Tag Archives: New York

There goes the neighborhood

There Goes the Neighborhood is a podcast series from The Nation and WNYC.

It provides a look into the public perception of rezoning East New York. The reporters and producers get the emotional response on tape in a way you can only accomplish on radio, complete with all of the vocal inflections and intonation, putting a human sound on a complex set of issues.

However, a few criticisms:

For a podcast series about gentrification, the hosts don’t ever actually define what it is. This isn’t a knock against the producers, as gentrification doesn’t have a universally agreed upon definition to point to. By keeping things nebulous, the producers are able to capture the responses and reactions from New Yorkers without putting their thumb on the scale. They range from concerns about housing costs to new restaurants that don’t feel like they’re ‘for us.’ Cultural changes, economic changes, social changes – it’s all there.

However, much of the show focuses on the city’s response to this trend – NYC’s push for inclusionary zoning. Without defining the nature of the problem (gentrification), it’s very difficult to evaluate the effectiveness of the city’s response. Programs like IZ are focused on providing a specific kind of ‘proper noun’ Affordable Housing; newly constructed housing units offered at below market rates. The particular mechanism of IZ builds these units in exchange for additional development. IZ is predicated on a change to the physical environment of the city.

While the podcast talks a lot about race, class, and the challenges of a changing city, it never quite rounds the corner and asks the next question – if change is inevitable, what kind of policy response is appropriate (and is New York’s response adequate)? How should communities look to manage change?

It’s clear that the reporters are interested in telling the human story of people facing eviction, watching their neighborhoods change before their eyes. But in discussing a major change to the city’s zoning policy, the podcast series has very few interviews with the public officials involved in crafting that policy (I only recall one quote from Vicki Been referenced in the final wrap-up episode).

Perhaps my background as a planner tunes my ear to things like this, but there are other small mistakes regarding the policies that shape a city’s housing stock. Zoning is the big one. In episode 4, they discuss New York’s 1916 zoning code, noting the results proved so popular, and property values increased – “and developers have been manipulating the zoning process ever since.”

I might argue with the greedy developers vs. civic minded interests framing; but the broad intent of zoning to preserve and increase property value isn’t wrong. However, they then add this: “DeBlasio’s innovation is to use zoning not just to facilitate growth, but to control it. That’s new.”

No, it is not. That is the very idea of zoning.

There are numerous references to a housing shortage and a housing crisis, but the entire series elides the overall demands for growth. They clearly document the change in the kind of people moving into the neighborhood, but don’t ever address the broader question of how to increase the housing supply in the face of growing demand. How should the city grow? If not here, then where? If the city doesn’t engage in shaping this physical growth, that won’t prevent the social fabric of the neighborhood from changing.

Despite these frustrations, these are important conversations to have. Taking action to fight gentrification will require building a political coalition; one that’s bigger than just the market urbanists or the anti-displacement activists:

https://twitter.com/surlyurbanist/status/738021367610671104

https://twitter.com/surlyurbanist/status/764599887908380672

https://twitter.com/surlyurbanist/status/745623354153959424

There’s potential to form a political coalition around these issues; this podcast series is a great look into the kinds of issues such a coalition would need to address.

Building Height and Density in Center City Philadelphia

With a hat tip to this tweet from John Ricco, linking to this compendium of tall buildings in Center City Philadelphia from the Philadelphia City Planning Commission. The document provides a brief profile of each building, showing building height, site size, gross floor area, floor area ratio, year of completion, and floor count.

Example of information from the Philadelphia FAR catalog. Screenshot from the document.

Pulling the data into a spreadsheet allows for some quick charts to show the relationship between building height and density.

It’s generally true that taller buildings are more dense, but not universally so. Buildings with the same density come in different shapes. Both the Liberty Place complex and the 230 South Broad St have an FAR of ~19.5; but Liberty Place includes a 960′ and 783′ tall towers. 230 South Broad St is just 250′ tall, but the building’s floorplates occupy 100% of the site.

By comparison, the densest zoning in DC is for 12 FAR (the C-5 zone), located in one of the few exception areas for DC’s height limit (allowing 160′ tall buildings along some blocks of Pennsylvania Ave NW). Quite a few blocks are zoned for up to 10 FAR, but nothing in DC can be built to an FAR of 15, 20 or 25, as in Philadelphia.

Considering DC’s effective downtown height limit of 110′ to 130′ combined with a maximum FAR of 10, it’s not hard to understand why DC has so many boxy buildings forced to occupy entire parcels. Likewise, DC’s height limit is indeed a hard limit on office density. Beyond 10 FAR, any additional density requires more height than the law currently allows.

In New York, the Empire State Building has a FAR of about 28. At less than half the height, the Equitable Building (inspiration for New York’s 1916 zoning code) has a FAR of 30.

Note: almost all of these very dense buildings are offices.

Back in Philadelphia, a more obvious example: the obvious relationship between building height and floor count (taller buildings have more floors).

Looking at building height by decade, you can see the clear trend of taller buildings emerging following the end of Philadelphia’s ‘gentleman’s agreement’ on building height – that no building should be taller than the Statue of William Penn atop the City Hall clocktower. This agreement left plenty of room for tall buildings; at 548 feet tall, City Hall was the tallest building in the world between 1901-1908. The agreement was breached by the construction of 1 Liberty Place in 1987.

This particular data set doesn’t include any buildings shorter than the City Hall tower; it’s not a complete record of all construction in Center City, just high rise buildings (the document was published in 2010). You can clearly see the approximate 500′ limit prior to 1987.

