Every week we read more than we can write about on the blog. To avoid letting good commentary and research fall by the wayside, we’re going to publish weekly excerpts from what we’ve been reading.
Tanvi Misra, “Young people are pulling jobs back to city centres“, Citylab:
Talented young people are moving to urban centers, raising the skill level of the labor force and attracting the attention of businesses. As a result, some of the job sprawl that took place in the early 2000s has started to swing back to cities, concludes a new analysis by the City Observatory think tank of Census data on local employment and housing.
Kirk Johnson, “Targeting inequality, this time on public transport“, New York Times:
SEATAC, Wash. — On Sunday, the county transit system for the Seattle metropolitan area began hurtling down a road that few cities have traveled before: pricing tickets based on passengers’ income.
The project, which is being closely watched around the nation, gives discounts on public transportation to people whose household income is no more than 200 percent of the federal poverty level — for instance, $47,700 or less for a family of four under the 2014 guidelines. The problem it addresses is that many commuters from places like SeaTac, an outlying suburb, are too poor to live in Seattle, where prices and rents are soaring in a technology-driven boom. If they are pushed out so far that they cannot afford to get to work or give up on doing so, backers of the project said, Seattle’s economy could choke.
Timothy B Lee, “How NIMBYism is holding back Silicon Valley and the American economy“, Vox:
[Google and o]ther technology companies in the region have also faced resistance from not-in-my-backyard (NIMBY) advocates. The result: not only is the Valley failing to deal effectively with growing congestion and soaring housing costs, these myopic local policies could end up hampering the country’s most important driver of economic growth. So what looks like a local issue has broader implications.
Ignoring the pressure for more development is short-sighted. A better approach would be to accept that growth is inevitable and start planning ways to accommodate it gracefully. That means allowing high-density development in certain areas, positioning these developments so that some residents will be able to walk or bike to work, and making sure these areas are well-served by transit so they don’t overwhelm the city’s streets.
One of the biggest problems in Mountain View (and surrounding cities) is that more than 85 percent of workers there get to work by car. That works fine in a typical suburb, but it’s becoming increasingly untenable as the region becomes more populous.
If Mountain View allowed high-density housing to be built in the area around Google’s headquarters, that could not only help lower the area’s sky-high housing costs, it could also encourage more people to walk or bike to work, relieving some of that congestion.
Eric Crampton, “Dreaming A New City: Optimistic for Christchurch long term, pessimistic for short term“, NBR:
Labour’s 2014 Ilam candidate, James Dann, blogged recently that while the planners envisioned a compact and vibrant downtown core, planner incompetence will instead have achieved a “Turbo Timaru or a Hefty Hamilton.”
I’m a bit less pessimistic, at least for the longer term.
The government rightly took a lot of criticism for its initial attempts to artificially restrict downtown land supply to force a compact city form and encourage higher-valued development. The planners here exhibited basic cargo-cult thinking: because successful cities have high downtown property prices, they thought they could make Christchurch successful by forcing prices to be high. Well, that doesn’t work: high prices in successful cities reflect that people get a lot of value from being located in great downtowns, not the other way around.
In the longer term, because so much has moved on to the suburbs and to neighbouring districts, downtown land prices will have to drop. When that happens, developers will be able to bring to market properties with rental rates that could draw in tenants – if the planners don’t mandate that everything be plated in gold. Downtown will then come back but as part of a polycentric city.
German Lopez, “The Dutch embassy is trolling all of Washington, DC with this infographic“, Vox:
The Dutch embassy doesn’t appreciate people comparing Amsterdam to Washington, DC, just because the District legalized marijuana on Thursday…
Ben Adler, “Care about global climate change? Then fight local air pollution“, Citylab:
The dirty fuels that cause particulate pollution are the same dirty fuels that cause global warming. Cracking down on local air pollution will not only save lives, it will shift the economics of energy toward cleaner sources that produce less carbon. The willingness of India and other populous developing countries such as China, Brazil, and Indonesia to adopt such policies may determine the fate of the Earth.
