The New York Times notes that the crisis is turning design from decoration and frivolity to function.
The pain of layoffs notwithstanding, the design world could stand to come down a notch or two — and might actually find a new sense of relevance in the process. That was the case during the Great Depression, when an early wave of modernism flourished in the United States, partly because it efficiently addressed the middle-class need for a pared-down life without servants and other Victorian trappings.
Patrik Jonsson in The Christian Science Monitor notes that the crisis may be ending the McMansionization of the suburbs and some cities (via Planetizen).
With housing prices off by 18 percent in 20 US cities in the last year and new home starts at a 26-year low, bulldozers have slowed their march across American cities and towns. In Westport, Conn., teardown permits are down in the last year by 33 percent – a figure that experts say can be extrapolated nationwide, though teardown trends do have significant regional variations. Analysts expect the lull to last at least five years, perhaps 10.
My own hunch is that we are witnessing a sharp turn toward quality and functionality. The Great Reset will mean smaller, better, more efficient spaces, and an emphasis on higher quality design from the artifact to the city and regional scales. Call it wishful thinking, but the logic of the economy is at least pushing in the right direction.
January 13th, 2009 at 11:24 am
“The Great Reset will mean smaller, better, more efficient spaces, and an emphasis on higher quality design from the artifact to the city and regional scales”
I can see where you’re coming from but I would suggest that needs to be tempered by the experience of the “buy to let” phenomenon in the UK housing market:
Driven by rapidly increasing houseprices, developers built more and more “apartments”, squeezing more and more “units” out of development sites. This was backed by government legislation that demanded higher dwellings per hectare densities in urban locations.
We all know about how easy credit fuelled this boom, and how when that credit dried up the boom went with it.
So, developers are now stung, knowing that the only people who were buying the tiny “apartments” (I use the word in speech marks because the usual word in UK English is a “flat” – but that had working class associations, so developers, eager to add a touch of continental luxuriousness, started marketing them as “apartments”) were people with buy-to-let mortgages.
Now that demand has dried up, developers want to build houses that they know will sell – i.e. “family houses” with a backgarden and a drive for two cars.
In other words, I predict that when housebuilders start building again they will
a) lobby the government to revoke guidance calling for higher density
b) avoid building flats like the plague
c) build larger, worse, less efficient spaces.
I agree there is a growing clamour for a new ascetism, but this at the moment only seems to be actually demand for more space, not less – garden space to grow your own vegetables, storage space for your new bicycle, second-hand purchases and labour-saving devices that will improve work/life balance. In other words, the new ascetism is, like environmentalism, simply a reinvention of consumerism.
January 13th, 2009 at 12:33 pm
I think design has been leading up to this point and hopefully this is the tipping point where we really see wide-spread adoption of a different kind of beautiful.
January 13th, 2009 at 12:42 pm
The trend toward smaller, denser, well-designed residences needs a boost from careful investment in urban infrastructure. Septic tanks and wells work only with ample open space per lot. Otherwise, the one can contaminate the other. Our local geology permits only about 4 single-family septic systems per acre. Dense housing requires a water/sewer system.
My town controls its growth boundary with well-thought, parsimonious incremental extensions of the water/sewer system. This mostly works well: empty land fills up more quickly inside the growth boundary. But one unintended consequence is that developers who own land outside the boundary can build only about 4 houses per acre. This has led to a bias toward McMansions, which were providing a higher profit per lot until this year’s real estate market meltdown. The added cost of redeveloping an existing residential area (demolition and removal, lost value of demolished homes, road moving, repair of environmental damage such as leaks from in-ground fuel tanks…) will mean that we are stuck with existing sprawl for some time to come.
One possible solution to the beyond-the-growth-boundary problem would be long-term planning at a regional level. Regional plans could integrate public services such as water/sewer across municipal boundaries. Regional zoning can mandate greater density in certain areas (such as the outskirts of older towns that are destined to become subsumed into the metropolis). The regional authority could accommodate some costs of redevelopment, such as realignment of roads and provision of good public transit. It can merge individual lots, coordinate the activities of individual landowners, or invoke eminent domain in support of its goals.
