Tag Archives: DC

Parking, misunderstood

CC image from Atomic Taco

Let’s take a trip up and down the Northeast Corridor and look at recent parking news.  All three show some misunderstandings about parking, cities, and markets. Time for some Shoup reading assignments!

New York:  Looking to discuss changes to the zoning code parking requirements in downtown Brooklyn, the New York Times comes down with a severe case of windshield-itis:

In traffic-clogged New York City, where parking spaces are coveted like the rarest of treasures, an excess of parking spaces might seem like an urban planner’s dream.

Yet city officials, developers and transit advocates say that in Downtown Brooklyn, there is this most unusual of parking problems: There is simply too much of it.

Admittedly, many urban planning principles seem counter-intuitive at first glance.  When you add in the challenge of altering a regulatory status quo (such as modestly changing the zoning code, as is proposed in Brooklyn), the weight of conventional wisdom is enormous.

Still, it’s interesting to see a parking glut framed as an “urban planner’s dream.’ (particularly when compared against later articles from DC) It’s sure not my dream, either in terms of result (excess parking) or process (via the unintended consequences of regulation).  Building parking is expensive, so we don’t want to build too much of it.  Requiring us to build too much means that those costs just get passed along to the rest of us.

It’s worth noting that New York is not proposing to eliminate these requirements and rely on the market to determine how much parking to provide, they are merely reducing the requirement from mandating 40% of new units have spaces (in a neighborhood where only 22% of households own cars!) to 20%. Why not reduce it to zero?

Likewise, there are likely opportunities for new developments to make use of the excess parking already built. Hopefully, those kinds of arrangements would allow for new buildings to still be parking-free if the market so desires.  Nevertheless, a reduction in the requirement is moving in the right direction.

Philadelphia: A few miles south on the NEC, Philadelphia might be backtracking on parking, rather than moving in the right direction. Philly has already altered their zoning code to eliminate parking requirements in the city’s dense rowhouse neighborhoods.  Now, members of the city council want to roll those changes back. The council’s interference in a code change that’s only been in effect for a few months is troubling, as is the lack of reasoning.  From the Inquirer’s article on the topic:

“Most developers wish that they didn’t have to get approvals from anybody,” says Clarke. “I have to be responsive to the needs of the residents. They don’t have enough parking.”

Perhaps this is where a dose of that counter-intuitive planning wisdom would be useful.

The reasoning put forth for changing the rules back is equally troubling, particularly given the Philadelphia Planning Commission’s charge in rewriting the zoning code: reduce the need to grant so many variances.  Attempting to graft a comprehensive zoning ordinance onto a pre-existing (and pre-automobile) cityscape is bound to be a challenge no matter what; but pushing a code to require elements so geometrically opposed to the pre-code fabric is foolhardy.  Such changes, often made in the name of providing more parking only end up inducing unintended consequences.  From the Next American City article:

Gladstein said the bill’s proposed changes could set Philadelphia back on the path back to when the city issued more variances than nearly any other big city in America because of unrealistic demands in the zoning code.

“There are many instances in rowhome neighborhoods where you simply cannot provide parking by right because of factors like narrow lot lines,” she said. “We thought these changes would send too many cases to the zoning board.”

Gladstein also noted that lack of a parking requirement in the original code was intentional, as on-site parking, which often manifests itself as a front-loading garage, actually diminishes the supply of public parking spaces.

A code that doesn’t respect geometry, doesn’t reflect the city’s history, and achieve its stated goals is a bad code. Here’s to hoping those changes do not go into effect.

DC: In the District, the parking conversations aren’t focused on zoning (yet! – but they will be, and soon), but rather the management of on-street parking spaces. Policy changes take a different tack than in Philadelphia – instead of providing parking for residents via zoning code requirements, the city is strengthening on-street protections for residents with parking permits.

The reaction is all over the map – Ward 1 Councilmember says this is about a future that “discourages car ownership,” yet the goal of enhanced residential permit parking protections is about “striking a balance in favor of those who are residents with stickers who paid for them.”  Did those residents pay enough for a scarce resource?  If the price reflected the scarcity of spaces, would there be as much of a parking problem?  And how does making on-street parking for residents easier discourage car ownership?

