Monthly Archives: May 2013

The future of Penn Station, part II: additional resources, renderings, and video of the architectural presentations

Penn Station platforms. CC image from Harvey Yau.

More links in relation to yesterday’s post on the future of Penn Station in New York:

In the videos from MAS, particularly in the panel discussion segment of the event moderated by Michael Kimmelman, it is heartening to hear many of the issues I raised in yesterday’s post (written without the aid of hearing the presentations) acknowledged, if not satisfactorily resolved. The SHoP team in particular at least addressed the more practical concerns of cost, safety, and infrastructure. Reactions amongst transit advocates were skeptical, but open.

Unfortunately for SHoP (and for the credibility of the entire process as something more substantial than a hypothetical design exercise), these pragmatic and practical realities were dismissed as problems for policy wonks to solve, implying they are beneath the work of the designers – all while joking that the one team at least acknowledging these realities was not a ‘designer.’

The future of New York’s Penn Station

Phase 1 of Moynihan Station. Image from Moynihan Station Development Corporation

Phase 1 of Moynihan Station. Image from Moynihan Station Development Corporation

Today, New York’s Municipal Arts Society revealed the results of their recent design challenge to re-envision New York’s claustrophobic Penn Station. The reveal of the concepts comes on the heels of a vote by the city’s Planning Commission to extend the operating permit for the station’s upstairs neighbor, Madison Square Garden, for another 15 years. The fate of the arena and the station are inexorably linked, but the discussion around re-envisioning the station dances around the real concerns of on-site interests and avoids the question of more pragmatic improvements to the underlying infrastructure.

Penn Station is easy to diss. It’s certainly not a grand space, nor a particularly functional one. Michael Kimmelman, architecture critic for the New York Times makes a habit of denigrating the station regularly. Given the regular beatings in the press, it’s hard not to feel sorry for the place. The challenges to improving the space are large and complex (and that’s a big reason why they haven’t been tackled yet).

Several issues pop up in my mind:

Transportation infrastructure: Penn Station has a capacity issue; the two big components are train capacity and passenger capacity. In terms of train capacity, the solution involves new tunnels under the Hudson in some shape or form.

For passengers, the solution is only partly about the ‘station’ as we commonly conceive it, the historic edifice preservationists mourn. That Penn is long gone; but the operational guts of the station never left. Penn Station today, from the concourses down, is essentially the same as it was on opening day. Improving passenger capacity could involve a number of improvements, from the relatively modest expansion of platform access points through Moynihan Station (a project that only addresses a minority of Penn Station’s passengers and did not have the support of previous Amtrak leadership) to more radical changes such as widening platforms at the expense of several platform tracks.

In DC, the recently revealed plan to re-make the back-end of Union Station involves a complete re-configuration and re-build of the entire rail yard in order to widen platforms prior to the construction of air rights development over the tracks. The lesson there is to get your platform arrangement right before you start fixing columns in place (the concept involves the demolition of the existing parking garage over the tracks because the column placement is not ideal for Amtrak’s goals). At Penn Station, however, a lot of those columns are fixed. Even if you demolish MSG above, you’re not going to re-arrange every bit of the original infrastructure. The path dependence of many of those column locations is just too great.

Aesthetic improvements vs. functional improvements: From a great deal of the media critiques of Penn Station, you wouldn’t get a hint of the transportation problems listed above. Instead, the biggest objection is aesthetic. Across town, the magnificent Grand Central Terminal is celebrating its centennial, and the comparison is too juicy to ignore for Here and Now on WBUR.

Kimmelman makes the social case for great design and emphasizing the equity and democratic power that well-designed public space can have. However, design is not destiny. Even while Here and Now gushes over the greatness of Grand Central, they gloss over the fact that it, too faced neglect, deferred maintenance, and the threat of demolition. Kimmelman seemingly glosses over that erroneous causality.

Beware PATH: Kimmelman likewise criticizes Calatrava’s World Trade Center PATH hub as an “architectural foll[y]”, now excessively over budget. At the same time, it’s hard to see the difference between the trajectory of both projects (at least, as envisioned in this design challenge) – both involve avant garde re-designs with little to say about the actual transportation infrastructure. Steven Smith’s accounting of the spiraling PATH project could be a prescient description for Penn Station:

The architecture critics were smitten. The design, The New York Times’s architecture critic Herbert Muschamp wrote, “should satisfy those who believe that buildings planned for ground zero must aspire to a spiritual dimension,” and he hoped that New Yorkers would detect the “metaphysical element” in Mr. Calatrava’s work. His design was supposed to spur development throughout the neighborhood and lead lower Manhattan, still reeling from the attacks, out of its malaise. To the extent that the critics were worried, it was about how it would fit in with the architectural context of the site, not its cost.

