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Old 03-31-2018, 01:13 PM
 
2,074 posts, read 1,334,870 times
Reputation: 1890

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Quote:
Originally Posted by arjay57 View Post
I don't think Ansley or Virginia Highland experienced that much white flight.
They didn’t. He doesn’t have a clue what he is talking about. White flight was mostly in West and SW Atlanta. Never understood how people run with one narrative and try and apply it to the whole city when 90% of white flight was in two specific areas of the city.
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Old 03-31-2018, 03:30 PM
 
Location: Prescott, AZ
5,559 posts, read 4,655,313 times
Reputation: 2284
Quote:
Originally Posted by arjay57 View Post
Okay, maybe I misunderstood you.

It seemed like you were going to considerable lengths do defend the City Design Book in this post:

http://www.city-data.com/forum/atlan...l#post51103133
That post was pointing out similarities between the ARC's predicted densification trends and the City's growth plan, not an endorcment of the plan itself.

Infact, not much after that post, I have this one, which rather directly critisizes the city's plan.
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Old 03-31-2018, 04:16 PM
 
Location: Prescott, AZ
5,559 posts, read 4,655,313 times
Reputation: 2284
Quote:
Originally Posted by samiwas1 View Post
You need to stop using complete and utter exaggeration and falsehoods. Since when is SFH "the only legal form of housing"? Since when is that all that is available? I get daily listings of homes in my email. Every single day, there are multiple condos and townhomes available at fairly low cost, in central areas of the city. There are apartment and condo buildings being built all over the place. How can you sit there and say that SFH is all that is legal and available? It's not even remotely true.
I wonder what the actual ratio of zoned land is for SFH to multi-family. Given how the city is only planning to set up 25% of its land for any kind of meaningful density, I'm willing to bet more than 75% of the city's land is illegal to build multi-family homes in right now.

I wonder what percentage of the metro's area is made legally availible to higher density than single-family housing? 15%? In 2005 urban categories made up barely over 10 percent of all housing, and SFH developments have been rather active since then, but so have a comparitive few multi-family developments.

Was it exadurating to say SFh is the 'only legal form of housing made availible'? Yeah, sure. Would it have been exadurating to say that SFH is the vastly larger form of housing legally allowed? No, not at all.

Quote:
I remember an article by one uber-urbanist blogger talking about the study. And checking out his Facebook page, he's pretty off the rails into hardcore urbanism...not sure I trust everything he says in his blog article. I would like to read the study itself, but not enough to buy a $30 book. See how the questions were presented and how the data was interpreted. Because, like I said, if you asked me if I wanted to live in an urban, walkable environment, I would say yes. But if you then asked me if I was willing to give up everything that was required in order to live in that environment, I would say no. Because while I would love to be able to walk to restaurants, stores, and entertainment, I would not want to live in a small mid-rise condo or apartment as a family. So, in the end, my answer would be no, but it could quite likely be recorded as yes, depending on the questioning methodology.
The whole reason for comparing Atlanta's findings to Boston's was to explicitly control for the very thing you're attempting to dismiss the study for.

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I'm not misrepresenting at all. Your position is that every lot in the metro should be zoned to build absolutely any type of residential structure desired by whoever happens to purchase that property, with only health, safety, and environmental regulations standing in the way, no matter what anyone else in the neighborhood has to say about it. I have maintained that as your position since day one. Is that not your position, verbatim?
It's actually not, since I've rather routinely stated 'up to mid-level density', and brought in the example of Japaneese zoning many times before, which is not 100% open wheeling all the time, like you're trying to frame me as being.

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And, if so, do you have any right to rail against Fuqua's projects, specifically the Piedmont Park one?
I don't have a particular issue with Fuqua's Piedmont Park project. Otherwise, I'm more railing on the lost opportunity. Do I think he shouldn't be allowed to do what he does? Not really. Do I think we'd have seen better projects if the restrictions weren't in place in the first place? Oh yeah.

