Upzoned

For City Planners, Community Consensus Shouldn't Be the Standard

Aiming for community consensus when making planning decisions sounds like a noble goal. Yet in practice, says Jeremy Levine in a recent article in Shelterforce, a consensus approach to community participation often supports “elite authority” and the status quo rather than challenges them.

Levine uses an example from the affordable housing debates in the Bay Area, where public meetings were, in effect, “veto points that can block new development.”

New projects generally require community agreement in order to move forward, and so all it takes is a handful of opponents to signal a lack of consensus. By design, then, public meetings give the people who say “no” a much louder voice than the people who say “yes.”

Levine’s article in particular—and community consensus in general—is the subject of this week’s episode of Upzoned. Host Abby Kinney, a planner in Kansas City, and Strong Towns senior editor Daniel Herriges, discuss the ways in which conventional public engagement can actually hurt the planning process. They talk about why asking people where they struggle (not to mention observing firsthand) can yield better results than asking people what they want. They also discuss why reforming public engagement should go hand in hand with reforming public works.

Then in the Downzone, Daniel recommends The Overstory, a Pulitzer Prize-winning novel about trees that inspires awe, wonder, and even humility in the reader. And Abby is getting ready for Fall with a scary yet thought-provoking film.

Additional Show Notes

• “It’s Time to Move On From Community Consensus,” by Jeremy Levine

• “Stop Asking the Public What They Want,” by Daniel Herriges

• Abby Kinney (Twitter)

• Daniel Herriges (Twitter)

• Gould Evans Studio for City Design

• Theme Music by Kemet the Phantom (Soundcloud)

• Select Strong Towns articles about public engagement

  • “Most Public Engagement Is Worthless,” by Charles Marohn

  • “Most Public Engagement Is Worse than Worthless,” by Ruben Anderson

  • "‘Public engagement’ is about knowing your neighbors, not planning a meeting.” by Rachel Quednau

  • “Don't Leave Your Community's Challenges to the Professionals,” by Rachel Quednau

  • “We Don't Need More ‘Invitations to the Table.’ We Need a New Table.” by Charles Marohn

For U.S. Transit, "Death Spiral" Shouldn't Have Been an Option in the First Place

A recent article in The Guardian described the “death spiral” looming for public transit in the United States. Country-wide, the pandemic has resulted in a 90% drop in ridership. This has led to cuts in services—which means even less ridership—and higher fares to make up for lost revenue. Higher fares lead to fewer riders…which means more higher fares, more cuts in services, or both. And so on. You see where this is going.

To save public transit, Congress may have to fill a $32 billion funding gap...but no funding package currently exists. Transportation advocates also warn that cuts in services exacerbate a “mobility crisis” that already existed for our cities’ most vulnerable people.

This article prompted a lively conversation on this week’s episode of Upzoned, with host Abby Kinney—an urban planner in Kansas City—and cohost Chuck Marohn, president of Strong Towns. Abby and Chuck discuss why the mortal danger facing public transit was always going to be an option when you overlay a dysfunctional transportation system on a dysfunctional land-use pattern, why public transit is a long-term investment in people, and how the U.S. subsidizes automobiles too. They also discuss whether making the “compassionate argument” may unintentionally undermine transit advocates’ case for public transportation.

Additional Show Notes

• Public transit faces 'death spiral' without $32bn injection from Congress, by Miranda Bryant

• Abby Kinney (Twitter)

• Charles Marohn (Twitter)

• Gould Evans Studio for City Design

• Theme Music by Kemet the Phantom (Soundcloud)

• Some recent Strong Towns articles on public transit

  • “The Only Thing More Expensive Than Saving Transit is Not Saving Transit,” by Daniel Herriges

  • “In Transportation Costs, ‘It's the System, Stupid,’” by Daniel Herriges

  • “What the Left Gets Wrong about Public Transportation” (Podcast)

  • “Transit’s Chicken & Egg Fallacy,” by Chuck Marohn

  • “Why Development-Oriented Transit is better than Transit-Oriented Development,” by Rachel Quednau

Can the Right and Left Come Together on Zoning Reform?

As the suburbs—and, more specifically, single-family zoning—emerge as a political issue in the presidential election, what can get lost is context, nuance, and even the opportunity for consensus.

