Monthly Archives: September 2013

Link dump – all things ‘affordable housing’

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

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.

Density – a vision for an urban America

The world is urbanizing. But is it doing so in a truly urban fashion, or is it merely a way of noting that ‘urban’ can be defined as ‘not rural?’

This is one of the concerns Vishaan Chakrabarti brings up in his discussions of ‘hyperdensity’ and his book making the case for a truly urban future: market-driven, transit-supportive, and more dense and urban than what we have today. Chakrabarti notes that this isn’t meant to denigrate suburbanism, but to merely level the competitive playing field and to stop direct subsidy of suburbanization.

ArchDaily links to a video of Chakrabarti speaking before a panel of big names in architecture and academia at Columbia University. They summarize as follows:

Through the compelling representation of statistics, Chakrabarti makes a concise case for the benefits of investing efforts in a development strategy that is based on dense cities. By identifying issues in modern infrastructures, current city planning policies, and paradigms within the design and construction fields, he paints a new urban landscape.

And the video:

[youtube http://youtu.be/ZBC_Pa1a6bc]

In the panel discussion, Bernard Tschumi notes that the ideas Chakrabarti presents are not new; to which Chakrabarti asks rhetorically, “then why are we in this mess?”

Metro’s stainless steel future – Rosslyn

As the construction fencing starts to come down around the second entrance to Rosslyn Station, you can now see the future aesthetic for Metro infrastructure. Lots of steel and glass, but little of Metro’s original materials: concrete, tile, and brass.

Elevator-only second entrace to the Rosslyn Station. Photo by the author.

Elevator-only second entrance to the Rosslyn Station. Photo by the author.

The three elevators descend to a new mezzanine adjacent to the existing mezzanine. More renderings of the project are available at Arlington County’s website.

Cutaway of the Rosslyn Station second entrance. Image from Arlington County.

Cutaway of the Rosslyn Station second entrance. Image from Arlington County.

Above ground, the elevators emerge in a completely different structure across the street from the existing entrance. The separation between the two avoids the discord between Metro’s current embrace of stainless steel and the system’s historic colors and materials. Even though this project represents an addition to an existing station, the construction is almost entirely outside of the existing station shell. Unlike the proposed Bethesda renovation, the Rosslyn project thereby avoids the conflict between the old and new palates.

New Rosslyn Station entrance pavilion. Photo by the author.

New Rosslyn Station entrance pavilion. Photo by the author.

As the Metro system has expanded, it’s also picked up architectural variety. Even during the build-out of the original Adopted Regional System, the station architecture varies from station to station, depending on age and the construction methods. All of the ARS stations used the same palate of materials, despite the variety in design. Additions beyond the ARS (NoMa infill station and the Largo Extension) feature a different look than other above-ground stations; the Silver Line to Dulles will feature an entirely different architectural vocabulary.

Speed, urban transportation and geometry heuristics

Following up on this previous post, noting that “transport is mostly a real estate problem” – a few quick heuristics on cities, speed, and space:

Comparison of population/employee density and street area per person. Image from NYU Urbanization Project.

Comparison of population/employee density and street area per person. Image from NYU Urbanization Project.

Regarding speed: 

Speed requires space; faster travel occupies a larger area than slower travel.

Speed alters our perception of space. Faster travel makes large things seem smaller (hat tip to this post from GGW for the links). The properties of the space affect how we use it and what we percieve it to be; wider roadways within streets get used for faster travel.

Regardless of speed, cars require large spaces relative to their capacity. Even when parked (v = 0), cars require lots of space. By extension, building cities around requires a completely different spatial footprint.

Regarding space: 

There is a strong tendency for cities to devote about 25% of their land to streets. Street networks are for mobility, but also for access to land. Devoting too much land to streets is wasteful; too little makes it difficult to unlock the value of the land within a city.

Intersection density correlates with walkability and connectivity; wider instersection spacing correlates with the higher speed travel of cars.

Consider the relationship between the density of the network (intersection density), the tendency to use ~25% of land for streets (regardless of the density of the place), and street width on the kind of transportation.

Simply requiring some minimum intersection density for new developments via a code will still be subject to ‘gaming’ and open to unintended consequences.

Street networks are sticky and tend not to change once established; the cities that grow around them are path-dependent. However, transport networks can be layered – subways travel fast, require space and grade-separation, but deliver passengers to the street grid as pedestrians; just as freeways are layered above/below streets and deliver high volumes of cars to local streets.