If you put all of these characteristics into one chart, you get something like this:

The size of the circles indicate the gross floor area of the project.

Renovating Penn Station as an institution, not a building

Beware nostalgia for the old Penn Station. While the railroad station’s current iteration neither functions well nor provides an inspiring space, addressing these problems requires addressing the underlying issues of railroad governance, finance, and operations.

Writing in the New York Times, David Dunlap aims to demolish the myth of Penn Station’s demise as solely an act of civic vandalism. Penn Station’s decline was a symptom of major shifts in transportation finance, travel patterns, and urban development. Railroads were accustomed to their monopoly position and regulated accordingly.

With the rise of direct competitors for both intercity and commuter traffic from airlines and cars (both subsidized by the government), change was inevitable:

In “The Late, Great Pennsylvania Station,” Lorraine B. Diehl said the death knell first sounded in 1944, when President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed into law a bill to provide $1.5 billion in federal financing for new highways, including an interstate system.

It sounded again in 1947, when the Pennsy reported an operating loss for the first time in its long existence. One month later, in March, a United Air Lines DC-6 reached La Guardia Airport only 6 hours 47 minutes after it left Los Angeles.

It sounded again in 1949, when the railroads’ share of intercity passenger traffic fell below 50 percent. And again in 1956, when construction of the interstates began in earnest. And again in 1958, when National Airlines inaugurated domestic jet travel with a run between New York and Miami that took just 2 hours 15 minutes.

Intercity travel and freight were the most profitable business lines for railroads. Commuter trains provided some feed for longer distance trains, but were an otherwise marginal business. In reality, the business was in decline well before 1944; Ridership for transit of all forms declined during the Great Depression (along with the rapid expansion of suburbs and proliferation of the automobile), only propped up by travel restrictions during WWII.

Penn Station’s edifice was torn down because the economic model of American railroads, predicated on their monopoly on metropolitan mobility, collapsed. Looking to monetize their assets, developing their lucrative real estate seemed obvious. For Penn Central, it wasn’t enough to save the company. Still, the loss of the building draws most of our attention.

Even today, we tend to focus mostly on Penn Station as a place, rather than on the underlying tunnels, tracks, and organizations that operate them. Last week, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo unveiled his reboot of the longstanding plans (with a throwback to Gov. Pataki and Pres. Bill Clinton) to redevelop Penn Station, complete with a rebranding.

The full presentation slide deck includes lots of flashy renderings of what’s possible, building off of the same basic concepts as before: relocating Amtrak functions to a new facility within the Farley Post Office building; removal of Madison Square Garden’s theater and a complete redevelopment of Penn Station’s concourses below.

I'm entirely too captivated by this woman in Cuomo's Penn Station presentation. She's a symbol of the whole thing. pic.twitter.com/mQz0oqjdZ3

— Second Ave. Sagas (@2AvSagas) January 7, 2016

Shiny station doesn't solve her problem. She's waiting for a train, and Cuomo's plan includes no new rail capacity! https://t.co/xJZ7wNosYp

— Second Ave. Sagas (@2AvSagas) January 7, 2016

There’s a lot to be said in marshaling the political will to get something done. Cuomo’s presentation doesn’t shy away from that ambition. But ambition alone isn’t enough. Given the challenges in executing complex projects, it’s not surprising to see figures like Robert Moses viewed favorably. But are you executing the right projects?

Slide #6 from Gov. Cuomo’s presentation, complete with Robert Moses.

Not only does the focus on the building itself miss the real capacity challenges for Penn Station’s infrastructure, it also elides over the very real challenges for operations and governance. Adrian Untermyer reminds us of the key governance challenges to success for any plan:

In 1970, one railroad controlled the transportation hub. After it went bankrupt, New York State took over trains to Long Island, New Jersey took over trains to the Garden State, and the Feds took on the rest…

Even with a reinvented station complex overhead, the Long Island Rail Road, New Jersey Transit, and Amtrak will still share the mostly same tracks, cramped platforms, and underwater tunnels. It’s unlikely that decades of dysfunction will disappear after the ribbons are cut.

Finding effective governance solutions for both the physical station as well as the underlying railroads that use it is a much bigger challenge. During the monopoly era, before the creation of either the MTA or Amtrak out of the remnants of Penn Central, that kind of vertical integration clarified things. Current governance is muddled.

Lack of integration and coordination among various stakeholders isn’t a new problem. When New Jersey Governor Chris Christie killed the ARC project, some advocates celebrated the demise of a flawed project with the hope for a better one. ARC’s primary flaws stemmed from an inability for the key stakeholders to effectively coordinate investments. Instead of one railroad forcing coordination, Penn Station was a battle between three entities (Amtrak, NJ Transit, and NY’s MTA – each with different priorities and different leadership).

The unwillingness to share turf isn’t just a challenge for Penn Station, coordinating between two states and Amtrak; but even within the MTA. East Side Access, connecting the Long Island Railroad to Grand Central Terminal is an extraordinarily expensive project, opting for a deep cavern terminal station under Manhattan instead of a potentially cheaper and more useful option that would’ve required better coordination and integration between the MTA’s own commuter railroads. Instead of tackling this issues, the MTA opted for the more expensive solution.

