Zoning Ourselves to Death

One thing we could do as a country that could help reduce carbon emissions in a relatively pain-free way would be to ease regulations around what you're allowed to build where. This would reduce emissions because people living in high-density areas tend to drive less and have lower home energy usage. It would be relatively pain free because we wouldn't be talking about taking people's cars away or forcing anyone to live in densely built cities who doesn't want to. Instead, we'd be talking about letting people build denser structures if they can find people who want to live inside them.

If you go up to the Columbia Heights Metro station and then walk east just a block east you'll be struck by the hard transition from the large-for-DC new apartments on 14th street and the low density structures right around them. What's going on, you'll wonder. What's happened, simply put, is that you've moved out of an area zoned C-2-B and into an area zoned R-4. In R-4 areas, (including almost everything north of Euclid between 14th Street and Georgia Ave, pretty much the entire square between P, U, 14th, and 7th and many other parts of the city) you can't build a house taller than 3 stories (or 40 feet), you can't occupy more than 60 percent of your lot, and you can't build apartments smaller than 900 square feet per bedroom.

As a result, even though these places have become much more desirable places to live, they simply aren't allowed to accommodate very many additional residents. Instead of seeing new, denser construction to allow more and more people to live where they'd like, we see zero sum battles over "gentrification" as working class residents can't afford new, higher rents. Meanwhile, the central city's inability to accommodate all the people who'd like to live there puts enormous price pressure on the closer-in suburbs, pushing people who want the suburban lifestyle ever-further from the city center in search of affordable housing.

It's not clear to me what the federal government can really do about this since zoning is handled very, very locally in America. Maybe there's some way to create incentives for cities and inner suburbs to deregulate? I'm not sure. But it would be a good idea. If you took any particular restrictively zoned neighborhood and deregulated it, the resulting changes and dislocations might be very bothersome to people. But if you did it systematically, the impact in most places would probably be reasonably light and at the end of the process almost everyone would be better off -- you'd still be able to find housing in low-density areas if you wanted it, and you'd be closer to stuff than people who live in fringe exurbs are these days.

At any rate, as I was working away on this post I saw that Virginia Postrel has an Atlantic column on much the same subject, though she eventually veers off in a different direction from where I would have gone.

Comments

land value property taxes.

Posted by this guy | October 9, 2007 4:50 PM

It's not clear to me what the federal government can really do about this since zoning is handled very, very locally in America.

Congress could change the rules in DC, which is a start.

And, you know, the Atlantic website is not read exclusively by federal officials; is advocating for locally implemented policies against house style or something?

Posted by southpaw | October 9, 2007 4:50 PM

Matthew,

My county in Washington State is voting this weeking on allowing "Transferable Development Rights." The long term goal is that a rural farmer or private forest owner could sell the development rights to their land to a more urban developer who could then transfer them to their own project and get density bonuses, allowing them to build more densely than regulations would otherwise allow.

If applied well, it keeps the rural areas rural and the developed areas get more dense. Win win for everyone, even the farmer who gets to keep his farm instead of sell it into a whole bunch of cookie-cutter homes.

Posted by Erik Hanberg | October 9, 2007 4:52 PM

Its even harder to change in DC. You know how many cocktail party invitations will suddenly get lost in the mail if you vote to allow the lower class access to sections of DC?

Posted by Rob | October 9, 2007 4:56 PM

Houston, Texas, has no zoning. Have you ever been to Houston? Does it look to you that lacking zoning has in any way made Houston a more environmentally sound city? Do you find the city particularly notable for less driving or lower home energy usage?

Posted by rea | October 9, 2007 5:03 PM

The federal government pours a lot of money into local developments through CDBG (community development block grant), LIHTC (low income housing tax credit), and DREAM (another block grant). Making those funds contingent on sensible, high-density zoning would put a lot of pressure on cities and counties to rezone or at least create exceptions.

I believe some of the developments constructed under HOPE VI (demolish public housing projects and rebuild with privately developed, lucrative mixed-income projects with federal financing assistance to developers) already incorporate zoning exceptions, for instance, a relaxed height requirement.

