My laptop is temporarily out of commission. Posting will be light for a few days until I can get that fixed.
Monthly Archives: September 2009
Suburban Regulation
Photo by millicent bystander
Over the past week or so, there’s been a great deal of words blogged amongst various econobloggers on suburban subsidies, regulations, built form, etc. Are they the product of market demand, and thus an accurate gauge of the preferences we have for urban design? Why do libertarians not take on these subsidies and distortions in the market, when they clearly have an enormous impact in what we build and how we get around?
Didn’t we just have this libertarian-vs-urbanist discussion as it related to high speed rail?
Ryan Avent pointed to a bizarre post from Bryan Caplan, where Caplan proffers that zoning restrictions against mixed use were somehow pro-urban. Ryan managed to get Tyler Cowen’s attention, if not change his mind. Ryan has other posts on the subject, too – and there are many more, but I can’t even keep track of them all.
Throughout the entire discussion, it became increasingly clear to me that no one was being very precise in what they mean by ‘suburb.’ Indeed, the word itself is so broad that it can’t have too precise of a meaning – yet at the same time, I think most of us know a suburb when we see one.
Some refer to suburbs by jurisdiction – but this isn’t particularly accurate. Some parts of DC are essentially old streetcar suburbs. Likewise, parts of suburban jurisdictions have distinct pockets of urban form (Silver Spring, Bethesda, etc.), and many jurisdictions are so large and varied that defining them with one word is a exercise in futility (how would you characterize Montgomery County – it has urban, rural, and everything in between).
When speaking of what makes great urban places, we talk about Density, Diversity, and Design. In evaluating whether a place is ‘suburban’ or not (or more accurately, what kind of suburb we’re talking about), it makes more sense to look at form rather than jurisdiction.
Ryan Avent gets to the heart of the matter:
At the heart of many of Tyler’s posts are questions about what drove the growth of the suburbs. This is a question that really must be framed appropriately to make sense.
If one refers to suburbs as development outside the traditional or center city, then suburbs have basically been around as long as cities. Some share of population growth has always been accommodated by development at the urban fringe. Development of new transportation technologies changed the pace and the form of suburban developments over time, as did the increase in population growth associated with industrial development. But outward growth is a natural part of urban development.
When we talk about the phenomenon of rapid suburban growth in America, we’re largely asking questions about why that growth took a particular form and why that growth coincided with decline in center cities. Obviously, new suburban growth forms were largely a function of the automobile, but that’s not the end of the story. Specific choices were made to accommodate the automobile in various ways, and those choices affected decisions at the margins, and given the importance of feedback loops in urban settings these choices were potentially quite powerful in certain circumstances.
Simply viewing suburbs as the natural outward extension of the city isn’t a sufficient analytical framework. It addresses location, but not density, diversity, or design. Indeed, many older streetcar suburbs would be considered urban today, certainly within the purview of what New Urbanists often seek to create.
The Three D’s, the factors important to urban/suburban form (not just location), have been highly regulated and influenced by specific policy choices. Matt Yglesias captures this idea with a rhetorical question:
Maybe us urbanists are wrong, and even though it seems to be the case that suburban sprawl in the United States is systematically supported by a series of direct and indirect subsidies and regulatory mandates that it secretly also reflects underlying market preference and it’s all just some kind of giant coincidence. But why can’t we try to put this proposition to the test?
Indeed. Why can’t we?
Pledge Your Support
Car Free DC is coming up next week – Tuesday, September 22, 2009. Sign up, pledge to go car free or car-lite. Also, come on down to the street celebration between 11am and 3pm on the 22nd – the street celebration will be happening outside of the Portrait Gallery and the Verizon Center at 7th and F streets NW.
What is Car Free Day, you ask?
Car Free Day is an international event celebrated every September 22nd in which people are encouraged to get around without their car – highlighting transit, bicycling, walking and all alternative modes of transportation. By taking a fair number of cars off the roads people who live and work there are given a chance to consider how their neighborhood might look and work with a lot fewer cars. Click here for more information about World Car Free Day.
Washington celebrated Car Free Day for the first time in 2007 with about 1,000 District residents committing to be car free for the day. Last year, Car Free Day expanded to the entire Washington Metropolitan Area, and 5,445 residents throughout the region pledged to be car free. This year we hope even more drivers throughout the region will leave their cars at home or go “car lite” by sharing a ride to work. By taking the Car Free Challenge, participants not only help to improve air quality, save money, and reduce their carbon footprint, but also get a chance to win great prizes at the event.
