Category Archives: Places

Argument for historic preservation district for less than 20 year old McMansions

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I wondered when this day might come: a local government official in Australia is suggesting a set of McMansions less than twenty years go should be protected by a historic preservation district.

Hornsby councillor Bruce Mills is leading a push to have Cannan Close, Cherrybrook, gazetted as a heritage conservation area.

While the cul-de-sac was only developed in the 1990s, Mr Mills said it was already architecturally significant, and brushed aside claims that it was too new to be listed.

“I don’t think anyone turns into Cannan Close who doesn’t let out an involuntary ‘wow’,” Mr Mills said. “The houses are consistent in their look, feel, style and materials, the width of the blocks, even the trees and gardens.

“I know that the Cannan Close dwellings are only 20 or so years old, but what will our grandchildren be debating if we say it’s not old enough

“Under these new planning laws, nothing will survive until it’s 70 years old because nothing is protected.”

The logic here doesn’t seem terribly unreasonable: buildings that are not protected can be altered and/or destroyed. Yet, I imagine people might have two major objections:

1. Historic buildings should be a little more historic than less than 20 years old. This is actually an interesting question: at what point does a community have enough perspective to be able to declare something worth protecting or not? Buildings are not simply protected because they are old; it is often because they exemplify a particular style (even Brutalist structures can be considered for protection) or the community has found them to be worthwhile structures.

2. Some will argue that McMansions should never be historically protected, even if they were much older. One critique of McMansions factors in here: such homes are often not considered to be paragons of architectural style and because they are mass produced, will not age well. Put another way, these homes are not architecturally worth saving.

All together, discussions about historic preservation districts often stir up a lot of discussion as it can pit community interests versus the rights of homeowners. It will be interesting to see if these Australian McMansions do get protected.

New census data suggests many American big cities now growing faster than their suburbs

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New census data suggests demographic patterns not seen since before the 1920s: big cities growing faster than their suburbs.

Driving the resurgence are young adults, who are delaying careers, marriage and having children amid persistently high unemployment. Burdened with college debt or toiling in temporary, lower-wage positions, they are spurning homeownership in the suburbs for shorter-term, no-strings-attached apartment living, public transit and proximity to potential jobs in larger cities.

While economists tend to believe the city boom is temporary, that is not stopping many city planning agencies and apartment developers from seeking to boost their appeal to the sizable demographic of 18-to-29-year olds. They make up roughly 1 in 6 Americans, and some sociologists are calling them “generation rent.” The planners and developers are betting on young Americans’ continued interest in urban living, sensing that some longer-term changes such as decreased reliance on cars may be afoot…

Primary cities in large metropolitan areas with populations of more than 1 million grew by 1.1 percent last year, compared with 0.9 percent in surrounding suburbs. While the definitions of city and suburb have changed over the decades, it’s the first time that growth of large core cities outpaced that of suburbs since the early 1900s…

In all, city growth in 2011 surpassed or equaled that of suburbs in roughly 33 of the nation’s 51 large metro areas, compared to just five in the last decade.

Note: this is from one year of data, 2010 to 2011, it is hard to know whether this is a big trend or not. The different in population growth was 0.2%, not inconsequential but not exactly a big shift either. We’re not exactly at the end of the suburban era just yet.

Let’s say these numbers hold for a few years. It would be interesting to see how suburbs respond. It would also be helpful to see if the people who are moving to the city are doing so from inner-ring suburbs, exurbs, or somewhere in between as these different types of suburban communities would likely respond in different ways. I could imagine scenarios where built-out larger suburbs, places like Naperville, push for denser and taller developments in order to try to attract residents.

What happens when there are 65 million vacant homes in China

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A review of a new book about China leads with this information about the recent “building binge” in China:

This spring in Beijing, I asked a businessman an obvious question about the risks to China of an economic crash-landing, to which I got a less obvious reply. It is impossible to travel around China without concluding that the place is in the grip of a building frenzy. In less than a decade, China has pumped around $4 trillion into property; tens of millions of houses and apartments as well as Ozymandian public buildings and factory estates – and what hits the eye is how much of it all stands empty. Across the country, uninhabited concrete blocks scab the land, not only in the megacities of the eastern seaboard but also in the sleepier southwest; from filthy mining towns in Henan, all the way to entire ghost towns in Inner Mongolia. With an estimated 65 million homes standing vacant, residential construction last year was still running at a rate of five times demand.

