An LT reader and fellow urban writer based in the DC area, Bryce Tolpen, has launched a new Substack called Political Devotions. One of his first podcasts, “Stories & objects”, explores a global community that has coalesced around Columbia Pike in Arlington, Virginia; and how an arts space in a strip mall, StudioPause, came to serve as a neighborhood focal-point in the post-2020 American anomie that may never quite end. Such an interesting piece — check it out, along with the rest of Bryce’s writing and podcasts. He is a great storyteller, and writes with a perspective that incorporates a thoughtful and eclectic range of influences.
Status Check
I haven’t written much here lately — other obligations have taken priority. Also:
I have been trying to come up with a new organizing principle for this page. One reason is positive: when I began writing here, 13 years ago (!), I was about to begin my last year of graduate school. At the time, the spirit of New Urbanism had captured many imaginations (including, to an extent, my own), and I was especially interested in Andrés Duany’s assertions about the need to legalize traditional building patterns (an obvious factor in the title of this blog); but I wasn’t convinced that master-planning was the right approach, and I had also found little discussion on the Web or in the press about the role that land use law might be playing in housing markets, or how market-rate housing was becoming less affordable in many regions. I wanted to explore those issues and see what I could learn.
Since the mid-2010s, there has been a sea change: a widespread mainstream awakening to the role of land-use policy in shaping regional housing markets. I think it’s fair to say this was helped by the growing visibility of the scarcity of housing units, and the fact that it began to impact more people in the professional class. California and Oregon, two housing-expensive states, recently enacted laws that presume this dynamic to be at work — and seek to create many new legal units by relaxing zoning. Major cities across the country, including Minneapolis and New York, have largely accepted the same premise. Development opponents are now routinely expected to engage with impacts on housing; and articles skewering the obstructionary role of local zoning have become commonplace. For these reasons, I don’t feel the same urgency about raising attention anymore. It has become conventional wisdom that zoning contributes to housing shortages; and that these impacts deserve scrutiny. This change is a major win, and I hope my contributions here, and in publications, have helped to bring this discussion forward since 2010. Based on the engagement I’ve gotten from readers, I think they have.
But there is also a less positive side to my questioning of purpose here: it is clear to me that none of what has changed has been nearly enough. Not yet. Today we see and discuss the role of zoning in housing markets more easily, and this represents progress toward a goal I believe many share, namely, to create a more responsive legal framework for urban growth. But actual reforms, so far, have been far too modest; market pressures remain high; a NIMBY mindset continues to prevent enough building to match demand (particularly in the suburbs); and inequality continues to be amplified by past circumstances and present inertia. The current gridlock in the housing market (due, they say, to high interest rates) has pushed the cost of a home to record highs. And if existing pressures weren’t enough, American cities, with high levels of homelessness, now face a migration crisis that will require homes for perhaps millions of additional people — a Sisyphean challenge whose high-water mark remains unknown.
To be candid, I have a bad feeling about where this is all going. Healthy social institutions need to be able to adapt to changing demands, and, right now — despite some key recent victories — America’s model for urban growth is not capable of being sufficiently responsive. We need better results. With tent cities, shelters at capacity, and impossibly high rents, I fear that some US cities are at a turning point, and may be moving in the direction of those global cities where a mismatch between the population and available housing creates a permanent class of homeless or barely-housed people. To head that off, we would need elected officials and municipal planning officials to get serious about authorizing much more housing construction. We would also require a more coherent policy on migration, one that acknowledges the centrality of affordable homes to successful resettlement. From what I can see, I am not optimistic.
Whether a niche law-and-planning blog can do much to move the needle on these kinds of policy goals is debatable. Over the past few years, I’ve shifted to wrtiting articles that have had wider exposure. I have also been working on some primary-source research into the factors that shaped the more responsive American urbanism of the pre-zoning era, because I think we can learn a lot from the past; I know that I have, simply by examining it. In the meantime, I do still plan to write here on occasion, and will share links to any pieces I publish elsewhere. As always, I am happy to receive feedback. One of the best things about writing is the opportunity it provides to hear from others. That said, please forgive me for having posts that appear like rare birds.