Developers could support additional regional regulation if increased residential density raises basic land value and removes some development costs (eg: the cost of paved roads or individual septic systems)from their books. The developer then would have to weigh the carrying cost of undeveloped land (or profits from existing development) versus the promise of greater future profits. Carrying costs and also the costs of making long-term investment decisions in an atmosphere of uncertainty both can be reduced through PROMPT and responsible development and implementation of regional plans.
Prompt action could happen if the Obama administration chooses to direct federal economic stimulus funds into regional infrastructure. Some local and state authorities already are lobbying for this. Plus, our current federal Transportation bill is due to expire SOON. The Smart Growth community is lobbying for the new bill to favor public transportation over car-oriented projects. If YOU want to support this stuff, consider writing to your Congressional representatives. Today.
January 13th, 2009 at 1:30 pm
Robert, There are lots of options for people who want vegetable gardens, home workshops, and the like, to get what they want out of a more densely built environment. People want all the stuff you list, but many of them also want to: interact with their neighbors, avoid chores like mowing the yard, spend less time commuting, walk to work or school or a convenience store…, enjoy communal green space, and so on. The LEED-ND (LEED for Neighborhood Development) community has been working on design solutions that provide all these things within an environment more densely built than typical suburban developments. Existing neighborhoods that meet LEED-ND criteria have proved to retain and/or increase their market value over the long term. They earn a price premium even in today’s real estate market.
If you want a good primer on LEED-ND, I would suggest: Sustainable Urbanism: Urban Design with Nature, by Douglas Farr (Wiley, 2008)
January 13th, 2009 at 3:02 pm
Two housing luxuries are quiet, and space. Density benefits developers, and municipalities (who can derive more taxes),but it is really not clear that there are any benefits, beyond economy, from living in a crowded housing development. People with families will accept small spaces only if they cannot obtain larger spaces because of lack of affordability. …People always seem to need more space. I can’t count the number of clients that I have had that have large houses and still want to add more space. One client, who was in his seveties, and retired, had a 17,000 square foot house on 100 acres, for the two of them, however he needed to add 4000 square feet. He really believed that he needed the space for a spa and a home office. I have had numerous clients who are retired couples who “need” 5000 square feet or more when building a house. I don’t think that people will ever choose to live in small spaces, if they have a choice.
January 13th, 2009 at 5:59 pm
I don’t think that knockdowns are a bad trend. One of the towns I’ve lived in, Arlington Heights, IL, is a leader in knockdowns. They take a 2 bedroom, sided ranch on a slab, within walking distance of the commuter train to Chicago, and replace it with a McMansion.
What else are you going to do with a 2 bedroom ranch on a slab? It was cheap housing when it was built in the ’50s. You certainly can’t have kids in such a house.
You personally might not like McMansions, but that’s it, a preference. To make the economics work, the knockdowns almost have to be McMansions.
Other than that, they certainly meet many of the “sustainable development” ideals: they’re in built out areas, they are transportation oriented, etc.
Arlington Heights has built what can only be described as an entirely new city where its downtown used to be, and it is totally transportation oriented. Their commuter train station to Chicago is the base that everything is built upon. They’ve got buildings there as high as 10 stories, which is amazingly big for the ‘burbs. And they’re residential buildings.
January 13th, 2009 at 6:43 pm
It’s true that Americans have had a love affair with large houses. Just as they have loved big cars. But they don’t love those cars so much when gas is $4 per gallon. Big houses, even energy-efficient ones, cost more to heat (or cool). Big houses mean more space to keep clean. Big houses have a higher real estate tax bill. Big houses have a greater total burden of maintenance, especially as they age. Big houses frequently sit on larger lots that also need more maintenance: mowing, snow removal, and so on. Big houses may become a luxury that fewer Americans can afford. Or, Americans who cannot afford to buy so much stuff in the coming decades might prefer to or need to allocate disposable income to purposes other than buying more living space.