Dwarfing even the $2 trillion borrowed for the Railway Ministry’s high-speed networks since 2008, and the thousands of kilometres of 4–6 lane toll roads with barely a vehicle on them, China’s building binge is the most striking example of what Prime Minister Wen Jiabao famously, but impotently, denounced in 2007 as the country’s “unbalanced, unstable, uncoordinated and unsustainable” model of economic development. Now, with house prices and sales sagging in response to government restrictions aimed at deflating history’s biggest ever property bubble, and with local governments as deep in bad debt as the developers, I asked the businessman what was to prevent the bubble actually bursting, in a spectacular financial explosion?

His answer was that it wouldn’t happen. A lot of these empty apartments, he said, had been bought by Chinese families as investments, and they would patiently hang on to these speculative purchases because interest on savings was derisory. Secondly, although some developers would go to the wall, the bubble would simply not be allowed to burst for fear of public anger as well as economic chaos. China had massive reserves if need arose, he said, and would not hesitate to bundle nonperforming loans off into a state “bad bank”. Its plans to build 36 million “affordable” homes by 2015 would also help to offset faltering private sector demand. When in a hole, in other words, the Party keeps digging.

This isn’t the first piece I’ve read suggesting that we could be headed toward a pop of the property bubble in China…

Study suggests political corruption needs to be investigated in the Chicago suburbs

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A new study from a political scientist argues that political corruption is a big problem in a number of Chicago suburbs:

The study by the University of Illinois at Chicago documented criminal convictions or conflicts of interest affecting more than 60 suburbs in Cook and surrounding counties and more than 100 public officials and police officers.

Former Chicago Alderman Dick Simpson, now head of UIC’s Political Science Department, led the study, and on Monday said corruption in the suburbs, in some cases, is worse than in the city.

“This isn’t a minor problem,” Simpson said. “This is a major problem.”

The IG could either be created by lawmakers and the governor, by each county, or by a consortium of suburbs. It would cost about $1 million annually, far less than the $500 million estimated cost of the problem, according to the study.

So the “Chicago way” extends past the city borders and even Cook County. I wonder if it is even easier to be corrupt in smaller communities where there is less of a media spotlight and relatively few residents are heavily involved or are knowledgeable about local government.

Even if the corruption is widespread, would officials and the public be willing to support an independent inspector general looking into these matters as it creates another layer of government?

It would be interesting to know how these numbers compare to corruption in other metropolitan regions: is Chicago that unusual in this regard?

Naperville moving forward with proposal for influential mixed-use Water Street development

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An important new development proposal in Naperville is back up for discussion:

Plans to develop the Water Street area of Naperville’s downtown are being revived after five years and now include a 130-room hotel.

However, the latest proposal will have to overcome concerns from city officials and residents about issues of height, density and traffic congestion.

Marquette Companies, under the name MP Water Street District LLC, presented its revised plan to the city’s Planning and Zoning Commission this week. The 2.4-acre site is bounded by Aurora Avenue on the south, the DuPage River on the north, Main Street on the east and Webster Street on the west…

The current proposal calls for a 130-room Holiday Inn Express and Suites; 61 to 65 apartments; retail, restaurant and office spaces; and a 550-space parking garage. There also would be a plaza and connection to the Riverwalk.

The tallest portion of the development would be the hotel, which has a tower that reaches just above 90 feet…

Bob Fischer, vice president of the Naperville Area Homeowners Confederation, said the plans will “canyonize Water Street.”

“Allowing this kind of height and density along the Riverwalk will forever diminish it as the crown jewel of our downtown,” he said.

I think there are two big points about this that are not mentioned in the article:

1. One important feature of this mixed-use development is that it is south of the DuPage River. In other words, this development would firmly move the downtown across the river. This is no small matter: while there is development on the south side, it is primarily smaller and single-family home. Naperville’s downtown is popular (see the parking issues) but it is not clear that a majority of Naperville residents want the downtown to expand into more residential areas.