Edward Glaeser on the Housing Shortage
In his recent City Journal article, “Free to Build,” Edward Glaeser begins to reframe the zoning-driven housing crisis as a national phenomenon, requiring national solutions, rather than a merely local or coastal problem. Advocating for the use of federal policy to unwind the cumulative, national effects of zoning overreach strikes me as a stark milestone in the right-leaning policy world. That said, I think this may represent one facet of a pent-up, multipartisan response to the NIMBYism that, for generations, has damaged the US economy and environment through land-use policies that promote rent-seeking behavior and de facto segregation at the expense of traditional, participatory, incremental urban growth.
A Top Ten List for Urban Code Reform
R. John Anderson has an article at CNU’s Public Square identifying ten code-reform priorities that would help to address the endemic shortage of housing units in the United States. Several of these principles align with recommendations I’ve touched on here at LT, or in other articles, including: provisions to reduce parking requirements for new units; zoning that allows accessory dwelling units (ADUs) to be built, as-of-right; amendments to state and local building codes to allow small multifamily (Missing Middle) buildings to be built in accordance with the International Residential Code (IRC), rather than the more compliance-costly International Building Code (IBC); and a general liberalization of structural massing requirements and lot-size minimums, to facilitate more efficient uses of scarce metropolitan land parcels. This top-ten approach strikes me as a practical summary of salient points for code reformers to keep in mind. David Letterman would be proud.
To this list, I would add: amending state subdivision statutes (or municipal ordinances, in some places) to actively encourage the creation of new, tiny, privately-owned lots. I have in mind parcels less than 30 feet wide at the street line, with no side yard requirements. This would allow traditional attached buildings to be built in diverse designs, as part of a coherent overall pattern. Over time, this would foster the growth of a variety of small housing options, along with the richness and equity of a broad base of participatory property ownership. Ultimately, it would allow the kinds of tight urban blocks to be generated today, in plausible settings, that already characterize our favored old neighborhoods.
A Real New York Institution Survives
The WSJ recently ran a fitting tribute to Gray’s Papaya, still going strong after about 48 years on the UWS. Reading this article, I learned a few important things, including that the original Gray’s began as a Papaya King franchise; and that its Recession Special — two hot dogs and a juice drink for $1.95 — was invented in response to an actual recession in 1982.
Sadly, I haven’t been to Gray’s since the iconic bright-yellow Greenwich Village location (Sixth Avenue and West 8th Street) closed a decade ago. Time does fly. I remember going there for a midnight snack when I lived at the New School dorm in 1999. I liked their piña colada — and the tinny sound of 1950s oldies, playing on WCBS-FM, that spilled onto the night sidewalk with the stark fluorescent light and the smell of burning hot dogs.
The erstwhile Gray’s Papaya at Sixth Avenue and West Eighth Street in New York closed around 2014.
No, You Cannot Bicycle Out of a Century of Cars
This piece in the FT begins with an enticing premise, namely, that 19th-century urbanism achieved an ideal form, only to see it eroded by cars. True enough. Then it shifts to a common 21st-century refrain — an assertion that we can have the best of all worlds because, unlike the benighted souls who populated this planet before us, we moderns enjoy the limitless wonders of technology.
Eh, not really.
This framing isn’t completely wrong. In their better parts, Western cities of the 19th century were beautiful. No one is building new places that look like Sugar Hill or Park Slope today, and that is a shame. As an advocate for more traditional forms of urbanism, I believe that 19th-century cities expanded under a more workable framework than today’s zoned neighborhoods, and that the old way of doing things often produced practical and attractive results. (That said, the tenements of the Lower East Side provide a good counterpoint.) Meanwhile, I think one could fairly lay blame for much of the subpar urbanism since about 1920 on the rising influence of cars. If nothing else, cars decreased the emphasis builders once placed on the kinds of urban details that disappear when buildings are passed quickly.
But here’s the elephant in the room: in the United States, we now have a century’s worth of neighborhoods that were built for cars, and a large proportion of people live in those neighborhoods. Those people also need continued access to city centers.
