Are Millennial Families Really Seeking a Car-Based Suburban Lifestyle?

A recent article 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.

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 William Alonso in the 1960s, 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 "favored quarter," 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.

Income distribution map of Dallas/Fort Worth by Bill Rankin.

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 abuse of the zoning power, at city-wide scale, has been the subject of a tremendous debate in recent years.

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.

In a post a while back, 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 National Community Preference survey, which continues to show that people highly value the single-family home and immediate, walkable convenience:

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 amplified for the millenial generation, with a particular emphasis on walkable neighborhoods.  Oversupplied, relative to preference, are the mostly residential suburb and 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 Gilmore Girls show, with its vaguely New Urbanist mix of houses and shops with quirky and eccentric independent proprietors immune from the long arm of Walmart:

Stars Hollow set, and also, I believe, for Hill Valley from Back to the Future.

The allegedly unrealistic image of the town in the show has been critiqued here, 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.

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 here) 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.

Tokyo neighborhood.

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 wrote two years ago:

"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.
....
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."

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 not 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 panoply of incentives the US tax code offers to those who would buy rather than rent.  Many other families with financially limited choice, shut out of suburban options by restrictive zoning and other exclusionary policies, must remain in urban areas regardless of their preferences.

Seen in this context, I do think the New Urbanism has tapped in to something important in the American psyche.  Only, as Nathan Lewis has written about, it has generally (but certainly not always!) 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 typical Connecticut small town 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.

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.

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 city codes.  This blog is intended as a sort of continuation of this new conversation using a slightly different vocabulary.   

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.

Single Family Zoning: It's All About the Lot Sizes

Contemporary 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.

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 floor area ratio 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.  

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:

This is Gerritsen Beach, 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 has shown, 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 Nassau County 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.

Beach neighborhoods seem to be popular settings for this type of design, as a similar (but slightly lower) density is present in Long Beach, California, 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):  

And here is Levittown 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.:  

The Levittown homes in their initial form, intended for the large families of the Baby Boom era, were actually somewhat smaller (800 sq. ft.) 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.

At the extreme is the ultra-low density of interior but non-rural New England, showing 2- and 3-acre lot zoning (here, in Easton, Connecticut), accompanied by wetlands regulations, with population density of around 260/square mile:

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.

In practice, however, American zoning does not take this approach, with the sole exception of mobile home parks (which I've discussed here).  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:

• Apparent aesthetic preference for large, widely space multifamily over densely packed single-family in multifamily zones.  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 code, 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.  
• Minimum street widths.  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.

The design differences produce some noticeable differences even at the very large scale.  The prefecture of Tokyo, 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.

A metro area of more comparable size to New York's, such as Kyoto-Osaka-Kobe, 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%).

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 wrote some years ago in response to critique from the Brookings Institute:

"I was even more surprised at the claim that I defend 'anti-density zoning and other forms of large lot protectionism.' Not so. 

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."

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 point often raised to incredulous reaction), 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 majority of its housing units are in multifamily structures (in the case of Seattle, at the link) only underscores the point.

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), one study 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:

"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." Lot Size, Zoning, and Household Preferences:Impediments to Smart Growth?

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 design detail -- 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.

Kentlands, with SFD lots from 5,600 to 2,600 sq. ft, and with ROWs ranging
from 45 ft. to 12 ft. on alleys.

Related posts: None of mine, but Nathan has written several great pieces on the topic which you can find at his website.

Demise of the Duplex

The 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 has plummeted 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.

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):

Triple deckers in Bridgeport, CT.

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 triple-decker, or three-decker, house.  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.

The vertical axis shows the number of  two  and three-family
structures sold over the past three years within the metro area.

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.

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 Urban Kchoze's Simon Vallee has recently explored).  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.

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 What Happened to the Three Decker, 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:

• 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.
• 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.
• 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.
• 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.
• 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.

