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The Bellows » NIMBYism
Ryan Avent argues a perspective against NIMBYism here, which never occurred to me before: that "the biggest problem with public involvement and development is that some of the biggest beneficiaries of new development have no seat at the table–those who’ll be living at to-be-constructed residences. Even if you bring all neighborhood stakeholders in, educate them, and get their opinion (eliminating squeaky wheel bias), you’re still not getting the views of all interested parties." He continues as follows:
"However the planning process addresses public participation, policy should begin with a pro-density bias to reflect that fact that other things equal, developments will always be less dense than is socially optimal. That’s because the people who would like to be residents of an area but aren’t benefit from development but have no political say in the matter."
Got that? In ciites, you should plan for optimal density (because that's ecologically efficient, too), but the NIMBYs will argue against density, and they will make those who want to move into the neighbourhood pay the additional cost of keeping density *below* optimal levels. As Avent puts it, "we need to determine whether the burden is on current homeowners to pay for the right to exclude additional residents, or if the burden is on non-residents to pay for the right to live there. Current policy is de facto the latter."
Tags: nimbyism, urban_development, density, affordability, the_bellows, ryan_avent on 2008-08-01 -All Annotations (2) -About
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But the current system is hugely inefficient, because we’re not even trying to figure out who the actual losers are, what a reasonable estimation of their losses is, what the social gains are, and so on. As such, you have projects which might potentially generate huge social benefits and considerable private benefits–to neighborhood residents, as well–derailed because a handful of very loud people shout loudly. And this costs those loud people only the time to organize and shout.Add Sticky Note
- Oh god, how true! We see this time & time again with community associations "representing" the neighbourhoods here in Victoria.posted by lampertina on 2008-08-01
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the biggest problem with public involvement and development is that some of the biggest beneficiaries of new development have no seat at the table–those who’ll be living at to-be-constructed residences.
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Another way of looking at this is by asking who has the right to restrict entry to a neighborhood, and how far does that right extend. When thinking about theoretical negotiations over the terms of development, we need to determine whether the burden is on current homeowners to pay for the right to exclude additional residents, or if the burden is on non-residents to pay for the right to live there. Current policy is de facto the latter.
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policy should begin with a pro-density bias to reflect that fact that other things equal, developments will always be less dense than is socially optimal.
Old vs. New: Extreme Edition | weeasssuburb
Dan Bertolet of Seattle-based blog "Huge ass city" spent some time visiting Medfield, Massachusetts (where I gather he was raised). He temporarily renamed his blog "Wee ass suburb." This particular entry looks at two houses -- one, the Dwight-Derby house from 1621, the other a 2005 "Extreme Makeover" McMansion. Throughout, I've found Dan's entries really intriguing, but didn't comment. Today, however, someone commented with "Who gives a flying f*ck about Medfield," which prompted me to post a comment. Click through to read. I do give a flying f*ck, I guess.
Tags: dan_bertolet, hugeasscity, weeasssuburb, medfield, beverly, massachusetts, comments, history, urban_development on 2008-07-28 -All Annotations (0) -About
more fromnoisetank.com
The Bellows » How Good is Houston?
Ryan Avent of "The Bellows" critiques Ed Glaeser's piece for the New York Sun, which, according to The Bellows, is riddled with errors and is undermined by Glaeser's own research. Glaeser's neo-con thesis in the NY Sun article is that Houston is middle-class-friendlier and somehow more affordable due to its libertarian anti-regulationist stance, and that NYC is unaffordable because it's regulated to the nines. It's a very familiar argument in some circles, and it's interesting to see Ryan take it apart quite deftly.
Tags: nyc, edward_glaeser, ryan_avent, urban_development, regulation, affordability on 2008-07-19 -All Annotations (0) -About
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EcoDensity raises fears of crowding without amenities
Crosscut's David Brewster referenced this article in his critique of 2 Seattle developments. Key aspect is that if the amenities aren't delivered, you can't have the density. It won't work -- the amenities HAVE to be first-class. Recall Edward T. Hall and his commentary on Calhoun.