Integration isn’t easy. The MTA’s split personality for regional rail dates back to the differences between the PRR and NY Central railroads. The merged Penn Central couldn’t integrate; it’s not a surprise integration hasn’t happened without some larger outside incentive to do so. The past decade of airline industry consolidation in the US shows how hard this can be, even with incentives.

The real challenge isn’t in finding the right design for a new Penn Station, but in reforming the institutions that operate and govern our transit systems.

Forecasting uncertainty in practice: Snowperbole

Example of snow forecast communicating levels of undertainty; image from the Capital Weather Gang

Example of snow forecast communicating levels of uncertainty; image from the Capital Weather Gang

Because making accurate predictions is extremely difficult, we can dramatically improve both the accuracy of forecasts and enable effective communication about the forecast by embracing the uncertainty involved in the forecast. This allows decision-makers to both use the information available while understanding the limits of those predictions.

Following forecasts for a “potentially historic” storm set to hit New York and New England, public officials in New York City went to great lengths to emphasize the dangers of the storm. The Governor closed down New York’s subways in anticipation of the storm (showing one of the quirks of New York’s transit governance, local transit is under state control).

There was just one problem: the storm mostly missed NYC.

In their forecast post-mortem, the Washington Post’s Capital Weather Gang highlighted the key shortcomings of the forecast – a failure to present the level of uncertainty in the forecast.

Why were the forecasts so bad?

It’s simple: Many forecasters failed to adequately communicate the uncertainty in what was an extremely complicated forecast. Instead of presenting the forecast as a range of possibilities, many outlets simply presented the worst-case scenario.

Especially for New York City, some computer model forecasts were extremely dire, predicting upwards of 30 inches of snow – shattering all-time snowfall records. The models producing these forecasts (the NAM model and European model) had a sufficiently good enough track record to take them seriously.

However, some model forecasts (e.g. the GFS model) signaled reason for caution. They predicted closer to a foot of snow.

Part of the challenge here is that most of the forecast was accurate. This was a historic storm; the storm simply tracked a bit further to the east. Areas like New York City were right on the margins, where a small change to the inputs can mean a large change in the outcome – and the forecast did not adequately convey that uncertainty. Add in the fact that the forecast miss happened to be the largest city in the United States, and you have a very public error.

When a forecast is so sensitive to small changes (eastern Long Island, not far away, received 30-plus inches), it is imperative to loudly convey the reality that small changes could have profound effects on what actually happens.

It’s easy to second-guess public officials making key decisions like closing transit systems after the fact (and after the forecast bust), but they can only act on the information that they have in front of them. It’s easy to argue that it is better to be safe than sorry (and this is certainly true – it is better safe than sorry) but there is a real risk of eroding public confidence in these kinds of decisions when the forecast doesn’t pan out. (It doesn’t help that despite closing the subways, the MTA’s snow plan called for trains to remain in operation without passengers to keep the tracks clear of snow)

As some meteorologists suggest, conveying the uncertainty in their forecasts should be a larger element of both the forecast and communication. It’s not just a matter of using the best information available, but also understanding the uncertainty involved.

Decreasing opportunities for incremental development in American neighborhoods

Several months ago, Charlie Gardner had an excellent, thought-provoking post asking why have American cities seen the demise of the duplex? In a time when growing cities are bursting at the seams and facing severe affordability challenges, an incremental kind of development might be welcome in many cities, offering new housing while allowing an evolutionary pace of change to a neighborhood’s physical fabric, instead of the abrupt transition of large-scale redevelopment. So why don’t we see more of it?

Consider international comparisons of small-scale incremental development: Charlie Gardner compares the built form on both sides of the US-Mexico border, noting how on the Mexican side houses grow incrementally over time, often adding new uses along the street. The net result is a slow transformation of the entire neighborhood, evolving towards denser development patterns. Gardner speculates on reasons for the difference with standard American development patterns (including finance and regulation), noting that the small-scale development open the door to homeownership at a much lower price threshold.

Conversely, there are examples of American neighborhoods adding units on a relatively small scale. Let’s Go LA has been tweeting highlights from Wallace Frances Smith’s “The Low-Rise Speculative Apartment,” published in 1964. The book documents the replacement of single-family homes with low-rise speculative apartments (often in the form of dingbats), concluding that this small-scale, relatively low-cost form of construction plays an important role in adding housing supply to the market. Without requiring challenging lot consolidation or more-expensive construction methods, this kind of incremental, small-scale development allowed neighborhoods of single-family homes to evolve into denser places – even without large incomes in the neighborhoods to afford expensive new construction.

Despite the small scale of each individual building, the net result was a substantial increase in housing production overall.

So, why don’t we see more of this today? While various New Urbanists might not like the specific dingbat product, the idea of small-scale urban density is still appealing. The so-called ‘missing middle’ forms, such as townhouses, flats, and small apartment buildings are all lauded as contextually-friendly ways to add housing and increase density in already developed areas. So, why are these housing types missing?

As Let’s Go LA points out, much of this kind of development has been regulated out of existence. In LA, large portions of the city have been downzoned; the newer zoning no longer allows for by-right development of dingbats and other small-scale apartment buildings. In aggregate, the result is a huge decrease in the potential development allowed in LA.