Come on out next Tuesday.
Waterfront Precedents
SW Waterfront. By M.V. Jantzen
Following up on discussion on having the Anacostia emulate Paris, I thought it would be nice to look at some precedents of urban rivers in other places. The idea that bothered me the most was the notion that narrowing the Anacostia’s channel by half would be no big deal to the river’s ecology.
Encouraging good urban waterfronts is a fantastic idea, but I fail to see why replicating Paris is necessary. Surely, the great density of bridges in Paris is a nice condition and helps connectivity, but there are plenty of other urban rivers to draw from as well (not to mention ‘one-sided’ urban waterfronts that face oceans, bays, or lakes where bridges won’t do you any good).
Not all of these are applicable to the Anacostia, but I thought it would be a cool exercise to see what’s out there. Also, it’s worth noting that you can have successful urban rivers with wide channels. I don’t mean for this to be extensive or exhaustive by any means, just showing what can be done (and by extension, how far we have to go in DC).
Chicago
Width: ~300 feet
The Chicago River surely isn’t a paradigm of environmental purity. Engineering projects reversed the river’s flow so that Chicago’s sewage and waste flowed away from Lake Michigan (and the city’s water supply), not into it. It’s perhaps one of the most ‘urban’ rivers in the world, flanked by massive skyscrapers and the double-decker Wacker Drive. Numerous bascule lift bridges cross the river, making it seem as if the river barely interrupts Chicago’s grid.
Picture from Wikipedia:
Pictures from the Author:
From the El, crossing the river on the Wells St Bridge:
Shanghai – The Bund
Width: ~1300 feet
Shanghai features a river on a scale more similar to the Anacostia. Though the Huangpu River isn’t all silted up like the Anacostia and still sees substantial ship traffic, it’s nevertheless a similar width. Shanghai features significant urbanism on both sides of the river, even without the frequent crossings. On the western shore is The Bund, featuring Shanghai’s colonial architecture, while the eastern side shows off the new skyscrapers of Pudong.
Photo from Wiki:
You don’t need to narrow the river in order to have an urban river condition.
Pudong, viewed from the Bund (wikipedia):
London
Width: ~1000 feet
Another river on a similar scale to the Anacostia, the Thames shows what you can do to integrate a wide river in an urban setting. Though bridges aren’t as frequent as Paris, the core of London still has several of them crossing the Thames, as well as numerous underground transit connections.
Wiki image from the Tower Bridge:
Paris
Seine
Width: ~500 feet
Nir Buras’ ideal for the Anacostia, despite the fact that it’s twice as narrow as the existing river. Nevertheless, there are great lessons for how the city interfaces with the river.
Wiki photo:
This is the basic design Buras is proposing – a lower level walkway that allows pedestrians to interact with the water, allows boats to dock, etc. The wall to the right would serve as a flood wall, and the remainder of the city’s grid and functions would sit on that higher plane. Much of Chicago’s river features similar differences in elevation, if not the charming walkways of Paris.
A Parisian Anacostia
Yesterday, Kojo Nnamdi hosted classical architect Nir Buras on his show, talking about (among other things) narrowing and urbanizing the Anacostia River so it more resembles the Seine‘s course through Paris. Such a massive public works undertaking would be under the guise of a new iteration of the L’Enfant and MacMillan plans for the city.
Buras hit on a wide variety of topics – some of which I agree with, some I do not, and some that raise serious concerns about his ideas. They include the interface between city and water, hydrology and flooding, the supposed superiority of classical design, and a desire to make everything revolve around Paris.
- Some bloggers have already chimed in – And Now, Anacostia, JD Hammond, Selophane
- Nir Buras’ lecture notes on the subject
Thoughts on the various topics:
Urban Waterfronts
Buras is certainly correct in noting that DC’s waterfronts are woefully underutilized. I know I’ve had those thoughts myself, and think there are many opportunities on the shores of the Anacostia to help the city engage the water that flows through it. We see some good examples of this here and there within the region – Georgetown’s waterfront, Alexandria’s waterfront, and even the SW DC waterfront (something’s just fun about grabbing a beer at Cantina Marina). Still, there’s a far greater opportunity that we’ve missed. Given the pending redevelopment of Poplar Point, this condition is poised to change in the relatively near future.
