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A list of changes to make it easier to build beautiful and walkable places

chrisbarber.co

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Re: A list of changes to make it easier to build beautiful and walkable places

#111

Post by crooked-v »

rickydroll wrote: post #84
harmmonica wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry to focus on the greedy developers comment, but one thing I'd ask you to consider is that sometimes you need some greedy developers to balance things out a bit. The US has gotten so bad at building housing supply to meet the demand that prices have obviously gotten out of whack. The past several years in Austin, TX, though, as an example, have shown that unshackling some greedy developers to come in and build is…

Things are bad in the US for housing because we count on market forces to provide what's necessary. Market forces shut down development if housing prices drop. After all, why start a project if you have a chance of being underwater by the time you're done with it? see: https://clmarohn.substack.com/p/what-happens-when-housing-pr... If you want affordable housing, it will have to be government-funded, allowing develop…

> Market forces shut down development if housing prices drop

There's a huge gap there where building housing would still be entirely profitable, if only we didn't have the self-inflicted wound of the permitting and zoning process in most major US being extremely slow and expensive.

For example, new row houses are explicitly or implicitly illegal in many cities (and thus all the old ones are extremely expensive), despite being both immensely popular for urban families and cheap to build in bulk.

Re: A list of changes to make it easier to build beautiful and walkable places

#112

Post by rickydroll »

harmmonica wrote: post #98
rickydroll wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Things are bad in the US for housing because we count on market forces to provide what's necessary. Market forces shut down development if housing prices drop. After all, why start a project if you have a chance of being underwater by the time you're done with it? see: https://clmarohn.substack.com/p/what-happens-when-housing-pr... If you want affordable housing, it will have to be government-funded, allowing develop…

What you say is true to an extent, but I think you're underestimating a couple of things. First, some real estate developers enjoy very good margins, particularly those who purchase land, entitle the land and either build the improvements themselves or sell the land to someone who follows through with the construction. That is to say that even when prices/rents compress there tends to still be opportunity for develop…

The Substack article I linked in my previous post presents a compelling case for why and when builders stop building. Your position that we could fix that by removing regulations. I think that's not a wise course of action because many of the housing regulations are written in blood, and if you're going to eliminate regulations, you need to understand why they were there in the first place and how much blood is behind them.

But even with regulations, developers don't care. see: https://www.youtube.com/@cyfyhomeinspections. This bloke is a building inspector in Arizona, and he documents all the shortcomings and tricks that builders will use.

You are right, I don't believe that increasing the supply of housing will decrease prices because housing is a financial instrument, and the whole system is so leveraged that it will fall apart if prices decline. One could claim that it fell apart in 2008. However, if you were to move housing out of the asset class, you would cause significant financial trauma to tens of millions of people. How would you make them whole?

We have an example of oversupply not leading to price drops. Commercial real estate, such as storefronts and offices, continues to maintain a high price, even though a property has been idle for years. One would expect it to sell/lease for less due to the lack of demand, but it doesn't.

The only thing I know that will decrease housing prices predictably or consistently is not maintaining the property. Let the property become worn, dysfunctional, and substandard. Some classes of landlords have made this an art form.

My responses are always long-winded, but that's a side effect of using speech recognition. :-)

Re: A list of changes to make it easier to build beautiful and walkable places

#113

Post by rickydroll »

crooked-v wrote: post #111
rickydroll wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Things are bad in the US for housing because we count on market forces to provide what's necessary. Market forces shut down development if housing prices drop. After all, why start a project if you have a chance of being underwater by the time you're done with it? see: https://clmarohn.substack.com/p/what-happens-when-housing-pr... If you want affordable housing, it will have to be government-funded, allowing develop…

> Market forces shut down development if housing prices drop There's a huge gap there where building housing would still be entirely profitable, if only we didn't have the self-inflicted wound of the permitting and zoning process in most major US being extremely slow and expensive. For example, new row houses are explicitly or implicitly illegal in many cities (and thus all the old ones are extremely expensive), desp…

Multifamily housing is not terribly popular here in New England, mostly because developers are cheap ass bastards and skimp on noise proofing. When my partner was renting in a two-family house, we could hear the landlord's child running, yelling, screaming, and dropping things. It was hell. It was one of the primary motivations for us to get our own house. My only experience with good multifamily housing was in Estonia, where the walls were thick and didn't pass sound at all.

Row houses are an interesting solution as long as there is a 30 dB or greater sound attenuation between apartments and a 90-minute firewall between them. Row housing is also interesting because it allows for the inclusion of a garage and charging infrastructure beneath the house, as well as a space to store home-scale batteries charged by your rooftop solar panels.

Re: A list of changes to make it easier to build beautiful and walkable places

#114

Post by rickydroll »

Karrot_Kream wrote: post #105
rickydroll wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Things are bad in the US for housing because we count on market forces to provide what's necessary. Market forces shut down development if housing prices drop. After all, why start a project if you have a chance of being underwater by the time you're done with it? see: https://clmarohn.substack.com/p/what-happens-when-housing-pr... If you want affordable housing, it will have to be government-funded, allowing develop…

> Another way of expressing it is the government pays for housing to be built at cost plus and then charges rent according to what people can afford, i.e., income and expense-based rent. Does this sound like a realistic policy in any part of the US to you? Do you think the tax base in the US is eager to increase their taxes significantly to fund the creation of a government housing arm? My experience has been that ev…

My opinion is influenced by what I've seen and read about Helsinki social housing. As for the stuff on the list being more palatable, I'm not so sure. Many of the things on the list are the reasons why I don't want to live in a city. Remember, I'm a country mouse. However, I don't see them as being particularly viable either, because each one has an impact on many other items on the list. And if you're going to change one, you need to change several to make it cost-effective in terms of money and political capital.