Mr. Calatrava would eventually become to be remembered with regret among those in his hometown of Valencia, where his City of Arts and Sciences ended up costing more than three times its initial $400 million budget. But at the time, Mr. Calatrava could do no wrong.

In New York, his starting point was far higher than it had been in Valencia. The Federal Transit Administration pledged $1.9 billion [ed. – now officially at $3.74 billion] for the project early on, and the Port Authority would throw in another few hundred million—a number that would climb much higher.

The lesson from ground zero is that projects like this are exceedingly complex. As Smith’s article shows, the PATH project involves complicated jurisdictional issues and a tremendous number of infrastructure challenges; the hub (with deep pockets backing the project) ended up absorbing most of those common costs.

Madison Square Garden: Penn Station has every bit of the complexity that the PATH hub does, and no element shows this more than Madison Square Garden.

All of the submissions to the Municipal Arts Society’s design challenge assume the re-location of the arena, and apparently did so without talking to the owners of MSG:

A spokesman from the Madison Square Garden Company replied, in part:

“It’s curious to see that there are so many ideas on how to tear down a privately owned building that is a thriving New York icon, supports thousands of jobs and is currently completing a $1 billion transformation. These pie-in-the-sky drawings completely ignore the fact that no viable plans or funding to rebuild Penn Station and relocate MSG actually exist. Not that long ago, MSG spent millions of dollars and three years exploring a move to the Farley building as part of the new vision for Moynihan Station. That plan collapsed for a number of reasons that did not involve MSG, but did involve many of the same people now pressuring MSG to move, including The Municipal Art Society, which created enormous obstacles to achieving the relocation.”

Indeed, MSG was once a willing partner in moving from their current site in exchange for a new arena. As the MSG spokesman indicates, the arena company decided to stay and renovate their current arena due to the slow pace of the complicated deal. The city has some leverage with the operating permit’s expiration date, but otherwise the air rights the arena occupies are privately owned, and the projected cost to buy them out in 2008 was close to $2 billion.

Now that MSG has invested an additional billion dollars into their renovation, not only has the cost of a buyout increased, but those advocating for moving the arena missed the most obvious window to strike a deal. Prior to the renovation, MSG’s aging facilities aligned interests. Now, MSG has little incentive to move, particularly when some of the proposed sites range the original short hop across 8th Avenue in the Farley Building Annex to the distant to Javits Center site along the Hudson (and far from the centrality, connectivity, and value of Penn Station).

The designs miss the art of the deal and ignore the reality that MSG will be, by necessity, a partner in any changes to the site. Ignoring this reality seems to only set the stage for disappointment in implementation. Matt Chaban in Crain’s writes:

The many—architects and urban designers—welcomed the latest push to undo the destruction of Penn, but planners and real estate bosses expressed grave reservations over the plans, which were drawn up at the behest of the Municipal Art Society.

“I don’t know how you do this without telling the people sitting on top of the station what you’re doing,” said Steven Spinola, president of the Real Estate Board, referring to Madison Square Garden.

Incremental improvements: Even without these visions, incremental improvements are possible. While the full scope of Moynihan Station might be ill-advised, the more limited phase 1, consisting essentially of an additional exit concourse providing additional platform access, is a reasonable investment. Additional investments across 8th Avenue could also clear out the maze of back-office and railroad support functions contained within the existing Penn Station facility (things like baggage handling, employee break rooms, a commissary for long distance trains, etc).

This diagram from New York State shows both the phase 1 concourse as well as the mess of rooms and corridors in the existing station. Clearing out those support functions from Penn Station allows for re-allocation of that space for additional passenger facilities and more coherent circulation.

To improve the feeling of the concourses, add an element of spaciousness, and potentially some natural light, there are options without removing the arena. As this section of MSG shows (see also this old cut-away from Popular Science), the arena floor is located on the 5th floor of the structure. The primary use of the lower floors is for MSG’s 5000 seat Theater/Forum. Relocating just the theater, combined with the removal of support functions from the lower levels, would provide a great deal of space to work with to create a more inviting passenger space.