A principal challenge to decisive, coordinated global action against climate change is the reluctance of developing countries to get onboard. Historically, poor nations have quickly escalated their energy use as they move from a rural farming economy to an urban industrial one. In China, both carbon emissions and particulate pollution have skyrocketed in recent years as the country’s economy has boomed. Now that its cities are choked in smog, China has finally begun to invest in cleaner energy.
World Streets, “Welcome to World’s Streets Worst Practices Department“:
A new mobility killer promoter proposal for Mexico City. (They’re kidding, right?)
…what chances do you think the hapless (and only) ped (bottom right) has of actually making his way across the street?
T. Duran, “Pushing the wrong road: Faults and fallacies in the Takapu Valley plan“, Wellington Scoop:
Did anyone point out that having two parallel highways could be a liability in a major event? That it could leave multiple routes to be cleared instead of one, dividing their resources? Ask Christchurch about triage. Do you think the chief executives were shown the map showing the bits of SH1 that are listed as earthquake vulnerable? Including that controversial stretch above the school? And were they told that the Transport Agency has said that if if it gets to build the new Takapu highway, it’s not going to bother strengthening SH1? Because, you know, building a new greenfields road is so much more fun than maintaining an existing one. People complain about the road cones. Best to just let it fall down first, and then make people beg you to fix it — like they did with SH58.
[…]
Here’s the kicker, though: the Transport Agency is pushing the wrong road. Of the four options it analysed for the route north of the saddle, the one that was closest to the originally proposed route — what was “Option A” that came out at Grenada Village — was the best option, according to its own project goals and its own internal experts. It had good natural resilience, did the least damage to the environment, didn’t have bizarre snarly interchanges that tried to mash together two motorways with eight local streets, a train station and a footpath, and most importantly, it made the traffic flow best. But the Agency rejected that option.
Liz Stinson, “Stylish low-cost houses designed for singles“, Wired:
Some of our most vibrant cities are in the midst of a housing crisis. Rents continue to rise, while wages stay relatively stagnant, save for a select group of people. The average resident of New York City, San Francisco, London, and comparable cities, can no longer afford to live in these there, at least not comfortably. Thinking of living alone? Great idea, see you in Iowa!
It’s interesting then that a new proposal from Dutch construction company Heijmans has found a way to make low-cost housing look swank. The Heijmans ONE is a prefabricated home meant for residents who are young, single and just beginning to build their careers. This “not quite” generation, as the company describes them, has a steady job and makes a decent living, just not enough for them to live on their own in an expensive city. The ONE is solves for that by offering a two-story, 45 square-meter home for €750 a month, cheaper than what someone would pay to live in Amsterdam’s city center, and far less than NYC’s own micro-apartment proposal, which is offering 260 to 360 square-foot homes for $2,000 to $3,000.
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Hmmmm, if more and more young people, like me, move into cities, then housing in the inner areas of towns would get more expensive. Obviously we should build more higher density homes to partly alleviate the problem. However, if this trend continues, would the high density homes just get more expensive, resulting in newer apartments/units getting smaller and smaller, year by year? If that happens, shouldn’t we just decentralize so that less affluent households aren’t forced to commute from the outer suburbs (where there are few jobs and housing is cheaper), to the CBD. I do have a gut feeling that this may happen in Auckland in the future, where young families are essentially forced to purchase homes in far flung suburbs 🙁
In my opinion, the P2G in Wellington isn’t really needed. An extra lane between Petone and Ngauranga Gorge, upgrading of The Esplanade, as well as building the Hutt Cycleway should be sufficient.
“…young families are essentially forced to purchase homes in far flung suburbs”
I think this has long since happened in Auckland! If anything, we’re trying to get to a situation where this is not necessary.
Decentralisation as a solution to long commutes is a seductive but unworkable idea. Essentially, Auckland already has a quite polycentric employment pattern, with substantial number of jobs located in the Penrose-Mount Wellington industrial belt, near the airport, out in Howick, and throughout the North Shore and Waitakeres. But our commuting patterns don’t suggest that there are any advantages to this – people in the inner suburbs commute shorter distances, on average, while people in the outer suburbs commute much longer distances.