The problem with Mr. Buras’ idea is that he’s promoting Paris as the ideal, when he admittedly notes the dimensions of the Anacostia are more similar to the Thames in London. He specifically calls to narrow the river from ~1000 feet wide to ~500 feet wide. Instead of making the urban design meet the natural conditions of the land (as L’Enfant did so well, siting the Capitol atop Jenkins Hill, keeping his grid within the relatively flat plain below the fall line, etc). Similarly, he dismisses Amsterdam and Venice as problematic for engineering reasons.
Having the city meet the water is a great idea. Re-creating Paris is a solution looking for a problem.
Transportation
Buras mentions the Anacostia serving as a barrier – and rightfully notes the barriers also imposed by both the SE/SW freeway and 295 – yet this major infrastructural idea gets little treatment from Buras compared to the idea of narrowing the river channel. In my mind, removal of the freeway is a far more important decision, yet it’s not nearly the sexy idea.
Ecology and Hydrology
JD Hammond summed it up succinctly: “I do worry about flooding.” So do I. I’m no hydrologist, but some of Buras’ answer to astute questions from callers don’t leave me with a lot of confidence that he’s fully assessed the impacts of such a decision. One points out the damage done to New Orleans by Hurricane Katrina, particularly noting how man’s manipulation of the Mississippi River and various wetlands didn’t help that city – it hurt it. Man’s engineering can’t replicate nature. JD Hammond emphasizes this point as well, looking to Los Angeles and the concrete gutters that serve as rivers.
The other thing is that I can’t quite tell exactly where Mr. Buras proposes to narrow the river. Presumably, he’s talking about the region between the confluence with the Potomac and the area around RFK Stadium – any further upstream, and the river is quickly surrounded by both the National Arboretum and the Kenilworth Aquatic Gardens – trying to force the river into an urban condition amongst such natural parks is boneheaded.
Classical Architecture
Perhaps the most tedious bit of Buras’ talk was the rambling was his talk on the superiority of classical design. For one, conflating classical aesthetics and architecture with good urban design is annoying. I’ve got nothing against classical architecture, but I happen to rather like modern architecture as well. I’m far more interested in good design, regardless of the style it fits into. As it relates to the city, I’m more interested in how those buildings fit into and function within an urban environment.
Holistic Understanding
I find it curious that Buras talks of having a holistic understanding of architecture and urbanism, while the hydrology of his proposal shows a profound lack of any sort of holistic understanding of water systems and their intricate feedback mechanisms.
All in All…
Buras raises an intriguing idea. I certainly support the idea of crafting a new vision for DC, guiding it as the city’s previous plans have done. I appreciate the fact that Buras is focused on the city, not just the Federal elements (as some other plan proponents have done). I absolutely embrace the desire to have DC interface with her rivers and waterways in a far more productive and beneficial fashion.
However, the focus on classical design (to the point of exclusion, it seems, of all else) troubles me. Likewise, the details of the plan that were the focus of the Kojo interview (narrowing the river by half) look to be an attempt to force Paris upon DC. Also, the lack of concern over the hydrologic impacts is both troubling and a step in the wrong direction – as we embrace sustainability in terms of design, we should apply what we’ve learned about rivers and their ecosystems rather than just throw up something that looks good.
There needs to be more to a plan than just good-looking classical design elements.
Miscellany
Basic Training
The Tsarchitect had a great reminder on the importance of the basics today – linking to a video from William Whyte, from a video version of his great work, the Social Life of Small Urban Spaces.
Part 1:
The remaining sections of the video are available here: (one – two – three – four – five – six)
I hadn’t watched the video since graduate school – thanks for the reminder. It’s well worth a viewing.
NCPC Items
A couple of items related to the National Capital Planning Commission:
JDLand had an item a while back about their largely favorable reaction to the 11th Street Bridges project – with the exception of the streetcars, of course.
However, they are not at all happy with DDOT’s decision to choose a streetcar system with overhead wires, and the document goes into detail on how this works against federal interests, as well as listing what non-overhead-wire streetcar options exist out there (none in the US so far). Their conclusions (page 22):
“Recommends that DDOT not include streetcar system components for overhead wires as part of the 11th Street Bridge project and that DDOT prepare an environmental impact statement for its proposed District wide streetcar system that examines potential impacts on the L’Enfant City and Georgetown and that includes an analysis of propulsion systems that do not require the use of overhead wires.
“Advises DDOT that the Commission does not support a streetcar system with overhead wires because it supports the unobstructed views to important landmarks along the city’s streets and avenues that are integral to the District’s unique character and result from the long-standing federal statutory prohibition against using overhead wires in Washington City (the L’Enfant City) and Georgetown.
