|
At the local (state/municipal) level, the best path forward is probably upzoning and streamlining development. Public housing is good, but getting enough of it to move the needle is going to require (inshallah) a Sanders or Warren HUD. Even then it would be far from a sure thing.Squalid posted:I don't know why you'd think history supports any of this. You sound like you'd have opposed the new deal because Roosevelt was seizing private businesses, or Medicare because it wasn't universal. I'm becoming increasingly convinced that suburb brain exists on the left as well as the right, it's just that instead of compalining about parking when you say their shouldn't be single family homes near transit, they accuse you of being spineless for not wanting to overthrow capitalism instead. It's the exact same provincial idiocy with a coat of performative radicalism thrown on.
|
#
?
Jan 31, 2020 02:33
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 20, 2024 17:50 |
|
|
nrook posted:I don’t think that’s necessarily true, states trying out policies is a classic way to show they can work on the federal level. Like Obamacare was heavily inspired by Romneycare, right? California is rich, they could fund public housing. It’s when this train of thought goes into “therefore we must oppose all other reform” that it loses me. States can try it out but it is absolutely impossible for California to pay for all the housing it needs using resources from only within California. LA is building affordable units for $800k per and is missing like 1.5 million units.
|
|
#
?
Jan 31, 2020 03:22
|
|
|
Kill Bristol posted:At the local (state/municipal) level, the best path forward is probably upzoning and streamlining development. Public housing is good, but getting enough of it to move the needle is going to require (inshallah) a Sanders or Warren HUD. Even then it would be far from a sure thing. I'm curious if anyone knows about the relationship between upzoning and development. Like, just because a city changes the map to permit a dense building to be built doesn't actually mean anyone's going to come along and do it. Then, if they do, they still have to go through a review process even then, which always includes public feedback. The fights over zoning just bewilder me I guess because it's not like people are even fighting about specific projects or proposals, they're just fighting over the idea of projects? Do I have that right?
|
|
#
?
Jan 31, 2020 08:06
|
|
|
Kill Bristol posted:At the local (state/municipal) level, the best path forward is probably upzoning and streamlining development. Public housing is good, but getting enough of it to move the needle is going to require (inshallah) a Sanders or Warren HUD. Even then it would be far from a sure thing. quote:I'm becoming increasingly convinced that suburb brain exists on the left as well as the right, it's just that instead of compalining about parking when you say their shouldn't be single family homes near transit, they accuse you of being spineless for not wanting to overthrow capitalism instead. It's the exact same provincial idiocy with a coat of performative radicalism thrown on. Except, the difference between healthcare and zoning is that with zoning you have half the left partnering with NIMBY's to keep US neighborhoods exclusionary and economically segregated. They're fighting the good fight, keeping out the poors from their gated communities. Oh, and keeping zoning density low also hurts the environment, so I guess the leftists fighting bills like SB50 are also real happy about that.
|
|
#
?
Jan 31, 2020 08:58
|
|
|
The US needs building more dense by right. Got an area zoned for single family homes, you're, by right, able to build triplexes. Got an area with triplexes? You can build mid rise towers. Got an area with mid rises? You can build high rises. All by right, no vetos from the neighbors. Massively reduce required set-backs and parking. Invest in public housing (but public housing without the above will fail as well).
|
|
#
?