Other elements of the Post parking article talk about the difficulty of parking for non-residents visiting the city, as well as the city’s efforts to re-purpose some curb space away from parking and towards other uses (such as protected bicycle lanes) – but fall into the trap of equating all things parking together.  Metered, permitted, for residents, for visitors, using curb space for parking or for other uses – these are all big differences, and conflating them all together is problematic, and increases the chances of misunderstanding.

DC height limit trade-offs, part 2

DC skyline. CC image from James Calder

Continuing on the discussion of DC’s height limit (and potential changes to it), I wanted to take note of a few more articles on the subject.  George Mason law professor David Schleicher (he of land-use law and procedure fame) asks height limit proponents six basic questions, all of which more or less ask proponents to weigh the trade-offs – or explain why they think the trade-offs do not exist. The six questions:

  1. Do you believe supply is important in determining prices in housing and office markets?
  2. Why do you think development should be spread out?
  3. What effect do you think limiting heights has on agglomeration, including the depth of local markets and information spillovers?
  4. Why do you think D.C. will grow without going up?
  5. Do you think D.C. would instantly become as tall as New York upon repeal?
  6. How much is the D.C. aesthetic worth?

All good questions. So much of planning work is about discussing these trade-offs; an honest discussion of the costs is a prerequisite.

One comment on numbers 5 and 6: DC can indeed go taller while still maintaining the aesthetic of a ‘flat’ skyline, if that is something of value to residents (and therefore worth the cost).  The height limit’s maximum and the flat nature of DC’s skyline are two separate things; if DC’s height limit were set at 200′, we could expect buildings to eventually fill that envelope with numerous buildings up against that limit, rather than form the wedding cake shape of many other American skylines.

Indeed, if that flat-ness is what we value, then we shouldn’t fear adjusting the heights upward – opportunities to shape the city will still exist.

I also wanted to highlight a comment in Kaid Benfield’s original Atlantic Cities piece from ArtR:

1) at current demand for jobs and housing DC has at least a 30 year supply of land to add over 200,000 more jobs and 169,000 people without changes to zoning or the height limit (DC Office of Planning).

I don’t doubt that this is true, but the question of how much land is available gets back to the old real estate cliche of location, location, location.

2) Density through high rise steel and concrete construction will not increase housing affordability. Hard costs alone are over $200/sf with soft cost, land and profit you are well over $400/sf and with even minimal parking you are over $500/sf, thats $500,000 for a small two bedroom. To the extent high-rises syphon off high-income households that might stabilize less costly forms of housing but I am skeptical.

Art is making two points: one about costs, and one about filtering within the market.  In terms of costs, Art is absolutely right – relaxing the height limit will not magically lower construction costs. However, couple that reform with others (such as the aforementioned reduction in required off-street parking) as well as efforts to speed approvals and reduce the lead time required for building and we’re on to something (all potentially positive outcomes of DC’s zoning code review).

The point about filtering is trickier.  Certainly, in the abstract, adding more supply should relieve pressure on older housing units to filter up to more expensive submarkets, but the key phrase in all such abstractions is “all else being equal.”  All else is clearly not equal, and I can’t blame someone for skepticism on the ability for upzoning to make this happen – particularly when such changes to the zoning code happen on an ad-hoc, case-by-case basis.

3) There is a difference between capacity and supply. Raising the height limit may increase capacity but it does nothing for supply. Supply is a function of developers meeting demand and development stops the instant prices stop rising.

While this point is also true, the nature of the equilibrium depends on the other factors influencing cost.  For example, take the examples from Portland, where the elimination of on-site parking requirements allows some development to pencil out a lower price point.

There’s also a point to be made here about location.  If our goal is to add supply, the market might be able to support a lot more supply in more desirable locations.  However, if most of the District’s developable capacity (in point 1 above) is not in those locations, then it will take something else to turn that capacity into new supply.

4) There is nothing to suggest that height alone will increase demand. In fact, too much capacity can increase uncertainty because you never sure how much your competitor can absorb. Denver learned this when they down zoned neighborhoods and they took off.

I hope no one takes away the idea that changing the height limit alone will lead to some magical change in DC’s built environment. Given the fact that zoning is usually an even greater constraint (and given the procedural challenges it can impose), it shouldn’t be seen as a panacea.

Height limit trade-offs

The Cairo. CC image from NCinDC.

Following up on some of the trade-offs mentioned at the end of the previous post on DC’s height act.