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 article on Worcester's three-deckers puts it, "to look at a three-decker means ... 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."  

Bridgeport, CT rent map showing lowest rents in duplex/
triple decker belt between downtown and outlying
single-family neighborhoods.  From Trulia.

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.

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.  

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 New Urbanist revival of the so-called "granny flat" (a concept which goes by countless names, but never "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 single-family houses continue to undergo illegal conversion to multifamily use, 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. 

Hope VI and Public Housing: The More Things Change...

Stephen Smith has posted a perceptive article critiquing the design of contemporary public housing projects.  The story of public housing over the last 20 years is largely the story of the Hope VI program, which was adopted by Congress in the early 1990s to provide a source of federal funding for rehabilitating, and even more so demolishing and rebuilding, distressed public housing.  Accompanying the new funding initiative was a new design philosophy: HUD secretary Henry Cisneros embraced the principles of the Charter of the New Urbanism the mid 1990s, reflecting a change in course from the tower-in-the-park design principles which had prevailed for many decades. 

This was not an empty gesture, as a vaguely New Urbanist design approach came to be reflected in dozens of Hope VI projects built over the ensuing fifteen years.  But just how new was this approach, really?  A close examination of justifications given for the projects themselves reveals certain overriding concerns, which for those familiar with the history of urban planning in the 20th century may seem familiar, but which have little do with New Urbanist principles.

A concrete example might help illustrate the point.  The project I'm most familiar with is the recent Hope VI redevelopment of Nashville's J. Henry Hale Homes, a project that was typical of the low-rise public housing constructed in Nashville during the 1950s.  Although the original project was demolished around 2006, Google earth shows it as it existed before:

The buildings shown are all two-story structures.  The planning principles at work in creating such a development were perhaps not as careless and insensitive as they're sometimes made out to be:

"...[W]ith houses and gardens in compact groups ... there can be playgrounds for different age-groups and parks and perhaps even a community center, instead of dead chasms between houses and acres of unnecessary pavement in streets, sidewalks and alleys. The whole neighborhood may be just one super-block, which means complete play safety for the children and clean, quiet green surroundings and outlook for all the houses. For access to the houses there may be small dead-end streets. Garages and parking spaces are conveniently located at the nearby street-front. The house itself, shallow and never more than two rooms deep, has sun in every room and far more real privacy than an 'individual' house on a narrow lot."    -Catherine Bauer, A Citizen's Guide to Public Housing (1940).

This is hardly traditional urbanism, but there is a clear acknowledgement here of the problems of welcoming the automobile into the heart of a residential environment, as well as a backlash against the repetitive, amenity-poor process of speculative lot subdivision that had characterized the seven decades or so preceding 1940.  The development relegates the handful of parking lots in groups to the fringes of the development, or to dead-end access ways.  The few auto streets are quite narrow and naturally control speed with T-intersections and sharp turns.  Far more numerous are the narrow pedestrian paths linking the housing units to the streets and to the two large park areas within the project.  Overall, it is a pedestrian-focused environment, with a balance of built space, streets and park space reminiscent of a college campus. 

For reasons that have been hotly debated, this project, like many others, quickly degenerated into a focal point for crime and poverty. Was it the fault of its design?  Nashville's director of the Metro Development and Housing Agency, Phil Ryan, thinks so:

“Part of the problem with public housing in the U.S. is overly dense housing that’s unappealing and unattractive,” Ryan explained. “The extreme density has created a bad environment for people. ... We think a beautiful mixed-income neighborhood is a net gain for low-income people versus an overly dense, traditional 60-year-old housing development,” Ryan said.

Does this sound at all familiar to the claims of the early 20th century Progressive housing reformers?  It's a position Jacob Riis would have applauded, and which Lewis Mumford might have endorsed.  The key elements might be summarized as environmental determinism, or belief that one's built surroundings influence social behavior, and out of that thinking a belief that decongestion, or a dispersal of population, is the best means of positively influencing behavior -- among a certain segment of the population anyways.  (At least, the Nashville planners, to my knowledge, have never criticized nearby high-end condominium developments for being "overly dense.")   These are not mere idle words, on this project (see below) or others, as a net loss of housing units is characteristic of the entire Hope VI program.

