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to be fair, having a sensible form-based zoning code and extremely present mass transit is like the number one and two things you want to have in terms of producing large volumes of cheap housing via the market. the free market isn't some primal force, it is just what sort of naturally happens within given parameters and if your parameters aren't all hosed up with euclidian single use zoning and expensive modal transportation then the problem kind of solves itself. so pointing to housing in japan is another way of saying "see what happens when you don't do things as stupidly and expensively as possible?"
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Jan 10, 2019 21:11
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For sure. Where I get either confused is why someone would broach Tokyo as an example of a housing market unshackled by red tape, address none of the other factors that allow Tokyo to exist as it does, and then call affordable housing a solved problem. Like, the Boston metro area could house just about all of New England were it as dense as Tokyo, but good luck moving any of those people around without a wholesale restructuring of society. I guess what I'm saying is that I wish that our local YIMBY folks would pull the brakes a bit on market über alles and instead advocate for a benevolent regional dictator.
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Jan 10, 2019 21:36
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in my experience, the role that fractured american government and the ways that jurisdictional piss-matching creates sprawl is a lot less sexy to talk about and even think about than simcity style slider fiddling. it's way more terrifying to try to grapple with the idea that bad cities are practically codified by the way american government works, so people would rather try to find the one weird trick to creating density like the current passion for upzoning. and, again my opinion, the reason this is terrifying is because it means you'd have to try to convince older white americans to have less of a thirst for segregation and soft racism and if we can crack that nut then most of the problems in contemporary america would be fixable. so ultimately urban sprawl and expensive housing are part of the entire tangle of the wicked problem that is the legacy of racial exploitation in america which is far, far outside the realm of strictly urban planning plus tokyo is one of the world's beautiful cities, like paris, except paris has some uhhh roadblocks in terms of trying to discuss it as something to aspire to (first, assume a dictator leveled everything and gave a single dude a broad mandate to rebuild the city in the name of aesthetics...) Mr. Fall Down Terror fucked around with this message at 21:43 on Jan 10, 2019 |
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Jan 10, 2019 21:40
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So this is what helplessness feels like. I've been trying to dig more into this stuff by way of regional transit wonkery, and it is super-gritty and super-bleak at times. I don't feel like the YIMBY crew are peddling useful solutions, even though they're en vogue with local politicians, but the tenant advocacy and poverty law folks I've talked to seem like they're only delaying the liquidation of the urban poor. I'm gonna fire up Cities: Skylines or something when I get home. 
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Jan 10, 2019 21:49
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I'm pretty yimby and my slogan is not to build more affordable housing. But to build so much housing that bit is affordable for all. To those on the left you should understand this as the de-commodification of housing through the use of supply and demand. Once housing is cheap and widely available it will be much easier to use the existing human services and public housing budgets to house all of the homeless. In Seattle where I live it costs 500k per unit of affordable housing to be built. We will never solve our homelessness and housing affordability crisis untill we radically reduce the cost of housing. I am 100% for a move from a property tax system to a land value tax system. Also radically upzone every urban area. Let the market build all the units it will support, then have the government come in and keep building units until housing is dirt cheap and Land Lords are begging for renters.
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Jan 10, 2019 22:04
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the problem with that proposal is that it is a recipe for permanent hellworld gridlock and the rapid depletion of public resources as its logical conclusion, and in a more realistic sense the market will give up at a point of congestion and saturation long before housing becomes universally affordable. it's a bit like saying "let's keep building this building taller and taller, the foundation will sort itself out"
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Jan 10, 2019 22:15
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That is also my problem with it. Anything that doesn't involve mass construction of mixed-income public housing with a total war level of mass transit expansion seems like it would crush the poor, the environment, and the QOL of anyone left in the housing market. E: Currently posting on a bus in Boston. I leave work well before 5 and then work from home in the evening so that my 3-mile commute across a couple of blighted highways doesn't take 45 minutes. 😎 Insanite fucked around with this message at 22:26 on Jan 10, 2019 |
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Jan 10, 2019 22:23
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actually when i think about it "first, encourage the market to build like crazy regardless of civic infrastructure and loosen the zoning code to enable this activity" is the essential component of gentrification sure we can fix that with "second, throw a ton of government money at the problem" except the second step never comes and cities really don't have much money to throw around which is why they dropped public housing as soon as possible once the federal government shifted policy towards 'market solutions' you have to start with government expenditure, not end there
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Jan 10, 2019 22:27
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And that's a struggle, I think, in some progressive communities where market urbanism is cool. It's sucking up oxygen in our zoning discussions, and at least here, it's gained some traction in popular political groups. Stronger protections for the working poor, public housing, local land trusts, etc. don't really seem to be part of the conversation, nor does infrastructure development. If they're mentioned at all, it's something short and vague, like, "we support providing affordable housing" or "the expanded tax base will take care of infrastructure concerns." I've come to think of the movement as stealth libertarianism mixed with people who genuinely think they've found, as you've said, 'one cool trick' to fix housing and refuse to think beyond that. Insanite fucked around with this message at 22:58 on Jan 10, 2019 |
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Jan 10, 2019 22:51
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Land use policy is transport policy.
