Quote on housing that's very apt: "As demand for housing rises, Philadelphia’s neighborhoods can either remain affordable or remain low-density. They cannot do both"

This is true everywhere, not just in Philadelphia.  It's relevant to both strong and weak markets, because even in weak markets, there probably isn't enough housing.

In the discussions about school closures in Salt Lake City, the g word, gentrification came up.  People blamed it for the decline of families in the center city--therefore a bunch of center city schools were on the chopping block--when that is a trend that is national, that people with no children or few children tend to live in the core, while people with families tend to live in the outer city or the suburbs.

Similarly, the West Side of Salt Lake is more heavily minority and equity issues for the West Side are touted all the time.  But it's complicated.  First, the west side is really three sections: the part that is east of the railroad tracks, so it's really part of "the east".  The residential section west of the freeway and railroad tracks.  And farther out, the mostly industrial section of the west side.  

My thing about the west side is that it doesn't have centers, the equivalent of commercial districts on the east side like 9th and 9th ("In Salt Lake City, a dynamic enclave gives new life to neighborhood," Washington Post) or 15th and 15th ("Thinking about the opportunities for success with neighborhood commercial districts: comparing Manor Park in DC to 15th and 15th in Salt Lake," 2021).  

There are two commercial districts on major streets (North Temple, Redwood Road), but there aren't neighborhood commercial districts.  

A lot of retail on the west side looks like this.

There are some putative attempts but they are disjoint urban design wise, not very compact.  There needs to be a focused program to develop them into coherent wholes ("Lee's Market to close its 400 West location in Salt Lake City" and "Lee's Market is reopening in Salt Lake City," Salt Lake Tribune, "Grocery stores in cities: the failure of the "15 minute grocery store"," 2023;. "Fairpark neighborhood in Salt Lake gets new coffee shop: A team of business owners on the west side of SLC saw a ‘desert’ for coffee shops, so they’ve opened their own," Tribune).

Stoneground Bakery sells wholesale and retail, baking and selling from an industrial building on the west side that isn't part of a commercial district.

And, not unlike how there is all kinds of outlier commercial retail space in the other part of the city, space that isn't part of a commercial district, the same is true of the west side, there are a bunch of interesting businesses there, but like how mayors say more people need to work in the office ("'We need more London Underground commuters on Fridays to help shops, restaurants and pubs'," My London, "Mayor of Washington, D.C., pushes for workers to return to the office," NPR), these buildings need to be in business districts to better generate economic activity that cross promotes other businesses.

I haven't figured out how to write it up, but Salt Lake City and County have invested in a lot of social infrastructure like libraries and recreation centers on the west side, but they haven't been developed in a manner that promotes the development of centers.

Lack of centers is blamed on disinvestment, but again I think that's a stretch.  

I think back in the day when the center city downtown was so thriving, it was close enough to the west side that there wasn't a big push to develop retail districts there.  There was no need.

Especially because back then and today the population of the city (210,000) and the west side is small.  

Like a lot of Salt Lake west side is mostly single family housing.  People may earn less, so the properties languish some, but as economically deprived areas go, Salt Lake's Westside isn't so bad.

But people claimed such issues were relevant to the proposed school closures on the west side also.  Whereas like in center city it is about demographics, and lack of enough population to support full classrooms at existing schools, even if west side households tend to have more children.  

If you want to support schools, you need more population, and given the housing demographics there, that means multiunit housing.  It is happening, but in the North Temple corridor mostly, and closer to the east side.  

So a lot of this addition to the housing stock isn't going to help the schools on the west side, because it is clustered east.

So this op-ed in the Philadelphia Inquirer, "What the ‘poop building’ tells us about affordable housing in Philadelphia," feels very relevant to me because it's merely about numbers and demographics.  

I wrote about this wrt retail within the entry on the Bridge Park ("Revisiting the 11th Street Bridge Park project as an opportunity rather than a folly: a new revitalization agenda for East of the River, DC"), but it's the same about housing affordability.  If you want it, you need a lot of housing.  Just like if you want retail, you need way more people than you realize--many thousands, not hundreds.

A sign on a fence in 2021 expressed the opposition of some West Philadelphia residents against the construction of an apartment building at 48th Street and Chester Avenue. Photo: Tom Gralish, Philadelphia Inquirer.  