Jan 31, 2020 14:00
|
|
|
Cicero posted:You know how for healthcare, basically every other developed country has universal healthcare and American conservatives have this kind of brain disease where they insist this is somehow impossible or practical for America? It's the same setup for zoning: basically every other country is substantially less stupid on this than the US, some nations literally don't have any SFH-only zoning in the entire country, but you still have Americans insisting this is somehow impossible or impractical or would be the death of their culture. the 'american exceptionalism' factor here is our insane focus on local autonomy and home rule. let's compare to germany, another place somewhat notable for a historic emphasis on every little shitsburg having its own special rights -germany can pass land use laws at the federal level. the united states cannot -the majority of land use planning in germany takes place at the state level, with some federal and limited local input. the majority of land use planning in america takes place at the local level, with limited state and effectively no federal input -regional planning is mandated in germany by federal law, and is coordinated by each state government. regional planning is complete calvinball in the united states, states can choose if they want to do it or not and how it is done -zoning categories and definitions, etc. are uniform at the federal level in germany. in the united states, each of the more than ten thousand different planning organizations could do whatever it likes -coordination between governments in germany is baked into the planning process, where higher tier governments can dictate policy to lower tier governments, but must also accept input and criticism from those lower tier governments. in the united states, all planning is a turf war to determine who is the singular authority who has the last word on land use planning in that jurisdiction specific categories of zoning are a red herring. the problem is that the american regulatory system around land use is fractured into a kajillion pieces by design El Mero Mero posted:I'm curious if anyone knows about the relationship between upzoning and development. Like, just because a city changes the map to permit a dense building to be built doesn't actually mean anyone's going to come along and do it. Then, if they do, they still have to go through a review process even then, which always includes public feedback. i think you're right on both of these bolded counts upzoning is not going to create growth itself. if we can see that developers are champing to build denser but are being held back by restrictive zoning (not as common as you would think, it's relatively easy to get variances) then yeah upzoning will incite new development. upzoning can be a good idea at times, but it's also a bit of a buzzword where left YIMBYs have somehow adopted this libertarian viewpoint that regulations are the problem holding down the market from fixing things on the second bolded statement i also agree with you, people like to argue about the concept of zoning without really understanding what it is or how it works or what the flaws of zoning-as-land-use are in the united states (see above, massive fragmentation = huge problem) and there's sort of this vague handwavy idea that we could just remove or reform zoning somehow and things would get better in some way, typically in a way that aligns with the speaker's ideal outcome
|
|
#
?
Jan 31, 2020 14:59
|
|
|
 luxury handset posted:upzoning is not going to create growth itself. if we can see that developers are champing to build denser but are being held back by restrictive zoning (not as common as you would think, it's relatively easy to get variances) then yeah upzoning will incite new development. upzoning can be a good idea at times, but it's also a bit of a buzzword where left YIMBYs have somehow adopted this libertarian viewpoint that regulations are the problem holding down the market from fixing things This is, I think, a big reason why the Left is so scattershot on housing and land use stuff.* Even if you have to rely on the private sector to build the vast majority of housing, when you encounter arguments that smell like classic Republican deregulationism, your Lefty hackles are going to go up. * Not commenting on SB50 in particular, as CA politics are some serious Event Horizon poo poo and I'd rather just not acknowledge them. Insanite fucked around with this message at 15:22 on Jan 31, 2020 |
|
#
?
Jan 31, 2020 15:19
|
|
|
Zoning of course is a complicated subject but we have to acknowledge why these zoning regulations were passed and are ruthlessly protected. It’s because they were created with the explicit purpose of having white-only single family housing so whites could accumulate generational wealth and preventing people of color the same opportunity. Sometimes, regulations are bad when they were created for a nefarious purpose. The practice of Red Lining began in California during WWII and its little wonder why the zoning fight is most hostile there.
|
|
#
?
Jan 31, 2020 15:35
|
|
|
Some zoning regulations were/are racist. Some aren't. Zoning reform of some sort is very good (e.g., see luxury handset's last post). If you care about getting broad Left support, it remains a difficult messaging battle, even if you do pair it with, I don't know, big investments in mass transit and social housing. It's arcane, often boring subject matter that people are dimly aware may or may not benefit real estate developers. Not a winning combo.
|
|
#
?
Jan 31, 2020 15:49
|
|
|
Solaris 2.0 posted:The practice of Red Lining began in California during WWII and its little wonder why the zoning fight is most hostile there. no, red lining is a federal policy set up by the new deal as part of the housing act of 1934 when the Federal Housing Administration was created along with the Home Owners Loan Corporation. they set new regulations around mortgage lending, creating the long term self amortizing mortgage (good) and also creating worthiness maps of areas where the residents were judged on the loan worthiness based on circular reasoning like "they have nice houses, they are moral people who are good stewards of money" (very, very bad). it is independent of any state law i did an effort post on how this works here Solaris 2.0 posted:Zoning of course is a complicated subject but we have to acknowledge why these zoning regulations were passed and are ruthlessly protected. no, zoning law was created in the progressive era of government reform - a time when explicit racial codes and segregation still existed, so there was no reason to use land use control to enforce racial oppression. like you could legally refuse sale of property to black people and that was still an ok thing to do, there was no need to play games with zoning once racial covenants were banned then it turns out that form based elements of land use control like lot size and setbacks were really handy for enforcing racial segregation, on the idea that economic exclusion is mostly the same as racial exclusion in an economic system where socioeconomic status is tied to race. but the key element here is local land use fragmentation, the incorporation of suburban towns to enact these laws for the purpose of SES/race exclusion relies on a lack of regional planning control and is not inherently a problem with the idea of zone based land use controls you and i agree on the use of zoning to enforce segregation. i think you've just got causality in the wrong order
|
|
#
?