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Well, if people don't like murder, why do we need to have laws against it? If most people are against drunk driving, why do we have laws making it illegal? I mean, since people don't like those things, they just won't happen, right? Yeah, big stretch, but the end result is the same. Just because most people do or don't like something, or do or don't want something, doesn't mean that it will happen that way. If 409 of the 410 homes in my neighborhood were against something, that doesn't mean that the 410th home won't do it. That's the way the world works...I assume you are old enough to understand human emotion.
You're trying to give examples of things that aren't driven by market forces, as evidence against things that would be driven by market forces.

Also, by your example, the neighborhood would still be 99.8% what the people in the neighborhood wants to be, all while that one person gets to be what they want to be. That just sounds like everyone's happy, unless you're the kind of person who get's all riled up over 0.2% not going exactly the way you want it.

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Casually steps over literal history because it shows that car-centrism wasn't a natural occurence.


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On a per-user basis, transit is far and away more subsidized. The fare you pay for transit is a tiny portion of the actual cost. In fact, fare revenues for MARTA are only about 30% of operating costs, much less if you add capital costs. By contrast, fuel taxes (paid by users) fund at least 44% of GDOT funding, which also pays towards capital expenses. I haven't been able to determine if that's just Georgia fuel taxes, or federal fuel taxes as well. But Federal funds pay for an even larger share. I assume that the federal portion also includes motor fuel taxes, bringing the total percentage covered by user taxes even more. Every time I fill my tank, I pay about $7 (currently about 18%) in fuel taxes.
How many roads in our state get gas-tax funding from people who never use them? How many roads get federal funding from people who will never come to our state to use those roads? How many people pay sales taxes for TSPLOSTs that they'll never reap benefit from? How many people pay property taxes to fund local road work in a part of town that they'll never go be in?

Now, before you misunderstand my position once more, let me say that I actually do not have a problem with any of this. Let me repeat that for you: I do not have a problem with subsidizing others from more productive sources.

My problem comes from the disparity in the funding mechanisms. Road funding is hidden in gas taxes (a fuel tax, not a road-use tax), sales taxes on unrelated items, and property taxes. The only direct-use costs are the HOT lanes, but those are an outlier to the wider road network.

By contrast every transit system makes you pay fare every time you walk onto it. It's in your face about the costs (or at least a portion thereof). That creates a very real misconception.

This isn't a semantic argument. The differences in payment placement create very real, and very different cognitive responces.

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If you had somehow been able to keep the automobile mostly hidden from people, and not let them know that they could freely drive themselves anywhere and everywhere they want, then maybe it's possible that people wouldn't want them. I mean, you'd have to create a town like The Village, but...
The issue isn't that people might like the car, it's that we made that the only viable opportunity by crippling the other options, and then told people that that was the natural order. It wasn't. It was the result of MASSIVE efforts on all levels of government and corporate lobbying.

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And the only way to do that, in your mind, is to make it absolutely everywhere?
It's the only way to actually create a level playing field to let actual preferences emurge.

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The second time you linked the same article in one post. Bravo! So, according to Levine, Atlanta has 10% of its housing in urban zones, and is meeting nearly half the demand. Most of those urban zones are only partially built up, and surely zoned for higher-density residential. It seems to me that we could absolutely fix this "amber-encased crisis" quickly by filling in our urban zones with residential buildings.
It was relevant. Oh, and you have data to show that, in 2005, our high-density areas were, actually, only partially built up? I would love to see that source. Oh, and if that was really as much the case as you say it is, then surely we wouldn't have needed to keep adding new density areas. Surely vacancy rates wouldn't be so low right now. If we had such an overwhelming surplus of potential capacity, then why, perhaps, wasn't that demand getting met in like it was elsewhere?

Oh, and, just as a warning, be careful with concepts like 'Zoned Capacity'. Seattle is finding out the hard way that such things are not nearly as useful as they sound.

Quote:
I think you'll find that the vast, vast majority of property owners simply do not agree with you. And that is the reality of the human condition, something you seemingly refuse to accept.
I refuse to accept that we should let personal feelings override policies that are known to work and be net benefits to socitety at large. I am worried that you refuse to recognize the need for seperating personal preferences from larger policy choices, and see it a tad sociopathic to be honest.