In any event, here is the new project, developed with $20 million in federal Hope VI funding:

A comparison of the projects reveals the following changes:

Is $20 million dollars for a loss of 255 housing units a good use of taxpayer money, one could ask, even if the new units are of higher quality?   Long-term maintenance liabilities have presumably increased as well, with the total paved surface increasing from 7% to 30% to serve less than half the number of units.  And of the new street grid, that presumably New Urbanist-inspired addition?  Does this automobile connectivity serve any purpose in the absence of the mixed uses that New Urbanism advocates but which are absent here, or have Catherine Bauer's "acres of unnecessary pavement" simply reappeared?

The streets have been dramatically widened, flattened and straightened, as well, which has necessitated the placement of speed bumps throughout the project:

And although an article touting the project refers to it as "a neighborhood with real front and backyards, green space and duplex homes," not only has green space been reduced and identifiable parks nearly eliminated, the homes do not, in fact, have backyards:

Front yards do exist, though, with thoughtfully-located utility boxes.  Brick is reserved only for the facades, or rather parts of the facades:

I'll let the reader compare the design and aesthetics of these homes to those of the nearby Andrew Jackson Courts, public housing built some 15 years before the original J. Henry Hale homes:

With this design-focused analysis I won't delve into the city's motives, why it might have wanted to dramatically reduce density in existing public housing projects, or whether the city planners truthfully believed their own pronouncements on density.  The project did "succeed" at largely replacing the population in the project, and there is evidence that tenant management, one the key elements of the relative success of New York's public housing, is now given greater attention. 

From a planning perspective, though, is it possible to argue that this new design approach is always an improvement over the public housing of the 1950s?  Even some of the most sensitively-designed developments replacing notorious projects, such as the redevelopment of the Robert Taylor Homes in Chicago, show a similar emphasis on wide streets, low building footprints, large parking areas and residual "green space."  Perhaps the design philosophy underlying these redevelopments has not changed quite as much as one might think.

Last Look At Seaside

After reading Bruce Richards' comment on the previous Seaside post,  I returned to the town on my last day in Florida and took a closer look at some of the "Krier lanes," the narrow footpaths running behind and between the houses of Seaside which apparently double as utility easements.  Only by walking these paths can one appreciate some of the more subtle design decisions made by the town planners.

What I found interesting to note is not only the frequency of accessory houses, but the presence of four lots (in the center of the image at right, although there are several others in the town) of typical Seaside dimensions of 50'x100' which have each been subdivided into two 50'x50' lots, a size very close to that which Nathan Lewis has suggested for a dense neighborhood of single-family detached homes. 

The only access to these lots, as with the accessory houses, is by the lanes.  Despite the small size of the lots, the houses are quite ample:

The house to the left in the top photo is, I believe, this one, a 1,400 square foot house with 550 square feet of porch space.  The address is given as Savannah Street, one of the wide, brick-paved streets, yet the only direct access is by the paths. 

A city of residential lots of this average size, using a distance between houses the same as that in the lower photo (about 16') for rights-of-way, and with short and narrow blocks of 300'x100', would attain a density of over 9,100 units/square mile, or, using the American average of 2.59 persons per household, around 24,000 people per square mile.  A few wider streets would be needed at intervals, but they should not alter this outcome greatly.  A real life example is Nathan Lewis' own Tokyo suburb of Seijo, which he's used to familiarize us with the neglected area of Japanese urbanism:

The Seijo street view, with a remarkably Seaside-like house on the left:

