I'MMA LET YOU FINISH
Case in point: the minimum-plot-size restrictions in many suburban areas, which make those areas inaccessible to middle-income households while at the same time imposing huge infrastructure maintenance burdens on local authorities.
I would just point out the end result of having NO zoning regulations is often not very desirable, either, in terms of local design.
Houston, TX, a city that famously advertised "no zoning," is a case in point.
Word to swoosh. NYC may be a terrible place to find an apartment, but it's also nice that we have Central Park. The park's a pretty huge zoning exception, but it's also a city staple. So, while certain regs are awful, height and zoning regulations are among the ones that help make living here tolerable. Not to mention that some are simply geologically necessary...to keep manhattan from sinking into the ground.
Ah, yet another thread on zoning and urban quality-of-life! To summarize an earlier point on the property values topic, someone argued that it was the taxes and the cost and hassle of getting permits that is to blame for the high price of housing; my reply was that there wouldn't be cost, hassle and risk IF DEVELOPERS DIDN'T BET THE HOUSE (literally) ON GETTING VARIANCES. The developers in this cast want points for 'reducing' the size of their building from the original design but it is STILL over existing, established, known-all-along zoning. Maybe it's expensive because they've had to create two unfeasible designs already! How many more designs are they going to generate before they play by the rules?
I'm all for designing for density, but it is hard to argue that anywhere on Manhattan is wasteful sprawl.
marc-
Re: sinking
I recall as a kid seeing a factoid somewhere about Manhatten actually being *lighter* in weight now than originally due to the extreme amount of excavation for subways, utility tunnels, and multi-level basements. Dirt's heavy.
>>the minimum-plot-size restrictions in many suburban areas, which make those areas inaccessible to middle-income households while at the same time imposing huge infrastructure maintenance burdens on local authorities.
I'm not sure I agree with this, vaara, Consider the infrastructure needs (roads, schools, utility lines, etc.) of one house on 5 acres of land vs. the land being carved into 1/4 acre lots and a total of 20 houses being added - or 150-200 townhouse units - or a 20 story apt building.
I would think on a micro level that the sparser the development, the less infrastructure cost needed. Of course on a macro level, that leads to sprawl and it's problems, but I don't classify sprawl concerns as being the same as "the minimum-plot-size restrictions ...imposing huge infrastructure maintenance burdens on local authorities".
What am I missing here?
Andy,
Infrastructure costs are roads, sewer/gas/electricity pipes and wires. Much easier to hook up one apartment building than a large neighborhood. Often new developments/customers aren't charged the full price of hooking them up.
Sorry, I'm a fan of a lot of restrictions. Without them you get bad, bad situations, like overdevelopment in areas that can't support it because, for example, there isn't enough water to go around. Or places with a distinct character that get ruined, and no longer have anything at all to offer anyone except a cheap and ugly place to live. Preserving character is not unimportant, even if it sounds elitist. Views matter, as far as I'm concerned.
I don't want the US to look like the USSR or China (or Mongolia, for that matter, where Ulan Baator has been "China-ized) - housing in blocks of apartments that are hideous and depressing, while affordable. No thanks.
Compare San Francisco to say Houston. Where would you rather live?
Do you also oppose zoning efforts to prevent starbucks, walmarts and burger kings from taking over neighborhoods and driving out local small business owners?
I understand your point, Atrios, but that isn't what I understand vaara to have said. Less density should mean less infrastructure need, and less maintence needed, combined with higher property values (tax revenue). While a large apartment house should provide some cost benefit due to scale, the increased population should also require more infrastructure (and I also count schools in infrastructure). At some point the extra people in the apartment house are going to have an effect on roads and sewerage capacity that less dense development avoids. I would agree, however, that typical normal suburban plot development is probably the most inefficient cost-wise, but I just don't see the point where the extreme low density development imposes higher maintenence costs - I would think that it would combine roughly the same level of revenue due to higher property values but with less need and wear and tear on the infrastructure. That's the part I don't get.
