Tag Archives: sprawl

Australian expert says McMansions should be divided into apartments

Posted on by

An Australian expert tackles the problem of McMansions and affordable housing:

Western suburbs “McMansions” should be converted into apartments to help deal with Perth’s population growth, an expert says.

Leading WA environmental scientist David Kaesehagen said walls or divisions could be built within big properties in the most affluent suburbs to add to housing stock in a rapidly growing market…

The Australian Bureau of Statistics has forecast Perth’s population will grow from 1.8 million to 4.2 million in the next four decades…

Mr Kaesehagen said with the right laws and incentives, owners of large mansions could be persuaded to divide their properties. “This is a way of using existing built form to increase density without introducing high-rise or changing the aesthetic of these established suburbs,” he said.

This is not the first time this has been suggested but I have yet to see a community or significant number of people push for this. I suspect it would be really difficult to do this kind of retrofitting in suburbs often so concerned about property values and density: who would want to be the first resident to have your house subdivided as your neighbors look on and wonder about their housing values? How much would it cost to convert larger homes into multiple units when they were originally intended for single families? This might work best in McMansion neighborhoods that are abandoned or not yet opened (each of these would pose their own set of problems) so there would be no community members in opposition. But, then why not build higher density developments in the first place?

Claim: a McMansion might kill you

Posted on by

I’ve seen lots of critiques of McMansions but I can’t recall seeing one that suggests they are bad for your health:

https://i0.wp.com/homeinsurance.com/images/McMansion.v2.png

Quite the infographic but I think it (perhaps intentionally) invokes McMansions to introduce some negative connotations and avoids the bigger context: these are problems across American society, whether you live in a big house or not. Some of these are tied to sprawl more broadly with its dependence on cars, on a shift toward eating out and more sedentary jobs, building homes in general, and a growing emphasis on media. This could fit with a common critique of McMansions: they are part of larger patterns of excessive consumption.

In the end, your McMansion is not killing you much more than “average” American contexts are.

Reconsidering what sprawl, suburbs, and world-class city mean

Posted on by

A sociology grad student involved with the city of Calgary regarding development and growth suggests we need to step back and reconsider the “vacant terminology” used by “urbanistas”:

When it comes to sprawl, said Gondek, the term actually means “non-contiguous growth of an urban area.”“It’s uncontrolled, it’s unplanned. In our opinion, it’s simply not the case for Calgary,” she said…

“Suburb” is Gondek’s least-favourite misused term, preferring the term “community” instead.

“Suburbs, as they are properly defined, are areas outside the metropolitan region,” she said.

“They are bedroom communities. It’s an American concept that means independent municipalities outside of the city.”

Growth on Calgary’s edges actually involves periphery communities, not suburbs.

“Calgary’s so-called suburbs are actually a part of the city — there’s nothing ‘sub’ about them,” said Gondek, pointing out that these homeowners pay property taxes into the same pool as inner-city residents do.

The third phrase is the idea of just how “world-class” is Calgary.

Gondek looked at various indices to see how cities are rated on their globalness. She found a wide variety of measures, depending on what angle of “globalness” was sought to be defined: population, income, walkability, transportation — any number of measures.

Gondek drew the conclusion that indices of world-classness depend on the subjective views of what the creators of the indices decide is world-class, rather than any real, fundamental, unified definition of the term.

Some of this makes sense. Suburbs are now vital parts of metropolitan regions rather than ugly step-children of cities. Also, sprawl is not necessarily unplanned or disordered as critics suggest; there is a logic to it, typically involving profits to be made by developers and others. Both of these terms are often loaded with negative connotations by critics.

On the other hand, the definition of a world-class city seems more set to me. The term used widely in urban sociology actually is “global city” which has a lot of overlap with the concept of a world-class city. The global city is typically defined as being a global economic center with a high concentration of FIRE (finance, insurance, and real estate) industries. But, there are other dimensions to global cities including cultural and government institutions. (For one example of these various dimensions, see this ranking of global cities.) I wonder if the suggestion that world-class city is a nebulous term is done so that Calgary can feel better about what it is doing…

Plans in the Chicago region to help mitigate future flooding

Posted on by

With the flooding that took place in the Chicago region in recent days, it is reasonable to ask what is being done to limit flooding in the future. Here is one answer from a regional expert:

Asked if costly and disruptive transportation chaos is inevitable, Josh Ellis, a stormwater expert with the Metropolitan Planning Council, offered some rays of hope.