Otherwise, especially with single family housing districts, there isn't enough to keep it low cost as demand rises and supply doesn't ("Understanding the DC housing market: demand for urban living, not the construction of new housing, is the driving force").

The article discusses how a Philadelphia neighborhood could have had as redevelopment a multiunit building with 76 units, 20% affordable.  Instead, to placate resident opposition, it will become 22 luxury rowhouses:

Philadelphia’s neighborhoods can either remain affordable or remain low-density. They cannot do both. Squirrel Hill, a cozy corner of Southwest Philadelphia, was given this choice. We overwhelmingly chose the latter. Other neighborhoods would do well not to copy our mistakes. 

... One neighbor, objecting to density, dismissed the apartments as “slum housing.” Meanwhile, the neighborhood group Protect Squirrel Hill referred to the four-story mixed-income project as a “monstrosity,” fearing an apartment building would gentrify the neighborhood. 

... But new development did not cause the neighborhood to become whiter, wealthier, and less affordable. Take a walk around the neighborhood and you will see that essentially no new development has occurred. Data from the U.S. Census Bureau estimate that the number of housing units here decreased by 132 over two decades. The building that once stood on the site of the dog park hosted 61 apartments. 

... When housing supply is constrained, property owners have more power to dictate prices; new residents and existing tenants must compete for units. Research supports this intuition, finding that new apartments lower, rather than raise, the risk of rent hikes and displacement. Even market-rate development “frees up” low-income units; blocking development has the opposite effect.

... Neighbors used the guise of housing justice to block the development. Other times, we wore no such mask. But in each case, we have chipped away at affordability, walkability, and the urban fabric that makes this neighborhood diverse, unique, and sustainable. When we frame the fight over an apartment building as a community-stands-up-to-greedy-developer story, the tenants who might have called the new building home are forgotten and erased. And when a building gets blocked, those tenants don’t vanish into the ether.

(There is a project in my neighborhood where a church is selling out to be redeveloped as housing.  Someone complained about it as "gentrification."  While there are apartments on that street, the fact is our zip code is the highest income in Salt Lake.  By definition it can't be gentrification.)

The article mentioned how one person against the development suggested a bird sanctuary or a cat oriented project instead of the dog park it would replace.  That's like the anti-76ers arena people suggesting small ground up grassroots development projects for Market Street, the downtown retail district of Philadelphia ("Penn professors spearhead workshop reimagining uses for proposed 76ers arena site near Chinatown," Daily Pennsylvanian, "Community groups say forget 76ers arena plan" WHYY/NPR).

Taller buildings constructed with wood

For fire code reasons, wood construction has been capped at about 5 floors-stories, although when constructed on top of a one or two story concrete podium, the total height can be 6-7 floors.

At 18 stories, Mjøstårnet in Brumunddal, Norway was for a time the tallest timber building in the world.  It's now second tallest.

For the past few years, there's been a great deal of research and change in standards allowing for the frame construction of taller buildings ("Rethinking Code Requirements for "Tall Wood" Buildings," Architect Magazine; "Could Tall Wood Construction Be the Future of High-Rise Buildings?," ArchDaily).

Asian and Nordic countries have been leaders in pushing the changes forward ("Voll Arkitekter's Mjøstårne in Norway becomes world's tallest timber tower," Dezeen).

Constructing buildings in wood instead of concrete and metal creates fewer greenhouse gas emissions, and as a cost advantage requires less labor and can be done in part using modular construction techniques in off site facilities.



Rendering: Imagefiction.

The Wall Street Journal reports ("Country’s Tallest Wooden Building Rising in Cleveland") that a building is being constructed in Cleveland.

-- Presentation
-- "Harbor Bay's Intro project: Here comes the neighborhood," Crain's Cleveland Business

At 9 stories, it's not so much "tall" as it is wide. From the article:

The nine-story development, dubbed Intro, will include 298 apartments, retail space and an event venue. It is being built primarily with mass timber, a type of pressed wood that is gaining popularity as a climate-friendly alternative to steel and concrete.