This ‘plan B’ isn’t a new idea. Vornado Realty owns a great deal in and around the Penn Station complex and has a vested interest in improving on the station. Vornado’s CEO Steve Roth suggested as much in 2008 (The more incremental, pragmatic idea even had support from Senator Chuck Schumer):

Despite a push by Vornado and co-developer Related Companies to keep the larger-scale project alive via government support, Mr. Roth indicated he considers that scenario unlikely.

“[We] basically feel that something good is going to happen,” he said. “Either that the governments are going to get their acts together, which they probably will not, or … we have with Madison Square Garden a Plan B, which is they stay where they are, we take out the theater, we—underneath the seating bowl of the arena—put a new grand entrance to Eighth Avenue and a new grand entrance to the station on Seventh Avenue, and what that will do is create a grand train station. Not quite as grand as moving it, but pretty nice. Actually, spectacularly nice.”

Sticker shock: There’s also the matter of cost. SHoP architects estimated their proposal at a mere $9.48 billion:

All the architects insisted their plans were workable, and Vishaan Chakrabarti, a partner at SHoP, even presented a plan using air rights sales and payments-in-lieu-of-taxes to cover the costs of the project, which he pegged at $9.48 billion. “And that’s with a factor of 30% cost overruns,” he said, as though it were a selling point.

Steve Roth emphasized that the value to the private development in the area can be realized with a less expensive station:

Mr. Roth said that the “Plan B” would add just as much value to Vornado’s property as if the original plan went forward.

“Our company’s principal interest in what happens with this Moynihan, Madison Square Garden, et cetera deal is to improve the value and increase the value of our adjacent eight million feet, which we believe we can do equally as well with Plan A or Plan B,” he said.

In that case, perhaps those air rights sales and PILOTs could be directed towards the other infrastructure costs facing the station.

A path forward? Combine new station entrances using that freed space, new concourses with space freed from relocated support functions, incremental improvements at the platform level, operational changes to the operating plans for the railroad tenants at the station, and investments in new rail tunnels under the Hudson – and now we’re talking about a realistic path forward.

The Planning Commission’s new, 15-year operating permit for MSG is a step in that direction, both in terms of identifying realistic improvements as well as syncing the timeframe for the larger discussions about the site. As Matt Chaban notes, the only realistic outcome of the MAS’s re-visioning process is “the kickoff of a renewed debate about the future of the West Side.” And, based on other examples, a decade-and-a-half timeframe would seem to be about right.

Development costs and housing affordability

Vancouver towers along False Creek. Photo by author.

Two competing narratives often emerge when talking about policy responses to housing costs. One asserts that lowering the costs of construction and development will allow those savings to be passed on to eventual users of the real estate; the other asserts that markets set prices, and lowering the cost of development would yield pure profit to developers who will charge what the market will bear. So, which is it? The Vancouver Sun has a series of articles on housing affordability in Vancouver, BC. One of these articles focuses on development impact fees(among other causes) and their role in affordability. The two basic narratives are on display:

“The significant cost premiums of building new homes in Vancouver, compared to Surrey, leads to two observable results,” said Anne McMullin, president and CEO of the Urban Development Institute. “Either the increased costs will inevitably be passed on to homebuyers or the viability of building new market housing will be suppressed. Regardless, the end game is a more unaffordable and less socially sustainable city.”

She says the most obvious way to address affordability is to look at the costs and supply of housing.

“Costs affect supply — if it’s too expensive to build, you’re going to limit the supply. But we still have the demand. There’s always going to be a demand — there are buyers who can afford it.”

But Brian Jackson, the City of Vancouver’s general manager of planning, says market demand drives the price of housing much more than the costs of development.

“If we took $1,000 off the cost of the CACs or we took $1,000 off the cost of the DCLs,” Jackson said, referring to two types of city development fees, “is the developer going to take $1,000 off the cost of selling the house? I don’t think they would – they’re going to get the highest price that they could.”

These two narratives aren’t necessarily at odds with one another. In the short run, a small decrease in development fees (thereby lowering the cost of development) wouldn’t likely lower costs. However, the total fee amounts per unit in Vancouver are substantial – on the order of $76,000 per unit, according to the Sun’s figures. That’s roughly equivalent to the cost of an underground parking space. If you were to remove the fees, would developers merely pocket the difference as extra profit? Recall research on the liberalization of parking space requirements in Los Angeles: removal of these requirements lowered the cost of development in Downtown LA, but the results were not merely additional profit for developers. Instead, the lower development costs allowed developers the flexibility to build for a wider variety of sub-markets and price points.

