How Do You Define “Feasible”?

A recent study concludes that it is feasible to convert some downtown buildings into residences. However, given the qualifications they put on this statement, I strongly suspect the authors’ definition of “feasible” is quite a bit different from mine.

Can the owner of this office building feasibly convert this space to residences? The answer, according to some, is “yes” so long as taxpayers give the property owner enough subsidies. Photo by Tomi Knuutila.

First, at least some of the building conversions they studied were hotels, not office buildings. Hotels, which are already residential in a sense, have a lot more plumbing that make them easier to convert to residential uses than offices. Continue reading

Disaster or Timely Adjustment?

The commercial real-estate market is tanking with vacancy rates approaching 20 percent, observes high-tech consultant George Sibble. This is a problem for all of us, he warns, for two reasons.

First, he says, the defaults that are likely to result from this will be much greater than the defaults that caused the 2008 financial crisis. Second, cities depend heavily on commercial real estate for tax revenues. Despite his arguments, I believe this is more of an opportunity than a serious problem. Continue reading

Downtown San Francisco Is Dying

The owner of San Francisco’s first and fourth largest hotels announced Monday that it is going to walk away from the mortgage it owes for those buildings. The owners of the Hilton Union Square Hotel noted that San Francisco’s path to recovery remains clouded and elongated by major challenges,” including the fact that fewer groups want to hold conventions in a city now more famous for its homeless population than its cable cars and restaurants.

Once famous as the center of the 1960s counterculture, Haight Street is now the home of a new kind of counterculture. Photo by Franco Folini.

Last month, Nordstrom said that it was closing both its stores in downtown San Francisco. “The dynamics of the downtown San Francisco market have changed dramatically over the past several years,” said a Nordstrom official, “impacting customer foot traffic to our stores and our ability to operate successfully.” Continue reading

Get Back to Work, You Cretin!

Perhaps the Antiplanner is naive, but I’ve always believed that government infrastructure exists to help us be more productive and live the lives we want. To the contrary, I’ve noticed that news reports take it for granted that we exist solely to support the infrastructure that government thinks we should have.

According to the latest estimate, economic activity in downtown San Francisco is only 32 percent of what it was before the pandemic. Photo by PhotoEverywhere.

This is most obvious with urban transit which, since we aren’t riding it, “experts” argue we should pay more taxes to keep it running anyway. Lately, the same attitude is creeping into stories about downtowns. Continue reading

The Real Reason Downtowns Are Declining

Crime, on-line shopping, telecommuting and exorbitant rents are all contributing to the decline of downtowns, observes an article on CNN Business. But the real reason downtowns are declining, according to the article, is that people don’t live in dense enough neighborhoods.

If we just had more density, this wouldn’t be a problem, say the densimaniacs — except this boarded up pharmacy is in one of the densest neighborhoods in the country. Photo by thisisbossi.

“To reinvent downtown retail,” asserts the article without any room for debate or citation of evidence, cities need “denser neighborhoods with a broader mix of affordable housing, experiential retail, restaurants, entertainment, parks and other amenities.” Where have I heard that before? Continue reading

How Not to Revitalize Downtown

The city of Portland announced yesterday that it received a $2 million federal grant to get it to ban gasoline (and, presumably, Diesel) delivery vehicles in a sixteen-block area of downtown Portland. That means all supplies to offices in that area will have to be transferred from petroleum-powered vehicles to electric vehicles before they enter the zone, thus driving up costs.

Here’s the cheery view greeting coffee drinkers looking for the Starbucks in the downtown Portland area that will be ruled off limits to gasoline-powered delivery vehicles. Source: Google Street View.

The good news is that three of those 16 blocks are city parks and eight are government buildings, so only five blocks of private office buildings will be affected (not that anyone should cheer about a policy that makes government cost even more than it already does). In addition to offices, I count at least four restaurants and coffee shops plus a beauty salon that will be annoyed by the new rules. At least one other restaurant has already “permanently closed,” probably due to recent rioting, and this new rule may be all that is needed to push some of the others out as well. It’s also worth noting that there are plenty of parking garages in the area, so none of the bureaucrats who are making these rules will have to have their lives disturbed by them. Continue reading

What’s Wrong with the 15-Minute City

“What is the 15-Minute City?” rhetorically asks urban planner Steve Mouzon. His answer: “It’s every city ever built by humans on this planet until a century ago, but with a catchy new name.”

A 15-minute city in the 1920s. Click image for a larger view.

In other words, a 15-minute city is crowded. It is noisy. Living quarters are cramped. Grocery stores are small and high priced. Crime and contagious disease are continuing worries. Income inequality is high and only the wealthy enjoy true mobility; most people are confined to walking. Continue reading

Collapse or Evolution?

An article in Salon by anti-capitalist Chris Hedges argues that our civilization is on the verge of collapse. As evidence, he points to the 65 percent decline of the population of St. Louis since 1950.

The city of St. Louis is losing population but the St. Louis metropolitan area is thriving. Photo by David Schwen.

This decline, however, only applies to the city of St. Louis, which is a political entity. The St. Louis metropolitan area, which is an economic unit, has grown by 68 percent in the same time period. Continue reading

Smart Growth Minneapolis Conflicted over Density

A Minnesota judge has ordered the city of Minneapolis to do a more thorough environmental analysis before implementing its plan to densify the city by abolishing single-family zoning. Opponents of the plan argued that densification would reduce the amount of permeable land, leading to increased runoff of polluted waters, which would be harmful to, among other things, migratory birds.

Tearing down these Minneapolis homes and replacing them with duplexes or triplexes won’t make housing more affordable. Photo by Michael Comerford.

Those opponents included the Audubon Chapter of Minneapolis, Minnesota Citizens for the Protection of Migratory Birds, and Smart Growth Minneapolis. I can understand the first two, but why did Smart Growth Minneapolis sign on to this lawsuit? Smart-growth advocates are supposed to favor increased densities. Continue reading

Twelve Ways to Destroy Cities

Kimberly Nicholas, an associate professor of sustainability at Sweden’s Lund University, says that automobiles are killers and offers twelve ways to get them out of our cities. Typically for sustainability advocates, she completely ignores the benefits provided by automobiles as well as ways in which the costs of automobiles could be reduced without reducing driving.

A typical street in sustainable Stockholm. Photo by European Institute for Sustainable Transport.

Her twelve ways include reducing the amount of parking, charging more for parking, closing parts of cities to automobiles, and charge a fee to drive automobiles into city centers. All revenues from such fees, parking, fines, etc., should, in her opinion, go to fund “sustainable transport,” which means any kind of transportation other than automobiles. Continue reading