2. This development speaks to a broader issue: is Naperville ready for denser development? While the community added about 100,000 people between 1980 and 2008 as it expanded primarily to the south and west, there is really no open land left in the community. Thus, to grow, the city must approve denser development. The downtown is the logical place to start: it is near a train station, it has a number of restaurants and stores, and seems to be quite popular. Yet, projects like this could push Naperville into a new era of mixed-use and denser development as opposed to the primarily single-family home development that characterized the post-war era.

I’ll be tracking what happens with this proposal as both of the issues I cited above are likely to generate a lot of public discussion and comment. This could be a turning point in Naperville’s history: should the downtown expand in a big way and should the city pursue denser development in desirable locations?

UPDATE: I wouldn’t be surprised if the project is approved but the height is limited to something like fifty or sixty feet (five or six stories). Ninety feet would be quite high for downtown Naperville though approving that height could indicate some willingness to to pursue taller projects in the future.

Chicago housing values reverse 49 month slump – with a $100 gain

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The latest data about median housing values in the Chicago region suggests prices are back up – but only a little:

May’s 0.1 percent year-over-year gain in the median sales price of existing homes in the nine-county Chicago area broke a 49-month losing streak that stretched to April 2008. The last time they showed a year-over-year increase was March 2008, the month John McCain earned enough delegates to secure the Republican presidential nomination.

Does that $100 finally signal a turnaround for Chicago’s housing market, particularly because, from May 2010 to May 2011, the median price dropped 10.8 percent?

“What it signals is the first stage of the bumpy ride at the bottom,” said Geoffrey J.D. Hewings, director of the regional economics applications laboratory at the University of Illinois. “I think the trend is going to be modestly positive, but there may be months where it is not.”…

Not every county recorded improvement in its median price, but in Cook County, which accounts for more than half the Chicago area’s sales activity, the median price rose 3 percent, to $170,000, from $165,000 in May 2011. And in Chicago, where overall sales rose 19.6 percent, May’s median sales price of $203,000 was up 6.8 percent from a year ago, largely because of an 11.9 percent gain in the median sales price of single-family homes.

My take: the housing recovery will still take quite a while. A $100 increase the region probably doesn’t mean much and it is not until we see a number of consecutive months of an uptick that we can claim this is a trend. Even then, it could take years (decades?) to make up the drop in housing values.

 

The Chicago Fire and Bridgeview: another case when building a sports stadium is not a good investment

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Residents of the southwest Chicago suburb of Bridgeview are not happy about reports that Toyota Park, built to be the home of the Chicago Fire, has created a lot of debt for the community:

The exchange came Wednesday night at Bridgeview’s first Village Board meeting since the Tribune published a report detailing the small southwest suburb’s financial woes tied to its biggest bet, the 20,000-seat Toyota Park.

The taxpayer-owned home of the Chicago Fire has come up millions of dollars short of making its debt payments since opening in 2006. Meanwhile, the town has nearly tripled property taxes in less than a decade, even as the town offset some of the financial sting by taking out more loans to help make payments.

In all, the blue-collar suburb is now more than $200 million in debt.

In comparing towns’ debt to property values, the Tribune found Bridgeview had the highest debt rate in the Chicago area. Much of the debt is tied to a stadium deal in which the newspaper found insiders landed contracts and town officials enriched their political funds with stadium vendor donations.

The stadium might have helped put Bridgeview on the map (leading to higher status/prestige) as it is the only suburban facility in the Chicago area that is home to a major sports team (despite arguments in the past from the Bears and White Sox that they might move to the suburbs). But this level of debt seems insurmountable for a village of 16,500 people who have a median household income of $42,073, below the national average.

This should be a reminder for many communities, small suburbs or big cities: sports stadiums are not the deals they may be made out to be. Yes, it could bring or keep a major sports team. But, the public debt may take decades to repay, can lead to higher tax burdens for residents who are likely not all attending the games, doesn’t necessarily mean that a host of entertainment businesses will open up nearby to serve stadium patrons, and the primary people who benefit are the sports teams (who get new stadiums for which they don’t have to pay the whole bill) and a small number of local leaders and businesses. It may be nice to mentioned on TV every once in a while (if you can find the more minor channels the Fire tend to be relegated to) and be the politician who helped bring the major team to town but it often isn’t a great deal for the whole community.

