Category Archives: Uncategorized

Driverless cars don’t change geometry

Via the Streetsblog Network, I came across this Salon piece from Michael Lind praising our future driverless car overlords.  Angie Schmidt at Streetsblog did a nice job to take down some of Lind’s loaded language, particularly the bits about “rigging markets” (which rings just as hollow as the cries about “social engineering” – as Timothy Lee notes, there’s no such thing as an intervention-free infrastructure policy).

Those issues aside, the biggest thing that Lind misses isn’t about technology at all – but rather about geometry, land use, and the relationship between transportation and the built environment. Lind writes:

As the white windmills fade from the picture of the future, so do the bullet trains speeding past them.  Even before the end of President Obama’s first four years, unrealistic fantasies about high-speed passenger rail had collapsed.  Federal funding for high-speed rail demonstration projects has been minuscule and symbolic.  State and local governments continue to conclude that the costs of high-speed passenger rail outweigh the alleged benefits.

In the longer run, robocars may be fatal for fixed-rail transportation, at least for passengers rather than freight.  Google has been test driving self-driving cars in California and Nevada has become the first state to legalize driverless vehicles.  No doubt it will take several decades for safety issues and legal arrangements to be worked out.  But high-speed trains might find competition in high-speed convoys of robot cars on smart highways, allowed higher speeds once human error has been eliminated.  And the price advantage of subway tickets over taxi fares in cities may vanish, when the taxis drive themselves.  Point-to-point travel, within cities or between them, is inherently more convenient than train or subway journeys which require changing modes of transit in the course of a journey.  Thanks to robocars, much cheaper point-to-point travel everywhere may eventually be cheap enough to relegate light rail and inter-city rail to the museum, along with the horse-drawn omnibus and the trans-atlantic blimp.

Paraphrasing Jarrett Walker (aside: his recently published book is an excellent read), technology does not change geometry.  A driverless car is still a car, the geometry that governs the car is the same regardless of who (or what) is at the controls.  Despite predictions about how this technology could change everything (see a whole series of GGW posts), I find the possibility for change to be marginal.  Driverless Johnny Cabs, Total Recall-style might decrease the cost of providing taxi service, but that won’t fundamentally change the inherent capacity limitations of taxis compared against a subway system.

The choice of the taxi as a demonstration for the technology is interesting. Most taxis operate in big cities, and big cities tend to be dense.  Density helps support high levels of transit service and ensures that lots of potential trip destinations are easily reached by foot or by transit, thereby diminishing the market for these automated taxis.  Cars, regardless of who’s driving, don’t have an advantage in point to point travel over pedestrians, transit, or other modes in cities.

The other point Lind makes is in investment priorities for government-funded infrastructure (hence the earlier comment about “rigging markets”).  Lind seems to view the built environment as static, rather than an evolving system that changes in concordance with the changes to the transportation infrastructure.  New York’s subways fueled its dense development, and that density in turn provides the market for high capacity rapid transit.  Given growing populations and constantly changing cityscapes, these infrastructure investments in transit are step along the process of letting out cities continue to grow.

(semi-related sidebar on growth patterns: check out this article in Scientific American on the patterns of growth among subway networks around the world.  The authors concluded ” that the geometries of large subway networks are guided by simple, universal rules.” – reminiscent of Geoffrey West et al)

Density helps provide public benefits

Ryan Avent, writing at Architect Magazine, takes a look at the recently floated idea of putting a Redskins practice facility at Reservation 13 in DC.  One of the reasons for the backlash against the idea was the opportunity cost of a metro-adjacent, develop-able site (a scarce enough commodity in DC) lying fallow for the purposes of football practices. Regardless of the merits of that particular idea, Avent notes that denser development all around creates more capacity for these kinds of public goods.

Consciously, in the case of urbanists opposed to the practice facility, or unconsciously, as is likely to be true of nearby residents, opponents are expressing an awareness of the importance of density to urban life. To make Reservation 13 come alive, there must be people there—enough of them to support local businesses such as coffee shops and corner stores. With sufficient critical mass, the neighborhood might support restaurants, bars, and shops, which could then draw residents from other corners of the city. A healthy density helps integrate a neighborhood into the broader city, which then reinforces that neighborhood’s local amenities. Were more than half of the parcel dedicated to a relatively stultifying land use, critical density might fall out of reach.

Lurking within this compelling argument, however, is an unjustified assumption. On its own, the use of 33 acres for football need not reduce the parcel’s density. Development proposed for the remaining land could simply be made taller. In the 2003 master plan, the city recommends building heights of two stories on the western, neighborhood-facing side of the property, rising to 10 stories on the waterfront side (the property slopes downward toward the water). In practice, the only thing preventing Washington from having its cake and eating it too is a devotion to short buildings.

Not only in terms of opportunity costs for limited parcels of land, there’s also the matter of revenue.  Constraints on development limit the ability to ask for public amenities, ranging from new infrastructure to affordable housing via inclusionary zoning.  There’s only so much juice that can be squeezed from the orange.

Indeed, the core urban logic of density is taking root (“Height in this city isn’t about height. It’s about density,” Hickok said). While a great deal of the discussion has focused on changing the height limit, there’s a lot of potential capacity between the more restrictive zoning and the federal height limit. Avent continues:

Indeed, the scarcity of land that has so energized residents to question the mayor’s efforts is entirely a product of the District’s laws and regulations. The neighborhoods just west of Reservation 13, like much of the city’s residential land, are zoned R-4. This allows for matter-of-right development of single-family homes on lots with minimum specified widths and maximum specified heights. If Washington wanted to do so, it could substantially increase the available developable area. A zoning area that doubled the District’s population density—essentially creating an entire second city on top of the first—would be achievable without so much as questioning the city’s statutory height limit—and leaving the District at less than a third of the population density of Manhattan.

Utilizing modest-in-appearance, yet substantial increases in density amongst DC’s residential areas (mentioned here), we could greatly increase the effective overall density of the District.  But those small interventions (alley dwellings, english basements, etc) won’t produce that ‘second city’ that Avent discuses.  That would require more intense development.

Writing in Crosscut, Ed McMahon discusses some of those forms:

Julie Campoli and Alex MacLean’s book Visualizing Density vividly illustrates that we can achieve tremendous density without high-rises. They point out that before elevators were invented, two- to four- story “walk-ups” were common in cities and towns throughout America. Constructing a block of these type of buildings could achieve a density of anywhere from 20 to 80 units an acre.

