Quimbyism: sign me up!

A book I need to read.  Yes to the City: Millennials and the Fight for Affordable Housing

We've heard of NIMBY -- not in my backyard -- and YIMBY -- yes in my backyard -- abbreviations for different factions in communities opposed to or supportive of development.

A few years ago, Michael Mehaffy a prominent new urbanist, came up with the term, QUIMBY ("Never mind NIMBY and YIMBY–it’s time for ‘QUIMBY’ urbanism We need a major rethink of gentrification and affordability challenges if we’re going to get anywhere," Public Square), for "quality in my backyard" in part because YIMBYs don't seem to be too clued into quality, just building.

This comes up a lot with criticism of historic preservation as a limiter of development, or a stalking horse to stop development.  OTOH, there are a lot more areas of cities not zoned for preservation than for preservation.  

So most cities have plenty of build out capacity in commercial districts, transit catchment areas, reproduction of institutional lands, etc.

It happens that the neighborhoods that many people want to live in are typical of those that are designated historic, such as rowhouse neighborhoods in New York City, Baltimore, DC and Richmond.  YIMBYs basically argue for tearing down historic housing in favor of building more, to meet current demand, not recognizing that the new housing will be even more expensive because it is built at today's pricing for land, labor, materials, and financing.

To me, this is a perfect example of YIMBY housing on Sherman Avenue NW in DC, adjacent to housing that is eligible for historic designation but isn't designated, hence there are no design standards or processes to ensure compatible development.

Anyway, I commented on a recent post on the Pro-Urb list that QUIMBYISM could help us solve a problem of lack of congruence with multiple movements all addressing an element of what makes urbanism and urban living so attractive, by providing the glue that could join them in an agglomerated movement:

• Historic Preservation
• New Urbanism
• Urban design and placemaking (including Project for Public Spaces concepts)
• Walkability-15 Minute City concepts
• Sustainable mobility
• City Beautiful.  

This too, in NE DC near H Street NE and Hechinger Mall, in a rowhouse neighborhood that is eligible for historic preservation designation.  

These kinds of examples are why I argue that the entire city should be treated as a historic district ("Treating an entire city as a heritage area/conservation district, rather than a neighborhood by neighborhood approach," 2020).

On the other hand, this is an example of good, quality oriented infill development in a historic district and yes it costs more.  

It's a row of four or five new builds constructed on the 500 block of East Capitol NE (a tony housing district in DC).  

Ironically, they were built on a parking lot that was created by the Capitol Hill Baptist Church in the 1970s, by tearing down a beloved neighborhood restaurant, Mary's Blue Room  ("Losing my religion," 2008).

This action sparked the creation of a local historic preservation ordinance, providing protection against non-federal property owners, when the National Register Historic Districts designation process created by the 1968 National Historic Preservation Act only provides protections against federal undertakings.

But as Stephen Semes writes in Future of the Past: A Conservation Ethic for Architecture, Urbanism, and Historic Preservation, "the architecture of the ensemble" and maintaining neighborhood design coherence should be our priority.

"Maintaining a broad stylistic consistency in traditional settings is not a matter of 'nostalgia,'" he says. "It's a matter of common sense, of reinforcing the sense of place that made a building or neighborhood special to begin with. But many academically trained preservationists want to impose their inevitably subjective notions of what the architecture 'of our time' is."

Modern rowhouses in Capitol Hill, Seattle

Historic era rowhouses in Pittsburgh (I don't know if they are designated)

Typical new construction apartment design.  This is in Lakeland, Florida.