Tag Archives: Density

More thoughts on density, procedure, and neighborhood opposition

Downtown Seattle. Photo by author.

On land use procedure:

In the same line as my previous post about procedural hurdles to adding density, a similar discussion is happening in Seattle. Within the larger realm of procedural hurdles, this focus picks up on the idea of a ‘density’ party. While party organization is a part of the larger systemic issue, it does not address the true procedural issues ow how decisions on density are made.

On the impacts of density:

Matthew Kahn visits dense New York, sees some trash on the sidewalk. David Owen often talks and writes about urban places being counter-intuitively green, and this is a perfect example. New Yorkers end up producing less trash per capita than average Americans, but you wouldn’t get that impression from walking the streets.

Within this counter-intuitive reality is the seed of NIMBY opposition. The things that opponents of dense, infill development often come back to tangential impacts such as parking, traffic, trash, noise, etc. The logical response is to address each of those impacts, rather than put a stop to (or severely limit) development.

One of the items in these battles that is front and center is financial interest – yet it’s the developers that are characterized as greedy for acting in their interest, while neighboring homeowners acting in their own financial interests are pure. Seattle again provides an example of this discussion.

On the challenges of infill:

Payton Chung highlights several promising development projects in DC. One, the group buyout offer of an old condo along 14th St shows the challenges in assembling properties in a fractured ownership environment. Payton notes:

The buildings’ condo ownership structure makes redevelopment (in the absence of eminent domain) incredibly difficult. As Lydia DePillis writes, “each of the two separate condo associations would have to vote unanimously to dissolve themselves. Obviously, this would have been much easier with a single owner (whether a rental building or even a co-op, where only a majority of shares can dissolve the association), but condos’ recent proliferation as a way of making homeownership more attainable has the unintended consequence of hyper-fragmenting land ownership.

This reminds me of something impressed upon me in grad school: various decisions of urban form are incredibly sticky. Once roads are laid out, they are very hard to change. Residential land uses in particular are remarkably resilient, for essentially this same reason.

On implications for transit:

Alon Levy draws on Jane Jacobs’ distinction between micro and macro destinations. A macro destination is a large district or place (e.g. downtown), while a micro destination is a specific shop, store, or address. The implication is that transit-oriented places are spiky places:

It’s easy to just pronounce transit more suited to dense city centers than driving, but the situation is more complicated. Transit, too, thrives on good connections to microdestinations. It can’t serve employment that’s dense but evenly dispersed in a large area – people would need too many transfers, and the result would be service that’s on paper rapid and in reality too slow. Instead, it works best when all destinations are clustered together, in an area not many subway stations in radius.

While many of the contested transit-oriented developments aren’t on the terminal end (i.e. the work trip) of a such a destination, but rather the origin – the larger impact is the same. Transit networks have the centripetal force, while auto-oriented ones have a centrifugal force. Transit works best with density, density works best with transit – enabling the mitigation of those externalities that neighborhood opponents will harp on.

Institutional hurdles to dense infill development

dc cranescape - CC image from yawper

A common theme is emerging among those thinking and writing about cities, from Ryan Avent to Ed Glaeser to Paul Krugman – our land use controls have stunted growth in our developed and productive areas – our cities. So, a simple fix would be to just allow more development, right? Glaeser makes the case that one American city, Chicago, has done a pretty good job of that, and as a result housing prices there are low relative to other large cities.

But for anyone who’s watched the intense battles over seemingly innocuous projects in our cities, it’s obvious that simply allowing more development isn’t that simple. No matter the reasonable arguments in favor of such development, opposition is often intense and emotional, and the institutional decision making processes favor delay and often unfavorable decisions in terms of increasing urban densities.