Mid-rise buildings ranging from 5 to 12 stories can create even higher density neighborhoods in urban settings, where buildings cover most of the block. Campoli and McLean point to Seattle where mid-rise buildings achieve densities ranging from 50 to 100 units per acre, extraordinarily high by U.S. standards.

The challenge, however, is meshing that modestly tall kind of density (respectful of the federal height limit) with the current structures on the ground.  It would require large scale redevelopment of already extant neighborhoods.  Indeed, some of those structures that DC does have are threatened by the lure of development potential. This manse on K St is one of the last of its kind.

The irony is that the constraint on height (and thus density) in DC is one of the key reasons legacy lowrise structures are under such development pressure.

Google Streetview - Northeast corner of 6th Ave and 38th St

A quick stroll around Midtown Manhattan will reveal lots of really tall buildings, both old and new.  But there are also lots of small and short structures mixed in – since development pressures have the ability to go up (not that New York is free of development constraints – see Ed Glaeser), they don’t have to knock down all smaller structures as a matter of course.

Google Streetview - Southwest corner of 6th Ave and 38th St

The takeaway is about tradeoffs – preserving structures like the remaining manse on K St is a constraint.  It can be a workable constraint, depending on what other constraints are also in place.  But the combinations of affordable housing, historic preservation, a flat skyline, shorter buildings and smaller scale development might not be feasible together.

McMahon’s larger point is one of context – simply plopping a skyscraper down amidst a sea of shorter buildings is a recipe for another Tour Montparnasse.  But context is relative and probably speaks more to the pace and evolution of the change than to the nature of the change itself.  Likewise, additional height might be the very thing that helps preserve the small-lot fabric of a place while still providing a release valve for growth, as it has in many locations in Manhattan.

Avent concludes with a cautionary note about the costs of these preferences:

What the battle over Reservation 13 makes clear, however, is that Washington’s height aversion crowds out attractive amenities—a football facility in this case; parks or museums in others; willing would-be residents, artists, entrepreneurs, and taxpayers in many, many others. It has a substantial cost, in other words.

As mentioned above, this is really a discussion about trade-offs.  Paris is often mentioned as a fellow flatly-skylined city with far greater density than the District today. But would DC residents really embrace the intensity of redevelopment required to turn rowhouse neighborhoods into 5-6 story walk-up neighborhoods?  If not that particular trade-off, then what other trade-offs are on the table?

Should be an interesting conversation.

Rail transport links – carry that weight

CC image from Rob Swatski

Some illustrative links from the world of rail transportation:

From Reason and Rail: Why the freight railroads will never electrify.

This is the problem which freight electrification faces. While electrification would represent a lessening in fuel expenses, especially as the price of oil is expected to rise another 20-30% over the long-term, this is a fairly minor savings for the railroads.

Some discussion in the comments asking if government subsidies would change the calculus.  It might, but perhaps the better question is about ensuring common usage of key track segments between commuter and freight traffic, between double-stacked containers and electric multiple unit passenger trains.

Why commuter railroads will electrify:

Firstly, operational costs have a far greater prominence than do capital costs owing to the nature of government agencies as opposed to private agencies. An investment that is hard to justify for a freight operator becomes much easier for a public agency that is receiving “free” funding from another agency and in the process is able to reduce its operational costs to those to whom it is immediately responsible. In such a way does spending hundreds of millions of dollars to save a few million per year become an attractive financial option.

More importantly, however, is the fact that electric trains accelerate much faster, and electric multiple units, compared to a diesel locomotive hauling several rail cars, accelerate like a bat out of hell.

The upshot of this is that more time is spent at higher speeds, reducing the time penalty for any individual train stop and greatly increasing the average speed, making it more attractive to travelers and increasing its patronage, and political support, as a result.

Alon Levy notes in the comments that commuter lines are talking about electrifying only a fraction of the track that would be required for a transcontinental freight route.  Greater payoff and a smaller up-front investment makes sense.

Some confounding factors: speed and weight.  Alon Levy takes note of three challenges in meshing fast passenger trains with heavy but slow freight – a conflict inherent in mixing passenger and freight traffic.  They are 1) schedule conflicts, including the challenges of meshing disparate speeds together; 2) different track geometries required, particularly superelevation (e.g banking) of the tracks; 3) damage to tracks inflicted by heavy trains.

Another confounding factor: US regulations.  Systemic Failure takes note of a recent US railcar procurement.

The FRA is soliciting bids for a $551 million contract for 130 bi-level railcars. As a condition for the contract, the railcars must be manufactured entirely with American steel and components. If you do the math, that comes to 4.2 million dollars each – double the global market price for a bi-level car.

In other words, the FRA is pissing away a quarter billion dollars. Imagine all the projects that might have been done with $250 million. Imagine all the jobs that might have been created with that money. I’m talking real jobs — not bureaucrats enforcing Made-in-America rules. Jobs like installing new PTC signaling, repairing bridges, or expanding the transit network. You know, things that have tangible benefit to riders.

The really crazy thing is that there is a glut in the passenger railcar market. The last thing needed is yet another product (a hopelessly primitive one at that). And since few operators besides Amtrak will be interested in this railcar, a lot of design and development will just go to waste.

Our regulations prohibit purchasing rolling stock off the shelf from other nations, while our history of divestment in passenger rail has largely dried up rail car manufacturing in this country.  These regulations also make the adoption of the faster electric traction commuter trains mentioned above more expensive and more difficult.   They also mandate inferior performance:

Now compare that to the example of the FRA compliant Colorado Railcar as given in theFairmount DMU study. With two single level multiple units and two trailers, Colorado takes 123 seconds to accelerate to a speed of 60 miles per hour. The Talent, however, has blazed past Colorado, reaching 95 km/h (~60mph) in 40 seconds. Indeed, by the time that Colorado has reached 60 miles per hour, the Bombardier Talent has reached the FRA’s normal speed limit of 130 km/h and been cruising at top speed for 50 seconds.

The implication here isn’t just about speed for speed’s sake – the better acceleration makes it easier for the trains to keep on schedule, improving reliability and cutting travel time.