While the physical space allocated to streets tends not to change, the use of that space can change a great deal over time.

A visual survey of selected elevated rail viaducts: part 5 – Vancouver and Tysons Corner

Pulling together some suggestions from the comments of the series prologue, part 1part 2, part 3, and part 4

Vancouver: Alon Levy reminds us to look at Skytrain’s viaducts in Greater Vancouver. Skytrain represents the kind of future for rapid transit this series means to investigate, baked right into the system’s name: expansion of transit aboveground, rather than under.

Skytrain’s fully automated, fully grade-separated network includes underground transit in dense areas and along narrow streets, but makes extensive use of elevated rail along wide streets and freight rail rights of way (active and dormant). Jarrett Walker discusses the virtues of the Skytrain system, above and beyond that of regular rapid transit – with the automated trains allowing for increased frequencies without increasing the associated operating costs:

Light rail is wonderfully flexible, able to run onstreet with signalized intersections, and across pedestrian zones, as well as in conventional elevated or underground  profiles.  Driverless metro must be totally grade-separated, which in practice usually means elevated or underground.  SkyTrain got its name because the original lines were mostly elevated, though the newest, the Canada Line, has a long underground segment.

The system’s most recent addition, the Canada line, features elevated sections for the two southern branches – one that goes to the airport, and one to redevelopment areas in Richmond.

Vancouver 1

Skytrain Canada Line viaduct over a sidewalk in Richmond, BC. Image from Google Maps.

By placing the line alongside the roadway when next to surface parking, they’ve managed to expand the sidewalk without imposing too much on the pedestrian environment. The benches and trellises around the columns are a nice touch. The single guideway for both tracks helps minimize the bulk of the guideway. When those parking lots are redeveloped, they can front on the sidewalk without overshadowing it.

Aerial view of Skytrain in Richmond, BC - showing redevelopment of suburban land uses. Image from Google Maps.

Aerial view of Skytrain in Richmond, BC – showing redevelopment of suburban land uses. Image from Google Maps.

Older elevated guideways in the system include center running sections through suburban land uses:

Center running elevated Skytrain line. Image from Google Maps.

Center running elevated Skytrain line. Image from Google Maps.

Some sections run along alleyways.

Aerial of alley-running aerial alignment. Image from Google Maps.

Aerial of alley-running aerial alignment. Image from Google Maps.

Other sections combine separate and adjacent right of way with berms and greenery:

Elevated rail shielded by trees. Image from Google Maps.

Elevated rail shielded by trees. Image from Google Maps.

Center-aligned side-platform station. Image from Google Maps.

Center-aligned side-platform station. Image from Google Maps.

Vancouver provides lessons for rapid transit expansion in that it uses elevated rail through suburban-style rights of way.

Tysons Corner:

The Silver Line extension of Washington’s Metro system to Tysons Corner follows some of same principles as Skytrain, but without the same quality of execution. Part of the challenge is the landscape (Tysons features some wider roads than Richmond), and part is in the transit infrastructure.

View of Tysons guideway along Route 7 in Tysons Corner. Image from the author.

View of Tysons guideway along Route 7 in Tysons Corner. Image from the author.

Tysons tunnel proponents claimed that a Spanish-style large-bore TBM could tunnel through Tysons at lower cost than elevated rail. The authorities rejected this argument after some study, and with good reason. It may be true that the Spanish can build transit tunnels extremely cheaply (they can!), but it makes little sense to compare American elevated costs with Spanish tunneling costs.

Instead, it’s illustrative to look at relative costs of construction types. If the contractors could’ve built tunnels at the same cost as the Spaniards, they could’ve built elevated rail for less money, as well.

View of Silver Line Metro, looking back towards Greensboro Station. Image from the author.

View of Silver Line Metro, looking back towards Greensboro Station. Image from the author.

Along Route 7, they’re starting to install sidewalks, but the pedestrian environment is still lacking.

View of new sidewalk along Route 7, leading to Greensboro Station. Image from the author.

View of new sidewalk along Route 7, leading to Greensboro Station. Image from the author.

There are opportunities for infill development along these new sidewalks, but sidewalks adjacent to a high-speed stroads isn’t the most compelling environment. Other new transit-oriented development in Tysons isn’t attempting to turn the existing main stroads (routes 7 and 123) into nice streets, but rather add a pedestrian layer on top of the current auto-centric network.

Image from the author.

Image from the author.

Image from the author.

Image from the author.

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