I took a look at this issue in a post back in January: http://greaterakl.wpengine.com/2015/01/13/the-geometry-of-urban-labour-markets/
Thank you for such an insightful article. However, as Auckland’s labour market becomes a composite model rather than polycentric, it is obvious that land values in inner areas would continue to rise. The issue I have is that if we intensified, would we get affordable dwellings, or dwellings that would only be slightly cheaper than standalone houses, but still unaffordable? If the latter is the case, then would families still be forced to live far away from their jobs? Btw, the latter is the case in Melbourne (sadly)
One slight advantage of having a polycentric employment pattern is that transit and road space is used more efficiently I.e in the morning rush hour, under a polycentric employment model, transit and roads would have more users going away from town, rather than all users going to town.
I don’t think you can say young families are forced out of the CDB but maybe most choose that option. If you are looking for two-bedrooms under $400k the CBD is an option but if you want a third bedroom for the added amenity or a garden then you have to choose a suburb. That is a trade off people face in every city. I think the renaissance of the city centre is actually as much a result of the fact many families had one parent at home with kids all day so they opted for somewhere with amenity at home and the other partner put up with a commute. Now with many couples both working and kids at daycare the suburban house only gives benefit in the weekends. There is still an amenity benefit but just not as large as it once was.
I don’t think that there are that many good quality $400,000 two bedroom units in the cbd. I think first home buyers are afraid of buying a leaky apartment. The newer apartments cost around $500,000+ for a two bedroom unit.
Unfortunately, what I believe could happen is that the new higher density dwellings would be slightly cheaper than standalone houses, but they still won’t be affordable. The end result is that families would still be forced to live far flung suburbs. By the way, this is exactly what is happening in Melbourne at the moment…
The worst will be if they are forced to live in an apartment out in a distant suburb. If we keep on ratcheting up land values that might just happen.
If there are 100,000 dwellings within 5km of the CBD or 500,000 in which case is a lower income household more likely to be able to afford a house at 5, 10, or 20 km from the centre?
Dr Crampton misses the essential city shaper; transport. If the Christchurch rebuild continues on its almost entirely auto-dependent model then the city will remain dispersed and vapid. Perhaps he should give a little more attention to Prof Glaeser’s book; Chch will miss out on agglomeration economies. It will remain a ‘Hefty Hamilton, or Turbo Timaru’. Ah well, this is government policy, the Council can do a little, accelerate cycling and bus priority on its streets where it has the money and in as much as it can get NZTA to agree…. But it terms of determining urban form after physical geography comes infrastructure provision, the former is not under our control but the later is. Note that both of these things are very different in Wellington, that city he says he prefers, not just the first, physical geography as he claims, but also the built infra.
And he is flat wrong and contradictory here, this is a total misreading of the literature, especially Glaeser:
‘And, fortunately, while the economic literature points strongly to the benefits of urban agglomeration and of having lots of people in a city, it is far from clear that those benefits require having a single dense centre’
And yet Silicon Valley has been a poster child for agglomeration without having any centre let alone a strong one. Maybe it it requires is for people to be a convenient driving distance of each other…
Err? In what sense is SV ‘a poster child for agglomeration’? Bigness is not the same as density. Sure each company has internal agglomeration, but they are separated from each other physically.
Agglomeration is not the same as high density. It doesn’t require that firms are beside each other or in the same building, simply that they are close enough to create economies of scale. Firms benefit from the spillovers of clustering. Silicon Valley is a great example. People trained at one firm can mingle with people from others and move 1/2 and hour up the road to another or start their own company. That differs from density. Maybe there is a good reason the tech sector went to Silicon Valley rather than all located in San Francisco where there is higher densities and even a train system. Maybe they were avoiding density not flocking to it. But at the same time they had access to the skills, services and resources they needed.
The empirical literature does not provide very conclusive evidence on the relationship between productivity and urban form / centrality. There are reasons to think that more centralised cities might have benefits – mainly arising from observations of people’s behaviours and interactions at a very micro level (e.g. in offices and universities). But this remains a hypothesis for the moment.
The case of Silicon Valley is really interesting. It’s always been sustained by a high density of social networks, even though it’s not physically dense. Stanford University is integral to this process – it’s allowed lots of smart people to come together within a walkable (or at any rate cycle-able) environment. My suspicion is that Silicon Valley’s educational and research institutions have compensated for its sprawled development pattern – but again, that’s just a hypothesis.