Much of that LA zoning potential would’ve been in the hands of small-scale landowners rather than large real estate development firms. One consequence of removing that development potential is to erode the ‘franchise’ for incremental development. Let’s Go LA notes that “by zoning small developments out of existence, we’ve made land development a much less democratic process, in the sense that far fewer individuals in the community are able to participate economically.” Instead, 20% of LA’s recent growth has been absorbed in the relatively small confines of downtown. While this is good for downtown (thanks to regulatory changes such as LA’s adaptive re-use ordinance and relaxation of off-street parking requirements – discussed previously here), limiting growth to such a small area of the city has consequences: “when growth is restricted across so much of the rest of the city, there will still be pressure on regional housing prices, and gentrification will continue.”

The phenomenon isn’t limited to LA or to dingbats. Stephen Smith, writing at New York YIMBY, looks at the demise of small-scale development (buildings smaller than five units) in New York: “Put simply: New York City’s small builders have been nearly eradicated. The segment of the market that normally produces about half the city’s new building stock has all but vanished.”

New York City building permits, by number of units. Chart from New York YIMBY, data from the US Census Bureau.

Smith considers several hypotheses for this decline in small-scale development, including the end of some tax abatement programs and weak markets in some parts of the city. Smith also hypothesizes that New York’s recent ‘contextual rezonings’ removed development potential from areas ripe for small-scale development:

The result is that many neighborhoods that were once full of redevelopment opportunities are now closed off to anything but the smallest of one- or two-family projects on vacant lots. This sort of redevelopment was largely banned after the implementation of the 1961 zoning code, but throughout her tenure Amanda Burden closed off the last few areas where it was still allowed.

DC is seeing similar conversations. Demand for additional housing often leads to ‘pop-up’ development, often in the form of vertical additions to existing rowhouses. The term even gets used as a catch-all for any kind of smaller scale infill development. Many existing residents are concerned about the changes (though others are supportive).

Responding to political pressure and resident requests, the Office of Planning proposed their own version of a contextual rezoning.However, during a hearing on the measure, one of the zoning commissioners expressed deep concern about the overall impact of reducing this development potential in a city with a growing population and decreasing housing affordability. Greater Greater Washington’s summary of the exchange captures the concern: “I just don’t think we have a comprehensive housing policy in this city and I’m worried about all the unintended consequences of [this proposal].”

While Charlie Gardner contrasted American urbanism to Mexico, there are other options as well. This paper from Sonia Hirt looks at German land use regulations. German zoning is guided by federal standards, localities have some flexibility within those standards but cannot add restrictions to the basic zoning classifications. One end result is that there is no such thing as a residential zone devoted solely to single-family homes. Likewise, even residential zones must accommodate commerce to meet the “daily needs” of the neighborhood.

In outlining potential routes for zoning reform in the United States building off of lessons learned from Germany, Hirt suggests that instead of relatively small areas of mixed-use zoning, planners could focus on a wider area of limited flexibility for residential development – something that might not look that different from the small, speculative apartment developments of the 50s and 60s; or of duplex development.

Updating the Reading List, August 2014: The New Geography of Jobs; Edge City; The Box; The Power Broker

CC image from carnagenyc.

The confluence of events in my life (new apartments, travel, wedding planning, etc) haven’t left time for much blogging recently. However, there’s always time to read. With that in mind, a few additions to the reading list (and correcting one egregious omission):

The New Geography of Jobs: Enrico Moretti (2012)

Berkeley economist Enrico Moretti delivers a concise and readable summary of the economic geography of innovative industries – the kinds of jobs that produce what Jane Jacobs referred to as “New Work” (Moretti cites Jacobs’ books on urban economics repeatedly). This transition to the ‘innovation sector’ means a profound shift in the economic geography of the US, just as past shifts from agriculture to manufacturing had large impacts on where and how we live. Moretti also explains how these innovative jobs tend to cluster together and the paradox of location and local interactions becoming more and more important in a world of globalization and ever-improving communication technologies.

Also, credit to Moretti for writing such an accessible book. In the acknowledgements, he notes that “serious economists are not supposed to write books – they are supposed to write technical papers.” Yet, such papers don’t easily spread outside of the academia bubble and into the hands of planners and policy-makers.

Edge City: Life on the New Frontier: Joel Garreau (1991)

First, a confession: despite Edge City‘s place in the urban planning canon, I had never read the entire thing (just a chapter here and there as a part of grad school assignments). With the opening of the Metro’s Silver Line through the quintessential Edge City, Tysons Corner, I wanted to correct my own reading list gap. It was also an opportunity to look at Garreau’s work nearly 25+ years after he wrote about these places.

Edge City describes the rise of the suburban office/retail node, usually located at a key transportation intersection, obtaining a critical mass of jobs and retail and pulling the business focus away from the traditional downtowns and business districts. Garreau’s description of the thought process behind development deals is insightful (as well as the impacts of unintended consequences, development following the path of least resistance, etc), but hardly limited to the suburban context of edge city.

Some statements from 1990 seem laughable now (“there is no petrochemical analyst around who thinks there is any supply-and-demand reason… that the price of oil should go higher than $30 a barrel in constant dollars in this generation.”), but others seem prescient: speaking of Tysons Corner, Garreau notes that parking lots alone represent a massive land bank, just waiting for a “higher and smarter and more economic use.”

The error, however, seems to be in thinking of places like Tysons as fundamentally decentralized, rather than strengthening centers in a polycentric metropolis. The future of an edge city like Tysons has more in common with urbanism than with the model Garreau describes. Nevertheless, his description of these places is an important element of the grand American suburban experiment.