People who argue that city motorists should be relentlessly harassed with fees, penalties, and parking rules, as a strategy to discourage the use of private cars in cities, are out of touch in a way that betrays their own privilege (despite the progressive veneer of such rhetoric). Sure, some large US cities, like New York, Chicago, and possibly Philadelphia, have adequate public transit service in core neighborhoods. (I say adequate because I’ve spent far too many years on the NYC subway to be any more generous.) That said, the parts of these cities that are adequately served tend to be the most expensive. For the vast majority of the working- and middle-class residents of the same urban regions, public transit is either a rare bird (I’m looking at you, once-per-hour buses in the suburbs!) or a hybrid option that includes driving (e.g., to the nearest subway or commuter rail station). Oftentimes, the transfer from car to public transit is further complicated by a serious lack of affordable parking options near transit nodes. This is a long-term failure of urban and regional planning policy that ought to be addressed. It is not a reason to vilify and harass residents of outlying neighborhoods who need to come into the central city.
As for predicting that e-bikes will soon be the primary form of urban transport, I almost don’t know where to begin. Are these enthusiasts unaware of the proportion of humans who are elderly, disabled, or simply dislike riding bicycles? Do they not know that people have young children? Have they never been to a city that experiences winter, or rain, or blazing heat? Do they not understand being tired at the end of a long day, or have they not noticed the many miles that often separate central business districts from the places where most people find homes? The idea is laughable. Subways (and commuter trains) are the arteries of global cities.
Until planners find ways to accommodate ordinary weather conditions (and the large number of us who live in outlying or car-centric locations), this silliness about attacking and vilifying motorized vehicles (including, apparently, now subways) has to stop.
Salutations, and Some Readings
I’ve been writing less here over the past year because, to be candid, my writing capacity has been soaked up by other commitments. That said, we’ve been seeing a flurry of articles in the MSM over the past few months that confirm a growing recognition of one of the key premises that this blog has emphasized for more than a decade: the role of excessive, cumulative land use regulations in the chronic shortage of metropolitan affordable housing.
Thought I’d check in to post a round-up of some of the more interesting ones:
https://nypost.com/2022/12/24/how-to-solve-new-york-citys-affordable-housing-problem/
https://www.city-journal.org/keep-talent-with-new-housing-new-york-city
You heard it here, first.
Edward Hopper’s New York
Positive review by James Panero in this month’s New Criterion. Hope to see it before it closes.
The Decline of Chinatown’s Bilingual Street-Name Signs
I’ve always liked New York’s Chinatown, and its unique, bilingual riff on standard street-naming has highlighted the special qualities of this neighborhood for as long as I can remember — distinguishing its corners from those in the surrounding blocks of the Lower East Side and the so-called Civic Center (that cluster of neoclassical courthouses and public buildings centered on Foley Square). So this article at the Times gave me a pang of sadness — zeroing in, as it does, on a small but meaningful detail that I’d also noticed, showing how cities can change slowly, then all at once.
Several years ago, I had the good fortune to work in the Municipal Building, on Centre Street, for some time. Being there daily afforded me frequent opportunities to cover the blocks of Chinatown on foot (as well as the various subparts of the Lower East Side and SoHo), block by block, during lunch hours. I noticed then that the center of gravity was moving eastward, with a commercial nexus increasingly focused on East Broadway, far from the old core along Canal, Mott, and Mulberry Streets.
I also noticed that the new street-name signs were rarely subtitled, like the older ones had been:
The Times essay, linked above, covers the history of these signs in the context of the history of the neighborhood. I do hope their decline is not a harbinger of rapid change. There have been rumors that Chinatown could soon be made a target for more intense gentrification; and some has already begun. But because it has not gone full-scale (yet), Chinatown is one of the few places in Lower Manhattan that retains some of the character of an older New York City — a messy, discordant, multilayered urban universe (photos by your webmaster) whose spirit has largely been tamed and curated into submission, elsewhere in the tangle of narrow downtown blocks that once teemed with so much human variety.
That is to say, Chinatown is still New York City, as it was meant to be. And I, for one, hope it will stay that way for a while longer.
Inventing a National Currency in a Divided Nation
Here’s an engaging essay by Roger Lowenstein, at the WSJ, plugging a new book he’s written on the same theme: the early story of U.S. paper money and its debut by the Lincoln administration during the Civil War. This snapshot illustrates how hard it would be to overstate the transformative force of that bloody war in U.S. history. So much that has shaped and defined the modern Nation, not merely in areas of federalism and abolition, but also especially in the landscapes of law and economics, can be traced to the crucible of the 1860s. Our paper money — vested with an intangible faith in a particular living system, rather than a redemption value in a abidingly precious metal — is another ghost of that time.