized.<br />
<br />
By contrast, the driverless car offers no such economic advantage to the individual driver, since he is already donating his own labor to operate the vehicle. In implicit recognition of this fact, the claim is made that the most significant consequence of this invention will essentially be to reduce the cost of <i>taxis </i>to the point that renting a car on a trip-by-trip basis actually becomes cheaper, and no less convenient, than owning one. In other words, a driverless car network, for all the technology it requires, is really a simple labor saving device, which like the very early car, allows an existing function to be performed more cheaply but otherwise not much better: certainly driverless cars will not enjoy the kind of speed advantages over human-driven cars as the autos of the 1920s gained over horse-drawn carriages. In this sense, it is functionally equivalent to a massively subsidized (or, perhaps, completely unregulated) human-driven taxi service, which, in theory, could be funded for no more than the amounts currently spent on private car ownership, and certainly with less technological difficulty.* <br />
<br />
As it happens, non-subsidized transit systems of this sort already exist, and have existed for decades, in many cities of the developing world where labor is cheap, car ownership is low and public transit options are limited.<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-vfF3IC8biqI/U5pZpm8nhJI/AAAAAAAABRU/LNIurmZggZk/s1600/rickshaw.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-vfF3IC8biqI/U5pZpm8nhJI/AAAAAAAABRU/LNIurmZggZk/s1600/rickshaw.jpg" height="133" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Auto rickshaw in Bangalore and Xe Nom drivers in Hanoi. Wikipedia and <a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/gavinkwhite/4770770176/in/photolist-8gzrLd-8WtqSQ-6Vp6Wn-9DPK1g-8Wvg2u-7FDrZU-3vUg3g-drUZji-9f4tfq-7Vw5rd-9BwgAt-9Bwgnz-9Bwgtc-fpRJs3-e2X9Mq-4cHAzg-bg8YET-ey7LDy-ahAa4r-hAH4At-7VVXVp-bas3sD-dM1FnQ-gwrzLn-bv7UtE-bTDdCa-6C45Fd-eNiGjw-ng5Lub-aMfLRV-9bWQ4e-bsTW7k-4mmASs-c6chPQ-bz4GoV-faXDe3-dQBmFM-mNACY9-2rMDkM-c3zXeL-hJeJ6-dBo2sr-9xEvkw-4YQYok-a7hAJy-eRoTNj-bpscDf-47NTX1-9WYYek-79cVJw/">Flickr</a>/<a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/gavinkwhite/4770770176/in/photolist-8gzrLd-8WtqSQ-6Vp6Wn-9DPK1g-8Wvg2u-7FDrZU-3vUg3g-drUZji-9f4tfq-7Vw5rd-9BwgAt-9Bwgnz-9Bwgtc-fpRJs3-e2X9Mq-4cHAzg-bg8YET-ey7LDy-ahAa4r-hAH4At-7VVXVp-bas3sD-dM1FnQ-gwrzLn-bv7UtE-bTDdCa-6C45Fd-eNiGjw-ng5Lub-aMfLRV-9bWQ4e-bsTW7k-4mmASs-c6chPQ-bz4GoV-faXDe3-dQBmFM-mNACY9-2rMDkM-c3zXeL-hJeJ6-dBo2sr-9xEvkw-4YQYok-a7hAJy-eRoTNj-bpscDf-47NTX1-9WYYek-79cVJw/">Gavin White</a></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
These transit systems, based first on human-powered rickshaws and later auto rickshaws, motorbikes and pedicabs, provide both point-to-point and last-mile transport, essentially substituting for private vehicle ownership. However, the tendency over time, as a country grows wealthier, is not for auto rickshaws to become ubiquitous, but for public transit and private vehicles (motorbikes or cars) ownership to supplant them. This is certainly due in part to the rising cost of labor, but must also be due to the inherent comfort and convenience of owning one's own vehicle in low-density areas and of the geometric efficiencies of transit in a dense city (using <a href="http://www.humantransit.org/2012/08/bus-stigma-and-driverless-cars-email-of-the-month.html">Jarrett Walker's terminology</a>). The dense city of taxi-based transport tends to be a <a href="http://www.mediabistro.com/unbeige/files/original/mumbai.jpg">traffic nightmare</a>. The low-density city, on the other hand, generally uses taxis in a limited supportive role.<br />
<br />
(An exception might be the dense but mid-sized city of the developing world, such as Jaen, in Peru, a country that is notorious for the use of largely unregulated, and therefore quite cheap, taxi and bus systems to supplement inadequate public mass transit systems, such as in the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lima#Land">far larger capital of Lima</a>):<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-Ha1SztVpu4o/U7Cr0ZTfnyI/AAAAAAAABR0/eAhQkvxz0bk/s1600/Peru.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-Ha1SztVpu4o/U7Cr0ZTfnyI/AAAAAAAABR0/eAhQkvxz0bk/s1600/Peru.jpg" height="246" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Motorbike-taxis on the streets of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ja%C3%A9n,_Peru">Jaen, Peru</a>. Exploration of the city on <a href="https://www.google.com/maps/@-5.708323,-78.807316,3a,75y,74.84h,80.07t/data=!3m4!1e1!3m2!1sNlPdIORXlTg1zxnXrZiskA!2e0">Streetview</a> shows a <br />
largely taxi-based transportation system, supplemented with private motorbikes. There are <br />
only a handful of automobiles visible here and there, mostly utilitarian in nature. A far cry<br />
from the SUVs of American streets, these vehicles actually seem designed around the<br />