In the discussion of Kaid Benfield’s piece supporting DC’s height limit, several comments are worth highlighting. First, Payton Chung notes the need to discuss more than just supply, but to also realize the strength of the demand for living in DC:

I think that a splendid city could be built within the current Height Act, or a revised one, or perhaps even none at all. However, I’ll raise a few counter-factuals, recognizing that I also have not gotten around to writing more extensively about the topic:

1. The growth projections for this region are staggering: +874,394 households and +1,625,205 jobs from 2010-2040. Yet your (and my) preferred strategy of retrofitting mid-rise corridors has a limited upside. Toronto’s Avenues plan, which promotes redeveloping its extensive streetcar commercial strips with a 1:1 street enclosure ratio (building height=street width), only projects an additional 2,000 residents (=1,000 units) per mile of redeveloped “avenue” frontage. Given the District’s small footprint, that’s not going to be enough to absorb very many new residents, much less to increase the city’s housing stock by enough to improve housing affordability.

2. As you well know, a huge difference between Washington and the world’s great mid-rise cities (not just the European capitals, but also cities like Buenos Aires and Kyoto) is that Washington’s mid-rises peter out into single-family houses just one or two miles from the core, while those cities have multifamily-density housing stretching clear to the city limits. This brings me to your point about creativity: what high-rise downtowns do is to concentrate high-value uses within a small area instead of letting it spill out into neighborhoods. High-value office, hotel, and retail uses have priced out most of the creativity in Dupont Circle, Woodley Park, Georgetown, Mount Vernon Square, etc.

Toronto’s Avenues planning study can be found here, and the report’s executive summary is here.  This kind of development is excellent infill and definitely worth pursuing for many cities (not just those with height constraints like DC).  Still, the constraints are real and the opportunity for this kind of infill is limited, however promising it may be.

On Twitter, Neal Lamontagne takes note of the positive abilities of regulations to shape urban development, and the need to balance against their costs:

 [link] @ryanavent Agree, but – limits also linked to + land values. Still, not only economic but also design arguments. Better to shape than squish

Another comment from Payton, making note of the trade-offs in accommodating growth in other areas of the city:

In theory, it should be possible to significantly increase population and jobs within the District and not raise the existing heights. However, the city isn’t exactly littered with vacant lots; such increases would require a lot of demolition, and a lot of density within existing single-family neighborhoods.

Household sizes are *dramatically* smaller than they were: even though the city’s population dropped by 184,000 over the past 60 years, the number of housing units increased by 70,000. Much of that change came from carving up single-family houses into apartments, which is now much more controversial than it used to be.

Under the new Sustainable DC Vision, the city will need over 100,000 new housing units over just the next 20 years. Accommodating more households within the more location-efficient city will, as you know, reduce the region’s ecological footprint. But I genuinely wonder where these units can go: as I mentioned, due to the city’s small size there’s only 3-4 miles of redevelopable land along key arterials like Georgia, Rhode Island, and East Capitol — I’d add some in Upper NW, but you and I both know that’s highly unlikely — and those are only sufficient to address 10% of the total housing demand.

The real reason why Vancouver went whole hog for downtown skyscrapers was not about views, not about impressing people; it was about accommodating dramatic population growth while leaving its single-family neighborhoods mostly untouched, after a citizen revolt over “secondary suites” (accessory units). I know that my neighborhood is (mostly) ready for a few thousand more, perhaps even several thousand more, but is yours?

The point about feasibility is important.  It just might be easier to go to Congress to change the height limit than it would be to fight a million NIMBY battles in established neighborhoods.  There’s a case to be made for more of that type of development to be allowed by-right, but that too represents a big change.

Some of the trade-offs will involve resolving tensions within the urbanist community.  On Twitter, in response to Ryan Avent’s frustrations, Yoni Appelbaum notes:

[link] @ryanavent First-wave urbanism was fundamentally nostalgic. Redevelopment was the threat, and revival the solution.

[link] @ryanavent It’s less an allergy to empiricism than an exposure of the simmering tension between that nostalgia and more progressive visions.

Payton again, asking rhetorically where this mid-rise development will go:

Again to the last two commenters: how do you propose to add mid-rise density without demolishing huge swathes of low-rise buildings, either in the District or Arlington? Already, rowhouse neighborhoods like Chinatown, Foggy Bottom, Southwest/L’Enfant Plaza, the West End, and now Navy Yard and NoMa (particularly its eastern flank) have been sacrificed to extend the medium-rise downtown. Facadectomies are the only way that we have to remind ourselves that these were indeed low-rise at one point in time. Which neighborhoods should be demolished next for the growing downtown?