The irony is that, in the first half of the 20th century, the Suburban Experiment—an approach to growth (not actually limited to the suburbs) in which Americans build human habitats in large blocks and to a finished state—was launched and sustained through nonpartisan consensus.

Today, ending the Suburban Experiment should have broad bipartisan appeal. Because the Suburban Experiment hasn’t worked. In fact, it’s been a disaster. People on the political Left and the political Right might get there via different paths and priorities, but moving on from the Suburban Experiment could be an opportunity for common ground and the chance to point our towns and cities toward financial strength and resilience.

That’s the topic of this week’s episode of Upzoned. Host Abby Kinney, an urban planner in Kansas City, and Strong Towns president Chuck Marohn discuss a recent article in The American Conservative, “Zoning Reform Is Not Leftism.” They look at how we’re being pressured to view this issue through an increasingly partisan frame, why the predictability of single-family zoning is necessary when building at huge scale, and how the Left and the Right could actually find consensus on this topic.

Then in the Downzone, Chuck talks about a new book he’s reading on the life and death of ancient cities. And Abby recommends The Geography of Nowhere. She also talks about a recent visit to a lovely town in Northwest Arkansas.

Additional Show Notes

• “Zoning Reform Is Not Leftism,” by Theo Mackey Pollack (The American Conservative)

• “It’s Time to Abolish Single-Family Zoning,” by Charles Marohn (The American Conservative)

• Abby Kinney (Twitter)

• Charles Marohn (Twitter)

• Gould Evans Studio for City Design

• Theme Music by Kemet the Phantom (Soundcloud)

• Related articles from Strong Towns

  • “The Is the End of the Suburban Experiment,” by Charles Marohn

  • “Nobody wants to ‘destroy the suburbs.’ But everyone should want to end the Suburban Experiment.” by John Pattison

  • “The Conservative Case for Ending Single-Family Zoning”

Pandemic Fallout: Will New York City Experience Long-term Decline?

Every week on the Upzoned podcast, host Abby Kinney, an urban planner in Kansas City, takes one big story in the news and she “upzones” it—examining it through a Strong Towns lens. Strong Towns founder and president Chuck Marohn is back this week as Abby’s co-host.

Today, Abby and Chuck look at a story playing out in New York City. Apartment vacancy rates there are climbing, as people flee the city due to the pandemic, and rental costs are plummeting. According to a recent article in the New York Times, the number of apartments available for rent in July (67,300) was the highest in at least a decade:

In June and July combined, more than 120,000 apartments were for lease, a nearly 26 percent increase over the same months in 2019.

The surge in supply has driven down rental costs across the city and forced landlords to offer generous concessions, including up to three months’ free rent and paying the expensive fees brokers command.

Abby and Chuck discuss the “great reshuffling” happening in America’s largest metropolises, the fragile model that undergirds so much of the rental housing market in New York City, and how likely it is that New York will experience a long-term decline. They also discuss why “the Lindy effect”—named for a deli in Manhattan—gives hope that New York will survive the coronavirus fallout...though the journey is likely to be a painful one.

Then in the Downzone, Chuck describes his own journey back from an accident, as well as his experience with a doctor-prescribed media fast. Abby looks ahead to a mountain biking trip to northwest Arkansas and recommends a meditation app from neuroscientist Sam Harris.

Additional Show Notes

• “Manhattan Vacancy Rate Climbs, and Rents Drop 10%,” by Matthew Haag

• “This Is the Great Reshuffling,” by Johnny Sanphillippo

• Abby Kinney (Twitter)

• Charles Marohn (Twitter)

• Gould Evans Studio for City Design

• Theme Music by Kemet the Phantom (Soundcloud)

• Additional reading related to this episode:

  • “10 Tasks for Cities Responding to the Pandemic,” by Charles Marohn

  • “Pandemics Take Advantage of Everything Good in Cities. Here’s How we Protect Them.” by Tristan Cleveland

  • “Is COVID-19 the End of Cities?” by Joe Cortright

  • “Effective Quarantines and Strong Towns” by Spencer Gardner

"This Makes No Sense": An Ill-Fated Comprehensive Plan in Texas (and Why It Matters Where You Live)

Someone on the Strong Towns staff wanted to name this episode of the Upzoned podcast:

Plan? “No,” says Plano.