Andy X-
And think of the cost per unit. A development of one house/5 acres still requires a 40' wide paved right-of-way (U-turns for fire trucks!), which has a much greater carrying capacity than one house will use. The case really isn't about a single house, it's about many single homes on many 5-acre lots, taking up possibly hundreds of acres for maybe dozens of users. Miles of small-gauge utilities are far more expensive that a fraction of the length at a large gauge.
Another point:
While I agree that rent control (and other zoning regs) tend to support the status quo, I'd like to further point out that it isn't necessarily enacted to support the status quo for the its own sake.
I live in a small town directly across the Hudson River from NYC. (Go get a map; I'll wait.) I am part of this town's "gentrification". Without rent control, this place would be YuppieOpolis instead of just YuppieBurgh. When market forces change, as they surely will, those who have changed the place will flee. Rent control serves to moderate that and protect the city from drastic, short-term changes. Changes that would be irreparable.
Saying that rent control (which, as a socialist, I support) serves the status quo is just too self-serving. It's a useful tool to help us manage the places where we live.
Of course, we could just have unfettered free-market forces. We could start by making the churches pay their fair of property taxes. (Even as an atheist, I don't support THAT.)
Say what you want to, but I love two of DC's regulations: the building-height one (which allows all of us in rowhouses to see the Monument from anywhere in the city) and the first-amendment trampling restriction on large ads on the city. The advertisers have figured out how to get around the later, however, by painting ads onto large swaths of fabric and "stretching" them across buildings. Hopefully we'll find a way to stop that too. I love that DC is ad and skyscraper free.
I'm looking at this from another standpoint - not urban. If restrictions are loosened, it enables developers to rape the countryside. And they will, as fast as they can. Talk about lining pockets and making the rich richer.
The more people who are squeezed into a space, the more degredation there is to the existing landscape and the quality of life for everyone and everything.
Do you also oppose zoning efforts to prevent starbucks, walmarts and burger kings from taking over neighborhoods and driving out local small business owners?
I can understand people's concerns regarding corporatization, but how does this argument stand with respect to liberal viewpoints on free trade and subsidies to agribusiness?
I agree with Tena and lefty.
We are seeking a historic designation for our neighborhood both to preserve its appearance and to keep it an area where an economically diverse population can afford to live. A developer came in, tore down an existing house, and put up a McMansion. We saw that our natty little neighborhood would soon be an enclave for the very rich.
Look, I wasn't trying to make the point that zoning regs are bad (necessarily), just that they are regulations which erode "property rights" and definitely aren't "liberal." While some libertarians do come out against zoning regs of all kinds, few "conservatives" are too concerned with such evil statist policies.
If you want that loud, dirty steel plant moving in next door be against zoning regs.
I'm pissed because the new neighbors have decided to build a large, ugly structure so that they can have more shade when they sit on chairs in their driveway and chew the fat. It does indeed block our one view. But these people have been obnoxious since day one anyway by for example, blaring hate ratio (i.e. Rush Limbaugh) while running their power tools.
Less dense development (at the suburban sprawl level) will not generate more revenue. Is one house on five acres assessed at a greater value than five houses on a single acre each? Same amount of land, I'd argue the one-house scenario would have to be over-the-top in luxury to be assessed at 5 times a still-sprawling 1 unit/ac.
And while Andy X is right that at some point extra people in an apartment building will at some point have an effect on the infrastructure, it has an incrementally smaller effect than building a whole new house, extending the road, utilities, school bus route another 200' farther for each new living unit.
Furthermore, think of the shape that these sprawling neighborhoods take: curving, disorienting roads and cul-de-sacs for two developer-driven purposes: to create the association w/ 'country manors' and to minimize the length of developer-funded road/utility respectively. The result: 'collector' roads which have high traffic, not pedestrian-friendly, lack of connecting streets so that you can't walk to anything. Your back-to-back neighbors have to drive out to collector-roads to get to each other's front doors!