Or, at right, consider an entire neighborhood built along these lines.  This is a development at the fringes of Tokyo -- just a bit further west steep mountains quickly rise up.  It also happens to be about 70 acres, very close to Seaside's 80.  Even the street network is vaguely similar, yet density is about 25% higher.  It's not necessarily a model to be copied, but it does show what could be accomplished using the basic 50'x50' lot that Seaside pioneered along with 16' streets.  To densify further, while retaining a single-family detached form, subtract half or so of the 50'x50' lots and replace them with the "accessory dwellings" that are abundant at Seaside, and which, under separate ownership, can fit on their own 20'x25' lots:

These cottages offer around 500-800 square feet, not much different from the "micro homes" currently being built in Portland that commenter Vince has mentioned. 

The promise offered by these common sense innovations at Seaside unfortunately has not carried over into most New Urbanist developments.  At Kentlands, for instance, although many individual houses can fit within a 50'x50' lot, a rear yard of equal size has typically been reserved for a detached garage, an issue I've talked about before.  But the lessons of Seaside are there for anyone willing to look a little closer at the remarkable planning that went into it.

For more on these issues, I strongly recommend reading Nathan Lewis' site if you haven't discovered it already:

• How To Make a Pile of Dough with the Traditional City 5: The New New Suburbanism
• How To Make A Pile of Dough With the Traditional City 4: More SFDR/SFAR Solutions
• How to Make a Pile of Dough with the Traditional City 3: Single Family Detached in the Traditional City Style

Yours truly enjoying a beverage and a good book in Seaside
after a day exploring the town.

Alys Beach: The New Urbanism Samples the Old

Throughout the week, I'll be making the most of a trip to the Florida coast to post on several of the New Urbanist towns and developments in the area from an 'Old Urbanist' perspective. Today's piece, the third and final, examines Alys Beach.

Alys Beach, even in its current embryonic form, is the most promising New Urbanist project of the three I've visited over the past week.  Promising, in that it discards the New Urbanism's 19th century American small town planning model in favor of an unapologetically traditional format, at least in part, and has the potential to show the way forward for subsequent developments.  However, the issue of cars and parking -- the planning challenge of the day -- remains in flux, and it's not clear whether Alys Beach has made much of an advancement in that key area.

Courtyard townhouse under construction: The exterior
walls consist of concrete blocks which are filled with
rebar and solid mortar.

The project is the newest of the group, having been designed in 2003.  In a difficult economic climate, less than 20 percent of all lots have been sold, with even fewer homes actually built.  The developer (Birmingham-based EBSCO) has limited initial sales to a third of the project area and has engaged in very little speculative building.  Homes are largely custom built by purchasers of individual parcels.  With so little completed, there wasn't much to photograph, but enough has been constructed that it's possible to extrapolate the built areas to the remainder of the development.  Encouragingly, several homes were under construction at the time I visited.

The description of designer DPZ focuses mainly on architecture rather than urban form:

"In the tradition of nearby Seaside and Rosemary Beach, Alys Beach will be a model resort town-- a place where the best concepts in town planning are applied to create an ideal urban experience in harmony with nature. ... Seeking to achieve an overall feeling of calm and simplicity for the town, the design team turned to a number of sources for inspiration. A trip to Bermuda led to the discovery of the perfect architectural style for the project. The simple volumes of whitewashed masonry and stucco typical of the style possess an uncomplicated, organic beauty. Buildings are grouped into small compounds and unified by perimeter walls, which are higher and more formal in the urban zones, lower and more rustic in the rural areas. The Bermuda style is combined with a patio house type that originated in Antigua and a courtyard building type that came from California."

