I don’t know how to illustrate this post, so here’s a squirrel who looks like he’s interested.

by Daniel Kay Hertz

So, I write about zoning a lot. But other than “more housing, please,” I’ve never really given much of an outline of what I think cities ought to do with their zoning codes.

Part of that is intentional. Thanks to some combination of a begrudging acceptance of political realities and a genuine belief in local communities’ right to have a say in their own development, I don’t think specific declarations about what should and should not be allowed are really useful or appropriate. But you have to start somewhere, and I think it’s necessary for those of us who are arguing for change to give some indication of where that change might take us.

Though I’ll get around to some specific ideas about building types in the Chicago area, I actually think that the most important question isn’t what will be built on your block, but how – and by whom – decisions about zoning will be made. In practice, after all, the answer to the first question will depend on the answer to the second.

So what would a good zoning process look like? On principle, I’d suggest it be: Continue reading →

by Daniel K. Hertz

Jim Russell, the urban geographer who writes at Pacific Standard magazine, has recently been doing a great series on non-intuitive growth patterns in American cities. One of the more interesting findings is that the traditional connection between income growth and population growth doesn’t necessarily hold for Rust Belt cities, where large-scale manufacturing jobs may still be declining, while a smaller number of high-skill jobs pull in upper-income people.

But in applying some of these ideas to housing markets, he misstates the results of a recent study about why housing prices are going up so quickly in so many places. Not just misstates, actually: he turns the paper’s conclusion on its head. This is what Russell writes:

Urban America is filling up…. To be a superstar metro, to “fill up,” means high incomes piling into a place with constrictions on construction. What a superstar metro doesn’t mean is strong population growth and demand for housing outstripping supply.

That last part, about demand outstripping supply, is actually exactly what the study says creates “superstar metros” where housing costs price out huge numbers of existing and would-be residents. Continue reading →

Uptown

Pete Saunders, who has been on a blogging tear lately, just posted a mini review of the literature on gentrification management:

I think today’s urbanists, the young educateds who are leading today’s return to cities, would do well to seek out this research.

Speaking of many of today’s urbanists, I’m not sure many are aware of the gentrification management research that exists.  Many come to their preference for cities through the New Urbanism or Smart Growth movements, which emphasize quality urban design (New Urbanism) or the the policy framework needed for successful and sustainable cities (Smart Growth).  But people who have been working in the field of community development have been addressing this for years.  Perhaps it’s time for their work to see the light of day.

Very true! As an aside: I’ve been meaning for a while now to start a regular feature on the blog where I’d write up quick summaries of interesting research coming out of both scholarly journals and groups like the Urban Land Institute and so on. A lot of them bear directly on issues that the non-academic, non-community development urbanist blogosphere debates all the time, and many aren’t really that much more wonkish or difficult to understand than your average Streetsblog post. Maybe after finals. Continue reading →

by Daniel Kay Hertz

In response to this post at The Atlantic Cities, a commenter objects:

[Y]our suggested remedies are housing subsidies, protections against evictions due to rising rents, and an end to caps on housing construction. In cities like Milwaukee or Kansas City (or St. Louis, Omaha, etc) those don’t match up with any problems in the local housing market.

The media’s obsession with gentrification to the exclusion of all other housing issues has a number of consequences, ranging from annoying to pernicious, but one of the worst is a widespread belief that New York, Washington, Chicago, San Francisco, and so on have one set of housing problems, and everybody else has a completely different set.

This is not, in fact, the case. In fact, nearly every metropolitan area in the country has these two problems: A) Zoning prohibits new construction in relatively nice neighborhoods, meaning prices are artificially high, which forces people either to live in less-nice neighborhoods with more crime, worse schools, etc., or build new houses on farm/desert land with worse access to the actual city, and B) A big chunk of people can’t actually afford to pay the market price for housing almost anywhere. This leads to problem C), which is economic segregation, which has various disastrous effects on the opportunities people have to lead the kinds of lives they would like to lead.

What is special about New York, Washington, etc., is the fact that the geography of their economic segregation is changing, and changing quite rapidly. But the underlying housing dynamics that cause segregation are quite similar. Remember that the vast majority of American neighborhoods where prices are higher than they should be as a result of restrictions on new building look much more like this:

Continue reading →

A rendering of the development at Children’s Memorial Hospital in Lincoln Park.

by Daniel Kay Hertz

Alternative title: Chicago’s Affordable Housing System is Broken.

But thanks to the development at Children’s Memorial Hospital, there will soon be 64 new affordable homes in the heart of Lincoln Park! And in another 35 years, maybe Lincoln Parkers will deign to build some more.

But we’ll get back to that in a moment. At issue here is “affordable housing” in a narrower sense, meaning homes whose prices are kept below market rate through subsidies and government mandates. It’s that type of housing that urban progressive types are most likely to get excited about; indeed, one of the most common ways that cities battle economic segregation is something called “inclusionary zoning,” which requires that certain types of new developments – it varies from city to city – set aside a certain percentage of their housing units to be “affordable,” or priced below regular market values.

I have a bit of a philosophical problem with this as a primary strategy for promoting housing justice, which is that designating islands of “inclusionary zoning” in a sea of zoning that is decidedly exclusionary feels about as righteous as designating “free speech zones,” outside of which one apparently cannot speak freely. Basic constitutional rights – like not having the government target you for exclusion from communities in which you would like to live – seem by definition like things that ought to apply everywhere. Continue reading →

by Daniel Kay Hertz

Sometimes people ask me: Daniel, how is it possible that a neighborhood like Lincoln Park – or Lakeview, etc. – can actually lose housing units?

The answer, for the most part, is that as demand to live in a neighborhood goes up, there’s a larger and larger pool of wealthy people looking for housing. And they’re not just willing to pay more for it; they’re willing to pay more for better housing. And one way to turn existing buildings into “better” housing is by taking two or three smaller units and making one bigger unit, which can then be sold or rented for more than the combined price of the old units.

Although this happens all the time, it’s hard to see, since it doesn’t involve teardowns or major construction. Fortunately, though, Steven Vance has created something called Licensed Chicago Contractors, which is a searchable database of every Chicago building permit over the last several years. Many, though far from all, of these jobs are described as “conversions” or “deconversions” in the permit, which means you can find a lot of them with a simple search. “Deconversion,” for example, gets 270 hits, including the beaut shown above in Lincoln Park, which is turning a generous three-flat into a massive townhome.

Anyway, if you’re curious about what this process looks like on the ground, or if there have been any recent deconversions near you,  it’s a great tool.

(Cross posted from City Notes.)