“Encourages DDOT to pursue alternative propulsion technologies for the proposed streetcar system that do not require overhead wires in accordance with its January 24, 2008 commitment to include dual vehicle propulsion requirements in a solicitation package for the development and implementation of the broader streetcar system beyond the Anacostia and H Street/Benning Road corridors.”
Meanwhile, at GGW, Matt Johnson has a post up on potential freight rail bypasses of DC, triggered in part by safety concerns, and in part by the NCPC’s desire to remove the current rail rights of way though the District.
These aesthetic concerns shouldn’t be underestimated, but from my perspective, the minimal obstruction of streetcar wires isn’t worth the kind of opposition the NCPC is putting up. Even if you take wires as a negative (which I do not think is a given), the net results are certainly a positive for DC.
Shopping Spree
Transit Miami reminds us all of a post from the Infrastructurist back in May with a nice comparative chart of transit costs by mode, with references to specific projects.
Modernism in DC
DC MUD had a great interview with architect Ali Honarkar (designer of the Lacey) with some great tidbits on DC’s style, height limits, and NIMBYs:
DCMud: Lacey has gotten attention inside DC, but also outside DC. What do you attribute that to?
AH: Yeah, I don’t know! (laughs). We designed it to get attention, that’s what you do. We’re not going to write a hit song and apologize, you want it to be played. Actually we’re getting more national than local attention. I’m a little disappointed with the local media, and I think it may be driven by sponsors, this very conservative southern town. You would think the Washington Post, as local media, should know what’s going on around here. We’ve seen the Lacey in New York blogs, LA blogs, and architecture blogs, and I’m always amazed how they find us. But they don’t have to find you here, we’re here, they should know what’s in their back yard.
On sustainable design:
DCMud: So green is not cheap, design is not cheap, how do you combine those two goods, and still make it affordable?
AH: Its hard, there are metropolitan cities, like NY would be the first, Chicago, San Francisco, LA, they have that. You put up a building anywhere in New York, they will still line up if its good. I think the DC culture, within the last 10 years has really changed, you see a lot more emphasis, not just on housing, but the restaurants, you see a lot more design, restaurants, bars, we’re getting there slowly but surely. We’re not very good at that, we just do it. There were so many ways to make the Lacy cheaper. But at the end of the day, the architect, the developer, have to be able to look back and be okay with it. The average life of a building is 25-30 years, we’d like to see the building there in a 100 years. Real estate is a long-term thing; we don’t do things for marketing purposes. With the whole green movement, nobody ever uses bad materials on purpose. Another way the AIA is using – you know when the record companies stopped using vinyl because it was no good – the same with the AIA, we achieved it in the Lacey, we’re doing it in a small residential project, you put a good project out there, people will follow.
On height limits and NIMBYs:
DCMud: Height restrictions and historic preservation?
AH: It’s partly that, but, no offense to attorneys, you do any work in DC, forget the ANC and historic preservation, but every other neighbor is an attorney. Its great to have pride in where you live, but people feel like they get to claim it, we see that all the time, we always feel like we don’t want to deal with it any more, but then we get a good client, who wants to do something different, and we say, okay, lets do this again. Its not historic preservation, I think its more the people in the neighborhoods that want to stop the process.
DCMud: Do you think the height limits are a good thing?
AH: I like them; I think you are most creative when you are challenged. DC is my favorite city, and you have New York for that. London, Paris, the scale is completely different, most European cities are like that. I like the height restriction where it is, we should just be a little more creative. We have suburbs to balance stuff out.
More Cake Parking
Image from ITDP-Europe
The owner of Cake Love is on the record wanting more parking for businesses on U Street. Many folks commenting on his blog (myself included) are trying to convince him otherwise. Warren followed up on his comments on August 3:
I understand and really like the density argument: more people walking will bring success for street level retail shops, these are my core customers, and traffic robs a neighborhood of potential. A lot of the customers that shop in Mid-city are walkers, but not everyone, and this city doesn’t have the density of Manhattan everywhere. Do we really need 1,500 new parking spots, probably not, but couldn’t the Mid-city merchants use more? I appreciate the feedback, but I invite people to ask other businesses if they could drop their driving customers as quickly as the mood suggests in the comments submitted. Drivers matter, too, for a urban environment to thrive.
The thing is, drivers do matter. But urbanism is about playing to your core strengths and advantages, and no matter how you slice it, parking is not going to be the core advantage of an urban area.
Twin Cities Streets for People had a great post linking to a post from the Commercial District Advisor on parking and retail in urban environments, explaining the issues facing urban retail areas.