A few weeks ago, Austin Contrarian posted about a new draft paper from David Schleicher at George Mason. Over the past few weeks I’ve been reading and sharing some reactions to the paper in my del.icio.us sidebar feed (a workaround for my use of the sharing features of the new Google Reader). I’d like to compile some of those thoughts (and somewhat related posts) here. First, the abstract of Schleicher’s draft paper:

Generations of scholarship on the political economy of zoning have tried to explain a world in which tony suburbs run by effective homeowner lobbies use zoning to keep out development, but big cities allow relatively untrammeled growth because of the political influence of developers. Further, this literature has assumed that, while zoning restrictions can cause “micro-misallocations” inside a metropolitan region, they cannot increase housing prices throughout a region because some of the many local governments in a region will allow development. But these theories have been overtaken by events. Over the past few decades, land use restrictions have driven up housing prices in the nation’s richest and most productive regions, resulting in massive changes in where in America people live and reducing the growth rate of the economy. Further, as demand to live in them has increased, many of the nation’s biggest cities have become responsible for substantial limits on development. Although developers are, in fact, among the most important players in city politics, we have not seen enough growth in the housing supply in many cities to keep prices from skyrocketing.

This paper seeks explain these changes with a story about big city land use that places the legal regime governing land use decisions at its center. Using the tools of positive political theory, I argue that, in the absence of strong local political parties, land use law sets the voting order in local legislatures, determining policy from potentially cycling preferences. Specifically, these laws create a peculiar procedure, a form of seriatim decision-making in which the intense preferences of local residents opposed to re-zonings are privileged against more weakly-held citywide preferences for an increased housing supply. Without a party leadership to organize deals and whip votes, legislatures cannot easily make deals for generally-beneficial legislation stick. Legislators, who may have preferences for building everywhere to not building anywhere, but stronger preferences for stopping construction in their districts, “defect” as a matter of course and building is restricted everywhere. Further, the seriatim nature of local land use procedure results in a large number of “downzonings,” or reductions in the ability of landowners to build “as of right”, as big developers do not have an incentive to fight these changes. The cost of moving amendments through the land use process means that small developers cannot overcome the burdens imposed by downzonings, thus limiting incremental growth in the housing stock.

Finally, the paper argues that, as land use procedure is the problem, procedural reform may provide a solution. Land use and international trade have similarly situated interest groups. Trade policy was radically changed, from a highly protectionist regime to a largely free trade one, by the introduction of procedural reforms like the Reciprocal Trade Agreements Act, adjustment assistance, and “safeguards” measures. The paper proposes changes to land use procedures that mimic these reforms. These changes would structure voting order and deal-making in local legislatures in a way that would create support for increases in the urban housing supply.

Bold is mine.

In other words, the procedural causes of slow zoning approvals are systemic. It’s a similar argument to that in favor of the “zoning budget,” some procedural change to give the broad yet shallow interests in favor of development an equal say to the narrow and intense sentiments often in opposition.

Matt Yglesias takes Schleicher’s lead and looks at this in the political context of urban governance:

In other words, if U.S. cities had regularized party systems each city would probably have something like a “growth and development party” that pushed systematically for greater density. Its members and elected officials would, of course, have idiosyncratic interests and concerns that would sometimes cut across the main ideology. But the party leaders would be able to exercise discipline, the party activists and donors would push for consistency and ideological rigor, and it’d be off to the races. Instead, most big cities feature what really amounts to no-party government in which each elected official stands on his or her own and overwhelmingly caters to idiosyncratic local concerns rather than any kind of over-arching agenda. But different institutional processes could change this, and create a dynamic where growth, development, and density are more viable.

Richard Layman often speaks about the “growth machine” thesis of cities, but I don’t know that it accounts for the more procedural hurdles ‘regular’ infill development encounters, as opposed to big ticket projects.

At the Atlantic Cities, Emily Badger asks: should building taller should be easier?

But how do you grow denser if you can’t grow up? At a certain point – whether it’s in downtown Austin or near a suburban Boston transit station – communities will exhaust the real estate that exists below building height limits imposed years ago for safety, continuity or aesthetics. And then what? Will people let go of these rules?

Given DC’s height limit, Badger focuses on some examples of DC’s stunted growth and the practical implications of such a policy.

Ryan Avent chimes in at The Economist:

Part of the problem, I think, is that people view the built environment as primarily aesthetic in nature. Most of us live in one building and work in another, and almost every other structure in the city is essentially decoration for our lives; I’ve been in a lot of Washington buildings, but my primary interaction with the vast majority of Washington structures is a street-level view of their exterior. The nature of this interaction is such that we underappreciate the built environment as an input to production. It is clear, for instance, that people and machines are critical to the functioning of the economy. There would be huge concern if the government of a city declared that firms located within its boundaries could employ at most 30 workers using 15 computers. But the built environment is just as important a part of the production process; firms pay eye-popping rents for Midtown offices and Silicon Valley real estate because they anticipate getting a good return on their investment. In the same way that a firm which pays out millions in salary or to use a piece of capital equipment also anticipates getting a good return on that investment.

