Yule Heibel's Library tagged density →  View Popular, Search in Google

Yes, much more productive to see both cities and small towns through an economic lens, and to encourage resilience in place and civic engagement.
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“To me, it seemed a little preachy,” he says. “These people who lived in urban areas would come out and tell me how to live, tell me that you shouldn’t enjoy living where you do, you shouldn’t like your job, you shouldn’t feel good about the lifestyle that you’re living because it’s bad, and what we’re doing is good. What you’re doing is dumb and what we’re doing is smart. What you’re doing is sprawl, and what we’re doing is smart growth.”

(It’s interesting here to pause and ponder if “sprawl” is one of those words that naturally sounds odious – like “phlegm” or “yuck” – or if it has just taken on that connotation as a result of so much sneering).

Marohn says he has realized over the past decade that he and the New Urbanists are actually often talking about the same thing. The urban experience and the small-town experience have more in common than people think. And they’ve both been distorted by the suburban experiment. The picture looks different. In cities, it looks like an army of surface parking lots has devoured our downtowns. Small towns have also been hallowed out at the core and nipped at their edges by encroaching subdivisions.

But the effect is the same, Marohn says: an erosion of civic space, which has led to an erosion of the financial viability of communities. And this is the language he uses to talk about planning – the language of economics, of debt and prosperity and gas prices.
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This quote/observation is just crazy. My observations of Portland drivers are that they are overwhelmingly deferential to bicyclists, and to call Williams "too dangerous" for cyclists strikes me as just plain weird. (Full disclosure: I'm currently living in an apartment that overlooks this bike corridor.) It makes me wonder what people actually want. I've noticed that many people here (including younger ones) really fear density (Portland overall is very low density, population-wise), and resist changes that would densify the city. They like the suburban-y feel of these eastside neighborhoods, but want all the goodies that gentrification also would bring. Meanwhile, the racial question in Portland is IMNSHO huge. Every time I'm out and just chat casually with strangers who happen to be African-American, I get the impression they think it's weird that a white person (female) is talking to them. Why would that be the case, if not for the fact that is *is* unusual? Neighborhood sports games (at Unthank Park, of all places) are observably segregated, as I've seen: white adults playing some version of softball, while black kids hang out dribbling a basketball in a separate play lot a few yards away. So much bs. For example, this:
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"I'm not selling my property, so I don't give a shit," says Goldsmith. But while the city help for new businesses has been great, in the hubbub of bikes, cars, and buses, Goldsmith no longer feels safe biking down its main business street. "I love living here, I love being here... but I don't bike with my kids on Williams anymore—it's too dangerous."
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portland race bicycles cities density gentrification

Ed Glaeser and Michael Mehaffy debating over high-density living.
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“Building up is an option to avoid building out,” Glaeser says.
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Not everyone agrees. Architect and urban designer Michael Mehaffy says encouraging high-density living doesn't always improve a society's quality of life.
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It had to happen, of course...
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So it is with particular angst that many of these same planners [who learned from Jane Jacobs that they need to listen to the people] now are forced to reckon with the modern-day Jane Jacobs, at least in terms of tactics and a libertarian streak: the Tea Party.

Across the country, Tea Party activists have been storming planning meetings of all kinds, opposing various plans by local and regional government having anything to do with density, smart growth, sustainability or urbanism.
(...)
What’s driving the rebellion is a view that government should have no role in planning or shaping the built environment that in any way interferes with private property rights.
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jjacobs tea_party grassroots planning density smartgrowth atlantic_cities

Jane Jacobs wrote about this decades ago, but it still applies:
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This insurance function is important. It reduces the risks associated with specialization and therefore encourages more of it. By allowing workers to focus on tasks at which they’re relatively better than others, specialization helps drive economic growth. It’s also an engine of innovation. As workers focus on a specific task, they may well find better ways to do it. They might better schedule their days or invent something entirely new — software code written to expedite repeated tasks, or a machine that automates portions of a task. Of course, existing companies can be resistant to innovation. Dense cities, by acting as a source of insurance, enable workers with good ideas to take risks and start new businesses. If these workers fail, they have a good chance of finding employment elsewhere in the city. And if they succeed, the task of staffing the company is made easier by the existing pool of talent, and odds are good that customers and suppliers are close to hand, as well. Big cities provide a climate in which innovation can flourish, and in which innovators have the resources they need to exploit new ideas.
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It seems like there's a lot to revise / recheck in this study. One thing it does perhaps prove is that amenities in cities/urban environments are absolutely crucial. Meanwhile, note this caveat, from the article:
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While the work doesn’t prove that living in the city causes the changes in the brain, it could be used to help improve life for city dwellers.
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--> i.e., bring on the amenities.

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Who knew? Boston ranks 3rd nation-wide in "diversity density."
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First, is there a wide range of ethnic and racial groups in your city — as opposed to a binary division between white and black, or native and immigrant? And second, is your city’s density high enough so that you really encounter people from different ethnic backgrounds on sidewalks and other shared space, as opposed to simply driving past their neighborhoods on your way to the mall?

