Urban Returns

10 Blogs Every Urbanist Should Read

I've excluded Austin blogs and blogs that focus on just one city.  These are in no particular order.

1.  Ryan Avent 

Elegant writing on urban economics and transit.

2.  Creative Class 

Richard Florida's consistently interesting ideas on why some cities flourish and others do not.

3.  Streetsblog 

A mash up of more than 230 local blogs covering cities, urbanism, transit and bicycling.  A wonderful sampler of cities.

4.  Newgeography 

Joel Kotkin has assembled a stable of writers who look at where cities have been and where they are going.

5.  Next American City 

Consistently good essays on place-making and cities.

6.  All About Cities 

Wendy Waters' unique perspective from her perch in Vancouver.

7.  Affordable Housing Institute: U.S. 

Don't let the stuffy title throw you.  This quirky blog covers the ecology of India's slums one day and the "ultimate future city" the next, along with knowledgeable posts about the obstacles to affordable housing in American cities.

8.  The Overhead Wire 

Expert in all things transit.

9.  The Anti-Planner 

Serious urbanists should make a habit of reading the serious anti-urbanists, and Randal O'Toole is their king.

10.  The Goodspeed Update 

A planner's thoughtful perspective on the obstacles confronting livable cities.

Honorable mentions:  Market Urbanism, Emergent Urbanism, Environmental and Urban Economics (wonkish) and Matthew Yglesias (only a small percentage of his posts deal with urbanism, but those that do are usually very good).

Fact checking minimum-parking requirements

Tory Gattis opposes minimum-parking requirements (as do right-thinking people everywhere), but wonders whether they make any difference:

Developers in Houston know the market demands parking, and they'd be committing suicide without it. What I'd really like to see, if someone has it, is data on approved apartment projects of the last few years, and how their built parking compares to the legally required minimums. If many of them are right at the minimum, then relaxing the regs could have an impact. But if most projects have more than them minimum required, as I suspect they do, then relaxing the minimums may have little practical impact.

Good idea.  A lot of us (me included) assume that we'd have less parking if we relaxed minimum parking requirements.  But what does the evidence show?

I haven't pulled up site plans and parking charts for every new downtown development.   But I did check four new downtown developments:  360, Spring, Amli (Block 22), and the Gables at Park Plaza on Lamar, just south of Spring and the railroad tracks.

Downtown is a good place to start because downtown has reduced minimum-parking requirements.  (Residential developments downtown need just 60% of the parking the city requires elsewhere; retail, just 20%.)  If downtown developers are building less than the minimums required elsewhere, the minimums elsewhere are too high -- where "too high" means "more than customers are willing to pay for."  Mandating unnecesary capacity is expensive and wasteful. 

I'll address criticisms of this approach at the end.

The Gables at Park Plaza isn't eligible for relaxed parking because it is not zoned for downtown.  But it is mixed-use like the other developments and is adjacent to downtown, so I doubt it needs more parking than the other developments.  Think of the Gables as a control group of one.

To the numbers:

360

• 852 -- standard city minimum
• 466 -- reduced city minimum for downtown 
• 648 -- spots provided (76% of standard requirement)  

Spring

• 923 -- standard city minimum
• 368 -- reduced city minimum for downtown 
• 799 -- spots provided (87% of standard requirement)

Amli (Block 22)

• 667 -- standard city minimum
• 299 -- reduced city minimum for downtown 
• 430 -- spots provided (64% of standard requirement) 

The Gables at Park Plaza

• 587 -- standard city minimum
• 645 -- spots provided (not eligible for reduced minimum downtown)  

This is a small sample, I admit, but it suggests that the city requires too much parking outside downtown.  Both Amli (64%) and 360 (76%) provided much less parking than the standard minimum. Spring took just a 13% discount, but then it includes parking for an office development.

The Gables will have 58 more spots than the city minimum.  This suggests (as Tory hypothesized) that the developer thought market demand exceeds the city minimum.  But I'm not convinced that's true.  The Gables has seven stories of parking with roughly 90 units each, probably more for stories 2-7.  The Gables could not have met regulations with just six floors because it would have been short 30-40 spots.  Because the developer had to build a seventh floor anyway, it might as well have used the whole floor.  Hence the extra spots.