Indeed, the costs of limiting density (or of delay via uncertain procedural approvals) all impose costs that are often hidden, but nevertheless real. And, sometimes counter-intuitively, the feared externalities of dense development such as traffic never materialize:

“What I’ve found is that what people envision has nothing to do with the reality,” [Roger] Lewis says. “What they envision is ugly buildings, more traffic.”

This sounds counter-intuitive, but taller buildings that are part of a walkable, transit-oriented community can actually help ease congestion. And there’s no reason for these places to be ugly. Tall buildings that make the best neighbors don’t feel like tall buildings at street level. They’re wrapped there in lively retail, townhouse fronts or inviting public space.

The aesthetic concerns over height and density are indeed overblown – good street-level urban design and architecture at the human scales are far more important to building a quality environment than the overall height of buildings. Obviously, taste in styles is a matter of personal preference, but we have a strong enough catalog of what works in urban design to get the broad principles of those designs into new development projects.

Unfortunately, the structure of the regulations and ordinances seldom make quality development the path of least resistance for a developer – again highlighting a procedural, systemic argument.

On density and design tradeoffs

Bethesda Row - note that you don't even see how tall the buildings are - CC image from faceless b

Kaid Benfield’s excellent blog had a post last week on the need for better urban design and management of the public realm in our new, dense infill development. And while I certainly agree with the need for better urban design, I take issue with Kaid’s implication of an explicit trade-off between density and design – that is, the more density you get, the less human-scaled the street will feel as if this were some correlation of a natural law.

Kaid’s post shows several comparison photographs taken from Google streetview, many from the DC area. What’s missing is an actual accounting for the density embodied in those pictures (such as the visual survey posted here). Additionally, some of the photos Kaid compares are not similar photos – one example involves a view down the axis of a street, while the other is a view of a building’s first floor and the accompanying sidewalk.

For me, it’s a completely different feel. The second development, part of Bethesda, Maryland’s terrific Bethesda Row area, is not just more inviting but also a bit smaller in scale, at five or six stories tops. But that’s part of it, in my opinion. To increase density enough to make a difference, we don’t always need to maximize it. Much of the time a moderate amount of human-scaled urbanism will be far more appropriate than a high-rise. This isn’t, or shouldn’t be, just about calculations of units per acre or square footage. It’s also about what feels right to people.

The sentiment that “we don’t always need to maximize” density implies a tradeoff between human-scaled design and density that I don’t think is absolute. To a great degree, the influence of design – at the street level in particular – is the key element of a human scale. In the comments, Payton (assuming this is from Payton Chung) adds this:

I’d agree that it’s almost all about design. The low- and mid-rise floors are most important, to be sure, since humans’ peripheral vision is weakest when looking up. However, there are plenty of historic skyscraper districts that maintain a great sense of place and small scale at the street level (Broadway in Los Angeles is a thrill to walk down), and even some which maintain good sunlight at street level (just was at Rockefeller Center for the first time in a while and reminded of that crucial detail).

Encouraging both smaller parcel sizes — for exactly that granularity, and to ensure greater diversity — and mid-rise heights both ask huge concessions from our current bigger-is-better development paradigm. Of course a developer will build out to whatever envelope the regulations will allow to recoup their costs, will charge high initial rents that only the most reliably profitable (i.e., bland) retailers can afford, and often won’t spend a premium on the sort of pedestrian-scale details that really create a great sidewalk environment. Yet other factors also result in these squat, boring buildings. Occupants will pay a premium for “ground-related” space or for high-rise space with a view, but not for the mid-rise floors. (Compare that to the 18th and 19th centuries, when the 2nd floor commanded the highest rent as it were above street dust but not a long walk up.) High-rise life safety and structural requirements make a 6-story building almost as expensive as a 12-story building. Requirements for exit stairs (like restricting scissor stairs), and tenants’ desire for reconfigurable spaces, both fatten floorplates. Municipalities set build-to lines for bases (correct) and, fearful of oddly height-obsessed NIMBYs, set unrealistically low height limits.