The developer, Harbor Bay Real Estate Advisors LLC, hopes that the new Cleveland building will become a blueprint for others to follow. It is also betting that the pandemic won’t cool demand for transit-oriented apartments in big cities. ...

The nine-story development, dubbed Intro, will include 298 apartments, retail space and an event venue. It is being built primarily with mass timber, a type of pressed wood that is gaining popularity as a climate-friendly alternative to steel and concrete.

The developer, Harbor Bay Real Estate Advisors LLC, hopes that the new Cleveland building will become a blueprint for others to follow. It is also betting that the pandemic won’t cool demand for transit-oriented apartments in big cities. ...

If done right, making beams and floors from wood emits about half as much carbon dioxide into the atmosphere as the production of steel and concrete, said Galina Churkina, a senior scientist at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany. Trees also remove carbon from the atmosphere, turning wooden buildings into carbon vaults. That could help slow down global warming.

But there is also a risk that a boom in timber construction could accelerate global deforestation if the wood isn’t harvested in a sustainable way, she said.

A couple months ago I wrote about the sameness and architectural homogeneity of podium-based buildings ("Why new apartment buildings all look the same"). Wood construction might foster more attractive design.

As importantly, it can allow for taller buildings and greater density compared to current techniques, and over the long term, lessen housing appreciation.

Housing innovation in Seattle

There is an article ("More high-rise apartments needed, says bank chief - ‘Build up’ with taller blocks in Dublin to solve housing crisis, says McDonagh") in the Irish Times about the state of housing in Dublin--the Sinn Fein Party rose to the top of the board in last weekend's elections in part because it called for a subsidized home building program--and a banker made an interesting point. From the article:

[Francesca McDonagh] The former HSBC banker said she had lived and worked for most of her life in cities with high-rise buildings. She said that when she moved to Dublin to take over the top job at the bank in 2017, she was surprised by the city's "sprawl and the flatness of the skyline".

She said the city "sweeps" into the neighbouring counties of Louth, Wicklow and Meath and "it doesn't stop there". A city should have "the most options in the least space," she said.

More housing in the least amount of space is a pretty succinct description of what housing policy should aim to achieve in a city, as most cities are constrained by their boundaries and after a certain point can only grow up.

This is especially true today considering both population increases--when legacy cities were mostly constructed the US population was 40% of what it is today, plus shrinking household sizes and a rising share of single households, now almost 30% of total households ("Eric Klinenberg on Going Solo," Smithsonian Magazine).

For example, DC is 62 sq. miles, although about 1/3 is taken up by federal land and has more than 700,000 residents.

 OTOH, Fairfax and Montgomery Counties have about 1.1 million residents each on about 400 sq. miles. Then again, San Francisco is 47 sq. miles with 880,000 population, while Philadephia is 134 sq. miles with over 1.5 million residents. But Phoenix has 1.66 million residents but over 500 sq. miles of land.

Geekwire has a story, "This Seattle startup gives big discounts on home rentals — but only if you agree to Airbnb a room," on a number of housing "innovations" in Seattle.

• Loftium rents out homes to tenants at a discount if they agree to become an Airbnb host.
  
• Loftium previously created a program providing down payment assistance to homebuyers who agreed to split their Airbnb profits with the company. The offering was popular, but the company ran into issues due to rising housing prices, competition among buyers, and the complexity of the mortgage process.
  

A story from KING-TV outlines two other programs:

• Common offers dorm-style housing for adults with rent in Capitol Hill at just over $1,000, if you don't mind sharing common spaces.
• For anyone trying to avoid renting all together, Flyhomes is helping people buy homes by making cash offers on the buyer's behalf.

Commonspace in a Common building in Los Angeles.

What's old is new again.  These programs aren't really new.  Group housing is not new.  Although now it's being called "co-living" ("With loneliness and rents on the rise, co-living is gaining a foothold in Boston," Boston Globe; "“Co-living” is the new “having roommates” — with an app," Vox)  From the article:

“Our general philosophy is to keep all the good parts of roommate living and get rid of all the bad parts,’’ said Brian Lee, senior director of real estate at Common, a New York-based co-living company with 1,000-plus residents in six US cities. Arx Urban and Common have filed plans with the city of Boston to build a 282-bed co-living project called Common Allbright in Allston.

“I think Boston has a lot of the same characteristics that have made us successful in cities like New York and San Francisco,’’ Lee said. “Rents are very high in Boston, there’s not a lot of residential supply, and so a lot of young professionals making between $50,000 and $90,000 a year don’t have great housing options.’’

Common Allbright’s proposal includes 35 income-restricted bedrooms starting at $844 a month, according to plans submitted to the city, while the market-rate rent in a four-bedroom unit is estimated to start at $1,500 a month. In both instances, rent is inclusive of utilities, Wi-Fi, weekly house cleaning, furniture, kitchenware, and supplies like toilet paper and dish soap.

Definitely an advantage of the Common "platform" is that you are renting a single room, even if shared, so you're not responsible for when another roommate may be in arrears.

Loans for buying a house.  Providing loans in return for sharing property appreciation gains isn't new exactly either.  But with declining returns in most other kinds of investments, more capital is available--at least in strong real estate markets--to fund alternative investment vehicles involving residential real estate ("As unsafe as houses," Financial Times).

Microunits.  And there is the microunit type, although the US version is a lot bigger, averaging 400 s.f. (The Macro View on Microunits, report, Urban Land Institute) but can range from 100-300 s.f., at the lower boundaries ("What Is a Micro-Apartment? Even Tinier Than a Tiny House. A Huge Trend Explained," Realtor.com) closer to "capsule" housing in Asia ("Hong Kong riled by latest tiny 'space capsule' homes," BBC), which are more common as pod/capsule hotels.

Saturday's Vancouver BC election

Vancouver is one of North America's leading examples of high density urbanism.  (Image from Destination BC.)

Starting in the late 1950s, the city began encouraging high rise multiunit apartments, while also focusing resources on creating and maintaining parks, access to the waterfront, and recreational and civic facilities ("The Vancouver Model," Places Magazine; "High density living in Vancouver, British Columbia").

In transportation planning circles, the city is "famous" for not allowing freeways to be constructed within the city.  The Translink transit system operates at the metropolitan scale, and is highly respected.

The city began gaining population with the handover in 1997 of Hong Kong to the Chinese. Residents were able to move to other British Commonwealth countries and many chose Vancouver. The city continues to add population and to build more housing towers.

• Gordon Price, a former City Councillor and now professor, writes a great deal about cities and urbanism through his Price Tags website
• Patrick Condon, a new urbanist, is a professor at the University of British Columbia and a prolific author on urbanism (Seven Rules for Sustainable Communities,  Planning a Post-Carbon World
• The Tyee is a particularly interesting alternative weekly, often running series on urban topics such as transit and mobility (e.g., "Vancouver in 2050: Transit City")

The metropolitan area is constrained by mountains and seas and like other similarly constrained cities (Seattle, Salt Lake, etc.) perhaps this is a factor in an enhanced sense about the environment.  That being said, residents aren't happy with the "Growth Machine" and what they see as the complicity of elected officials in stoking it.

On the other hand, Vancouver interestingly shows the difference between being a city-state, like DC, and being a typical municipality with "ordinary" financial capacity.  Last year, Vancouver's government budget surplus was $5 million while DC's was in the hundreds of millions--because DC collects income taxes as well as property taxes, and has a stronger commercial real estate market, not because it's better managed or a better place to live.

Vancouver elections.  Canada doesn't allow the national political parties to organize and run affiliates at the municipal level.  Ontario doesn't allow the creation of local parties, while British Columbia and Quebec do.  Yesterday was election day for provincial and local offices in British Columbia.

Unique characteristics for voting and governance.  Saturday elections make British Columbia unique across North America.  Provincial elections are held on a schedule different from local elections.

But Vancouver has other unique electoral qualities.  The city has four active political parties, three of which won offices yesterday.  All of the Council positions are elected at-large, which makes it easier for the Council to act for the city as a whole.  The City also has an elected park board, unique in Canada, which has been in place since the late 1890s.

Saturday's election had three strong mayoral candidates from 3 of the 4 major parties (10 parties ran candidates for City Council), the incumbent, Gregor Robertson, of Vision Vancouver, the center-left party, Kirk LaPointe, former editor of the Vancouver Sun, for the Non-Partisan Association, the conservative party, and Miriam Wong of COPE (Coalition of Progressive Electors), the left party.  (One of Wong's platform positions was a suggestion that transit be practically free "Universal transit in Vancouver for $1 a day, pitches mayoral candidate," Vancouver Sun).

The continued densification in Vancouver, along with the hollowing out of the middle class, put the majority party at risk, and Kirk LaPointe ran a better campaign.

Results.  Despite that Gregor Robertson was re-elected and Vision maintained a Council majority, but NPA has 4 of the 11 seats, one of which went to the Green Party--candidate Adriane Carr got more votes than any of the candidates, and Vision lost control of both the Parks and School Boards--the Green Party picked up seats on both.

Note that Vancouver's population is a little smaller than DC's (603,000+ to 630,000+) but they had a slightly larger turnout, 44% and 181,000 voters, compared to DC's recent results of about 164,000 and 35.5%).

So in Vancouver, while two parties (Vision, NPA) dominate local politics, a third, the Greens, is a viable third party, with seats on the City Council, Parks Board, and School Board, while the fourth (COPE) is still viable (COPE was the majority party on Council before Robertson's first victory).   Vision controls the City Council, NPA controls the Parks Board, and the School Board is split between Vision and NPA, with the Greens having the deciding vote.

It results in a much more vibrant polity than is typical of US cities.

-- "Gregor Robertson re-elected mayor of Vancouver," CBC-TV
-- "Re-elected Mayor Robertson Vows 'We Can Do Better'," The Tyee
-- "Vancouver Election: The Tyee's Four Big Questions," The Tyee (the questions are affordable housing, balancing density with neighborhood character, campaign finance reform, and the city's role in oil pipeline issues)
-- "Vision's Angry Voter Double Whammy," The Tyee (the prime funder of the NPA is a railroad executive)
-- "Why Vision Deserves Vote of Progressives in Vancouver," The Tyee
-- "Kirk LaPointe and Gregor Robertson — the politician and the ideologue," Vancouver Sun

There are plenty of lots capable of accessory dwelling units in Upper Northwest

DC needs an alley dwelling open house or Alley-Palooza of its own.  This poster and event is from Seattle.

Much of the most vociferous opposition to the potential for "alley dwellings" on the rear of housing lots in Washington, DC--something that is legal now in certain residential zones, has been grandfathered in for some dwellings/carriage houses that wouldn't be legal now, but for existing buildings, but mostly isn't legal in DC--comes from Wards 3 and 4 in Upper Northwest. 

Yet many of the lots are appropriately sized for such dwellings.

And the likelihood of residents--the proposed changes to the zoning code would only allow accessory dwelling units on owner-occupied lots--renting units to "bad tenants" is extremely unlikely.

See "Will carriage houses destroy city life as we know it?" and discussion on the topic from Greater Greater Washington:

-- Walkability and garage apartments are not just for the young
-- Panic! Your alley could have a cute, clean little brick house!
-- Why the angst over accessory dwellings?

We went to an estate sale on the 4400 block of River Road NW over the weekend, and the block was full of lots with garages, at least one might have been semi-converted into something more, demonstrating the potential of accessory dwelling units here.

The block is 0.46 miles from the Tenleytown Metro Station and 0.59 miles from the Friendship Heights Metro Station.

Personally, I think that ADUs should be prioritized, when they can be easily accommodated, in transit station catchment areas, up to about one mile from the station--easy walking distance is up to a half-mile, and biking distance is up to one mile.





Note the extension on this building.  The plantings obscure the building somewhat.  But if you zoom in, you can see it better.

Residents don't want "density" ... but they do want the benefits that come from more population

When people lament that their neighborhood "lacks retail" I usually turn the conversation around and ask them "why do you think that is?"

In a GGW thread I made a side comment about desires to recapture and restore the Takoma Theatre as an active entertainment use.  Someone who also lives in the neighborhood scoffed, saying that he didn't care about that but wants upscale restaurants and boutiques.

I laughed vocally and in print in response.  With a limited population at the neighborhood scale, such retail "amenities" don't magically appear.  They need the ability to draw on a customer base larger than what is present within the neighborhood.  Cinemas and theaters are anchors, drawing in customers that end up being shared with nearby businesses, including restaurants, making the "pie" bigger than the neighborhood could otherwise support.

Typically, less dense or lightly populated communities lack the number of residents necessary to support the breadth and depth of retail they want.

It's only "worse" now because of concentration within various retail sectors, changes in people's shopping practices, preferences for lower prices, plus e-commerce, which has destroyed some retail and service sectors (music, videos, travel, books) and taken away a portion of sales volume from others.  See "The long term shake out of local retailers and independent retail districts"

This means changes within the metropolitan retail landscape at the scale of neighborhood, multiple neighborhood ("regional" shopping districts within a city serving multiple neighborhoods), and regional shopping destinations serving very large retail trade areas.  Districts are refocusing around food and other convenience goods (hardware, pharmacy) and certain categories aren't represented except by boutique outlets.

But, if you want more retail, a functioning neighborhood theater, etc., it's fair to say that you need more residents...  and how else are you going to get that but with an increase in residential density?

This is relevant because Joel Kotkin points out in "City Leaders Are in Love With Density but Most City Dwellers Disagree" from the Daily Beast that residents "don't want more density" but "planners do."  He makes this point out of his more general argument that suburban residential living still dominates residential choice decision making.

I think he misses the point.   What is it about "density" that people don't want?

Density or more importantly and accurately, "more residents" (this is the basis of the argument in favor of healthy cities laid out by Jane Jacobs in Death and Life of Great American Cities) means more customers for retail businesses, more local tax revenue, more eyes on the street to support public safety, more customers (hopefully) for transit, more people able and willing to be civically active, etc.

Density isn't some reflexive desire, devoid of context. 

From the book (pp. 208-212):

What are proper densities for city dwellings?  … Proper city dwelling densities are a matter of performance … Densities are too low, or too high, when they frustrate city diversity instead of abetting it …  Very low densities, six dwellings or fewer to the net acre, can make out well in suburbs …  Between ten and twenty dwellings to the acre yields a kind of semisuburb …
However densities of this kind ringing a city are a bad long-term bet, designed to become a grey area. …
And so, between the point where semisuburban character and function are lost, and the point at which lively diversity and public life can arise, lies a range of big-city densities that I shall call “in-between” densities.   They are fit neither for suburban life nor for city life.  They are fit, generally, for nothing but trouble …

I should judge that numerically the escape from “in-between” densities probably lies somewhere around the figure of 100 dwellings to an acre, under circumstances most congenial in all other respects to producing diversity.

But today, with changes in shopping patterns and how retail sectors are organized, 100 dwellings to an acre doesn't support the kinds of neighborhood and urban outcomes people want.  (Note that the first chapter of Belmont's Cities in Full puts numbers to Jacobs' arguments.  And Belmont's numbers too need to be updated in the face of e-commerce.)

Despite Jacobs, somehow planners fail to make the case that density "produces" the kinds of amenities (or "outcomes") that people want for their neighborhoods and their city.  

In a conversation yesterday with Anke Hansing, the marketing coordinator for IBA_Hamburg, we were talking about the themes outlined in the joint exhibition by their project and HafenCity.  Titled "Building the City Anew: Imagining Tomorrow's Hamburg," It's on display for the next few weeks at the University of Maryland College Park School of Architecture.

It's worth seeing.  (Although it will be displayed again in November at the University of District of Columbia, in association with an all-day conference.)

The exhibit is organized into four themes; one is termed the "Open City."  She said that the "Open City" is about how community dialogue and participation is essential to the process of transforming communities, and is a response to how people across Europe--not only in Hamburg--are taking a much more active role in their communities, that they want to participate and shape the future, rather than just accept top-down decisions.  I told her about the old saying "think global, act local."

I countered how in the US, this isn't so much the case, that residents, especially homeowners, take responsibility for their house, maybe their block (I wish I could get other residents on my block to pick up litter...), and maybe their neighborhood, but not their city.

I fault planning and planners to some degree for this problem, because planning iterations are set up with a major disconnect, are set up from the outset to fail.

Planners have two responsibilities, to address city-wide goals and objectives simultaneously with neighborhood goals and objectives.  But rarely are these sometimes conflicting outcomes defined overtly.

On the other hand, residents tend to only take responsibility for addressing neighborhood objectives, refusing to take responsibility for the achievement of broader/city-wide concerns and objectives.  This is opposite of the new sense of responsibility taken on by citizens in European cities like Hamburg, in part a response to fears of the impact of climate change gone unchecked.

This conflict is accentuated because planners tend to only define the residential concerns in the public processes, and to not differentiate the appropriateness of various types of interests and concerns depending on land use, urban design, and other considerations.

For example, I get frustrated in such sessions when everyone wants "open space" and the planners don't point out where this desire is in conflict with other priorities, such as at a transit station where the priority needs to be leveraging the financial cost and investment in transit.  Or residents state that the neighborhood doesn't have any "open space" and don't consider campuses and big front yards as part of the neighborhood's green space. 

So yes, "people don't want density" but they do want "amenities."

But, I would even argue that they aren't necessarily against "density" but they are against big buildings poorly designed and poorly built.  I think about this in terms of Takoma in DC/Maryland.  When the Metro was first proposed, it was accompanied by station plans.

Remember this was during the urban renewal era, so block-y ugly buildings were the primary result of public planning processes back then.  Think H Street's Delta Towers.

So of course residents fought this off.

While they were successful in Takoma in fighting off this change--which wouldn't have only been at the Metro site, but beyond--maybe they learned the wrong lesson.

That "density" was bad, rather than the lesson that crappy looking density was bad.

Nuance is tough.

Images of a protest flyer and the cover of a station area plan for the Takoma subway station from the article "Call to Arms: Activists defend a community under seige" by Diana Kohn, in the May 2009 issue of the Takoma Voice

HafenCity has planned for and is building a dense community, 12,000 residents and 45,000 office workers in about 2/3 of a square mile.  But they built parks, cultural spaces, social housing, community centers, extended the subway system, constructed bicycle paths, created a university--devoted to the built environment and metropolitan development, are building a Philharmonic Hall, subsidize retail development, have created community communication centers for public participation, etc.

Interestingly, one of the comments made by Jürgen Bruns-Berentelg, CEO of HafenCity supports my general point that we construct the communities we get based on our rules and processes.  

He talked about how "everyone" said that families wouldn't want to live in the city center, in tall dense buildings, but how once they built an elementary school, HafenCity began attracting many families, and in turn the organization developed participation processes to engage children, such as in the design of a playground (above, photo courtesy of HafenCity).

The point I am making is not that people need to live in tall buildings, but that some will, if it is an element of and a way to live in a complete community ("HafenCity Hamburg - What does HafenCity have to offer for kids?"). 

Density in and of itself isn't bad.  What's bad is monoculture districts.  And the failure to plan comprehensively and to fully implement integrated plans.

A practical example of Jane Jacobs' writings on how density supports retail diversity

Rosier/News. Claire Cavanah, owner of erotic toy store Babeland, stands in front of her store.

The New York Daily News reports on a sex toy shop opening up in Park Slope, with a baby changing table (probably not for kinky adults) in the restroom, in "Joy toy store gets a good vibe from Park Slope parents."

Also see, "Park Slope: Where Is the Love?," and "The Park Slope Parent Trap" from the New York Times.

Nicole Bengiveno/The New York Times. The streets of Park Slope are a veritable stroller catalog, with every brand and configuration imaginable.

The five word answer to why it is so difficult to revitalize neighborhood commercial districts in DC

We don't have enough people.
-------------
Here's something I wrote this weekend in an email thread on urban transit systems:

... I was thinking that I neglected to mention the most important thing, which I just took for granted. And that is urban design + density. Typically, it's easy to knock "next generation transit" systems because they are attempts to put the genie back in the bottle. [Added -- next generation transit systems are those like BART, MARTA, WMATA etc. that were built in the 1960s and 1970s. Urban design refers to the grid pattern of relatively small blocks that typifies the L'Enfant City.]

Since the dominant development pattern in the U.S. is deconcentration and a much greater per capita use of space in all metropolitan regions, it's almost impossible for new transit systems to repattern development, except on very long time frames, even if TOD and other pro-transit policies are in place (i.e., keeping commercial development in the core, reducing or eliminating free parking, etc.)

When transit competes against free parking, and people's failure to adequately account for sunk cost in computing trip costs, often transit doesn't appear to be an equivalently sound economic choice. (Peter Newman's work on the economic value of transit in terms of building wealth at the regional level is a good counter to this kind of thinking.)

But when you live in a place with enough density (and DC is just barely on the cusp of having enough density, most residents think there is too much and the sad reality is that most places don't have enough people to support neighborhood-based amenities especially retail, which is why neighborhood commercial district revitalization is so hard even so) you can support relatively frequent transit services, and with complementary development practices, and livability, you see how it works. [emphasis added]

That being said it took more than 20 years for the pieces to come together in the core of DC, I mean 20 years after most of the system was built out in the core.

And I mention the core, because the one thing only that I have probably ever thought of that Steve Belmont in Cities in Full didn't already write is this:

Belmont justly criticizes the other problem with next generation transit systems is that they are about polycentricity, not recentralization, and he criticizes the WMATA system for being polycentric, and not having much success in terms of densification in the outer suburbs (not Arlington).

Belmont's absolutely right.

Figure from Cities in Full.

But he doesn't take into account that at the core of DC, the WMATA system functions monocentrically, almost like the MUNI system in SF vis-a-vis BART. There you have great transit, more density, more neighborhood amenities. That's why almost every one of those neighborhoods has revitalized or is well on the way, and that is despite the relative under-density (most DC rowhouses are two stories).

Subway stations at the core of the city of Washington.

Density = accessibility

In transportation research, mobility and accessibility have very specific definitions. Mobility is about getting somewhere. Accessibility is having things to do in places.

In Death and Life of Great American Cities, Jane Jacobs was writing about accessibility, about density allowing and supporting a great variety of offerings. In the U.S., no city has more accessibility than New York City.

1. This is from yesterday's NYT Metropolitan Diary column:

During a recent visit to my friend Jen, a native New Yorker, from my home in Maine, we decided to walk from her apartment in the East 90s to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. As we walked down Museum Row, I commented on the spectacular view one would have of Central Park from the apartment buildings overlooking the street. “Yeah, the view is nice,” she said, “but you have to walk at least three blocks to find a good deli.” -- Jill Dube

3 blocks for a good deli! In DC, it's miles and miles, and I've never been to Wagshal's given its location...

2. The Sunday New York Times Travel section a couple weeks ago had a story, "ICE CREAM; Small Detours for Sweet Rewards" about super great ice cream options. From the article:

Be strong: New York has not opened the greatest museums and attracted the best theater and built the highest skyscrapers just to be outdone on its frozen dairy offerings. If you're willing to go a few steps out of your way, you'll find what you're looking for — much of it native, some with origins in Los Angeles or France or Italy.

Say you're leaving the Metropolitan Museum of Art, where vendors ply red-white-and-blue-missile-style Popsicles at the bottom of the steps. Upper Fifth Avenue might be barren of stores, but one street over, on Madison, you have three great choices.

E.A.T., an upscale deli that is part of the Zabar family, dishes out a tart lime sorbet, tiramisù-flavor ice cream dished out with a chunk of ladyfinger, and other flavors ($4 a scoop, $7 for two).
If you like your ice cream flavors intense, walk two more blocks to La Maison du Chocolat, the French chocolaterie that doubles as a glacerie in the summer ($4 a scoop, with no discount for gluttons). The sorbets and ice creams are as rich as the chocolate: you might think the shop had jammed a whole mango tree into the mango, concentrated a whole strawberry patch into the strawberry, and a squeezed an entire caramel vine (or whatever) into the caramel.

The choice for the budget-conscious is Sant Ambroeus, an Italian cafe another block down where it's $3 for a scoop, $4 for two. The catch: flavors are labeled in Italian, meaning if you're not sure whether “pesca” is fish or peach, you're going to have to ask. (Seafood sorbet lovers, sorry to disappoint: it's the latter.)

Another example of the value of density. Most of the extant decent (not necessarily great) independent places here are lightly spread out across the region. And chains like Rita's, Maggie Moo, and Carvel are on the rise.

The Express did a story on ice cream last week, and didn't even mention Thomas Sweet, the venerable independent ice cream parlor in Georgetown.