Constraints to affordability

'Truth' - CC image from Kellan

A few items on affordability and development:

Short term vs. long term: Matt Yglesias asks why we’re not building more multi-unit buildings in the face of tremendous demand, and the answer is (broadly speaking) financing:

Karl Smith, citing me, blames anti-density land use rules. Naturally I would like everyone to buy my book and it would certainly be convenient if my pet long-term issue were also the solution to our short-term problems. But I’m actually not sure it’s true. My reason for doubting it is that the construction undershooting doesn’t seem notably concentrated in the supply-constrained markets. What’s more, every time I speak to people who are involved in the development game, they assure me that the short-term constraint on big developments is financing. People have more or less shovel-ready infill projects and they need a loan. Some evidence for this is provided by the fact that there’ve been a curious volume of large 100% equity projects undertaken recently. What people say is that there’s too much liquidity risk to go into big things.

Financing is indeed a critical element.  Many of those shovel-ready projects are good ones, but the bar is much higher now than it was.  This represents a short-term constraint. Another factor is the considerable lag time involved in putting together complex development projects. That said, this doesn’t mean the long-term regulatory constraints aren’t a factor – particularly procedural ones.

Supplying affordability: Lydia DePillis takes a look at DCFPI’s most recent report, and asks why housing affordability advocates don’t do more to expand the supply of housing overall?

The DCFPI report makes mention of the fact that housing in Washington is constrained by our height limits. It doesn’t take that logic one step further to point out that there are lots of areas where D.C. limits its own capacity to build through low-density zoning.

It’s true, affordable housing people were the driving force behind inclusionary zoning, and smart growth advocates are getting to agitate more forcefully for the city to require developers who want public land to incorporate affordable housing into their proposals. But many developers avoid the public land process altogether, preferring not to deal with all the delays and frustrations. And affordable housing shouldn’t be all about setting prices artificially low—it’s also about letting builders build the amount of housing this city needs.

One option would be to look at the missing middle of density.  Regardless, the overall supply needs to expand in the face of DC’s growing population and intense demand.

Demand and that other thing I can’t remember:  Chuch Thies doesn’t seem to think there’s actually a housing price problem in DC:

The District of Columbia, for example, is a desirable place to live. Unlike in many parts of the country, there are job opportunities in our region. Many of the positions pay a good wage. A robust job market attracts new residents. In turn, the demand for housing increases. Prices go up.

Simple economics.

Perhaps a little too simple.  Simple economics would also allow for an increase in supply in the face of such demand.

But taxpayers should not be asked to spend a dime on affordable housing for young, single residents without children. There are plenty of market rate solutions to their housing concerns. They come in the form of suburbs, group homes, roommates and sacrifices.

Or, you know, we could build more housing.

Affordable for whom? RU Seriousing Me is making more maps – this one focusing on affordability, noting that affordability is relative to one’s income:

 I’ll echo Lydia DePillis‘ call to affordable housing advocates to pay attention to the effect that excessive land use regulations have on housing costs. Relaxing building height restrictions and eliminating barriers to the construction of housing is a good way to make housing more affordable across the board, even though chances are, the free market will never produce housing in DC that its many impoverished residents can afford, which is why DCFPI’s recommendations to increase subsidies for low-income housing production and homeownership are also valid.

Squeezing out the entry-level middle: The Post gets in on the action, too:

Many of the outer suburbs still have plenty of houses in the lower price ranges. But less-expensive homes are very hard to find closer to central D.C.: 68 percent of homes offered for less than $350,000 are located in the outer suburbs beyond Montgomery County, Arlington and Alexandria. In the District, Redfin counts only 862 listings for less than $350,000.

Don’t forget bad regulations that drive up costs: Such as those that demand the provision of parking on-site, like this development in Brooklyn.  The cost aspect is bad enough, but the impact on urban design is truly awful.

Height and zoning links

DC Zoning Map - CC image from Payton Chung

Every so often (just as we’re seeing right now), someone will suggest changing DC’s height limit and a flurry of articles/blog posts/tweets/etc will go up, arguing for or against.  This past week has been no exception.

Zoning and process: At the Atlantic, Josh Barro argues that the height limit isn’t the real villain:

But the real crisis of land use in Washington goes way beyond the height limit. It’s that the District’s planning and zoning apparatus is overall hostile to new development, usually allowing far less building that would be permitted by the Heights of Buildings Act of 1910. And while D.C.’s planning rules are restrictive, they are also arbitrary and unevenly enforced, making it a difficult market to enter.

I hinted at this in my post on the limit as well, but Barro really highlights two distinct issues.  One is a matter of the content of the regulations – how much density is allowed, what kind of uses, etc.  Barro highlights some DC examples of rather low densities allowed by right in otherwise obvious areas for denser development.  The other is a matter of process. Barro notes that many developments don’t take advantage of by right zoning, but rather look to the Planned Unit Development process, which adds flexibility at the expense of certainty.

The proposed project is not out-of-character for its surroundings. But even though Wisconsin Avenue in the area is characterized by six- and eight-story apartment buildings, this parcel happened to be zoned for a “floor-area ratio” of 1.0. That mans only one square foot of building area per square foot of lot area.

So, the owners of the property filed a Planned Unit Development application that would have allowed a FAR of 2.0. This was hardly an earth-shattering level of density. Permitted FARs in D.C.’s main business district go as high as 12.0. Yet the neighbors fought the project tooth and nail, suing to block Zoning Commission decisions and even trying to get the old supermarket named a historic landmark. Don’t laugh. The “Park and Stop” strip mall on Connecticut Avenue in Cleveland Park, right next to a subway station, is a protected historic landmark, on the grounds that it is one of the oldest strip malls in the country.

In practice, these two constraints (content and process) work hand in hand. The unfortunate outcome is that good projects have to jump over more procedural hurdles, while inferior projects are often approved by right.   The by-right density on such a parcel should be higher than 1.0 (and probably higher than 2.0, too), but the process could also stand to be improved.  Process matters, as does the regulation content.

Zoning is killing America: No, I don’t think that overstates what Jonathan Rothwell argues in The New Republic. Taking a cue from discussions about Why Nations Fail, Rothwell posits a thesis about why regions fail, and the answer is zoning:

Specifically, they contrast “extractive institutions” that concentrate power and hamper development, such as slavery (at the extreme) and limited voting, civil, or property rights, with open institutions that diffuse power and opportunity, providing universal incentives to invest and innovate.

Urban scholars and policymakers have much to learn from such institutional analysis. While most political economists think of institutions operating at the national or even state level, there is one essential but overlooked institution operating at and within the metro scale: zoning.

…

Previously, my work has found that zoning laws inflate metro-wide housing costs, limit housing supply, and exacerbate segregation by income and race. Other work faults these laws for their damaging effect on the environment, since they make public transportation infeasible and extend commuting times. With a few possible exceptions (see Michelle Alexander), it’s hard to think of an existing political institution in the United States that is more destructive of human and social capital.