Just because it is the human condition doesn't mean we should maintain it. Not when we have the knowledge to do better.

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Prices going down is not good for property owners.
Ensuring that a private investment performs well is not the government's job. Keeping a market stable, sure, but not guarenteeing a person that their property will return on purchase. We don't demand such things with cars, or other goods, why should property be any different?

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Because that's not how the world works. That's not how human beings think. It's just not. People who buy a property in certain areas far and away expect that property to retain its value through the general character of the surrounding neighborhood. That is how people think. That is what people want. That is reality. you don't have to like it. You can point to data to say that slapping up a micro-apartment building in the middle of Paces is better for overall housing costs, but the residents of that area would never have any of it. Because, that's reality.
Japan and Germany would certainly beg to differ on your claim of reality. Just because people are wrapped up in toxic, borderline sociopathic mentalities of ensuring they get theres to the detriment of everyone else involved doesn't mean we should allow that to continue, nor maintain its legal status.

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Can you honestly tell me that outside of health and safety reasons, you have absolutely no care in the world what gets built next to you?
Like I've siad, neither your nor my personal preferences should dictate the policies

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And short of very, very few examples, this almost never plays out the way it does on paper. There are almost no affordable, transit-laden, highly-dense areas. But, yeah, we know...they are all just doing it wrong.
I mean, when they actually are doing it wrong, we should point that out. Especially when the sudies and analyses are actually based on real-world data and observations.
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Old 03-31-2018, 06:25 PM
 
5,633 posts, read 5,313,627 times
Reputation: 3855
Quote:
Originally Posted by fourthwarden View Post
I wonder what the actual ratio of zoned land is for SFH to multi-family. Given how the city is only planning to set up 25% of its land for any kind of meaningful density, I'm willing to bet more than 75% of the city's land is illegal to build multi-family homes in right now.
The proportion of land is irrelevant. If you can fit a 40-unit building on the same lot that four houses used to reside on, you've got ten times as many dwelling units in the same space. You don't need more land for the density. 25% of land for density and 75% for SFH sounds absolutely fine.

Quote:
I wonder what percentage of the metro's area is made legally availible to higher density than single-family housing? 15%? In 2005 urban categories made up barely over 10 percent of all housing, and SFH developments have been rather active since then, but so have a comparitive few multi-family developments.
Are you kidding me? Apartment buildings and townhome developments are going up everywhere. I've seen far more of those than new SFH, especially ITP.

But, remember...again: in 2005, 10% of the housing being urban was meeting almost half of the demand, and we've been building tons of large apartment buildings, condo buildings, and townhomes since.

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Was it exadurating to say SFh is the 'only legal form of housing made availible'? Yeah, sure.
No, it wasn't "exadurating", it was false.

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I don't have a particular issue with Fuqua's Piedmont Park project. Otherwise, I'm more railing on the lost opportunity. Do I think he shouldn't be allowed to do what he does? Not really. Do I think we'd have seen better projects if the restrictions weren't in place in the first place? Oh yeah.
What restrictions are in place that are stopping other, better projects, but allowing Fuqua's project? Parking requirements?

Quote:
You're trying to give examples of things that aren't driven by market forces, as evidence against things that would be driven by market forces.
No...I'm showing how market forces don't dictate everything. "Market forces" will not stop a developer from buying a home in the middle of a beloved neighborhood and slapping up a stick-built apartment building there unless there's no way that anyone would fill the apartments. Even if every person in the neighborhood was against it for a variety of reasons.

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Also, by your example, the neighborhood would still be 99.8% what the people in the neighborhood wants to be, all while that one person gets to be what they want to be. That just sounds like everyone's happy, unless you're the kind of person who get's all riled up over 0.2% not going exactly the way you want it.
That one thing could be an auto mechanics business which brings extra traffic and noise to the area. You wouldn't care about that. That's not normal.

Quote:
How many roads in our state get gas-tax funding from people who never use them? How many roads get federal funding from people who will never come to our state to use those roads? How many people pay sales taxes for TSPLOSTs that they'll never reap benefit from? How many people pay property taxes to fund local road work in a part of town that they'll never go be in?