Instead of the high-cost regulations forcing them to build Cadillacs, lower costs allow them to build a wider variety of products to meet a wider range of price points. If the costs are too high, developers have little choice but to aim for the luxury submarkets.

Markets do indeed set prices; and in the short term, developers won’t necessarily lower their prices. However, the markets are deeper and more complex in the longer run and allowing flexibility to build to those submarkets will produce a wider range of products, not just catering to the luxury set. As that housing ages, it can filter to lower-priced submarkets. Filtering isn’t a set policy so much as it is a description of  how housing markets work.

Note that some of these Vancouver fees might only apply to units in re-zoned developments. However, that raises the question of if there is enough by-right development capacity not just within a city or political jurisdiction, but in areas with demand for market-rate development. Also note that in many places, by-right development is increasingly rare, subject to negotiation and incentives as a part of the approvals process. A profile of New York’s Amanda Burden in last year’s New York Times noted that “there really doesn’t seem to be any true as-of-right development anymore.”

Those development fees aren’t just collected for fun, however. They’re paying for something. However, as is the case with parking, is collecting these fees the best way to accomplish the goals? Over at Human Transit, Jarrett Walker notes some of the perverse incentives baked into development fees, and the unintended consequences therein. Jarrett cites this post from the Pembina Institute, looking at the often-perverse incentives packaged into these fees:

Developers continue to build in sprawling greenfields because it is often cheaper and easier than building developments in walkable, transit-oriented neighbourhoods. Lack of supply means homebuyers are priced out of these locations and are literally “driven” to the urban and suburban fringes, where long and stressful auto commutes are required — and this only leads to more congestion.

Building transit is only one half of the solution. Toronto also needs to make sure we get the right mix of development in the right places to support and use transit infrastructure. Perhaps this current process of examining revenue tools will create an opportunity to do so.

As noted previously, a great deal of development will follow the path of least resistance. These kinds of fees might provide an easy way to fund new infrastructure, but they also add to the overall cost of development. Other tools for capturing that value and channeling it to the needed projects might offer fewer unintended consequences. One such unintended consequence is to push development into outlying areas, or force development to only serve the luxury submarket.

Graphic standards on the Subway – a lesson for Metro as it evaluates the future of ‘Metro Brown’

Today, Second Ave Sagas linked to a digitized copy of Massimo Vignelli’s 1970 graphics standards manual for the New York City Subway. The photographed pages of the manual describe, in exacting detail, the graphic look and feel and philosophy of wayfinding signage for the Subway. While Vignelli’s schematic map (a scan of the map can be found here; discussion of the map’s legacy here and here; and for more from Vignelli himself, see this outtake from Helvetica) didn’t make it out of the 70s, his graphic legacy lives on through the system’s signage.

Henry Grabar wrote about the digital version of the manual in Atlantic Cities in March, adding some history to the conversation. One such change was the inversion of the standards from black text on a white background to the system’s current white text on a black background as a measure to discourage graffiti, though there are claims that white on black is more legible. On a temporary basis, some black-on-white signs have returned.

One of the more interesting pages from the manual shows how signs showing options should only appear at decision points along the way to a train – not before, and not after:

The text at the top of the page reads (out of the frame of the screen capture above, view the full page with magnification to read the text):

This diagram explains the sequence of information to the subway rider. It is a branching system that will lead him to his destination as directly as possible. The basic concept of this branching system is that the subway rider should be given only information at the point of decision. Never before. Never after.

All of the discussion about the manual emphasizes the power of standards. For a detailed history of New York’s struggle with diverse signage, see Paul Shaw’s online work, based on his book. The history of New York’s signage is understandably turbulent, but the level of coherency that comes through for users given the scale of the system is remarkable.

This puts Metro’s recent discussions about moving away from ‘Metro Brown’ into context. If any of New York’s standards look familiar, it is because Vignelli worked on both systems. Vignelli was a consultant to Harry Weese (architect), along with Lance Wyman (map designer), and reportedly was the one to coin the name ‘Metro’ and create the ‘M’ logo. Given the efforts in New York to standardize wayfinding signage, why move in the opposite direction now?

What’s wrong with ‘Metro Brown?’

