The Gated City in action: Today’s Washington Post on the inadequacy of the region’s housing supply in meeting demand. In short, Ryan Avent called it. The region is producing jobs, people want to move here, yet it hasn’t been able to produce enough housing to meet that demand. From the Post article:
“If businesses find they can’t have their workers live near where they can work, they’re going to go somewhere else. And the workers themselves might also go somewhere else,” said Lisa A. Sturtevant, an assistant professor at George Mason’s school of public policy, who co-authored the study with Stephen S. Fuller, director of the university’s Center for Regional Analysis.
Their research showed that the Washington area, defined by 22 counties and cities, is expected to add 1.05 million jobs through 2030. More than a third of those jobs will be in professional and technical sectors, but significant growth also is expected in administrative, service and health-related jobs that often pay lower wages. If those numbers hold true, that boom will require as many as 731,457 additional units to house workers in the jurisdictions where they work, the study found.
That means the region would need to produce about 38,000 new housing units per year, “an annual pace of construction never before seen in the region and below what local jurisdictions have accounted for in their comprehensive plans,” the study concludes. Data show that over the past 19 years, the region has averaged 28,600 building permits a year; last year, about 15,000 building permits were issued in the region.
In addition, much of the new housing needs to be multi-family units (to make efficient use of available land) and affordable rentals (to put it within reach of younger workers and those with lower salaries), George Mason’s researchers argue.
For more on Fuller and his work, see Lydia DePillis’s April City Paper profile.
I must, however, take issue with the Post‘s framing of the issue. From the second paragraph in the article:
With that growth comes a vexing problem: How do you house those new workers in ways that are both affordable and don’t worsen the soul-crushing commutes that already plague the region’s residents?
The problem here isn’t vexing at all. Nor, frankly, is the solution. The solution is rather obvious: we need to grow up instead of out. We need to add density. We need infill development around existing infrastructure assets. Admittedly, implementing that solution is certainly more vexing than simply stating it aloud, but let’s not let the challenge of implementation obscure the diagnosis of the root problem.
With Rail~volution complete, several recaps of conference sessions have sparked some interesting discussion. One panel posed the hypothetical question – what would DC look like today if we had never built Metro?
WMATA’s Nat Bottigheimer emphasized the linkage between high capacity rapid transit and the ability to support dense urban development, drawing a contrast to the spatial inefficiency of automobile-based systems:
Bottigheimer gave an analogue for Washington, DC, saying that the parking needed to serve all the cars that would come in place of Metro could fill the entire area from 12th to 23rd Streets, Constitution to R (including the White House) with 5-story parking decks.
That’s a lot pf parking. It’s an absurd amount, really – but it shouldn’t be a surprise. Consider an auto-oriented business district like Tysons Corner:
Tysons’ dependence on the automobile, and a place to park it, is dramatic when compared with other areas. With about 120,000 jobs, Tysons features nearly half again as many parking spots in structures, underground and in surface lots. That’s more parking, 40 million square feet, than office space, 28 million square feet. Tysons boasts more spaces, 167,000, than downtown Washington, 50,000, which has more than twice as many jobs.
Of course, downtown DC never would’ve developed in such a fashion. Bottigheimer’s hypothetical is meant to draw a contrast rather than represent a plausible alternate universe. Never the less, the ratio of space devoted to parking compared to space devoted to other stuff (offices, retail, housing, etc) is striking. An auto-based transportation system requires the devotion of half of your space to just the terminal capacity for the car.
While acknowledging Metro’s power to shape development and growth when paired with appropriate land use and economic development policies, the GGW discussion turned (as it often does) to Metro’s constraints. Several commenters ask – why not four tracks like New York? Why not have express service?
Sample of Midtown Manhattan track maps from nycsubway.org
New York’s four-track trunk lines are indeed impressive pieces of infrastructure, but it’s worth remembering that they are essentially the second system of rapid transit in the city. New York did not build those four-track lines from scratch, they built them to replace an extensive network of elevated trains. Consider the changes from 1904 (left), to 1932 (center), to present (right):
Red lines are elevateds, blue lines are subways – source images from Wikipedia. The process of replacing older elevated trains with subways is clear, particularly in Manhattan and around Downtown Brooklyn. The relevance to DC is that four-track subway lines don’t just happen. The circumstances in New York that desired to get rid of most of the elevated tracks provided an opportunity to rebuild all of New York’s transit infrastructure. Metro is not provided with such an opportunity. Adding express tracks to the existing system would require essentially rebuilding the entire system, and without a compelling reason to do so (such as New York’s removal of Els), it’s simply not going to happen – no matter if it were a good idea and a cost-effective idea or not.
