But my argument assumed that new development would in fact bring traffic wherever it occurred. A new study by three North Carolina State University scholars suggests otherwise. The study concludes that “rural locations are more likely to experience an increase in traffic due to increased development as compared to urban land uses.” (p. 19). This is because “locations that did not experience a significant traffic increase… had a higher traffic volume before development”. (p. 20). This might be because those areas were “already highly saturated, which served as a major disincentive for the migration of traffic” (id.)

So in other words, if I am understanding this paper correctly, an already-congested area will not get much more congested with new development, because people react to congestion by going elsewhere or using slightly different routes. By contrast, when a basically uncongested area gets new development, the new development does not create enough traffic to scare off drivers.

The post traffic and development appeared first on Market Urbanism.

Our results demonstrate that the places that contribute most to mixing by economic class are not civic spaces like churches or schools, but large, affordable chain restaurants and stores. Insofar as policy makers seek to increase exposure between different classes, they should pay attention to the role of firms in shaping class mixing.

It is not necessarily surprising that chain restaurants tend to be places where people of all classes mix. The very design of these restaurants is meant to appeal to the widest audience possible. Behold your local Cheesecake Factory. It is usually found in suburban shopping centers where land is cheap, such that the Factories are large and capable of holding all large numbers of customers. And of course, The Factory’s famously tome-like menu, which has everything from hamburgers to orange chicken to shrimp scampi, betrays the chain’s intention to serve as many different walks of life as possible.

But it is also worth considering that chains, even if they are designed to appeal to the largest audience possible, might be playing an outsized role in class integration. Research from City Observatory argues that chains tend to proliferate in more car-dependent cities. It is not entirely obvious why this is the case, but some theories suggest themselves. The typical car-dependent shopping center relies on “anchor stores,” well-known brands that can attract a sufficiently large enough pool of customers. Small, unknown businesses are at a distinct disadvantage in these spaces. Thus, to the extent that the typical American is driving to the Kroeger or Starbucks down the street, as opposed to stopping by the bodega or coffee shop at the corner, then it should come as no surprise that rich and poor are more likely to rub shoulders at chains.

Density zoning also limits the opportunities that rich and poor have for coming into contact. By excluding multi-family development in many neighborhoods, the less affluent are often de facto excluded from living in the same subdivisions as the more affluent. The sorts of neighborhoods in which rich and poor would have ample opportunity to bump into each other at local haunts interwoven into the fabric of the neighborhood simply don’t exist in much of America.

But it is worth considering how much “rubbing” is really occurring at these spots. In The Death and Life of Great American Cities, Jane Jacobs explains how many people in her neighborhood in the West Village would leave their keys at the local deli:

In our family, for example, when a friend wants to use our place while we are away for a weekend or everyone happens to be out during the day… we tell such a friend that he can pick up the key at the delicatessen across the street. Joe Cornacchia, who keeps the delicatessen usually has a dozen or so keys at a time for handing out like this. He has a special drawer for them.

By contemporary standards, this is a shocking degree of trust that these acquaintances are placing in the deli owner. I would be shocked to learn that any similar arrangements exist at a chain establishment. Nor do I believe that rich and poor (or even people from the same classes) are sharing local gossip or getting to know each other at the Cheesecake Factory. At most, the shoulder rubbing is probably limited to the literal bumping of shoulders as one family enters and the other exits the Factory.

It would be interesting to where the rich and poor rub shoulders in locales with more options beyond chains, or in locales with less restrictive zoning. My hunch would be that we would see relatively more socializing among classes, and richer linkages at that, in cities with more density and more options beyond chains.

The post Rubbing Shoulders: Maybe appeared first on Market Urbanism.

But is supply really increasing that rapidly? Federal statistics on housing construction are at a Census housing data webpage. I looked at the “New Housing Units Completed” table and found that about 216,000 housing units in structures with over five units were completed in the first half of 2023.

On the positive side, this is definitely an improvement over the 2010s, when the economy was still recovering from the 2008 recession. For example, in the first half of 2019, just over 169,000 such units were built, and 2018 was pretty similar.

But is construction still up to Reagan-era levels? Not really. In the first half of 1986, almost 258,000 relevant units were completed. And in the first half of 1973, just over 378,000(!) such units were built.

And these levels of construction were in a less populous country. Today the U.S. population is about 335 million, up from about 240 million in 1986 and 212 million in 1973. So if construction had kept up with population, our new unit count would be about 1/3 higher than in 1986, and almost 60 percent higher than in 1973. Instead, construction went down.