Note that the reduced minimums downtown appear to be below market demand, at least for residential projects. 360 provided 39% more than the minimum; Amli, 43% more.  Spring provided more than twice the minimum required, but then, again, it's also providing parking an office building.  Thus, I'm skeptical that we would see a reduction in parking if we got rid of downtown parking minimums, at least for condos.  (Of course, if the parking minimums don't matter, why not get rid of them?)

I can think of four objections to this approach.

First, four data points do not a sample make.   This is a fair criticism.  These conclusions are necessarily tentative.  Ideally, we would get a complete census of downtown projects, comparing parking supplied to downtown minimums as they changed over the years.  That's a project for a paid consultant. 

Second, some may argue that these downtown projects need less parking because they are mixed-use.  But because the City mandates very little downtown parking for retail and restaurants, being mixed-use just doesn't matter much.  For example, 360 had to provide only 23 spots for its retail and restaurants.  Suppose that 360 were purely residential.  If its developer cut its parking by exactly the amount of the minimum required for the retail/restaurant uses, then 360 would have provided 625 spots rather than 648 spots, and its minimum would have dropped from 466 to 443.  In that case, it would have 41% more than the parking minimum, rather than 39%.  That's not much of a difference.  (And even that 41% would be too high if the developer had internally set aside more than 23 units for the retail/restaurant uses).

The third objection is that we have parking minimums to protect neighborhoods from spillover parking that occurs when developers under-provide parking.  Downtown developments are not good example, the argument might go, because they are not surrounded by neighborhoods.  But the fact that downtown developers can't count on the spillover parking actually supports my approach.  Because developers cannot assume that other parking will be available nearby, they have to build enough parking to handle the anticipated demand. 

Finally, some may argue that downtown projects don't need as much parking because downtown residents drive less than average.  I imagine downtown residents do drive less.  But I doubt many of them have given up their cars yet.  Austin is still too auto-centric.  Even if a handful have gotten rid of their cars, I don't think developers would have counted on this when planning their parking.  (It will be interesting to see what effect light rail has on auto ownership downtown.)

Again, I acknowledge that my sample is awfully small.  We need more data.  But it is consistent with the proposition that the city mandates way too much parking outside downtown.

Local control

I admit it's unlikely that TxDOT will be stripped of its jurisdiction over city roads and renamed the Rural Texas Public Works and Electrification Authority.  But there are lots of serious people who want Texas cities to have more control over their own infrastructure.  State Senator Kirk Watson for one:

If accountability [at TxDOT] is to be more centralized, Watson wants decision-making better distributed. He proposes giving more authority to the metropolitan planning organizations (the next task, he said, is to make the "P" in Capital Area Metropolitan Planning Organization "really mean something"). After decades of legislator frustration with TxDOT's "one-size-fits-all" model, Watson said, he's even seeing support for localized fundraising, such as gas tax and vehicle registration charges. "It may be the old mayor in me," he said, "but I really believe in this concept of local control, as long as you build in mechanisms of accountability."

Local control is meaningless, of course, without money.  Senate Bill 855 would fix that, sort of, by allowing counties to raise gas taxes and five other fees in order to finance infrastructure improvements.  (Using the gas tax for rail would require a constitutional amendment, though.)  I say "sort of" because the local gas tax would be capped at 10 cents/per gallon.  And, as a practical matter, one county in a metropolitan area cannot raise the gas tax unless the other counties do, too; drivers will simply drive across the border for cheaper gas.  

Assuming counties can coordinate their actions, though, raising the gas tax might actually be politically feasible if the locals think they will get infrastructure improvements they actually want.  

This would get us about a quarter of the way to full local control.  To get the whole nine yards, cities would also have to get back the money they send the state, and TxDOT would have to lose jurisdiction over metropolitan infrastructure projects.  Who knows.  TxDOT doesn't have many friends these days. 

Battling redevelopment, literally

Yes, we have bitter arguments over development in Austin, but "bitter" is a relative term.

"Sprawl" \'sprol\ n.

The Overhead Wire asks what sprawl is.  Ryan Avent gives his answer -- he uses "sprawl" to refer to neighborhood density rather than regional density.  (As a stats geek, I would state it this way:  "What matters is a metropolitan area's weighted density and not its standard density.")

My own thought it that it's time to retire "sprawl."  This little 5-letter word is being forced to do too much work; it simply has too many meanings.  And it might as well be a 4-letter word because it is the land-use equivalent of "asshole" -- I've told you I don't like you but I won't bother getting specific. 