@tassojunior: we live in small enough apartments already — we have to, what with a median sales price of almost $500/square foot!

Payton, (again!), this time in a thread at Greater Greater Washington:

The problem is not with mid-rise densities, it’s with low-rise densities. I would be happy, perhaps even elated, to see mid-rise densities spread across a wide swathe of Washington, D.C., but I know that many others would not. Indeed, they, including many of Kaid’s neighbors in Ward 3, are already in open revolt, with dire consequences for the city, region, and planet.

You can’t squeeze a fast-growing balloon on the sides (protecting low-density neighborhoods) and the top (height limits) forever.

Bold is mine, and it’s spot on.

 

Bad reasons to support DC’s Height Act

DC Skyline. CC image from Ed Uthman.

DC’s lack of tall buildings is certainly one of it’s defining characteristics.  Given our human tendencies to be loss averse, to embrace the status quo, it shouldn’t be a surprise that changing such a characteristic can be shocking to some.

I’ve written on the height limit before, as have many others.  The most recent defense of the law comes from Kaid Benfield (both at the NRDC and Atlantic Cities). Kaid outlines some good qualitative reasons to embrace the limit – unfortunately, marred by some of the serious shortcomings and logical fallacies from his other arguments in support of the limit. I share Ryan Avent’s frustration with some of the manners of argument.

As an example, some of the arguments Kaid presents in favor of the height limit, and a brief response:

Actually, DC can grow under current law. In 1950, with the height restrictions fully in effect, the city’s population was 802,178. In 2011, its estimated population was 617,996. The truth is that we were a “shrinking city” until about a decade ago, and we are nowhere near full capacity today.

It is misleading to call DC a ‘shrinking city’ solely based on population, as that description misses several confounding variables.  One is household size: it has been steadily decreasing over time (averaging 2.72 persons per hh in 1970, down to 2.16 in 2000), meaning fewer people occupy the same amount of space.  Furthermore, DC has indeed grown – it has more housing units than it did when its population peaked, and it has more jobs, too (and thus more office space).

So, no – the fact that DC’s population is lower today than in 1950 does not suggest the city has excess capacity.

A lot of other things are going well under current law, too. As Derek Thompson wrote in The Atlantic, Washington is the richest and best-educated metro area in America, leading the nation in economic confidence.

I don’t know that being rich proves success.  In fact, there’s plenty of evidence that areas like DC and SF are so rich because they are exclusive, and that high prices prevent the middle class from paying reasonable prices for housing.  Ryan Avent has written on this extensively. Simply put, more wealth is not the sign of a healthy economy.

Building height has little to do with affordability.  The argument that a limit on building height restricts housing supply and thus leads to higher prices is essentially the same argument made against Portland’s urban growth boundary. In both cases, it’s hogwash: if affordability were closely related to building height and density, New York City and San Francisco would be the two most affordable big cities in America.

This one is just absurd.  No one is proposing increasing building heights in DC just for the sake of going taller; the entire reason to change them would be to remove a constraint to growth.  The constraints to growth do indeed have costs.  Portland’s UGB is also a constraint.  Constraints do not need to be a negative if there are other means to allow growth; then they can shape that growth instead.  But to imply that elevation alone is the key to affordability is absurd. Asserting those who would change the height limit believe such absurdity is beyond reason.

In any event, denser doesn’t necessarily mean taller. These numbers may surprise you: Barcelona is denser than New York City, housing 41,000 people per square mile compared to New York’s 27,000. Barcelona’s beautiful and thriving, mid-rise central district L’Eixample is denser than Manhattan, at 92,000 people per square mile compared to Manhattan’s 71,000. It does not have buildings taller than Washington’s. In D.C., we could increase density substantially by incrementally converting many aging one- and two-story buildings in commercial and mixed-use districts to a still-human three to five stories.

The comparison of DC to Paris drives me nuts.  Paris is indeed dense, and mostly low-rise.  However, Paris has little of the small-scale rowhouse and single family homes that populate DC’s neighborhoods – if DC were Paris, those areas would be built out with 5-7 story apartments.