Several reasons Americans may be moving toward rejecting sprawl

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An architecture writer sums up some of the arguments of why Americans might be starting to turn against sprawl:

In short, builders are recognizing that buyers (and renters, too!) value the neighborhood as much as — if not more than — the house. And what they want from that neighborhood might not be McMansions and four-car garages after all. Resale value may not in fact trump all else. Young and old, whether they’re in the city or the suburbs, want to walk to places like restaurants and shops. (And let’s stop talking about the integration of things like cafes, public transit and bike racks as “urbanizing” an area, which only reinforces the divide between two entities that are divided enough already.)

People have begun to wake up to the fact that the more time spent in the car means poorer health and less time with their families — and they’re seeking shorter commutes. They’re interested in smaller homes that are easier to maintain (and less expensive to heat and cool). Young millennials and older baby boomers are also showing less and less interest in car ownership and a corresponding greater interest in public transit, walking and biking. And again, it’s likely that we’re all less interested in continuing to discuss “urban” and “suburban” as dueling polar opposites — and more interested in recognizing there’s mutual benefit to some overlap.

The aforementioned changes point to the fact that a paradigmatic shift in our concept of the American dream is underway. And this shift is not just because of the recession, says Gregory Vilkin, managing principal and president of MacFarlane Partners, quoted in that USA Today piece, “It’s no longer the American dream to own a plot of land with a house on it and two cars in the driveway.”

And here is her summary of the people still defending sprawl:

And yet … there are still those who are having none of it. And they are a vocal and often breathtakingly well-funded minority. For them, the sprawl that characterized the years leading up to the financial crisis remains a dream to strive for. Any threat to the McMansion of yore is equated to “feudal socialism” (I kid you not). And these opponents not only excel at mobilizing the troops but at mastering the message. Take a look at the rhetoric of, say, the Texas Republican party, which recently passed “Resist 21” in opposition to Agenda 21, the United Nations’ sustainable communities strategy adopted in 1992. Taken together, proclaims Resist 21, those strategies aspire to “the comprehensive control of all our population and its reduction to sustainable levels and the socialization of all activities by their relocation to highly restricted urban settlement centers.”

Nothing like cherry-picking the more extreme arguments…there is not much defense of the “traditional American suburbs” here. At the same time, I thought this was a decent summary of some of the arguments out there though, of course, it remains to be seen which side Americans will choose. Is “everyone” really interested in merging urban and suburban life? Opponents of sprawl can continue to tout the advantages of denser living but we don’t have the proof yet that we are headed toward a full “greatinversion” back to city life.

Another note: there is a small paragraph in this article suggesting that government could do more to promote alternatives to sprawl. This is true but one doesn’t have to go all the way to a Agenda 21 level of involvement. Local governments could provide tax breaks or incentives for denser (and more affordable) housing. Gas taxes could be raised. More money could be spent on mass transit. The government could revoke the mortgage interest deduction. Different levels of government could cede some of their own power (such as 45 mosquito abatement districts in DuPage County) in order to work together on a metropolitan level and solve problems together. And so on. The federal government helped promote suburban sprawl throughout much of the 21st century – what would happen if the playing field started tilting in the other direction? Is any attempt to provide alternatives to sprawl “feudal socialism”?

 

Naperville cites traffic concerns and proximity to a residential area in rejecting McDonald’s near downtown

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Naperville’s City Council voted Tuesday against a proposal from McDonald’s to build a restaurant just south of downtown. The cited reasons: traffic and proximity to a residential area.

The City Council unanimously turned down the proposed fast-food restaurant at the southeast corner of Washington Street and Hillside Road citing concerns about traffic at an already busy intersection and locating a 24-hour business close to homes…

The proposal was backed by both city staff and the plan commission. However, in a discussion that lasted more than an hour, councilmen focused on the potential for traffic tie-ups…Addressing the myriad of traffic concerns, William Grieve, a traffic engineer hired by McDonald’s, said a traffic study showed travel time through the intersection would only increase by about a second and double drive-through lanes would prevent backups.  Stillwell said the company would be diligent about addressing any problems if they arise…

But traffic wasn’t the only concern. Neighbors said they feared there would be increased noise and lights coming from the restaurant if it was allowed to stay open 24 hours as proposed.

