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A template for opposing new housing
In my recent post about "takeaways from Japan" I spoke about a willingness to experiment and be playful with the built environment. I said that quite often people design homes around what they want, as opposed to what they think might broadly appeal to the market. So today, let's look at an example. Below is a site on the outskirts of Tokyo, about an hour from the center of the city. The architect — Kamakura Studio — describes it as being situated in a "new town" where about 75% of the residents have moved in within the past decade. And like Japan as a whole, problems of aging and population decline are expected in the future.
Using Google Maps to get rough dimensions, the site looks to be somewhere around 8m wide by 11m deep. So this is not a huge site compared to what you might find in the suburbs of other cities, but it's certainly a very workable set of dimensions. Also noteworthy is the fact that the area has no sidewalks. This is common throughout Tokyo. Ordinarily, this would imply a suburban mental model. But in practice, Tokyo's streets actually feel very pedestrian-friendly. And that's because they tend to be narrow and the entire city is oriented mostly around rail.
What was ultimately developed on the site is this (House F):
Totalling 169 m2, the first floor of the house serves as an office for the architect and as an open space for the local community. The firm opens up the space to people who may want to stop in for coffee (or just hang out) and for movie nights. There's even a "plant-sharing network" on the terrace where dozens of households supposedly contribute and participate. On the second and third floor of the house are the domestic quarters. Here there are two generous bedrooms, study spaces, and multiple balconies, one of which provides access to a rooftop terrace.
It's a highly livable house, but it's also designed to meet a particular set of ambitions. I mean, look at the above coffee window. And this is one of the really cool things about domestic architecture in Japan. (If any of you are familiar with how the zoning would work for a site like this, I'd love to understand that.)
Project images via Kamakura Studio
The traditional narrative when it comes to NIMBYs is that these are individuals acting out of self-interest. Quintessentially, these are people who own their home and do not want development "in their backyard" out of fear that it might negatively impact the value of their property and/or have a negative impact on their local community.
But in reality, anti-development sentiment is likely more nuanced than this. In a recent working paper called "The Symbolic Politics of Housing," researchers at UC, Berkeley and UC, Davis show that anti-development sentiment is not always just about self-interest; rather, it can be predicted by how people feel about certain "salient symbols."
This is based on something called "symbolic politics theory" and it works like this: We all have positive and negative associations with certain "symbols." Often these are developed early in life. And so how we might feel about a development or a particular land use policy, depends on the symbols attached to it and whether we like them.
Here's an example.
Consider two identical apartment developments happening in your neighborhood. The first is being developed by faceless "Wall Street investors" and the second is being developed by a nice local entrepreneur who also happens to be of the exact same ethno-cultural group as you.
If you don't like people on Wall Street and you don't want them profiting from the development, the research suggests that you are more likely to oppose the first development, even though it's the same as the second one, and maybe even if it runs counter, in some way, to your own self-interest. You just don't like the symbol attached to it.
This is also why people who live in cities tend to be more pro-development on average. It reinforces symbols that they already like; ones associated with cities, density, and urban living. This is fascinating, but it also complicates matters. Because it means that strong opinions are not just being formed based on measurable impacts. It's also a question of symbols and feelings.
The typical way to buy or procure construction is create a set of drawings, put them out for tender to people who can build what is shown, select the lowest/best bidder, and then proceed with construction. This is commonly referred to as "design-bid-build." There are, of course, others ways to procure construction, but this is the traditional method. And in an idealized world, it would always work out very well for owners and developers. But in reality, it's a lot more complicated.
The important prerequisite for this method is a great set of drawings (more broadly, great contract documents). Because that is effectively the thing you are buying. Unfortunately, great drawing sets don't always happen and there are generally a few reasons for this. One possible scenario might be that you just don't have enough time to produce them. Maybe the market is hot and you want to start construction yesterday, or maybe you have some deadline to meet. Whatever the case, you're in a rush.
But the most likely scenario is that the drawings aren't great simply because the people doing them aren't good or because, hey, we are all only human. Things were missed, there are mistakes, and the drawings weren't fully coordinated across the various disciplines. There's no such thing as 100% perfect drawings. And that results in construction risk, because you've now bought things that are wrong and that will need to be corrected later.
Changes are costly. Later is also a suboptimal time for the simple fact that the price of construction depends on the current situation you happen to be in. Early on before a contract is awarded, buyers of construction have the most, or least some, leverage. The bid process is designed to be competitive and so bidders generally need to sharpen their pencils if they want to win the work. But once a job has been awarded and construction starts, that leverage flips.
Scope gaps and change orders become that much more expensive because, well, they can be. Switching costs are prohibitively high at this point. And it doesn't just work with scope additions. You will also be penalized for going in the opposite direction and removing scope items (i.e. credits). In these situations, you should expect to receive cents on the dollar back. This is one of the great asymmetries of construction pricing.
My point with this post is simply that the price of construction depends -- it depends on how and when you are buying it. It's a very opaque market and it's important to keep that in mind.