Also, why the scarequotes around "gentrification"?

Posted by StJoe | October 9, 2007 5:07 PM

Yup. In my hometown of Milwaukee they have recently been heavily developing the area along the main river right next to the downtown with all kinds of neato apartment buildings and condos and lofts etc. in imitation of city living, like "let's play New York but without the noise." Ah, but they "forgot" all the businesses and shops and services. Looking upon it all from a cliff overlook last year, it struck me: yeah this is the same old dumb old Milwaukee, it's all going to be dead as a doornail, no different than the burbs, as they still all hafta make an appointment, get into their cars and go someplace else (like "the mall") to even see other people. Clue, duh: this much Jane Jacobs was right about, you want city living, you can't do it by zoning out business to strip mall areas. Either you want quiet, or you want city living with people and their inevitable noise around.

Posted by artappraiser | October 9, 2007 5:09 PM

Another thing to keep in mind when looking at insanely irrational policy is that you'll need to look for somebody powerful benefitting from the status quo. The problem with an effort to combat exorbitant housing costs is that you'll be opposing the political power of landlords and owners who realize plenty of rent increases and capital gains without actually contributing anything. If zoning policies allow developers to create denser developments, sure, they might be able to reap a windfall by generating more supply. But why do that when you can just choke the supply through zoning policy and realize gains that way?

That's why the only viable way of creating more affordable housing is to subsidize (i.e. bribe) the bastards with tax credits and other such subsidies in order to compensate them for the resultant losses when the housing supply increases. Otherwise they'll oppose anything that lowers the price of housing.

Another option is to enhance the power of the tenants lobby. I'm ready for ideas on that one.

Posted by StJoe | October 9, 2007 6:01 PM

Exactly right. There are far too many ways that opponents of inner city development can delay or even stop large developments. Just look at NYC - there are a zillion ways local groups can and have ended large developments. I've been following the development in Brooklyn of the Atlantic Yands project (where the Nets will play in 2009, among the buildings to be built there for). Ratner eventually got most of the development through, but there are still a bunch of lawsuits trying to stop it, and he had to significantly reduce the height (and, therefore, the housing density) of a number of the buildings. There ought to be much less ability of neighborhood groups to stop large developments like these.

Posted by Al | October 9, 2007 6:09 PM

Instead of seeing new, denser construction to allow more and more people to live where they'd like, we see zero sum battles over "gentrification" as working class residents can't afford new, higher rents.

Because what you're going for seems to be high-rises, and high-rises are unfriendly in a number of ways and they're really damned expensive to live in. Or more accurately, the New York effect involves lots of the well off and and lots of grinding poverty and few steps in between.

I think you could get around this with arcologies, provided someone could come up with and fund a working design. (I am thinking a three-sided pyramid oriented to give at least some sun to every side of the build. About a mile long on each side, and stepped. The steps are basically the backyards of the housing, and the inside core is cheaper apartments, shopping and infrastructure core. Seven or eight of these would suck up a lot of population; enough to start seeing rent prices drop. But nobody has quite built anything like that because of the capital investments involved.)

Zoning almost isn't going to matter; if the feds pony up the right amount of money, they can buy out the zoning.

max
['The trick is building something working.']

Posted by max | October 9, 2007 6:11 PM

Matt is right, and so is Jane Jacobs. Cities grown without too much of a heavy hand in their geography end up being much better cities. I even think American cities might have benefitted from not making every last one of them so rigidly grid-based.

Posted by CG | October 9, 2007 6:42 PM

the problem is still nimnby not in my neighbors back yard. Something that relieves the shortage of housing less than an hours commute from jobs in DC will lower the price of residences in DC and people who own their own residence in DC wouldn't like that and they vote. The suffering would be yuppies who end up euppies [young exurban professionals] don't vote in DC. It's evil and will drown DC in a few centuries but it is not just a stupid mistake.