The Box: How the Shipping Container Made the World Smaller and the World Economy Bigger: Marc Levinson (2006)

Levinson’s history of the shipping container is a fascinating look behind the scenes of how we move goods around. Consequences for cities involve containers making old break bulk piers in Manhattan, San Francisco, and other ports obsolete; lower shipping costs enabling greater trade; intermodal shipping opportunities eventually enabling all sorts of new models for trade and distribution.

Levinson documents the challenges of overcoming proprietary interests to develop a series of standards that ensure interoperability, as well as the economic and institutional challenges (from port operators to unions to shipping companies to regulators) in embracing the new model. Levinson provides an insightful account of the difficulties in implementing new systems.

The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York: Robert Caro (1974)

I’m not sure how I missed including this in the reading list. It’s not a recent read for me, but reading Cap’n Transit’s post on the book and the reminder of Caro’s focus on the use of power rather than a personal, David v. Goliath struggle between the Moses and Jane Jacobs, I realized that I didn’t have it on the list. Here’s to correcting that omission.

More than just a documentation of Moses’s life and his use of the institutions to wield power, Caro’s book provides an excellent history of New York City and the background for so many of the institutions that shaped and continue to shape the city to this day. Caro’s focus on the institutional levers of power (a theme he carried through to his biographies of LBJ) gives the book applicability to any major city.

Challenges to affordable housing in growing cities and regions

Suburban Apartments and Estates – Now Renting. CC image from moominsean.

Call it gentrification, call it renewal, call it anything you like. Intense demand for city living is putting tremendous pressure on urban housing markets. Meeting that demand with new development reshapes the physical fabric of the city, but preserving the physical status quo in the face of that demand leads to rising prices in the existing housing stock.

David Byrne issued an ultimatum to New York: if gentrification from the 1% stifles the city’s creativity, he’s “out of here.” At the same time, Ed Glaeser remarks that New York should celebrate it’s ability to attract the rich – this kind of agglomeration of skills and talent is what makes cities special places. It’s not the fact that the rich are coming back to the city that’s problematic, but that the city isn’t still able to provide opportunities at all price points. David Madden notes that gentrification’s current pace is not trickling down to the middle and lower classes.

All the demand for urban living presents the ‘good problem to have.’ But good problems still represent problems.

Gabriel Metcalf, executive director of San Francisco based non-profit SPUR, stepped into the fray with an essay for Atlantic Cities on the failure to relieve the demand-side pressure and the resulting consequences: his friends keep moving to Oakland because they can no longer afford San Francisco:

A great quality of life and a lot of high-paying professional jobs meant that a lot of people wanted to live here. And they still do.

But the city did not allow its housing supply to keep up with demand. San Francisco was down-zoned (that is, the density of housing or permitted expansion of construction was reduced) to protect the “character” that people loved…

Whatever the merits of this strategy might be in terms of preserving the historic fabric of the city, it very clearly accelerated the rise in housing prices. As more people move to the Bay Area, the demand for housing continues to increase far faster than supply.

Metcalf expanded on the idea in an interview with SFGate.com:

Now, should there be places for middle-income folks to live? Absolutely. But it can’t be done with the existing housing stock. Smart new places will have to be built.

That includes high-density buildings, micro-units and new construction. It also means getting a grip on the incredibly complex and restricting planning process that stalls every development. The whoa-on-growth movement began in the early ’70s, and there’s a direct corelation between that and higher prices.

“Up until the mid-’70s,” Metcalf says, “our housing prices tracked right at the national average.”

Over the past 20 years, Metcalf says San Francisco has produced an average of 1,500 new housing units a year. Compare that with Seattle, which is averaging 3,000 units a year with a smaller population. And even that wouldn’t be enough.

Increasing density and allowing the market to meet the demand for new space is part of the solution. In a high-demand place like San Francisco, it’s probably best characterized as a necessary-but-not-sufficient condition. Part of the challenge is that center cities can liberalize their zoning regulations a great deal and still not seem to make much headway in affordability. The regional nature of housing markets, spanning across multiple jurisdictions with multiple regulatory structures, makes it difficult for any one jurisdiction alone to make a dent in the supply.

Consider the case of Long Island: a September New York Times article on Long Island’s lack of available apartments looks to a recent report from the Regional Plan Association to underscore the challenge:

According to a new report from the Regional Plan Association, an urban research and policy group, 55 percent of all 20- to 34-year-olds on Long Island still live with their parents, which is up 11 percent in a decade and appears to be one of the highest rates in the country.

But while some may actively choose to sleep in full view of their teenage posters and trophies, most are there because there are few other places they can go.

The article closes with an anecdote that illustrates the assymetry of demand in the housing market and the regional impacts it can have:

Peter Ottaviano, 24, who graduated from college two years ago, has been living at his parents’ home in Cold Spring Harbor and working for a public relations firm in Great Neck. He looked at some Long Island apartments, but said he wasn’t impressed by the offerings. He signed a lease this month on a two-bedroom in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, where he and a friend will live for about $2,000 a month, and reverse-commute.

For Mr. Ottaviano, it came down to a paradox: young people aren’t likely to put down roots on Long Island until there are more young people on Long Island. “I want to be where my friends are, where there’s a lot going on, in the middle of everything,” he said. “That’s why I’m moving to New York.”

Long Island – home to the kind of mass produced suburban housing that provided the market-rate affordability for American cities in their suburban booms is now facing the same kinds of challenges that older places encounter.