To put the facts another way: our half-year multifamily construction rate is about 644 per one million Americans for 2023, down from 1075 per million in 1986 and 1783 per million in 1973. That’s not my idea of a “50-year high.”

The post Is there really a building boom? Not as much as you might think appeared first on Market Urbanism.

But what’s important to recall – especially for those of us under, uh, 41 – is that pedestrianized streets aren’t a new concept coming into style, they’re an old one that’s been in a three-decade decline. Samantha Matuke, Stephan Schmidt, and Wenzheng Li tracked the rise and decline of the pedestrian mall up to the onset of the pandemic. Even in the urbanizing 2000s and 2010s, 14 pedestrian malls were “demalled” against 4 streets that were pedestrianized:

In a 1977 handbook promoting pedestrianization, Roberto Brambilla and Gianni Longo admit that some of the earliest “successes” had already failed:

In Pomona, California, the first year [1962] the mall received nationwide press coverage as a successful model of urban revitalization; there was a 40 percent increase in sales. But the mall was slowly abandoned by its patrons, and now, after fifteen years of operation, it is almost totally deserted.

A Handbook for Pedestrian Action, Roberto Brambilla and Gianni Longo, p. 25

One obvious reason for the failure of many other pedestrianized streets is that they were too little, too late. The pedestrian mall was one of several strategies against the overwhelming ebb tide of retail from downtowns in the postwar era. They weren’t seen as alternatives to driving, but destinations for drivers, who could park in the new, convenient downtown lots that replaced dangerous, defunct factories.

A minority of the postwar-era malls survived. The predictors of survival are sort of obvious in hindsight: tourism, sunny weather, and lots of college students, among other things.

Some of the streets which were “malled” and “demalled” have rebounded nicely in the 2000s. The slideshow below shows Sioux Falls’ Phillips Avenue in 1905, 1934, c. 1975, and 2015.

The saddest case might be Baltimore’s Old Town Mall, pedestrianized in 1968. Since it’s still legally closed to cars, it’s not reckoned among Matuke et al’s “failures”. As in many other failures, this commercial strip was already in bad shape in the 1960s. Subsidies and buzz around pedestrianization gave it a short-term fillip, but the downward trend took hold again quickly.

This time is different, maybe

Pedestrian mall advocacy today is somewhat different, although the death of retail everywhere today echoes the 1950s downtowns. Perhaps most obvious is the change in commercial uses: today’s pedestrian malls are anchored by the patios of eateries and drinkeries. Those seem a more natural pairing with outdoor space than shopping. (Even better are playgrounds, which are still absent from most pedestrian malls).

The valence of cars in cities has also flipped from asset to liability. If you’re aiming to reduce car space in cities anyway, busy social strips are obvious places to start.

What does “failure” mean?

A pedestrian mall with low traffic is considered a failure. But we don’t normally hold a road (or sidewalk) to that standard. And if stores or homes sit vacant on a normal street, we rarely blame the infrastructure. If you want, you can see this as a car-centric conspiracy. But I think it’s more reasonable to admit that pedestrian malls are pitched as commercial and social spaces, a potentially delightful blend of public and private space with benefits to all. When that fails, like any commercial concept, it needs to be rolled up.

But – like other commercial failures – this need not be a big deal. Restaurants fail without fail. Social commerce may be more fragile than other forms, because it can go into a downward spiral.

Why not leave a street pedestrianized even if it’s a commercial and social failure? In most cases, there are real costs to the closure, either to traffic circulation or accessibility and deliveries for whatever businesses (or homes) remain. In addition, abandoned pedestrian spaces frequently feel unsafe. Finally, there are cases – like Baltimore’s Old Town Mall – which can remain pedestrian-only even in failure, because there’s nothing better to do with the space.

Failure can be fine

The long, slow, recent death of the postwar pedestrian mall is a solid reason for city bureaucrats and merchants to be skeptical of eager proposals. For every photo of a vibrant throng on a pedestrian street, they can produce one of failed stores or empty pavement.

A notable improvement of the COVID-era street conversions over the 1960s and 70s pedestrian malls is their physical simplicity. Most use simple barriers and moveable street furniture, sometimes paint, to transform what is otherwise the same span of asphalt. This allows regular, small changes. If, like a restaurant, avenue du Mont-Royal fails in five or ten years, it will have been a success – and the barriers can come back down.

The post Pedestrianized streets usually fail – and that’s OK appeared first on Market Urbanism.

Earlier WSJ reporting includes a map of Flannery’s holdings, which are predictably a bit scattered. To zoom out and give a scale comparison, I outlined a 55,000 acre contiguous blob around the core of the Flannery holdings.