Posted by robert Waldmann | October 9, 2007 6:44 PM

I live in a somewhat traditional neighborhood. There are many longtime residents who are invested in the community. Zoning encourages stability. Eminent domain, urban renewal, gentrification, infill development, all are ways to break up (what may be) stable pleasant neighborhoods. "There ought to be much less ability of neighborhood groups to stop large developments." High density development can lead to increased crime. (Duh.) Only for the seriously affluent, and for renters, are these other peoples problems.

Posted by huh | October 9, 2007 6:54 PM

artappraiser has got it right. It's not all about density. In fact, too much density can actually really crush urbanism (as in the Brooklyn Atlantic Yards project). It's about providing pedestrian access to commerce and services and also about decent mass transit.

Atlanta has some horrible examples of high density neighborhoods that are a far cry from the sort of livable/walkable NYC ideal. The style in Atlanta is to build enormous condo towers with 50 foot set backs and behind enormous parking structures on major arteries like Peachtree in Buckhead. When you provide this kind of mega density but don't provide walkability, the result is even worse than suburban sprawl. You end up with even more cars on the road because everyone in every condo in all of those towers has at least one car and nothing to do be drive it everywhere they go.

There has been a ton written on this subject. I recommend Kunstler's "Home from Nowhere" and "The Geography of Nowhere" as starting places on this subject.

As a side note, urbanism was a strong feature of the early Gore 2000 campaign and the reason I was such a strong early supporter.

Posted by Rob Mac | October 9, 2007 6:54 PM

I'm getting into this conversation way late, I wonder if anyone is still out there. Anyhow I wanted to make a couple of points. I'll take these as the show up in Matt's post. First, though, I live in FL which has a very structured system of land use law. Your results may vary.

1. "We'd be talking about letting people build denser structures if they can find people who want to live inside them." There is more to this than removing restrictions. Residents FLIP OUT when local governments speak about increasing density. The fear, often, is lowering property values. Densities are often calculated as floor-area ratios (FARs). In South Florida, you can usually pack government meetings with raging hordes if you suggest FAR ratios higher than 1 (which is to say the full square footage of a parcel is built). Recent redevelopment in West Palm Beach occurred only after the local government went out of it's way NOT to calculate FARs.

2. Same point as above Often, cities have what are called concurrency regulations. Services must be provided concurrent with development. Sometimes this is easy (as in providing electricity). But schools and roads also have concurrency. New development needs to be accommodated by existing roadway capacities, for instance. State DOTs generate capacity levels for different types of roads (2 lane divided/undivided, 4 lane divided/undivided). Local governments set standards based on those capacity levels (often listed as a level of service (LOS) and given A-F ratings). These standards are hard to change...and changing them makes residents FLIP OUT. They don't want more traffic, and they resist lower levels of service. You can imagine how schools would be similar.

3. Same point as above One important thing to consider here (and I think tragically under explained in the recent Kelo v New London case) is that residential land uses are money losers for cities. Cities must be careful in residential density increases in ensuring that development pays for itself. This may not be a problem in the case of DC, but remember that condo/apartment markets are volatile. What was earning loads yesterday, today is a slum.

I have much more to say (as in, the difference between "land uses" and "zoning" or the concept of "rational nexus"/"rough proportionality" when it comes to local government spending), but this is just too long. Sorry all. Point is, what Matt is suggesting is extremely hard and the opponents of it are not just the legal departments of our local governments (or the commissions themselves, for that matter). Again, sorry.

Posted by Gus | October 9, 2007 6:59 PM

You have no idea the hell that would break loose in our cities if we abandoned zoning altogether. It would be anarchy. Believe me, developers cannot be trusted to do the right thing on their own. This is especially true in the rest of the country outside of DC.

An analogy here would be Bush and diplomacy in the Middle East. He didn't think diplomacy was working so he decided, Fuck It, I'll just start invading countries. But what was needed was still diplomacy, just a different take on it.

I agree with Matt that the lack of density in cities is a problem on many many levels. But I don't think the answer is to throw out all of our zoning codes. We just need to change them.