I love the huge houses built in the 1920s. In the 1970s a lot of them sold for a song or got torn down because people could not afford to heat them anymore. Or because folks couldn’t afford to maintain them, and finally they got condemned. Today’s McMansions are not nearly so well-built. A contractor friend of mine says that lots of the elegant tall roofs in our pricier local developments are not trussed strongly enough to allow the attic to be used for storage. To my mind, that is rotten design. Better design can maximize the amenities of any size of home.
That said, my home would be considered large by most of the world’s population.
January 14th, 2009 at 1:13 am
Wil wrote, “Density benefits developers, and municipalities (who can derive more taxes),but it is really not clear that there are any benefits, beyond economy, from living in a crowded housing development.”
I see this sentiment expressed by some people in my city, and it confuses me. A lot.
Two things about it confuse me. I’ll start with the simple one.
First, the idea that density is achieved through “crowded housing development” is wrong. The key word that signals the mistake is “crowded,” as though density equates to *over*-crowding and …slums. This is simply untrue: you don’t need overcrowding (i.e., cramming too many individuals into a room or a suite of rooms) to achieve density. If individuals *choose* to live in smaller rooms, that’s not *crowding* – by limiting the size of your dwelling, you’re not crowding it with extra people.
Second, the idea that developers and tax-hungry municipalities are the only entities to benefit is also wrong, but linked as it is to a fear of slum conditions (i.e., *over*-crowding), and to the fact that everyone hates profiteers, it’s difficult to set straight. Maybe people would benefit from re-reading Jane Jacobs (eg., The Life and Death of Great American Cities), who makes the point over and over again that density brings benefits to residents. And maybe they should consider what a risk-intensive endeavor development is. Crunch the numbers: it’s not easy to make “a killing.” As opposed to, say, corporate executives, real estate developers, if guided by the community, at least give something back – and can often lose their shirts trying.
Yet somehow, there’s this persistent suspicion that some cad of a crypto-slumlord is out to make a killing by building a nice condo tower or other “densification” project in the urban core – with nary a thought given over to how the street (and therefore all residents) benefit from the added vibrancy conferred by people who walk, shop, dine, go to cafes, etc. on that street, as a result of (a) living in that condo or (b) having the additional population to support the cafes, restaurants, shops, amenities, theatres, cinemas, galleries, and so on.
You cannot, without density, have a vibrant urban street. The population won’t be there to support the amenities that make the city desirable.
Granted, there’ll still be suburbanites with 5,000 sq.ft. houses coming into the cities, but don’t be a hater of density in cities – or of the people who make it possible, for they give the city its vibrancy and life. Some of us actually like living this way.
January 14th, 2009 at 5:01 am
Zoe, I completely agree with you – I’m saying that even during the housing boom developers resisted this model, so now there’s no way they will build mass produced housing that isn’t based on a “family homes” model – 3 or 4 bed houses with back gardens and a drive for 2 cars based around cul-de-sac road layouts.
Planners need to be given more powers to refuse housing layouts on this principle – but governments see planning as part of the problem to economic recovery, not the solution.
The result? More of the same.
January 14th, 2009 at 8:42 am
Zoe, you are right in the sense that big homes aren’t for everyone. Singles are a growing demagraphic, and they certainly don’t need or perhaps want a McMansion.
See, Arlingotn Heights has them covered as well. Those big residential buildings, right next to the train station, cater to singles and empty nesters. The neighborhoods nearby that have all the knockdowns cater to families. Everybody gets to walk to the train. It is a perfect example of transportation oriented redevelopment.
Doesn’t change the fact that those old ranches are crap, and need to be wiped from the face of the earth. And that can’t be done unless they’re replaced with something that can generate the revenue needed for the rebirth. That’s a McMansion.
January 14th, 2009 at 12:56 pm
Big houses, even energy-efficient ones, cost more to heat (or cool).
All else being equal, this is true. Simple physics there.
But all else is not equal.
I’ve owned homes built at various times (‘46, ‘72, ‘93, and ‘01). Each has gotten progressively larger, and each has gotten easier to heat and cool.
The latest home is quite energy efficient. It is very well built. Lots of insulation, excellent windows, house wrap, masonry construction, and the most efficient furnace on the market.