Long live the quirky grid!
Of the people here who are in favor of libertarian property rights, most are conservative Republicans. The people in favor of more restrictions tend to be moderate Republicans and Democrats.
This is anecdotal evidence from one neighborhood in Fort Worth and probably doesn't apply everywhere.
>>Look, I wasn't trying to make the point that zoning regs are bad (necessarily), just that they are regulations which erode "property rights" and definitely aren't "liberal."
the difference being that zoning which limits property rights but also maximizes and preserves property values would be ok by conservatives while the very idea is anathema to libertarians? I'd go along with that proposition.
the thing that gets me are those who think that they should have unfettered "property rights" to build in danger-prone areas like the South Carolina coast - but yet whose costs of rebuilding after each hurricane add to everybody's insurance costs as well as the federal "insurer of the last resort" and FEMA costs bourne by all.
On the other hand, homeowners associations are indeed out of hand in lots of places. Telling a person in minute detail what they can and cannot do on their own property is overreaching and dictatorial.
General rules like you can't build a second story that blocks everybodys view simply because you want to maximize yours are appropriate. The next step is then sombody builds even higher to see over yours. Or you have to have dozens of junk cars parked on your lawn or paint your house psychodelic colors are OK I think.
Azrael - One of the things I love most about Dublin, Ireland, is the fact that it is a human-sized city - the building aren't tall, and there are no billboards (anywhere in Ireland, that I saw.)
Here in Lake City, Co., year-round population just over 300, we are having a small war over signs. Two businesses in town want to put up more and larger signs than they are allowed to have, and naturally, it is those two businesses that already have more signs than any of the other businesses. It looks like hell and it isn't necessary. They already have more customers than they know what to do with.
It's called greed, and that's why restrictions are necessary, even though the restrictions sometimes have unwanted side effects.
Or you have to have dozens of junk cars parked on your lawn or paint your house psychodelic colors are OK I think.
Let's clarify that. Regulations that say that you can't have dozens of junk cars parked on your lawn or paint your house psychodelic colors are OK I think within closed communities.
Really dense neighborhoods (and we have plenty of those) with zero lot line construction, teensy back yards and no trees dehumanise the people who live there and condemn them to a life of over air-conditioned concrete encrusted misery. However, mixed use zoning such as they have in the eastern cities and Europe promotes socialization and efficient use of resources.
As long as zoning regulators follow Christopher Alexander's A Pattern Language -- four-storey limit for residential buildings, nine-percent parking in small lots, etc -- they're fine by me. Of course, there are places where these guidelines simply can't be enforced (Manhattan, for instance) but there's no reason not to.
Atrios:
Libertarians are people who don't want to be told what to do. Liberals are people who don't want to be told what to do but reserve the right to bitch when others don't do what they're told.
Intriguingly, I have a foot firmly in both camps.
Of course, we just need a dose of consensus, a splash of equity, and a desire to be accommodating. Need I point out that there are 260,000,000+ of us? AH HAH HAHAHAH HA HAH !!!
As an aside, let me point out that conservatives are those who love being told what to do. Or at the least, what to think. How else could Rush be so successful?
I have a paperback collection of Aesop's fables. Each tale is but a few sentences long, and is accompanied at the bottom of the page with an explanation of the moral of the story. My favorite concerns a fisherman who spreads his net in the river and then chases the fish into it. A few days later, a farmer comes from downstream to tell him not to stir up the water because his cows cannot drink from the muddied stream. The fisherman replies, "But this is the only way I have to make a living." This story has no printed moral at the bottom of the page. I just love that. And it seems appropriate here.
"mixed use zoning such as they have in the eastern cities and Europe"
For example, who decided that living above retail space should be illegal? In most newer U.S. residential developments, this sort of "quarantine zoning" means that people are forced to drive everywhere for the tiniest errands.