The diversity density index measures both at once. And if you use data from the most recent census, you see something surprising: Boston is the third-most diverse city in America, outside of New York and San Francisco.

Diversity density counts the number of people per square mile who do not claim membership in either of the county’s two largest racial/ethnic groups. The result gives you a rough approximation of the likelihood of running into people of a variety of different ethnic backgrounds during a brisk walk across town.

Suffolk County, most of whose residents are in Boston, has 12,338 people per square mile, making it the seventh-most crowded county in the United States. Take away its two largest ethnic groups (non-Hispanic whites and Hispanics), and there remain 3,957 people in other categories per square mile — the sixth highest concentration of all US counties and county equivalents. (Of the five leaders, four are boroughs in New York City.)
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Part 4 of a 5-part series; excellent reading:
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What makes for an economically great place? I asked Bruce Katz, head of Brookings' excellent Metropolitan Policy Program, and he emphasized that smart growth alone is not enough. "What you want is great places that are built on great economic bases," he said. "The two really need to go together. What I argue for is economy-shaping, talent-preparing, and placemaking, all together."

So smart density cannot yield economic flourishing all on its own; cities need to focus on their tradeable sectors, research institutions, and worker training programs. Nonetheless, smart density lays the groundwork for agglomeration economies to emerge and can accelerate and strengthen them when they do. So how can places do density right, to encourage great (economic) places to take root and grow?
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More on David Owen's 3/17 talk in Vancouver, organized by former Mayor of Vancouver, Sam Sullivan:
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Owen's speaking engagement in Vancouver is being organized by the Global Civic Policy Society of ex-mayor Sam Sullivan.

Sullivan, a former politician who takes pride in taking on hard issues, pushed the City of Vancouver during his term to adopt EcoDensity, his brainchild concept that seeks to build a greener city through greater population densities.

Now an adjunct professor at the UBC school of architecture and landscape architecture, a position he took on starting in January this year, Sullivan reflected on how he changed the way many Vancouverites view density.

"I noticed that when people would come to public hearings after the EcoDensity initiative started, it was very rare to hear…[them] say density is bad," Sullivan said with an amused laugh in a phone interview with the Straight. "What they would say is: 'I'm not against density, but not here.'"

According to Sullivan, Owen will also help him launch what he called the Centre for Market Urbanism. "The idea is that government has a lot of responsibility for creating sprawl," Sullivan said. "There's a great demand by the market for increased density. And because government is constantly saying 'no' to density, we now have the sprawl we have across the region."
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Victoria could learn from this.

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Former Vancouver Mayor Sam Sullivan on the creation of a Centre for Market Urbanism in Vancouver.
From the article:
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It's the rules and the way city governments impose them, not the taxes and the fees, that pushes housing costs so high in Vancouver, says Sam Sullivan, the former mayor and councillor who's launching a new Centre for Market Urbanism.

"We're constantly saying no to density," he told me this week as he launched the privately funded initiative to explore solutions to urban problems. "We have height limits. We have this dome skyline policy. We have suburban view corridors criss-crossing the city. We have urban view corridors, hundreds of them, in the downtown. ...

"These things have constrained development in the city very much."
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Ed Glaeser on development limits. (This fits in with the recent spate of interest in Vancouver around Market Urbanism, too.)
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The relationship between housing supply and affordability isn't just a matter of economic theory. A great deal of evidence links the supply of space with the cost of real estate. Simply put, the places that are expensive don't build a lot, and the places that build a lot aren't expensive. Perhaps a new 40-story building won't itself house any quirky, less profitable firms, but by providing new space, the building will ease pressure on the rest of the city. Price increases in gentrifying older areas will be muted because of new construction. Growth, not height restrictions and a fixed building stock, keeps space affordable and ensures that poorer people and less profitable firms can stay and help a thriving city remain successful and diverse. Height restrictions do increase light, and preservation does protect history, but we shouldn't pretend that these benefits come without a cost.
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This sentence, "Simply put, the places that are expensive don't build a lot, and the places that build a lot aren't expensive," applies very well to greenspace-eating suburban sprawl, too. It's cheap to build single-family homes for Victoria families on Langford's Bear Mountain or in the Cowichan Valley, but our city politicians (and NIMBY community organizations) continue to ensure that it's prohibitive (if not impossible) to develop (tall) buildings right downtown, where we have ridiculous height restrictions to go with a moribund economy and scores of empty storefronts. Further down in the article, Glaeser also notes: "One could quite plausibly argue that if members of the landmarks commission have decided that a building can be razed, then they should demand that its replacement be as tall as possible." This makes sense, and again, we don't do it (here), insisting that razed, empty parking lots in heritage-designated districts can only be built up according to severe height and density restrict

edward_glaeser skyscrapers urban_development urbanplanning density development market_urbanism