An older home often cannot be brought up to modern standards of energy efficiency. In my home built in ‘46, I had insulation added to the attic, new windows, and a modern furnace, but I couldn’t do anything about the insulation in the walls, or house wrap. If was what it was.
So… newer is generally better, energy wise. Larger can be more efficient, if it has the latest do-dads.
The latest cool thing is reflective insulation in the attic. Take the sun’s energy on a hot day and reflect it back into space. It’s like stapling aluminum foil to the rafters. Lowers the heat load tremedously.
January 14th, 2009 at 5:00 pm
Regarding the human experience of residential density, I have heard that the relevant variable is how many people per room, not how many people per acre. If you stuff more than 1.5 people into a room, people feel stress from the crowding. OK, lots of jokes about the .5 person, but when you average it out over the rooms in a domicile (and over a population), 1.5 is the tipping point. I’m not sure whom to cite for this statistic, but it has arisen in our local discussions of residential density, especially downtown and in areas dominated by student housing. So I think it is well-accepted among urban planning professionals.
And Buzzcut, I think with a lot of coordinated effort one could over time alter some particular neighborhoods to make it cost-effective to replace old ranch houses with something other than McMansions. But you need a plan that wins support from: municipal and regional planners, developers, owners of existing properties, the general public, people who are in the market for a home….. To date, it’s usually much easier for one or 2 parties to build McMansions.
Count on the lone developer/property owner to go for the easiest solution. If you want more communitarian results you have to organize the community to get what it wants. See Thomas Schelling’s discussion of how individuals each acting to optimize their own outcomes collectively end up with a situation that only a minority of them would prefer. One example: people taking seats in a lecture hall, with free-seating rather than reserved seats. Most folks want to be near the front but not in the front row. Typically, the first folks in the door sit in the middle of the hall. They are hoping that someone will come in and sit in front of them. They don’t sit in the back row (which would maximize the likelihood that someone will sit in front of them) because they really want to be much further to the front. The next cohorts to arrive sits directly behind previous cohorts until the back of the hall is filled. Then if there is a large enough attendance the front half fills, from back to front. The cumulative consequence: people get what they desire (a seat near the front but with someone sitting in front of them) only when the hall is nearly full. And then, despite free choice and preferential advantage given to early arrivals, it is the latecomers who get the ‘best’ seats. You could disrupt this pattern – giving most people a personal outcome that they would prefer – through some sort of collective action: ushers; a speaker who cajoles attendees to move closer to the front; ‘reserve’ seats in the back half of the hall until the front half has filled filled…. But it takes forethought and organized assertion of group choice over individual choice.
I think there is too much uncertainty in the real estate market right now to know whether or not McMansions have lost their lustre. There’s the glut of unpurchased or foreclosed larger homes; differing forecasts of the length or severity of the current recession; demographics of an aging population; and the possibility that upcoming generations will not want the same things as ours has.
There is room for an organized community to seek its collectively preferred outcome, if people are willing to put in the effort. You might need incentives like historical preservation, affordable housing, economic development, renewal of decrepit neighborhoods, removal of a public health hazard, etc., to encourage enough individuals or parties to get involved.
January 14th, 2009 at 5:25 pm
Zoe, no matter what “the community” wants, the numbers are the numbers. Redevelopment either works or it doesn’t.
You’ve got a certain construction cost per square foot, with presumably a certain level of profit there.
If your feedstock is a ranch that goes for $250k, you’re going to need a certain size house to be able to get the profit level to make the transaction work.
If the numbers don’t work, the alternative is that no redevelopment occurs. You get a situation like you have in California, where all the housing stock is these cheap, crappy ranches going for outrageous prices, and no redevelopment occurs.
Regarding the rest of your post, it generates all kinds of philosophical questions about how one would even know what “the community” even really wants. Organizing just ensures that the busybodies have a voice, not that the interests of all (or any) are represented. Ditto for any process controlled by political interests, like municipal planning.