Tags: amenities, eco_density, frances_bula, urban_development, vancouver on 2008-02-14 -All Annotations (6) -About
more fromwww.canada.com
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Lehan said people feel the process is being rushed through and they fear that the new charter will mean that "we will have 40-storey towers that will be built in the middle of nowhere."Add Sticky Note
- - sounds like a typical NIMBY panic-mongering reaction...posted by lampertina on 2008-02-14
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As well, they don't like a postscript added by Coun. Suzanne Anton to consider taller buildings in the city's heritage neighbourhoods of Chinatown, Gastown and the Downtown Eastside.Add Sticky Note
- I'd agree with them that historically significant neighbourhoods shouldn't be subject to extreme make-overs. Infill is one thing, getting rid of surface parking lots, ditto. But razing and rebuilding gets trickier, and some areas have protection. As for including the DES...? Not so sure about that one.posted by lampertina on 2008-02-14
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Colin Gray, chairman of the Dunbar Visions group, which developed the west-side neighbourhood's local plan 10 years ago, said Toderian met the group before Christmas and allayed some of their fears.
On the other hand, Gray said, residents hear about proposals to build seniors' residences in their neighbourhood that are much higher than the current four-storey limit.
"There's this pressure to use the seniors' card to get more height. It just feels like there's huge pressure to get higher density."
- So? Lift the height from 4 to ...what?, 6-storeys? Big deal. That's not exactly "40-storeys towers in the middle of nowhere," is it?posted by lampertina on 2008-02-14
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As well, they worry there isn't enough emphasis on creating affordable housing or complete neighbourhoods with libraries, transit and community services to go with the density.
5th-and-Columbia---South on Flickr - Photo Sharing!
Hmmm, what do we think of this overhang? The rendering was posted by someone in the comments board to David Brewster's article in Crosscut about this development.
Tags: architecture, crosscut, flickr, seattle, urban_development on 2008-02-14 -All Annotations (0) -About
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City softens to the sharp edges (Toronto Star)
A second article by Christopher Hume on Toronto's changed skyline and streetscapes, particularly as manifested by Libeskind's ROM addition.
Tags: architecture, christopher_hume, cities, skylines, street_scape, toronto, urban_development on 2008-01-01 -All Annotations (2) -About
more fromwww.thestar.com
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The hostility that has greeted Daniel Libeskind's addition is an indication of just how dramatic, even wrenching, that reappraisal has been.
The response from some has been hysterical, apoplectic, but that's good, too.
In a city like Toronto, where change happens slowly and grudgingly, the shock of the new can be painful. At a time when the future seems so threatening, we are understandably reluctant to let go of the past.
- - strange: this makes T.O. sounds as hidebound as Victoria when it comes to accepting (never mind embracing) change...posted by lampertina on 2008-01-01
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Can a building change a city?
Probably not, but it can alter the way we see it.
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That's not to say everyone will love Libeskind's deliberately provocative contribution. With its sharp edges and leaning walls, it looms over the corner of Bloor and Queen's Park in a way that can't be ignored. It demands we engage with it and refuses to leave us alone. In this sense, it ranks among the most public pieces of architecture ever erected in Toronto. Which is another reason so many of us aren't sure what to make of it.
At the very least, its appearance marks 2007 as a turning point in the life of the city. It will be to the early 21st century what City Hall was to the second half of the 20th century, one of those rare instances when Toronto stepped outside its usual conservatism to do something entirely out of character.
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The first result of Toronto's new-found boldness was, of course, the Sharp Design Centre at the Ontario College of Art and Design. Created by English architect Will Alsop, it is a two-storey box suspended high above the ground on 12 multi-coloured steel stilts.
Not surprisingly, Alsop's "flying tabletop" was met with howls of outrage. Torontonians, especially architects, had never seen anything like it and they weren't impressed. That was back in 2003; now this unique structure is arguably one of the most popular in the city.