As the 24-year-old Ottaviano’s housing decision shows, part of the question is if the suburbs can develop the kind of quality places that will attract a broader demographic, rather than just a release valve for housing demand. Outside of DC, Montogmery County is explicity looking to attract younger residents – and while reform of the county’s liquor laws alone won’t likely do it (or help the County chase the nebulous “hip” demographics), it can’t hurt.

But still need to build the additional density. Proposals for efficiency apartments in Fairfax County face strong opposition (including an elected official insinuating that affordable housing will bring gang violence and sexual predators); a transit-oriented, mixed-use apartment project was recommended for rejection by staff due to (among other things) having too little parking (a still-generous 161 spaces for 141 units) for the County’s taste – despite sitting a stone’s throw away from the Huntington station.

At the same time, we have substantial evidence of the benefits that affordable suburban apartments can bring. David Kirp in the New York Times celebrates the ten year anniversary of suburban New Jersey apartments built under the Mount Laurel doctrine:

“I wish other places could learn from our example,” says Mr. McCaffrey, the former mayor, but that hasn’t happened. Affordable housing is still too rare in suburbia, as zoning laws continue to segregate poor and working-class families. Despite the track record in Mount Laurel and the promise it holds for neighborhoods around the country, it’s hard to imagine that the suburban drawbridge will be lowered anytime soon.

Link dump – all things ‘affordable housing’

DC Construction that comes up on a Flickr search for Inclusionary Zoning – CC image from Adam Fagen.

I’ve got far too many tabs sitting open in my browser, awaiting some form of linkage in the blog (the dates of publication might show how long they’ve been sitting). But, I want to put some of these out there rather than hog my browser’s memory.

I’ve attempted to cluster them together topically – a whole host on affordable housing policies and market-rate development.

“Winning upzoning in the bay” – from PriceRoads.com. The paralysis of urban development is part of a procedural tragedy of the commons, a side-effect of the decision-making architecture that we’ve adopted over time.

I now believe that California is not especially resistant to change, but rather that we’re seeing the tragedy of the commons that results when unified housing market is divided into dozens of cities. In short: when each city constitutes a tiny fraction of the habitable part of the metro area, no city can individually change housing prices much by allowing more development, but it can control the crowding within its borders.

So, what’s a potential solution to this impasse? Just buy people off.

Maybe the best dollar-for-dollar policy initiative of our time was Race to the Top. For $5 billion, the Obama administration bribed hundreds of thousands of charter-school students into existence. Race to the Top gave a lot of firepower to charter school proponents, allowing them to accuse teachers of turning down money for students…reversing the normal debate in which charter schools are accused of sapping money from traditional public schools.

The best way to deregulate cities would be to bribe key constituencies in a way that gives easy fodder for debate. I propose the following: California should triple the solar tax credit for seniors in communities that substantially ease zoning regulations. Any deregulation policy has to neutralize the most ardent opponents of development: seniors and environmentalists. This one would not funnel money through bureaucrats and would show up in anyone’s pocketbook as soon as they asked for the solar panels.

“NIMBYism will lead to economic stagnation” – an Op-Ed in the SF Examiner

Instead of fostering policies that discourage job formation, real estate development and economic growth, policymakers should be encouraging greater densities, and greater heights for new housing, especially along BART and Muni lines. If we are to get more people to live and work in San Francisco, then we must reject NIMBYism as a selfish luxury we cannot afford. The City badly needs an expanding tax base to fund financial promises it has made to public employees and to pay for its essential municipal services. New developments add mightily to the public’s well-being through contributions to The City’s funds for affordable housing, parks, transportation and the like. All of this comes from economic growth and a sensible balance between what we are now and what we need to be moving forward.

“Report finds a city incentive is not producing enough affordable housing” – New York Times

The report… found that the optional program known as inclusionary zoning had generated about 2,700 permanently affordable units since 2005, or less than 2 percent of all apartments developed in the city during the same period.

Under the program, the city allows developers of market-rate housing to build more units than would normally be allowed when neighborhoods are rezoned for new development, as long as they make 20 percent of the new homes affordable.

But Bill de Blasio, the city’s public advocate, argues in his housing platform for “converting incentives to hard-and-fast rules,” saying that 50,000 additional affordable units could be built over 10 years with a mandatory program.

Mandatory IZ might not be the fix New York is looking for. DC has it, yet we’re still looking elsewhere for inspiration.

“In New York, the rent doesn’t have to be ‘too damn high’ “ – Reihan Salam in Reuters

A century later, neighborhoods like the one I grew up in seem frozen in amber. The faces are different, to be sure, and so are the languages spoken by the locals. Crime has gone down and property values have gone up, and New York City is as desirable as it’s ever been. Yet we’ve had nothing like the building boom of the 1910s and 1920s that transformed the face of the city. Millions of low- and middle-income New Yorkers thus find themselves squeezed by skyrocketing rents, and hundreds of thousands of others who want to make their home in New York can’t afford to do so.

…

The first and most obvious thing to do is to broaden area in which housing can be built. For example, Schleicher and Roderick Hills Jr. of New York University Law School observe that cities like New York use “non-cumulative zoning” to dedicate desirable locations to low-value industrial uses. They propose allowing developers to replace empty warehouses, barely-used shipping facilities, and heavily subsidized factories with housing. Historical preservation districts severely restrict new housing development in many of New York City’s most desirable residential neighborhoods, which has contributed to rising housing prices. Though hardly anyone proposes getting rid of historical preservation districts entirely, the Harvard economist Edward Glaeser has made a strong case for limiting their growth.