There is no silver bullet to this problem. But if planners and developers collaborate with neighborhoods on an acceptable level of increased density, they will get more in the end than if they don't.

Also its important to focus on the increase in vitality that density can bring to a neighborhood. Talk about making great places, and people will see the upside to density.

Posted by nathan | October 9, 2007 7:44 PM

As I resident of Houston, I can assure you that lack of zoning does not lead to wiser urbanism. No doubt there is, in many cities, bad zoning and/or inflexible zoning, but the main problems have been with transit policy, especially the policies that have for the past 60 years favored freeways uber alles.

(By the way, I disagree with Rob Mac's recommendation of Kunstler's books. He is more or less on the right side on this issue, but his books are full of unsupported assertions about the negative qualities of various facets of modern urbanism. They come off as eloquent rants, not erudite arguments. And he always makes extreme claims about the negative impacts of freeways, etc.--so extreme that they are hard for me to take seriously.

I would instead recommend Suburban Nation and its rejoinder, How Cities Work by Alex Marshall. These authors are passionate but use facts and statistics, not hyperbole, to make their points.)

Posted by RWB | October 9, 2007 7:52 PM

Regarding Houston...

The point has been made a number of times about the lack of zoning in Houston. That is true, but remember that they use an alternative form of land-use regulation - restrictive covenants. So, while the instrument is different it is not as though there is unfettered freedom in developments there.

I agree with RWB on Suburban Nation and How Cities Work. The former is by a leading new urbanist firm (DPZ), the latter by a critic of new urbanism (or "the new urbanism" as the snobs say).

Posted by Gus | October 9, 2007 8:38 PM

Re: When you provide this kind of mega density but don't provide walkability, the result is even worse than suburban sprawl.

This pretty much hits the nail on the head. You don't need high density housing. You can still have single family housing in fact as long as you have the amenities that people often travel to (schools, shopping, banks, healthcare, churches, post offices, entertainment, etc.) within a modest and walkable (or bikeable) distance. Even if some people still have to drive at need (inclement weather, carrying passengers or heavy cargo) it's still better to have them driving just a half mile or so up the road than ten miles across town. This is where zoning is a problem: too many developments are zoned purely residential with even schools and churches excluded, let alone any sort of shopping. That's what needs to change.

Posted by JonF | October 9, 2007 9:10 PM

Let's all live by Portland communist rules. Everyone will be happy or at least no one will talk about what a disaster that communist - excuse me, "progressive" - utopia is really like.

Posted by Lee | October 9, 2007 9:47 PM

Re: JonF's comments

This is where zoning is a problem: too many developments are zoned purely residential with even schools and churches excluded, let alone any sort of shopping.

This is not done at the zoning level, it occurs at the land-use level. Zoning is a technical level of regulation in which details (like parking requirements, light requirements, building bulk, etc.) are codified. Land-use is a broader category in which Agriculture, Residential, Commercial, Industrial, etc. uses (as well as densities, broadly) are determined.

Posted by Gus | October 9, 2007 10:39 PM

"Atlanta has some horrible examples of high density neighborhoods that are a far cry from the sort of livable/walkable NYC ideal. The style in Atlanta is to build enormous condo towers with 50 foot set backs and behind enormous parking structures on major arteries like Peachtree in Buckhead. When you provide this kind of mega density but don't provide walkability, the result is even worse than suburban sprawl. You end up with even more cars on the road because everyone in every condo in all of those towers has at least one car and nothing to do be drive it everywhere they go."

I live in intown Atlanta and follow the high-rise developments pretty closely. Buckhead's problem is that all the condos are so high-end. Elton John isn't going to go walking to Phipps any time soon. The rich folks only live there for the view and the address.

A much better example of urban development is midtown and centennial park. It's not exactly New York yet, but the pedestrian activity there has increased exponentially over the last 5 years. If it continues, Atlanta might look somewhat like a butchered miniaturized version of Chicago in 10 years.

Atlanta's relatively lax regulations in the area also means more buildings to keep prices down. I always scratch my head about worries about housing prices. I know some homeowners get extra equity, but in the end it has the same effect as high gas prices.