Now, before you misunderstand my position once more, let me say that I actually do not have a problem with any of this. Let me repeat that for you: I do not have a problem with subsidizing others from more productive sources.
Uhhh...yeah. And how much do people pay towards transit, sidewalks, and bike lanes which they will never, ever use? A lot more than pay for roads which they never use. Remember: even if you don't specifically use roads, those roads provide services that benefit you: product deliveries to businesses you use, the lanes busses travel in to get kids to school, ways for emergency vehicles to get to you. Sidewalks and bike lanes that you don't use provide absolutely zero benefit to you. If you never go to the Beltline, it provides zero benefit to you, but you still pay for it.

NOTE: I am not arguing against those things...I gladly vote for them and pay towards them because I realize the benefit to others.

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My problem comes from the disparity in the funding mechanisms. Road funding is hidden in gas taxes (a fuel tax, not a road-use tax), sales taxes on unrelated items, and property taxes. The only direct-use costs are the HOT lanes, but those are an outlier to the wider road network.

By contrast every transit system makes you pay fare every time you walk onto it. It's in your face about the costs (or at least a portion thereof). That creates a very real misconception.
If you want to cut all gas taxes and come up with a driving fee so that we "see it", that could be discussed. But, the fuel tax goes away. And no, the fee isn't going to be ten times as much.

So, maybe instead of a fuel tax covering 50% of all costs, we could just have a user fee covering 33% of the operations costs. Sounds reasonable...sign me up.

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This isn't a semantic argument. The differences in payment placement create very real, and very different cognitive responces.
If you say so. Remember, we also pay for our vehicles, the maintenance, the insurance, etc. We absolutely see those costs. You get a comparatively free ride funded by others, especially if you walk or bike, in which case you pay nothing outright even for your special lanes.

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It was relevant. Oh, and you have data to show that, in 2005, our high-density areas were, actually, only partially built up? I would love to see that source.
Wait...you want a source showing that our denser areas were only partially built up in 2005?? You need a source for that? Well, let's see...the massive sh**ton of new buildings in Midtown in the last ten years and still empty lots are my first source. The still-vacant seas of surface parking lots in Downtown are my second source. The empty fields of grass and parking lots west of the connector are my third source. I won't even get to the vast amounts of land available around the south Beltline trail.

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Oh, and if that was really as much the case as you say it is, then surely we wouldn't have needed to keep adding new density areas. Surely vacancy rates wouldn't be so low right now. If we had such an overwhelming surplus of potential capacity, then why, perhaps, wasn't that demand getting met in like it was elsewhere?
Well...because maybe developers don't want to build what you want them to build. Apparently, the demand isn't as much as you suggest it is. Otherwise, developers would be falling over themselves to turn every empty lot in midtown and downtown into high-density housing for a quick, easy profit. The Atlanta GIS site is not working right now, but I'd venture to guess that most of Midtown and Downtown is zoned for density. There are tons of industrial areas around town which could easily be switched to multi-family zoning...happens all the time.

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I refuse to accept that we should let personal feelings override policies that are known to work and be net benefits to socitety at large.
Then you refuse to accept reality.

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I am worried that you refuse to recognize the need for seperating personal preferences from larger policy choices, and see it a tad sociopathic to be honest.
Sorry...it's reality. Just as those same owners did not want to give up their land and neighborhoods for highway expansion which would have greatly reduced the pressure on our existing highways many years ago and probably also wouldn't do it for a rail line to be plowed through heir neighborhood, they aren't now going to give it up to dense development. While you may not see it as the same because highways are not dense housing, the mentality of the people involved is exactly the same: protect their neighborhoods.



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Ensuring that a private investment performs well is not the government's job. Keeping a market stable, sure, but not guarenteeing a person that their property will return on purchase. We don't demand such things with cars, or other goods, why should property be any different?
Property is quite a different beast, and always has been.

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Japan and Germany would certainly beg to differ on your claim of reality. Just because people are wrapped up in toxic, borderline sociopathic mentalities of ensuring they get theres to the detriment of everyone else involved doesn't mean we should allow that to continue, nor maintain its legal status.
I guess i should have been more specific: it's the way it is in America.