Yes, DC could likely increase density to Parisian levels and remain beneath the limit; but people seldom note what would be required to make that happen, what the trade-offs would be.  Would DC residents trade the complete redevelopment of its historic rowhouse neighborhoods for that to happen?  Benfield does not discuss the trade-offs.

One of Ryan Avent’s chief frustrations is a failure by height limit proponents to acknowledge the costs of the policy.  Ryan makes an estimate of those costs in his blog at The Economist:

Even simply taking the 22% figure, we’re left to conclude that the policy is extraordinarily costly. It represents a sigificant transfer of income from renters to homeowners. It represents a rise in the cost of business for all those operating in the area (which translates into more expensive government, as the impact of high housing costs on real wages forces the government to pay higher nominal salaries to attract qualified workers). And it captures the stultifying economic effect of crowding out in the Washington-area economy, as relatively location-sensitive activities (effectively, those not conducting business with the government) are driven out of the District into the suburbs or other metropolitan areas.

Regardless of what the actual cost is (and another Atlantic Cities piece quibbles with Ryan’s calculations), it is clear that the cost is substantial.  And, as the case of the Portland urban growth boundary mentioned above notes, there can be good reasons to have these constraining policies in place.  Avent continues:

There is a more practical case for limiting development, namely, that as Washington becomes more dense there will be negative spillovers accompanying the positive ones: more traffic, for instance, and more noise. Such costs aren’t negligible and often help explain NIMBY attitudes. Yet these shouldn’t dissuade Washington from making it easier to build. The net benefits of easier building should be large enough to help compensate losers and invest in projects to ameliorate negative effects.

Indeed, the discussion about DC’s height limit would be better off with a discussion of costs and trade-offs.  Likewise, an acknowledgement of  the fundamental truth about cities would help: the only constant is change.

Choice architecture and zoning

Parallel parking on-street. CC image from Eyton Z.

Following up on the previous post, two pieces showing the limits of the zoning code in structuring choice architectures in urban environments:

Parking. Zoning code provisions that require adding off-street parking seriously distort both the urban fabric as well as the decision-making of individuals using those buildings – and thus those parking spaces (some previous thoughts on this here and here).  Portland has eliminated minimum parking requirements under certain circumstances (and has had this regulation on the books for many years – only recently have both developers and financiers been on the same page about parking-free development).  Of course, a parking-free development is nothing new – huge swaths of our cities built before the imposition of such codes function just fine without the ‘benefit’ of such codes guiding their maturation.

The most recent news about these parking-free developments in Portland is that those living in the parking-free apartments are not car-free themselves:

But a city of Portland study released this week suggests that no-car households are the exception, not the rule, even in apartments that don’t provide parking. And those vehicles have to go somewhere.

…

But it also found that 73 percent of 116 apartment households surveyed have cars, and two-thirds park on the street. Only 36 percent use a car for a daily commute, meaning the rest store their cars on the street for much of the week.

Point being, rescinding parking requirements from zoning codes alone is not enough to change behavior.  That doesn’t mean that changing parking requirements isn’t a good idea – it is. As the quote above also notes, very few of these residents use their cars for a daily commute.  However, there is a limit to what zoning can do.  Parking requirements in the zoning code are a crude form of parking management; rescinding those rules likely warrants better parking management programs.

Portland appears stuck in between market equilibria here: people complain about more parkers on the the street, but those people are only parking there because it’s cheap and available.  Likewise, off-street spaces are available for rent, but many are unwilling to pay the price to do so:

But developers can’t count on tenants to pick up the tab, particularly when there is street parking easily available nearby.

“The market is the market,” Menashe said. “If the guy down the street has no parking and he’s able to get $800 a unit, that’s probably all we can get, too.”

Great news for the city, and for consumers who value market-rate affordability in their apartments.  This suggests that a) the old requirement for parking was indeed too high, and b) moving some of those cars to the street hasn’t put too much strain on on-street parking.

Nonetheless, the lesson is that zoning can only do so much.  Zoning is a blunt instrument, it can regulate form well.  To the extent that use and form are tied together, it can regulate use.  But you can’t dictate behavior with a zoning code – and trying to do so will likely bring unintended consequences.