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Both Alsop and Libeskind have been criticized for being more interested in designing architectural icons than city-building. The truth is that in both cases, they have accomplished both. This isn't always so; just take a look at the condo tower Libeskind has designed for the west side of the Sony Centre (formerly the Hummingbird Centre). This is as kitschy and inappropriate a piece of architecture as one could imagine on this site or any. Resembling nothing so much as a Vivienne Westwood boot, it fails on any number of levels.
But the Crystal, like the Sharp, manages to be a landmark as well as a solution to practical issues of circulation, access, program and the like. Both projects make it clear that a building need not be dull in order to be useful.
Crosscut Seattle - Amazon joins a parade of high tech to the urban core
- article by Margaret Pugh O'Mara, which asks some pretty good questions about how the transfer of "new economy" businesses from the suburbs back to the center city has implications for urbanism, as well as for what type of new economy businesses move to the core.
Tags: amazon, crosscut, neighbourhoods, new_economy, seattle, south_lake_union, urban_development, urbanism on 2007-12-20 -All Annotations (8) -About
more fromwww.crosscut.com
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New-economy companies are clustering in old manufacturing and warehouse districts in cities from San Francisco to Vancouver to Barcelona. These and many other cities worldwide have redeveloped broad swaths of urban industrial land for new high-tech campuses only minutes from downtown. Drawing on a creative, young workforce who prefer city life, high-tech companies use an urban location as a recruitment and retention tool to show that they are not only innovative, but they are also cool.Add Sticky Note
- - Vancouver? Really? Downtown Vancouver?posted by lampertina on 2007-12-20
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technology seemed to occupy a particularly anonymous kind of suburban space in the public imagination. Pundits called these "technoburbs" and "nerdistans"; boosters called them "Silicon Valley" and "Silicon Prairie" and "Silicon Forest," but never "Silicon City."Add Sticky Note
- - ha! well-put!posted by lampertina on 2007-12-20
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These areas have prospered also because they have been able to create the kind of self-contained, amenity-rich environment that drew tech companies to suburbs in the first place. Technology and other knowledge-intensive industries tend to thrive when located in a place that is built for them, surrounded by other companies like them, filled with features that educated workers want and need.
This is another kind of high-tech bubble, one built not on company valuations but created instead by the actual physical environment of a place. The most successful dot-com and knowledge-worker districts in big cities across the world have managed to recreate this bubble in an urban setting, while managing to retain enough funk to keep the neighborhood interesting.
- - that actually sounds kind of ominous, casting these businesses as part of a homogenizing force, a sort of business-based "oversuccess" (Jane Jacobs)...posted by lampertina on 2007-12-20
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However, older large cities still have something that suburbs, by and large, do not. City neighborhoods can be more diverse and interesting architecturally, economically, and demographically. History gives the urban fabric an interesting quality that is hard to replicate in a newer suburban setting. The funkiness that urban high-tech districts retain – whether accomplished by rehabilitating older buildings or keeping the homegrown retailers – is what gives the city a competitive edge over the suburb.Add Sticky Note
- - that sort of contradicts the "homogenization" aspect, but if things go wrong and veer into homogenization, it probably is a question of "oversuccess" v. simply "success"posted by lampertina on 2007-12-20
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The New Economy started in the suburbs, but the new trend is back to urban neighborhoods. Amazon is a good match for South Lake Union, but the danger is that it could be too big, with too few small companies clustering around.
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These landscapes are a departure from high-tech and biotech companies' usual habit of locating in self-contained campuses, separated from other kinds of industries and land uses – landscapes that American suburbs have been very good at providing. Techies were among the first white-collar workers to move to the suburbs, and research park developers were among the first to create grade-A suburban commercial real estate.