Emphasis mine.

And it’s not just zoning: Will Doig at Salon writes about the practical impacts of historic preservation:

When Jacobs’ neighborhood was protected in 1969, it was no tony enclave. In fact, the justification for the urban-renewal project was that Greenwich Village was allegedly a slum. But now that the Village is wealthy, suddenly there are three expansions of its protective boundaries in six years. The timing invites cynical conclusions, bluntly summed up by urbanist Alon Levy on his blog last year: “Let us remember what historic districts are, in practice: They are districts where wealthy people own property that they want to prop up the price of.”

This isn’t to say that zoning or historic preservation are bad for cities – far from it.  However, the very nature of cities is dynamic.  It’s inherent to their economic purpose, as agglomerations of human and social capital.  Zoning, if it isn’t forced to evolve (via a zoning budget or other potential solutions), constrains the city.  Historic preservation also faces the challenge of dealing with dynamic, growing places, as that movement gained traction in an era of divestment in urban places.  To the extent that preservation is about more than just edifices, you have to confront these questions. (Aside: See Benjamin Schwarz discussing the economic moment behind the Village of Jane Jacobs’ era, and also this video on the techno culture of Berlin and how it evolved out of a fleeting and unique circumstance, hat tip to Aaron Renn)

Random factoids about height: Shilpi Paul at UrbanTurf highlights an inforgraphic that aims to quantify the price premium in New York for height.

Random factoids about density: BeyondDC pulls some travel mode statistics from COG’s travel survey at the neighborhood level, and the impact of density on travel behavior is quite obvious.

In less dense areas (and I’m judging density solely on my own impressions from other research), walking plummets as a work commute mode.  In almost all areas, the commute trip is biased towards modes better at covering longer distances (cars, transit) and less to walking and biking.

Thoughts on changing DC’s height limit

With both city leaders and members of Congress discussing alterations to DC’s height limit, I think there are a few things worth highlighting.  These are just some thoughts on what I think are the core issues here, and how DC might proceed.

Why do this?  The compelling reason must be economic, and the reasoning behind this change will need to be carefully communicated to the public at large.  A limitation like this involves a number of trade-offs, and must be understood just as the costs of other zoning restrictions need to be understood.

There ought to be a campaign that both illustrates the benefits of density, but also the costs of restricting development – both in terms of opportunity costs of limiting agglomeration economies, but also of the general costs that raise rents and prices for all sorts of real estate in the region. (see many previous posts from Ryan Avent – 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, among many others)

At the same time, changing the height limit won’t be a panacea.  The real estate market in DC is regional, other local governments will need to pull their weight as well.

Reverse the question: why shouldn’t we do this?  Taking a page from the concept of shifting the procedural burden of land use regulation, perhaps the question needs to be flipped on height limit proponents – if not up, where will the city grow?  Will commercial areas encroach into residential ones?  What about the costs of pushing development further out into the region?  What about the costs of rising rents?

The height limit is not zoning.  It’s worth remembering that most of the District is regulated to maximum densities well below the maximum envelope of the height limit.  Likewise, these areas represent some of the best opportunities for cost-effective, small scale infill development: the “missing middle” of housing densities.

 It is important not to get too caught up in the density numbers when thinking about these types. Due to the small footprint of the building types and the fact that they are usually mixed with a variety of building types, even on an individual block, the perceived density is usually quite lower–they do not look like dense buildings.

There are many opportunities for this kind of infill development in DC, whether on alley lots or via the conversion of English Basements and other additions of multiple units into otherwise single-family zones.  Smaller scale multi-unit buildings can also be designed as to be visually indistinguishable from neighboring single-family homes.  This kind of development ought to be allowed across the board (and DC is moving in this direction), an example of incremental changes to the regulatory environment.

That said, those kinds of developments won’t impact the height limit.  In DC’s largely residential areas, I doubt a taller limit would have much effect.  Conversely, raising the height limit without increasing the allowed density brings little economic benefit.

“Vistas” and “views” are overrated.  Atrios said it.  Most of the ‘views’ people talk about when discussing DC’s tourist-caliber photo shots are enhanced by tall buildings, not the other way around.  The buildings frame the views down street corridors.   Most of the people are not viewing things from the stereotypical aerial shot, but rather from street level.

Instead, what people seem to be concerned about is about the city’s skyline becoming a vista in and of itself, distracting from monuments and memorials.   I don’t think this is of concern, as skylines can be manipulated just as easily as other physical elements of the city.  Likewise, any alteration of DC’s height limit is not likely to suddenly trigger a free-for-all of skyscraper construction, but rather a slow climb to a new, higher equilibrium.  The overall impression from afar would still be that of a ‘flat’ skyline, the monuments and memorials would get their respect while the rest of the city would have room to grow.

The “Monumental Core” and “Downtown” are not synonyms.   The reported initial conversations on height involve minor changes in the already-tall areas, and transit-oriented height districts elsewhere. Matt Yglesias:

 They seem to be contemplating two different ideas, either or both of which could be implemented. One is to tinker at the margins with the restrictions on downtown structures to allow an additional floor or two of leasable office space. The other is to allow for substantially taller buildings in a few outlying areas, with the thinking being that if we can have tall buildings right across the Potomac in Arlington County there’s no reason peripheral parts of D.C. shouldn’t have them too.

The idea of protecting the monumental core from the intrusion of tall buildings is a worthy urban design cause, but also largely a strawman.   The NCPC’s Monumental Core Framework Plan is discussing this area in blue, while the broader ‘downtown’ is represented in brown/tan, showing the area of DC’s Center City Action Agenda.

 While adding some buffer around the White House, the larger point is that downtown already has most of the city’s tall buildings.  Furthermore, if we’re talking about adding a modest increase in heights allowed in DC (something along the lines of allowing buildings to be twice as tall as the streets they front on, rather than the current limit of street width + 20 feet), then views like this and this within the monumental core will look exactly the same in all of the tourist photos.

Always remember – the reason to do this is to add density, and perceptions of density (such as equating it with height) are often inaccurate.

There will be a plan. Lydia DePillis wisely notes that any change would need a plan, and not just open the door to willy-nilly skyscraper development.  In the event that this comes to pass, I’d expect both a detailed map and accompanying restrictions to protect the vistas we do have, as well as a strong urban design component.   Potential options could be altering the existing formula (what if the limit were 2x of street width?  Or street width + 75 feet instead of 20?) and could easily introduce mandatory setbacks at certain heights to avoid urban canyon effects (think along the lines of a less-tall version of New York’s 1916 zoning code building envelope).

