Tag Archives: density

What Density-Phobia Gets Wrong

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by Michael Lewyn

Some prosperous American cities have a housing supply problem: they have made zoning more and more restrictive over time, thus causing limited housing supply, thus causing escalating housing prices. And because some people fleeing high housing prices move to automobile-dependent suburbs or smaller cities, restrictive urban zoning means more suburbanites with more cars, creating more pollution everywhere.

So one might think that the logical solution is to build more housing in urban areas, especially in the costliest markets. Yet in a recent article, the Philadelphia Inquirer‘s Inga Saffron wrote: “Density has to be relative to what already exists … so neighborhoods can step up density gradually.” In other words, don’t build too much stuff because…why? Most of her article seems devoted to the evils of tall buildings.

As far as I can tell, there are three myths underlying Saffron’s article.

Myth 1: “Beware! The high-rises are coming!” Saffron writes that some unnamed “hard-line” density proponents “assume there is only one way to achieve real density. They use density as a rallying cry to justify the construction of more and bigger high-rises, in both America’s thriving cities and its hollowed-out ones.” Continue reading →

High-Rises and Streetlife

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One common argument against tall residential buildings is that high-rises reduce a neighborhood’s livability by reducing its streetlife. For example, a few months ago I read a blog post claiming that “people who live in the high floors of a high-rise are less likely to leave their homes.” I have lived in elevator buildings for the past couple of years, and can verify from personal experience that high-rise residents leave their homes for the same reasons that homeowners do: to go to work, to get groceries, and to perform all the other little functions that are necessary for a normal life. To be sure, a few people do work at home and get groceries delivered, but the overwhelming majority of people need to leave their homes on a regular basis, whether they live in a single-family house, a small multifamily building, or a high-rise.

Moreover, this argument doesn’t seem to be supported by what I have actually seen with my own eyes. New York City neighborhoods like Times Square and the Upper West Side certainly have plenty of elevator buildings, but these places have far more street life than many low-density suburbs or quiet rowhouse neighborhoods. Why? Because even if a few shut-ins are less likely to go outside than in a low-rise neighborhood, any negative results of this phenomenon are outweighed by the positive effects of density. So many people live, work and play near Times Square that its streets are far busier than those of a less dense rowhouse area such as Washington’s Capitol Hill (or even of higher-density rowhouse areas such as New York’s West Village). By contrast, my current neighborhood in Kansas City is not particularly lively—but my block (dominated by a 10-story building) seems no more lifeless than the street a block away dominated by three-story buildings, or the single-family home blocks west of my building.

In fact, high-rises may sometimes increase street life by increasing the popularity of city life and thereby increasing urban density. The “streetlife” argument against urban high-rises assumes that people who don’t live in high-rises would be happy to live in low-rise apartment buildings. In other words, it assumes that consumer preferences are: (1) highrises, (2) lowrises, and (3) suburbia. But some consumers may prefer (1) highrises, (2) suburbia, (3) lowrises, because they are only willing to live in the city if they can get the amenities that come with (1) for example, doormen to enhance security (which are more common in high-rises than in smaller buildings) or elevators to reduce stress on aging knees and hips. In turn, these consumers are more likely to walk on city streets than if they lived in suburbia, thus increasing urban streetlife. And if they are business owners or executives, they are more likely to place their businesses in the city than if they lived in suburbia, thus causing even more people to walk on city streets. Continue reading →

When Nuisance Law Is A Nuisance

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(cross-posted from planetizen.com)

In the recent case of Loughead v. Buckhead Investment Partners, a group of Houston, Texas, homeowners filed a common-law nuisance action to prevent a developer from building an apartment building in their neighborhood; the plaintiffs asserted (among other claims) that the apartments caused increased traffic—a claim that would be true of any new housing. Under the law of nuisance, a landowner may recover damages whenever another person uses their land in a manner that causes substantial, unreasonable harm to other landowners. A jury awarded the plaintiffs damages in December 2013, and the verdict will be appealed.