Last week, the Washington Post featured a lengthy profile of WMATA’s head architect, the man behind the concepts in Metro’s recently unveiledstation of the future‘ concept. The article offers some insight into the thinking behind the proposed re-design of the Bethesda station, as well as some of the pushback Metro has received already from the Commission on Fine Arts (among others).

Some changes seem sensible, like higher-output light fixtures to replace current fixtures, with the goal of increased light levels while staying true to Harry Weese’s indirect lighting scheme. These seem more like mechanical or operational challenges for the most part, the kind of behind-the-scenes stuff that won’t make such a huge difference in the appearance of stations.

Other proposals seem like change for the sake of change: replacing bronze with stainless steel, for example:

Karadimov acknowledges bronze as a central element of the “original palate” of Metro. But operationally, it is not ideal. Bronze needs polishing, not just cleaning, and the grime on the railing in Bethesda easily comes off to the touch. In the NoMa-Gallaudet and Largo stations, some of the system’s newest, there are already stainless steel railings that Karadimov says are less expensive to clean (though he did not have a cost estimate) and lighter in color. Same for the first group of five Silver Line stations under construction and the canopies that cover some Metro entrances.

Karadimov proposed replacing the bronze railings and escalator panels throughout the Bethesda station with stainless steel; after criticism over the idea of stripping out so much bronze, however, he retreated, agreeing not to replace the bronze with stainless steel or any concrete parapets with glass. Instead he says Metro will keep all its bronze railings. But he says the escalator panels are a less central element that needs replacing. “That is one thing that we are going to have to have a further conversation about,” he said.

While stainless steel might require less maintenance, that doesn’t make it maintenance-free. Plenty of Metro’s entrance canopies are already showing their age, along with accumulated dirt and grime. Likewise, I can’t see any objection to the use of stainless steel features in new stations, but fail to see why this is such a critical element for the improvement of existing stations. If an escalator replacement opens the door for a stainless steel enclosure instead of a bronze one, so be it – this would hardly be Metro’s first stainless escalator. However, that reasoning doesn’t apply to bronze railings that are not in need of replacement.

Stainless steel station elements at NoMa-Gallaudet U Station. Photo by author.

Aside from bronze, the other element of Metro’s aesthetic under attack is the color brown:

But if the stations are to get brighter, Karadimov said, brown cannot continue to be the dominant color. “We’re not going to keep any brown,” he said. “We believe that having a lighter color will help make the station more bright.”

Like the bronze, brown unquestionably contributes to the placid feeling of the stations, but Karadimov said it contributes just as strongly to views that the stations appear dated. Whether the agency will have to retreat on the color brown as it did on bronze has not been decided.

Karadimov also has not formally proposed a color to replace it. He talks about light gray and silver, which he said would make signage easier to read, but without stainless steel to pair it with he may have to reconsider.

As ubiquitous as brown is within the Metro system, it is by no means the dominant color inside stations. The complaint that bronze is too dark seems to ring hollow, as well. Concrete and the red tiles are far more dominant in the palate than either brown or bronze.

Brown elements are limited to accent pieces and signage. The shade of brown itself is so dark that it doesn’t readily register as a brown at all, but almost a black-brown. Contrary to the assertion from Metro, this dark background provides a great deal of contrast for white lettering, making signage easy to read. White text on dark backgrounds is hardly unique to DC in terms of mass transit signage, either.

Combination of stainless steel, painted steel, and brown signage elements at NoMa-Gallaudet U Station. Photo by author.

Even in Metro’s newer stations (those not a part of the originally planned system), Metro’s white-text-on-brown-background signage standard remained intact. Why change it now and disrupt the uniformity across the system?

The addition of gray elements to Metro’s signage scheme is not new, either. Gallery Place, WMATA’s designated ‘test’ station for new signage, has seen lots of designs over the years, including different background colors and fonts and backlit signage, and the use of gray backgrounds for directional arrows – but none abandon Metro Brown.

Prescriptive urbanism vs. market urbanism – the tension between demand for more housing and the desire to curate great cities

San Francisco skyline w/ crane. CC image from Omar Omar

Tales from two cities:

San Francisco: From Ilan Greenberg in The New RepublicSan Francisco’s Gentrification Problem isn’t Gentrification. Greenberg compares the public debate (often writen, and discussed previously here) in San Francisco compared to more the more familiar narrative in other cities.