size and weight of human beings, and create a steady but by no means congested flow of traffic.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
For driverless cars to reverse this durable observed trend, and actually encourage people to dispose of their cars, we'd need to believe that the cost savings of driverless taxis could outweigh the inevitably increased inconvenience of not having personal ownership (including ownership of a driverless car) for most or all people. The problem with this scenario, though, seems to be twofold, as stated before:<br />
<ul>
<li>In dense urban areas, very cheap and convenient taxi service may overwhelm highways and city streets, as it does in Hanoi or Mumbai or many other cities of the developing world, negating that same convenience and worsening the quality of urban life (miles driven are expected to increase with a "robotaxi" system, according to one <a href="http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0968090X13002581">recent study</a>, and this may underestimate the number of transit riders, cyclists and pedestrians who switch to driverless taxis). If the number of taxis is limited, as in most cities in developed countries today, then this will partially negate the cost advantage of lacking a human driver and will certainly hinder convenience, illustrating again that this is as much an issue of restrictive licensing and geometry as it is technology. Arguments on behalf of robotaxis appear to assume that their numbers will not be limited by law.</li>
<li>In suburban and rural areas, sufficiently frequent robotaxi service may be difficult to provide, yet the cost of storing one's own personal vehicle will continue to be minimal or nonexistent while providing total convenience. Additionally, suburban errands often require multiple stops spread out over a large area due to car-based urban design, which will either require tiresome and inconvenient re-hiring of cars for each leg and practical difficulties with transferring purchased goods, or else cars will need to 1) park at each destination or 2) cruise around aimlessly while waiting, either of which would lessen certain of the the advantages over individually owned vehicles. </li>
</ul>
<div>
There is one other issue which I raise by way of a insightful quote from Neil Salmond's <a href="http://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2014/6/9/marginal-cost-of-transportation-robotaxis-and-sprawl-repair.html#.U7S9P_ldXFc">article on robotaxis</a>: "<i>Once you own a car - and so mentally discount the cost of insuring, maintaining, fuelling the car - then every trip looks free</i>." Although I agree with this, it also suggests a very difficult path toward weaning people off private car ownership. A privately-owned car is immensely versatile. It can handle short trips, medium-length trips and cross-country treks. It is always there and ready to go at a moment's notice, at times of high and low demand alike, with no questions asked. For many it is a personalized space as much as one's own bedroom or office, and doubles as a mobile storage unit. The opportunity cost of giving up all this "free" travel, and its associated comforts and conveniences, may therefore be much higher than might be suggested by a pure dollar-and-cents comparison. Further, once the car is owned, whether it be human-driven or not, the incentive to use a taxi system at all is much reduced for the very reason Neil describes. No matter how reasonable a robotaxi trip might be, it cannot beat the perception of "free."</div>
<ul>
</ul>
<div>
Whether or not robotaxis can succeed at large scale in American cities, there are a few areas where a privately-owned driverless car could provide an unmitigated social and economic good. For those unable to drive and without access to reliable transportation, such as young people or very elderly living in car-dependent areas, owning such a car could be a lifeline to mobility and independence. That would have the potential to remedy one of the greatest inequities of a car-based transportation system (though certainly not the only one). It's also tempting to imagine, as Neil suggests, driverless cars ferrying commuters to rail stations, and thereby opening commuter parking lots for redevelopment, and it's certainly possible, or even likely, that driverless cars could become the default ownership option. A cheaper, but non-revolutionary, taxi system might not be such a bad thing, especially for households that need access to a car but only rarely. And what of the implications of driverless buses, and driverless car sharing? As an incremental step that expands transportation options while lowering costs, it has promise.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
The vision of a fleet of driverless taxis completely supplanting car ownership, however, seems to encounter significant practical difficulties. Many vehicles on the road must remain individually owned in any event (such as vehicles serving a particular business). With the abundant free parking already prevalent in the United States, one of the greatest cost benefits of a taxi system — eliminating the need for costly local storage — is greatly lessened. In other countries or in certain US cities, this advantage might be more appreciable, but then, a city that is sufficiently dense will, or eventually will, offer alternative transportation options that do not require storage, either. In the case of this technology, only time will tell.</div>
