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| 1. | 0xdb8f...bcfd | 4.5M |
| 2. | jcandqc | 4.1M |
| 3. | baldinini | 941K |
| 4. | partytime | 939K |
| 5. | jimmyyyy | 918.6K |
| 6. | witcher01 | 898.8K |
| 7. | kualta.eth | 869.1K |
| 8. | Brandon Donnelly | 702.4K |
| 9. | ZORG | 487.3K |
| 10. | Ev Tchebotarev | 170.5K |
On July 1 of this year, a new California bill, called the "Affordable Housing and High Road Jobs Act of 2022", will go into effect. And the goal of this legislation is to significantly increase the supply of new homes in the state by allowing multi-family construction on lands that are currently zoned for commercial uses.
On some level, it is of course curious that there even needs to be this bill. Because what we are effectively saying is, "hey, we should allow people to build a mix of uses on our main streets and with high enough densities that we might actually be able to support transit." Why was this not always the case? (Rhetorical question.)
In the words of architect and planner Peter Calthorpe, who was recently interviewed here in ArchDaily, this is a "landmark piece of legislation" that has "received very little attention." So that's why we're talking about it today.
Calthorpe was actively involved in crafting this legislation, and his work apparently started with different scenario land-use models. The first experiment looked at a 43-mile stretch of El Camino running from San Francisco to San Jose (pictured below). And what they found was that this one strip alone could accommodate somewhere around 250,000 new infill homes.
To put this into context, the state of California is currently building about 140,000 new homes each year, through a roughly equal (1:1) split of multi-family and low-rise single-family. Already this represents a shift, as supply used to be slanted (3:1) toward low-rise. (I don't know when exactly this was the case, but Calthorpe mentions the figure in his interview.)
Moving on from El Camino, Calthorpe and his team then ran a similar exercise for the five-county inner Bay area. And here they found that some 700 miles of commercial land could produce up to 1.3 million multi-family homes at "reasonable densities." This was then expanded to the entire state of California and the number increased to 10 million new homes.
Of course, as we have talked about before on this blog, not all of this land might actually be feasible for development. Sometimes the math doesn't work even at a zero land cost; you might need a negative land cost in order to pencil a new development. Meaning, you might need to be paid, perhaps through some sort of subsidy.
So what Calthorpe and the team did was use MapCraft to quickly run development feasibilities on the above sites. They had it run 6 different pro formas using local rents, construction costs, city fees, and so on. And what they determined was that this 10 million number drops down to 2 million when you apply the economic realities of the world.
As a disclaimer, I'm not at all familiar with MapCraft. But I'm going to take this number at face value and say that this is still a lot of new homes. And this is what people are hoping for come July 1 of this year.
Image: HDR / Peter Calthorpe
I just learned that the US has a "National Walk to Work Day." And it happens to be today, Friday, April 7, 2023. It was started in 2004 by the federal government and the American Podiatric Medical Association -- because, you know, walking is good for your feet -- and the idea is that since so few Americans actually walk to work, we should encourage them to do it at least one day of the year. Back in 2019, the figure was that less than 3% of Americans do it on average.
While I'm sure that there are some good intentions here, I'm guessing that the impact of this national day is probably somewhere between zero and "I guess I'll park in a farther spot at the office park today." The reality is that a day like this exists because we have spent the last 75 years, or even longer, making it exceedingly difficult to navigate our cities without a car. So it is equal to, "let me speak out of the other side of my mouth for a day."
But we also know that a real and meaningful solution is pretty simple to achieve (though clearly not easy). Build smaller streets and build more densely, especially next to transit. (Would you add anything to this?) So I think it's time for a new kind of national day. Maybe it's a day where every dense development proposal next to transit just gets automatically approved. It would be a national day for "this took too long, so here you go."
I don't know, this probably needs some work. I'm open to other ideas here.
So Sunday came and went and Parisians voted overwhelmingly to ban shared electric scooters in the capital. Of those who voted, 89.03% were against them. And this, to be honest, is not all that surprising. Also not surprising is the low voter turnout (7.46% of 1.3 million registered voters).
But I do think it raises important questions about this "democratic" process -- and not just because I happen to like electric scooters. One problem is that there's an inherent bias. And this same phenomenon can be found in community meetings for new developments.
If you're upset about something (and you have the time), then you are probably more intrinsically motivated to participate. In other words, if you think that electric scooters are a horrible nuisance, then you're more likely to take the time to say something about them. But if you think electric scooters are just, like, fine, then you're probably less motivated to go out and vote.
Maybe this doesn't matter. Maybe the turnout percentage itself is the answer you're looking for. Only 7.46% of registered voters cared enough about electric scooters to voice an opinion. So if the rest actually liked them, it's their problem for not voting.