“We can definitely do better. I’m not sure we’re willing to invest the amount of money needed to have an infrastructure that truly withstands a 100-year storm. When we built most of our infrastructure it was for a five- to 20-year storm standard.”

What’s slightly depressing is that current Metropolitan Water Reclamation District infrastructure and projects under way, including tunnels and reservoirs, will provide about 17 billion gallons of storage, Ellis calculates. Compare that to the 70 billion gallons or so that roiled Cook County alone in storms Wednesday and Thursday.

“Even when the Deep Tunnel is complete, the numbers don’t add up in our favor,” Ellis said. “We can do better, but I’m not sure we can ever solve this and have zero problems.”

So what can we do?

As individuals, it can come down to reducing the impermeable pavement on your property or cultivating a rain garden that holds stormwater temporarily.

On a wider level, it’s going to take expanding municipal stormwater systems, creating stream-side ponds to store rainfall and investing in green infrastructure, Ellis thinks.

“It’s about finding other places to put the water other than in big pipes … that’s what green infrastructure is,” he said. “It’s about finding ways for natural vegetation to prevent water from entering the storm system.”

Likely candidates for ad hoc stormwater storage include public entities with a lot of land — from schools with athletic fields to park districts.

The causes and consequences of flooding like this can be traced to human development. Critics of sprawl have noted for decades that flooding is one pernicious side effect: cover land with houses and asphalt and there is less place for water to go. Cover up natural wetlands and build close to waterways and this is going to happen every so often. Think of the concept of a retention pond; it is an admission that we have altered the natural landscape in such a way that we need to create a space for excess water to go.

I know some critics of sprawl would say the answer is to have less sprawl. Since this cat is out of the bag in many places in the United States, Ellis’ answers above are interesting: a combination of large-scale, regional projects would help as would more individual and municipal actions. Large projects like Deep Tunnel are impressive but they aren’t silver bullets. I’ve noticed more nearby communities have moved toward combining park land and floodplains. Thus, if flooding occurs, not many buildings are hurt and fewer people need to be evacuated.

This could also lead to broader questions: who is responsible for the flooding and its effects? Should individual homeowners bear the burden of protecting themselves and cleaning up? Should local communities? How about regional entities – how much power should they have to tackle such issues? This sort of problem requires coordination across many governmental bodies, calling for metropolitan approaches. It still strikes me as strange in the United States that individual homeowners may not know much at all about the flooding or water problems their property might have.

For a longer look at flooding and water issues in suburban sprawl, I highly recommend Adam Rome’s 2001 book The Bulldozer in the Countryside.

The booming housing market: Washington D.C.

Posted on by

Washington D.C. may be growing in influence and its housing prices are certainly growing – they just reached a record high.

The median price of a home in the District reached its highest point in history last month, according to the latest data from RealEstate Business Intelligence, a subsidiary of MRIS.

D.C.’s median sale price soared to $460,000 from $405,000 in February, an increase of 13.6 percent month over month. For the entire metro area, the growth was more modest. The median sale price for the region rose 8 percent, to $372,500 in March from $345,000 in February.

Falls Church boasted the largest median price in the area last month and the biggest percentage uptick year over year. The median sale price for homes in Falls Church climbed to $631,000 in March, a 37.7 percent increase. However, there were only 16 sales in Falls Church in March, which likely skewed the numbers…

While this is good news for sellers, it is not as good for buyers who are combatting not only rising home prices but also depleted inventory. The number of homes for sale in the region continues to hover at historic lows. The 6,289 active listings in March were down 4,200 from the same month a year ago and have dropped nearly 20,000 since their peak in the fall of 2007.

A couple of thoughts:

1. This seems to reinforce the figures that suggest the Washington D.C. area is doing quite well. Housing prices are up, the population is growing, the region now has some of the wealthiest counties in the United States…this is a contrast to the fate of many Rustbelt locations as well as some Sunbelt communities that are still recovering from the real estate bust of recent years.

2. This will feed into ongoing conversations about the expansion of the Washington D.C. region and sprawl. In recent decades, there have been a number of discussions and fights about sprawl in Maryland and Virginia and with these housing prices and housing demand, there will be plenty of people who want more new homes.