Is NYC “Landmarking Away” Its Future? – ArchDaily

A recent study by the Real Estate Board of New York (REBNY) concluded that by preserving 27.7% of buildings in Manhattan, “the city is landmarking away its economic future.” REBNY is challenging the Landmarks Preservation Commission, arguing it has too much power when it comes to planning decisions, and that by making business so difficult for developers it is stifling the growth of the city.

…

Preservation, on the other hand, limits new supply and also creates a ‘cultural commodity’ of preserved buildings, both of which would increase the cost of living. How is it, then, that Francis Morrone cites new development as part of the problem, rather than the solution to rising costs?

Quite simply, the members of REBNY are building the wrong type of development: where developers do get the opportunity to build without restriction, they are too often building luxury apartments that are only an option for the super-rich. This may be good for their short-term profit margins, but it is bad for the long-term vitality of the city, as those who are not astoundingly wealthy are forced to leave – and the city becomes less diverse and less productive as a result.

Both sides overplay their hand a bit here. Landmarking alone isn’t what constrains New York real estate development (nor is it the case in other cities), and other constraints are also what push market-clearing prices so high (hence why all new apartments seem to be luxury ones). Affordability over time also involves filtering – yesterday’s luxury apartments have filtered down to more affordable price points. If you don’t build enough housing, you’ll see those older buildings filter up.

“In Defense Of The ‘Poor Door’: Why It’s Fine For A Luxury Condo Developer To Keep Its Low-Income Units Separate” – from Josh Barro at Business Insider, where he goes through a thought experiment about applying the same logic of IZ to that of SNAP benefits.

We require and incent developers who build market-rate housing to also sell or rent some units in the same developments at cut-rate prices. The idea is that affordable housing shouldn’t just be affordable and livable; it should be substantially similar in location and character to new luxury housing. If rich people are getting brand new apartments overlooking the Hudson River, so should some lucky winners of affordable housing lotteries.

Hence the outrage over the “poor door” at a planned luxury condo project that Extell will build on Manhattan’s Upper West Side: market-rate buyers will use one entrance, while tenants in the project’s affordable housing component will use another. Affordable apartments will also be on low floors and, unlike many of the market-rate units, they won’t face the Hudson River.

Getting mad about the “poor door” is absurd. The only real outrage is that Extell had to build affordable units at all.

New York’s housing advocates are right about one very important thing: upzonings are a windfall for landowners and the city should be asking for something in exchange for allowing more development. But what it should be asking for isn’t luxury apartments with river views to give out by lottery. It should be asking for cash.

Now, the reason for IZ isn’t solely about affordable housing, but about preserving and providing for mixed-income communities and for permanently affordable housing. All worthy goals, but the can come with a great deal of procedural headaches.

A visual survey of selected elevated rail viaducts: part 4 – monorails, active uses under viaducts, and precast concrete in Puerto Rico

Pulling together some suggestions from the comments of the series prologue, part 1, part 2, and part 3…

Monorails: Always popular as a technology that can reduce the visual bulk of elevated rail, Alon Levy collected some comparisons showing that purported monorail cost benefits to be mostly illusory. But what about visual bulk? Alon makes a note of the smaller required structure:

It includes a diagram of monorail structures, which can be seen to be quite light and thin. The width of the structure from guideway to guideway is 4.5 meters including both guideway widths, and including the outside appears to raise it to 5.5. Two-track elevated conventional rail structures typically range from 7 to 10.5 meters wide.

Mumbai has monorail under construction:

Mumbai monorail, under construction. CC image from Wiki.

One long-standing example is Seattle’s monorail:

Seattle Monorail, as seen from a neighboring downtown building. CC image from Bala Mainymaran

Seattle Monorail from street level. CC image from The West End.

New York: Commenter Matthew (of Walking Bostonian) offered two photos from New York of mainline rail infrastructure. The approach for the Hell Gate bridge towers over parts of Queens:

Hell Gate bridge approach. CC image from Matthew in Boston.

Another example is from the Long Island Railroad, with retail spaces crammed underneath a viaduct in Flushing, Queens:

LIRR viaduct, Flushing. CC image from Matthew in Boston.

The LIRR shows an example of re-using the space beneath a vaiduct with retail; perhaps without the architectural glamor of the archways in Berlin or Vienna. Nevertheless, it shows the potential for re-using some of the space beneath elevated rail.

Vienna: Neil Flannagan (after looking at Berlin examples) suggested Vienna:

The Queens Boulevard and Berlin examples really seem like missed opportunities we could have had in Tysons: cheap infill retail using the bridge structure as a roof. It would reduce the barrier effect of the median, focus activity near the stations, and set an example of urban form.

This was the solution nobody was looking for because we were so set on fighting out the tunnel-versus- overground plan and trying to keep the project afloat. I certainly was guilty of believing that no viaduct could be attractive, and kept arguing for a tunnel. I was looking at the types without considering design. It’s the same trap that NIMBYs do, wanting to minimize the impact by making a building smaller, rather than better. Damn. Looking outside of the box is why Jarrett Walker is so great.

I would really take a look at Otto Wagner’s Wiener Stadtbahn. The infrastructure is pretty street-friendly. It’s also very well designed, particularly the bridge over the Wienzeile.

Some images from Vienna:

Vienna viaduct and bridge structures, with retail spaces beneath. CC image from Wiki.

Retail beneath a viaduct in Vienna. CC image from Wiki.