The courtyard house is a traditional form, and the streetscape that results from these attached U-shaped dwellings is one which is unmistakably traditional as well:

There are several elements here which are unprecedented, or nearly so, for the New Urbanism.  The exclusive use of attached residential dwellings -- of an outstanding quality -- is one. The flush street surface, with no sidewalk or lane differentiation, is entirely for the person on foot (promotional materials show children biking down a similar street, but when I tried to do the same it somehow did not feel appropriate -- the natural urge, reinforced by the level of architectural detail and glimpses into interior courtyards, is to walk the bike).  The "subtle mechanical order" of Seaside and Rosemary Beach is avoided by a gradual widening of the street as it leaves a public square and by a use of a fina-like design concept in which buildings extend outdoor stairways, window shutters and large planters two or three feet into the right of way.  The street, less than 30 feet at its widest point (lower image) narrows to under 20 (upper image).  The combined effect is entirely traditional, and the resulting streetscape 100% "place," even if it could stand to be narrowed just a bit more.

To observe how Alys Beach deals with the automobile, take a turn down a narrow lane leading off the street in the above photos (an appropriate width for the two-story courtyard format):

At the end of this lane, behind the courtyard homes, we encounter ... a parking lot, complete with nature band-aids, to borrow the terminology of James Howard Kunstler:

Turning left to face the lot:

It's an unusually nice parking lot, but a parking lot nonetheless, making car storage more prominent than at either Rosemary Beach or Seaside.  There appear to be at least two spaces provided for each courtyard house.  These common lots are a fundamental design element of the Alys Beach plan, appearing below as the tree-dotted areas. 

In this plan, we see that there are actually three different types of street: the pedestrian street, vehicular ways with raised sidewalks, and the paths leading between and around the network of parking lots.  Only half of the courtyard homes open onto pedestrian ways, while two thirds of the street network is primarily or exclusively for the car, a proportion similar or greater than at Rosemary Beach. 

An example of one of the vehicular streets is below, showing a 30-foot right-of-way:

The building lots in this area have a refreshing variety that characterizes the development as a whole, with dimensions including 60'x50', 30'x80' and ranging up to 40'x110'.  Zero lot line designs are the norm.  On the narrowest lots, suggested designs show a large townhouse, abutting the street, separated from a loft unit at the rear of the lot by a spacious courtyard (the photo shows such a design).  Unlike the mini-cottages of Seaside or the granny flats of Rosemary Beach, these loft units will not be available for separate rental, according to the sales office.  One doubts how much use they are likely to receive.

The area immediately adjacent to the beach incorporates a somewhat more irregular, if not organic, plan, and it turns out this area was not actually designed by DPZ, but by Porphyrios Associates,  the firm of classicist Demetri Porphyrios:

In this area, lots sizes are as small as 30'x40', yet the insistence on providing two parking places per unit prevails even here, in the form of on-site parking rather than common lots.  The overall plan provides for increasing lot sizes away from the beach, but it's not clear if this distribution actually reflects market demand since -- as the very helpful realtor at the sales office informed me -- subdividing lots will not be permitted.  The smallest lots seem undersupplied, while the 40'x110' lots, offered at such high prices, look like strong candidates for partition.  The designer explains that the distribution of lot sizes is attributable to the "urban-to-rural transect," yet the practical effect is to flatten the price distribution for lots, compensating for lower land values farther from the beach by setting larger minimum lot sizes. 

One final point: like Rosemary Beach, Alys Beach shies away from embracing Highway 30A, adding large landscaped buffers with blocking hedges and broad bike paths and/or access roads which are nearly as wide as 30A itself.  At 120 feet between facing buildings, the gap is not quite as large as at Rosemary Beach, but given the modest and traditional scale of the pedestrian paths and elegant buildings, the contrast is even more jarring.  Although traffic noise from the road was a design concern here, the effect of drawing back from 30A in this manner will be to encourage higher traffic speeds, partially negating the intended benefits of the setback.

Despite quibbles with street layouts and lot dimensions, Alys Beach appears to be a true breakthrough for the New Urbanism.  The architecture hits a high note of elegant simplicity, the pattern of attached courtyard dwellings is a welcome change, and the presence of narrow, pedestrian-centric streets shows a confident embrace of traditional urbanism.  One nagging concern, though, is whether this community represents a turning point in design, or is simply a magnificent one-off, the product of a particular architectural vision that is unlikely to be repeated.

