#Gentrification

How do You See the City?

Urban Design, Urban Planning

I see every city for how it was built when it got rich. Economies move around, cities rise, fall, and some rise again, reinvent themselves, die off, or sit stagnate waiting for its revival. But, at some point every major city got really rich, and that’s when its public streets, parks, buildings, and private buildings set the bar/tone for the next century or so.

grayscale photo of high rise buildings

Photo by Ross Richardson on Pexels.com

For example, in San Diego, it got rich in the early 1950’s, when its population double as military R&D rose/located near its military installations. High wages, lots of jobs, and land for suburban growth with great state/fed spending on highways and our pending car culture. Spending its money during our mid-century modernist era has formed/shaped the context for the city of today and beyond.

It was a trip to Buffalo, and seeing its turn of the century opulence, that showed me how to ‘see’ a city.  Every great American architect of that time, Frank Lloyd Wright, Louis Sullivan, Frederick Law Olmsted, were building in Buffalo at that time and it generated two Presidents. This view translates to seeing our old European cities, such as Venice and its well-preserved mid-millennium opulence still valuable today, as well as in seeing our Asian cities, such as ShenZhen and its booming wealth (with every architect in the world, Steven Holl, BIG, and Gensler working there), and so on…

Vancouver got rich as Hong Kong shifted hands from English to Chinese rule 20+ years ago. That era’s neo-conservative ‘free market’ architectural expression of almost urban, but not quite, townhouse wrap of a small footprint, single-core tower was urbanism-lite at time when suburbia ruled our west coast north American landscape. And, it was the right architectural form for transitioning from suburbia back to urbanism… but, its already dated and in transition again, and towards a more urban pattern.

assorted labeled signage

Photo by Arnie Chou on Pexels.com

This new era is beholden to the ‘got really rich’ era in Vancouver and will still be subservient to that context, which wasn’t true 20+ years earlier when that great flush of wealth easily overwhelmed its past and context. Meaning, the wealth generated today in Vancouver is simply the by-product of yesterday’s economic boom. Same with Venice and its tourist value today for preserving its past opulence.

We’re watching the political anxiety in the face of this urban shift playing out across the world as the last throes of that 80/90s neocon intellectual culture are desperately holding on to the last of their structured power. Those  neocons who are voraciously holding onto power today also hold the counterculture of the 1960s in great disdain as their political radicalism and animus against authority, custom, and tradition is rising and an obvious threat to the old leaders. I believe this disdain is one of the reasons for the angry, resentful, punitive political furry expressed in Washington, DC and beyond… because the neo-counterculture is being repeated by today’s younger generation but this time with their own value system/context.

The millennials are choosing to spend their money in cities that are getting rich right now. These are San Jose, Oklahoma City, and in rebound cities, such as Austin, Seattle, and maybe Detroit (an anomaly in this group of relatively ‘new’ towns as it got very rich in the 1940s and may keep its Art-Deco patterns) will be reshaped with their values. I’m looking forward to ‘seeing’ how these cities express themselves as they grow rich over the next decade (with Vancouver’s ubiquitous point towers with a townhouse wrap in mind).

“Do the Math!” How to Deal with Hot Housing Markets

San Diego, Urban Design, Urban Planning

Transect-LA-nathan-dumlao-539610This innocuous quote from a recent Texas Monthly Magazine article (here) shows how easily it is to misunderstand the forces that shape a hot-hot housing market cities:

“”The problem, of course, is that this idealized urban lifestyle is out of reach for most. The culprits? “Student loan debt, wage stagnation, rising rents, insurance costs, and the lingering aftermath of the Great Recession, which many millennials ran right into at a key career stage,” – Jason Dorsey, President of the Center for Generational Kinetics, an Austin-based research and marketing strategy firm that tracks social trends among millennials and Generation Z.

Ok, so rents don’t rise when wages stagnate. This is because “the rent” is determined by:

Wages x Employment ÷ No. of Units Available = Market Rate Rents*

OK, so while this *equation is simple… the basic point is that the rents are rising in hot housing market cities because our growing upper class wages are booming while the number of units available are limited. Higher wages x higher employment in cities that constrain new development makes for hot markets and high rents.

With wages somewhat stagnating for the shrinking middle class, we understand that rich/middle/poor people want to live in nice /fun/safe places. And, everyone is willing pay more/compete for access to the ‘good life’ in a city that has great amenities, such as arts, parks, rivers (think Austin and Denver), nice weather, beaches, bays (think San Diego), and most importantly lots and lots of jobs with some or all of this stuff (think Bay Area, Seattle, and Los Angeles).

This competition is seen in San Diego, as our rent has historically been high for my entire life, with very little fluctuation in either good times or bad. A recent Federal Reserve paper stated the reason for this is attributed to rental rates being determined more by the level of amenities our neighborhood’s provide than merely by supply of housing.

This factor still fits with the simple equation above as those cities with the good life are too few and far between and those nice places are unwilling to build enough housing to meet market demand… as people continue to look for places to spend their valuable time and money. With that, one neighborhood will be expensive for a variety of reasons, and a similar neighborhood only a few miles away will be stagnant or declining, while still having the same physical access to beaches and bays… just not the economic access.

What Mr Dorsey fails to understand about Austin is that those few units available in the urban fun/nice hipster areas are being rented by those few Sci/Bio/IT-tech engineers who are in high demand and making significantly higher wages (+$200k/yr) than the regular blue and white collar workers ($60k/yr). This drives up the rent in those few high-demand neighborhoods. Austin, and all cities, needs more housing/jobs with nice stuff in more neighborhoods rather than having big money fight for those few amenity-filled neighborhoods scattered throughout most cities.

And with that I feel myself sliding into the displacement/social justice trap. As displacement is the nasty common side effect of gentrification (value increases). So, I’ll put this out there again for your consideration:

The most appropriate urban design response to social justice is to build towards social/enviro/economic (jobs/housing) stability. To be clear, I am not advocating for displacement, but I am advocating for some gentrification in economically static neighborhoods (such as more schools, parks, and market-rate development opportunities) and some economic stagnation (such as subsidized housing and rent control) in hot markets.

This brilliant study shows that all of San Francisco is an expensive because it is affluent with a growing population and no land easily available for development. And, building more housing would reduce rents as it adds supply to the inherent demand. But, if they built enough new housing to reduce prices it would significantly change the character of the city and its quality-of-life… so, urban design will make a huge difference in how San Francisco builds its future! Go Sonja Truss!

Ultimately, our big west coast cities currently flourishing on the tech industry (ironically born in San Jose suburban garages) will continue to be successful into the future as our nation’s constricting economy pushes well-educated, financed people into these nice cities. And, they’ll continue to spill out excess jobs into neighboring cities, towns, and transform conventional suburban tracks (which are still being built, btw) into more urban places (despite their fighting this urban shift). Again, urban design is necessary to move our cities into the future.

By the way… Seattle and Denver have stabilized rents by building more housing. And, a few years ago Denver changed their conventional zoning to a form-based code in anticipation of their 21st century development needs. Need I mention the value of urban design again?