Perhaps the single biggest opportunity for an express level of service would be the conversion of MARC and VRE into a through-running S-Bahn-like transit service. Portions of the Red Line do indeed have four tracks – its just that two of them are for freight and commuter rail. Likewise, should there be future expansion of Metro within the core (such as a separated Blue line) there would be the opportunity to study making such a tunnel a four-track line. That concept would have to include a number of different ideas, however – future expansions to link into that capacity, surface/subway hybrid service for streetcar (such as in Philadelphia or San Francisco), etc.
Having done some work to help with the 2011 Railvolution local program committee, I’ll be spending part of this weekend and next week up in Woodley Park for the 2011 edition of the conference. Anyone from internet-land making the trip to the District for the conference? Anyone from DC interested in swinging by the adjunct (and free!) local program on October 19? Anyone doing both?
Drop a line in the comments or via email if you’ll be in town and/or if you’re dropping by the conference.
While the vacancy rate for the Metro area is indeed low, it is most pronounced among Class A buildings in the District where just 1.6 percent of apartments are vacant. Class A rents in the city in the third quarter averaged $2,582/month, up from $2,448/month in September 2010. For Class B buildings, the situation for renters in the city looked a little better; the vacancy rate sat at 2.2 percent (up from 1.8 percent last year), but rents also increased to $1,886/month from $1,793/month in September 2010.
From the report:
“…while all submarkets are chronically low [in the area], there is notable vacancy variance among District submarkets. The Upper Northwest submarket posted the lowest stabilized vacancy at 0.5%, while Columbia Heights/Shaw posted a stabilized vacancy of 2.4%.”
2. I’d say there’s some strong demand in this market. Clearly, room for more development, yes? Yet Housing Complex notes that some developers are concerned about their new projects all hitting the market at the same time.
“There is just a ton of supply coming,” he said. “In certain markets, there will be spot oversupply.” Which is developer-speak for holy shit guys slow down so my building will still sell.
3. Payton Chung with some important synthesis of recent growth and affordabilitydiscussions, noting the key distinctions between micro and macro levels:
– as Rob points out, housing is a bundle of goods whose utilities vary for different audiences
– housing construction can induce demand, particularly by adding amenities to a neighborhood
– housing construction can also remove amenities from a neighborhood, like a low-rise scale, thus changing other intangibles included in that bundle of goods
– construction costs don’t increase linearly; rather, costs jump at certain inflection points, like between low- and mid-rise
– housing and real estate in general are imperfect markets, since land is not a replicable commodity
– the substantial lag time for housing construction, even in less regulated markets, almost guarantees that supply will miss demand peaks
Pro-active planning remains the best and most time-honored way of pre-empting NIMBYs. Get the neighborhood to buy-in to neighborhood change early on, and then they won’t be surprised and upset when it happens.
I’ve often cited Chris Bradford’s short post on filtering as a good summary of one of the dynamics at play, but there’s no one thing you can point to for a full explanation.
As for Payton’s last point about the best offense against NIMBYs being a good defense (or maybe it’s the other way around), I hope to write more about that soon as a part of a more complete response to Ryan Avent’s The Gated City.
As painful and divisive as the recent events in Madison, WI have been, I’ve been overcome by the openness and civic use of the Wisconsin State Capitol and the adjoining Capitol Square. Mammoth recently posted an excellent piece on observations of the social action and public space as they’ve intersected at Tahrir Square in Cairo. In that same vein, I’d like to highlight the civic spaces and public buildings in Madison as another interesting case.
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Madison is a planned city, home to the state’s capital and the state’s flagship university. James Doty, a territorial judge passing through the area in the 1830s loved the site so much, he purchased land, platted streets and lots, and convinced the territorial legislature to designate his paper city as the new capital. Doty selected a site on the natural isthmus between lakes Mendota and Monona for the city, designating the highest ground for a capitol building and public square. Influenced by Washington, DC, Doty planned a rectilinear grid of streets, augmented by radial avenues emanating in all directions from the new Capitol Square. The narrow nature of the isthmus cut most of those radial avenues short, but the natural setting more than made up for the truncated corridors.
image from Madison: A Model City – UW history collection
Several buildings served as Wisconsin’s capitol, occupying the same square. The state looked into expanding their current building when it was destroyed in a fire in 1904 – just five weeks after the legislature voted to suspend the Capitol’s fire insurance policy.