For things like sunlight at street level, the more important considerations would be the orientation of buildings on the site and the setbacks rather than absolute height – issues of design of a different sort than the street level scale.

The gated Washington region

The Gated City in action: Today’s Washington Post on the inadequacy of the region’s housing supply in meeting demand. In short, Ryan Avent called it. The region is producing jobs, people want to move here, yet it hasn’t been able to produce enough housing to meet that demand. From the Post article:

“If businesses find they can’t have their workers live near where they can work, they’re going to go somewhere else. And the workers themselves might also go somewhere else,” said Lisa A. Sturtevant, an assistant professor at George Mason’s school of public policy, who co-authored the study with Stephen S. Fuller, director of the university’s Center for Regional Analysis.

Their research showed that the Washington area, defined by 22 counties and cities, is expected to add 1.05 million jobs through 2030. More than a third of those jobs will be in professional and technical sectors, but significant growth also is expected in administrative, service and health-related jobs that often pay lower wages. If those numbers hold true, that boom will require as many as 731,457 additional units to house workers in the jurisdictions where they work, the study found.

That means the region would need to produce about 38,000 new housing units per year, “an annual pace of construction never before seen in the region and below what local jurisdictions have accounted for in their comprehensive plans,” the study concludes. Data show that over the past 19 years, the region has averaged 28,600 building permits a year; last year, about 15,000 building permits were issued in the region.

In addition, much of the new housing needs to be multi-family units (to make efficient use of available land) and affordable rentals (to put it within reach of younger workers and those with lower salaries), George Mason’s researchers argue.

For more on Fuller and his work, see Lydia DePillis’s April City Paper profile.

I must, however, take issue with the Post‘s framing of the issue. From the second paragraph in the article:

With that growth comes a vexing problem: How do you house those new workers in ways that are both affordable and don’t worsen the soul-crushing commutes that already plague the region’s residents?

The problem here isn’t vexing at all. Nor, frankly, is the solution. The solution is rather obvious: we need to grow up instead of out. We need to add density. We need infill development around existing infrastructure assets. Admittedly, implementing that solution is certainly more vexing than simply stating it aloud, but let’s not let the challenge of implementation obscure the diagnosis of the root problem.

Quick links on rising rents, density, and housing supply

CC image from Eric Wilfong

Some quick notes:

1. DC rents continue to rise:

While the vacancy rate for the Metro area is indeed low, it is most pronounced among Class A buildings in the District where just 1.6 percent of apartments are vacant. Class A rents in the city in the third quarter averaged $2,582/month, up from $2,448/month in September 2010. For Class B buildings, the situation for renters in the city looked a little better; the vacancy rate sat at 2.2 percent (up from 1.8 percent last year), but rents also increased to $1,886/month from $1,793/month in September 2010.

From the report:

“…while all submarkets are chronically low [in the area], there is notable vacancy variance among District submarkets. The Upper Northwest submarket posted the lowest stabilized vacancy at 0.5%, while Columbia Heights/Shaw posted a stabilized vacancy of 2.4%.”

2. I’d say there’s some strong demand in this market. Clearly, room for more development, yes? Yet Housing Complex notes that some developers are concerned about their new projects all hitting the market at the same time.

“There is just a ton of supply coming,” he said. “In certain markets, there will be spot oversupply.” Which is developer-speak for holy shit guys slow down so my building will still sell.

3. Payton Chung with some important synthesis of recent growth and affordability discussions, noting the key distinctions between micro and macro levels:

– as Rob points out, housing is a bundle of goods whose utilities vary for different audiences
– housing construction can induce demand, particularly by adding amenities to a neighborhood
– housing construction can also remove amenities from a neighborhood, like a low-rise scale, thus changing other intangibles included in that bundle of goods
– construction costs don’t increase linearly; rather, costs jump at certain inflection points, like between low- and mid-rise
– housing and real estate in general are imperfect markets, since land is not a replicable commodity
– the substantial lag time for housing construction, even in less regulated markets, almost guarantees that supply will miss demand peaks

Pro-active planning remains the best and most time-honored way of pre-empting NIMBYs. Get the neighborhood to buy-in to neighborhood change early on, and then they won’t be surprised and upset when it happens.