But if you think that this percentage should be higher to be more representative, then one solution is to try and reduce the barriers to participation. And I think there's an argument to be made that something as dumb as a Twitter poll, open only to Parisians, might have been more inclusive.
On July 1 of this year, a new California bill, called the "Affordable Housing and High Road Jobs Act of 2022", will go into effect. And the goal of this legislation is to significantly increase the supply of new homes in the state by allowing multi-family construction on lands that are currently zoned for commercial uses.
On some level, it is of course curious that there even needs to be this bill. Because what we are effectively saying is, "hey, we should allow people to build a mix of uses on our main streets and with high enough densities that we might actually be able to support transit." Why was this not always the case? (Rhetorical question.)
In the words of architect and planner Peter Calthorpe, who was recently interviewed here in ArchDaily, this is a "landmark piece of legislation" that has "received very little attention." So that's why we're talking about it today.
Calthorpe was actively involved in crafting this legislation, and his work apparently started with different scenario land-use models. The first experiment looked at a 43-mile stretch of El Camino running from San Francisco to San Jose (pictured below). And what they found was that this one strip alone could accommodate somewhere around 250,000 new infill homes.
To put this into context, the state of California is currently building about 140,000 new homes each year, through a roughly equal (1:1) split of multi-family and low-rise single-family. Already this represents a shift, as supply used to be slanted (3:1) toward low-rise. (I don't know when exactly this was the case, but Calthorpe mentions the figure in his interview.)
Moving on from El Camino, Calthorpe and his team then ran a similar exercise for the five-county inner Bay area. And here they found that some 700 miles of commercial land could produce up to 1.3 million multi-family homes at "reasonable densities." This was then expanded to the entire state of California and the number increased to 10 million new homes.
Of course, as we have talked about before on this blog, not all of this land might actually be feasible for development. Sometimes the math doesn't work even at a zero land cost; you might need a negative land cost in order to pencil a new development. Meaning, you might need to be paid, perhaps through some sort of subsidy.
So what Calthorpe and the team did was use MapCraft to quickly run development feasibilities on the above sites. They had it run 6 different pro formas using local rents, construction costs, city fees, and so on. And what they determined was that this 10 million number drops down to 2 million when you apply the economic realities of the world.
As a disclaimer, I'm not at all familiar with MapCraft. But I'm going to take this number at face value and say that this is still a lot of new homes. And this is what people are hoping for come July 1 of this year.
Image: HDR / Peter Calthorpe
I just learned that the US has a "National Walk to Work Day." And it happens to be today, Friday, April 7, 2023. It was started in 2004 by the federal government and the American Podiatric Medical Association -- because, you know, walking is good for your feet -- and the idea is that since so few Americans actually walk to work, we should encourage them to do it at least one day of the year. Back in 2019, the figure was that less than 3% of Americans do it on average.
While I'm sure that there are some good intentions here, I'm guessing that the impact of this national day is probably somewhere between zero and "I guess I'll park in a farther spot at the office park today." The reality is that a day like this exists because we have spent the last 75 years, or even longer, making it exceedingly difficult to navigate our cities without a car. So it is equal to, "let me speak out of the other side of my mouth for a day."
But we also know that a real and meaningful solution is pretty simple to achieve (though clearly not easy). Build smaller streets and build more densely, especially next to transit. (Would you add anything to this?) So I think it's time for a new kind of national day. Maybe it's a day where every dense development proposal next to transit just gets automatically approved. It would be a national day for "this took too long, so here you go."
I don't know, this probably needs some work. I'm open to other ideas here.
So Sunday came and went and Parisians voted overwhelmingly to ban shared electric scooters in the capital. Of those who voted, 89.03% were against them. And this, to be honest, is not all that surprising. Also not surprising is the low voter turnout (7.46% of 1.3 million registered voters).
But I do think it raises important questions about this "democratic" process -- and not just because I happen to like electric scooters. One problem is that there's an inherent bias. And this same phenomenon can be found in community meetings for new developments.
If you're upset about something (and you have the time), then you are probably more intrinsically motivated to participate. In other words, if you think that electric scooters are a horrible nuisance, then you're more likely to take the time to say something about them. But if you think electric scooters are just, like, fine, then you're probably less motivated to go out and vote.
Maybe this doesn't matter. Maybe the turnout percentage itself is the answer you're looking for. Only 7.46% of registered voters cared enough about electric scooters to voice an opinion. So if the rest actually liked them, it's their problem for not voting.
But if you think that this percentage should be higher to be more representative, then one solution is to try and reduce the barriers to participation. And I think there's an argument to be made that something as dumb as a Twitter poll, open only to Parisians, might have been more inclusive.
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