Here, the debate is dominated by fierce new champions of the anti-gentrification cause who aren’t concerned so much about the truly poor being forced from—or tempted out of—their neighborhoods. In their view, the victims of gentrification are also affluent, just less so than the people moving in. And the consequences are supposedly catastrophic not only to these relatively well-off people who are living amidst people even more well-off, but a mortal threat to nothing less than the rebel soul of San Francisco.

While the conversation may not fall into the same narrative as other cities, that doesn’t make it more useful. Greenberg notes that the San Francisco conversation can “suck the air out of a reality-based conversation” about affordability.

Greenberg spoke with Peter Cohen, a San Francisco housing advocate:

Sitting in the worn lobby of a hotel patrolled by security guards near Twitter’s new corporate headquarters, and armed with documents showing statistics on skyrocketing rents and rising tenant evictions, Cohen came to talk about disenfranchised people struggling to keep financially afloat and about the legal intricacies of deed-restricted affordable housing. He said he expects to have an uphill climb to reach new residents obsessed with buzzy restaurants and city officials in thrall to new tech business interests, but now also struggles to be heard over the din of middle-class residents moaning about the “gentrification” of their neighborhoods—residents who themselves may have been gentrifiers, or more likely followed in gentrifiers’ footsteps.

Greenberg writes of this narrative as if it were inevitable: “The compact city has a long history of clubby NIMBYism and knee-jerk preservationist politics that torpedoes even the most sensible development projects.” In addition to the outright opposition, fees and a long approvals process increases barriers to new housing supply in the city.

Some opposition to new development is that it makes the city dull. This isn’t the first time such arugments have come up. Inga Saffron, also writing in The New Republic made the same case that gentrifcation brings monotony. Writing specifically of San Francisco, Charles Hubert decries the “homogenization” of the city.

Part of the challenge is that rebuffing that monotony probably requires more development to meet the demand, not less. It’s a somewhat counter-intuitive proposition. Another challenge is the notion that cities do not (or should not) change, when history says otherwise.

Brooklyn: San Francisco’s experience is not to say that fears of monotonous development aren’t somewhat warranted. Unleashing the market alone won’t solve all urban ills. The Wall Street Journal looks at the results of one of New York City’s rezonings, ten years later, with some detrimental effects on 4th Avenue in Brooklyn:

But the Planning Department lacked such foresight in 2003 when it rezoned the noisy avenue to take advantage of the demand for apartments spilling over Park Slope to the east and Boerum Hill and Gowanus to the west. Focused primarily on residential development, it didn’t require developers to incorporate ground-level commercial businesses into their plans, and allowed them to cut sidewalks along Fourth Avenue for entrances to ground-level garages.

Developers got the message. With the re-zoning coinciding with the real-estate boom, they put up more than a dozen apartment towers, many of them cheap looking and with no retail at the street level, effectively killing off the avenue’s vibrancy for blocks at a time.

The city finally got wise and passed another zoning change last year, correcting some of these mistakes.

The shortcomings on 4th Avenue show the tension between market urbanism and proscriptive/prescriptive urbanism (and both words probably apply) but it also shows the power of incentives and how development tends to follow the path of least resistance. But it’s not like this outcome is solely a product of the market.

Some of the architects responsible for middle-brow architecture along Fourth Avenue are surprisingly candid about the other cause: They pass the buck to the developers who hired them and the pressure they faced to cut costs at the expense of aesthetics.

“I try to do my best for my clients and try to get them as big a building as possible,” says Henry Radusky, a partner with Bricolage Architecture and Designs LLC, which has built nine buildings along Fourth Avenue in the last decade.

One of Mr. Radusky’s buildings was 586 President St., one of three buildings on the same two-block stretch of the avenue that contribute to its canyon of mediocrity look. Another is the Novo Park Slope, at Fourth Avenue and 5th Street, a pallid, prison-like structure with parking and a medical facility at ground level that towers menacingly over its next-door neighbors.

That parking, of course, is the product of prescriptive regulation. Market pressures might impact some design choices, but the relative impact of those decisions (compared against higher quality materials or prioritizing retail uses on the ground floor) likely pales in comparison to the cost and spatial needs of parking.

Back in San Francisco, Peter Cohen is looking for ways to mesh the market and prescriptive elements together:

Even housing advocates like Cohen concede a hard ideological approach loses hearts and minds. “I also understand that we have a changed disposition toward cities. How can you find a sweet spot between these two forces—how do you bring in this creative class, but also make sure that people who toiled in the weeds are not simply squeezed out? How can you sort it without just saying that the market will take care of everyone, when obviously it won’t?”