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<div>
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------<br />
<br />
*<span style="font-size: x-small;">Let's consider that for a second. One <a href="http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0968090X13002581">study has estimated</a> that a fleet of driverless taxis could dramatically reduce car ownership, on the order of one driverless taxi replacing eleven owned vehicles. Given car ownership in the US of 800/1,000 population, this suggests a reduction in car numbers to only 72/1,000, or approximately the same number seen on the roads of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_vehicles_per_capita">Mongolia</a>.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: x-small;">Now, with the savings from not having 728 owned cars, at an average of $<a href="http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2014/05/09/aaa-says-cheaper-to-own-a-car/8861533/">8,800 per year per car</a>, a surplus of $6,400,000 per 1,000 population is generated, or approximately $90,000 per remaining car <i>just based on eliminating ownership</i>. Even if we generously assume $30,000 per year per car to account for gas, heavier maintenance and more frequent car replacement, that still leaves $60,000 for driver wages even before accounting for any per trip fees levied on riders. Even a modest fee of, say, $2 average per ride, could generate tens of thousands of additional dollars per year. In other words, replacing private car ownership looks, at least on a back-of-the-envelope calculation, like it would be financially feasible right now, not at some uncertain date in the future.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: x-small;">This still underestimates the savings, however, since by eliminating private car ownership, and turning the task of piloting cars over to professional drivers, we both eliminate the need for expensive parking minimums and may reduce the economic cost of crashes (estimated at <a href="http://urbanmilwaukee.com/2014/06/06/bike-czar-the-massive-cost-of-automobiles/">$871 billion each year nationwide</a>, or $900/person in economic losses).</span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: x-small;">Furthermore, such a network would presumably make many local bus systems obsolete or uneconomic (though probably not regional bus or rail systems), so that spending in these areas could be transferred to supporting a public network of taxis, offsetting the additional tax that would need to be levied to fund the system. Although the retention of human drivers creates a major added expense, drivers can be expected to perform some duties (refueling/recharging/basic cleaning and maintenance) that would otherwise need to be done by separate employees, and the human brain offers a proven technological fix to many of the difficulties still encountered by driverless cars.</span><br />
<br /></div>
Charlie Gardnerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07317335121565650040noreply@blogger.com20tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7394091530012769761.post-19483038449893142372014-06-01T13:38:00.000-04:002014-12-03T01:41:50.874-05:00The Problem with Schools and Housing SupplyIn an earlier <a href="http://oldurbanist.blogspot.com/2014/04/nyc-suburban-demographics-choice-or-fate.html">post</a>, I discussed how the population of young adults and young children is rapidly declining in the wealthy suburbs of New York City, a trend previously noted by the <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/17/nyregion/suburbs-try-to-hold-onto-young-adults-as-exodus-to-cities-appears-to-grow.html?_r=0">New York Times</a>. Although I alluded to high housing costs being an important factor in these changing trends, I failed to mention an absolutely crucial element that is driving much of the opposition to increasing housing supply: school funding. This factor is so important that is helps explain not only regional patterns in the New York area, but the NIMBY attitudes prevalent throughout much of the United States that have been so heavily covered in recent <a href="http://la.streetsblog.org/2014/04/28/urbanism-author-ben-ross-book-excerpt-and-l-a-event-tues-429/">books</a> and <a href="http://www.planetizen.com/node/67772">articles</a>.<br />
<br />