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Like I've siad, neither your nor my personal preferences should dictate the policies
So, then why do you want policies to match your personal preferences?

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Just because it is the human condition doesn't mean we should maintain it. Not when we have the knowledge to do better.

I mean, when they actually are doing it wrong, we should point that out. Especially when the sudies and analyses are actually based on real-world data and observations.
Still amazes me that no city in the entire United States has gotten it right, and only a few cities worldwide have even come close to figuring it out, when it is apparently SO obvious. Maybe, just maybe...it isn't as cut and dry and obvious as you say it is.

Last edited by samiwas1; 03-31-2018 at 06:46 PM..
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Old 03-31-2018, 09:02 PM
 
31,993 posts, read 36,507,354 times
Reputation: 13254
Quote:
Originally Posted by fourthwarden View Post
That post was pointing out similarities between the ARC's predicted densification trends and the City's growth plan, not an endorcment of the plan itself.

Infact, not much after that post, I have this one, which rather directly critisizes the city's plan.
Gotcha.

I still think we are a LONG way from needing to turn the developers loose on the magnificent single family neighborhoods that make our city what it is. In my opinion the result would be catastrophic, on many levels.

A more sensible approach is to simply see who shows up. If it turns out we need to redevelop some areas in order to accommodate more people we can revisit the issue at that time.
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Old 03-31-2018, 09:53 PM
 
Location: Prescott, AZ
5,559 posts, read 4,655,313 times
Reputation: 2284
Quote:
Originally Posted by samiwas1 View Post
The proportion of land is irrelevant. If you can fit a 40-unit building on the same lot that four houses used to reside on, you've got ten times as many dwelling units in the same space. You don't need more land for the density. 25% of land for density and 75% for SFH sounds absolutely fine.
In a scenario of limited supply, as we are in, limiting supply by limiting potenatil build sites is absolutly relevant to the issue.

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Are you kidding me? Apartment buildings and townhome developments are going up everywhere. I've seen far more of those than new SFH, especially ITP.

But, remember...again: in 2005, 10% of the housing being urban was meeting almost half of the demand, and we've been building tons of large apartment buildings, condo buildings, and townhomes since.
"Tons" does not mean enough. Especially since we've been adding people to the metro, and specifically more jobs than housing since 2012. The ARC states that "[a]ll counties in metro Atlanta are experiencing the a decline in housing inventory", and that "[h]ome prices rising significantly – faster than wages – due in large part to dwindling supply".

But, maybe the folks at the ARC just don't get it either?

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What restrictions are in place that are stopping other, better projects, but allowing Fuqua's project? Parking requirements?
We've been through this dance plenty now. You should know the answers, since they haven't changed: parking minimums, mandatory setbacks, limits on multi-family housing, low default height limits, low default floor-area ratios, and low default residency allowances all play into shaping the developments.

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No...I'm showing how market forces don't dictate everything. "Market forces" will not stop a developer from buying a home in the middle of a beloved neighborhood and slapping up a stick-built apartment building there unless there's no way that anyone would fill the apartments. Even if every person in the neighborhood was against it for a variety of reasons.
I never said market forces dictate, nor should dictate everything. In this case, though, we have solid, real-world evidence, backed by analysis and study, to show that market forces are the better long-term solution to meeting housing needs.

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That one thing could be an auto mechanics business which brings extra traffic and noise to the area. You wouldn't care about that. That's not normal.
God forbid a new business open! How will you ever recover from such a thing! How will you be able to stand the convienience of having an auto-repair shop within walking distance?! How can you suffer through the indignity of being able to drop your car off at the shop and walk home?!

I lived with a business on our building's bottom floor for most of my childhood, and with businesses a 5 minute walk in either direction from our mult-family apartment building in Virginia Highland. They do not spook me, and they just so happen to exist in one of the very areas you want to encase in amber, yet that neighborhood is happier for them. Good thing most of them were in place before the very restrictions you want to keep in place were codified.

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If you want to cut all gas taxes and come up with a driving fee so that we "see it", that could be discussed. But, the fuel tax goes away. And no, the fee isn't going to be ten times as much.