I have, however, seen some recent exceptions, for example in Seattle where some of the newer apartment buildings have retail on the ground floor. In many places, this sort of development is against the law.
Fort Worth is basing their new model of development on Seattle's. Finally some sanity.
I'm an architect, and an architectural historian who specializes in the history of cities, and a preservationist. Hint: any preservation activity undertaken in most American cities will have the effect of driving up property values and driving population density down below what it might otherwise be. Historic preservation has matured, and engages the building context, rather than the single building--there is more than one way to destroy the history and meaning of an artifact. You can yank a pre-Columbian (or Sumerian) artifact out of the burial site and sell it on the black market, or you can yank the neighborhood out from around the brownstone. A community has every right to resist change if it believes that change will result in a step toward chaos. The challenge is to get the public to recognize the existence of a public realm, and a public interest, that requires care, involvement, and design so that it functions well and nobly for all citizens. American life is so privatized that these disputes tend to become NIMBY matters, only.
I don't know about Peter Jennings's neighborhood, but this is one matter one which righteous indignation is wasted. A fourteen-story building might be better suited to another building site, perhaps one redeveloped after WWII. At the turn of the 19th century, 100-foot tall buildings were the norm in New York. Why not build more eight-story buldings (that's a 100-foot building that allows room for modern building services in the floor structure) among those? Paris is almost (but not quite) as population-dense as Manhattan, but has very few tall buildings, certainly none of even this height near the central arrondissments (except that damned Tour Montparnasse). If you're a developer or architect, and you look around, and you say, "I want to build something here that's completely unlike anything else in the neighborhood," you might just want to reconsider.
Building regulation governs acts just as every other sort of regulation does. Sometimes, what someone else does makes my life unreasonably unpleasant. That's what laws against nuisance are all about. This is just one more. And I don't think that the developers are in it to lower rents, but to take advantage of the high rents in the neighborhood, so this ain't charity.
northsylvania - Fort Worth has always been sane in comparison to Dallas. You are so lucky to live there. Dallas keeps coming up with "plans" to utilize the Trinity Sewer Basin (you have the actual river,) and can't implement anything because everybody keeps fighting about it.
I really hate having to spend the winter in a city I am uncomfortable in.
For example, who decided that living above retail space should be illegal? In most newer U.S. residential developments, this sort of "quarantine zoning" means that people are forced to drive everywhere for the tiniest errands.
Amen. This is one of the worst things they've been doing lately. Here in California, I imagine we are the living example of developer-driven sprawl.
Instead of huge suburban housing developments, miles from grocery stores or other services, it is essential that we return our zoning "blocks" to more human levels. The developers hate it because, well, they're businesses, and they want to maximize their profits. But the mega-scaled development -- huge suburbs, huge commercial centers -- is causing impossible-to-solve traffic problems, quality of life issues (kids with nothing to do, unless their soccer moms drive them somewhere else), etc.
In Northern California, there's a different problem: some counties have enforced large min. lot sizes (like 5, 20, 40, or even 160 acres) over the near-entirety of the county... while intended to reduce crowding, land prices have soared, and the existing land is being split into an unending grid of ranchettes. And providing services to a thousand houses, 5 acres apart, is much more expensive than providing services to similar houses on 200-ft lots.
What they really need to be doing up there is creating "density pockets", so that development takes place in small clusters of high-density zoning, with large green belts between. They're moving towards that, I think, but not with any speed at this point.
Anyway, FWIW.
with the increase in population... hieght restrictions in Denver and Boulder are actually destroying the quality of life, as teh housing spread oooozzzzzzesssssss across teh plains to the point that there is no more visable dirt and the 'city' covers a 20 by 60 mile area. If there were not these stupidly short hieght restictions Denver could be fit in Manhattan...
another thing, as values went way up in Boulder and it is not possible to go up past 3 floors... a hugh amount of people have built homes in their backyard, I shite you not...