While it's often pointed out that the American system for education funding creates great disparities both between states and among school districts within states, what's less often noted is that the same locally-slanted funding system greatly contributes to and reinforces opposition to increasing housing supply. A glance at the particulars of the funding system makes it immediately obvious why this should be the case. Crunching the numbers for the city of Rye, in Westchester County, the Zoning Plan blog <a href="http://zoningplan.org/2013/04/20/case-study-32000-assessed-value-2-children/">estimates</a> that:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"Only a small percentage of households in Rye pay enough school taxes to cover the cost of two children in the RCSD. Even most large new homes do not pay enough taxes to pay for two students."</blockquote>
<br />
I can't vouch for the accuracy of these particular estimates, but there's no doubt that the typical state's funding system, which places around <a href="http://febp.newamerica.net/background-analysis/school-finance">44% of the cost of funding local schools</a> directly onto homeowners through local property taxes, punishes those jurisdictions that choose to increase their residential housing supply, and in particular the type of housing supply that is aimed at families with children.* The town that adds additional homes of this type has two basic options: either increase the tax burden on existing residents, with no improvement in the quality of education, or keep taxes constant while letting school quality decline.<br />
<br />
<div>
The quoted blog is particularly interesting in how it illustrates how opposition to demolition of smaller homes, and their replacement with so-called McMansions, is linked to concerns about school-related property taxes. The site puts its bluntly: "We don’t want to be told we can’t replace a three bedroom, senior-friendly ranch, with a five bedroom, family-friendly colonial, but then, why should neighbors pay more school taxes and endure class-overcrowding when [school] enrollment increases?"<br />
<br />
<div>
The blog suggests the common-sense solution of increasing the proportion of child-free households by constructing <a href="http://zoningplan.org/2012/10/20/cottages-the-key-to-lower-school-taxes/">much smaller single-family homes</a> to retain empty-nesters, something I've <a href="http://oldurbanist.blogspot.com/2014/03/housing-dreams-american-and-mexican.html">advocated</a> previously. In most American towns, however, and certainly in the elite suburbs of Westchester and Fairfield County, such a recommendation is likely to be met with intense hostility. Multifamily residential is even less welcome, and non-residential uses are feared as nuisances and traffic generators. Faced with the threat of larger homes bringing increased taxes and smaller homes portending decreased property values, the shrill NIMBY voice is raised against any project, large or small.* </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
The typical American system of local school funding appears to be unique in the world, or nearly so. As psychologist Robert Slavin <a href="http://www.ascd.org/publications/educational-leadership/may02/vol59/num08/Unequal-School-Funding-in-the-United-States.aspx">wrote</a> in 1999:</div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"To my knowledge, the U.S. is the only nation to fund elementary and secondary education based on local wealth. Other developed countries either equalize funding or provide extra funding for individuals or groups felt to need it. In the Netherlands, for example, national funding is provided to all schools based on the number of pupils enrolled ... ."</blockquote>
<div>
Canada's provinces maintained a roughly analogous funding system in the not-too-distant past, but <a href="http://www.americanprogress.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/HermanCanadaReport.pdf">educational reforms</a> in several provinces in the 1990s — notably in Ontario, British Columbia and Alberta — brought about a transition from joint local-provincial school funding systems to provincial-level systems. These changes also seem to have involved a shift in funding sources away from local property taxes and toward general tax revenue. In the case of Alberta, these reforms are reported to have enabled a reduction in residential education property taxes of 65%.<br />
<br />
The heavily localized school system in the United States long predated <i>Brown v. Board of Education</i> and school desegregation, but incentives for localization were greatly increased with the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milliken_v._Bradley"><i>Milliken v. Bradley</i></a> decision from 1974, which endorsed political balkanization of urban areas as a means of evading desegregation mandates. In combination with exclusionary zoning codes, which the court had approved nearly 50 years earlier, self-governing municipalities were given almost every imaginable enticement and ability to restrict increases in housing supply. Since good schools, no matter what their enrollment, are associated with higher property values, the incentive is to create the best possible schools for the fewest possible students.<br />
<br />