I’ve often cited Chris Bradford’s short post on filtering as a good summary of one of the dynamics at play, but there’s no one thing you can point to for a full explanation.

As for Payton’s last point about the best offense against NIMBYs being a good defense (or maybe it’s the other way around), I hope to write more about that soon as a part of a more complete response to Ryan Avent’s The Gated City.

eBooks and Cities

Ryan Avent’s recently published Kindle Single on urban economics entitled “The Gated City” finally enticed me to venture into eBooks. I’ve tested out friends’ Kindles, but never felt the urge to spend my cash on one – I still like the feel of a real book and don’t care to carry yet another device around, particularly one with the limited application of the Kindle. Likewise, I’m not yet willing to drop the money for an iPad, so my device stalemate continues.

Presented with something I want to read and a product that’s only available in one electronic medium or another, I took the plunge. Likewise, knowing that other electronic-only publications I’d be interested in are coming down the pike only hastens the point. Not wanting to hurriedly invest in new hardware, I downloaded the Kindle reader for my computer, as well as the Kindle app for my Droid smartphone. I already do quite a bit of reading on the go via my phone, mostly through Google Reader and various mobile news sites (anytime the Washington Post wishes to adopt a better mobile site format, it would be welcome).

While I’m not wild about reading long-form works on my laptop any more than I already do, I’ve found the Android reader to work quite nicely. The added advantage of not being entirely reliant on a wireless signal while underground on the Metro is an added bonus. I already carry my phone with me all the time, thus there is no need to haul along another device.

Converting to e-books isn’t completely without remorse. Alon Levy noted (in the comments) his refusal to buy an e-book, noting “they are to browsing at a bookstore what driving is to walking on a commercial street.” Given recent discussions in DC about the loss of third places (that just so happen to sell hardcopy books – not without a bit of irony, given B&N’s foray into e-readers as well), this isn’t a change to take lightly. At the same time, I’m sure Ryan Avent would note that rapidly increasing rents for your local bookstore are a more worthy culprit – as well as the fact that the innovation that takes place in cities can often be disruptive.

The most segregated cities in America

Salon.com has an interesting slideshow of the 10 most segregated cities in America. The data comes from the 2010 Census, and the methodology to determine the level of segregation is based on differences between census tracts:

We may think of segregation as a matter of ancient Southern history: lunch counter sit-ins, bus boycotts and Ku Klux Klan terrorism. But as the census numbers remind us, Northern cities have long had higher rates of segregation than in the South, where strict Jim Crow laws kept blacks closer to whites, but separate from them. Where you live has a big impact on the education you receive, the safety on your streets, and the social networks you can leverage.

The following is a list of the nation’s most segregated metropolitan areas of over 500,000 people. The rankings are based on a dissimilarity index, a measure used by social scientists to gauge residential segregation. It reflects the number of people from one race — in this case black or white — who would have to move for races to be evenly distributed across a certain area. A score of 1 indicates perfect integration while 100 signals complete segregation. The rankings were compiled by John Paul DeWitt of CensusScope.org and the University of Michigan’s Social Science Data Analysis Network.

Each of the 10 most segregated cities includes a narrative for the city. Several include observations on transportation and the linkages between land use and infrastructure.

# 10. Los Angeles

The L.A. riots of 1992, like the 1965 Watts riot, were sparked by police brutality, a steady concern in besieged neighborhoods like South Central. Nearly 20 years later, the jobless ghettos of black and Latino Los Angeles remain. Greater Los Angeles has been so big for so long — legion nodes connected by extensive highways — that it’s hard to say exactly what its borders are. Safe in their cars and behind their gates, most white people have gone back to not paying attention.

In short, transportation matters. Diversity without intermingling can be isolating.

# 2. New York

Ingrid Gould Ellen, an urban planning and public policy professor at New York University, says that New York City is somewhat more integrated than the data would suggest, because it is far denser than most cities. Since census tracts are made up by population, tracts in New York tend to be very small.

