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It's so amusing to see you try to simultaneously argue that planners shouldn't be telling people what to do with their property but then when it comes to parking suddenly giving people mandates is "legitimate." You're no different than the "urbanists" you decry. Every planner has some excuse to justify telling others how to live their lives - some urbanists' excuse might be "the environment," yours is "congestion." Your opinion that government should force mandates onto other's property in the name of preventing "congestion" is just you trying to force your opinion onto others. Some of us LIKE the density you consider "congestion" - that's why people pay millions of dollars for property in places like Manhattan. If you don't want to live in a busy, dense area, simple answer is don't live there, rather than forcing your preferences onto others through mandates set down by planners.
There are multiple levels of granularity in planning.
The planning typified on this forum is density, mixed use, and there is an obvious anti-car obsession to boot evidenced by the anti-parking, anti-street sentiment. I see a distinction because of the levels of granularity. You apparently do not. The urbanist's "environment" excuse is merely pretextual.
If you want high density then go live in Manhattan and pay the costs and taxes there instead of trying to import them everywhere they aren't.
And you'd rather tell people what they "should" want? Urban cores are booming (and building less parking) because that's what people and employers want, and are paying for.
Dream on.
Of course a developer would rather have more units to sell for the same space - the "people" you are referring to aren't at the table when those decisions are being made. They can only choose from what is available. So to suggest that this is some open market where consumers can freely drive demand and choose is simply absurd.
Interesting fact about Portland is that in the last sixteen years, the UGB has been expanded enough to build 67,000 homes and only 5400 have been built.
92% of current housing starts are taking place inside the original 1979 Urban growth boundary.
Of course a developer would rather have more units to sell for the same space - the "people" you are referring to aren't at the table when those decisions are being made. They can only choose from what is available. So to suggest that this is some open market where consumers can freely drive demand and choose is simply absurd.
People vote with their feet and wallets. Developers have a huge incentive to get it right...if they don't, they won't lease their apartments/offices/retail at decent rates.
I'm talking about how things actually work. You're theorizing from a couch.
If you want high density then go live in Manhattan and pay the costs and taxes there instead of trying to import them everywhere they aren't.
Another incoherent and incomprehensible sentence.
Quote:
Originally Posted by IC_deLight
Dream on.
Of course a developer would rather have more units to sell for the same space - the "people" you are referring to aren't at the table when those decisions are being made. They can only choose from what is available. So to suggest that this is some open market where consumers can freely drive demand and choose is simply absurd.
Under that same logic (although I don't want to imply that your arguments are logical), people can choose to live in places that are not NYC, SF, Seattle, etc.
The truth is, alot of the great cities people are mentioning here like New York and SF became the sort of cities they are because of an older era when there were less restrictions on what people could build, when there was a freer real estate development market. That said, ideological rules like "no zoning ever" or "we always need zoning to protect urbanism and the environment" are rarely a good idea. In a certain time, in a certain place, you always end up making the wrong call by adhering to your dogma. I wish my city (Vancouver, BC) would adopt a more Houston style approach. We have only a little original urbanism from that older, freer time and what we have is all developed now. Micromanaged development set in place by unimaginative politicians hounded by NIMBYs has destroyed this city. It's become a no-fun, sterile, cramped, unaffordable playground for the rich and is everything wrong with today's urban planning. We need freedom. We need to be allowed to develop what the market demands, when it demands it, and we need to be able to take chances, make mistakes, and let small groups and individuals, not just implacable governments and enormous developers, do new and interesting things. This city is choking to death on its own restrictions and needs to stop favouring the existing homeowners at the expense of the class that aspires to own. Too much consulting with communities for years and years and years. Sometimes, a community needs to deal with competition and stop stifling the future, because the future comes for us all just the same.
If we loosened restrictions now, the city would emerge a great one, but the government deserves some credit for that. With all the bad I spoke of, they also led the way towards a better philosophy towards city building. Developers and the people now have a culture and experience with an urban, sustainable way of life, and if were freed would build it everywhere. The city deserves credit for leading the way on that, and it wouldn't have been possible without powers. So, there's a balance to be struck. Lead the way, preserve when you should, allow creative destruction when you should. A very difficult balance to strike. We failed on allowing the creative destruction, others failed on preservation, others still on leading the way forward. One day, someone will strike it right again.
Your idea that urban planners are responsible for incensed density is without merit. Urban planners are responding to circumstance, not themselves the cause of them.
It would be easy to see how the desirable features of an area could be obliterated as the population grows.
I can see a role for urban planning in the preservation of such. For example, historical preservation.
In the case of Seattle I would like to see the preservation of neighborhoods of Single Family Homes/with yards. With a growing population, I would consider urbanizing certain parts of the city, concentrating the extra population into dense areas.
Interesting fact about Portland is that in the last sixteen years, the UGB has been expanded enough to build 67,000 homes and only 5400 have been built.
92% of current housing starts are taking place inside the original 1979 Urban growth boundary.
Except all the people that, you know, just moved outside the UGB. Vancouver, WA? Population in 1980? 42,834. Population in 2015? Est. 172,860.
Portland's UGB has been expanded a dozenish times, or about every three years. It's done a good job of expanded to ensure there's always plenty of room for more sprawl which isn't surprising. The actual intent of Portland's UGB is precisely to ensure that there's always room for sprawl. It's in fact a requirement that there be room for more sprawl at all times. It's really more intended to manage sprawl so they don't disparate pockets of sprawl, which is why the current UGB is 13% larger than it originally was -- plus all that development outside the UGB in WA.
Portlandians are interesting creatures much like they are everywhere. Everyone should live in dense, walkable neighborhoods and not drive, yes. But it's not like there's any less driving going on today despite hundreds of millions of dollars spent on transit. Transit usage isn't significantly up, still under 10%, where it's largely been. Carpooling is down. Walking is down. The only positive number is cycling.
I do tend to agree. At the moment, the UGB expansions aren't really necessary. Most of the demand is for more centrally located development so relatively little is occurring in the periphery. That doesn't seem to much matter whether it's the periphery that's covered in the UGB or not as development in WA has also slowed down as well. In the 1980s and 1990s, however, it was the opposite. The UGB did an excellent job of controlling where development occurred then. Unfortunately, where it directed a whole lot of that development was outside the UGB to Clark County WA rather than inside the area covered by the UGB.
One side-effect that's perhaps beneficial to people who hate the idea of free choice is the rise in litigation and bureaucratic red tape. The exponential increase in litigation in the last 15 years or so has really stymied expansion of the UGB. Take one of the huge expansions to Damascus which occurred 14 years ago. While it's inside the UGB, you still can't develop anything there. The city is too dysfunctional to put together a growth management plan and without a growth management plan you can't have development. So they just spent hundreds of millions of dollars putting in new roads and schools and utilities to the 17,000+ acre UGB expansion in 2002 and there's been little development in any of that area, particular Damascus. It's not entirely surprising as uh, Damascus is in the middle of nowhere. The only reason it was added was because the land is to useless to grow anything on. In other places litigation has stopped planned development. Woodburn (also in the middle of nowhere but where there's actually demand) has been fighting to get an expansion area for 10 years in court. I guess they can just go up to Lake Oswego and commute down to save the environment.
Last edited by Malloric; 06-26-2016 at 09:00 PM..
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