The landowners sued for nuisance because Houston has no zoning code and the city could therefore not legally exclude the apartments—but at common law, something permitted by zoning can still be an actionable nuisance. So if the Loughead action is upheld on appeal, landowners all over the country may become more willing to file nuisance actions to keep out multifamily housing (or for that matter, any other allegedly undesirable land use).

It seems to me that states should prohibit nuisance claims against new multifamily housing (either through state legislation or through judicial decisionmaking), for three reasons.

First, the public policy in favor of affordable rental housing dictates against such actions. Throughout the United States, there is a rental housing shortage. Between 2000 and 2013, median household income has increased by 25.4 percent, while rent has increased by 52.8 percent. The explosion in rental costs has not been limited to gentrifying, traditionally high-cost cities such as San Francisco and New York. For example, in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, rents increased from 20 percent of household income in 1979 to 35.2 percent in 2013. The explosion in rents is in large part the result of increased demand for rental property; tighter credit standards and stagnant wages have kept would-be homeowners from buying houses and forced them to rent instead. The supply of multifamily housing has increased, but not fast enough to keep up with increased demand: the national rental vacancy rate (8.3 percent) is at its lowest point since 2000. Continue reading →

Transit, Density and Congestion

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(cross-posted from planetizen.com)

A few weeks ago, Wendell Cox wrote a blog post asserting that the most dense metros tend to have the highest levels of congestion. Assuming for the sake of argument that his methodology for measuring congestion makes sense, it does not necessarily follow that sprawl equals low congestion, or that transit-oriented development equals high congestion.

Cox focuses on metrowide density. But there are different kinds of density; some regions, such as Los Angeles, have high regionwide density but so-so transit systems, car-oriented street design, and a not-too-dense central city. Others, such as Boston, combine a very dense, transit-oriented core with not-so-dense suburbs. Regions in the first group tend to have low transit ridership, thus effectively combining density and sprawl. In addition, large regions are likely to have higher congestion than small regions, even leaving aside density.

So I thought I would take a look at Cox’s data and ask a slightly different question: do transit-oriented places have more congestion than one might expect for their size, or less?

Exhibit A is New York City: the region with the highest transit ridership in the United States. Since New York is the largest region in the nation, one might expect it to have high levels of congestion. But according to Cox, New York is only fourth in congestion. Thus, it appears that a highly dense core, when combined with less-dense suburbs, will have levels of congestion lower than one might expect based on population.

Five other large regions (Philadelphia, Chicago, Boston, San Francisco, and Washington) have highly transit-oriented central cities: that is, cities where over 25 percent of residents use transit to get to work. All of these cities have fairly high central-core density; all but one (Washington) that is, over 10,000 people per square mile within the city limits, and Washington is pretty close to the 10,000/square mile mark.* In fact, five of these cities (all but Washington) are the five most dense principal cities (that is, largest city in their metropolitan area) in the United States.

Philadelphia has the fifth highest regional population, but only the thirteenth highest level of congestion. Thus, Philadelphia clearly outperforms its population in addressing traffic congestion—that is, it has less congestion than one might expect from its size.

Chicago has the third highest regional population, but only the 12th highest level of congestion. Thus, Chicago again outperforms expectations.

On the other hand, two other transit-oriented regions do not outperform. Boston has the tenth highest population but the eighth highest level of congestion, and San Francisco has the eleventh highest population but the third highest level of congestion. (Washington ranks no. 7 in both).

On balance, transit-oriented regions do not seem to have more traffic congestion, controlling for size, than the nation as a whole.

*Washington has 61 square miles and 602,000 people, according to the 2010 Census.

Jungle Shmungle

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(Cross-posted from cnu.org)

Recently, as I was scrolling through some blog post comments, I noted that more than one person feared that new development would make their city “a concrete jungle” (or worse still, lead to “Manhattanization.”)  After a little Google searching, I learned that the former term has not been limited to high-rise neighborhoods, but that neighborhood activists and the media had suggested that Chicago, Houston, Chattanooga, Philadelphia’s Main Line suburbs, and Pompano Beach, Florida were or might become “concrete jungles” if the wrong thing was built.