Here are different meanings I've seen it given: (1) peripheral development -- greenfield development at the fringe of an urban area (one variation singles out "leapfrog" development); (2) economic dispersal  -- the rising cost (in both time and money) of getting from point A to point B; (3) "pod" development -- any development sharply segregating single-family, multi-family and commercial uses; (4) low-density development  -- always a relative metric, of course; and (5) auto-dependent development.  I'm sure there are others.

"Sprawl" literally means "to spread or develop irregularly." That best matches (1). But what makes it such a slippery word is the correlation between these definitions, which causes people to conflate one meaning with another. Peripheral growth can lengthen commutes. Virtually all new suburban development is "pod" development, and low-density development at that. And everything built more than a quarter-mile from a rail station -- virtually any suburban development -- is car-dependent, or at least car-oriented.  It is therefore unsurprising that people use "sprawl" to encompass several meanings at once.

For example, Dolores Hayden in A Field Guide to Sprawl defines "sprawl" as "a process of large-scale real estate development resulting in low-density, scattered, discontinuous car-dependent construction, usually on the periphery of declining older suburbs and shrinking city centers."  So she combines (1), (4) and (5), and possibly (3) as well, and throws in a jab at tract development for good measure.  (Note, though, that combining meanings technically narrows the definition rather than expands it.)  There are many others, of course.

But it's sloppy to mix them up.  The correlation is imperfect.  New Urbanist developments that mix single-family, multi-family and commercial uses into a walkable neighborhood are often built on greenfields at the periphery of urban areas and are not served by transit.  Density is not a perfect proxy for urban form because pod developments are sometimes denser than traditional, walkable neighborhoods; this is one reason why places like Phoenix have a relatively high weighted density.  Infill development is frequently not served by transit and consists of segregated uses.  Commuting costs can rise with rising density as well as increasing geographic dispersal if the transportation infrastructure is not up to snuff.

Each of these definitions suggests a different problem.  You cannot propose a solution until you have told the rest of us what problem you are trying to solve.  And "sprawl" is simply too mushy to do that.  If you are worried about the loss of open space, then New Urbanist greenfield development must be included within the definition of "sprawl."  If you are worried about rising commuting costs, it makes no sense to include greenfield development served by mass transit.  If you care about urban form -- if you hate pod development, for example -- you should include pod development whether it's core or suburban, dense or sparse.  We're engaged in lots of different debates over land use but we often don't realize it because we use just one word to characterize them all.

We need to develop more precise, clinical terms to advance the discussion.  Medicine, math and science (and law, more or less) define their terms precisely.  People make fun of jargon, but serious disciplines need it to keep distinct ideas straight.  As used today, "sprawl" is the medical equivalent of "sick."  Imagine the hilarity that would ensue if doctors used "sick" as their primary term for both prostate cancer and the flu.  

Define terms precisely.  And don't build moral judgments into them.  You can cast aspersions once everyone else knows what you're talking about.

A National Infrastructure Bank; Fixin' TxDOT

Ryan Avent plugs the idea of a National Infrastructure Bank as a more practical alternative than abolishing the DOT.  My understanding is the Bank would function like the military base closing commission:  it would make recommendations to Congress which Congress could override with a majority or supermajority (depending on the variation).  This would de-politicize transportation funding, curb the redistribution of money from cities to rural areas and preserve the feds' ability to coordinate large, interstate projects (like rail).   And Ryan's of course right that the DOT is not going anywhere, so there's no sense in planning for its demise.  But if I stuck only to the politically feasible, . . .

Speaking of the politically impossible, I've been thinking of ways to kick TxDOT out of our cities.  TxDOT does more damage than the feds (think TxDOT's proposed Highway in the Sky through Oak Hill), and it's the agency most directly responsible for pushing an inefficient allocation of transportation dollars.  Cities ought to keep their state money as well as their federal money.  Give metropolitan organizations like CAMPO unfettered control over transportation projects within their boundaries.

This is a thornier problem, practically, because we will still need TxDOT to maintain the highways and bridges outside the metropolitan areas.  And we'll still need its engineering expertise.  So it's a matter of cutting it down to size rather than eliminating it altogether.

Here's the best idea I've come up with so far: (1) Remove TxDOT's jurisdiction over  metropolitan areas; and (2) rename it the "Rural Texas Public Works and Electrification Authority."  I figure cities would be able to grab their fair share in no time.

Eureka!