"liberal' policies to 'save' the view have totaly distorted the area into dump.
(I posted this as a comment to Newman)
The Synagogue seeks a zoning variance under the Landmark Law because of the "preservation purpose" of funding restoration of the landmark Synagogue. Thus, the only purported preservation purpose is financial -- permitting the Congregation to finance preservation from income from the Tower. However, this supposed preservation purpose amounts to shifting the cost of preservation from the Congregation to its neighbors, many of whose property values will precipitously decline as a result of the Tower rising directly in front of their windows. Thus, the benefit to some of the wealthiest New Yorkers, like the Rudins, comes at the expense of the Synagogue's neighbors.
If you are advocating repeal of the Landmark Law to permit unrestricted development in any area, that's another matter. (Perhaps Paris should have such a lack of restrictions as well.) But the existing law and zoning is clear, and the Synagogue's proposal amounts to shifting its burden to its neighbors, many of whom are not as wealthy as the Synagogue or its members.
Finally, the proposed Tower will be one to a floor multi-million dollar condos -- hardly a contribution to any affordable housing crisis.
(Full disclosure -- The Tower would rise right in front of my window.)
Rent control is essential and should be federal law in my book. As apartment complexes are owned more and more by large companies and less and less by Mom and Pop looking to retire, rents spiral out of control and can quickly destroy a neighborhood. Evictions skyrocket, students change gradeschools, overcrowding becomes a huge problem in schools in lower income neighborhoods.
Just look at Santa Monica since the California state legislature outlawed vacancy control. Before rent control in that city, senior citizens who had lived in buildings for decades were being harassed to leave. Eightly year old women would lose their husbands and the grieving widow would have to deal with a landlord demanding they move out. It was horrible. People were receiving 50% rent increases per year - sometimes more often. Why? Because Santa Monica's a great place to live and landlords could get away with it. Rent control passed at the insistence of senior citizens and the town stabilized for many years. Finally, that sell out fuck Garamendi got the legislature to outlaw vacancy control and Santa Monica is now a zoo. Tenants who've lived there for decades have been forced out. Rents that were moderate are through the roof. A crummy one bedroom built in the sixties with no finesse whatsoever starts at $2000 a month.
When rents are that high, other businesses suffer. People who are spending half their income on rent don't go out to dinner, they don't buy new cars, they can't afford insurance. All of the money that supports myriad small businesses gets sucked into the pockets of the landlords. Buildings without rent control are far less stable. There is far greater turnover in tenants and that impacts both the neighborhood and the families who live there.
UCLA's study on the recession of the early 90's found that it lingered in SoCal longer because of the high cost of housing and that rentals played a huge role in that. The lack of rent control is very costly in terms of both business and individual lives.
bayard - I understand why you feel the way you do about the sprawl, but we have that in Dallas plus no height restrictions. So without the restrictions, you could end up with a lot of very tall sprawl in Denver and Boulder.
I think height restrictions are generally a good thing, especially in places where there is something to see if buildings aren't blocking the view. If there weren't any restrictions in Santa Fe, for example, I might be able to afford to live there, but I wouldn't want to.
Oh, please. Why exactly should Grandma have a right to cheap rent because she moved into an apartment 50 years ago, exactly?
The addition of rent control is very costly in terms of both business and individual lives as people waste time with rent seeking behavior (subletting, subsubletting, joining "the system," searching for the recently deceased) instead of working. Grandma living in her seven room apartment on the upper west side alone for $250 a month is like writing her a check for $3000 a month. People who can't afford to live where they are should move.
Hipocrite:
Nice satire. Perhaps a little too subtle. Too subtle for yourself.
You complain about inefficient expediture of effort in subletting, seeking out the recently deceased, etc. Then you suggest people move just for the sake of moving.
I'm moving inefficiently right now. It's called a gigglefit.
You have a point, though. If grandma can't keep up, put her in a home. Jeebus be praised.