January 14th, 2009 at 6:03 pm
Zoe, I like your interest in “community”, but I wonder if our society, as it is today can really work in the environment that was supported by Jane Jacobs ?… It’s interesting that many very important late 20th century innovations occured in suburbia. I’m thinking of Silicon Valley, Hollywood, Microsoft, the bio tech industry…. If I am wrong about the golden age of density being over, and the new urbanism following the Los Angeles model, I would expect to see innovation coming from extreme urban environments like the sprawling slums of third world mega cities, and the corresponding US inner cities……Regarding the large houses, singles don’t need a large house, but families do need space. In California, many, many, people add more square footage to their small, but overpriced, houses, because they need the space. If they are unable to add enough space they simply move a little farther out and get the room that they need. The desire for “wide open spaces” is part of the American culture, the US will never be like small European countries.
January 14th, 2009 at 11:58 pm
Numbers are numbers, but don’t discount what can be done with initiative, creativity, research and partnering. My town wants to build a high-end condo above a 10-screen cinema on a prime spot in our downtown. The goal is to get more mature adults living downtown, to balance our vast population of college students. We hope that more adults will strengthen the downtown economy: they have more disposable income and do not disappear during the summer or the biggest shopping days of the year (Black Friday, and just before Christmas). The town also needs to increase tax revenue from homeowners. Taxes from student rentals do not pay for all the services that the students use. A steering committee of diverse representation spent over a year studying what town residents want our downtown to be. This marketing/vision effort determined that our best bet for attracting adults to downtown would be a high-quality multi-screen cinema. This would be the anchor for other businesses serving a more mature clientele.
We did our best to find out what the community wants. Next, how could we make it happen?
In our case, the first move was for the local government to move a few businesses (from worn, ugly buildings) and consolidate lots to get a space big enough for a 10-screen cinema (the minimum size necessary to acquire the best first-run films) in a prime location. It took a few years, some municipal funds, and plans to realign of a road to make that happen. All the businesses that were moved now are happy with their new locations in a much newer building.
Next, the municipal government made a deal with an organization representing downtown businesses, to take advantage of their expert knowledge and private funding base. This organization wrote a request for proposals to build and operate the combination condo/cinema, It worked with possible applicants, and picked the winner.
Actually, it was very easy to pick the winner. About 16 developers were interested in the RFP, but only one actually made a proposal. Why? All but one of the developers were locals who knew only how to build high-rise student apartments . They didn’t understand the adult market for downtown housing. They didn’t know how to leverage public funds, or put together a deal involving numerous partners. Only a more sophisticated developer from out of town was able to make the numbers work. It knew how to find well-to-do adults who want a high-end condo. It knew better than to put popcorn ceilings in a building for sophisticated adults (a mistake made by one local developer 20 years ago, whose market failure frightened the other locals from ever again seriously considering to build for adults). The out-of-town developer quickly got commitments for all the condos in the building, has a waiting list long enough to fill 3 more buildings of comparable size, and now is looking for more lots in our downtown. This company also knew how to find a cinema operator interested in the site. It had creative ideas for maximizing revenue. For example, if you add a few things such as pull-out desks for the stadium seating in the high-end cinema, our local university can rent the theaters for overflow classrooms at times (such as 10 AM) when the theaters otherwise would be empty. This company also knew how to win state and federal funds for the road realignment. This company knew to hire a high-end international design firm, and also was highly responsive to local aesthetic preferences.
Groundbreaking will happen this spring. Somewhere in the process, the local government will sell the land to this developer. Who will sell the built condos, and then collect condo maintenance fees and rent from the cinema and some retail space for years to come. Who will skip the financial burden of incessantly repairing apartments damaged by drunk student tenants. Who has built up such a reputation and web of relationships in town that it will be given first crack at new investment opportunities. I am deeply grateful to this corporation for showing all our locals that YES WE CAN (sorry, I couldn’t resist) do more than build student high-rises downtown.
In our town, building a student high-rise within walking distance of campus has been the easy way out. The easy way out is the only thing most of our local developers know. The easy way out has progressively throttled the economic health of downtown, turning it into a student ghetto. The easy way out has endangered the tax base of the oldest, most attractive parts of town. The easy way out has frustrated the desires of mature residents and wealthy and retired alumni who would like to enjoy downtown life within walking distance of campus. Enough people around here got so tired of the easy way out that we organized and figured out how to do something different.
