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

Article about popularise.com - sounds intriguing:
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“We found a lot of the answers people were putting out were not directly answering our question, which is what do you want here?” Miller says. “It was ‘what do I want in my neighborhood?’”

But this isn’t a bad result. If anything, the flood of random ideas reflects the fact that no one has been asking these people what they want at all. It’s like they’ve just been waiting to plead for a fitness center, and these are the first folks to come along remotely broaching the topic.

Miller says one of the Popularise front-runners – a local bar manager who wants to open his own spot – was even offered a property two blocks down the street and $150,000 in build-out capital by another developer in the neighborhood, thanks to the display of enthusiasm on the site.

“When we saw that it was like, ‘OK, this is not a zero-sum game on our property,” Miller says. “We should rethink of it as what do people want in their neighborhood?”
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atlantic_cities real_estate urban_development

Chad and Courtney Ludeman build LEED Platinum homes for ~$300K sales price. This is great, but consider building 3-BDR units so that people don't move out when they're expecting a second child?
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2012 holds much promise for Postgreen Homes. Despite suboptimal economic conditions, the company plans to construct 16 row houses, two condos and a retail space in a completely new area: South Philadelphia. Plus, Postgreen will try its hand at its first rental project and a six-unit co-housing building.
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ludeman philadelphia leed green_buildings urban_development infill

@MarketUrbanism makes the case for a variant of trickle-down benefits of market forces.
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When Ryan Avent’s ebook The Gated City came out, I summed up his thesis as being that if you allow more growth in Silicon Valley, you get more tech companies and tech wages. The same principle is worth a try around Union Square and Dumbo. They’re both urban neighborhoods, but are relatively squat compared to other commercial neighborhoods in the city. They may not be completely “zoned out” for new development, but the amount of developable space is a small fraction of what’s already built, and it’s certainly not enough to keep prices from rising faster than the rate of inflation. In Dumbo, for example, new buildings are barely allowed to rise above the height of a elevator-less walk-up, when they’re allowed at all. In Union Square, the hottest new building isn’t even new, but rather an expensive rehab of an old structure with barely any new square footage. Entrepreneurs, especially in lucrative industries like technology, are willing to shell out more money to be in a talent hub like New York or Silicon Valley, but their ability to pay is not limitless.
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forbes stephen_smith marketurbanism cities nyc urban_development

There's a city on an island in BC that could use this proposal...
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A city proposal before the Office de consultation publique de Montréal would modify Montreal’s urban master plan to allow the possibility of greater building height and density in certain sectors of downtown. It is designed as an incentive for owners of vacant properties or outdoor parking lots to bite the bullet and develop their properties, through offering them the possibility of erecting a taller building.

Exterior parking lots are holes in the urban tissue that disfigure the downtown core of a city. All efforts must be deployed to encourage property owners to redevelop these outdoor spaces and at least bring the parking indoors.
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montreal surface_parking_lots urban_development

Fascinating imagery. I can't help but hope that the ability to see / map / visualize what we're doing will help inform better choices.
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Las Vegas's built environment is full of absurdities. The city's development patterns showcase a tension between the natural (desert) and the built (the planned communities that litter the landscape).

They also serve as visual symbols of America's 2008 housing bubble. Anticipating rapid growth, developments fail to connect to each other, confidently (or, perhaps thoughtlessly) leaving the future to fill the spaces between.

Below is a collection of satellite imagery via Google Maps that showcase some of these bizarre building patterns.
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atlantic_cities las_vegas google_earth sprawl suburban_style landscape urban_development

Interesting discussion of streetcars' ability to cement a sense of place (which buses can't do):
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... the old New Orleans streetcar is inextricably linked to the city it navigates. This sense of permanency is a big reason for the St. Charles streetcar's success. It's also something buses lack: because they can go anywhere, they belong nowhere.
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streetcars transit urban_development

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Strengthening property rights, however, would more closely align private costs and private benefits. A group of NIMBY neighbors forced to buy a property in order to limit development on it would only make the purchase if they felt very strongly about doing so and, in particular, if they felt the benefits to them of blocking the development were worth the cost of the land in question.

