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The city design plan does not call for nothing new to be build in the green areas. It just calls for it to be more limited to the duplex / quadruplex level (along with things like more historically contextual setbacks and reduction / elimination of parking minimums) so neighborhoods can still keep their character.
Agree with your metahore and we need drastic change to stay ahead on affordable housing with all the demand coming our way. But this seems like a fair steep in my opinion, more like putting on one entire layer of clothing at once. We just need to make even this happen still. We are still standing in the snow with just a tee shirt right now.
Don't get me wrong, I think the city's plan is much better than what we have now, and, if we weren't headed towards meeting our inflation-adjusted peak housing prices in 4 years, I'd say it was okay.
As it is, though, I'm very worried that we'll do that plan, then sit on it while we flow right past the critical point.
That was 10% of the metro's land, which includes much more than the city. Keep in mind, that 10% of the metro's area is 838 square miles, which is over 6 times as much area as the city itself.
So, assuming a linear relationship of land-area to satisfying density preferences (a bad assumption, but oh well), we'd need to have had 20% of the metro dedicated to urban living in 2005, or 1,675 sq miles. That's ~12.5 times the area of the City of Atlanta, all dedicated to fairly dense, urban living to meet demand.
Okay, this is getting patently ridiculous. What on earth did the author consider dense urban neighborhood if six times the size the city of Atlanta was considered dense urban neighborhood, and not capable of meeting demand? 10% of the metro housing even the entire metro population would be a density of under 7,000 PPSM.
838 square miles is roughly the size of Fulton and Cobb counties put together. If anyone thinks we need that much area dedicated to high-density urban living, they are densely-high. 838 square miles at even a modest 5,000 PPSM density is well over 4 million people.
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Also, our metro only had 4,250,000 people in 2005. In 2017 we had 5,900,000 people, an increase of 1.65 Million people. So, to meet the same percentage, we'd need to dedicate even more land, else we'd actually be meeting a smaller percentage of demand.
Note something here: we have increased population by nearly 40% in the last 13 years, still have vast areas undeveloped in the city, and still are seeing prices not much higher than 15 years ago. That does not sound like a crisis.
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If we were to try and satisfy 100% of the urban demand, we'd need 28% of the total metro land area dedicated to the prospect of urban living, representing 17.4 times the entirety of the City of Atlanta.
Are you starting to realize how ridiculous this all sounds? No, I assume not. 28% of the metro area is 2,345 square miles. At 2,500 PPSM, which is not dense at all (and is, in fact, our current urban area density), that's already the entirety of our metro population.
Sorry...prices are not much higher than 15 years ago, still have huge swaths of land to build high-density on right here in the core, and much, much more metro-wide, and can easily support the numbers. We are not close to needing our established neighborhoods to rip up. Nope. Not even close.
Don't get me wrong, I think the city's plan is much better than what we have now, and, if we weren't headed towards meeting our inflation-adjusted peak housing prices in 4 years, I'd say it was okay.
As it is, though, I'm very worried that we'll do that plan, then sit on it while we flow right past the critical point.
The Atlanta Case Shiller index is still way behind that of the 20-city composite and has been accelerating at a slower rate than it since the end of the recession, as well.
Has anybody asked all these people who are clamoring to get into the city of Atlanta what size housing they have in mind, what part of town they want to live in and how much they plan on paying for it? Do they have children and do they plan on using public schools? How many cars do they have and where to they plan on parking them? Where are they going to work?
It would be nice to know a few of these basics before we turn the developers loose on our classic single family neighborhoods.
Has anybody asked all these people who are clamoring to get into the city of Atlanta what size housing they have in mind, what part of town they want to live in and how much they plan on paying for it? Do they have children and do they plan on using public schools? How many cars do they have and where to they plan on parking them? Where are they going to work?
It would be nice to know a few of these basics before we turn the developers loose on our classic single family neighborhoods.
Yep. We have done one on one interviews with every single person that might possibly move to Atlanta in the coming decades because that is a perfectly reasonable thing to expect. :-)
But seriously, if you don't think there is demand for urban living then there is no reason to keep these laws around prohibiting it.
And these anti-density laws don't stop people from moving to the metro, they just force them to live further away than they would like and thus drive even further and use even more infrastructure than if they were able to find affordable options in the city.
Yep. We have done one on one interviews with every single person that might possibly move to Atlanta in the coming decades because that is a perfectly reasonable thing to expect. :-)
But seriously, if you don't think there is demand for urban living then there is no reason to keep these laws around prohibiting it.
And these anti-density laws don't stop people from moving to the metro, they just force them to live further away than they would like and thus drive even further and use even more infrastructure than if they were able to find affordable options in the city.
Do we know anything about these alleged hordes? For example, what kind of housing do they want and what are they wiling to pay for it?