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Jan 10, 2019 22:54
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Insanite posted:I don't feel like the YIMBY crew are peddling useful solutions, even though they're en vogue with local politicians, but the tenant advocacy and poverty law folks I've talked to seem like they're only delaying the liquidation of the urban poor.
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Jan 10, 2019 23:05
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I sometimes see that, but it's very much on "and also" terms. I think that those things should be prerequisite and primary to, say, inviting private developers to turn a shuddered school in a dense city into luxury housing because more is better and that's all there is to say on the matter.
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Jan 10, 2019 23:10
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imo the problem with upzoning is that it seems more immediately attainable - instead of going through the whole process of planning, proposing, and funding transit improvements, you can change zoning with very little effort in time and money. so it's a very tempting first step to take since it is relatively cheap to implement and you don't have to jump through as many legislative hoops (or ballot measures). except, if you don't pursue zoning reform as part of a holistic policy, then whoops you've just dumped a whole can of gas on the fire that is gentrification, effectively just lowering the bar for property ownership low enough to include a broader set of poor white collar millenials while leaving the working class in the same position they were before. good intentions, but...
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Jan 10, 2019 23:17
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Most YIMBYs are urbanists who are absolutely pro-transit. It's a chicken and egg problem either way. It's harder to argue for expanding mass transit when population density is low. Also, even in areas that do have reasonably good transit connections, often you can hit mandatory single family homes within, like, a block or two. It's hard to describe just how hosed up American zoning is. Little German towns with <20k people will have nicer, more urban-feeling downtowns than US cities 10x the size, it's unreal. They'll be vastly more walkable even though they have barely any more transit than a few local buses. Yeah obviously big apartment blocks may necessitate good transit, but you can get to fourplexes and townhomes and the like mostly relying on walking and biking to pick up much of the slack (assuming you also do mixed use zoning and other common sense changes). IIRC Germany doesn't even have any single family home only zoning in the whole drat country, but American flip the gently caress out even when you try to remove it even a couple blocks away from light rail.
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Jan 11, 2019 01:58
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American decision making on land use is totally different from Europe because the conditions are totally different. In America we have just this absurd amount of empty space left. A pretty huge chunk of the west is just plain undeveloped. Even the east coast isn't really having much trouble finding places to put new poo poo. This is also why we just keep dumping trash into landfills while...some Scandinavian country (Sweden, I think) has gotten so good at burning trash for power that they've started buying garbage. Europe is packed much tighter. There isn't nearly as much empty space. What is empty isn't necessarily all that usable. Even so the tight packing makes mass transit much more usable thanks to economies of scale. A hell of a lot of Americans are still doing things like living an hour or three away from the nearest city but driving in for special occasions. Even if you mass transit the gently caress out of the cities that won't change. Europe is barely larger than the U.S. but has more than double the people. That's a gargantuan difference that makes mass transit more viable.
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Jan 11, 2019 02:38
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FWIW, Boston is just about as dense as Stockholm. We don't have a lot of empty space around us, but what's occupied isn't particularly dense, either. Lots of smaller non-NYC American cities have the density to support superior mass transit--it's just that spending on that and/or compromising the right of suburban drivers to go smoothly from garage to office and back again every day are third rails. (Pun.) Car dependence, prioritization, fetishism... it just makes doing better hard.
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Jan 11, 2019 03:03
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luxury handset posted:the problem with that proposal is that it is a recipe for permanent hellworld gridlock and the rapid depletion of public resources as its logical conclusion, and in a more realistic sense the market will give up at a point of congestion and saturation long before housing becomes universally affordable. it's a bit like saying "let's keep building this building taller and taller, the foundation will sort itself out" Would you like me to respond to your points?