The dad jokes—and, yes, the staff member is a father—are plentiful with this story out of Plano, Texas. So too are the head-scratching details. You see, Plano (population 288,000) worked for years to create a new comprehensive plan. The Plano Tomorrow Comprehensive Plan wasn’t perfect, but it contained good faith efforts to address the city’s looming financial crisis—a crisis brought on by the rapid outward expansion and mounting maintenance obligations of Plano’s Suburban Experiment. But now the city has abruptly scrapped the Plano Tomorrow plan and is defaulting instead to the older master plan that should be called “Plano Yesterday,” because it dates back to 1986 (when the city’s population was one-third of what it was). And it was this plan that helped guide so much of the city’s fragile-making decisions over the last 30-plus years.

Strong Towns senior editor Daniel Herriges wrote about the situation in the Dallas-Fort Worth suburb last week, saying:

It’s no small task to tell someone who’s used to getting something on the cheap—in this case, a big house with a big yard, smooth roads, ample parking, and uncrowded, high-quality schools and parks—that it never really was that cheap and it’s going to cost a lot more going forward.

The time for Strong Towns advocates to start insisting on that tough conversation in your own places is yesterday. But barring that, it’s now. Plano’s problems aren’t going away, but the can has now been kicked years further down the road.

In this week’s episode of Upzoned, Daniel is back to talk more about Plano with host Abby Kinney, a planner with Gould Evans in Kansas City. Abby and Daniel discuss the bizarre fate of the Plano Tomorrow plan. ("This makes no sense.") They also discuss how the situation in the Dallas-Fort Worth suburb reveals common misunderstandings about comprehensive plans, why it could stifle good planning in Texas, and why towns and cities must be allowed to evolve if they are to stay solvent.

Plano, Texas is the unfortunate object lesson: We can’t solve the Suburban Experiment using the same kind of thinking we used when we created the Suburban Experiment.

Then in the Downzone, Abby talks about the throwback music and movies she’s been consuming lately, and Daniel discusses the Murphy’s Law of air conditioner repair in Florida: If your A/C is going to break down, it’s going to break down in August.

Additional Show Notes

• “What a NIMBY Victory in Plano Means for the Future of Urban Planning in Texas” (D Magazine), by Peter Simek

• “A Plannner’s Nightmare in Plano. A City’s Nightmare Too.” by Daniel Herriges

• Abby Kinney (Twitter)

• Daniel Herriges (Twitter)

• Gould Evans Studio for City Design

• Theme Music by Kemet the Phantom (Soundcloud)

• Additional reading related to this episode:

  • “What Does a Strong Towns Master Plan Look Like?” by Kevin Klinkenberg

  • “A Strong Towns Comp Plan,” by Rachel Quednau

  • “A Town Well-Planned” (a six part series by Alexander Dukes)

  • “My City Has Massive Infrastructure Liabilities. So Do 99% of the Cities in America.” by Alexander Zhang

  • “A Texas-Sized Pavement Problem,” by Daniel Herriges

Finding a Room to Rent in Boulder Won't Get Easier Anytime Soon

A couple weeks ago, we posted a link on the Strong Towns Facebook page to a recent article about how the city of Boulder refused to lift its cap on the number of unrelated people who can live in the same home. Housing advocates in Boulder had hoped to put an initiative on the November ballot to reform the laws. But the city seems to have changed the rules, and now housing advocates plan to sue.

The Facebook post generated a lot of conversation—79 comments so far, and not a few angry emojis—and so we are unpacking the story further in this week’s episode of Upzoned.

Host Abby Kinney, an urban planner in Kansas City, and Rachel Quednau, program director at Strong Towns, discuss some of the factors that make Boulder, Colorado such a complex and highly competitive housing market. They discuss why lifting the cap on unrelated people almost certainly would legalize a practice that’s already happening, and how the current limit effects not just renters but landlords. And they explore why cities should explore removing barriers to natural growth, including allowing the next increment of development intensity.

Then in the Downzone, both Abby and Rachel talk about an addictive show on Netflix that should probably be watched with a pen and paper in hand. And, just in time for Strong Towns Food Week, Rachel recommends the podcast The Splendid Table and Abby talks about her forays into food preservation.