Such a plan could also identify areas for truly tall buildings, DC’s own version of La Defense or Canary Wharf.  Doing so should be part of a conscious urban design, rather than the isolation of the Tour Montparnasse.

Added density provides opportunities to finance new infrastructure.  What better way to link transportation and land use than to fund new transportation infrastructure via tax revenues from new development?

Links: The new American Dream

House for rent. CC image from Sean Dreilinger

Foreclosed sprawl – the next frontier of renting?  The New York Times looks at the practice of firms buying up foreclosed, cookie cutter sprawl housing at relatively low prices with the idea of renting these houses out to tenants.

As an inspector for the Waypoint Real Estate Group, Mr. Hladik takes about 20 minutes to walk through each home, noting worn kitchen cabinets or missing roof tiles. The blistering pace is necessary to keep up with Waypoint’s appetite: the company, which has bought about 1,200 homes since 2008 — and is now buying five to seven a day — is an early entrant in a business that some deep-pocketed investors are betting is poised to explode.

With home prices down more than a third from their peak and the market swamped with foreclosures, large investors are salivating at the opportunity to buy perhaps thousands of homes at deep discounts and fill them with tenants. Nobody has ever tried this on such a large scale, and critics worry these new investors could face big challenges managing large portfolios of dispersed rental houses. Typically, landlords tend to be individuals or small firms that own just a handful of homes.

Cities usually have more rentals, and for good reason.  Apartments have common structural elements and provide for economies of scale in managing multiple units.  Applying this to large-scale single family detached homes is a different and challenging model, but a seemingly inevitable result of the decline in home prices in these areas once built on speculation.

It’s also an example of housing market filtering in action.

This isn’t quite what the concept of filtering is about… Cap’n Transit disputes the concept of filtering, noting that such shifts are not permanent.  However, I don’t think anyone was asserting they were.  Filtering is a process, a description of the market responding to shifting demand.  It is not a description of an end state.

It’s true that most of those buildings were not well-maintained, but the causation is more likely the other way around: the landlords didn’t put a lot of money into them because they didn’t bring in much rent. So why were the rents so cheap? I’m guessing that there were several related factors: racism, city services, crime, noise, fads and the suburban ponzi scheme.

I don’t think any of those really disproves the filtering concept.  Filtering doesn’t really describe causation, just the correlation – as demand drops (and therefore the potential rent income), so to does maintenance, and the units on the margins will filter down to more “affordable” prices. Each of those factors listed at the end could be construed, one way or another, as an influence on demand.

The rest of the Cap’ns post on the politics and emotions of gentrification and filtering up are spot on, however.

The fiscal benefits of density: While renting out old McMansions might be a challenge due to diseconomies of scale, Emily Badger looks at Asheville, NC and makes the fiscal case for density and urban infill development.

The whole idea is pretty simple. But it’s sort of baffling that we haven’t been looking at our land this way for years. Cities, Minicozzi laments, are woefully ignorant about exactly which types of neighborhoods and development put the most financial strain on public coffers and which kick in the most money. This is why Minicozzi has been deploying every metaphor he can think of – cash crops, gas tanks, french fries! – to beat home the math.

Fundamentally, this is the same concept as the Geoffrey West observation of urban agglomeration and the inherent efficiency it offers.

How to make use of the reverse commute: Perhaps someone should inform various secondary job centers along transit lines of their fiscal potential.  Alon Levy looks at what’s required to make for successful secondary CBDs along rail transit lines, and what’s wrong with our current land use around suburban stations:

But really, the kind of development that’s missing around suburban train stations in the US is twofold. First, the local development near the stations is not transit-oriented, in the sense that big job and retail centers may be inconvenient to walk to for the pedestrian. And second, the regional development does not follow the train lines, but rather arterial roads, or, in cities with rapid transit, rapid transit lines…

In both cases, what’s missing is transportation-development symbiosis. Whoever runs the trains has the most to gain from locating major office and retail development, without excessive parking, near the train stations. And whoever owns the buildings has the most to gain from running trains to them, to prop up property values. This leads to the private railroad conglomerates in Tokyo, and to the Hong Kong MTR.

Commenter Jim notes how the DC region has a decent track record in this regard with Metro, but not with commuter rail:

The experience in Washington has been that when a Metrorail station (either an extension or infill) is proposed, the planners tear up their existing plans and write new ones for the area immediately surrounding the new station. Metrorail-catalysed TOD is a well understood and appreciated phenomenon. But no-one cares about commuter rail. Planners don’t assume that commuter rail stations will change anything, so don’t change their existing plans to accommodate them.

That’s the disconnect you have to fix.

Indeed – creating that symbiosis requires solving a bit of a chicken-egg problem.  Still, some opportunities exist in the DC region.  New Carrollton jumps to mind, both for Metro access for DC reverse commutes, as well as its mid-line location on the MARC Penn line.  However, the challenge there is on the development side, not the transit service side.

Parking requirements matter: Downtown LA’s revival based on adaptive re-use might not have been possible without changes to LA’s minimum parking requirements.  Making a place built pre-requirement conform is unnecessary, and shows how influential and destructive the requirements can be.  It also speaks to the ability of changing regulations to make doing the right thing the path of least resistance:

Passed by the L.A. City Council in — yes — 1999 and at first applied only to Downtown, ARO gave the go-ahead for the conversion of historic and other older — and often under-used, under-appreciated or even abandoned — office buildings into residences. ARO was expanded in 2003 into various other parts of the city.

“[The Ordinance] provides for an expedited approval process and ensures that older and historic building are not subjected to the same zoning and code requirements that apply to new construction,” reads text on the city’s Office of Historic Resources site.

Fitting in with the econourbanist theory about reduced land use regulation allowing for the market to better address issues of supply, the response was impressive:

During an almost thirty-year period beginning in 1970, Downtown Los Angeles gained a grand total of 4,300 units in housing stock.

Then, between 1999 and 2008, Downtown gained at least 7,300 housing units just from long-term vacant buildings.

That said, it’s not like LA completely abandoned these regulations:

Shoup’s article notes that pre-ARO, developers were required per each housing unit to provide two or more parking spaces. Those spaces, Shoup emphasizes in his piece, were required to be on-site.

