Daily insights for city builders, delivered every morning at 6 AM ET. I’m Brandon Donnelly — a Toronto-based real estate developer and founder of Globizen. I’ve been writing here since 2013.
Keeping with yesterday’s theme of urban density, here is a photo by Andy Yeung that I am embedding via his 500px page:
The photo is of Hong Kong and it was taken using a drone. Click here for other photos from his “Urban Jungle” drone series.
If you remember the maps from yesterday, you might remember that Hong Kong had a peak residential density of around 111,100 people per square kilometre (2013).
Above is what that generally looks like.
The following diagrams were taken from LSE’s Urban Age website. I’ve sorted them from lowest to highest peak residential population density. In each case I’ve also included the year of the dataset.
It’s amazing how much these simple extrusion diagrams can tell you about the city. It also shows you that high population densities don’t necessarily need to equate to tall buildings. Barcelona, in particular, stands out for me.
Berlin (Peak residential density: 21,700 people/km2, 2009)
Stockholm (Peak residential density: 24,900 people/km2, 2012)
London (Peak residential density: 27,100 people/km2, 2013)
São Paulo (Peak residential density: 29,380 people/km2, 2009)
Mexico City (Peak residential density: 48,300 people/km2, 2009)
Barcelona (Peak residential density: 56,800 people/km2, 2013)
New York (Peak residential density: 59,150 people/km2, 2012)
Shanghai (Peak residential density: 74,370 people/km2, 2011)
Istanbul (Peak residential density: 77,300 people/km2, 2013)
Hong Kong (Peak residential density: 111,100 people/km2, 2013)
Mumbai (Peak residential density: 121,300 people/km2, 2013)
For the past week or so I’ve been seeing the proposed Kettle Boffo Project in Vancouver make the rounds online. Here’s a rendering of the project, which is located at Commercial Drive and Venables Street:
The reason it has been making the rounds is that a community group called NO TOWER (written in all caps) has come out in fierce opposition of the 5 to 12-storey building. They have over 3,500 signatures.
As an outsider looking in, this is surprising. The scale of the project seems appropriate. The height roughly matches the existing building shown above to the right. It may even be lower. And the project will provide somewhere around 30 social housing units, as well as additional space for the Kettle Friendship Society non-profit, who are currently on the site. (Note: An application to the city hasn’t yet been made.)
What this has me thinking about is the push and pull between bottom-up and top-down planning.
When architect Bjarke Ingels talks about his Dryline project in New York, he likes to refer to it as the love child of Robert Moses (top-down planning) and Jane Jacobs (bottom-up planning). In the case of this project, it’s because it’s a large infrastructure project that they are trying to root into the local neighborhoods. Makes sense.
But this same thinking could also apply to overall city building. Local communities rightly have their own wants. But at the same time, cities need to be thinking about the overall. The challenge is finding that right balance.
I would be curious to hear your thoughts on the Kettle Boffo Project in the comment section below – especially if you’re from Vancouver.
The Urbanist recently published a guest post, called Let Us Build Backyard Cottages, that sounds a lot like a post I wrote a few years ago, called Why It’s Next to Impossible to Get a Laneway House Built in Toronto.
It’s the same story: buy house; see opportunity to build low-cost well-designed backyard cottage (or laneway house); discover the countless obstacles in front of you; give up until the land use policies become more favorable.
Here’s the Seattle version of the story (via The Urbanist):
I bought my home in 2014 with the intent of building a backyard cottage on the property. The property is a mere 4,080 square feet, with a large flat backyard that is mostly wasted space. The plan was to buy a small, prefabricated, and super-insulated (to Passive House standards) house. We would install it and move into it while we brought the main house up to Passive House standards as well, adding insulation and ventilation. We would then move into the main house while my parents (who are currently living on the East Coast, and want to move closer to us) move into the backyard cottage.
Unfortunately, Seattle’s backyard cottage requirements proved too onerous for us to move forward with building one. The requirement of an additional parking space was a bit irritating (especially considering that my family lives car-free near the future Roosevelt light rail station), despite the fact that we do technically have two parking spaces. But more frustrating than that, it was the owner-occupancy requirement that made us scrap our backyard cottage plans.
What I find interesting about all of this is that the same narrative is happening in multiple cities, from Seattle to Toronto. That, again, suggests to me that change is likely inevitable. Especially since Seattle seems further ahead in this regard compared to Toronto. Change is happening.
Of course, there are differences between accessory dwelling units (what The Urbanist wrote about) and independent laneway housing (what I wrote about). But I would classify them as being in the same family of urban change.
Most North American cities are clinging to a specific kind of single family housing typology. I can appreciate why. But I believe that there will be a tipping point.
I’m not sure that this year will be the year. Which is why I didn’t include laneway housing in my list of 10 city building predictions for 2016. But I think it will happen in the shorter term.
When I was
a kid growing up in the suburbs of Toronto, I never played in the backyard. I
played in the streets. That’s where all the kids came together.