So, maybe instead of a fuel tax covering 50% of all costs, we could just have a user fee covering 33% of the operations costs. Sounds reasonable...sign me up.
And yet, when I proposed tolls, you had quite a lot of hate for the idea.

Again, the issue isn't that those subsidies exist, it's that there is a huge discrepancy in how the costs are presented to people, while you insist that the transportation choices have been natural, and the result of uninfluenced, rational decision. They have not, not by a long shot, and that continues to this day.

That is my point.

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If you say so. Remember, we also pay for our vehicles, the maintenance, the insurance, etc. We absolutely see those costs. You get a comparatively free ride funded by others, especially if you walk or bike, in which case you pay nothing outright even for your special lanes.
There are known, established responces to different costs presented. Take a look here, Table 3: Impacts of Different Types of Pricing on Page 16. It outlines how different charging mechanisms manifest different responces.

Also, wear and tear on a section of pavement is an exponential relationship to weight. So, while a fat man riding a heavy bike may weigh 8.75% of an average car, he only does 0.01% of the damage to the surface. Given how much road funding is done through sales and property taxes, I really doubt that a biker is only paying one tenth of one percent of what a car-owner does in terms of financing the roads.

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Wait...you want a source showing that our denser areas were only partially built up in 2005?? You need a source for that? Well, let's see...the massive sh**ton of new buildings in Midtown in the last ten years and still empty lots are my first source. The still-vacant seas of surface parking lots in Downtown are my second source. The empty fields of grass and parking lots west of the connector are my third source. I won't even get to the vast amounts of land available around the south Beltline trail.
A source on percentages. Just throwing google-earth links at me isn't an actual source. It's noise with not enough context to be made useful.

After all, how many of those locations weren't even zoned for high-intensity use in 2005? Even then, it doesn't matter if new stuff was upzoned, if we are adding more people than we are upzoning. How do you know if those areas are enough? How do you know that, by building them up, they'd solve anything? How do you know that they don't have some fatal flaw that's keeping them from being built up right now (like overly restrictive zoning laws that raise the barrier of development too high to turn a profit)?

Even then, why does their vacancy dictate not opening up zoning even more? You can't just bar all new construction because a few locations haven't yet been improved. You won't fix anything that way, and infact just make things worse as you continue to build up unmet demand waiting for projects that may never come.

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Well...because maybe developers don't want to build what you want them to build. Apparently, the demand isn't as much as you suggest it is. Otherwise, developers would be falling over themselves to turn every empty lot in midtown and downtown into high-density housing for a quick, easy profit. The Atlanta GIS site is not working right now, but I'd venture to guess that most of Midtown and Downtown is zoned for density. There are tons of industrial areas around town which could easily be switched to multi-family zoning...happens all the time.
Except that there's demonstratable demand, and demonstratable attempts to meet it, what with the vacancy rates staying low, housing prices continuing to rise, despite what new housing coming online as has.

That, and I have it good from one this past round's city council candidates that developers would love to have things like no parking minimums. Things which rather get in the way of turning 'quick, easy profit' by raising the barrier of entry on a project to make it profitable in the first place. I have no doubt that, if we continue to styfle supply, demand will rise high enough to make those areas more profitable, and we'll see a flurry of activeity.

Of course, that's likely already happening given the efforts for projects like the Stitch, Underground Atlanta, the Gultch, and a whole ton of other ventures that are building up, and expensively at that.

Prices will continue to rise, more will sulk about gentrification, more will continue to blame development rather than the things that made them expensive in the first place.

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Then you refuse to accept reality.
Says someone who, when asked "So, what you're telling me is... 'feels before reals'?", responded with "Was that not obvious?"

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Sorry...it's reality. Just as those same owners did not want to give up their land and neighborhoods for highway expansion which would have greatly reduced the pressure on our existing highways many years ago and probably also wouldn't do it for a rail line to be plowed through heir neighborhood, they aren't now going to give it up to dense development. While you may not see it as the same because highways are not dense housing, the mentality of the people involved is exactly the same: protect their neighborhoods.
They don't have to give their property to dense development, but they shouldn't have the right to keep their neighbor from doing so. Especially when that 'dense development' isn't much higher than 5 floors, with one of them being a shop or resturaunt.

