Where Pittsburgh could fit 100,000 more people... (Beaver, Liberty: hotel, home builder, income)

[pman]

Originally Posted by BrianTH

Yeah, but then look at housing prices in NYC, which indicate a massive unmet potential demand for more housing. And I personally think it is quite troubling that the population growth in NYC slowed way down from the 1990s to the 2000s.

So restrictions on new housing builds may not entirely stop city population increases, but I think there is ample evidence they can slow those population increases way, way down.

NY is complicated but the sheer cost of doing projects in NY (for a variety of reasons, not just nimbyism) is enough to ensure affordable housing (not the subsidized kind, just reasonably priced) is never built. Pittsburgh and NY, in this, have little in common. you're better off looking at Philadelphia which is well below it's historic peak and just starting to add population (as a result, they have real infrastructure issues they're pushing up against). there have been fights, but none of it has stopped population increases. a more transparent government there under the current mayor has led to lots of small projects being approved quickly (in Philadelphia, large projects in the core generally must use union labor which can be exponentially more expensive-same thing in NY). in the last decade that approach accomodated an additional 8k residents in the core area (probably largely due to growth in the number of households). that growth actually appears to be ramping up. there's some pushback, but it hasn't been able to stop growth. the real cap on growth there is that the city has few jobs and relies on the suburbs for most job growth..and of course, bad public schools which prompts many people to leave.

[BrianTH]

Originally Posted by pman

NY is complicated but the sheer cost fo doing projects in NY (for a variety of reasons, not just nimbyism) is enough to ensure affordable housing (not the subsidized kind, just reasonably priced) is never built.

Material and labor costs play a small part, but I don't think you can come close to explaining what is happening in NYC without NIMBYism. Of course NIMBYs throw every regulatory impediment they can think of at new developments, and don't just work through permitting. If you take out all the regulation-driven costs, what you have left isn't enough to explain why developers are not leaping to cash in on the sky-high rents in NYC. And in fact I know there have been numerous studies finding exactly that.

[pman]

Originally Posted by BrianTH

Material and labor costs play a small part, but I don't think you can come close to explaining what is happening in NYC without NIMBYism. Of course NIMBYs throw every regulatory impediment they can think of at new developments, and don't just work through permitting. If you take out all the regulation-driven costs, what you have left isn't enough to explain why developers are not leaping to cash in on the sky-high rents in NYC. And in fact I know there have been numerous studies finding exactly that.

material and labor costs play a large role in determining project cost and hence required return...in ny, the easy projects have long since been built. obviously nimbyism is a factor but largely irrelevant in a comparison with pittsburgh. mind you, the sky high rents are accompanied by sky high costs. if those costs existed in other cities, you would have no development at all there even setting the nimby's aside (which is what happened in philadelphia for decades, the current influx of development has, not coincidentally, been driven in part by small scale construction that isn't using union labor). costs do matter at the margin, there's no way around that. Pittsburgh, otoh, has far more open space than ny, isn't anywhere near it's peak population nor its population density so I don't think there's much merit in looking at ny for a comparison.

[BrianTH]

Originally Posted by pman

obviously nimbyism is a factor but largely irrelevant in a comparison with pittsburgh.

For now. I would suggest viewing NYC, and also Boston, Washington, SF, and so forth, as a warning about what the future could hold for Pittsburgh.

I also think it is important to recognize that these dynamics can play out at a relatively small scale. For example, they can play out just in the areas within walking distance of rapid transit stations. The cumulative area in question, particularly in a city without a robust rapid transit network, can be much smaller than the total area of a city.

[eschaton]

I think I'll answer my own question for a bit.

