Market Urbanism

Liberalizing cities | From the bottom up

“Market Urbanism” refers to the synthesis of classical liberal economics and ethics (market), with an appreciation of the urban way of life and its benefits to society (urbanism). We advocate for the emergence of bottom up solutions to urban issues, as opposed to ones imposed from the top down.

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I didn’t mean for these all (except the last one) to be about DC, but it looks like it turned out that way…

1. Matt Yglesias on lot occupancy rules in DC. I have a feeling, though, that these are more or less irrelevant in the face of other, stricter limits on density.

2. The feds, along with the Committee of 100 (surprise, surprise), are having a hissy fit over overhead wires on proposed streetcar lines. Regarding San Francisco: “But then you see these wires in the center. It’s like: Oh, great.”

3. WAMU manages to do a whole segment about DC’s historical streetcars without once mentioning that they were built and operated (at least for most of their history) by private industry.

4. WMATA institutes random bag checks on the Metro – an anti-terror strategy that has more holes in it than Swiss cheese.

5. Washington authorities might purposely make the Dulles Metro station inconvenient, to avoid “dual” terrorist threat. “We are not just looking at this (project) from a cost perspective.”

6. The price of gas in Iran skyrockets from 10¢ to 40¢ a liter, and China raises its fuel prices much more slightly, as governments feel the pinch of subsidized gasoline.

  • While zoning and land ownership is part of the story, historical streetcars were competing with narrow mud streets, so they had a lucrative captive market of riders. These days, governments are continuously widening and asphalting all the streets. Modern day streetcars will require public subsidies of one form or another to compete with that.

  • Benjamin Hemric

    COMMENT ONE (in this thread)

    Stephen Smith wrote:

    I have a feeling, though, that these [regulations restricting lot coverages] are more or less irrelevant in the face of other, stricter limits on density.

    Benjamin Hemric writes:

    I’m not sure what you you mean by “other, stricter limits on density” but, if you are talking about height limits, I believe I’m inclined to disagree. You’re not going to get high densities, generally speaking, if the buildings in an area have low ground coverages.

    The famous (or maybe not as famous as it should be) example is the one that Jane Jacobs gives in “Death and Life of Great American Cities”: Stuyvesant Town. According to Jacobs, Stuyvesant Town, which is a “tower-in-the-park” development, does not really have a very high density my Manhattan standards — because of all the open space. (Although I haven’t done an in-dept study of Stuyvesant Town, I have studied some other similar projects and they do have lower densities that similar areas of lower buildings — because of the low ground coverage.)

    ALSO, I think it’s important not to fixate on density as there are other things that also go into making a city healthy — and having high ground coverages, generally speaking, is one of them, in my opinion.

    Benjamin Hemric
    Fri., December 24, 2010, 8:50 p.m.

    P.S. — Lots of good links, Stephen. Thanks!

  • Benjamin Hemric

    COMMENT TWO (in this thread)

    Mr. Jerry Myrick said (as quoted in the linked to article on proposed D.C. street cars):

    You go to San Francisco, and you see these beautiful buildings, these structures. But then you see these wires in the center. Its like: Oh, great.

    Benjamin Hemric writes:

    I haven’t been to San Francisco but, from the photos I’ve seen, the streetcars in San Francisco — at least the famous “cable car” ones — do not have overhead wires. Although S.F. may also have streetcars with overhead wires too, those aren’t the ones that come to mind when people visualize streetcars on the beautiful streets of San Francisco.

    By the way, NYC also used to have both horse drawn streetcars (I believe they were the world’s first) and, later, cable cars. Horse drawn streetcars have their own aesthetic problem of course. But when you look at photos of NYC streets with cable cars, they really look great!

    I had meant to comment in a previous thread that was about streetcars but I think aesthetics do seem to me to be a significant problem for streetcars to overcome. I must admit that in the past one of the reasons I haven’t been more enthusiastic about streetcars is because of the aesthetic problem.

    But, on the other hand (and perhaps I’m being overly naive here), the aesthetic problem doesn’t seem like it should really be that difficult to solve — maybe with the batteries or fuel cells that everyone is talking about. (As I understand it one problem with batteries is stop and go traffic and the need for a flywheel — and streetcars seem like they would be well suited to the use of flywheels. Another problem is recharging or changing batteries — and again streetcars with short set routes and terminals seem like they would be well suited to handling this problem.)

    Benjamin Hemric
    Friday, Dec. 24, 2010, 9:15 p.m.

  • I was thinking more about off-street parking requirements – from what I understand, in places that haven’t done recent reform and aren’t dense city centers, these are usually the most constraining regulations.

  • Alon Levy

    Within NYC, it’s very easy to find out exact densities by going to websites like http://www.nyc.gov/html/dcp/pdf/lucds/mn6profile.pdf and looking at which census tracts correspond to each development and what size each tract is (easy in Manhattan, not as easy elsewhere). You can also get those densities on the Census Factfinder.

    The verdict: Stuy Town is dense, but is nothing to write home about by Manhattan standards. Its census tract ranks 111th out of 296 in Manhattan; Cooper Village ranks 129th. Most of the densest tracts are on the Upper East Side, which is the densest neighborhood, and have both high lot coverage and high floor counts; however, the single densest tract is a housing project in West Harlem, with middle-of-the-road lot coverage.

    On the other hand, Manhattan doesn’t really have density restrictions. Parking minimums are zero if you’re building in the southern two-thirds of the island or if your building is small, and floor area ratio limits are quite loose. The main barrier to development in New York is not zoning but the building approval process, which is slow and politicized and tends to reward sweeping urban renewal schemes and penalize evolutionary rises in density. Thus Columbia, which has a lot of buildings with two-thirds the maximum allowed FAR, prefers expanding into Manhattanville to adding floors to those buildings.

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