If you want more examples of how a community can organize to get what it wants, I would suggest you take a look at the Pittsburgh History and Landmarks Foundation. It has pioneered and excelled in a huge array of strategies for building partnerships to do something other than take the easy way out. Its primary focus has been historic preservation, but along the way it has revitalized blighted neighborhoods and business districts, provided affordable housing, built a children’s museum, educated thousands of school children to appreciate good architecture and urban design, and developed for-profit ventures that fund the non-profit work. Its most spectacular success was the development of historic railroad facilities into Station Square. Which they sold a few years ago for over $100 million.
BTW, this work involves red and blue voters partnering together for common benefit.
January 15th, 2009 at 7:09 am
Zoe,
Try exploring the situation in former Soviet satellite states in central and eastern Europe.
Many cities, especially Warsaw in Poland, suffered extensive damage in the war. Hitler raised Warsaw to the ground destroying around (Depending on which version you read) between 80 and 95% of buildings. Small parts were rebuilt painstakingly and realistically (ever been to the Old Town Square in Warsaw? Looks authentically 15th century, but it was all built in the 1950s), but the majority of residential accommodation was rebuilt in high-rise concrete blocks of small flats.
Many had balconies, many were built around courtyards for play areas, there’s a proliferation of corner shops. Bus provision is excellent. The building layout accords with many “urban design” sacred cows that are around today.
Many have since been refurbished, insulated, improved.
And yet the overwhelming desire of the residents is to move into “family housing” of the kind found in US suburbs.
Why? Because it’s Western. It’s expensive. It’s a symbol of Poland’s, Hungary’s, the Czech Republic’s move away from Russia towards the West. It’s about the freedom of using money to express desires. Those desires are for status.
I agree, producers dictate what the market wants; consumers rarely have the imagination or capability to express what they want through the market. But, in the absence of successful housing co-operatives delivering “bottom up” development, of communities of individuals interested in “self-build” getting together and developing successful high-density accommodation, and with the might of the volume housebuilders this situation isn’t going to change.
We can hope that volume housebuilders collapse (many have gone to the wall here in the UK, and there are signs that more are teetering on the edge) and out of the ashes rise more responsive, creative and community-led developers are born to follow the models you outline so well above.
January 15th, 2009 at 10:55 am
I just think that the process you laid out there, Zoe, couldn’t possibly figure out what “the community” wanted. You found out what the educated and the involved wanted. That might be 10% of the population, at most.
Society is populated by 100% of the population (duh!). The entire housing market, worldwide, caters to 100% of the population (again, duh).
So… with such a mobile society, with “The Great Sort” and “Who’s Your City”, don’t people just move to the areas that they want to live, that have the lifestyles that they want?
I think it is very naive to think that developers drive the housing market, not consumers. How could that possibly be, being that it is so easy for people to move and get exactly what they want?
January 15th, 2009 at 1:09 pm
Buzzcut, I should mention that I live in a college town. An unusually large proportion of our town populace IS well educated, and we have developed a lot of organizational structure for getting citizens involved: volunteer advisory boards for local municipalities, collaborative efforts between town and gown, a privately funded alliance of downtown businesses, and so on. Pittsburgh does not have all of these advantages, but the Pittsburgh History and Landmarks Foundation has found many ways to create successful large-scale projects.
And while our town is unusually well-educated, the surrounding counties are quite different. Out there, ‘up at the college’ can be an epithet. Nevertheless, they are partners in some of our projects – because they believe that they too will benefit. And their more traditional communities have a lot to teach our ‘creatives’ about the techniques and benefits of long-term community involvement.
The ‘vision process’ for our downtown used standard marketing techniques used by private industry to figure out what the public wants. Validity of these techniques is not perfect. Some companies are more competent at marketing than others. Luck plays a role. But the field of marketing exists because it improves the odds for successful business planning. In the years since our downtown’s ‘vision plan’ was created, the town has made in-depth study and action plans for individual areas. We already can see the effects of early measures taken in concert with the plan. For example, the plan recommended that we should enlarge the local public library but keep it downtown. We completed the library project about 4 years ago. It has brought more families with children into the downtown. This measure has boosted a couple of nearby child-oriented businesses, and increased attendance at child-oriented downtown events. The ‘new’ library helps to ‘brand’ downtown as the place to go for culture and public entertainment. We now hope it will help us to develop more businesses/events/public attractions to bring tourism dollars into town.