It seems to me, therefore, that this sort of term can be used to describe anything that even slightly varies from the status quo.  If you live in a rural area and someone wants to build a one-lot-per-acre subdivision, one of your neighbors will probably argue that this extremely low-density subdivision is turning your patch of paradise into a “concrete jungle.”

If you live in one-lot-per-acre sprawl, and someone wants to build a more conventional four-lots-per-acre subdivision, one of your neighbors will probably argue that this suburban subdivision is going to turn your area into a “concrete jungle”- even though, to someone living a truly rural life, your area is just as much of a jungle.

If you live in four-lot-per-acre suburbia, and someone wants to build some garden apartments or duplexes or smaller single-family homes, one of your neighbors will probably claim that these small dwellings are turning your neighborhood into a “concrete jungle”- even though to residents of estate-home suburbia, your neighborhood is a concrete jungle.

And if you live in a streetcar suburb full of duplexes and small-lot houses, and someone wants to build a walk-up apartment building near you, one of your neighbors will probably claim that these apartment buildings will turn your neighborhood into a “concrete jungle”- even though the buildings may look more like Paris or Copenhagen than midtown Manhattan.

And if you really do live in Manhattan, and you live in a fifteen-story high-rise that seems unimaginably urban to the residents of streetcar suburbs and walk-up apartments, this does not mean your neighbors will be immune from density-phobia.  If a developer wants to build a twenty- or thirty-story high-rise near you, your neighbors as well will complain that the new building will turn your neighborhood into a “concrete jungle”- even though to 99 percent of Americans, your neighborhood will already seem so far gone that another high-rise here and there won’t matter.

In sum, terms like “concrete jungle” and “Manhattanization” can mean nearly everything, which means they mean absolutely nothing.   And because these terms are meaningless, they should usually be treated as schoolyard insults rather than as a form of rational argument.

Are Mid-Rise Cities Better than Everything Else?

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Boston

Boston

by Jim Dalrymple

Perhaps the ideal size of a building is just tall enough (or short enough) that people will still take the stairs to the top.

That’s basically the idea Robert Freedman suggests in a great post over at Planetizen discussing the pleasure, economics and feasibility of cities with plenty of medium-height buildings. The idea is that cities need some amount of density to thrive, but massive elevator-oriented towers don’t feel sufficiently human scale.

I agree; pretty much all of my favorite spaces across the world are dominated by mid-rise buildings. As Freedman points out,

In areas of Manhattan where entire blocks of walk-up apartments have been preserved, the human scale provides an amazing and welcome contrast to the soaring, elevator-towers that cover much of the rest of the island. You immediately sense how the heights of the buildings are in harmony with the width of the street. The materials are warm and natural, and, on the Avenues and major streets, the sidewalks are lined with small shops and restaurants. While walking, you have the sense that you “fit.” It’s not unlike retrieving your jacket after having mistakenly slipped into someone else’s that was several sizes too large. It just feels right. Continue reading →

Four Points: It’s Not about Highrises

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Densification through midrise buildings

What densification through midrise buildings looks like.

by Daniel Kay Hertz

Ramsin Canon, to whom I’m indebted for being the very first person in Chicago to publish my writing, has joined Aaron Renn and me in the latest round of conversation about zoning deregulation as a way to get some control over housing prices and build more equitable cities.

Like Aaron’s, it’s a long, thoughtful piece with a lot of moving parts, and a lot of provocations. For now, though, I just want to make a few points related to Ramsin’s and Aaron’s posts – and the debate in general – that I think are too often obscured.

1. The most important way to increase supply is with midrises and 2-4 unit apartments, not highrises.

Supply arguments about affordable housing have focused largely on highrises, because those are high-profile symbols of density that excite urbanists and anger most other people. And it’s true that in the most exclusive neighborhoods of New York and San Francisco, skyscrapers are the most obvious ways to add lots of new housing units, since those places are already pretty dense. But under the kind of zoning deregulation that most advocates have in mind, the vast majority of densification would actually happen in outlying neighborhoods and suburbs, and would take the form of medium-sized and small apartment buildings where previously only single family homes were allowed. Continue reading →