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The stated policy goal of inclusionary zoning is to to produce more affordable housing. We can debate who ultimately pays for this below-market housing, and we have many times before on the blog, but for the purposes of this post let's just focus on its stated goal.
Given this ambition, it makes sense to carefully measure the number of affordable homes produced. And that is ordinarily what is done: "We implemented this new policy on this date, and since then we have produced X amount of new affordable housing."
It is then likely that we will take X and form opinions on whether it was a successful policy or not. If X seems like a lot, then maybe we think it's a good policy. And if X doesn't seem like a lot, then maybe we think it was a bad policy, or perhaps just an ineffective one.
But what is largely impossible to measure with any real precision is the number of new market-rate homes that are now not being built as a result of a policy. Let's call this number Y. It is, of course, possible to come up with an estimate by looking broadly at rents across the city, plugging in some development costs, and seeing what pencils. But this is a rough approximation.
It does not capture the countless times that a developer has looked at a possible housing site, only to come to the conclusion that it is not feasible to build. There is no official Y figure. And any amorphous estimates of Y are going to be easy to ignore by the general public anyway. Unbuilt homes? Opportunity costs? What?
I am saying (okay repeating) all of this because I continue to feel like most people believe that development will just happen no matter what is thrown at it. There is a housing shortage, right? So developers should just do what they do best and build today. Surely they could if they were genuinely nice people and really wanted to. Hmm.
What many people seem to ignore (or not know) is that development, and in turn new housing supply, operates under this very simple decision tree:
Find development site
Underwrite said site
If math works, seek capital/investors and then build
If math does not work, do not build
If math works, but capital doesn't like it, also do not build (most can't in this scenario)
Repeat
Just because you aren't seeing or noticing something, it does not mean that it doesn't exist and that it's not happening behind the scenes.
I went to bed last night watching President Biden's address to the Canadian Parliament (full transcript, here.). And I woke up this morning to this Globe and Mail article about Canadian competitiveness. In it, Tony Keller talks about some of the things that are broken in this country (shockingly housing comes up), and compares Canada to Argentina (an example of too many bad decisions) and to South Korea (an example of many good decisions).
All of this got me thinking about leadership.
Leadership is a great burden. As a leader, people are looking to you for decisions, for direction, and for you to instil confidence. They are also scrutinizing your every word and action. And in today's world, they are waiting to criticize you on social media and/or make a funny meme out of your most recent misspeak. As a developer, I get to interface with municipal politicians probably more than your average person, and I can tell you with confidence that it is a thankless job I would never want.
I can only imagine having to constantly worry about your employment and what people are thinking. Given this incentive structure, I'm sure we'd all act accordingly. It is truly public, service. At the same time, I know that it is not only unproductive -- but dangerous -- to pander to just what is thought to be politically popular. And we have spoken many times before on this blog about housing and land use policies that may be popular, but aren't at all effective -- or worse, are counterproductive.
What we should be demanding from our leaders are difficult decisions. These are the decisions that probably feel uncomfortable and that may require some personal sacrifice, but that are ultimately the right decisions for our collective long-term prosperity. It is about ambitiously deciding where we want to go and who we want to become, and then taking meaningful actions, however unpopular they may be, to get there.
Don't just tell me what I want to hear. Lead me. Push me. Be bold. In the end, we will respect you for your personal sacrifices and the difficult decisions you are making on our behalf. This is the great burden -- but also the great opportunity -- of leadership, and it behooves us to empower it. To borrow from Tony Keller, "there's no reason we [Canada] can't be the most prosperous and successful society on earth."
The stated policy goal of inclusionary zoning is to to produce more affordable housing. We can debate who ultimately pays for this below-market housing, and we have many times before on the blog, but for the purposes of this post let's just focus on its stated goal.
Given this ambition, it makes sense to carefully measure the number of affordable homes produced. And that is ordinarily what is done: "We implemented this new policy on this date, and since then we have produced X amount of new affordable housing."
It is then likely that we will take X and form opinions on whether it was a successful policy or not. If X seems like a lot, then maybe we think it's a good policy. And if X doesn't seem like a lot, then maybe we think it was a bad policy, or perhaps just an ineffective one.
But what is largely impossible to measure with any real precision is the number of new market-rate homes that are now not being built as a result of a policy. Let's call this number Y. It is, of course, possible to come up with an estimate by looking broadly at rents across the city, plugging in some development costs, and seeing what pencils. But this is a rough approximation.
It does not capture the countless times that a developer has looked at a possible housing site, only to come to the conclusion that it is not feasible to build. There is no official Y figure. And any amorphous estimates of Y are going to be easy to ignore by the general public anyway. Unbuilt homes? Opportunity costs? What?
I am saying (okay repeating) all of this because I continue to feel like most people believe that development will just happen no matter what is thrown at it. There is a housing shortage, right? So developers should just do what they do best and build today. Surely they could if they were genuinely nice people and really wanted to. Hmm.
What many people seem to ignore (or not know) is that development, and in turn new housing supply, operates under this very simple decision tree:
Find development site
Underwrite said site
If math works, seek capital/investors and then build
If math does not work, do not build
If math works, but capital doesn't like it, also do not build (most can't in this scenario)
Repeat
Just because you aren't seeing or noticing something, it does not mean that it doesn't exist and that it's not happening behind the scenes.