Also, the ‘vision plan’ revealed a potential market for adult residences downtown. This happened BEFORE the publication of Rise of the Creative Class. We’re not just fashionably following Richard’s prescription for success. Most folks involved in the downtown plan still know nothing about the concept of a creative class. To my mind, this congruence supports the validity of both our plans and Richard’s theory.
When this stuff works, it is not driven by either the developers or the consumers. It is a partnership that synergizes the investments of many parties to create what everyone wants but cannot do alone. It’s true that a lot of attempted partnerships don’t succeed, especially in the short term. But the rate of success, and its rewards, are great enough to justify the extra effort. And there is a learning curve. We can benefit from previous failures as well as successes, to improve the odds of future success.
January 15th, 2009 at 1:16 pm
One more observation about whether Americans will go for smaller homes or still want lots of space. The largest condos in our new high-end condo building will have only 3 bedrooms. The smallest will be efficiencies. A bunch of these condos will be SECOND residences. They are smaller homes AND more space.
January 15th, 2009 at 2:14 pm
Zoe, My hometown sounds a lot like the town in which you live. We have a very small downtown, only three blocks really, and a huge campus “on the hill”. I always loved the sleepy, quiet, nature of our downtown, but other people wanted “progress”. Over the years there were lots of changes, the old box factory at the edge of downtown was converted into a mall, which was a good thing, and lots of nightlife was brought into downtown, which I am not so sure about. Lofts were built, and the glorious old movie theaters were gotten rid of ( a terrible idea !) . Now there are lots of people downtown, and the peaceful atmosphere is gone. They also expanded the area that has parking meters, in the past if you wanted to avoid payng for parking you simply parked over one block, now you must go farther. ..Is that a picture of success? It isn’t in my mind…..
..I noticed what you said about the condos being second homes, yes second homes are “more space”, and an enlargement of an individual family’s footprint.
January 16th, 2009 at 11:44 am
Twenty years ago, we also wanted to maintain a ’small town’ feel for our downtown. What changed?
- The university and the town both grew.
- The population became a bit more cosmopolitan, and we developed a bigger market for the creative class lifestyle.
- Taking the easy way out year after year filled downtown with more student apartment buildings, degrading the diversity of the downtown economy.
- Student drinking and drunk behavior got worse, driving away non-bar-tour nightlife.
- Homeowning neighborhoods near the downtown have become totally fed up dealing with the effects of students’ drunk behavior (eg: cleaning broken glass off their sidewalks every Sunday morning). They want something to change.
- Big-box stores in strip malls stole a lot of non-student business from downtown, thus the downtown had to find something else to attract non-student business.
- The municipality saw its tax base degrade – partly because mature homeowners with disposable income were being replaced by students in rentals, partly because the university and other non-profits took over more land adjacent to the university (thus knocking those lots off the tax rolls).
- The municipality nearest the university is almost entirely built-out, so development income now must come from redevelopment.
- For a number of reasons, there now is hope that some of the oldest and most problematic student high-rises might be replaced with better buildings.
The new vision for downtown does try to keep some of the small-town feel. We want to preserve the oldest, most historic blocks, so they are zoned for a maximum height of 3 or 4 stories. We want to upgrade streetscapes and the amount of green space. New, taller high-rises must have retail/commercial space on the ground floor, and the upper residential floors must be set back from the street. The town and the university have begun to coordinate their planning efforts; we now share a long-term goal of softening the the boundary between us. There is an opportunity to reshape the environment to calm student behavior and fix longstanding traffic problems. An undeveloped but close-to-center plot of land has been zoned for ‘traditional’ development (smaller houses, larger yards, laid out on a grid of streets); we hope that folks who choose to live here will want to know their neighbors. And larger-scope town plans now encourage commuting to campus/downtown by means other than private car.
