Breakfast links: Thinking about urbanism edition

Development

Breakfast links: Thinking about urbanism edition

by David Alpert • September 10, 2008 9:15 am

A Metro train at the potential River Terrace station. Photo by David Alpert.

Conserbanism: A recent panel on transportation and energy featured conservatives and liberals who all agree on transit and compact development. For the conservatives, global warming isn't the reason; while painting urbanism as an environmental issue is a powerful argument, it shouldn't be the only one. Via Ryan Avent.

Imagining River Terrace: Imagine, DC imagines the new mixed-use community that could exist on the PEPCO site north of River Terrance on the banks of the Anacostia. It's a great spot for a new station to serve a new neighborhood, especially if we ever build the separate Blue Line.

A meeting of giants: Robert Caro, author of the definitive biography of Robert Moses, spoke recently about his one meeting with Jane Jacobs. "It turns out we each had a question that we wanted to ask the other," said Caro. "Jane wanted to ask me what it was like to meet him. I wanted to ask her what it was like to beat him." Via Richard Layman.

Is walk-"ability" enough? Ryan Avent summarizes an interesting blog debate over neighborhood design between Atrios and Kevin Drum. If you segregate residential uses from commercial uses and provide ample parking, but locate them in close enough proximity that people can walk and include nice sidewalks, will people walk? Drum does but none of his neighbors do. (Columbia, MD is similar.) Once we've put huge sunk costs into devoting most of the land to cars and foregoing all alternatives, the marginal cost of one more car trip to the store is small, and therefore people drive.

8 comments

Tags: Blue Line, DC, Jane Jacobs, links, Republicans, River Terrace, Robert Caro, Robert Moses, Smart Growth, TOD, transit

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David Alpert is the Founder and Editor-in-Chief of Greater Greater Washington and Greater Greater Education. He worked as a Product Manager for Google for six years and has lived in the Boston, San Francisco, and New York metro areas in addition to Washington, DC. He loves the area which is, in many ways, greater than those others, and wants to see it become even greater.

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"If you segregate residential uses from commercial uses and provide ample parking, but locate them in close enough proximity that people can walk and include nice sidewalks, will people walk?"

This actually happens in the western part of Greenbelt MD. People in the apartment complex walk to the adjacent regional mall. The fact that the walkers often don't have cars helps.

BTW, when I lived in Columbia, MD I walked to nearby shopping most of the time. My neighbors not so much.

by kenf on Sep 10, 2008 9:20 am • link • report

Re: the River Terrace proposal. Certainly, it seems that's very underutilized land. I fail to understand, however, how ImagineDC (or anyone else for that matter) can, with a straight face, suggest hat any redevelopment there would be affordable to any of the current low-income (or public housing?) residents.

The low-income residents are there precisely because it's undesirable, making it unaffordable. If it were newly rebuilt with even better transit, a marina, and attractive buildings, low-income people will not be living there. The developers won't be able, fiscally, to afford to offer housing at the cheap rents necessary for those residents. And, to the extent residential units are for sale (and not rental), even lower-priced units would get flipped to others who would upscale their interiors because of the newly revived neighborhood.

My guess is that DC will continue the Paris-style pattern we've been seeing develop in the past decade, where the lower income residents live on the outskirts. I'm not sure the Paris model is necessarily an evil thing, however.

In any case, expecting that the shops and homes should appeal in Anacostia to current low-income residents is a pipe dream.

by Joey on Sep 10, 2008 10:32 am • link • report

Sorry, in my last comment, make that, " . . . precisely because it's undesirable, making it affordable."

by Joey on Sep 10, 2008 10:33 am • link • report

Joey- Read up on the DC New Communities initiative. Arthur Capper, Northwest One, Park Morton, Barry Farm. These will all be reveloped into mixed income communities. The low income units are subsidized through: 1) free land to the developers (and land is NOT cheap in DC) and 2) large cash subsidies from HUD and DCHA. There are restrictions on selling/occupying subsized units. Not saying it can't be done, but it's not easy.

by SG on Sep 10, 2008 1:45 pm • link • report

This is so cool - maybe an answer to crazed, ugly bulging overbuilt condos. This way, we could all have houses!

The Next Little Thing?

By STEVEN KURUTZ

NYT

Tiny houses have been a fringe curiosity for a decade or more, but devotees believe the concept’s time has finally arrived. Above, Jay Shafer’s 90-square-foot house on tour.

by Anon on Sep 10, 2008 9:32 pm • link • report

Joey- IN my post I actually intended a mixed use community. I certainly don't think it's likely to happen anytime soon, that's why my site is called Imagine, DC.

I'm a little unsettled by a sentiment of contentment with isolating low income residents in disconnected parts of the region. Certainly those areas are more affordable because of their lack of desirability, but this disconnect also makes those areas more susceptible to crime and blight by virtue of their isolation. I don't see DC making a low income utopia within its borders, because I agree that concept is utterly laughable. But opening up that area to become a mixed-income mixed-use community could allow low income housing integrated with businesses and higher income housing.

by Dave Murphy on Sep 10, 2008 9:33 pm • link • report

But it's kind of a fantasy to have low income people mixed in with everyone else. One time there was the Kalorama Hotel. It closed. They could have built some low-moderate income housing there, but no, they went high end. Just seems to me that opening up to mixed use is just code of gentrification.

by Fred on Sep 10, 2008 9:55 pm • link • report

Mixed income housing exists in many of our nicest parts of the city, such as the U St corridor, Dupont Circle, and Southwest. The simple fact is that an entire city can't survive without low income housing. if it is mixed in with everyone else, it doesn't experience blight and crime like secluded low income areas. I believe it is highly classist to segregate low income residents as such.

by Dave Murphy on Sep 11, 2008 11:38 pm • link • report