But wait, you might argue: what if the potential developer stands to make billions by building on a particularly lucrative piece of land? How then could neighbors hope to buy the land to keep it un- or underdeveloped? It would obviously be much more difficult for NIMBY groups to halt development in such cases, but generally speaking, that’s a good thing. When land values are very high because development potential is very high, that suggests that demand is very high. And in such cases, the cost of blocking that high demand is also quite high. It is in precisely these cases that the economy is most harmed by NIMBYs who face low costs in restricting development.
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atlantic_cities cities urban_development ryan_avent nimbyism housing

Great article by Nicholas Kevlahan, comparing Vancouver and Hamilton (Ontario). In the conclusion:
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...the most important lessons from the Vancouver Model are generally applicable:
1. Residents have the power to decide what sort of city they want to live in. Vancouver residents deliberately rejected an urban freeway-based proposal, and eventually developed a dense, mixed-use pedestrian-based alternative. (...)
2. Effective city planning requires deciding on a strategic vision and sticking to it. Vancouver has followed the same basic urban planning strategy for 40 years now, regardless of changes in council and city administrators. This consistency allows the city to learn gradually how to do things right, and lowers the risk to developers. However, it needs all city staff (and council) to work together. (...)
3. Sustainability and livability are achieved in dense, mixed use, pedestrian-oriented development. Vancouver is consistently rated one of the most attractive and liveable cities in the world because it has focused on these qualities. Density makes cities more financially sustainable because it costs much less to provide services for a given number of people in a dense neighbourhood. (...)
4. Planners must be insulated from council and flexible in achieving strategic goals. Vancouver's planners operate largely free of direct council (and OMB!) interference, and have the power to mandate mixed use and particular built forms. Planning is prescriptive and interventionist. (...)
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nicholas_kevlahan vancouver hamilton_on urbanism cities urbanplanning urban_development

Lots of good sense in this article. I can think of a few NIMBYs who'd benefit from its insights...
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When it comes to land use, local city councils can’t suspend the laws of economics any more than they can suspend the laws of physics. ...opponents of density have acted as if the Seattle City Council might suddenly lose its mind and increase zoning from the square's current squat 40-foot buildings to mile-high sky scrapers. Local land use politics being what they are, that’s not going to happen. But even if it did, the developers would only build what they thought they could sell. (...)
But what the Seattle City Council can do is allow developers to act in the interest of profit. Private profit isn’t a bad thing, but our process often behaves as if it is. Listening to local elected officials talk with derision about “private property interests” ruining our city would be laughable if it wasn’t such a serious and almost deliberate misreading of basic economics. When private interests are profitable, jobs are created. That’s equally true for small companies stamping out widgets or developers who create housing. When developers create successful and profitable projects, people are put to work, new tax revenue is generated, and our plans to sustainably support growth can succeed.
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crosscut roger_valdez seattle zoning land_use urban_development

Self-explanatory title. Interesting posts.

market_urbanism urban_development

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.

david_owen sam_sullivan density sprawl urban_development vancouver market_urbanism

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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vancouver market_urbanism urban_development density sam_sullivan centre_for_market_urbanism

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

"Cisco Whitepapers" : ~16 papers on urban innovation, sustainability, mobility, transportation, work centers, urban energy, infrastructure, digital swarming, gov2.0, social networks, real estate.

reference urban_development cisco whitepapers urbanism

Very worth reading, on "The Cities We Want," by Witold Rybczynski
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All the cities that have experienced vigorous population growth during the second half of the 20th century—Houston; Phoenix, Ariz.; Dallas; San Jose, Calif.; Atlanta, Ga.—have grown by spreading out. These are horizontal cities, with generally low population densities, typically fewer than 10 people per acre compared with 15 to 20 people per acre in the older, vertical cities. Horizontal cities depend on automobiles for mass transportation and on trucks for the movement of goods. In a horizontal city, the difference between city and suburb is indistinct. People in both live chiefly in individual houses rather than in flats or apartment buildings, and the houses are organized in dispersed, semi-autonomous planned communities that are different from the urban neighborhoods of the past. Versions of the dispersed city can be found in large cities such as Los Angeles, small cities such as Las Vegas, and in the metropolitan areas surrounding all cities, old and new.
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witold_rybczynski slate_magazine urbanism urbanization urban_development cities

Brilliant:
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The 6 Species Of Vancouver’s Arm-Chair Urban Planners

1. Smarmy City Sucks!
No one can live here. Another high-end condo will just continue to force normal folk out of town.

2. Resort City Sucks!
All anyone does is live here. We need more offices and jobs.

3. The City is an Extension of my Ego!
A world-class city requires a grand statement to inspire [our journey over the Burrard Bridge]. And it’ll make the car ads better.