We now have scientific justification for McMansion regulations:  Infill McMansions: Style and the psychophysics of size, by Jack Nasar, a professor of planning at Ohio State, and Arthur Stamps, a something at the Institute of Environmental Quality in San Francisco.  The abstract (I couldn't find an ungated version):

The number and size of infill oversized houses, or McMansions, has increased in the U.S. and the world. To maintain desirable neighborhood appearances, communities should know what constitutes “too big.” This paper reports six studies that used color simulations of blocks of houses to examine compatibility and visual appeal in relation to attributes of the infill house and its context. Following psychophysical findings, the relative size of the infill house should have larger effects on response than its actual size. The studies confirmed that the infill ratio had more weight than size for perceived compatibility. Compatibility did not always translate into visual appeal. For visual appeal, infill style had larger effects than did size or size ratio, height had larger effects than width, and, for larger sizes and ratios, infill ratio had larger effects than actual size. To maintain visual quality in relation to infill houses, communities should first seek an architecturally compatible style, and then try to control its relative size (the infill façade area). Tests of responses to real infill houses can show how well these findings generalize.

Translation:  Relative size matters more than absolute size; architectual style matters more than either relative size or absolute size; and height matters more than width.  (Based on these "findings," Austin's McMansion ordinance regulates the wrong things.)

Kunstler's got a funny stand-up routine (but he's still a jackass)

Jude links to a video of James Kunstler doing his schtick at the TED Conference.

I watched all 21 minutes and 42 seconds. The first 15 minutes is Kunstler's stand-up routine mocking crappy suburban design. It's pretty funny -- I laughed a couple of times. (Note that 21:42 is about the length of a Family Guy episode without the commercials.)

But it really is too easy. Kunstler mixes photos of bleak, suburban strip malls and neo-brutalist, urban buildings with images of pleasant, New Urbanist streetscapes.  Of course it's funny.  It’s much harder to figure out how to integrate new urbanist environments with the automobile and the modern demand for convenience. (The automobile hasn’t disappeared yet, to Kunstler's continual surprise).  Adres Duany, Peter Calthorpe, and Stefan Polyzoides have been wrestling with this issue for years, doing the hard, gritty work.  Kunstler’s just a clown.

Around the 15 minute mark, Kunstler launches into one of his apocalyptic rants about peak oil and the end of society as we know it.  Tellingly, he prefaces it by saying that “Chris” — presumably, one of the conference organizers — “told me not to go on too long about this.”   The smart people there know he’s full of crap.

Potential demand for density

I noted recently that the 30 largest U.S. urbanized areas (excluding NYC) display no association between density and the number of households with children (as a percentage of all households).  I have put the numbers below the fold for the curious.

Interestingly, Tampa and Pittsburgh have the lowest percentages of households with children (I thought San Francisco would be at the bottom; it ranks just above of Tampa and Pittsburgh), while LA had the third-highest percentage, ahead of Dallas, San  Antonio and Atlanta.

The chart illustrates my point about density's irrelevance perhaps better than my scatterplot.  For example, the urban densities of Philadelphia, St. Louis, D.C., Detroit, Las Vegas and Cincinatti range from 3,274 ppsm to 8,457 ppsm, but their percentages of HWCs vary by just 4/10ths of one percent (between 35.3% and 35.7%).  (Remember, "urbanized area" includes the 'burbs contiguous to the urban core.)

The other thing that struck me was that households without children are a large majority in almost every large city.  They exceed 60% in all but five of the thirty.  Since I think such households tend to be more tolerant of density than households with children, there may be more market demand for infill density than most people think.  Neighborhood-activist types often complain that we don't need all those apartments and condos because families with children don't want to live in them.  Even if they're right about families with children, those households are a relatively small segment of the market.  

By the way, I am not suggesting that singles or couples would rather live in a 100-unit condo than a single-family home.  I imagine that, all else being equal, most singles or couples would rather have a single-family home.  My wife and I owned our own house for years before we had children.  And I certainly am not suggesting that singles or couples ought to live in multi-family units.  Not at all.  People should get the kind of housing they want.

But preferences depend on price. I prefer a 2009 Infiniti M45 to a twice-wrecked 2002 I35, but I drive the I35.  As home prices rise, and all else being equal, small households are more willing (on average) to switch to denser housing than larger households with children.  Their aggregate demand for SF housing is simply more elastic, more sensitive to price.  Rising property values really do generate more demand for dense housing, regardless of what families with children want.

I'm twittering

Hesitantly.  I'm not sure I want people to know how dull I am, but they've probably figured it out already.