Okay, so, we know that New York's congestion pricing in lower Manhattan is doing exactly what it's supposed to do. It has reduced traffic congestion and average drive times, improved air quality, increased public transit ridership, and continues to generate lots of money for the city.

Because of this, a majority of New Yorkers now say they want congestion pricing to continue, despite many vehemently objecting to it before its enactment. It is, in fact, a car-friendly policy. It makes driving faster and easier by reducing congestion.

But here's another way to look at its effects. A recent study by the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health (in partnership with the Yale School of Public Health) found that, at the highest level, the program is also helping road safety. Car crashes have declined since the program began.

But this is for overall crashes. Interestingly enough, the results are less obvious when looking specifically at injury and fatal crashes. One possible explanation for this is that congestion pricing is, you know, working. Cars are able to drive faster! And since I would imagine that vehicle speed is correlated with injury severity, this makes sense.

So, congestion pricing won't solve all of your city-building problems. It will, however, solve a great number of them. Which city will be bold enough to step up next?

Cover photo by Stian Skevig on Unsplash

I recently tweeted this photo of St.-Anna-Strasse 16 in Munich (the building in the centre) along with a pithy comment about how I really like the look and scale of this neighbourhood. It's beautiful, right? The tweet blew up and, as of right now, it has over 170k views. Pithy comments with pretty pictures always seem to outperform anything more nuanced that I might share. But in the spirit of yesterday's post about housing affordability, let's dig a little deeper.

Developed by Legat Living and designed by Munich-based Landau + Kindelbacher, the mixed-use building is located in Lehel, which I understand is one of the most desirable areas in the city. It's about 960 m2 and has five apartments (ranging from 140 to 200 m2) and one commercial unit at grade. Each home has direct elevator access and its own landing. To give you a better sense of the suites, here's a photo of the rear elevation:

What is clear is that this is a luxury, boutique offering. Based on a cursory review of the Munich real estate market, Lehel seems to be the most expensive neighbourhood, with an average apartment price of €12,468.33/m2. If we apply this average to their smallest apartment, that's a starting price of €1,745,566. But presumably, this isn't your average building. It was completed in 2020, so I'm going to assume these homes sold for meaningfully more.

All of this leaves us with a really beautiful building and a nice urban scale, but certainly not the secret to a magically affordable city. This is not a criticism of the project by any means. I stand by my original tweet. It's a beautiful development, but it does demonstrate some of the affordability challenges of building urban. Legalizing urban infill housing is not a silver bullet in and of itself.

Photos via Landau + Kindelbacher

So:

Urbanism is failing in Canada, and a two-decade-long effort to reduce sprawl through policies such as urban growth boundaries has caused sprawl to accelerate due to the leapfrogging effect, in which development is pushed out to smaller communities without transit, leaving middle-class workers facing long daily commutes back to the metros where their jobs are located.

Indeed, the data show that net migration out of Canada's largest metro areas is particularly strong among those early in their careers (late-20s to mid-30s). In the words of Mike Moffatt from the Missing Middle Initiative, "Canadians are choosing affordability over density."

This statement highlights the inherent tension between dense, walkable communities and car-oriented sprawl. The former may be nice, better for the environment, and advantageous for agglomeration economies, but the kind of built form that comes along with it tends to be fundamentally more expensive to build.

Now, we can get into a debate about transportation costs, environmental costs, and how people tend to discount the value of their time relative to direct costs, but regardless, it is clear that affordability is dictating where people move.

So Moffatt is not wrong in stating that the communities that we urbanists often like to celebrate as "success stories" are, in fact, the ones that many young people are leaving. And in my view, this highlights a missing success criterion. Great design and urbanism are all well and good but, how attainable is the resulting housing?

The most promising solution right now appears to be happening on the multiplex front. It's the most cost-effective way to build multi-unit homes, and I think our goal should be to apply this same general approach — as-of-right, cost-effective builds — to larger and larger housing typologies.

If we can unlock the same market enthusiasm for six-storey wood-framed builds, then I think we'll really be on to something.

Cover photo by Craig Cook on Unsplash

Chart from the Missing Middle Initiative