4. Table Top City Sucks!
We, the Skyscraper Nerds, call for an end to monotonous rows of mid-rise, cookie-cutter buildings and demand taller, architecturally expressive, “signature” towers.

5. That thing’s gonna block the fucking view!
Nimbys and View Coners united will never be defeated.

6. Where’s Everyone Going to Park?!
These are the “think of the children” people when it comes to urban planning.
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urbanplanning urban_development scout_magazine scott_daniel vancouver

Zing! The monoculture of big-box retail produces less economic benefit than mixed-use (urban) development. Gee, Jane Jacobs must be smiling: diversity (real eco-diversity) is what produces profit/ development/ sustainability - *not* mono-culture, which may produce a relatively short-term benefit, but cannot sustain economic benefit over the longer haul.

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Here comes surprise No. 1.: Big box stores such as WalMart and Sam's Club, when analyzed for county property tax revenue per acre, produce barely more than a single family house; maybe $150 to $200 more a year, Katz said. (Think of all those acres of parking lots.) "That hardly seems worth all the heat that elected officials take when they approve such development," he noted in a related, written presentation.

Among retail properties, the biggest per-acre property tax revenue in his county, almost $22,000 per acre, comes from Southgate Mall, the county's highest-end commercial property with Macy's, Dillards and Saks Fifth Avenue department stores. That's not so surprising.

But here's the shocker: On a horizontal bar chart Katz showed, you see that zooming to the far right side, outpacing all the retail offerings, even the regional shopping mall, is the revenue from a high-rise mixed-use project in downtown Sarasota. It sits on less than an acre and contributes a hefty $800,000 in tax per acre. (Add in city property taxes and it's $1.2 million.) "It takes a lot of WalMarts to equal the contribution of that one mixed-use building," Katz noted.
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urban_development malls municipal_funding retail citistates mary_newsom

A listing of recently published and working papers by Ann Markusen, director of the Institute's Project on Regional and Industrial Economics at the Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs (U of Minnesota). Her Areas of Expertise are:
Arts, culture and economic development; regional economics and planning; industrial organization; economic development, local, state, regional; industrial and occupational planning; economic impact of high technology, military spending.

Her current research "focuses on occupational approaches to regional development and on artists and cultural activity as regional economic stimulants."

Of special interest: http://www.hhh.umn.edu/projects/prie/aei.html ("The Arts Economy Initiative at the University’s Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs is midstream in a ten-year project on artists, their livelihoods, and their contributions, along with arts organizations and cultural industries, to regional and local economies.")

See also Markusen's bio page: http://www.hhh.umn.edu/people/amarkusen/index.html

references ann_markusen urbanism arts culture creative_cities resources urban_development

So, "...what would be the 19 urban development types for the creatives that fuel the knowledge economy? Here’s one look at it, based on a list initially produced by renowned urbanist Andres Duany:"
A. Primarily Commercial Mixed-Use Buildings
1. Pedestrian-Only Town Center Retail Entertainment Grouping;
2. Standard Town Center Retail Entertainment Grouping
3. Neighborhood Center Retail Entertainment Grouping
4. Triple Mixed-Use Flat
5. Triple Mixed-Use Mid-Rise
B. Primarily Residential Mixed-Use Buildings
6. Mixed-Use Loft Apartment Mid-Rise
7. Mixed-Use Loft Apartment Flat
8. Mixed-Use Mini-Condo Mid-Rise
9. Loft Apartment House
10. Live-Work Units
C. Exclusively Residential Buildings
11. Loft Apartment House
12. Courtyard Apartments
13. Townhouses with an Ancillary Building
14. Green-fronting Townhouses
15. Paseo Housing Grouping
16. The Inn
D. Exclusively Commercial Buildings
17. Loft Office Mid-Rise
18. Avenue Office Grouping
19. Urban Villa

cooltown_studios urban_development urbanism new_urbanism andres_duany chris_leinberger

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Cities are organized like brains, and the evolution of cities mirrors the evolution of human and animal brains, according to a new study by researchers at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.
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Comparing infrastructure to neural networks. Hm - legitimate, scientific, or overwrought metaphor? I can certainly see that "maintaining sufficient interconnectedness" is a problem for both brains and cities.

cities neuroscience evolution urban_development