Post-ARO, Shoup’s piece says that the average number of on-site parking spaces fell to 0.9 in those converted, previously vacant buildings. Including off-site parking, the number was still 1.3 spaces per unit. That’s a 65% drop in required parking spaces in an area where many residents already self-select to reside in for reasons unrelated to having a multi-car garage.

Nearly one space per unit is still a lot of parking.  Granted, this is LA that we’re talking about.  The flexibility to meet that requirement off-site (flexibility likely required to make the adaptive reuse of historic buildings possible) speaks to the benefits of allowing such changes as a matter of right.

The point about residents self-selecting to live in such conditions is key, contrary to common NIMBY complaints – no one is forcing Angelenos to move in at gunpoint.

Different thoughts on transit service metrics: Jarrett Walker looks at San Francisco’s transit speed (same as it was 100 years ago, or slower) and offers thoughts on various metrics and the need to think about the reliability of the network as a whole.

My own work in this area has always advocated a stronger, more transit-specific approach that begins not with the single delayed line, but rather with the functioning of an entire network.  Don’t just ask “how fast should this line be?” which tends to degenerate into “What can we do to make those forlorn buses move a little faster without upsetting anyone?”  Instead, ask “What travel time outcomes do we need across this network?”  Or turn it around: How much of the city needs to be within 30 minutes of most people?  — a question that leads to those compelling Walkscore travel time maps, which are literally maps of individual freedom.

What would land use regulatory reform look like?

Law Library. CC image from Janet Lindenmuth

Via the always interesting Land Use Law Professors blog, I came across this summary from interfluidity (written by Steve Waldman) of the main points of Avent, Glaeser, and Yglesias.  Dubbed the econourbanists, Waldman summarizes their arguments:

In a nutshell, the econourbanists’ case is pretty simple: Cities are really important, as engines of the broad economy via industrial clustering, as enablers of efficiency-enhancing specialization and trade, as sources of customers to whom each of us might sell services. Contrary to many predictions, technological change seems to be making human density more rather than less important to prosperity in the developed world… The value of human work is increasingly in collaborative information production and direct personal services, all of which benefit from the proximity of diverse multitudes. Unfortunately, in the United States at least, actual patterns of demographic change have involved people moving away from high density, high productivity cities and towards the suburbanized sunbelt, where the weather is nice and the housing is cheap. This “moving to stagnation”, in Avent’s memorable phrase, constitutes a macroeconomic problem whose microeconomic cause can be found in regulatory barriers that keep dense and productive cities prohibitively expensive for most people to live in. It is not that people are “voting with their feet” because they dislike New York living. If people didn’t want to live in New York, housing would be cheap there. It isn’t cheap. Housing costs are stratospheric, despite the chilly winters. People are voting with their pocketbooks when they flee to the sun. (“The rent is too damned high!”) Exurban refugees would rush back, and our general prosperity would increase, if the clear demand for high-density urban living could be met with an inexpensive supply of housing and transportation. The technology to provide inexpensive, high quality urban housing is readily available. If “the market” were not frustrated by regulatory barriers and “NIMBY” politics, profit-seeking housing developers would build to sell into expensive markets, and this problem would solve itself.

Waldman, however, is skeptical of how effective these solutions would be:

One should always be careful of claims that problems could be solved if only we “let the market do its work”. I don’t mean to go all PoMo, but to the degree that there exists an institution we might refer to as “the market”, it is doing its work and it is not doing the work Ygesias and Avent ask of it.

Far be it from me to play down the role of unintended consequences.  However, what would ‘letting the market do its work’ actually look like?  Letting the market work isn’t a binary choice, either – our housing and real estate markets “work” now in one fashion under a certain regulatory regime, and they would continue to do so in a changed regulatory environment – perhaps with wild changes in outcomes, or perhaps not.

The most likely outcomes, however, would be via incremental changes to the regulatory process – not fundamental ones. In The Atlantic Cities, Charles Wolfe discusses proposed land use reforms in Seattle, such as:

  • Allow Small Commercial Uses in Multifamily Zones and Bring Back the Corner Store
  • Concentrate Street-Level Commercial Uses in Core Pedestrian Zones Near Transit and Allow Residential, Live-Work or Commercial Uses in Other Areas Based on Market Demand
  • Enhance the Flexibility of Parking Requirements
  • Change Environmental Review Thresholds
  • Encourage Home Entrepreneurship
  • Expand Options for Accessory Dwelling Units and Rental Incomes
  • Expand Allowance of Temporary Uses

These are the kinds of reforms that stand realistic chances of approval.  They are marginal changes, tweaks to regulations that loosen some aspects and tighten others.  Allowing small-scale commercial uses and home entrepreneurship in residential zones is a minor change in the allowed uses; legalizing accessory dwelling units is a minor change to allowed unit densities (and not necessarily a change in built space); adjusting thresholds for environmental review is a matter of process.

Waldman argues that the “thicket” of zoning and process is a de facto property right for a landowner, ensuring controlled change under certain parameters for the surrounding land – and that changing these de facto rights is not easy, nor should it be:

If we reform away urban zoning restrictions, are we going to invalidate the restrictive covenants of suburban developments? Affluent urban property owners would have almost certainly evolved institutions that perform the functions of community associations if they were not able to rely upon the good offices of municipal government for the same. If restrictions on higher-density development are illegitimate, then should the state refuse to enforce such restrictions when they are embedded in private contracts? Perhaps the answer is an enthuastic “Yes!” After all, over the last 60 years, the state intervened very nobly to eliminate a “property right” enshrined in restrictive covenants and designed to exclude people of certain races from their neighborhoods. Three-thousand cheers for that! But state refusal to enforce previously legal contracts sounds a lot less like “letting the market work” and a lot more like deliberate government action.

This passage raises two issues.  First, as seen in the Seattle example, no reformer is realistically proposing to reform away all zoning restrictions.  Indeed, many of the proposed solutions actually involve changing the processes involved in making those decisions (and adjusting them over time) to allow for more incremental changes over time.

In other cases, legitimate concerns are often mis-matched with the available regulatory tools.  Zoning can easily regulate form, and more broadly, use – but is it the proper mechanism to regulate the locations of yoga studios (bonus points for headline puns)?  Historic preservation processes can easily be co-opted out of a broader desire for some kind of design review, as another example.

Second, the idea of some ideal, free-market outcome is misplaced. There’s no doubt that the forms of our cities are shaped by all kinds of regulation and legal structure.  Rather than pushing the result of reform as a move towards some free(r) market ideal, I think these attempts at reform instead reflect a growing understanding of how markets work and how market forces can be used in public policy (see Chris Bradford on the role of economics education in urban planning and other public policy professions).