The excellent Portland Transport blog takes note of these findings and asks: what policies would get you to go car-lite or car-free?  Options within this realm – things like charging for on-street parking permits, encouraging car-sharing services, enabling additional dense development to thus provide more ‘stuff’ within a walkable distance, thereby reducing the need for car ownership, etc.  Those kinds of policies are the ones to build into the choice architecture to reduce car use and ownership, and also to reduce the tension from good policy changes like the removal of minimum parking requirements.

Restaurants. Writing at Greater Greater Washington, Herb Caudill calls for the removal of a zoning restriction on restaurants in the Cleveland Park neighborhood of DC. The rule is a part of an overlay zoning district and limits restaurants from occupying more than 25% of the linear storefront footage in the area.  The goal is to require a diversity of retail uses in the area. The effect, however, has been for a lot of longstanding vacancies as well as some rather odd tenants (such as a vacuum cleaner repair shop).

Here again, zoning can only do so much.  Once you step outside the physical purview of what zoning is good at regulating, all bets are off. Zoning can require that buildings provide retail space, for example – but exactly what type of retail is a lot harder to regulate.  Leaving aside the wisdom of even trying to regulate such a thing (rather than allowing the market some flexibility to operate), the goal of diverse retail uses is probably better met with other types of policies than changes to the zoning code.

Miscellaneous thoughts on Hurricane Sandy

A few items to share in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy:

Hurricane Sandy from NASA GOES-13

Prediction: As the son of a meteorologist, I feel obligated to note that this storm was very well forecast.  Given a broader critique of science on a number of fronts, the accuracy of the forecast and the warning it provided is worth noting.  For other examples of pushback against reason, see: Frontline on climate change; the various reactions against Nate Silver; Michael Gerson’s trouble understanding statistics, etc. (I thought Ta Nehisi Coates has written well in response to this assault on logic, reason, and objectivity). Nate Silver devoted a chapter to meteorology in his recent book, much of which is discussed in this teaser in the New York Times entitled “The weatherman is not a moron.”

Accurate prediction for storms like this gives lots of time to prepare. While I was attending the NACTO conference in New York, I had a chance to visit NYC DOT’s traffic management center in Long Island City on Friday afternoon before Sandy hit; city officials were preparing for the storm well in advance at the time, thanks to a good forecast.

Resiliency: Prediction can help you prepare on a shorter timescale, but ensuring our cities are resilient to these kinds of events requires a whole host of other adaptations. Some ideas:

Financing Improvements: Matt Yglesias makes a point made before in the aftermath of DC’s derecho storm: burying power lines is expensive, and funding that cost is a lot easier to do in a densely developed community. The specific improvement need not be burying power lines, as the threats in some areas will be different (as Mayor Bloomberg noted, just pulling emergency generators out of basements prone to flooding is a good start – along with other “granular improvements”). \

Recovery: Leaving aside the opportunities for hardening vulnerable infrastructure like New York’s subway, the response and rather fast recovery of New York’s subway system (given the extent of flooding) is remarkable.  New York Magazine tells the story:

The first thing the MTA did right was informed by a colossal mistake. After the 2010 blizzard, which embarrassed the mayor and took out the subway for days, the MTA was too slow bringing its trains and equipment somewhere safe and dry. “We kind of dropped the ball and we learned from that,” said Tom Prendergast, president of New York City Transit, the part of the MTA that handles city subways and buses. This time the MTA shut everything down on Sunday evening, the day before the storm arrived. Waiting longer would have wasted time and man power needed for the cleanup afterwards.
…
In the future, Prendergast says, the system will have to rethink the way it designs its infrastructure. At the very least, ventilation ducts and gratings should be moved higher up or built so that they can be covered and made water-tight along with station entrances.
Implications for DC: The Washington Post looks at the worst case scenario for storm surge in DC.  In 2003, Hurricane Isabel wasn’t far from the worst case in terms of storm track, pushing water up the Potomac and into DC’s low-lying areas.

 

The most affordable city in America!

Why didn’t anyone tell me that DC is the most affordable city in America?