A summary: “driverless cars are ‘probably’ legal”

Posted on by

An economist takes a look at existing law and argues driverless cars are probably legal:

Over at the blog Marginal Revolution, economist Tyler Cowen points to a recent research paper by Bryant Walker Smith, a fellow at Stanford Law School, who has made the legality of driverless cars his bailiwick. In offering “the most comprehensive discussion to date of  whether so-called automated, autonomous, self-driving, or driverless vehicles can be  lawfully sold and used on public roads in the United States,” Smith argues that driverless cars are “probably legal.” He concludes [PDF]:

Current law probably does not prohibit  automated vehicles — but may nonetheless discourage their introduction or complicate their operation.

Unlike many journalists and policy-makers, Smith begins his analysis with a presumption of legality instead of illegality. “Until legislators, regulators, or judges definitively clarify the legal status of automated vehicles, any answer is necessarily a guess,” he writes. Smith’s own guess turns on three “key legal regimes”: the 1949 Geneva Convention on Road Traffic, National Highway Traffic Safety Administration regulations, and vehicle codes in the 50 U.S. states.

Smith doesn’t think that any of these regimes expressly prohibits driverless cars. The Geneva Convention says a driver must be able to control a vehicle at all times, but that stipulation is probably satisfied if a human can override the automatic operation. N.H.T.S.A. rules don’t explicitly rule out driverless cars either — though an odd rule saying hazard lights must be “driver controlled” might be a sticking point.

States codes, meanwhile, “probably do not prohibit” driverless cars in Smith’s mind, but they do complicate the situation. Right now these codes all naturally presume the presence of a human driver; in New York, for instance, there’s a rule that drivers must keep one hand on the wheel at all times (who knew?) that could become a problem in an automated-vehicle world. Additionally, laws dictating a certain following distance might interfere with algorithms that keep driverless cars close together on the road.

Sounds like an interesting loophole – why worry about whether it is legal when you can instead ask whether it is illegal? I still think a lot of the issue with driverless cars comes down to people, both “drivers” (now people who can override the car’s autopilot when they want) and other people on the road around the driverless cars, adjusting to the change. If it is like other modern technologies, like smartphones, and drivers realize they might be able to do other things while driving, perhaps the switch may be quick.

Another thought: could driverless cars and electric cars end up prolonging and even extending urban sprawl? If commuting is easier and consumes fewer resources (still debatable considering what it takes to produce batteries), why not continue it?

McMansions vs. trees in Bethesda, Maryland

Posted on by

Here is how the community of Bethesda, Maryland is planning to save trees from an onslaught of McMansions:

County Executive Isiah Leggett last year introduced a Tree Canopy Conservation bill that would force private property owners in small lots to pay a still-to-be-determined fee for lost canopy into a fund that Montgomery would then use to plant new trees.

Now, the County Council is wrangling with both sides to find a compromise.

Members of the building industry say the county shouldn’t legislate tree protection on private property, that they already avoid removing trees because of associated costs and that existing stormwater management requirements make protecting trees extremely difficult.

Some conservationists say the bill doesn’t go far enough, that replacing mature trees with new ones still takes away from the canopy, which everybody agrees is important for environmental and economic reasons.

Sounds like a typical suburban debate: should green interests or building/economic interests win out? The article doesn’t say this but I imagine there might be some old-timer versus newcomer aspects to this debate. If you have lived in the suburb for some time, trees are a good thing. They are not only green, they look better, suggest neighborhoods have stability, and contribute to higher housing values. If you are a builder or involved in real estate or want to move into places like Bethesda, you might want to pay less attention to trees and introduce new housing options.

One interesting note in the debate: there was some conversation about what percentage of tree canopy is desirable in a community. One pro-housing advocate suggested Bethesda already has more tree cover than much of the county. Just how much tree cover is necessary? Is a certain percentage related to housing values?

Census: 600,000 megacommuters in the US

Posted on by

New data from the Census shows there are around 600,000 megacommuters in the United States:

About 600,000 Americans are megacommuters who work at least 50 miles from home and take at least 90 minutes to get there, with the biggest concentration in California, the U.S. Census Bureau said on Tuesday.

The agency said the percentage of Americans who traveled at least 90 minutes to work daily has inched higher in the last two decades even as the number of people who work from home has soared by 45 percent.