Likewise, the move towards using market forces to better allocate scarce parking resources in San Francisco is perfectly valid, if not economically pure.  At Market Urbanism, Emily Washington summarizes this disconnect:

He points out that assigning prices to spots is not equivalent to allowing a market to determine a price. For a real price to emerge capital (the parking space) cannot be state-owned.

Sandy points out that the “shortage” of parking arises because no one owns street parking, so the appropriate incentives are not in place for someone to charge an equilibrium price for parking. While the San Francisco program may be a step in the right direction, he explains that “more intervention usually doesn’t solve the problems that were themselves the result of a prior intervention.” In this case, the city is trying to set a price for something that it could instead auction off to eliminate the original intervention.

I’d reject that view.  As ‘Danny’ notes in the comments, the government can be (and is) an economic actor.  The goal with SF Park isn’t to “eliminate the original intervention,” but rather to better manage on-street parking.  The goal is inherently about incremental change, and that’s what any realistic regulatory reform will also look like.

The rent is still too damn high

CC image from Jaybird

A few more thoughts (and links) to discussion from The Rent is Too Damn High.

On rent control:  Mike Konzcal (linking to JW Mason) notes how Yglesias’ book is more or less an endorsement of renting, yet rent control and similar sorts of tenant protections are part of what helps give renters similar levels of stability to owners.  While rent control often gets a bad name because of distortions it can cause in the rental market, the purpose was not explicitly to distort the market, but to provide stability. Mason:

I would just add that a diversity of income levels in a neighborhood is also a goal of rent regulation, as is recognizing the legitimate interest of long-time tenants in staying in their homes. (Not all rights are property rights!) So by framing the question purely in terms of the housing supply, the Booth people have already disconnected it from actual policy debates in a way favorable to orthodoxy. Anyway, no surprise, orthodoxy wins, with only a single respondent favoring rent regulation. (And I think that one might be a typo.) My favorite answer is the person who said, ” Rent control will have similar effects to any price control.” That’s the beauty of economics, isn’t it? — all markets are exactly the same.

Indeed, despite the virtues of renting, many aspire to own just because of that extra measure of stability and control – see Emily Badger in The Atlantic.

Defenses of rent control aside, I think this critique misses Matt’s broader point, which is that the kinds of entities focused on maintaining affordability via non-profit affordable housing development and via rent subsidies and so on should be on the forefront of wanting to grow the overall housing supply – but they seldom are.  There’s a blind spot and a disconnect here. Peter Frase takes Matt’s argument to the extreme:

The problem, here as elsewhere, is that in the tradeoff between social stability and aggregate material prosperity, Yglesias appears to assign stability a value of zero. If people “tend to resist change”, then this is simply an obstacle to be overcome by “state and federal officials”. The ideal type of society that’s evoked here is a perfectly frictionless world of market transactions, one that fully realizes Marx’s comment that under capitalism, “all that is solid melts into air”.

Glaeser’s Triumph of the City suffers a bit from this same problem in its policy descriptions (the ones regarding historic preservation are particularly illustrative), but just because their policy ideas might be a bit extreme doesn’t negate the substance of the analysis. Glaeser’s broad point is that cities are important, density is good, and we’ve severely restricted some of our most innovative and creative places.

On incremental change: Given the huge value current regulations place on maintaining the status quo (providing too much stability in many cases), any changes will necessarily happen at the margins.  They’ll be incremental, not transformative. Even a large change to the procedural environment around these markets will take years to adjust given the current levels of pent-up demand. Frase hints at this:

It’s not that Yglesias’s line of critique is totally wrong—I agree that NIMBYism and fear of change is often an impediment to desirable policies, and I agree that people with generally Left politics often betray a confusion about these issues. But while it’s not desirable to just freeze our current cities and neighborhoods as they are, it’s unreasonable to simply dismiss the desire for stability out of hand. To take this to itsreductio ad absurdam, I don’t think most people—or probably even Matt Yglesias—would want to live in a world where we all had to change jobs and move to new apartments every few weeks, even if such an arrangement would make us materially richer.

On confounding factors in housing markets: Mike Konzcal notes (#2) the major differences in housing price due to other variables beyond just supply and demand – namely, school districts, infrastructure, and all of the other elements of ‘location, location, location.’  The economic comparison requires an assumption of all else being equal, yet it seldom is.

 The quality of your schools, the relationship you have with the police, your ability to move freely and transport yourself, how you’ll be represented democratically, the primary means through which you’ll transfer wealth across generations (if you are a homeowner) and more are all in play even before you get to the economic efficiency, public sphere and social/health arguments about what housing brings.  Perhaps we can reform housing regulations without having to reexamine these issues, but it will be difficult.

Indeed, these kinds of intermingling of various issues is part of what makes zoning decisions so emotional and contentious.

On upzoning: Matt notes two cases where upzoning could be useful (or even just relaxation of existing rules around, say, accessory dwelling units), one about the broader need to increase the overall housing stock:

The question is not whether some fixed pool of people should give up stability in exchange for more money. The question is whether the incumbents should be asked to give up some stability for the sake of other people who are currently excluded from the opportunities the incumbents enjoy. My answer is that yes they should.

Consider the reactions against such increases in the housing stock, often exemplified by those incumbents.  Again, these decisions are incredibly emotional and contentious.  However, Chris Bradford notes how this ability to add supply is working in Houston:

The difference between Houston and a lot of other cities is that it is still easy to add housing in Houston’s nice, central city neighborhoods (unless your project has “Ashby” in the title). There are currently 15 apartment projects with 4,300 units under construction in the Montrose/River Oaks area. That’s not “announced” units; that’s 4,300 units under construction. For point of reference, only 3,089 building permits were issued for housing units of any type in the entire San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara metropolitan area in 2011.

Houston has a lot of needless land-use controls, including excessive minimum-space requirements and parking minimums,  but there really aren’t many other places in the country where there is both strong demand for infill development and a regulatory environment that freely allows it.

On the direct link to affordability: Matt’s second post takes aim at Arlington, VA:

What you see is a narrow thread of urbanism between Wilson Boulevard and Clarendon Boulevard, with a bit of a thicker blob of urbanism around the Metro station itself. I don’t really want to condemn this development paradigm because if you compare it to other suburban jurisdictions around the United States, what Arlington has done really stands out as practically best in class. But still the fact of the matter is that these single-family homes adjacent to the corridor of urbanism are sitting on some extremely expensive land. If you opened it up to redevelopment, you’d see denser building. Perhaps tall apartments in some cases, perhaps attached rowhouses in others. Opening this up would both bring the luxury market closer to saturation, and also just create some housing that’s a bit less convenient to the Metro and thus perhaps a bit more affordable.