Besides there's a difference between fighting a highway that would 100% be as backed up as the rest of the system, and which has known issues of fiscal sustainability, pollution, and social inequality, and keeping your neighbor from building a small apartment building on their land.

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Property is quite a different beast, and always has been.
Why though? That's a rediculous thing to insist on. Either make it an active investment, or treat it like the gamble that we treat every other passive investment as.

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I guess i should have been more specific: it's the way it is in America.
And America is falling face-first into an affordability crisis that's crippling social, and economic mobility.

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So, then why do you want policies to match your personal preferences?
Opening up the codes to allow a wide variety of outcomes and environments ≠ my personal preference.

If I had my personal preference, I'd be saying we should all build victorian homes, wear suits with top-hats, and have increadible steam-powered machines with far too many gears on them everywhere. Also more zepelins using the Bank of America building as a mouring post a-la the Empire State building.

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Still amazes me that no city in the entire United States has gotten it right, and only a few cities worldwide have even come close to figuring it out, when it is apparently SO obvious. Maybe, just maybe...it isn't as cut and dry and obvious as you say it is.
Well, there is one U.S. city that is doing better, though not exactly correct, and it's listed in that exact article I posted. Maybe if you'd go actually read it, you'd have seen that.

Then again, when nearly the whole U.S. is running with the same basic ideas that were set in motion 60 years ago, at the federal level, it's not surprising to see that things haven't been fixed, especially with people like you who insist on ignoring the data for their feelings.
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Old 03-31-2018, 09:59 PM
 
Location: Prescott, AZ
5,559 posts, read 4,655,313 times
Reputation: 2284
Quote:
Originally Posted by arjay57 View Post
Gotcha.

I still think we are a LONG way from needing to turn the developers loose on the magnificent single family neighborhoods that make our city what it is. In my opinion the result would be catastrophic, on many levels.

A more sensible approach is to simply see who shows up. If it turns out we need to redevelop some areas in order to accommodate more people we can revisit the issue at that time.
We have been seing who shows up. We've been seeing for the past 6 years now, what with adding 2 jobs for every new housing unit.

The results of comparitive inaction are that vacancies are at historic lows, prices are skyrocketing, and there is huge known unmet demand for both dense living in the metro, and living in the city specifically.

If we keep waiting, we'll pass pre-recession peak prices, adjusted for inflation, by 2022, and just keep going. We'll price out all but the increasingly wealthy from being able to live in the city. More poor will have to live in areas that are cheaper for housing, but much more expensive for transportation, while also being further away from civic and social services that could help them. We'll continue to sprawl, and our carbon-equivalent footprint will continue to grow per capita vs. what it could have been if we'd allowed more density. Oh, and transit projects will be less effective even as traffic increases because more people are being forced to live further away from ammenities.

But sure, encasing massive swaths of the city in amber is justifiable against all that because... you like the way they look?
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Old 03-31-2018, 11:31 PM
 
Location: Downtown Marietta
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Originally Posted by fourthwarden View Post

Well, there is one U.S. city that is doing better, though not exactly correct, and it's listed in that exact article I posted. Maybe if you'd go actually read it, you'd have seen that.
You post a lot of articles, and most of us don't have time to read them all, but the one you seem to post more than any other praises Boston as a model of urbanism, and I am guessing that's the one you're referring to. It's a wonderful place. I love it. But it's also not a bastion of affordable housing. Pull up Redfin or whatever your favorite real estate app is. I just did. I zoomed all the way out so that pretty much all of Central Boston was on the map, all the way out to Brookline and Somerville. Do you know how many properties I found that are listed at $250k or under? Three. In an area that measures roughly 7 miles by 7 miles, there are three such properties. I don't know that things are working as well there for those who would like to have "affordable" housing as you think is the case.