• Downtown can obviously house more people yet, both in terms of office conversion within the CBD and new construction around the old Civic Arena site.
• The Strip District could easily house tens of thousands of people. By my own calculations as of 2010 the population density of the Cork Factory plot alone (which was only part of a census block) was around 94,000 per square mile. Obviously all of the strip is not going to be built up to that extent, since it also includes a big slope with land that cannot be developed, some commercial and industrial will stick around, and not every development will pack that many people in that small of a space. Still, assuming something more like a third of that density you'd end up with around 20,000 people living in the Strip District, making it the most populous neighborhood.
• It seems clear to me that within at least Lower and Central Lawrenceville, many of the old industrial sites are going to be converted into mixed-use areas, particularly if the AVRR commuter rail takes off. Mostly this means further development by the waterfront, but there's also the former Iron City site, which potentially has great access to the Herron Avenue busway Station.
• Uptown surely has a lot of promise, almost as much as the Strip, as its residential stock was destroyed almost as completely - it's essentially an empty neighborhood east of Stevenson, with only a few hundred residents in the remaining two rowhouse areas, and a ton of low-use industrial/commercial and surface parking.
• I don't think South Side has come close to a plateau in terms of population, as there are still lots of industrial plots by the waterfront, and to a lesser extent at the foothill of the slopes between 20th and 27th. I think the residential demand will continue to push these areas towards either new construction or loft conversions.
• As I stated earlier, I think Station Square is a pretty bad usage of the current land it's on, given the great T access to downtown. It should really have a residential component, which over time becomes predominant.
• The North Shore in general (meaning everything bordering the river) is under utilized, with only two apartment complexes and Washington's landing. I know there are plans for the old location of Schweitzer Lock to be redeveloped as part of the plan for the lower Strip District, and there has been talk about some mixed-use going in between the stadiums. Although a bit further out, I think it's a matter of time before the industrial properties in Chateau nearest to downtown start to be converted to residential.
• Some sort of grand redevelopment of Allegheny Center would be great. In its current configuration it's plain awful, but it's someplace which could be convenient and walkable to downtown if the road patterns were changed, and comparably little worth saving exists in its core.

I think that's fine for the city center. The outlying areas are iffier. Of course as time goes on areas of higher demand will see infill, but the area of greatest demand outside of downtown is already pretty full as it is. The areas I would expect the most increased development are going to be Penn Circle, West Oakland around 5th Avenue, and Hazelwood.

[Evergrey]

Good point on South Side riverfront... it's really being wasted at present.

[pman]

Originally Posted by BrianTH

For now. I would suggest viewing NYC, and also Boston, Washington, SF, and so forth, as a warning about what the future could hold for Pittsburgh.

when pittsburgh has boston's population, yes, let's talk.
eschaton-allegheny center's main problem isn't road layout it's the buildings themselves as well as their uses. if I could replace the center with highrises, it would still be successful even without punching federal street through. now you could argue that it would be less convenient as a destination in itself with the current road layout but that's different than residential use.
overall, I agree with your assessment. there is a lot of potential to add in population in high density areas.

[BrianTH]

Originally Posted by pman

when pittsburgh has boston's population, yes, let's talk.

If other cities are going to grant us a window into a possible future for Pittsburgh, I don't understand why you would refuse to look through that window until that future period actually arrives. Advanced knowledge is typically quite valuable, even conditional knowledge.

By the way, the City is quite likely to hit serious constraints on prime locations for new builds, particularly in areas with good transit, long before it gets to Boston's population level. The only way that is even conceivably untrue is if we engaged in a massive expansion of our rapid transit system.

This is one of the many possible things you should be thinking about in advance, since of course it takes quite a bit of lead time to expand rapid transit networks.

[pman]

Originally Posted by BrianTH

If other cities are going to grant us a window into a possible future for Pittsburgh, I don't understand why you would refuse to look through that window until that future period actually arrives. Advanced knowledge is typically quite valuable, even conditional knowledge.

By the way, the City is quite likely to hit serious constraints on prime locations for new builds, particularly in areas with good transit, long before it gets to Boston's population level. The only way that is even conceivably untrue is if we engaged in a massive expansion of our rapid transit system.

This is one of the many possible things you should be thinking about in advance, since of course it takes quite a bit of lead time to expand rapid transit networks.

none of which is relevant at 100k. if you want to argue about nyc and its relevant to pittsburgh adding 100k, that's fine, but I see little logic

[BrianTH]

Originally Posted by pman

none of which is relevant at 100k.

Oh, I think it would be quite easy to see the parallels at 100K, in terms of housing price inflation, NIMBY-wars, and so on, particularly if we don't start expanding our rapid transit network.