I went to bed last night watching President Biden's address to the Canadian Parliament (full transcript, here.). And I woke up this morning to this Globe and Mail article about Canadian competitiveness. In it, Tony Keller talks about some of the things that are broken in this country (shockingly housing comes up), and compares Canada to Argentina (an example of too many bad decisions) and to South Korea (an example of many good decisions).
All of this got me thinking about leadership.
Leadership is a great burden. As a leader, people are looking to you for decisions, for direction, and for you to instil confidence. They are also scrutinizing your every word and action. And in today's world, they are waiting to criticize you on social media and/or make a funny meme out of your most recent misspeak. As a developer, I get to interface with municipal politicians probably more than your average person, and I can tell you with confidence that it is a thankless job I would never want.
I can only imagine having to constantly worry about your employment and what people are thinking. Given this incentive structure, I'm sure we'd all act accordingly. It is truly public, service. At the same time, I know that it is not only unproductive -- but dangerous -- to pander to just what is thought to be politically popular. And we have spoken many times before on this blog about housing and land use policies that may be popular, but aren't at all effective -- or worse, are counterproductive.
What we should be demanding from our leaders are difficult decisions. These are the decisions that probably feel uncomfortable and that may require some personal sacrifice, but that are ultimately the right decisions for our collective long-term prosperity. It is about ambitiously deciding where we want to go and who we want to become, and then taking meaningful actions, however unpopular they may be, to get there.
Don't just tell me what I want to hear. Lead me. Push me. Be bold. In the end, we will respect you for your personal sacrifices and the difficult decisions you are making on our behalf. This is the great burden -- but also the great opportunity -- of leadership, and it behooves us to empower it. To borrow from Tony Keller, "there's no reason we [Canada] can't be the most prosperous and successful society on earth."
Japan has a building typology known as machiya. They are found throughout Japan, but my understanding is that they are most closely associated with downtown Kyoto. The typical machiya consists of a long wooden home with a narrow street frontage, and at least one interior courtyard garden.
But perhaps the most interesting aspect of these townhouses is that, for the centuries that they have existed, they have always been mixed-used. The front of the building traditionally served as a kind of "shop space", and the private residential spaces were tucked behind it (though this line between public and private was fairly fluid).
And so for hundreds of years, the humble machiya became a flexible building typology that allowed shops, restaurants, and various other small businesses to flourish. This has changed over the years. People went off to work in offices and Western ideals around housing started to infiltrate Japan, among other reasons. But that doesn't mean that there aren't important lessons to be learned from Kyoto's machiya.
Here in Toronto, we remain deeply terrified of things like triplexes creeping into our single-family neighborhoods and we remain reticent to allow non-residential uses outside of their designated areas. Old habits die hard.
https://twitter.com/PlannerSean/status/1595877886740860931?s=20&t=e56R2T1MpmKjJti-9kKrjQ
But take a walk, cycle, or drive across one of our non-Avenue-designated arterial roads (which I did yesterday), and it's hard not to imagine something much better. My mind immediately goes to an improved streetscape with (1) less on-street parking, (2) a lot more homes (as-of-right), and (3) flexible ground floor permissions that allow for crazy things like a "shop space".
And then, what kind of city might we have if we had fewer barriers in the way of infill housing and if we allowed for low-cost spaces that could flex up and down based on the needs of small entrepreneurs? I'm pretty sure it would be a better one. And of course, it's been done before.
Photo by Akira Deng on Unsplash
Japan has a building typology known as machiya. They are found throughout Japan, but my understanding is that they are most closely associated with downtown Kyoto. The typical machiya consists of a long wooden home with a narrow street frontage, and at least one interior courtyard garden.
But perhaps the most interesting aspect of these townhouses is that, for the centuries that they have existed, they have always been mixed-used. The front of the building traditionally served as a kind of "shop space", and the private residential spaces were tucked behind it (though this line between public and private was fairly fluid).
And so for hundreds of years, the humble machiya became a flexible building typology that allowed shops, restaurants, and various other small businesses to flourish. This has changed over the years. People went off to work in offices and Western ideals around housing started to infiltrate Japan, among other reasons. But that doesn't mean that there aren't important lessons to be learned from Kyoto's machiya.
Here in Toronto, we remain deeply terrified of things like triplexes creeping into our single-family neighborhoods and we remain reticent to allow non-residential uses outside of their designated areas. Old habits die hard.
https://twitter.com/PlannerSean/status/1595877886740860931?s=20&t=e56R2T1MpmKjJti-9kKrjQ
But take a walk, cycle, or drive across one of our non-Avenue-designated arterial roads (which I did yesterday), and it's hard not to imagine something much better. My mind immediately goes to an improved streetscape with (1) less on-street parking, (2) a lot more homes (as-of-right), and (3) flexible ground floor permissions that allow for crazy things like a "shop space".
And then, what kind of city might we have if we had fewer barriers in the way of infill housing and if we allowed for low-cost spaces that could flex up and down based on the needs of small entrepreneurs? I'm pretty sure it would be a better one. And of course, it's been done before.
Photo by Akira Deng on Unsplash
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