Re: A list of changes to make it easier to build beautiful and walkable places

#115

Post by harmmonica »

hexis wrote: post #81
harmmonica wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you expand on that a bit? I'm not sure I quite understand, but I'm interested to know how you're thinking about it.

I would not ask normal people to start walking in dangerous neighborhoods in order to increase foot traffic and make it safer, those first folks are at great risk of just getting hurt. I would, however, try to keep any safe area with good foot traffic that way, or even increase foot traffic.

I'm not sure downvotes are the right way for folks to disagree with you though I'm thinking some folks think you're trolling. But I'll assume you aren't trolling and since I asked you to reply to my question I thought I would just clarify: I wasn't suggesting that you stick people in harm's way in order to decrease crime (that would very much be the tail wagging the dog). What I was saying is that when increased numbers of people are on the street research has shown that crime decreases as a result. It's not that someone's holding a gun to the head of the new people who show up on the street. It's that those new people choose, of their own volition, to be on the street because something (investment, the government, other residents) made the street more desirable to be on and a byproduct of that increase of people is a decrease in crime (because there are literally more eyeballs watching the street (not watching for crime or to deter crime, but because criminals aren't as likely to commit crime when there are more witnesses)).

Re: A list of changes to make it easier to build beautiful and walkable places

#116

Post by constantcrying »

petsfed wrote: post #106
constantcrying wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I see by your comment history that you live in Germany. You do understand that even California is considerably less urban than your country, right? Is it? Much of Germany is rural, especially manufacturing, you would be surprised. >But if the only solution to the drug problem in the US is incarceration, given the current state of prisons in the US, a more humane approach might be mass executions. My point is that th…

Some quick googling suggests that 80% of California's land area is rural, compared to 39% of Germany's. Considering they're very nearly the same size, that's considerable. And also understandable, considering that Germany has more than double the population. At no point did I say "don't try to solve the drug problem". I even said as much when I said "help the homeless get their life back on track". What I'm trying to…

>but I am here to say that its a lot more complicated than "get rid of the drugs, and people won't be homeless".

The only reason it is not as easy as that is, because it is very, very hard to get rid of the drugs. But if that was accomplished and mentally ill people were properly institutionalized, then homelessness would become a non-issue.

>If it were that easy, then Reagan's War On Drugs would've actually, you know, worked.

Nonsense. The war on drugs failed to get rid of the drugs.

Re: A list of changes to make it easier to build beautiful and walkable places

#117

Post by potato3732842 »

xnx wrote: post #73

Good list. By my count, 77% (27 of 35) of the items in the list are removing restrictions (many of them put there by urban planners).

>many of them put there by urban planners

At the behest of the prior generation of shortsighted attempts to build a utopia.

Not that this should be in any way construed as excusing industry fads at the expense of the public.

Re: A list of changes to make it easier to build beautiful and walkable places

#118

Post by sdenton4 »

Aurornis wrote: post #104
bix6 wrote: post #15

My dream is for my section of my town to ban cars. It’s already heavy pedestrian but if the cars went away (and everyone had to walk or e-bike or mobility scooter in the zone) it would be a utopia. Sure there’d be some issues to address and frustrations but we’d figure it out. The net would be amazingly positive.

> (and everyone had to walk or e-bike or mobility scooter in the zone) E-bikes are very popular where I live. At first it was great to see people of all ages out biking everywhere. But now everyone has started modifying their e-bikes to be overpowered and not require any pedaling. A lot of the cheap e-bikes have trivial procedures to unlock the power limit. Anyone who can search Reddit can figure out what to buy and…

Get the cars out of the streets and the (possibly modified) ebikes onto them... They have a literally smaller footprint, and are a huge improvement over cars.

Re: A list of changes to make it easier to build beautiful and walkable places

#119

Post by potato3732842 »

amelius wrote: post #5
abraxas wrote: post #2

If I'm being honest, this list is really daunting. I had no idea that so much red tape stood between North America and pedestrian (i.e. human) friendly places.

Every point on that list is going to generate so many objections that it will probably never take off. Therefore instead of making a list it is probably better to start a dialogue.

I'm already imagining the idiots who's made regulation worship their religion coming out of the woodwork to screech about how setbacks and parking minimums are "written in blood"

Re: A list of changes to make it easier to build beautiful and walkable places

#120

Post by cpursley »

HEmanZ wrote: post #59
bix6 wrote: post #15

My dream is for my section of my town to ban cars. It’s already heavy pedestrian but if the cars went away (and everyone had to walk or e-bike or mobility scooter in the zone) it would be a utopia. Sure there’d be some issues to address and frustrations but we’d figure it out. The net would be amazingly positive.

How would you get groceries tho? Everyone would starve! (Ive had multiple family members who said this after I mentioned I didn’t have a car for 4 years while living in a major city)

When traveling in Eastern Europe I did my best to explain that you literally can't buy groceries without owning a car in most places in North America; people were legit confused by the logistics of it (even villages and single family house neighborhoods have corner grocery stores in walking distances and bus stops).
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