We would
play baseball in somebody’s driveway, using one of the garage door “squares” as
the strike zone. We would play football on corner lots, where it was tackle on
the grass and “two-hand touch” on the street. And we would wax our curbs so
that we could skateboard them.
None of these
spaces were ever really intended for baseball, football, or skateboarding, but
we kids repurposed them.
As people,
including families, continue to move into urban centers around the world, I
have no doubt that the next generation of children will once again repurpose
spaces for play. But that doesn’t mean that we don’t have work to do when it
comes to properly preparing our communities for people of all shapes and sizes.
One of the
most interesting design challenges facing us today has to do with our towers.
Architects
have long been obsessed with the idea of vertical villages. Le Corbusier’s Unité
d’habitation in Marseille had two shopping streets embedded within the tower
that were intended to act as public spines. I don’t know how well they did, but
it was a highly progressive idea for the time.
Following
on this idea, I was recently watching a
TED talk with architect Ole Scheeren (thanks Mariane) and I was fascinated
by his obsession with breaking down the raw verticality of towers.
His belief
was that, yes, cities are and will continue to become more dense through tall
buildings, but that most towers isolate rather than connect people. His work strives to do the opposite.
And this
one of the big trends that I think we will see more of in our cites. We will see
new forms of urban connectedness and a blurring of private, public, and
semi-public spaces. Screw Euclidean zoning.
On that
note, I am reminded that I owe the ATC community a post on my predictions for
2016. I hope to get that out shortly.
Diagram via Büro Ole Scheeren
One of things I love about cities is the hustle and bustle of people.
I would rather eat at a busy restaurant than a quiet or dead one. I would rather workout at a busy gym than one with nobody there. And I would rather work in an office or at a coffee shop than work at home by myself. Working at home actually drains me if I do too much of it.
The reason for that is because I derive a lot of my energy from the outside world. Urban life energizes me. To Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung, that is the defining characteristic of an extrovert. I am focused on the “outside world of objects.”
But because of this, I can’t help but slowdown during the holidays. Once the city dials down and the streets become emptier, my mood actually changes. I don’t feel as energized.
It’s fascinating to think about the connection that many of us have with urban life. Since the first cities were established there has always been some kind of centralized place, market, or agora (in the case of ancient Greek cities) where people came together to exchange goods and ideas.
But one of the most interesting turning points for modern urban life, as we know it today, came in 19th century France with poets and writers such as Charles Baudelaire.
At the time that Baudelaire was active, Paris was undergoing Hussmannization. It was being transformed from a medieval city with cramped narrow streets into a modern metropolis of broad avenues.
And essential to these new streets and urban spaces was the flâneur. At the time, the flâneur was an important literary and artistic figure. He was a man about town. A man of leisure. An urban explorer in the new modern metropolis.
Here is how Baudelaire defined the flâneur in his Painter of Modern Life:
The crowd is his element, as the air is that of birds and water of fishes. His passion and his profession are to become one flesh with the crowd. For the perfect flâneur, for the passionate spectator, it is an immense joy to set up house in the heart of the multitude, amid the ebb and flow of movement, in the midst of the fugitive and the infinite. To be away from home and yet to feel oneself everywhere at home; to see the world, to be at the centre of the world, and yet to remain hidden from the world—impartial natures which the tongue can but clumsily define. The spectator is a prince who everywhere rejoices in his incognito.
One of the central themes at the time was that of anonymity. The modern city had grown to such a scale that a paradox had emerged. Despite all its density and physical proximity, urban life had an isolating effect. It had become easy to just be a number in an ephemeral crowd.
But fascinating to me is this idea that urban life – with all its ebbs and flows – could bring “immense joy” to the flâneur. In fact, the very definition of a flâneur was someone who did nothing. They weren’t capitalists on the pursuit of new material possessions. Their sole focus was urban life and nothing else.
And while most of us probably don’t routinely wander around our own cities as tourists without purpose, I suspect that many of us can appreciate the impact that urban life has on us. I know I do. It gives me energy.
Earlier this month The Washington Post published an article called, There’s no such thing as a city that has run out of room.
And what it was really about was that when we say there’s no more room (I guess people are saying this), we are really saying that we just don’t want to allow anyone else to become our neighbor. Because the reality is that urban population densities vary widely around the world. So how can you really call a place full?
I’m not sure I feel this pain point as much as the author, but I always find population densities to be a fascinating topic. And accompanying the article was a tool – using data from Demographia – that allowed you to compare the population densities of various cities.
Here are are two scenarios I ran:
It’s important to keep in mind that these numbers are averages for the entire economically contiguous region. So it tells you nothing about the potential spikiness of certain areas. That’s why the population density of New York (which includes portions of New Jersey and Connecticut) probably seems low to you.
Still, it’s fascinating to see how extreme some cities – including some first world cities like Hong Kong – can be. Clearly many cities have a lot of room to become a lot more dense. And I think that would be a good thing.