The issue of cars and parking, though, needs some creative rethinking.  In a community envisoned as "a place where our feet will take us where we want to go," as the Alys Beach exhibit proclaims, surely the designers imagined feet taking residents elsewhere than the driver's side door of a conveniently-parked SUV.  Nathan Lewis in previous comments suggested the idea of a single parking garage at the edge of the community from which residents could proceed on foot, bike or golf cart -- an approach which has been implemented in other resort towns, and which is especially feasible in Florida's mild climate.  Seaside's founder Robert Davis suggested valet parking some years ago to deal with a crush of cars there.  There are many potential alternatives, but a community explicitly designed around walking, the notion of prioritizing access to the car above all else must be reconsidered. 

That about wraps up my look at these three fascinating communities on the Florida panhandle.  Thanks for reading! 

The Successor: Rosemary Beach

 Throughout the week, I'll be making the most of a trip to the Florida coast to post on several of the New Urbanist towns and developments in the area from an 'Old Urbanist' perspective. Today's piece examines Rosemary Beach.

Rosemary Beach's origin dates to 1995, a time when the New Urbanism was in rapid ascendance.  The Congress for the New Urbanism had been formed two years before, Seaside and Kentlands had already enjoyed great success, and as real estate began to enter its 10-year boom period work was abundant.  Given the chance to design another coastal Florida town, DPZ might have simply copied Seaside's successful formula, but as the designers themselves explain, they chose not to:     

"Fifteen years after the design of Seaside, Duany Plater-Zyberk & Company was given the opportunity to return to the Florida Panhandle to create another new neighborhood on Scenic Highway 30-A. A New York-based investment firm had purchased a 52-acre property just seven miles east of Seaside, hoping to reproduce that project’s success. Given this objective, the clear mandate was to differ from that earlier model as little as possible. However, the opportunity to revisit the concept of the coastal resort town after fifteen years of experience allowed the design team to apply techniques that distinguish Rosemary Beach from Seaside in several fundamental ways. ...

Since most residents of Seaside use their cars rarely, the plan of Rosemary Beach introduces a rear alley system so that cars can be parked in garages that are not visible from the street. About half of these garages are topped by granny flats, small apartments that can be rented out to help finance the construction of the main house. The presence of alleys also means that not every house needs street access at the front, allowing many of the smaller streets to be replaced by boardwalks. The wooden boardwalks, inspired by northern seaside towns like Fire Island, allow direct pedestrian to access the beach and bring the beach experience deep into the plan. Two public squares on the southern boundary further focus the neighborhood’s activity on the ocean."

So right away we have a fundamental reconfiguration of the street network -- or do we?  In fact, both Seaside and Rosemary Beach share the same pattern of having a paved street on one side of homes, and a pedestrian path on the other, as can be seen by comparing the photos below with those from Tuesday's post:

"Back" and ...

... "Front."

So perhaps no "alley" has been introduced after all. Only the names have been changed.  The logic of the decision to add garages is a bit obscure: because cars are used rarely, does it follow that large and expensive garages should be built to accommodate them?

The garage-facing side with its 30-foot wide flush road surface and lack of green space presents a far more traditional urban appearance than the side that has now been designated the front, yet the designer does not appear to consider this a virtue, noting approvingly that the garages "are not visible from the street," in spite of the fact that we've just been told that in many cases there are no streets, only boardwalks.  Still, the arrival of the garages has, intentionally or not, created a traditionalist feel distinctively different from that of Seaside along certain of the so-called alleys, albeit one which depends heavily on the existence of homes above the garage to enliven and humanize the space.