“What happens is that we’re not making apples to apples comparisons. The neighborhoods in Atlanta and Houston are 10 times the size of neighborhoods in New York City physically,” she says. “The census tracts are so much smaller, so you’re likely to cross over a number of census tracts every day.”

The daily commute of the average New Yorker also lessens racial isolation. Thanks to the dominance of public transit, intra-city travel tends to be a diverse experience.

New York, despite segregation, benefits from both density and transit.

# 1. Milwaukee

Nationwide, blacks have been concentrated in the inner city, far away from where new jobs are created. Yet the case of Milwaukee is extreme: 90 percent of the metro area’s black population lives in the city. Making matters worse, suburban whites are notably hostile to building any form of public transit to connect city people to suburban jobs, further exacerbating segregation’s ill effects.

If you’re wondering if this can somehow, some way, be blamed on union-busting Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, the answer is yes. Walker took the lead in a campaign against public transit to connect the suburbs to the city during his time as county executive. He thought the funds would be better spent on highways.

“There is virulent opposition in these exurban counties to any kind of regional transit system, particularly a regional rail system. There have been proposals over the years, but they’re always DOA,” says Levine. “Governor Walker’s big issue as state representative and county executive was ‘Over my dead body light rail,’ and he fought with Milwaukee’s mayor over funds for regional rail. He very much represents that suburban and exurban base.”

That map graphic says it all.

Density, productivity, and housing prices

Ryan Avent recently spoke at the Kauffman Foundation‘s conference for economic bloggers. His short presentation touches on a number of economic issues as they relate to urban economies and their role in our national economy.

The presentation tackles Tyler Cowen’s Great Stagnation thesis. Avent specifically looks at the benefits of density on productivity and innovation, and how the dispersal of the American population has had a disparate impact on American productivity.

The implications for cities are clear – the dense areas (owing to the benefits of agglomeration and economies of scale) are extremely productive, but they’ve not been the areas seeing growth in recent decades. Instead, the less-dense places in the sun belt have grown. Avent attributes this to the sun belt’s ability to expand supply and keep housing costs low (citing Ed Glaeser). The implication is that the low cost of living is attracting people to areas that are less productive than the dense but hard-to-expand coastal cities.

The power of skyscrapers

Chicago skyline CC image from 1’UP on flickr

Several friends have pointed me to this Atlantic piece by Ed Glaeser on the power of skyscrapers and density in shaping the city, and the role cities play in our economy. Some snippets:

On the micromanagement of zoning codes:

New York slowed its construction of skyscrapers after 1933, and its regulations became ever more complex. Between 1916 and 1960, the city’s original zoning code was amended more than 2,500 times. In 1961, the City Planning Commission passed a new zoning resolution that significantly increased the limits on building. The resulting 420-page code replaced a simple classification of space—business, residential, unrestricted—with a dizzying number of different districts, each of which permitted only a narrow range of activities. There were 13 types of residential district, 12 types of manufacturing district, and no fewer than 41 types of commercial district.

Each type of district narrowly classified the range of permissible activities. Commercial art galleries were forbidden in residential districts but allowed in manufacturing districts, while noncommercial art galleries were forbidden in manufacturing districts but allowed in residential districts. Art-supply stores were forbidden in residential districts and some commercial districts. Parking-space requirements also differed by district. In an R5 district, a hospital was required to have one off-street parking spot for every five beds, but in an R6 district, a hospital had to have one space for every eight beds.

On gentrification, growth, and the hidden costs of height limits and other restrictions:

The relationship between housing supply and affordability isn’t just a matter of economic theory. A great deal of evidence links the supply of space with the cost of real estate. Simply put, the places that are expensive don’t build a lot, and the places that build a lot aren’t expensive. Perhaps a new 40-story building won’t itself house any quirky, less profitable firms, but by providing new space, the building will ease pressure on the rest of the city. Price increases in gentrifying older areas will be muted because of new construction. Growth, not height restrictions and a fixed building stock, keeps space affordable and ensures that poorer people and less profitable firms can stay and help a thriving city remain successful and diverse. Height restrictions do increase light, and preservation does protect history, but we shouldn’t pretend that these benefits come without a cost.