I have hopes that, with good design, we can have both a more urbane downtown and a small-town feel. That’s because as towns go we still are pretty small. The university anchors the regional economy. Its employee turnover (at every level) is less than the American norm, so people stay around long enough to develop a big network of acquaintances. If you’ve been here a couple of years you run into people that you know everywhere you go. If you want big-city anonymity here you have to work at being antisocial.
January 16th, 2009 at 1:24 pm
An interesting discussion, and one I have found myself involed with since the seventies. At this point I am convinced that the notion of the benefits of density somehow emerged, then was shaped, and spread by external forces, like the construction industry, and municipalities, which have nothing to do with the suitability of density for people. Now it seems to funtion like a particularly resilient meme, becoming linked with other memes such as “modernism”, “efficiency”, and continually resurfaces whenever there is an urban planning issue…..What you have explained about your town shows how, in that case, managing density was the only solution. Another great example of a place that is “urbane”, yet retains the small town charm is Carmel, California, it has great shopping, does not feel dense, and even has lots of residential right downtown. It is very successfully planned..Fortunately individuals can spend time in both low density, and high density environments, and the debate will not be resolved
January 20th, 2009 at 9:57 am
I’ll try and encapulate all I’ve read…
Size and Density
Toronto, where I spend my days and nights, is proving to be an interesting case study in apartment size and density. I’ve had the opertunity to search for aparments and condos a number of times since arriving in 2002 so I’ve got a decent idea of the housing stock in the downtown core. What I noticed was that the trend in new housing was to small condos, advertized at around 600 square feet. These were usually in odd shapes that were cut to conform with the outer shell of the stylized building. The interiors were essentially cookie cutters. They are also far to small to actually ‘live’ in but they are fine for transient people or those who just need a place to stay in a city they frequent (how many of these people are there really?)
My personal preference is to have more space, I’m going to guess that others either have this preference or will develop it in time. Having rooms and doors and stairs; enough space to walk ’somewhere’ and storage space for seasonal decorations add substantially to quality of life. The ability to invite guests, say 3 other couples, 8 people total, is also a huge benifit. For this reason I see demand for larger apartments and townhouses being quite substantial. Specifically 3-4 bedroom, multi floor apartments using construction techniques similar to those used in recent condo buildings would excelent as they are quite good at cutting down on noise and would offer excelent family living options.
Townhouses in Toronto, although picturesque from the outside, are actually rather problematic. I think this is mostly due to thier construction. The row housing in the centre west side of the city is decaying slightly and the walls / floors are paper thin. Babies below can be heard as can … enthusiastic … young couples next door. Additionally shared walls means shared pests. I recently saw a mouse in my house, which confuses me because there is almost no food in my house (I buy what I am going to eat that day or eat out). I’m rather certain he’s from next door, which has two rental units. The problem is getting rid of pests requires the co-ordination of all the attached houses.
Another form of dense housing that exists in Toronto sits between the centre city and the suburbs. I’m not certain when it was built but it is mostly large apartment blocks that sit in the middle of football field sized lawns. The western artirial north south road, the 427, is surrounded by these apparment blocks. They seem to be set to decay in the future. The public transit access is abismal, the noise from the highway is ever-present, the large baren lawns are desert like in the summer and snow covered frozen tundras in the winter. To call walking in the area a nuisance is a severe understatement.
The suburbs of Toronto differ significantly by area. Our McMansions are generaly oversized houses constructed on lots which shouldn’t hold them for asthetic reasons. In some areas they don’t apear to be in trouble, just another form of housing becomeing more dense as small single family dwellings are replaced by larger multi-generational dwellings. Due to the differences in construction these houses are probably going to go all different ways. Some are likely poorly constructed and will not stand up to wear and tear while also having rotten heating / cooling costs. Others could do fine.
In the end I expect a regular density gradient to emerge, with geographic factors and infrastructure factors altering the gradient. Having said this I’m still intrigued by one of the points I remeber from reading Marx about an even distribution of the population. I don’t remember his reasoning but I’d like to look into it sometime to better understand the statement.