New York also developed with little interference from the city. If today's burdensome regulations were there in the 1800s, there would still be cows in Harlem.

Posted by MattW | October 9, 2007 10:45 PM

When we get our revamped, steroidal transit spending, you would want federal transit money contingent on allowing (not mandating) adjacent transit-oriented development. You won't rezone everything, but you'll rezone where it counts most.

Posted by greg c | October 9, 2007 10:45 PM

Yes, but all this assumes that most parts of the country have an effective subway/elevated system, which only a few do. (And they really aren't that likely to get attractive systems within the next generation.) Otherwise, higher densities in cities just mean more traffic jams.

Posted by Steve Sailer | October 9, 2007 10:59 PM

Apropos of Sailer's last comment, last time I was in Seattle (two years ago) its monorail had derailed or otherwise became non-functional, and no one seemed in a hurry to fix it.

Posted by Fred | October 9, 2007 11:27 PM

Steve S.,

Why do you need subways/elevated railroads? Light rail works fine in Portland. The point does need to be, though, that land-use planning and transportation planning need to be done together (and traffic engineers need to be relied on less to solve congestion problems).

Posted by Gus | October 9, 2007 11:48 PM

MAtt, your are a young guy with no kids who grew up in an apartment in manhatten. Your lake of knowledge of homeowning is a handicap. Owning your onw house it great for lots of reasons, but especially if you have a family. People with families don't want to live in apartments if they can afford a house. I lived through the Seattle (Wish We Were Living In Manhatten) -ification. The talked all about urban viliages and high densisity and now they have one of the most kid free cities in the US.

So maybe the soloution is kids don't live in cities (except poor kids becasue that's where all the funded housing is) anymore, but then where do they live? The problem of cities is tied to the problems of suburbs. I think if you are really going to talk about I Wish I Dad A Pony soloutions, you make suburbs more like small cities with neighborhoods with stores and shops and schools. You spread them out around big cities with greenspace (or business parks) between, then you have fast trains into the city for commuters.

The idea that you can transform all big cities into Manhatten is not going to work. You have provide people with what they want in a way that makes sense for traffic, commerce, quality of life, and the environment.

Posted by cw | October 10, 2007 12:49 AM

Fred, the monorail you're thinking of was just a brief transport from one part of downtown to another. A much more extensive rail system that connects residential and exurban areas to downtown from both the north and south is being constructed and will be finished sometime in 2009 I think. It should have been built long ago, but again, siting difficulties and entrenched neighborhood interests nearly derailed (...) the whole process. But yeah, it's a miracle it's even getting built.

Posted by StJoe | October 10, 2007 12:54 AM

If today's burdensome regulations were there in the 1800s, there would still be cows in Harlem.

That would be fantastic! High density from the Battery to 110th, cows in Harlem. High density in Riverdale and the South Bronx, cows in Pelham Park. Fabulous!

At the very least, they should put some sheep back on Sheep's Meadow.

Posted by brooksfoe | October 10, 2007 2:03 AM

"I even think American cities might have benefitted from not making every last one of them so rigidly grid-based."

Um, Boston?

Where the cows _made_ the roads!

Posted by Ben Cronin | October 10, 2007 2:41 AM

If you want encourage high density walkable cities, there's an obvious solution: tax cars. A hefty federal gasoline tax would discourage driving. Even more effective would be to impose a high cost on public parking. In Amsterdam, the parking costs 4 EUR per hour 24 hours per day. Walking and bicycles are the dominant transport mode there.

Posted by John FC | October 10, 2007 3:17 AM

Don't DC's zoning rules prohibit buildings taller than the capitol? While removing such a rule would permit the higher densities you desire, the rule provides an urban design that highlights the importance of the capitol building as a symbol of our political institutions.

Posted by Chuck | October 10, 2007 9:24 AM

Virginia tried to do something like this (I think it was a Republican proposal that went nowhere.) Their plan was to tie transit funding to cities allowing high-density development near the stations.