A few comments
Manhattan is quite the exception in American urbanism. A lot more of the surface of our country it covered by suburban sprawl than by cities with Manhattan's density. There are underutilized, formally industrial areas, but Manhattan is probably not the best place to pick a fight over zoning being too restrictive.
Is living in a dense urban setting dehumanizing? It would seem that urban property values and living costs would indicate that the most desirable places to live are also amongst the densest. Many people choose to live in San Francisco and New York because they are good places to live. (Maybe instead of adding to Manhattan, we should build more Manhattans)
Zoning codes and building codes are different. Zoning codes are intended to influence the quality of urban development by controling land use and density. Building codes are primarily concerned with life safety. Both are systems were the result of "progressive" reforms that were intended to improve the livability (survivability) of cities.
China's urbanism is the direct result of progressive zoning codes that ensure light and open space to the people. The ugly slabs and towers that have resulted are proof that well intended regulations do not make good cities. I think it is great that every residence gets southern exposure, but I would not want to live in one of them.
Developers will build the biggest and cheapest buildings they can because they have to. That is how capitalism works. The value of any property is set by what could be built given the site's zoning. As an example, if I were to sell a vacant piece of land that was zoned for 20 units of housing, I would try to sell the land for the projected value of that 20 unit building less the estimated development costs of that building. Zoning sets maximums, but developers are motivated to push across those maximums through variances to limit there risk and maximize their profits.
I think that zoning is necessary, and in some places the codes are slowly changing to reflect the current thinking in urban planning. Many planners understand that density and mixed uses are what make cities great places to live, but these are not the people that are calling the shots in the suburbs.
Currently there is no profit driven motivation to change the financially successful formula for suburban development.
Change has to come from an underinformed market of consumers (unlikely) or from government regulation (zoning).
Andy X - you've missed an essential point. The trade-off isn't between one house on a 5-acre lot or 20 houses on ¼-acre lots, it's between 20 houses on 5-acre lots or 20 houses on ¼-acre lots.
Or, in a San Francisco context, the tradeoff is between a 10-unit apartment building on ¼ acre close to public transit and retail in San Francisco, or 10 houses on 4 acres of gated community near Stockton, two miles from the nearest shopping center.
Wow, I actually agree with Atrios about something. Up here in the Great Northwet, we have urban growth areas where high-density development is located. It works OK as long as there's enough land available in the UGAs.
My concern is that by splitting areas so markedly, you create a two-tiered society, with the landed gentry on five-acre tracts outside of town and the worker bees in high-density units in-city. You can sort of see that here, e.g., Microsoft millionaires in massive homes east of Redmond and the packed-in lower income folks in town.
There're no easy answers.
"The developers hate it because, well, they're businesses, and they want to maximize their profits."
Au contraire! Developers would love to build at the density of classy old neighborhoods like Georgetown, and include higher-value retail and office spaces at main intersections, but are often not allowed to because of obsolete zoning. Homebuilders have begun to swell the membership of the Congress for New Urbanism because they've seen that neighborhoods built on the traditional, human scale model make a fortune, as well as creating a more humane and environmentally-benign environment. Even in extremely conservative places like suburban Florida, they're lining up to build traditional, walkable, mixed use neighborhoods. If we put enough of these together, commuter rail might actually start to make economic - not just environmental - sense, and much of the opposition will dissipate.
And extremely tall buildings can contribute to perfectly humane streetscape, as long as there are storefronts on the ground floor. When you're walking on a sidewalk, and a facade is right on the lot line, you don't really notice a difference between a seven story building and a 100 story building (as long as proper solar access is maintained).
BTW, the affordable housing problem in NYC, Boston, and San Francisco is the fault of the suburbs, who insist on remaining low density and high cost while the metro area's population skyrockets. Supply and demand.
One last thought: it's not zoning vs. no zoning. It's good zoning vs. bad zoning.
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