Such was one of the headlines of a summary article about a new report from the Center for Housing Policy and the Center for Neighborhood Technology.  The report’s title (Losing Ground: The Struggle Of Moderate-Income Households To Afford The Rising Costs Of Housing And Transportation) might not square with the idea of making places like DC and San Francisco the most affordable city in the nation. Indeed, the headlines popping up in my Google Reader window show the range of interpretation:

Now, granted, that middle Planetizen link wasn’t referring to this study, but to a GGW piece from the GMU Center for Regional Analysis. Still, the divergence among the headlines is interesting. CNT published studies in recent years aimed to demolish the idea of ‘drive ’til you qualify’, noting that the transportation costs embedded in those housing choices are large and do not favor autocentric suburbs. Since the gist of those studies were that the seemingly more expensive cities were actually more affordable, I guess the snap conclusion about affordability here makes sense.

But in reading the report itself, it’s clear that DC’s affordability is not the key finding here.  The report’s title should be an indicator of that (again, the title is “Losing Ground”).

That said, the critique of the report stems from the practice of defining each area’s affordability in relative terms to the area’s median income.  While this might make sense if looking at any one metro area in isolation (as in the previous studies on combined housing and transportation costs within metro areas), I’m not sure that it is the best way to compare different metro areas to one another. Matt Yglesias made this point:

By the same token, measuring affordability in H+T terms is a great idea, but presenting it in income share terms is misleading. In general, a person can increase his earnings power by leaving a poorer place for a richer one. […] But it turns out that for many Americans the productivity and wage gains involved in moving to a rich city end up being clawed back by a lack of affordable housing. So the tendency is only for the most educated people—the ones with the least objective need—to be able to take advantage of the migration possibilities. This is a huge social problem that contributes to stagnating living standards, and it’s totally obscured by saying that the DC area is affordable because it’s full of rich people.

In short: the fact that DC, SF, et al are ‘affordable’ because they are rich is not exactly a good thing.  For one case, see Ryan Avent’s 2011 NYT piece (preivewing The Gated City) on the impact of high housing costs on GDP; for another, see Binyamin Appelbaum in the NYT Economix blog on the impact of high housing costs on income inequality, and therefore on the overall economy:

A recent paper by researchers at Harvard University argues that the prohibitive cost of living in the areas with the greatest economic opportunities has forced low-wage workers to migrate instead to areas with inferior opportunities.

…

And here’s the crucial point: It doesn’t have to be this way. High housing prices are the result of public policies that discourage new development. Those policies are generally embraced by the residents of wealthy areas, who benefit, at least in the short term, from restrictions on the supply of new housing. But this paper is one more reason to worry about the long-term economic consequences.

The three animated charts accompanying the Harvard paper are illustrative. Meanwhile, the broad policy implications for the region can be summarized in the concluding paragraph of the GGW piece from George Mason’s CRA (linked above):

Most local governments are not planning enough housing for their future workers, and may hinder new housing with regulations on new development. Meanwhile, builders need to recognize the need for more multi-family housing and smaller, more affordable owner and renter homes in the region.

Towards a DC S-Bahn, part 2

VRE train at Franconia-Springfield. CC image from nevermindtheend

DC’s existing (yet fragmented) commuter rail network is a huge low-hanging fruit for expanded and improved transit service (see this previous post). Writing at Pedestrian Observations, Alon Levy makes the statement that nobody likes riding North American commuter rail.  Alon compares two locations in New York that have both subway and commuter rail service – and in each case, the subway ride wins a much larger share of riders despite often faster rides on commuter rail.

Though the data isn’t easily available for the commuter rail operators, the differences in ridership are substantial.  The Rockville Metro station alone has more boardings than the entire MARC Brunswick line.

Alon identifies four reasons – a poorly structured network that does not serve non-downtown destinations; poorly designed transfers, often with financial penalty; cost differential and a lack of an integrated transit fare structure across all modes; and low frequency service.

Addressing the DC region specifically, some of these are undoubtedly true.  A lack of through-routing prevents serving non-downtown destinations on the other side of Union Station MARC could easily serve dense employment clusters in Crystal City and Alexandria, VRE could offer service through to Rockville, Silver Spring, Fort Meade and others. Likewise, train frequency isn’t good – structuring it more like urban rapid transit could be a huge improvement.