At the density of nearby Vacaville, this much land would be home to nearly 300,000 people. If it matched Oakland, it would be more than twice that.

Many, especially at the Charter Cities Institute, have written about new cities. But can a new city ever be truly “market urbanist”? Or is the intent to create a city necessarily an exercise in centralized planning?

Monopoly

Bizarrely, the one actor who could most purely create a market-driven city is the government: It could use eminent domain to assemble only the land needed for new infrastructure, tax all landowners fairly, and allow competition among landowners to compete via development and land use.

At the opposite extreme, when a profit-maximizing private actor owns all the land, it faces a unique form of the monopolist’s tradeoff: The longer it holds onto land, the higher price it can charge on sale, but the less that land contributes to urban growth. One way to sidestep this tradeoff is for the monopolist to develop land itself. But of course that concentrates risk, and the cost of development is at least a hundred times more than the land cost (which appears to have averaged about $16,000 per acre in Solano County).

Zero to one

So what’s a mega-landowner to do? I’d start by installing a handful of mobile home parks. Aside from creating some much-needed space for the large workforce that Flannery will need, residents on the site will serve as a weathervane. Their behavior – jobs, shopping, recreation – will show what amenities are already valued, and which are missing at the margin.

Flannery will need some Burnham-scale plans, especially if it hopes for a big exemption from California’s Kafkaesque environmental review law. But the logic of market urbanism should push a central planner toward marginal, halting, piecemeal actions – the kind of steps that are foundational to the growth and health of any city.

The post Solano County Dreamin’: Is there a market urbanist way to build a new city? appeared first on Market Urbanism.

After examining some poll data, I discovered that the answer depends on how the question is asked. A 2023 Yougov poll asked respondents to choose between two alternative views: “People should be free to buy land and develop real estate where they please” and “The government should limit where people are allowed to build things.” 64 percent of Republicans favored the free-market option, as opposed to only 47 percent of Democrats.

Similarly, a 2023 California poll asked Californians whether state government should “ease current land use and environmental restrictions to increase the supply of housing.” 64 percent of Republicans favored less regulation, as opposed to only 48 percent of Democrats. Similarly, 62 percent of conservatives and only 49 percent of liberals favored less regulation. Thus, it seems that where development issues are framed as a choice between government regulation and freedom, Democrats are more pro-regulation and Republicans more pro-freedom.

Where questions about regulation exclude the magic word “government”, partisan differences become a bit narrower. A July 2022 Yougov poll asked about removing “Regulations and codes that prevent developers from constructing more housing”. Republicans favored the free-market answer by a 43-40% margin, while Democrats disagreed by a 45-38% margin.

Polls that don’t directly reference regulation sometimes show that Democrats are more pro-housing. For example, a June 2022 Yougov poll asked respondents whether more apartments should be built: 83 percent of Democrats said yes, as opposed to 68 percent of Republicans. When asked whether more apartments should be built in respondents’ “local area”, the Democratic percentage dropped to 74 percent, and the Republican percentage to 50 percent.

When a poll asks generally about “density” and “development” rather than about apartments or homes or government regulation, poll support collapses among both Democrats and Republicans. The July 2022 Yougov poll asked about “Changing zoning practices to allow for more high-density development”. Only 39 percent of Democrats favored this idea, and an even smaller percentage of Republicans (24 percent) agreed.

A more idiosyncratic question, from Echelon Insights,

In sum, public opinion on new housing depends on how the issue is framed. Polls that emphasize freedom, government regulation, and environmental concerns tend to show that Republicans favor less regulation. On the other hand, polls that emphasize conflicts over density and development tend to show that Democrats are more pro-housing.

*Because it could be interpreted to mean that building more housing included “reducing… affordable housing close to public transit” OR to mean that “building more housing in high demand areas” included building “affordable housing close to public transit.”

The post Are Republicans or Democrats more pro-housing? Yes. appeared first on Market Urbanism.

In areas where there’s already some gentrification pressure, landlords face a timing problem: they can renovate (or sell to a developer) now, and cash out. Or they can hoard the property and wait until prices rise, supplying low-cost housing in the meantime.

Land value taxes are specifically designed to penalize the hoard-and-wait approach by raising the annual tax cost of sitting on valuable land. It is specifically designed to accelerate neighborhood change. That’s the point. That’s what it says on the tin.

Gentrification isn’t the only urban problem, and maybe it’s a small enough urban problem that a land value tax is a good idea anyway. But I think most of the benefits of Georgism can be unlocked with George-ish schemes (like renovation abatements or vacant land taxes) that are more narrowly designed.

The post Gentrification: An LVT Would Do That appeared first on Market Urbanism.