Lastly, it is worth noting that tech firms are increasingly seeking out the advantages of urban environs. The article linked in this post was all about how Google wants to urbanise its bit of Silicon Valley. Similarly, recent research also shows that urban San Francisco has overtaken suburban San Jose as a destination for venture capital: http://www.citylab.com/work/2013/06/americas-top-metros-venture-capital/3284/
I think one of the issues that faces start-ups is the high cost of land. It seems to me that this is where Christchurch could do well if they don’t over-plan everything. The NBR “cargo-cult” comment seems appropriate. You can’t just assume all the good things will come regardless. Cheap land can give an absolute advantage and it would be a shame if they threw that away for planning dogma. Silicon Valley wasn’t expensive once upon a time. The prices followed the high value activities not then other way around.
“The prices followed the high value activities not then other way around.”
Indeed! Of course, the flip side of this is that we shouldn’t be afraid of high land prices in Auckland. As long as we don’t constrain our ability to use high-value land efficiently, we should welcome it as a sign of economic success.
Put it another way: What would it take to make Auckland land prices actually fall in real terms? A severe recession? A financial crisis? Long-term population decline?
Ok I agree but back to your econ 101 comment from the other day, if land prices are artificially high due to regulation then a simple matter is to ease the rules both at the edges of town and in the centre. That cant hurt.
A simple matter in principle, and a hard slog in practice 😉
The Dutch house looks like it would be perfect for one single person or two large dogs.
“two large dogs” mfwic you’re showing your distaste for people that like different to your like. But I do agree “Agglomeration is not the same as high density”, like if you’re looking for over sized engineering tooling you look to Tokoroa or Kawerau and you will find over size tooling to support the mills, can this be called agglomeration?
The advantage with higher density is it attractive younger people. Sadly the controlling generation likes to make rules on what they should like and how they live.
Here is link to density, income and age at electorate level.
http://hamiltonurbanblog.co.nz/2014/09/hamilton-east-electorate-population-density/
But surely you can admit it does look kennel like.
For the last hundred years we have been trying to make dog’s kennels look like small houses.
Along comes a small house, and you say it looks like a kennel. Nice work 😉
I think the main point of density is that it achieves multiple agglomerations. The classic urban model of density as evolved over thousands of years is one that blends economic and social aspects, and does so in a way that transcends natural divisions. Young people get more choice of dates, trade enterprise gets more ideas / contacts / markets, all in one go, all that stuff…
The problem with the Silicon Valley-type comparison is that it is often close to being a monoculturally driven artefact, a very limited interpretation of “coming together”. I guess the natural risk is that it could lead to in-breeding rather than the cross-fertilisation that urban cultures down the Millenia have traditionally prized. When you look at how the 20th century’s suburban-dwellers’ paranoias have played out, this might just the worst aspect of sprawl, a return to village-like insularity…
“Mexico City” pedestrian rights (nonexistent) already in place on the Shore.
People wanting to cross *one road* (tristram ave, wairau rd intersection) have to navigate 2 out of phase traffic lights and 1 uncontrolled slip lane where traffic barely slows down. And anyone planning to walk *along* tristram, under the motorway, are in for further punishment.
Ivan Illich pointed out in Energy and Equity a long time ago the logical fallacy [of car ownership]; if you take the distance traveled by the average American auto in a year, and divide that by the total amount of time spent earning the money to pay for the auto, fuel, maintenance, insurance, etc., plus all the other time eaten up by tending to the auto in various ways, the average American car goes about 3.5 miles an hour: about the same pace, that is, that an ordinary human being can walk.
I personally don’t think that many young people want to move to large cities. Most of my friends did this because of the job market.. But it’s true that this trend should stimulate the building of higher density homes. Housing in the inner areas is good for small cities but not for large ones. For example, I’m living in Ft. Lauderdale and think that many of the new multi-storey buildings are much more appropriate than houses… I mean something like http://www.riva-condo.com and other similar ones… I also expect that newer apartments will get more expensive in the next years, but it wouldn’t be a surprise for anybody i think…