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Jan 11, 2019 03:53
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Insanite posted:FWIW, Boston is just about as dense as Stockholm. We don't have a lot of empty space around us, but what's occupied isn't particularly dense, either. It's funny you mention Boston as Tokyo a few posts up because there is a similar population problem going on right now in New England. Greater Boston is the only part of New England that is growing. Maine, NH, Vermont, RI, Connecticut, and anything west(ish) of Worcester is essentially aging out. In theory, the 40B law is bypassing SOME of the restrictive zoning policies created by the Boston suburbs but so much more needs to be done. Also, I thought Somerville was one of the densest places in the United States? Anyways, part of what we are seeing here is a combo of ending White Flight, rural death, and no housing policy coming to ahead and creating these housing issues. Density and square footage restrictions are going to have to be used soon and advocated for if we want to start making a dent in the housing market. Another interesting quirk in Massachusetts, is a place like Cape Cod could use a program where older folks move into condos and free up some more SFH. they are living 1500 to 2000 sqft homes that they can really no longer take care of and can literally be hazardous to them. One study said that up to 7500 homes could be on the market if they could get people to downsize.
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Jan 11, 2019 05:17
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Mooseontheloose posted:It's funny you mention Boston as Tokyo a few posts up because there is a similar population problem going on right now in New England. Greater Boston is the only part of New England that is growing. Maine, NH, Vermont, RI, Connecticut, and anything west(ish) of Worcester is essentially aging out. In theory, the 40B law is bypassing SOME of the restrictive zoning policies created by the Boston suburbs but so much more needs to be done. Somerville is indeed the densest city in New England and the 16th densest in the US. I actually live there; it's sitting at 18k people/sq mi vs. Boston's 14k/sq mi. It's tiny and has very little open space, though. TBF, "Boston" would encompass Boston, Cambridge, Somerville, etc. if it made any sense. Somerville is closer to Boston's downtown than much of Boston proper is. We love our stupidly tiny municipalities duking it out over who knows what, here, though. I think that density and square footage restrictions should be reduced to a point, but where I get uncomfortable is the notion that there shouldn't be minimums--that tiny houses, infill cottages, and micro-apartments are just interesting lifestyle choices rather than concessions to bleak reality. That's probably true for a few people, but if we can't provide 400-500 sqft of affordable housing per person, we're maybe not casting our nets wide enough by turning our commuter rail system into regional rail and forcing (somehow) low-density metro communities to upzone. Cape Cod isn't connected particularly well to Boston by mass transit, nor does it have a glut of decent jobs. I agree that encouraging people to downsize--maybe even direct payments to encourage it--could be good, but you're not discouraging car commuting that way. I guess some of the Cape is threatened by climate change, too, but that's maybe too much bleakness for me tonight. 
Insanite fucked around with this message at 05:43 on Jan 11, 2019 |
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Jan 11, 2019 05:41
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luxury handset posted:what kind of planning? you said in a different thread you're not familiar with the term CBD which to me is like saying you work in a mechanic shop and you've never heard of a differential. not trying to call you out here, just curious Comprehensive. We don't have any cities in our region which I think would have a CBD, and I fell backwards into the job but it's not commonly used around the office either.
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Jan 11, 2019 13:37
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ToxicSlurpee posted:American decision making on land use is totally different from Europe because the conditions are totally different. In America we have just this absurd amount of empty space left. A pretty huge chunk of the west is just plain undeveloped. Even the east coast isn't really having much trouble finding places to put new poo poo. This is also why we just keep dumping trash into landfills while...some Scandinavian country (Sweden, I think) has gotten so good at burning trash for power that they've started buying garbage. The US being so different is mostly two things. One is that a very large amount of our urban development happened with cars being available. If you look at cities that were reasonably fleshed out prior to cars, like Boston or Philly, you find those areas are decent transit-friendly in how they're built; they had to be, since back when they were being developed most trips were just walking. Ones that built more afterwards, like LA or Phoenix, are more car dominant, which means more spread out. The other is that we just collectively decided that more space = good and to build for cars. This isn't some inevitable thing, you can just look at how the Netherlands was going that direction post-WW2, then reversed course starting in the 70's. quote:Europe is packed much tighter. There isn't nearly as much empty space. What is empty isn't necessarily all that usable. Even so the tight packing makes mass transit much more usable thanks to economies of scale. A hell of a lot of Americans are still doing things like living an hour or three away from the nearest city but driving in for special occasions. Even if you mass transit the gently caress out of the cities that won't change. Europe is barely larger than the U.S. but has more than double the people. That's a gargantuan difference that makes mass transit more viable.