The writing in these posts is a bit squirrelly (or is it Straussian?), but as best I can make out, Tyler is deviating from the mainline economic views of externalities and prices by arguing a few points:

1. Urban serendipity and growth are high-value externalities quite distinct from the usual efficiencies of combining large amounts of capital and labor in downtown office towers.
2. Occasional visitors to the city find very high value there (presumably via a long-right-tail distribution)
   • including by creating demand for new goods
3. Congestion pricing will (a) decrease the number of people in the city, (b) particularly high-value visitors.

He also makes some specific critiques of the mechanism design of the proposed NYC congestion charge. It’s worth getting that right, but let’s leave the technicalities aside here.

Tyler’s points – as I’ve summarized (or mangled) them – seem like a mix of reasonable and wrong, although in several cases difficult if not impossible falsify. I’ll tackle these points in a completely irresponsible order.

2. Distinguished visitors

On the second point: Diminishing marginal returns is enough to give Tyler’s argument the benefit of the doubt. The first visit to a symphony or subway likely has a bigger inspirational impact than the seventh or seven-hundredth. And outsiders may bring insights to the city in an Eli-Whitney-and-the-cotton-gin way.

But for consuming new goods? Perhaps visitors’ demand is enough to sustain new imitations of low-end consumer goods (like a McDonalds in Chennai, if there is one). But for narratives of urban creativity, I prefer Malcolm Gladwell’s account of Airwalk shoes or Peter Thiel’s identification of eBay “PowerSellers” as a stepping stone for PayPal. A concentrated, differentiated – weird – population is better grounds for scaling innovation.

Cities are extremely good places to form weird communities. But slow travel within the city hurts it. Just as Alain Bertaud argues for job access, effective social access is limited by the human density and travel speed.

3b. The stay-at-homes

Tyler affiliates “congestion pricing” with the provincial sentiment “residents good, visitors bad.” This isn’t my interpretation, but I’m not a New Yorker.

As for who is likely to be dissuaded from coming to New York at all by an additional $23 driving fee, it is likely to be someone for whom the $23 represents a large percentage increase of the cost of their trip. For a visitor from outside the metro area making a vacation or work visit, the fee is a minor nuisance, perhaps 5% of a two- or three-day trip that includes expensive parking, gas, a hotel, tickets, and meals. By contrast, a Jersey City couple thinking about driving in for an ice cream and a walk in Central Park might see their trip cost double.

1. Mode shift, job shift

In the long run, the person most likely to stop coming to Manhattan entirely is the car commuter who really dislikes or fears transit. In the short run, car commuters and other city regulars – people for whom the cost would add up day after day – would be most likely to stop driving. Many would switch to other modes or work more days from home.

Ultimately, some of those people would decrease their labor supply to the city. Since drivers tend to be the highest-paid workers, there could be an echo of the 1970s trend of moving corporate headquarters to the CEO’s backyard in Westchester County.

Unlike Tyler’s narrative, this is a very boring risk of inefficiencies in capital-and-labor markets. In fact, maybe nudging some of the too-efficient, too-well paid financiers out of the city will lower prices and create more room for urban creativity, just as tariffs and Luddism can boost growth by forcing people to solve problems creatively instead of efficiently.

3a. Fewer cars…fewer people?

I addressed the “particularly” clause of the third bullet. But there’s a more basic question: Will congestion pricing increase or decrease the number of people in a central city? I wasn’t able to find research on this. One plausibly causal study found that an unexpected congestion price increase in Singapore sharply lowered the value of retail real estate, but not office or residential. London statistics show that entries have grown post-congestion price. This isn’t causal, but it does bring home just how small cars can loom in the social life of a major downtown.

Bus traffic is a key variable here: to the extent that congestion prices speed up bus service (including jitneys or informal car-shares), faster traffic could make trips to a center much more viable. My prior is that this effect would predominate in developing world cities (especially those without rail transit) but be weaker in the developed world. Still, London buses counterbalanced most of the private car decline in the first two years of congestion pricing.

Will congestion pricing improve the quality of life for non-car users and induce more demand to be downtown? Air quality will probably improve, but not a huge amount. There’s no difference between sitting at a café while cars pass at 10 mph instead of 5 mph.

The steel-man case for congestion pricing is that the authorities will spend the money as NYC’s have promised, to improve transit, and will be sufficiently defensive of their scheme to follow through. Significant service improvements on transit could lure far more visitors into downtown (since the price of a transit trip in NYC is mostly inconvenience and distaste), generating the kind of eucongestion that Tyler argues is so essential to urban creativity.

The post Will congestion pricing hurt cities? appeared first on Market Urbanism.