The suggestion that the boardwalks were inspired by Fire Island is intriguing.  Let's take a quick look at Fire Island's plan:

Do you notice anything unusual here?  Access to Fire Island homes is only by boardwalks and pedestrian paths for a very simple reason, as the Fire Island website explains:

"There are no paved roads on Fire Island and only service and emergency vehicles are allowed on the island. Free of cars, traffic, pollution, and noise Fire Island offers a peaceful getaway unlike any other vacation destination. ... Walking, biking, and golf-carting are the modes of transportation and help to preserve our island’s natural beauty."

Here is a Fire Island "street," "alley," call it what you will:

Flickr/Joe Shlabotnik

Now, like Rosemary Beach and Seaside, Fire Island is largely a vacation getaway, but one which accommodates over four thousand housing units containing a summer population in the tens of thousands, all without cars!  Could that be a viable planning model?  The design statement for Rosemary Beach shows, I think, the ambiguous role of cars in New Urbanist projects.  It is understood that cars are not an asset to the development and the feel of the community, yet they are guiding fundamental design choices.  The mode of accommodation changes, but this unresolved design tension persists.  The car-free option remains unexplored despite its obvious viability in the context of vacation destinations.

Moving on: here is the main commercial corridor of Rosemary Beach:

The architecture is of an outstanding quality, even exceeding the standard set at Seaside.  Each building shows a meticulous attention to detail and proportion in every part, and in its relationship to its neighbors (complaints about New Urbanist developments such as these often point to the alleged "fakeness" of the architecture, as though use of historicist elements and detail were somehow insincere.  I reject these arguments completely -- architectural beauty is not only a legitimate but highly important end, no matter how or through use of what styles it might be achieved).  There is a wonderful lack of large surface lots or garage parking -- a tremendous improvement over almost any other development in the surrounding area.  Notice again, though, two features of the design that have been seen before in Seaside: an excessive width of the street, and a reappearance of Christopher Alexander's "subtle mechanical character" in that the street, although angled NE/SW in defiance of a strict orthogonal plan, is perfectly straight, and of a regular width along its length.

The streets of Rosemary Beach do bend a bit more than those in Seaside, however.  The overall plan has a pleasing asymmetry, yet the surveyor's aesthetic is still evident here.  The 19th century pattern of large-scale, attached commercial buildings and detached single family homes persists, although in an extraordinary architectural form that is a delight to explore and take in.

A final point concerns the drastic difference in the way Rosemary Beach and Seaside incorporate Highway 30A (which both towns span) into their designs.  At Seaside, establishments are set back only 15-20 feet from 30A, which, despite its name, is only a 22-foot wide roadway with no shoulders.  Seaside does not shy away from this road, but encroaches upon it and tames it, inducing drivers to slow naturally in response to pedestrian activity.  Rosemary Beach, on the other hand, drops everything and runs away:

At the right hand side is the 22-foot wide 30A, appearing wider due to gigantic turning areas.  Grass buffers extend for 20 feet on either side, followed by ten-foot bike paths, and then another 35 feet of grass for a grand total of 150 feet of sun-baked open ground between buildings at the narrowest point.  On either side, the grassy buffers widen, creating a yawning gap of over 200 feet.  There is no shade at the crosswalk.  At high noon, the feel is of a no man's land, and I saw very few people bold enough to attempt this crossing on foot.

Why Rosemary Beach chose to abandon Seaside's approach and turned its back on this humble state road as though it were the Cross Bronx Expressway, I don't know.  But it need not remain that way -- a solution is as easy as constructing additional homes and shops to link the existing areas north and south of the road.

Overall, Rosemary Beach feels like a place torn in two directions: between a traditionalist European village and a 19th century American resort town with its boardwalks and scrub plants, and between excluding and indulging the automobile.  The clash produces an interesting, if not entirely harmonious, result.  In terms of creating a consistent style and successfully integrating the automobile, Seaside comes out on top -- which is not so much a critique of Rosemary as a compliment of Seaside.

In the next post I'll take a look at the third and latest of DPZ's towns along the coastline -- Alys Beach.