Additional Show Notes

• “Boulder Refuses To Lift the Cap on Unrelated People Living Together. Housing Advocates Plan To Sue the City,” by Christian Britschgi

• Bedrooms Are for People

• Abby Kinney (Twitter)

• Gould Evans Studio for City Design

• Theme Music by Kemet the Phantom (Soundcloud)

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How Do You Solve a Problem Like Housing Prices?

Roger Valdez is the director of a housing advocacy organization in Seattle “promoting more housing, of all types, in every neighborhood, and for all levels of income.” In a recent Forbes article, Valdez summarized the results of a study he’s done on the long-term effects of rent control. According to his analysis, rent control policies have historically been introduced as emergency measures...but they have a pesky way of outlasting the crises that prompted them.

 

Valdez warns that, if we’re not careful, communities may experience something similar with the pandemic:

The endlessly beguiling temptation of trying to fix or democratize prices is once again dancing in front of politicians eager to please during COVID-19 response…

 

The COVID-19 crisis could end up leading to price controls on housing that outlive the pandemic. Already in many states, including my own state of Washington, state and local government have imposed price freezes on residential and commercial rents. One can easily see, based on the history I cover in the analysis, how these freezes may become permanent, and lead to making eviction bans permanent too.

Rent control is one of those conversations that reminds us of just how complex the affordable housing problem is. In fact, it’s so complex, it probably can’t be called a “problem” at all. As host Abby Kinney says in this week’s episode of Upzoned, problems have solutions; there is no easy solution for the housing crisis.

 

In this episode, Abby and regular cohost Chuck Marohn, founder and president of Strong Towns, talk about Valdez’s article, about how the housing predicament becomes even more challenging during the pandemic, and how Strong Towns advocates should respond. They discuss the temptation to apply blanket policies to complex systems, the importance of feedback loops, and why we can’t just build our way out of the crisis. They also identify a first step cities can take that would be a quantum leap forward in bringing sanity back to the housing market.

 

Then in the Downzone, Chuck, still recovering from his boating accident, discusses his recent deep dive into World War II history. And Abby recommends the essential book The Geography of Nowhere, by our friend James Howard Kunstler.

Additional Show Notes:

• “Analysis: The Covid-19 Emergency Should Not Lead To Rent Control,” by Roger Valdez

• Abby Kinney (Twitter)

• Chuck Marohn (Twitter)

• Gould Evans Studio for City Design

• Theme Music by Kemet the Phantom (Soundcloud)

• Select Strong Towns articles and podcasts on renting, rent control, and the housing crisis:

  • “What Happens When a Third of U.S. Tenants Don’t Pay Rent” (Podcast)

  • “Can We Afford to Care About Design in a Housing Crisis?” by Daniel Herriges

  • “Statewide Rent Control: Solution or Distraction?”

  • “A Real-World Look at How Rent Control Hurts Tenants,” by Steven Greenhut

  • “Winners and Losers from Rent Control,” by Joe Cortright

  • “The Challenges of Building More Rental Housing,” by Spencer Gardner

Down to Earth: Time to Re-examine the Hype around Skyscrapers

"If no one ever built a skyscraper ever again, anywhere, who would truly miss them?”

 

That’s how architecture critic Rowan Moore begins his recent article in The Guardian, on his way to calling skyscrapers outmoded, damaging, and wasteful. Skyscrapers, he says, aren’t necessary to achieve the kind of density city advocates want for their urban core. Moore also punctures one of the longstanding arguments in favor of skyscrapers: that they are friendlier to the environment. Speaking about embodied energy, he writes: “Tall buildings are more structurally demanding than lower ones—it takes a lot of effort, for example, to stop them swaying—and so require more steel and concrete.”

 

Each week on Upzoned, we take a look at one big story in the news that touches on then Strong Towns conversation and we “upzone” it — examining it in light of the Strong Towns approach to building more financially resilient cities. This week, host Abby Kinney, an urban planner in Kansas City, is joined by cohost Chuck Marohn, the founder and president of Strong Towns. They discuss Moore’s article and explore the question:

 

A skyline full of skyscrapers makes for a nice postcard…but do skyscrapers actually make our cities stronger?