A new capitol arose soon thereafter. The current building was constructed between 1906 and 1917. Keeping in line with the grandiose ambitions of the city itself, the planned building would have eclipsed the US Capitol in height – though the final design brought the dome to a height of 284 feet – three feet shy of the US Capitol. The Capitol has four wings, oriented to the cardinal directions. Each wing looks towards one of the radiant streets from Madison’s original plan. The building is grandiose, ornate, and inspiring – keeping to the City Beautiful movement of the time.
cc image from kern.justin on flickr
Around the same time as the new capitol’s construction, the City enlisted the help of John Nolen, an aspiring planner and landscape architect to help beautify the city’s parks and public spaces. Nolen crafted a plan to improve Madison’s parks, connect the city to the surrounding lakes, and generally improve the city’s civic spaces.
images from Madison: A Model City – UW history collection
Nolen also offered improvements for State Street. State Street was the one radial avenue that cut across Madison’s grid without interruption from one of the city’s lakes. State Street also served as an important link between Madison’s two key institutions – the State Capitol on the eastern end, and the University of Wisconsin campus on the western end.
image from Madison: A Model City – UW history collection
Many of Nolen’s ideas, like those of many City Beautiful plans, were never fully implemented. Nevertheless, the Capitol Square remains a key civic space in Madison. State Street is still the key link between the Capitol and the University, lined with bars, restaurants, and shops. The terminal view of the Capitol Dome is a constant one for anyone in the city.
cc images from the queen of subtle and BoonLeeFamPhotography on flickr
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Given the nearly constant expansion of the security impulse, the most remarkable thing about Madison’s plan, civic spaces, and public buildings is just how public and civic they remain. The Capitol Square hosts numerous events, from weekly outdoor orchestra concerts to Madison’s weekly farmer’s market.
Even the mundane daily uses are exemplary of the Capitol’s civic nature. Due to the city’s location on the isthmus, often the fastest way to get from one side to the other on foot is to walk through the Capitol. Unlike far too many civic buildings in Washington, DC, the Wisconsin Capitol remains open to the public, not fortified and protected like so many other civic buildings.
Nothing made this openness more apparent than the nearly constant protesting taking place over the past week and a half on the Capitol grounds and within the Capitol itself.
cc image from Lost Albatross on flickr
Twovideos from Matt Wisniewski capture the spirit and the civic use of this particular space.
I can’t imagine a similar event taking place in any of the public buildings in DC. None of them remain as open as the Wisconsin State Capitol. Philip Kennicott warned of the implications of closing the Supreme Court’s main entrance, symbolic of a larger issue with our civic and public buildings:
All across Washington, the doors, terraces and plazas of our essential public buildings have been closed off to the public, likely forever. But the closing of this front door, which will now be used only for exiting the building, is not just another front door lost to paranoia. It is the loss of what may be the nation’s most important portal.
…
By a thousand reflexive cuts, architecture loses its power to mean anything. The loss to the citizens of the United States is enormous. We are becoming a nation of moles, timorous creatures who scurry through side and subterranean entrances. Soon, we will lose our basic architectural literacy. The emotional experience of entering a grand space has been reduced to a single feeling: impatience in the august presence of the magnetometer.
Madison’s alt-weekly newspaper (appropriately titled for the city as The Isthmus), like many weeklies, has had some of the best coverage of the ongoing political saga unfolding in Madison. Bill Lueders stepped back on Thursday, offering perspective on the past two weeks, and their implications on the future of life and politics in the state of Wisconsin:
But as a lifelong resident of Wisconsin, I’m saddened — truly and deeply saddened — by what Walker has set in motion. It will change the state forever, causing profound and lasting damage, no matter how the budget stalemate plays out.
Scott Walker’s declaration of war against Wisconsin’s teachers, nurses, social workers, 911 operators, prison guards, park rangers, sanitation workers, snowplow operators, engineers, police officers and firefighters — and their inevitable decision to join the battle — could be for Wisconsin what the attacks of 9/11 were for the nation. It will create a deep before-and-after divide, between a time of relative innocence and a time of perpetual conflict and insecurity.
The difference is that the attacks of 9/11 were external, and stirred a sense of national unity. What has been fomented in Wisconsin is a rupture among ourselves, one that will ensure acrimony and contention for many years, perhaps decades. The dispute will be not just between Walker and his tens of thousands of newly impassioned enemies, but between the state’s citizens — worker against worker, neighbor against neighbor, family member against family member. (Personally, I think a colonoscopy without anesthesia might be less painful than the next get-together of my extended family.)