One commenter expresses skepticism about the the ability of new luxury units to actually filter down as more affordable units.  As a counter, I always like to link to Chris Bradford’s posts on the subject of filtering: one here, another one, and a third.

On sprawl and governance: Charlie Gardner notes that growth on any given space has its limits.  Sooner or later, growth can’t just go up, it must go out.

A basic point I’d raise is that in almost all times and places, the solution for urban population growth has not been vertical densification, but outwards expansion into greenfield areas.  Historically, dramatic vertical growth was the product of exceptional circumstances, generally related to the presence of city walls paired with external military threats discouraging sub-urban construction, or the occasional imperial mega-city.  The development of skyscrapers in the late 19th century looked to have the potential alter this longstanding pattern, but for several reasons, greenfield development still remains today the overwhelming source of accommodation for urban population growth.

While I think Charlie is a little too attached to shorter cities (just as perhaps Glaeser and Yglesias are too attached to high rises), the point stands. I don’t recall the source, but I remember seeing a chart estimating the number of New Yorkers who live on the 5th floor or below.  Some very small portion (say 5-10%) lived above the 5th floor (i.e. in mandatory elevator territory).

Indeed, growing outward is natural. It need not be sprawl, since outward growth is only one key part of sprawl. Part of the problem (particularly when discussing regulatory and policy issues) is that of governance – and how our governance structures no longer match the actual economic geographies of our cities.

Some of this is inherently confusing our own terminology in discussing the issue. Mike Konzcal (#3):

There’s a good Foreign Affairs review of Glaeser’s Triumph of the City, which points out the trouble the economics-driven, supply-side housing costs arguments have with dealing with the suburbs.  As someone who read Suburban Nation early when he began to think critically about these issues, I find that a lot of these arguments just focus on city regulations while ignoring the whole existence of suburbs.  Foreign Affairs review:

Glaeser overlooks one of the central issues confronting cities for most of the last century: their competition with suburbs. Glaeser sees the competition as primarily between cities that restrict growth and those that accommodate it…

Getting any traction on this issue depends on defining suburbs.  The Joel Kotkin-esque definitions aren’t really useful, nor do they illuminate the differences between the real economic geographies of cities (that is, their regions) and instead focus on arcane and often anachronistic political boundaries.

None of this even gets at the key points about the regulations and governance structures that lead to sprawl – from Payton Chung:

Here’s the main problem I have with anti-government status-quo boosters: they’re somehow completely blind to how government created the existing situation, but then loudly whine about how government shouldn’t change anything! Not even removing its distortionary supports for the status quo!

On prospects for reform: Ryan Avent circles back to the same issues, albeit by approaching them from a different direction:

At some point, however, we need to stop and ask why the most sensible of ideas aren’t adopted by the American government. It’s not that congressmen are corrupt dolts—they may be, but that’s beside the point. It’s that America’s legislative institutions are not set up to encourage the adoption of the policies opinion editors want to see. Every once in a while an op-ed writer stumbles toward the truth with a “Washington is broken” sort of piece. It is incredibly rare to see a systematic analysis of the incentives facing legislators, which follows its logic through to the end: if Americans want Congress to behave differently, then it may make sense to devote more energy (or, really, energy) to assessing areas of institutional weakness and figuring out whether reform is needed.

 

Links: Metro’s disco inferno; the power of ports

Two items worth sharing:

7000 Series Metro Cars: 

Over the weekend, WMATA released a few pictures and some videos (complete with a soundtrack that would make Michael Bay jealous) of the prototype of the 7000 series, currently under assembly in Japan.

The front end of the cars looks sharp – the black background with the white Metro logo is clean and easily read and identified at a distance.  Compare against a rendering here.

It’s unfortunate that the side doesn’t share the same clean look.  The industrial design of the car body is fine – echoing other transit vehicles (both old and new) with the corrugated steel.  The contrast against the smooth finish at the window levels provides a similar effect to the current fleet’s brown stripe.

The car interiors will feature real-time strip maps showing the next stations on the line – early commentary has focused on misspellings.

While the old paint scheme (essentially just the brown stripe) might seem a little dated, the future cars feature this “disco ball” motif around the Metro logo, both inside and out.  It’s an upgrade from the hideous “America’s Metro” debacle, but still feels like it will be dated quickly.  The large penumbra around the M means that the disco ball on the exterior is centered on the entire carbody, rather than having the M aligned with the windows, as it is now with the brown stripe.  The front end of the 7000 car shows the crisp M logo well – I’m not sure why they didn’t keep the same approach with the sides and resorted to this disco gimmick.

The importance of ports: 

As each of those new Metro cars is manufactured, they’ll be shipped to the US for final assembly – likely arriving in some large port complex. Will Doig has an interesting article on the battles over waterfront land between maritime uses and real estate interests:

The problem (if you can call it that) is that this is happening just as the maritime industry is booming, thanks to an explosion of cheapo imports from Asia. It’s conventional wisdom that urban industries are dying, but shipping isn’t one of them. Even with the recession, the container trade has doubled since 2000, and 2012 is expected to be another record-breaking year. “I think it’s great to have a park, but you can put a park anywhere,” says Hughes. “There has to be someplace to do this.”

Are cities that place? After centuries of ports fueling urban growth, some people are starting to think: Maybe not anymore. “The scale of port activity requires much more space than it used to,” says Doucet, referring to the massive container ships that require not just deep-water ports, but dry-land acreage and fleets of trucks to unload their cargo. “It’s actually much more practical for ports to be located outside the city center.”

Doig’s article only touches on the changes to the landscapes that the current state of the art of shipping has brought upon our landscapes.  The article reminded me of some excellent Mammoth posts on the subject (shipping and border control, the landscape of globalization, and the physical distribution network as a sampling), noting how the economic logic and physical requirements of this type of trade, combined with legal structures and other constraints has created entirely new landscapes.

The key point that Mr. Doucet makes in Doig’s article is that the geography of shipping today is very different from the old landscape of longshoremen working on Manhattan’s docks.  Framing the battle over this real estate has something to do with the longevity and ‘stickiness’ of land uses – but often isn’t looking forward to the changing environment such infrastructure is operating in.