 

Abby and Chuck compare the “vertical sprawl” of skyscrapers to the density found in iconic cities like Paris. They discuss the problems of building all-at-once to a finished state, why skyscrapers are ultimately a pass/fail test, and the power and beauty of incremental ownership. 

 

Then in the Downzone, Chuck recommends a novel about Pearl Harbor by Jeff Shaara and the TV series Yellowstone, and he gives an update on his recovery from a boating accident. Then, Abby talks about Drawing the Landscape, a book she’s using to prepare to begin painting again this winter.

Additional Shownotes

• “Wasteful, damaging and outmoded: is it time to stop building skyscrapers?” by Rowan Moore

• Abby Kinney (Twitter)

• Chuck Marohn (Twitter)

• Gould Evans Studio for City Design

• Theme Music by Kemet the Phantom (Soundcloud)

• Recent Strong Towns articles about urban design

  • “What Is Traditional Development?” by Daniel Herriges

  • “A City Shaped by Many Hands,” by Daniel Herriges

  • “The Streets of Paris,” by Charles Marohn

  • “Greetings from Anywhere: Supporting Postcard-Worthy Places,” by Joe Minicozzi

  • “Why Urban Design Should Come from the Bottom Up,” by Nolan Gray

  • “Deadwood and Strong Towns,” by DJ Sullivan

A Better Use of Federal Infrastructure Spending

Heading into general election season, Americans are about to be deluged with ads, speeches, debates, articles and commentaries about all the ways in which President Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden—the two presumptive major-party nominees—differ on the issues. But there is at least one thing on which the candidates agree: both want to try to jumpstart the economy by spending trillions on infrastructure.

This point of agreement is no surprise to us here at Strong Towns. We even gave it a name: the “Infrastructure Cult.” As Strong Towns president Chuck Marohn wrote in the Strong Towns book, “Our collective belief in the power of infrastructure spending is now so deeply embedded within our society that we struggle to identify it as belief, let alone systematically question it. We take it as truth, unequivocally.”

Still, there are hopeful signs that the devotion to infrastructure spending may be eroding. One of the latest is an opinion piece published last week in the New York Times. Entitled “Stop Building More Roads,” the authors—two engineering professors, one at the University of Toronto, and the other at Cambridge—write that “the economic benefits of expansion are marginal and the downsides significant.” The first step to recovery, they say, should be focused on job creation, “but without saddling it to shortsighted, status quo projects we will later regret—highways, for example.”

The same goes for projects that emphasize technological  infrastructure, which risks becoming rapidly obsolete. Such projects should be “shovel ready” and “shovel worthy,” and sufficiently funded so that they don’t linger in aspirational planning documents. In the immediate term, this means emphasizing lots of small projects. They can quickly be planned, discussed and constructed once virus spread conditions allow. This will look different than 1930s New Deal images of heavy construction everywhere.

That article, “Stop Building More Roads,” is the subject of this week’s episode of Upzoned. Host Abby Kinney, an urban planner in Kansas City, is joined by Strong Towns Program Director Rachel Quednau. They discuss where Dr. Shoshanna Saxe and Dr. Kristen MacAskill’s alternatives for federal stimulus spending dovetails with a Strong Towns approach. They also talk about why the Infrastructure Cult has been economically (and socially) ruinous, why it’s time to reimagine what “progress” looks like, and what a much better use would be for all that stimulus money.

Then in the Downzone, Rachel recommends an excellent novel about Nigerian immigrants in the US and UK, as well as a TV show about the personal computing revolution. And Abby describes making the most of her opportunities to be outside before we’re all forced back inside by cold weather and COVID-19.

Additional Show Notes:

• “Stop Building New Roads,” by Shoshanna Saxe and Kristen MacAskill

• “Use stimulus to maintain viable infrastructure, not build more,” by Dennis Strait

• Abby Kinney (Twitter)

• Gould Evans Studio for City Design

• Theme Music by Kemet the Phantom (Soundcloud)

• Select Strong Towns articles about #NoNewRoads

  • “You Were Mentioned on the Floor of Congress,” by John Pattison

  • “A $7.5 Billion Boondoggle Advances in Austin,” by Daniel Herriges

  • “Just Say No,” by Charles Marohn

  • “The Fight For #NoNewRoads Is Alive and Well in Washington State”

  • “#NoNewRoads Gains Traction in D.C.”