Regardless of how the Wisconsin budget situation plays out, how the political winds shift in response, I hope these events have not provided the security apparatus with the opportunity to restrict access to the Wisconsin State Capitol. I hope these events are not the first reflexive cut of many that Philip Kennicott warned of. The scars from this particular budget fight will last for a long time in Wisconsin, but I hope this “perpetual conflict and insecurity,” as Lueders puts it, does not claim the openness and civic purpose of the Wisconsin State Capitol as one of its victims.
Winter’s freeze/thaw cycle chipped enough asphalt away from 8th St SE to expose the remaining vault of DC’s old streetcar system. The rails themselves are gone, but the underground vault that provided power for the system remains, as does one of the square access panels in the street. The rest of 8th Street contains discolorations and visible stress in the asphalt where more of the square access panels would have been, indicating more of the vault structure remains just below the surface.
New York’s streetcars used similar conduit technology. The extensive website nycsubway.org has some fascinating pictures from New York’s streetcar infrastructure remnants, as well as this handy explanation of the system:
This isn’t your basic track of two rails and wooden crossties. The track structure extends some two and a half feet into the earth. Under the paving blocks are cast iron yokes 5 feet apart, the trapezoidal shape shown here and in the previous line drawing. The yoke holds the shape of the lengthwise pieces, keeping the rails the right distance apart and keeping the conduit open.
The diagram above shows a double-track cable installation, but the basics are the same on Broadway. There is a yoke every 5 feet, and a pair of insulator covers around the conduit every 15 feet, and a cleaning manhole cover every 105 feet, of which every fourth one (420 feet apart) was also a slightly larger feeder manhole. It’s a lot of cast iron and concrete.
The exact diagram used here is actually for a cable car track, not a streetcar conduit – but the engineering is essentially the same. Some of DC’s old cable cars were converted to electric power.
Wikipedia also has a great image of track work at 14th and G Sts NW, showing the extensive cast iron underpinnings of these underground conduits:
GGW and PoP have also taken note of remnants of DC’s streetcar infrastructure in the past, some of the last remaining signs of a once extensive network.
(Mies’ Chicago Federal Plaza, with Alexander Calder’s Flamingo sculpture. A note about the lack of people in the plaza – this photo was taken with a temperature of about -5 degrees and a wind chill well below that. Author’s photo)
Today, Lydia DePillis has a guest post from Kriston Capps offering a well-put defense of DC’s oft-maligned MLK Library, the sole work of Mies van der Rhoe in the city. DePillis recently wrote about DCPL’s building boom and the modern taste it has. Capps defends Mies’ design and chalks up the library’s deficiencies to poor maintenance of the building, but also falling victim to the larger social ills that often make the location undesirable.
But more than a renovation, even, the MLK Library needs city serves downtown to step up. It will never be an inviting place like Shaw or Tenleytown until the city does something to serve D.C.’s homeless population downtown. The library serves as a de facto shelter and has since before Armstrong v. District of Columbia Public Library. Mayor Williams was kidding himself to say that it was a lack of WiFi, and not an abundance of homeless men, keeping families away.
Design matters – but it can only do so much.
The MLK Library has always reminded me of the uniquely frustrating promise of the District. Here is the start of this soaring Mies skyscraper that stops before it starts, well short of the Seagram Building in New York or 860–880 Lake Shore Drive in Chicago. We get a Mies, but a Mies cut off at its knees. It’s a perfect architectural metaphor for the almost-urbanism that characterizes life in Washington.
Mies isn’t all skyscrapers, of course. I’ve visited other low-slung libraries of his (on Chicago’s IIT campus) that work well. I’d also argue that Mies’ other works do work well in “almost-urbanism” of places like Detroit’s Lafayette Park, or when given sufficient space to contrast against the predominant urban fabric as the Seagram Building or Chicago’s Federal Plaza do. The MLK Library instead conforms to the city’s plan and fabric, with only the slight jog in G Street NW as it skirts the Portrait Gallery offering a chance to see the building from a distance.
It’s certainly not Mies’ best work, but the library isn’t the negative many make it out to be. With some thoughtful renovations to care for the original design, it has potential to be a great public space once again – insofar as design alone can tackle the human challenges of the library’s primary users.
The Gated City in action: Today’s Washington Post on the inadequacy of the region’s housing supply in meeting demand. In short, Ryan Avent called it. The region is producing jobs, people want to move here, yet it hasn’t been able to produce enough housing to meet that demand. From the Post article:
