On the heels of that study about the actual effects of density on citizens and their social habits, here’s the story of some developers trying to replace an older apartment building with everyone’s favorite, a vertical mixed use residential and street level retail development. The issue is that the number of affordable housing units set aside and their cost won’t come close to providing the number of affordable units presently in the existing complex. That might be because the existing complex has seen much better days and the new one will be… well, new.
Personally, I’m very much in favor of the proposal. I live like a block from here and these are just the sort of developments I’d like to see along Lamar. I don’t think it’s going to become a pedestrian paradise as some predict, but I think it would help. To me, it’s the handwringing that’s most interesting. It seems like many of the people who constantly advocate just these sorts of developments are willfully blind to the economic realities and their consequences. If you want more people in the city, you have to attract them. Attracting people increases the demand and the price for property, and leaves many who might otherwise live there out of the market. If you make unrealistic demands for affordable housing options then you remove the economic incentive for redevelopment and the increased density that would result. Which brings me to my overall problem with the density arguments anyway.
The fact is, despite what people living in cities might think of them, people in the suburbs are not just SUV driving, Bush loving, Rush listening morons, though some may well be that too. They’re economic refugees. They’ve fled urban areas for one of two reasons: 1) The neighborhoods are in horrible shape, and value and desirability are low OR 2) The neighborhoods are in fantastic shape and demand and price are exorbitant when compared with other alternatives. If you want people to choose to live closer to the city and work and to stay off the freeways and out of the big box stores, then you have to offer them something that justifies the price premium over alternatives. Clean, new, econimically thriving, pedestrian friendly developments might do that. Aging apartment buildings will not. But you’re not going to make urban living appealing by trying to make it’s cost competetive with suburban living. It’s simply always going to be cheaper to develop empty land than land that someone else is already living on. The added costs of suburban living are externalities (sprawl, traffic, pollution, etc.) and short of taxing them (I’m all for that carbon tax), it’s hard to get people to factor them into a cost comparison between two properties. It’s the added benefits of urban living that make the idea appealing, and developments like this seem to best represent some of those benefits. That and access to sno-cones.
But you can’t have it both ways. Density is expensive, and unless the costs of development are mitigated by potential profit for developers and justified by potential benefits to consumers, then it is also doomed.
November 16, 2006 at 9:05 am
Haven’t studied Austin that closely, but my estimation is that projects like this do little to curb continued growth in Round Rock or Buda or Pflugerville or Cedar Park. The same goes in the Dallas Fort Worth region. I think it’s silly to think that these projects are mitigating sprawl.
But it is a way for those larger cities to continue to reinvigorate life within and continue to expand their tax base, instead of allowing quality and discretionary income to move away. So, I am in total support for projects like this, despite the unfortunate side effects of displacement. I don’t know where the line is between when this work starts and when it perhaps goes too far (e.g. New York City housing costs), but I also do not know if we should try to dictate it. But from a cultural standpoint, I think it’s a good thing to have people living in the same area with diverse economic and social backgrounds. I think it’s more devastating long term to promote homogenous neighborhoods, be it low income ghettos or high income bedroom communities with high tax rates because those communities cannot support the infrastructure required to maintain any stability whatsoever.
A community that is not changing or evolving in one aspect or another is a dead one in my opinion.
November 16, 2006 at 9:16 am
The other thing… the idea that is typically expressed that people continue to flee the central city and choose the suburbs is, what’s the word… misdirected? Inappropriate? My family tree is 3 generations removed from a central city (Boston for that matter), and the same goes for practically everyone I know.
So I think you are the right track in terms of creating urban communities that are an attractive alternative. Because for me and everyone I know to move to the “City” you would have to convince us to flee the only “home” we’ve ever known. It would take much more than a shorter commute or pedestrian friendly street frontage for most people to leave behind families, friends, schools and other familiar environments.