Jan 31, 2020 15:50
|
|
|
Solaris 2.0 posted:Zoning of course is a complicated subject but we have to acknowledge why these zoning regulations were passed and are ruthlessly protected. Is there some term or way we can differentiate between the sort of lovely zoning the prevents density and reasonable mixed use stuff from the sort of zoning laws that prevent people from putting a chemical plant in a residential area? Houston is like this and it's a poo poo show when plants explode.
|
|
#
?
Jan 31, 2020 16:11
|
|
|
Solkanar512 posted:Is there some term or way we can differentiate between the sort of lovely zoning the prevents density and reasonable mixed use stuff from the sort of zoning laws that prevent people from putting a chemical plant in a residential area? Houston is like this and it's a poo poo show when plants explode. I mean zoning in of itself is fine and good. For example it would be lovely to zone low income housing next to a chemical plant (municipalities do this anyway!) I just don’t like legacy SF zoning laws and I don’t really have patience for people, left or right, who defend them. Also im not calling anyone out in this thread specifically I’m just venting. I’m involved in fighting for more housing, reforming zoning codes, and public housing in my supposedly blue county and its loving exhausting. Our DSA-backed county executive has done his best to ban housing, ANY housing being built because “develop = bad” and its dumb as hell. Meanwhile our home prices are increasing and younger generations are going to VA to live instead. As for the poor? They get hosed as always. Ugg.
|
|
#
?
Jan 31, 2020 16:28
|
|
|
Solaris 2.0 posted:Our DSA-backed county executive has done his best to ban housing, ANY housing being built because “develop = bad” and its dumb as hell. The Guardian posted:Tenant groups also say that building more market-rate housing without including stringent, enforceable tenant protections like rent control will put new generations of renters at risk. They fear that up-zoning areas could increase the land value, and prompt other landlords to increase their prices, too. Though I'm not even in the DSA anymore, I think it's truly difficult to find anyone from an urban DSA chapter that is against building housing. There is obviously a lack of housing in America's cities. I think a key sticking point is whether proposed reform centers people who already have precarious housing situations vs. the general welfare of the housing market--where the perceived and possibly real benefit is largely to people who sell, buy, and hold market-rate housing. There are huge problems with urban housing affordability across the developed world--even in places that have pretty good, developer-friendly regulations. Zoning reform is an important tool in many cases--particularly in the US--but I think it has an outsized role in the conversation sometimes. Insanite fucked around with this message at 18:11 on Jan 31, 2020 |
|
#
?
Jan 31, 2020 17:16
|
|
|
We can fight for both reasonable rent control / tenet protection laws, zoning reform, and building a lot more multifamily housing units but for some reason people think these stances are all mutually exclusive or one cannot happen without the other so then nothing ever gets done. At the end of the day, there is a lack of housing which in turns strengthens the power of landlords. Sure we should pass tenet protections, we absolutely should and DC just passed a good law as an example . But it doesn’t help those LOOKING for housing if we also don’t build a fuckton of units. Solaris 2.0 fucked around with this message at 17:23 on Jan 31, 2020 |
|
#
?
Jan 31, 2020 17:21
|
|
|
Insanite posted:https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/jan/31/california-housing-crisis-bill-failure-debate Yeah, I think this is the issue that often drives the wedge between groups that would otherwise be on the same side, and how the unholy alliance between leftists and homeowners comes into existence. The problem is that in a lot of markets, it's literally impossible to build new housing at a price that sensitive communities can afford without subsidy of some kind. This is what mandatory affordable percentages and development taxes that fund housing subsidies are trying to get at, although it's clearly not enough because we get "3000 people apply for 20 affordable units" headlines every year. In many states, these programs are the main source of funding for affordability efforts. There have been plenty of project cost breakdowns from for-profit and non-profit sources alike, so it's hardly a black box. Unfortunately The Discourse has been stuck for at least a decade on the idea that it's probably unknowable why new housing costs so much and it meshes with ideology a lot nicer if you just say "they could build housing at an affordable price, they're just choosing not to" and thus we get leftists teaming up with the modern landed gentry to ensure the status quo is maintained gonger fucked around with this message at 17:54 on Jan 31, 2020 |
|
#
?
Jan 31, 2020 17:51
|
|
|
luxury handset posted:upzoning is not going to create growth itself. if we can see that developers are champing to build denser but are being held back by restrictive zoning (not as common as you would think, it's relatively easy to get variances) then yeah upzoning will incite new development. Would you be willing to expound on this? Naively you’d think that upzoning would almost always create growth in booming areas. Why is this not always true? silence_kit fucked around with this message at 18:04 on Jan 31, 2020 |
|
#
?
Jan 31, 2020 17:59
|
|
|
Interesting development in DC, the most visible YIMBY organization joined the coalition to strengthen dc’s rent control laws https://twitter.com/ggwash/status/1222540931649490945?s=21
|
|
#
?
Jan 31, 2020 18:05
|
|
|
That DC thing seems like an attempt to do the right kind of centering, yeah.
|
|
#
?
Jan 31, 2020 18:12
|
|
|
silence_kit posted:Would you be willing to expound on this? Naively you’d think that upzoning would almost always create growth in booming areas. Why is this not always true? 1) zoning regulations are a limit on growth, not a driver of it. if there is not sufficient demand to cause developers to engage in the costly process of redevelopment, then it doesn't matter what the regulations are. regulations can hold growth back, but they cannot really push growth forward (in the context of making housing denser in an already populated area) 2) zoning regulations are not the only limit on growth. land use and transporation are basically the same thing in different manifestations. you are not going to get giant megablocks without sufficient transportation infrastructure to handle trips generated to and from those megablocks let's assume some old streetcar suburb of tightly packed single family houses in some midwestern midsized city. there is no nearby mass transit, the only available transportation modes are automobiles and ped-adjacent modes like bikes, scooters, walking, what have you. this district is upzoned, now you can build three story condos on formerly single family zoned lots. housing demand and local income is sufficient to generate redevelopment activity if new, denser housing comes in and there is no linked development of transportation, like a bus line - what happens to the streets? do they become more congested with vehicles? is there sufficient nearby parking to handle all these vehicles? if developers look at an area which they could legally redevelop, but the place is already slammed with traffic all of the time, what impact does that have on the pro forma calculations about how much they could profit from new development? it is easy for localities to rewrite zoning codes. it is much harder for them to get the resources necessary to expand transportation infrastructure. or expand public school capacity further, if an area is booming, this leads to an increase in home values - if the people who live in the desirable area have the ability to pay the increased cost of their rising property value, what incentive would they have to leave? gentrification works by pushing out poor residents and homeowners who can't afford the cost of rising rent/taxes, or find offers to sell too tempting to resist. middle class and wealthier homeowners don't get gentrified, by definition -- IF the conditions are right for new development and IF the only obstacle is overly restrictive zoning codes, then yeah, upzoning makes a lot of sense. just uncapping residential density and expecting density to happen is a bit too simcity, it assumes a deterministic relationship between zoning regulation and land use necessarily scraping against that limitation and this relationship, less often than not, doesn't really exist
|
|
#
?
Jan 31, 2020 18:20
|
|
|
luxury handset posted:1) zoning regulations are a limit on growth, not a driver of it. if there is not sufficient demand to cause developers to engage in the costly process of redevelopment, then it doesn't matter what the regulations are. regulations can hold growth back, but they cannot really push growth forward (in the context of making housing denser in an already populated area) Thank you. In a booming area though, the distinction you make in item 1) is a bit academic, isn’t it? I didn’t think about item 2), which basically could be summarized as: government services need to expand to handle higher population density. It makes sense to me why this often is a more important constraint on ‘densification’ than zoning laws. Thanks again for your post.
|
|
#
?