Alon’s four points open the door for a comparison between Metro and the area’s commuter rail services. The commuter rail network shares several stops with Metro. Shared stops are as follows (stations in bold are those along the shared track segment of a conceptual through-routed network):

Maryland:

  • Rockville
  • Silver Spring
  • College Park
  • Greenbelt
  • New Carrollton

DC:

  • Union Station
  • L’Enfant Plaza

Virginia:

  • Crystal City
  • King Street
  • Franconia-Springfield

While transfers aren’t particularly easy, some of the physical connections aren’t terrible.  Some stations share the same basic platform access (New Carrollton), while others easily could do so (King Street) with a little construction.  The Crystal City connection is a bit of a stretch – it involves several blocks of walking, either along Crystal City’s streets or through the warren of tunnels and underground retail space.  L’Enfant Plaza does not have an actual connection to the Metro platforms, just adjacency.

Financial transfer penalties are another story.  MARC offers an add-on TLC pass (at the cost of $102/month on top of the cost of a monthly MARC pass) that allows for unlimited use of local transit (rail and bus) in both DC and Baltimore; VRE offers a similar product with a similarly-large surcharge per month.

Using MARC’s $102 per month figure, and assuming 40 last-mile Metro trips per month, that would require a minimum of a $2.55 peak fare to make the pass break even on commute trips alone (roughly the equivalent of a ~15 minute Red Line ride from Union Station to Van Ness).

The fare structures aren’t entirely integrated either, though the disparities aren’t as large as in Alon’s example from New York.  Thanks to Metro’s time-and-distance based fare structure, you don’t find the same disparity of a flat-fare subway system up against a graduated fare commuter rail system.  The example of Far Rockaway shows the disparity – a subway ride to Midtown is a flat $2.25, while the LIRR to Penn Station is $10.00 at the peak, $7.25 off peak.

Compare that to the single ride fares for MARC/VRE and Metro – all fares to Union Station as a point of comparison.

Maryland (Penn Line fares, Camden and Brunswick line fares; Metro fares from Union Station):

  • Station – MARC fare to Union – Metro fare to Union
  • Rockville – 5.00 – 5.75 (time: 35-42 mins via MARC; 34 mins via Metro)
  • Silver Spring – 4.00 – 3.35
  • College Park – 4.00 – 3.65
  • Greenbelt – 4.00 – 4.30
  • New Carrollton – 4.00 – 4.20

Virginia (VRE fares – single ride price used; Metro fares from Union Station)

  • Station – VRE fare to Union – Metro fare to Union
  • Crystal City – 6.20 – 2.60
  • King Street – 6.20 – 3.70
  • Franconia-Springfield – 6.80 – 5.60 (time: 36-41 mins via VRE; 45 mins via Metro)

MARC fares are all rather close to Metro; VRE fares have a different problem of the LIRR-Subway comparison at Far Rockaway; the longest  possible competing trip (from Franconia-Springfield) has the smallest fare differential, it’s the shorter trips that are out of whack (a one-station VRE ride from L’Enfant to Union Station costs $5.55 on VRE, compared to the minimum Metro rail fare of $2.10).  This structure obviously reflect’s VRE’s role as an AM-peak-inbound, PM-peak-outbound operation, but certainly discourages usage within the core of the region for rapid transit.

Commuter rail isn’t always more expensive, either.  Looking at Rockville, (which, again, draws more boardings than the entire Brunswick line) a monthly pass to Union Station costs you $125 with the various discounts, while 40x trips per month via Metro at $5.75 a pop totals $230 ( !!! ); a weekly MARC pass totals $37.50 compared to $57.50 for ten peak-hour rides on Metro.  A person who was dropping $230 a month on Metro fares could easily purchase a $125/month MARC pass, add on the $102/month TLC pass and still get unlimited Metro usage off-peak for about the same cost.

A unified fare structure would likely involve lowering fares within the inner VRE territory (further integration would assume a single fare table for a through-running merged S-Bahn-like operation between MARC and VRE) to better mirror the various Metro fares for similar distances.  I would imagine this to be an easier organizational lift than, say, trying to bridge the gap in peak fares at Far Rockaway between $2.25 and $10.00.

The biggest difference in usage (thereby indicating usefulness) would appear to be frequency.  MARC’s Penn Line features the most frequent service, and even that is 20-40 minutes between trains at best during the peak, hourly trains at mid-day, and longer headways in the evening – plus, no weekend service.  Frequency is freedom, after all.  Thus, the purpose of any effort for through-running commuter rail services should be to help the transition of DC’s commuter rail network into a frequent S-Bahn-like network of interlined rapid transit services.

Density helps provide public benefits

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Should be an interesting conversation.

Thoughts on changing DC’s height limit

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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