Yesterday I wrote about urban-suburban divides within cities. And I argued that built form will largely dictate the kinds of transportation choices that people will ultimately make.
As a follow-up to that, here is a chart based on the findings of a research report completed by Peter Newman and Jeffrey Kenworthy way back in 1989. On the x-axis is urban density (i.e. built form) and on the y-axis is per capita transport related energy consumption.
What this chart shows is that as cities become more dense, “automobile dependence” is reduced in favor of, other, more sustainable forms of transport.
Here we have Houston at the top left (meaning it has the highest transport-related energy consumption per capita) and Hong Kong all the way on the bottom right. Hong Kong has by far the highest density among the cities looked at in this study, but Moscow seems to have the lowest per capita energy consumption. Still, the trend appears clear.
Some people think of “density” as a dirty word. But there are lots of benefits to dense urban centers. And density does not necessarily have to mean tall buildings.
The Toronto Star published an article today called: Midtowners battle the rise of the midrise. It’s about a group called The Density Creep Neighborhood Alliance, which was formed in order to fight a 4 storey stacked townhouse project that is currently going through the rezoning process.
Here’s a snippet from the article:
“I’m really concerned about my property value going down,” says Lisa Goodwin, 49, a stay-at-home mother of two who has lived in a four-bedroom dwelling on Keewatin Ave. for 19 years. “Right now all the houses are $1.1 to, say, $2.2 (million) but they’re looking at putting in places that are only $500,000.”
Not surprisingly, social media took hold of this and #DensityCreep quickly started trending on Twitter. BuzzFeed ran a piece called, Toronto Real Estate Is So Preposterous People Are Protesting Condos That “Only” Cost $500K. And somebody even bought densitycreep.com (their site is .ca) and redirected it to NIMBY on Wikipedia.
There’s so much I could say about this. But you all already know what I’m thinking. So I’ll end with this quote from the article:
“The simple fact of the matter is that the creation of a more sustainable, equitable, and affordable city requires the development of midrise and other more dense housing options along major roads, subways, and streetcar lines in already built up areas,” says Christopher De Sousa, director of the School of Urban Planning and Regional Planning at Ryerson University.
We have work to do.
San Francisco Bay Blues by Stefano Termanini on 500px
I recently stumbled upon a great Treehugger article by Lloyd Alter called: The real triumph of the city will be seen in Buffalo (2014). The post is partially a response to economist Ed Glaeser’s popular book, Triumph of the City, which I’ve mentioned and cited many times before here on ATC.
Lloyd’s thesis is basically that Ed is wrong in arguing that reducing the barriers to building is the most effective way to maintain housing affordability; that cities are really made out of flesh, rather than bricks and mortar; and that urbanists need to move beyond the view that a city’s past should be preserved at all costs.
Lloyd then goes on to argue that rather than continuing to over-intensify cities like New York, San Francisco, and Toronto, we should be turning our attention to former powerhouses like Buffalo and trying to figure out how to reinvigorate those cities. The bones are already in place.
Now, I don’t disagree that there’s lots of potential in cities such as a Buffalo and Detroit. I’ve written a lot about Detroit and I’m genuinely rooting for the city. But I don’t think it’s as simple as it sounds to shift our attention, and I don’t agree with all of the critiques of Glaeser’s work.
As important as built form is, cities like Buffalo and Detroit remind us that architecture and buildings alone aren’t enough to build a city. There are countless masterpieces – such as Michigan Central Station in Detroit – that regrettably sit abandoned. You need people and communities.
There’s also a snowball effect.
As a city becomes more successful, there’s a natural tendency for more people to want to be there. It’s no different than the network effect experienced by a social network. A social network without people has no value. But the more people you add to it, the more valuable it becomes and the more difficult it becomes to replace.
So it shouldn’t come as any surprise that people will put up with expensive real estate and small apartments just to live in cities like San Francisco. That’s where they want to be. And as long as the demand to live in those cities is increasing, I continue to believe that it makes sense to build more, not less, housing and to make it reasonably easy to do so.
At the same time, I believe whole heartedly in heritage preservation. As a trained architect, there’s a strong possibility that I would shed an actual tear should a building with heritage value be torn down in my city or in any city in the world.
And that’s why when I was on CBC radio last week I said that neighborhood investment needs to be a balance between preservation and progress. The Twittersphere later blasted me for using the term “progress”, but I think you get my position.
My interpretation of Glaeser’s work has never been that he supports completely erasing a city’s past in order to make way for the future. If that is his position, then I too disagree with it.
My interpretation has instead been that he supports removing unreasonable barriers to development so that cities are able to supply – or can at least try to supply – enough housing to meet growing demand. This also doesn’t exclusively mean high-rise intensification. It could mean removing the barriers in front of things like laneway housing. And I continue to believe that this is a good idea.
I don’t believe that this approach alone will solve all housing problems, but I do think it’s a great place to start.
Thank you Lloyd for the great post.