Jan 31, 2020 18:59
|
|
|
Solkanar512 posted:Is there some term or way we can differentiate between the sort of lovely zoning the prevents density and reasonable mixed use stuff from the sort of zoning laws that prevent people from putting a chemical plant in a residential area? Houston is like this and it's a poo poo show when plants explode. So what bothers me about some zoning around here in Boston is that it (soft) bans things that everyone is supposedly in favor of, things like triple-deckers. The point of regulation, IMHO, is to ban things that are harmful, whether it's a chemical plant right next to a kindergarden --- or that chemical plant dumping whatever it wants in the nearby river. Instead, those rules basically say that the expectation of the law is that you build something that would fit in a semi-rular suburb despite it being an urban area, so someone building something reasonable (like a 6-family home) has to go through committees (which is a vector for corruption) of tough negotiations, hordes of complaining affluent boomers that have too much free time (people working two jobs to feed their families don't have time for things like that!). Or you could build a McMansion that fits the rules and deal with way less hassle. Oh, and of course also lots and lots of parking spots, since that's what suburban life calls for, even if you're well in range of transit.
|
|
#
?
Jan 31, 2020 19:28
|
|
|
I think people ignore the "what if upzoning doesn't do anything?" arguments because they're mostly irrelevant to the question of whether it should be approved or denied. After all, if an area is upzoned but doesn't have the demand to justify building denser housing, nothing will happen. No good things will happen, but no bad things will happen, either. It's a net zero. If your questions are, "Will this change in policy lead to a net positive outcome for everyone collectively? Will it lead to a net positive outcome for various groups in particular, such as the poor?" The first simplifying assumption to be made is to ignore situations where the policy change has no effect. nrook fucked around with this message at 20:06 on Jan 31, 2020 |
|
#
?
Jan 31, 2020 19:39
|
|
|
Exactly. If an area isn't growing, then upzoning won't have a dramatic effect, sure. Of course, if it's not growing, then housing prices are probably reasonable anyway. Though I'm surprised how much leftists ignore the equity side of zoning, it's really just as important as price relief imo. For example, the reason the US can so often have such extreme inequalities in schools, especially within the same metro, is because schools get their pupils based on attendance boundaries, so if an area attached to a particular affluent school is nothing but single family homes on big lots, that makes it impossible for poor/working class families to attend. Whereas if townhomes/duplexes/fourplexes/etc are allowed, or especially the dreaded apartments, the rich can't really keep poorer people from attending anymore; some will definitely choose to move to a better school area even if it means living in a smaller home. Like, this seems pretty obviously to me a big factor in why Germany doesn't seem to have nearly as drastic school inequality, especially within a city/metro. I'm living in an area of Munich, Solln, that's been described as particularly desirable and peaceful, in the US that would instantly make me think "oh they mean it's rich and consists of basically only single family homes". But there appears to be only a handful of single family homes around here, and if you look at a transit/rent map, the rent isn't anything unusual either. In fact, just in general I find it really hard to tell if neighborhoods here in Munich are rich or poor or not, almost all just seem sort of vaguely middling, whereas in the US I almost always noticed even without paying attention at all.
|
|
#
?
Jan 31, 2020 19:51
|
|
|
nrook posted:I think people ignore the "what if upzoning doesn't do anything?" arguments because they're mostly irrelevant to the question of whether it should be approved or denied. After all, if an area is upzoned but doesn't have the demand to justify building denser housing, nothing will happen. No good things will happen, but no bad things will happen, either. It's a net zero. there are some cases where upzoning could lead to harm but yeah, mostly harmless overall my contention with upzoning is there's this assumption that there are many places where housing could be denser but is limited through land use regulation. these places exist, and are often highly visible (san francisco) but it's a bit cart-horse to assume that because land use regulation exists, in areas which could be denser, then those regulations are the reason those areas aren't denser which is not as often true as people seem to think
|
|
#
?
Jan 31, 2020 21:08
|
|
|
Is there anywhere that does minimums on units, like you see for parking? Like in this zoning category you must build one unit per acre or something like that.
|
|
#
?
Jan 31, 2020 21:52
|
|
|
Badger of Basra posted:Is there anywhere that does minimums on units, like you see for parking? Like in this zoning category you must build one unit per acre or something like that. It’s very common in suburbs and typically structures in the form of minimum lot sizes and mandatory setbacks from the property line. It’s a sneaky way of saying “you don’t get to live here unless you can afford to buy this much land”
|
|
#
?