Okay, this is getting patently ridiculous. What on earth did the author consider dense urban neighborhood if six times the size the city of Atlanta was considered dense urban neighborhood, and not capable of meeting demand? 10% of the metro housing even the entire metro population would be a density of under 7,000 PPSM.
838 square miles is roughly the size of Fulton and Cobb counties put together. If anyone thinks we need that much area dedicated to high-density urban living, they are densely-high. 838 square miles at even a modest 5,000 PPSM density is well over 4 million people.
You'll never get land to be 100% built up to its potential zoned capacity. That's just not how the real-world works, and Seattle is having to learn that the hard way. You actually have to overshoot your expected growth with 'capacity' to be able to handle real demand.
All those areas that are zoned for increased density, but aren't built up are not wiped away, though. They still exist in whatever form they had. They can still be SFH, or rural fields, or whatever. Having the wide-range of area established for the possibility of infill, though, actually enables the market to have the flexibility to meet demand.
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Note something here: we have increased population by nearly 40% in the last 13 years, still have vast areas undeveloped in the city, and still are seeing prices not much higher than 15 years ago. That does not sound like a crisis.
Well, when it took a massive recession built on toxic speculation and overly lax lending practices to make that 'slow growth' possible, perhaps there's something to be worried about this time?
We're on our way towards passing our inflation-adjusted peak housing prices, which I want to remind you were only that high because of toxic lending practices, in four years. This time, though, lending practes are tighter, and vacancy rates are much lower. This time, it's not a bubble. We're not flooding the market with housing, as the ARC explicitly states. Housing prices are rising despite stricter lending practices.
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Are you starting to realize how ridiculous this all sounds? No, I assume not. 28% of the metro area is 2,345 square miles. At 2,500 PPSM, which is not dense at all (and is, in fact, our current urban area density), that's already the entirety of our metro population.
It's all about needed zoning to actually meet demand, not just the potential capacity of the zoned area. Not 100% of that dense area will be built up into density, but having that much land established as potential density is what's needed to provide enough options to actually meet demand.
We have real-world data to show that, for this very metro, whether or not you want to accept it.
This is why I have been pressing the open-form zoning method, so that all that land that isn't built up despite being zoned for it, can still legally be the low-density that the market and individuals want it to be. Maybe now you can see how simply allowing for density won't automatically ensure that it happens to an area?
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Sorry...prices are not much higher than 15 years ago, still have huge swaths of land to build high-density on right here in the core, and much, much more metro-wide, and can easily support the numbers. We are not close to needing our established neighborhoods to rip up. Nope. Not even close.
Thank you, you've proven the point.
Pick one: "all that area zoned for density will be underused and unecessary, and there's not nearly as much demand for it as you say", or "zoning areas for density automatically mean they will fully and completly change".
I say let's prove you right. Let's zone as much land as I say is needed to be open to density, and then let's watch me be wrong. Wither that land is needed, and we meet demand as I say is necessary, or it's not needed, as you seem so sure it isn't, and things don't change what so ever. I would be 100% okay with not needing that land zoned at all in the end, but at least we'd have actually given the market the chance to do its thing.
Let's put our zoning where our mouths (keyboards?) are, and actually prove, in a real-world setting, who's right.
Do we know anything about these alleged hordes? For example, what kind of housing do they want and what are they wiling to pay for it?
If any of us can, for 100% sure, predict this, then the ARC needs to be offering up quite a lot of money for that information.
In lieu of bying psychic, the entire point of having an open zoning system is to allow the market the flexibility to be able to deal with a wide range of demand, whether that be for dense mixed-use and transit-oriented, or large-estate single family houses, or anything in between.
Give the market the flexibility to act, so civic leaders aren't always playing reactionary to housing needs, and inevitably lagging behind.
If any of us can, for 100% sure, predict this, then the ARC needs to be offering up quite a lot of money for that information.
In lieu of bying psychic, the entire point of having an open zoning system is to allow the market the flexibility to be able to deal with a wide range of demand, whether that be for dense mixed-use and transit-oriented, or large-estate single family houses, or anything in between.
Give the market the flexibility to act, so civic leaders aren't always playing reactionary to housing needs, and inevitably lagging behind.
So why don't we simply let the market fill up the identified growth corridors? If and when that space is used up, and if there is still a need, we can take a look at other areas.
So why don't we simply let the market fill up the identified growth corridors? If and when that space is used up, and if there is still a need, we can take a look at other areas.
Because I already answered this in a reply to Sam, I'll just copy and paste the answer:
You'll never get land to be 100% built up to its potential zoned capacity. That's just not how the real-world works, and Seattle is having to learn that the hard way. You actually have to overshoot your expected growth with 'capacity' to be able to handle real demand.
It's all about needed zoning to actually meet demand, not just the potential capacity of the zoned area. Not 100% of that dense area will be built up into density, but having that much land established as potential density is what's needed to provide enough options to actually meet demand.
We have real-world data to show that, for this very metro.
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