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The gradual emergence of an alternative, more-urban model for the high-tech district is a result of the growth and diversification of the technology industry and its workforce. Larger urban trends have also paved the way for this change. It is hardly a coincidence that technology industries returned to older urban centers after a decade of national prosperity and declining crime rates during which big cities "came back" and once again became desirable locations for the professional class.
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Remodeling older buildings as airy live-work lofts and building glass-clad towers on the sites of low-rise midcentury structures and surface parking lots, new-economy companies have helped to drive a huge transformation of the urban fabric.
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The other ways that urban tech districts can set themselves apart from suburban developments – both the high-tech campuses and the "urban villages" – is by recruiting the right kind of tenants. Not all knowledge-economy firms are created equal when it comes to creating and maintaining a vibrant urban environment. Firms engaged in sensitive research, like many biotech firms, must have elaborate building security systems that make it difficult for people to enter – and for workers to go out for lunch, or pick up clothes at the dry cleaner, or shop in local stores. They may need to be surrounded by walls or gates, without street-level windows. The need for this kind of security is part of what drove technology firms to suburban campuses in the first place.
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Size is the other thing that sets these firms apart.
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An area has multiple tenants rather than one or two, and these tenants also may interact and socialize with one another – collaborating on projects, hiring one another as clients, or simply having a cup of coffee. The enthusiasm of boosters for anything "high-tech" tends to ignore these distinctions, giving urban high-tech districts the potential to be as bland as any suburban office park.
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However, Amazon is a very large company, and its sheer size means that its part of South Lake Union runs the risk of becoming a corporate campus rather than a real neighborhood. Although Amazon is a giant employer, there's potential here to make the area around it an aesthetically interesting and diverse urban place that will, in turn, be attractive to other, smaller companies.
How Should We Be Thinking About Urbanization? A Freakonomics Quorum - Freakonomics - Opinion - New York Times Blog
A "quorum of smart thinkers" discusses what problems and opportunities majority urbanism presents, "What effects has it had on our local and global culture? Economy? Health?"
Tags: alan_berube, cities, dolores_hayden, edward_glaeser, freakonomics, innovation, james_kunstler, opinion, robert_bruegmann, urban_development on 2007-12-20 and saved by4 people -All Annotations (28) -About
more fromfreakonomics.blogs.nytimes.com
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Most observers tend to extrapolate current trends and assume that what we see now will continue moving in the same direction — ever-larger cities, etc. I don’t see it that way. The global energy predicament now gathering around us will synergize with climate change to produce a very different outcome.Add Sticky Note
- - of course he has to say that, since he has staked his speaking career on "the long emergency"...posted by lampertina on 2007-12-20
- Kunstler drives me nuts.
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Some of our cities will not make it. Phoenix, Tucson, and other Sunbelt cities will dry up and blow away. In Las Vegas, the excitement will be over. Other mega-cities will have to downscale or face extreme dysfunction.Add Sticky Note
- - it's obvious that he used to write science fiction, tooposted by lampertina on 2007-12-20
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The suburbs, for the most part, are toast. They have three possible outcomes in the twenty-first century: as slums, salvage yards, or ruins.Add Sticky Note
- - see previous commentposted by lampertina on 2007-12-20
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Edward Glaeser, professor of economics at Harvard and director of the Taubman Center for State and Local Government at the Kennedy School of Government:Add Sticky Note
- - his entire text is worth highlighting!posted by lampertina on 2007-12-20
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A central paradox of the twenty-first century is that declining communication and transportation costs have made cities more vital than ever.Add Sticky Note
- - I wonder how the declining transportation costs aspect would sit with Kunstler, who would presumably counter with "just you wait, that'll be over soon"...posted by lampertina on 2007-12-20
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Globalization and the death of distance increased the returns for being smart, and you become smart by hanging out with smart people. As such, cities remain important because they create the intellectual connections that forge human capital and spur innovation.Add Sticky Note
- - an important aspect here is that "smart" also means smart in different ways, and as Aristotle said (paraphrase): a city is composed of many different kinds of people (ok, he said men, but we mean people), and it's that rubbing up against difference (and tolerance) that makes cities so very valuable.posted by lampertina on 2007-12-20
- disagreement is good
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Add Sticky Note
Cities sometimes have a bad reputation because of their association with problems like poverty, pollution, and disease; but this association does not imply causation.