At worst, the result is an urban area composed of petty fiefdoms, each groaning under the weight of local property taxes and thus resistant to the arrival of any new families, but equally resistant to conceding any revenue or authority to higher-level governments. A handful of jurisdictions with legacy stocks of time-worn apartment rentals are made to absorb most of the region's low-income students, and with correspondingly lower levels of per-student funding. Is it any surprise that young families are deserting these areas in large numbers, as I showed was the case in Fairfield and Westchester Counties?<br />
<br />
Not every state has so localized a school system, however. In Fairfax County, Virginia (a state that doesn't lack for its own school funding problems and controversies), where schools are run at the county level, <a href="http://www.westchestermagazine.com/Westchester-Magazine/June-2010/Why-Are-Our-Taxes-So-High/">property taxes are half the level of Westchester</a>, achievement is comparable or higher, and the under-5 demographic, which is in freefall in Fairfield and Westchester despite overall population increase, is growing rapidly. Similarly, in Davidson County, TN, which merged with the city of Nashville 50 years ago, the 25-35 and under-5 populations have surged.<br />
<br /></div>
Westchester County school administrators <a href="http://www.westchestermagazine.com/Westchester-Magazine/June-2010/Why-Are-Our-Taxes-So-High/index.php?cparticle=2&siarticle=1#artanc">object</a> that the high cost of housing in the county requires higher teacher and staff salaries, but this too is partly a consequence of restricted residential supply. The attempt to exclude families in an effort to limit property taxes increase ends up inflating housing costs, and these increased costs are shifted back onto property taxes in the form of the increased employee salaries needed to account for the cost of living. Lately, cities have attempted to shift even this consequence onto the private sector by mandating inclusionary zoning for new development to provide for city employees (typically, law enforcement, firefighters and educators) unable to afford market prices, and doing so for purportedly altruistic reasons. However, when Darien, CT, attempted to limit its own inclusionary zoning program to so-called priority populations, including town employees, it <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/10/realestate/10wczo.html?_r=0">drew attention from the Department of Justice</a>.<br />
<br />
Policymakers haven't been blind to the perverse incentives created by localized school funding. Massachusetts' Chapter 40R, which creates <a href="http://www.mass.gov/hed/community/planning/chapter-40-r.html">incentives for towns to upzone residential land</a>, has companion legislation providing for additional funds for cities and towns that establish such upzoned districts to cover the costs of educating children who move into those same areas. Not that it has been successful in this end, at least as of a few years ago: according to a <a href="http://www.mapc.org/sites/default/files/Chapter_40R_Report.pdf">2009 study</a>, "[v]ery few districts approved to date allow construction of the type of housing (modest single family "starter" homes) that would be expected to trigger payments under [the law]." In addition, the charter school phenomenon, although far too complex a topic to delve into in any detail here, frequently involves direct state-level funding of charter schools.<br />
<br />
Even in Connecticut, the problem has long been known and obvious solutions proposed: a report from back in 2003 <a href="http://www.lwvweston.org/affordable.html">observed</a> that the state was "badly in need of regional and statewide revenue raising and land-use planning for long-term development." In Connecticut's case, as is the case for many states, this is a solution that is easier said than implemented.<br />
<br />
<div>
----------------------<br />
<br />
*It's an easy task to find quotes from city and state officials raising concerns with affordable housing programs on the basis that they attract young families with children, typically prefaced with the caveat that the legislator in question doesn't disapprove of children <i>per se</i>. A state representative from the <a href="http://www.lwvweston.org/affordable.html">town of Trumbull, in Connecticut</a>:, reacting to the effects of the state's affordable housing law (the notorious Section 8-30g): "The [affordable] developments tend to have children, and children are great. But the fiscal reality is that our schools have grown considerably. We've had to build a new school in part because of our increasing population. We would have had to have built it eventually, but that [affordable housing] sped that along."</div>
<div>
<br />
<div>
*This paranoid mindset, especially when paired with other latent biases and prejudices, can result in what I would term "NIMBY derangement syndrome," where otherwise reasonable and mild-mannered homeowners make shocking, hysterical and/or outrageous claims and allegations, usually against so-called "greedy" developers.</div>
</div>
Charlie Gardnerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07317335121565650040noreply@blogger.com5