Jan 31, 2020 22:18
|
|
|
gonger posted:It’s very common in suburbs and typically structures in the form of minimum lot sizes and mandatory setbacks from the property line. It’s a sneaky way of saying “you don’t get to live here unless you can afford to buy this much land” that's more of a maximum land consumption per unit, badger is asking about if there's such a thing as mandating the minimum number of units per structure i can't think of any, generally no because denser uses are inclusive of less dense uses. so something zoned multifamily could be divided up and sold as single family lots possibly unless there's some other restriction around that, but if you have a parcel where the highest/best use is five stories of 3/2 condos and you build something like townhouses you'd be passing up on potential rent capture. and you could build an 'apartment' building that's just two giant apartments or something but why would you do that even if it's legal? what you see more often are minimum sq/ft per unit so that you can't build a building that's just penthouses and tiny studios, or lot area per unit restrictions, which would then interact with any form or FAR regulations to produce a defacto number of maximum units - but no real restriction on the "there is one apartment in this apartment building" scenario (which is dumb as hell and would probably get shot down by the permit office)
|
|
#
?
Jan 31, 2020 22:30
|
|
|
luxury handset posted:my contention with upzoning is there's this assumption that there are many places where housing could be denser but is limited through land use regulation. these places exist, and are often highly visible (san francisco) but it's a bit cart-horse to assume that because land use regulation exists, in areas which could be denser, then those regulations are the reason those areas aren't denser which is not as often true as people seem to think I mean yeah you're not gonna get big apartment towers everywhere obviously, but if you look at countries like Germany or Japan, even in little towns/suburbs you see a lot of multi-family housing all over the place, whereas in the US not so much. I've seen little Bavarian towns that are more dense and walkable than US cities 20x their size. Most households don't need the full SFH + two big yards treatment at all, if you loosen zoning I think you'll get lots of townhomes and fourplexes and the like for people who want more space than a basic apartment, but not that much more. Cicero fucked around with this message at 00:13 on Feb 1, 2020 |
|
#
?
Feb 1, 2020 00:11
|
|
|
75% of LA is SFZ. Most US cities are something similar. There's a lot of land that it's illegal to build apartments in. If it was all zoned differently not all of it would densify but a lot probably would.
|
|
#
?
Feb 1, 2020 00:13
|
|
|
A timely story related to the housing affordability & income inequality crises: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-01-31/the-u-s-housing-crisis-is-making-its-way-to-the-heartland quote:The U.S. Housing Crisis Is Making Its Way to the Heartland
|
|
#
?
Feb 1, 2020 15:28
|
|
|
Solaris 2.0 posted:
Redlining started probably a decade before world war 2. Literally, derived from New Deal policies that marked communities not worth investing in as red. Mostly because there was a black person or peoples living there. And then the banks got a hold of the maps and it all went to poo poo. Post World War 2 there was a whole mix of issues started with the Interstate Highway System which opened up suburbs that had been hard to access before plus the new deal investment added with white flight.
|
|
#
?
Feb 1, 2020 15:38
|
|
|
silence_kit posted:I didn’t think about item 2), which basically could be summarized as: government services need to expand to handle higher population density. It makes sense to me why this often is a more important constraint on ‘densification’ than zoning laws. Thanks again for your post. One of the strange conversations about housing is eliminating parking minimums. This can only be proposed by people who live in areas where street parking is plentiful, or more cynically, won't have to deal with it and don't care. I've lived most of my adult life in areas where street parking is somewhere between hard and impossible to find. In the place where there was relatively plentiful public transport, I didn't own a car. In the places where there was no public transport and I was a poor graduate student, I spent my time shuttling my car around to deal with parking regulations. In places where there was no public transport and I'm no longer poor, I just check the "must have a parking spot" box on apartment search engines. Because of that experience, it seems like reducing parking requirements isn't really going to do much, unless you spend a lot of money on making alternative transport work or just want to punish poor people with parking regulations. When I think about what I'd need to select a place without parking (which means no car) I can think of the following from my time in Italy: (1) a local selection of grocery stores and restaurants within 2 miles that I can walk to; (2) a more-or-less direct transport line to work with a total door-to-door time of less than 45 minutes (no changes, they always double or triple transit time); (3) less direct, but sub-1-hour transport to other places I want to go (think, downtown, the beach) that runs pretty much around the the clock. There are a lot of places where I can get 1, but 2 and 3 only exist in relatively large quantities in New York and Chicago, maybe?
|
|
#
?