Cities are full of poor people because cities attract poor people, not because cities make people poor. Millions of the least advantaged come to urban areas not because cities are bad for them, but because cities are good for them.
- - exactly! Or, in the West's case, because the poor can expect to access services that they wouldn't get in less urban placesposted by lampertina on 2007-12-20
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Humans are a social species, and our greatest achievements are all collaborative. Cities are machines for making collaboration easier. Thus, I am delighted that our planet has become increasingly urban.Add Sticky Note
- - well said.posted by lampertina on 2007-12-20
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In the long run, however, the policies were probably less important than the eventual result — an equally massive move from the cities back into the countryside. In virtually every affluent nation on earth, the old Nineteenth-century industrial cities have exploded outward, allowing densities to plummet at the core as residents move further and further out into low-density suburbia and a very low-density exurban penumbra around that. The city of Paris today has a third fewer residents than it did a century ago, and the suburban and exurban territory around it leapfrogs more or less from the English Channel to Burgundy. In this process, the very distinction between urban and rural has all but disappeared as citizens in almost every part of affluent societies are able to participate in what is essentially an urban culture.Add Sticky Note
- - that's a very interesting (and different) way to characterize sprawl... much more "organic," with interdependencies...posted by lampertina on 2007-12-20
- have to think about this one...
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For years, when urban historians wrote about the “city,” they meant the center, the skyline, downtown. Suburbs were left out of traditional “city biographies” emphasizing economic development, population growth, and the achievements of business leaders. Everyone knew that large suburbs existed and had something to do with the process of urbanization. But most historians thought they were less significant than the city center: spatially, because they were less dense than centers; culturally, because more of their attractions involved nature than architecture; and socially, because their daytime activities involved women and children more than men.Add Sticky Note
- - that's an excellent precis!posted by lampertina on 2007-12-20
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Excessive green field growth lies behind the national energy shortage and the mortgage crisis. Using federal incentives to constantly expand urban peripheries with commercial and residential development has had serious consequences. Reliance on imported oil, pursuit of war in the Middle East, and the credit crunch shaking Wall Street suggest that wise patterns of urban land use are more important to economic well-being than many Americans recognize.Add Sticky Note
- - really well put; another reason to remediate brown fields and build on them; conserve greenfields.posted by lampertina on 2007-12-20
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Regardless, the same economic forces that are attracting people to large urban regions in the developing world apply here in the U.S. (and really always have). Firms and workers derive benefits from co-locating in large metro areas, in that they can each find a better “match” with one another given a greater variety of options. Big urban areas can cost-effectively support critical infrastructure like international airports, passenger and freight rail, and wireless networks. And urban proximity generates spillovers across workers, firms, and universities, embodied in the “network innovation” that powers areas like Silicon Valley (and in the venture capital that is its lifeblood). The result: big places are getting bigger. While the nation’s 100 largest metro areas (containing at least half a million people) contain 65 percent of U.S. population, they have captured 76 percent of its recent population growth. No wonder; as Ed Glaeser has argued, urbanization makes us more productive and, in the end, wealthier.Add Sticky Note
- - the benefits of co-locationposted by lampertina on 2007-12-20
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My colleagues at Brookings and I have argued that in light of this reality, we ought to begin to tackle critical national challenges — on economic growth, education and skills, infrastructure, and the environment — with a keener eye toward the big, complex, messy, metropolitan way in which the majority of Americans (and now, our global counterparts) live their lives.Add Sticky Note
- - interesting -- argues for the importance at fixing infrastructure *because* the Friedman model ("the world is flat" and it matters not where you live) isn't going to become a reality any time soon. Quite the opposite.posted by lampertina on 2007-12-20
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Kunstler is a nostalgic fear-mongerer. Why are we listening to the opinions of a guy who was a theater major in college?Add Sticky Note
- - that's what I ask myself, too...posted by lampertina on 2007-12-20
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In the developing world, cities are the intellectual gateways between the human capital of India and China and the markets of the West. In the developed world, cities have enjoyed a remarkable resurgence over the last 25 years as the density that once made it easier to move hogsheads onto clipper ships now serves to spread knowledge in finance and new technology.