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Jan 11, 2019 13:52
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Cicero posted:The US being so different is mostly two things. One is that a very large amount of our urban development happened with cars being available. If you look at cities that were reasonably fleshed out prior to cars, like Boston or Philly, you find those areas are decent transit-friendly in how they're built; they had to be, since back when they were being developed most trips were just walking. Ones that built more afterwards, like LA or Phoenix, are more car dominant, which means more spread out. yeah to this. the roots of american automobile dependence are not really based in an abundance of land and the ability to waste it - though it is true that you can't really build sprawl without a shitload of land rather, sprawl exists more due to chronology and the widespread availability of automobiles as american cities are being built, as well as push/pull factors like "americans love to have yards" and "it turns out that automobile dependent suburbs are an excellent way to enforce racial segregation when explicit segregation is made illegal" also, the way that land use regulation authority is handed out in the united states also encourages sprawl in a way that doesn't really exist in many european countries, which have a much longer tradition of regional land use planning as well as stricter controls on land use (iirc the concept of the 'police power' derives from german law) Mr. Fall Down Terror fucked around with this message at 19:19 on Jan 11, 2019 |
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Jan 11, 2019 19:15
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Insanite posted:Cape Cod isn't connected particularly well to Boston by mass transit, nor does it have a glut of decent jobs. I agree that encouraging people to downsize--maybe even direct payments to encourage it--could be good, but you're not discouraging car commuting that way. I guess some of the Cape is threatened by climate change, too, but that's maybe too much bleakness for me tonight. It's ok SouthCoast Rail is coming any day now...any...day...now (I have a home on the cape, and transit there sucks. For the cost of the cape flyer train you may as well rent a car)
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Jan 11, 2019 23:47
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Keep in mind that Germany was pretty much totally destroyed following WW2, so had the opportunity to rebuild in the era of the automobile with automobile centric development just like the US, but they didn't. Same with Japan. It's not even about when the growth/building happened. It's more about the policies that were in place when the growth happened.
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Jan 12, 2019 04:53
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Nitrousoxide posted:Keep in mind that Germany was pretty much totally destroyed following WW2, so had the opportunity to rebuild in the era of the automobile with automobile centric development just like the US, but they didn't. Same with Japan. I agree we should bulldoze every single family home and build judge dredd style brutalist megablocks. Welcome to the party comrade.
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Jan 12, 2019 05:08
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settle down corbu
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Jan 12, 2019 07:13
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KingFisher posted:I agree we should bulldoze every single family home and build judge dredd style brutalist megablocks. I see you are a Boston architect from the 70s.
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Jan 12, 2019 14:21
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Honestly, ugly brutalist housing projects are a step up from what a lot of cities have housing-wise.
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Jan 12, 2019 19:23
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Ratoslov posted:Honestly, ugly brutalist housing projects are a step up from what a lot of cities have housing-wise. * Yes, and access to economic opportunity and cultural enrichment; I'm just trying to make a pithy quote here, jeeze. The NIMBY deriding of new homes not fitting some aesthetic standard from the 1890s is just incredibly grating. A new building may provide homes to several dozen new families, but if it does have enough loving faux-brick in its facade then it's an affront to all that is holy, apparently.
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Jan 12, 2019 19:44
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Doesn't everyone deserve a nice built environment, though? Saying that aesthetics aren't important in affordable housing feels a little like saying that food stamp recipients don't need fulfilling diets--just gruel or nutrient logs. Insanite fucked around with this message at 20:52 on Jan 12, 2019 |
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Jan 12, 2019 20:49
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Insanite posted:Doesn't everyone deserve a nice built environment, though? However, the imposition of one very narrow idea of what is aesthetically sufficient is problematic--particularly when it used by groups that are very comfortable in their current housing situation to scale back or even block the construction of new homes for those who are insecure in theirs.
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Jan 12, 2019 21:09
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the big problem with giant housing blocks is that they generally aren't that much of an increase for density, as the point of concentrating housing in large towers is to leave ample greenspace open around the towers. the only way you get mass density from giant towers is if you build them close together to the point where you start creating a hostile streetscape at ground level via blocking sunlight
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Jan 12, 2019 23:10
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Cute rowhouses with veggie gardens in the back as far as the eye can see, along with windowless towers full of imprisoned absentee landlords and speculators, IMO.
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Jan 13, 2019 01:04
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Brutalism is loving awful. Art Deco 4 ever.
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Jan 13, 2019 15:37
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I mean, it works if you're really into foreboding and menace. 
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Jan 13, 2019 18:42
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Brutalism works best with lots of greenery, vines, climbers, water features, etc. 
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Jan 13, 2019 19:24
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Oh, yeah. I think virtually anything can work with the right support and context*, but that's missing from Brutalist stuff in my neighborhood. *Which you might not get in a deregulated free-for-all buildout.
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Jan 13, 2019 19:32
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Doesn't basically everything look better with greenery and water features though?
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Jan 14, 2019 10:39
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I feel like cities that have no style or aesthetics or character are called "many mid sized cities" and I imagine that a large city that chased that goal would eventually find itself being a mid sized city as well.
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Jan 14, 2019 13:52
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I need some good examples of planning agency or MPO websites. I have plenty of bad ones already. Any good, modern, responsive and interactive ones out there?
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Jan 14, 2019 21:25
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