Feb 1, 2020 16:42
|
|
|
You're describing a chicken-and-egg situation. Parking minimums are part of why alternative modes of transport are terrible. They're one of the major headwinds that make workable walking/biking/transit difficult. And it's common for parking minimums to be hilariously high, too, like literally "more space required for parking than the actual inhabited structure" kind of high. Car parking minimums, in the large, shouldn't exist. They heavily favor an environmentally destructive and expensive mode of transport for no good reason. Of course, if people/developers/whoever want to include parking for some building, that's absolutely fine, but the government shouldn't be literally forcing them to, that's nonsense. If they have to exist, having the parking be underground at least would be preferable, then it doesn't get in the way as much of other modes. And realistically you probably need to steadily reduce parking minimums rather than go for "huge parking minimums" to "zero parking minimums" overnight.
|
|
#
?
Feb 1, 2020 16:50
|
|
|
the problem with parking minimums, aside from the fact that they are completely made up (http://shoup.bol.ucla.edu/Trouble.pdf) is that they perpetuate sprawl. hard to find street parking in dense areas isn't really linked with parking minimums, that's just a different headache of not enough space in extant urban morphology for cars. you can sneak parking garages into buildings and underground and stuff, and of course the relative modal share of cars is lessened in dense areas anyway as you say it's when you leave dense areas that you end up with parking minimums doing strip malls and parking moats around standalone retail
|
|
#
?
Feb 1, 2020 17:00
|
|
|
This article has good visual depictions of how parking minimums significantly raise the overall price of multifamily housing: https://www.sightline.org/2013/08/22/apartment-blockers/ If you put parking on the first floor of a 5 story building, you just lost 20% of your rentable space. If it’s a surface lot, you reduce the size of the building so that everything fits on the lot you could’ve otherwise filled. If it’s underground, digging and reinforcing is very expensive, and you still have to give up space for the ramp. If you still can’t meet the minimums and your project can’t pencil out, you could go upmarket and make each unit larger, reducing the number of units and raising prices per unit to make up for it, so that you don’t have to provide so many parking spaces. gonger fucked around with this message at 17:31 on Feb 1, 2020 |
|
#
?
Feb 1, 2020 17:27
|
|
|
luxury handset posted:the problem with parking minimums, aside from the fact that they are completely made up (http://shoup.bol.ucla.edu/Trouble.pdf) is that they perpetuate sprawl. hard to find street parking in dense areas isn't really linked with parking minimums, that's just a different headache of not enough space in extant urban morphology for cars. you can sneak parking garages into buildings and underground and stuff, and of course the relative modal share of cars is lessened in dense areas anyway as you say That's a good read. I lived in a suburban apartment complex for a bit before I bought a house and they had spaces underground and we just parked outside cause we didn't want to pay the extra cash but the point stands, they add cars when they shouldn't and add cost.
|
|
#
?