On the inherent dynamism of cities and the shapes of growth:

Great cities are not static—they constantly change, and they take the world along with them. When New York and Chicago and Paris experienced great spurts of creativity and growth, they reshaped themselves to provide new structures that could house new talent and new ideas. Cities can’t force change with new buildings—as the Rust Belt’s experience clearly shows. But if change is already happening, new building can speed the process along.

Yet many of the world’s old and new cities have increasingly arrayed rules that prevent construction that would accommodate higher densities. Sometimes these rules have a good justification, such as preserving truly important works of architecture. Sometimes, they are mindless NIMBYism or a misguided attempt at stopping urban growth. In all cases, restricting construction ties cities to their past and limits the possibilities for their future. If cities can’t build up, then they will build out. If building in a city is frozen, then growth will happen somewhere else.

It’s a fantastic read. I imagine this piece is a prelude for Glaeser’s recently released book, “The Triumph of the City.” I will have to pick up a copy.

Different types of urban science

CC image from futureatlas.com

Jeff Wood’s handy mailing list on behalf of Re-connecting America pointed me towards this article from Urban Omnibus, disputing the broad conclusions from Geoffrey West’s work towards discovering a universal theory of cities. Eric Peterson, the author, does not like the implications of West’s quantitative work and the implications of physical laws that might apply to cities:

Despite proposing to have radically reinvented the field in which architects and urbanists work, the article appears to have garnered little attention among commentators and blogs from within architecture and urbanism. Perhaps the article’s lack of substance explains professionals’ reluctance to engage with the implications of West’s work. Nonetheless, it is crucial for those of us interested in the serious study of urbanism to look closely at the article, if only because many of the assumptions it advances strike me as undermining an understanding of cities as complex and important things.

The charge that West’s work is somehow lacking in substance struck me as harsh and misguided. The notion that there can be only one true understanding of how cities work misses the obvious difference between West’s work and the more conventional urban studies that Peterson seems to prefer. The difference appears to be a simple one, based on a misunderstanding of the kinds of universal rules West seeks to understand, as well as the fundamental difference between qualitative and quantitative observation.

Remembering that West is a physicist, Peterson’s charge that a universal theory of urbanism misses out on all of the complexity of a city represents a fundamental misunderstanding of what such a universal theory really means. Just look at West’s field – physics – and you can easily see exceedingly complex movements that can all be understood by the basic laws of Newtonian mechanics. A full understanding of motion, as we know it, is an exceedingly complex undertaking, yet Newton essentially boiled that complexity down to three basic laws of motion, which can easily be translated into simple maxims. Bodies at rest tend to stay at rest; bodies in motion tend to stay in motion; for each and every action there is an equal and opposite reaction; etc.

These laws have limits to their validity, of course, but that does not discount the fact that complex systems can be understood via the basis of simple laws. This reduction isn’t something to be feared.

Peterson also seems to gloss over the mutually beneficial relationship between both qualitative and quantitative analysis. He frames urbanism in a qualitative way and then implies that the quantification of urbanism not only has little to offer, but is indeed dangerous to our understanding of urban places:

Further, such an approach should be read as dangerous to all of us who see cities as phenomena formed at the collision of dynamic economic, historical, social, political and ecological forces.

This fear seems so misguided that I don’t even know where to begin.

Instead of recognizing cities as the products of these complex forces, the object of West’s study is purposefully contextless and unspecified. Describing how he applies his scientific principles to a specific city he’s studying, he says, “I don’t know anything about this city or even where it is or its history, but I can tell you all about it. And the reason I can do that is because every city is really the same.” West goes on to qualify this assertion by saying that, essentially, the differences between cities that we so often discuss are merely superficial, material ones, related to how a city functions rather than to each city’s unique history.

Even in areas of knowledge where we have a strong quantitative understanding of how things work, this knowledge has never derailed our searches for qualitative understanding as well – for context, for history, for social interactions.

Some of this confusion between the respective role for quantification and qualification stems from language. Peterson notes early in his piece his disdain for West’s characterization of cities as “problems” to be solved. Here, the word problem would have completely a different meaning to a mathematician and a physicist as compared to a ethnographer or an architect. To the mathematician, a problem is not necessarily a social ill but a riddle to be solved, a question to be answered.

In the end, both approaches are crucial to our understanding of the places we live in.

City Block

a work in progress…