The average one-way daily U.S. commute is 25.5 minutes, and one in four commuters leave their home counties for work, the Census Bureau said, based on its annual American Community Survey…

Three-quarters of megacommuters are male, and they are more likely to be married, older, make a higher salary and have a spouse who does not work. They also are likely to leave for work before 6 a.m., according to the study.

This is still a very small segment of the workforce, less than 1 percent according to the article, but still quite interesting. My first thought at seeing the megacommuter figures is that many of these workers live on the metropolitan fringe or in exurbs. This could be because they need to find a cheaper house (especially if they have a spouse who does not work?) or because they value a little more space.

How a developer of big homes differentiates his homes from McMansions

Posted on by

Few builders are aiming to have their new big homes labeled McMansions. Here is how one developer describes how his new homes differ from McMansions:

According to brothers Taylor and Milton Chamberlin, the goal for the Georgian style homes is for them to be an alternative to “McMansions.”

“We really take our time to design the homes to fit in the neighborhood. We’re not builders that come in and put this huge McMansion in a small neighborhood where it doesn’t fit. That’s not what we do,” said Taylor. “All of this is really thought through and it’s really livable, usable space. It’s not those McMansions where you walk in and wonder, ‘What do you do in this room?’”

The base model runs around $1.4 million and features four bedrooms and 4.5 bathrooms, with the possibility of another bedroom and bathroom on an additional level. Costs will vary based on the different lot sizes and individual add-ons the purchasers want in their homes…

Another goal is to foster a 1950s sense of community among the owners of the nine properties, in which everybody knows and interacts with their neighbors. The homes will only be accessible via a private road and there will be a small fence around the subdivision…

The brothers noted The Barrett Companies’ effort toward green building and energy efficiency. From better insulation and caulking to installing appropriate outlets in the detached garages for plugging in an electric car, the Chamberlins believe small touches make their properties stand out.

These are big new homes that at first glance might fit several traits of McMansions. But, here is the argument the developer uses to say their homes are not McMansions:

1. The homes will fit the neighborhood. Critics argue McMansions, particularly teardowns, can disrupt the character of existing neighborhoods.

2. The home is not just about space; it is about well-designed and usable space. One argument about McMansions is that they provide lots of square footage but this is often contained in cavernous rooms or in poor layouts that are difficult to utilize in day-to-day life.

3. They are hoping to promote a community atmosphere in their small development. I wonder if this is primarily a function of size; the fenced-in neighborhood with a private road will only contain nine homes.

4. These homes will be greener than normal big homes. McMansions are often said to about excessive consumption and part of sprawl.

5. There will be a consistent design scheme with Georgian architecture and detached garages on the private road away from the streets surrounding the neighborhood. McMansions are criticized for mixing architectural styles.

In the end, I wonder if a majority of buyers and critics would think these reasons are enough to separate these homes from McMansions. These are still big homes in the midst of suburban neighborhoods. They may be more consistent and be less mass-produced but are they different enough?

Architect Jeanne Gang opposed to sprawl

Posted on by

An interview with Chicago architect Jeanne Gang, designer of Aqua in the Loop, reveals her dislike for sprawl, and, along the way, the designs of Frank Lloyd Wright:

“Urbanization is the huge issue of our time,” she says. “We can’t survive if we can’t solve the problems of population growth, loss of clean air and water and loss of biodiversity.”

Gang and her firm, Studio Gang Architects, are pioneers in ecological urbanism, a field of design that considers rising populations and dwindling resources. Cities are key laboratories, and Gang says they must become denser and more nature-friendly.

She hasn’t hesitated to take on global icon Frank Lloyd Wright with her anti-sprawl approach. Chicago’s — and America’s — most famous architect spent decades promoting single homes on suburban lots where residents would savor nature far from downtowns and connect with society in cars.

“I want to turn Wright’s legacy upside down,” Gang says with no hint of doubt. “The way to be ecological is not by spreading out. It’s by clustering together. It’s by having a better relationship with nature in the city than you can have in a far-out suburb.”…

Taking on Wright is not an easy task. While he may have designed a number of single-family homes, he also designed a mile-high tower. Particularly in Chicago, Wright is someone revered for his ability to design in a Midwestern sort of way, drawing upon prairie influences and helping Chicago grow up. But, I’m sure Gang could find many people who agree that sprawl uses too many resources. Additionally, if new designs like that of Aqua can be more ecologically friendly, attract residents and business, and give cities iconic buildings, city leaders are likely to see this as a big win.