Feb 1, 2020 18:02
|
|
|
On parking minimums: bad, abolish them immediately. Now that I've said that, such that there should be no confusion about my position on parking minimums, I think we are talking past each other. I think abolishing parking minimums isn't going to do very much to help with the housing shortage or the cost of housing because I don't see why any developer would build any new housing without parking in the places where parking is already jam packed. Yes, it costs less to build such a building, but it is also worth less to the people looking for housing and will attract only those people who are so cost constrained that the premium for parking is impossible to pay for. In places where parking is jam packed, it is because there aren't any sufficiently good alternatives to driving and dealing with the car. Maybe its different in the suburbs, I don't know, I haven't lived in one for nearly 20 years. So, when I see people discussing parking minimums without also discussing how much they are going to spend on public transport to make it useful to the residents I see "poor(er) people should have to deal with that poo poo, I don't care." As an example of this, I literally said failure to provide public transport to poorer residents is punishing them by making them look for parking and luxury handset responded with a paper that advocated charging people for street parking. I guess that is a more obvious kind of punishment. Cicero posted:You're describing a chicken-and-egg situation. Parking minimums are part of why alternative modes of transport are terrible. They're one of the major headwinds that make workable walking/biking/transit difficult. And it's common for parking minimums to be hilariously high, too, like literally "more space required for parking than the actual inhabited structure" kind of high. I don't think this is true at all. As long as there is no alternative to driving, people will own cars and find a place to put them. Your point here is a kind of accelerationism where if we just start making car driving miserable, then public transport will all of a sudden get funded. But driving is already miserable if you can't afford to live close to work. It is already miserable when you get home from 9 hours at work and 30-45 minutes each way in traffic and have to hunt for a place to leave your car for the night. But richer (or older) people don't deal with that poo poo, they buy houses close to work with plenty of parking on site and don't even think about. The public transport must come, it must be frequent, it must cast a wide net, and it must go useful places. Without this, you are just saying the poor(er) should suffer. Edit: Yeah, everyone else seems to be assuming that parking is otherwise abundant. Not just the poster above me, but the article on housing prices, too: quote:But you doubt you can rent the slots for $250 a month, because parking is abundant in the neighborhood. So, yeah, I agree that eliminating parking minimums will probably bring down prices with few other consequences in places where you can just do whatever with your car. MickeyFinn fucked around with this message at 20:51 on Feb 1, 2020 |
|
#
?
Feb 1, 2020 20:29
|
|
|
MickeyFinn posted:On parking minimums: bad, abolish them immediately. it's worth pointing out that the housing crisis in places like California is so bad, and so many people looking for housing are so cost constrained, that in the present environment they literally have no options. In this context any changes that bring down housing costs are likely to benefit them, since cost is a major barrier to housing for so many. Also its worth pointing out that the poorest people who are most likely to be cost constrained are also those who are least likely to have a car, and therefore least likely to be impacted by reduced parking availability. Also, while you're obviously right about funding public transit, I think you are underestimating the significance of other travel modes which are severely negatively impacted by parking. I'm talking about walking and biking. Replacing urban area devoted to parking with more useful buildings improves these transport modes a lot even without increased spending on their infrastructure. Of course once again it's worth restating that everywhere has its own problems, and there aren't one size fits all solutions. Obviously every modern city needs to accommodate cars, there's no escaping them. The important thing is that we all agree that we should prioritize developing alternatives.
|
|
#
?
Feb 1, 2020 21:48
|
|
|
Squalid posted:it's worth pointing out that the housing crisis in places like California is so bad, and so many people looking for housing are so cost constrained, that in the present environment they literally have no options. In this context any changes that bring down housing costs are likely to benefit them, since cost is a major barrier to housing for so many. Also its worth pointing out that the poorest people who are most likely to be cost constrained are also those who are least likely to have a car, and therefore least likely to be impacted by reduced parking availability. Have you got a source for this? It might be true that the majority of poor people in NYC don't have cars. I don't believe that for a second about anywhere in California. If poor people have cars then abolishing parking requirements might make housing cheaper but housing + parking costs would be unchanged.
|
|
#
?
Feb 1, 2020 22:01
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 20, 2024 17:50 |
|
|
Squalid posted:it's worth pointing out that the housing crisis in places like California is so bad, and so many people looking for housing are so cost constrained, that in the present environment they literally have no options. In this context any changes that bring down housing costs are likely to benefit them, since cost is a major barrier to housing for so many. Also its worth pointing out that the poorest people who are most likely to be cost constrained are also those who are least likely to have a car, and therefore least likely to be impacted by reduced parking availability. That gives me a different way of thinking about my point. The changes we have to make are so drastic, both in terms of changing people’s habits and reducing the cost of housing, that when people bring up parking minimums I respond with OK, but who cares? When I was looking for a new apartment a few months ago, the new 1 bedrooms with a parking spot were about $3500/month. In order for the average couple in LA to not be rent burdened we need something like $1400/month. We need prices to drop by 60% before the median couple can afford it. The savings of 12.5% for eliminating the parking spot is literally 1/5 of the way there and only works that well if the developers will pass on 100% of the savings to renters.
|
|
#
?
Feb 1, 2020 22:18
|
|