San Juan, Puerto Rico: San Juan’s Tren Urbano was also mentioned in the comments. Google does not have streetview images in San Juan, but a brief Flickr search for CC images turns up the following examples of the system’s elevated structures:

Tren Urbano. CC image from I Am Rob.

Panorama of the Torrimar Tren Urbano station. CC image from davsot.

Tren Urbano. CC image from Paul Sableman.

Table of contents:

A visual survey of selected elevated rail viaducts: part 2 – best practices of integrating viaducts into urban designs

Continued from the prologue and part 1… A look at legacy examples of older elevated construction precedents. Some examples drawn from this post and this thread on the archBoston forums.

Berlin: As a part of his writing about elevated rail, Jarrett Walker takes note of Berlin’s elevated rail, and the use of space beneath them:

But the Stadtbahn is something else. Completed in 1882, it runs east-west right through the middle of the city, with all kinds of urban land uses right next to it. It’s a major visual presence in many of Berlin’s iconic sites, from affluent Charlottenberg to the Frederichstrasse shopping core to the “downtown of East Berlin,” Alexanderplatz. It even skirts Berlin’s great central park, the Tiergarten, and looks down into the zoo. If you were proposing to build it today, virtually every urbanist I’ve ever met would instinctively hate the idea, and if the idea somehow got past them, the NIMBYs would devour it.

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Yet much of it is beautiful. Most of the viaduct is built as a series of brick arches. Each arch is large enough to contain rooms, and today many of these are retail space, most commonly restaurants. These restaurants put their tables outside, sometimes facing a park but still, unavoidably, right next to the viaduct, and they’re very pleasant places to be. A train clatters overhead every minute or two, but it’s not dramatically louder than the other sounds of urban life, so it’s a comfortable part of the urban experience, devoid of menace. I could sit in such a place for hours.

Indeed, the four-track Stadtbahn cuts through Berlin on its own right of way, not in adjacent to or in the median of another street. Many streets run tangent to the elevated railway for segments, but much of the city directly abuts the railway.

Berlin Stadtbahn aerial image from Bing Maps.

By cutting through the city on a separate level and without directly mirroring the street grid, the transit network adds another layer to the cityscape. The city, both old and new (and yet to be built), has grown around the elevated rail:

Berlin Stadtbahn aerial from Bing Maps.

At the street, many of the viaduct’s archways have been turned over to retail uses, activating what would otherwise be a barrier of dead space:

View of the same viaduct from street level. Image from Google Streetview.

Jarrett’s post features a number of other images from Berlin, showing the various types of spaces the Stadtbahn creates. He closes asking if we might learn from these legacy examples in building new transit infrastructure:

Europe has some really beautiful transit viaducts, including some in the dense centres of cities. Most of them are a century old, so the city has partly grown around them. But the effect is sometimes so successful that I wonder if we shouldn’t be looking more closely at them, asking why they work, and whether they still have something to teach us about how to build great transit infrastructure.

Paris: Metro Line 6:

Paris Metro Line 6. Image from Google Streetview.

Line 6 runs down the middle of several wide streets, providing enough room for bike and pedestrian pathways beneath the viaduct, while also leaving enough space alongside for trees and landscaping. The aesthetic elements of the rail infrastructure (stone piers, steel spans) echo the architecture of the city as a whole.

Paris also has examples of old, now un-used vaiducts re-purposed as part of a vibrant cityscape:

Viaduc des Arts, Paris. Image from Google Streetview.

Above the viaduct is now an elevated linear park.

New York: In the comments of Part 1, Charlie asked about New York’s High Line. I did not initially include it, but I do think it offers an intersting example. The High Line (or what remains of it), like Berlin’s Stadtbahn, does not run directly above many streets. Also, the city grew around the infrastructure – in the High Line’s case of delivering freight to adjacent factories, that direct interaction was the very point of building the line.

Aerial view of the High Line weaving between and through buildings. Image from Google Maps.

Southern end ot the High Line, running adjacent to Washington St. Image from Google Streetview.

One particular example of elevated rail in New York both looks to the past (we don’t build ’em like we used to) but could also learn from the repurposing of the spaces created under viaducts for uses other than storage. The Queens Boulevard elevated rail line runs down the middle of a wide street, with large archways beneath the tracks – currently used for parking.

Queens Boulevard elevated rail. Image from Google Streetview.

Consider that when the line was built, the surrounding area was completely undeveloped. The city (and the roadway) emerged around the rail line, rather than cutting the rail line through an existing urban evironment (I don’t know that any single image better conveys the links between transportation, land use, and development). Meshing transit expansion into low-density areas is not just about transportation, but about re-shaping the city. Under the right conditions, it can work well.

New York has other examples of repurposing space beneath viaducts. While not specifically a transit example, the re-use of space under the Queensboro Bridge approaches in Manhattan is an example of what’s possible with some of these rail viaducts:

Queensboro bridge approach, New York. Image from Google Streetview.

Short of re-purposing the space beneath the tracks, the Queens Boulevard elevated rail allows for a perfectly acceptable kind of rail, without shadowing the streets or sidewalks below, making use of the street’s wide right of way. Alon Levy takes note:

But when there is an el about Queens Boulevard, everything works out: the street is broken into two narrower halves, with the el acting as a street wall and helping produce human scale; the el is also farther from the buildings and uses an arched concrete structure, both of which mitigate its impact.

Any other examples of older elevated infrastructure we can learn from?