The other night my colleague and I were convening a merchant roundtable and started by distributing a questionnaire that asked the merchants to describe their typical customer. Things like where they come from, whey they shop in the district, what problems they see with the district…etc. Knowing your customer and responding to their needs and concerns is the foundation of a successful business. Unfortunately, many of the merchants in the room couldn’t answer some of these basic questions. This simple questionnaire pointed to a fundamental problem within the district – merchants cannot pinpoint the reasons why customers are choosing to spend their dollars elsewhere. Without this critical information, there is little that merchants can do to address the problems and improve the shopping experience for their customers.
What I found interesting about that meeting, but not too unusual, was the emphasis that merchants placed on the shortage of parking as the primary reason their businesses are suffering. The mood in the room was tense as merchants lashed out in frustration at the parking situation. Here’s the rub – two follow up roundtables with residents and district employees found that parking was in fact a MINOR concern. Their real concerns were related to the trash, litter, unappealing storefronts and ‘grimy’ interiors of stores…these were the real reasons that many hesitated to shop in the district. The disconnect between what merchants thought was the problem and what the customers actually said was the problem was amazing – and hopefully eye-opening for many of the merchants.
Everyone wants to help small businesses. The thing is that what the businesses want isn’t exactly what’s best for either them or the city they inhabit. We could all use a better understanding of exactly how urban transportation and retail markets work, particularly retailers.
Progressive?
Image from Paul Keleher
This month’s edition of the Hill Rag has the usual ‘Numbers’ column from the folks at the DC Fiscal Policy Institute. This month’s subject is the decisions made by the DC Council in order to close DC”s recent budget gap. The DCFPI folks make the case that the DC Council relied on regressive taxes rather than more progressive measures in order to close the budget gap, and they argue that the poor are being asked to shoulder too much of the burden.
My point here isn’t to judge the actions of the Council. Nor am I trying to argue the substance of DCFPI’s position that taxation ought to have a more progressive structure. My issue is with DCFPI’s characterization of what’s progressive and what’s not, and the implications for urbanism of those assumptions.
A PDF of the Hill Rag article is available online here. In the print version, the article is accompanied by a table showing the ‘regressive’ actions the Council took, compared against ‘progressive’ actions the Council did not take.
Most of the regressive actions are, indeed, regressive taxes. Sales taxes, for example, are considered regressive because the burden of the tax is greater on those with a lesser ability to pay. Increasing the sales tax and the gas tax would both be regressive actions, in the strict, abstract sense of the term.
However, DCFPI also characterizes an increase in the sales tax on parking as a progressive action (last line item under the blue column). In a strict sense, this is simply wrong – any sort of sales tax is regressive. Amongst the pool of people that are purchasing parking, an increase in the sales tax rate on that parking would be regressive, with the burden falling disproportionately on those with less ability to pay. Yet they label this as a progressive action.
At the same time, an increase in the gas tax is labeled as regressive. In a strict sense, this is correct. However, it’s curious to see the two main transportation items – both regressive taxes – framed in these opposing ways.
If I had to guess as to why DCFPI distorted the academic definitions in this way, I would guess that they see gasoline as a necessity, while off-street parking is a luxury (hence taxing a luxury at a higher rate is progressive). I can see the logic in this approach, but it’s not a very useful distinction for transportation policy. At the same time, the logic that determines parking spaces are a luxury for the rich could also conclude that driving (and hence gasoline consumption) are a luxury for the rich, as well – particularly since we’re dealing with a gas tax applied only to an urban jurisdiction with fairly low vehicle ownership rates and good public transit usage.
From a transportation perspective, I’d argue that both taxes are good ideas (again, in the abstract – ignoring the larger decisions of the need to raise revenue) within an urban area. Parking ought to be priced via a market mechanism, but in general it should be more expensive than it usually is. Gasoline, on the other hand, is definitely too cheap from my perspective. Raising the gas tax, both at the local and federal level, should be a no-brainer.
Either way, a more holistic understand of parking and transportation policy would be useful to interject into larger issues of taxation and budgeting. It’s disappointing to see the DCFPI deal with these concepts on such a basic level, ignoring the larger implications of the taxes at hand – beyond just ‘progressive’ and ‘regressive’ taxation.
Time to get up and go to work
I ride on the bus into the city everyday
I sit on the seat and I dream myself away
I dream I’m on an island with a foxy lady too
but when I awaken
I must be mistaken
I’m on Third Avenue.