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There is no doubt that the general process of industrialization and growth adversely impacts the environment, at least initially, but cities shouldn’t be blamed for every smokestack. Cities are not factories. They are the concentration of people at high densities, and that concentration is pretty green. After all, we use a lot less energy when we cluster together in cities than when we spread throughout the country and drive hundreds of miles each day in commuting.
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Robert Bruegmann, professor of art history, architecture, and urban planning at the University of Illinois at Chicago:
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Of course, this huge outward migration of people has caused problems, just as the migration to the cities did. And public authorities have once again tried to slow or halt the process, now pejoratively called “sprawl,” often with the explicit aim of preserving the distinction between the urban and the rural. This effort is likely to be just as futile as the effort to stop people from moving into the cities, and just as likely to be counterproductive. No one knows what the next chapter of urban history will bring, but if there is any lesson to draw from what has happened to date, it is that abstract ideas about the proper form of settlement, whether urban or rural or hybrids we can’t yet imagine, tend to lag far behind the reality on the ground.
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Dolores Hayden, professor of architecture, urbanism, and American studies at Yale and author of Building Suburbia: Green Fields and Urban Growth, 1820-2000:
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Old divisions between “city” and “countryside” have become misleading in urbanized nations like the U.S. “City” in the U.S. today really means “metropolitan region,” because we are a predominantly suburban nation. After almost two centuries of peripheral urban growth, American suburbs have overwhelmed the centers of cities, creating urban regions largely formed of suburban parts. By 2000, more Americans lived in suburbs than in central cities and rural areas combined.
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Because of prejudices about density, high culture, and gender, suburbia resisted scrutiny for decades. It evaded both art historical analysis (based on the aesthetic assessment of outstanding buildings), and urban analysis (based on demographic and economic statistics).
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Today, Americans need to come to terms with the urbanized landscapes we have created. As Harlan Douglas, a perceptive sociologist, defined the urban region composed of suburbs in the 1920s, “It is the city trying to escape the consequences of being a city while still remaining a city. It is urban society trying to eat its cake and keep it, too.”
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Since the mid-1930s, the federal government has encouraged green field development on raw land outside of urban centers, usually through tax subsidies rather than direct spending. These incentives account for extended metropolitan expansion promoted by “growth machines” — alliances of bankers, developers, and business leaders profiting from hidden federal subsidies for suburban development.
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Alan Berube, research director of the Brookings Metropolitan Policy Program:
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The way the U.N. — and most economists — look at it, a city encompasses not just the political geography that lies at the heart of an urban region, but the entire surrounding metropolitan area that functions as an economic whole. So New York isn’t just the five boroughs (population 8.2 million), but the enormous labor market that extends from Rockland County upstate, west to the Poconos, east to Suffolk County, and south to the Jersey Shore (population 18.8 million). What separates us from the world’s developing nations (and many developed ones, too) is that most Americans who live in these “cities” or “urban agglomerations” would describe themselves as living in the suburbs.
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But if you live in Westchester County, N.Y.; Cobb County, Ga.; Lake County, Ill.; or Collin County, Tex., would you really have a reason to be there if it weren’t for New York City, Atlanta, Chicago, or Dallas?
25 Examples of Good Urban Design - International Herald Tribune
Tags: reference, urban_design, urban_development, urbanism on 2007-11-20 -All Annotations (0) -About
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