Another Lincoln Institute publication, abstracted on this webpage. Interesting comment re. differences between infill policies in cities with little population growth (where I live, for example) vs. infill in cities with rapid population growth:
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Policies aimed at reducing fragmentation should be clearly distinguished from policies aimed at increasing the density of built-up areas. Encouraging infill in cities with little population growth is qualitatively different from encouraging infill in cities with rapidly growing populations. In the former, it can form the backbone of an effective ‘smart growth’ policy. In the latter, it is overshadowed by the urgent need to prepare vast areas for projected outward expansion.
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New publication from the Lincoln Institute, downloadable as PDF. Abstract on this webpage; excerpt:
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The key findings show that on average, densities in developing countries are double those in Europe and Japan, and densities in Europe and Japan are double those of the United States, Canada, and Australia; and that on average, the annual growth rate of urban land cover was twice that of the urban population between 1990 and 2000. Most of the cities studied expanded their built-up area more than 16-fold in the twentieth century. At present rates of density decline, the world’s urban population is expected to double in 43 years, while urban land cover will double in only 19 years. The urban population of the developing countries is expected to double between 2000 and 2030 while the built-up area of their cities can be expected to triple.

The research suggests that preparation for the sustainable growth of cities in rapidly urbanizing countries should be grounded in four key components: the realistic projections of urban land needs; generous metropolitan limits; selective protection of open space; and an arterial grid of roads spaced one kilometer apart that can support transit.
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Density & livability doesn't have a singular form. Think choices instead:
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Livability is about choices, and if you want to pay four to five dollars a gallon to drive ten miles, you should have that right. But you should also have the right to avoid paying four dollars for a gallon of gas when you go buy half a gallon of milk. More to the point, if your monthly fuel costs cause you to not be able to pay your mortgage, as so many hard working Americans discovered in 2008, it becomes a problem to have no other options.

(...)

The anti-livability gurus decry the administration’s approach as top-down. But has any community — rural, suburban or urban — ever seen a more top-down approach than the way state DOTs built the interstate highway system and continued to add more and more freeways? I should know; I served at the New Jersey Department of Transportation from 1973 to 2007. I watched community after community, property owner after property owner, feel powerless and helpless over how we conducted our business.
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I have some questions about the source of this report/ research, which claims that density (including examples such as Vancouver's eco-density) "would yield insignificant CO2 reductions."
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Even if 75 percent of all new and replacement housing in America were built at twice the density of current new developments, and those living in the newly constructed housing drove 25 percent less as a result, CO2 emissions from personal travel would decline nationwide by only 8 to 11 percent by 2050, according to the study. If just 25 percent of housing units were developed at such densities and residents drove only 12 percent less as a result, CO2 emissions would be reduced by less than 2 percent by 2050.
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I guess the problem is with defining real density as a mere "twice the density of current new developments": if you consider that new developments include suburban greenfield spreads on 1/4 to 1/2 acre for each SFH, then doubling that density really doesn't amount to much.

Further down, the report just makes the case for building more fuel-efficient cars - so maybe that's where the report's agenda originates.

mit_techreview sprawl urbanplanning phil_mckenna density national_academy_of_sciences

Article reports on research (noted & bookmarked earlier: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2009-06/ucl-hpd060109.php) arguing the benefits of density (in early urban settings), which accelerated intellectual and cultural development.

urbanization urban_development urban_energy cities population density

Report on a new study by University College London that high population densities enable cultural & technical innovation. This directly results in modern human behavior, by which the authors mean "a radical jump in technological and cultural complexity," including "symbolic behavior" (abstract & realistic art, body decoration, etc.; music, and other technical innovations). The study aims to explain why advanced behavior and technology only begin to "explode" around 45,000 years ago - even though humans had been around for 160,000 to 200,000 years.

"Ironically, our finding that successful innovation depends less on how smart you are than how connected you are seems as relevant today as it was 90,000 years ago."

urbanization urban_development urban_energy cities population density

Left a comment on this entry by Richard Florida. His post was actually about design, and how it could change under economic pressure. But then someone left a comment about how bad urban 'density' is and that it benefits only developers and tax-hungry governments. Well, I couldn't let nonsense like that stand, so I posted a comment in defense of urban density. File it under "really, some people...!"

urbanism density comments design

A 9/10/08 pointer to a 44-pg PDF, "The economic impact of high density development and tall buildings in central business districts: British Property Federation." From the description:
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There is increasing recognition of the need to increase the density of commercial development, especially in the centres of our towns and cities. The sustainability benefits of high density are relatively well known. For example, less urban sprawl means less need to use greenfield sites, more use of public transport and, with mixed use developments, a reduced need to travel.

However, there is also an economic case for increased commercial density, as specified in Policy Planning Statement (PPS) 6 and the State of the English Cities. In current debates about increasing commercial density in London – including through tall buildings – this economic element has been little mentioned, and is perhaps little understood.

This research has sought to explain and estimate the economic costs and benefits of high density commercial development in central business districts. The aim is to provide a more rounded picture of the economic impact of high density development and to strengthen the assessment of such development.
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Excellent blog post by Donald Elliott on why and how (un)affordability is systemic, and what (little) steps municipalities can take to mitigate the problem.
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What can local government do? It cannot solve the macro-economic problem, but it can remove barriers that drive housing prices even higher than they need to be. Minimum lot size and minimum house size requirements are two of the main culprits. Artificially low multi-family densities are another, and narrow definitions of allowable housing types are a third.
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