Posted by SamChevre | October 10, 2007 9:51 AM

Gus: residential land uses are money losers for cities. Cities must be careful in residential density increases in ensuring that development pays for itself. This may not be a problem in the case of DC, but remember that condo/apartment markets are volatile. What was earning loads yesterday, today is a slum.

Exactly right, these calculations are done explicitly at city council meetings in Mass, the key component is education. Councilors often vote for more restrictive zoning because the calculations on property taxs vs education costs only break even if they do that (they also try to restrict three bedroom apartments for the same reason).

Posted by AJ | October 10, 2007 9:54 AM

houston really does have the perfect storm brewing on this topic. it turns out that developers have been replatting areas that have no deed restrictions (therefore they do not have to give notice to current owners in the area), then getting approval for high density developments. one such high rise is being fought in the museum district right now, more to come.

Posted by paperpusher | October 10, 2007 10:49 AM

"Yes, but all this assumes that most parts of the country have an effective subway/elevated system, which only a few do. (And they really aren't that likely to get attractive systems within the next generation.) Otherwise, higher densities in cities just mean more traffic jams."

But if development were more compact, with stores/restaurants available within a few blocks of houses, then inadequate mass transit would be less of an issue. Obviously, a lot of people who prefer living in low-density land-segregated suburbs, but there’s also plenty of people who want more compact development alternatives. The reason why metropolitan areas are so overwhelmingly geared to low-density auto development is that municipalities use zoning regulations to ensure that only certain types of development are built. I recommend the book, “Zoned Out”, by Jonathan Levine, a Professor of Urban Planning at the University of Michigan, which argues that urban sprawl is the product of local zoning.

Posted by Peter H | October 10, 2007 11:30 AM

'this guy' hit the nail on the head - the federal government should start taxing states based on the value of their land (not including buildings). Something like a fairly modest 1%/yr tax on the value of land (which, especially in urban areas, is much less than the value of the property including buildings) would all but cover the current revenue from the personal income tax. And given that zoning laws restrict supply thus providing a windfall for current property holders, this would eat into that, giving at leas some incentive for cities to cut their zoning in intelligent ways.

Posted by Josh | October 10, 2007 12:42 PM

paperpusher is correct. In fact, this high rise, which will produce significant negative externalities on some of the wealthiest, most influential people in Houston, may end up being the tipping point into the adaptation of some kind of zoning in Houston.

But the deed restrictions have only become seriously important in Houston in recent years. For most of the last century, developers didn't have to think about deed restrictions because almost all development was greenfields development. Houston sprawled, and developers, aided by the city and state, could make up the rules (including deed restrictions, which used to be hair-raisingly racist) as they went along. Even if Houston had zoning, it wouldn't have affected a lot of development which was done outside the city limits in "municipal utility districts" with the tacit agreement that if the city ran out sewer lines, etc. and developers built subdivisions, Houston would annex them in time. Only interpretations of the voting rights act in the 80s stopped this willy-nilly annexation. (But developers keep building outside Houston in small satellite towns or unincoporated MUDs.)

This sprawl development was made possible by the continued and aggressive freeway building by TxDOT. The wheel and spoke freeways of Houston have been a massive government financed sprawl engine. To add to this institutionalized sprawl, in-town development was made difficult by de facto zoning rules having to do with the number of sewer hookups a property could have. It was next to impossible to build higher density housing in town because of these limitations until the 90s.

But now these rules have been liberalized, and the sheer size of Houston makes it much more attractive for people to live in the inner city, close to work centers. A good thing, but without zoning, we see more and more examples of the high-rise that paperpusher mentions above.

While I think every city's urban issues are heavily influenced by a nationwide policy in favor of freeways, each city's own issues are a result of its historical and present development, and the inertia of the past is usually hard to change, even when it is necessary to do so.

Posted by RWB | October 10, 2007 2:12 PM

"you can't build apartments smaller than 900 square feet per bedroom."

That's impressive. My entire apartment is only 800 square feet.

Posted by aem5 | October 10, 2007 6:11 PM