Both Judy Brodhead and Joe McElroywere among the councilmen who agreed and said having a restaurant open 24 hours so close to homes was a deal-breaker regardless of the traffic issues.

I’m not surprised by this result: not too many residents would willingly choose to have a McDonald’s nearby and few people want more traffic. However, this seems a bit strange for a few reasons:

1. Washington is already a fairly busy road.

2. This intersection is near homes but there are already strip mall type establishments at this corner. In fact, I’m not sure there any homes that back up directly to this site as the DuPage River is to the east and all of the corners at the intersection are already occupied. The McDonald’s would replace a Citgo gas station, not exactly a paragon of civic architecture. Across the street is a Brown’s Chicken establishment. The other two corners include a cemetery and another strip mall type establishment.

3. The traffic study from McDonald’s seems to suggest there wouldn’t be any issues.

4. I wondered if this had anything to do with protecting the downtown but it is three blocks south of the downtown so it shouldn’t contribute to congestion problems there.

I wonder if there isn’t more to this story. Indeed, here are a few more details from the Daily Herald:

Council members admitted they were initially thrilled that McDonald’s wanted to open a downtown store on the southeast corner of Hillside and Washington streets. But when it came down to a plan that included five zoning variances, three landscape variances and a sign variance, they just weren’t lovin’ it.

So the McDonald’s required too many deviations from Naperville’s guidelines? While the restaurant might have needed 9 variances, the city could have made it happen if they really wanted to. Just how much did the pressure from the neighborhood matter?

Samuel Barber asks what might happen “If Mayors Ruled the World”

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Richard Florida interviews Samuel Barber about his forthcoming book titled If Mayors Ruled the World. Here is why Barber thinks mayors are increasingly important:

The problem here is that political sovereignty has passed to the economic sector, where global financial capital and multinational corporations exercise an undue influence on both domestic and international affairs. Cities share jurisdiction over the economic resources of the city — where commercial, financial and information capital are concentrated — but that jurisdiction is limited by the emerging sovereignty of economics over politics.

Where the city is able to exercise control of economic resources it must live with the superior jurisdiction of nation-states, who may interdict cities trying to collaborate across borders. A city boycotting goods made by child labor in a developing country may be held in violation of the WTO’s fair trade rules (which bar certain kinds of boycotts); or a city trying to control guns may be ruled in violation of the right to bear arms, as happened recently when the Supreme Court invalidated the District of Columbia’s gun control rules…

What I want to suggest is that these myriad global networks, and the inherent disposition of cities to cooperate, exemplify the deep capacity of cities to work together across borders, and justify my claim that a global “parliament of mayors” could achieve a good deal of concord voluntarily both on common policies and on common actions. This is what the networks are already doing, and what a formalization of the process could achieve. The key is a “soft” bottom-up approach to cooperation organized around “glocality” rather than a top-down “legal mandate” approach of the kind we associate with (and fear from) “world government.”…

While the details of a parliament of mayors would be worked out at an inaugural convening of interested cities, I propose some guidelines that could be considered. That there be three parliaments/audiaments per annum, each in a different (voluntary) city, and each representing 300 cities chosen by lot from a list of all cities wishing to attend. This would allow up to 900 cities per annum to participate. Given that all common actions would be voluntary.

The starting point for this conversation is the growing power, particularly economic, of the top global cities. While these cities operate within nation-states, they have economies and populations that rival nations.

Several thoughts about this:

1. While national leaders also talk about the economy and jobs, it seems like mayors may have more direct influence on bringing jobs to their domain. I would guess that overall, mayors are more pro-business and are always looking to attract top corporations and new firms. Perhaps mayors have to be more pragmatic about jobs and business climate as their connections to the business interests in their city are very important.

2. Let’s say Barber’s ideas about a “parliament of mayors” come to pass. What might actually come out of this? Mayors in the largest cities already meet and try to share best practices. Perhaps Barber thinks the mayors can forge stronger economic ties between their respective cities? Perhaps mayors can band together to put pressure on national governments?

3. I would be interested to know how the political clout of mayors around the world compares. Certain mayors in the United States are well-known but is this primarily because of the size of the cities in which they were elected or are their dynamic movers and shakers from smaller cities as well. Are mayors in different parts of the world more important or less important compared to US mayors? I could imagine that in countries with weaker governments mayors might have more relative influence.