Increasing density in areas where it makes sense and can be well integrated into the existing community is a great idea and can certainly help us on our quest to attain more affordable housing. And I don't just talk the talk - I live it, too. Our neighborhood, despite being in downtown Marietta, is considerably more dense than most parts of the city of Atlanta. We live in a single family home, and it is on a very small lot - less than a tenth of an acre. It adheres to a lot of the other principles you laud above: a high proportion of the lot is occupied by the house, there's very little space wasted on parking other than the basement garage, and it's very tall - four stories, and so it manages to be quite large and thereby represents quite an efficient use of space.

When our neighborhood was approved by the city council, though, people nearby who were already here were given the opportunity to voice their opinions of the development before it was approved. While the surrounding area was already fairly dense, there's no question that our neighborhood was going to make it denser. It was also replacing some really run-down apartments and duplexes that had basically been the scourge of the neighborhood for decades, and evidently the prevailing feeling was that the new, higher end, fairly dense neighborhood would be, on the whole, a benefit for the area at large, and it was approved. It has, indeed, resulted in a renaissance for the area, with much more renewal following it nearby. The Square is a much better, more vibrant place than it was 5-10 years ago, and the redevelopment of the housing stock near the Square had a lot to do with that.

The thing is, though - these neighborhoods had to go through an approval process to become a reality. The developers couldn't just slap up whatever they wanted. But you know what? Their applications were successful. There was, doubtless, some opposition from some individuals, but they weren't outweighed by the benefits seen by other residents and the council itself. The process worked. To the extent that the character of the neighborhood changed, it did so largely for the better, replacing poor quality or even abandoned real estate with much higher quality housing that's managed to raise the profile of the entire area.

Now, if we were to go just a mile away, to the Church Street historic district, and someone wanted to pull down one of those beautiful old 19th century homes on a 3/4 acre lot and replace it with a 20-unit apartment building, you can bet there'd be opposition, and I wouldn't blame those folks in the least. Most people bought into that neighborhood in part because of its character, and no one should be able to significantly alter that character without those who are already there at least being able to voice their opinions on it. That's why there's a process. By all means, make the process more transparent and less complicated - but a process has to remain.

Again, I like the idea of density where it makes sense. I live in a walkable urban environment and happen to love it. But I don't know that it's going to solve any "affordability crises," such as they are, on its own. Again, look at Boston. Nothing close-in could be considered remotely affordable by Atlanta standards. And while I do believe that we should find ways to better accommodate demand for housing in some of the most desirable areas, the notion that we could or should accommodate ALL such demand is simply not realistic. Desirable real estate is always going to come at a premium, no matter how densely packed it is. Look at Boston. Look at Paris, which has much greater density and also much more progressive housing policies than we could ever hope to attain here. There is still an extreme lack of affordable housing in the city center. My wife and I feel more at home there than just about anywhere on the planet, but realistically speaking, our dream of retiring there simply isn't going to happen, because we'd never afford anything that we'd actually want to live in there - and we have a pretty high income. Our dream of the 6th or 7th arrondissements? Forget it. We'd be lucky to find anything in the 19th or 20th at this point. The average Parisian is in a much more difficult situation than we are.

Finally, the notion that falling real estate prices benefit everyone is simply not borne out by reality. What happened the last time they plummeted, when there was too much supply out there and the credit markets collapsed at the same time? Who benefitted and who was hurt? The investment class benefitted - they were able to buy up distressed properties for pennies on the dollar. The people who got really hurt were the ones who had struggled to buy in the first place. The ones who had gotten an adjustable rate mortgage with an interest-only payment for the first several years and suddenly found themselves faced with a much larger payment when the introductory period ended. Those who found themselves so far under water that it didn't make sense to keep paying on the mortgage. When prices fall dramatically, the ones who end up getting hurt the most are those who were struggling with housing affordability in the first place.
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Old 04-01-2018, 07:22 AM
 
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Great points evanole.
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Old 04-01-2018, 08:58 AM
 
31,993 posts, read 36,507,354 times
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Housing prices are about much more than numerical supply and demand. Consider the gargantuan low cost, ultra high density housing projects built in cities like New York and Chicago.

Have they been successful? Have they lowered housing costs in those cities? Have they provided consistent good quality housing for low income residents? Are people eager to move in there?
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