Posts about Christopher Leinberger

Many drivable-fringe house prices are now below replacement value, meaning the land under the house has no value and the sticks and bricks are worth less than they would cost to replace. This means there is no financial incentive to maintain the house; the next dollar invested will not be recouped upon resale. Many of these houses will be converted to rentals, which are rarely as well maintained as owner-occupied housing. Add the fact that the houses were built with cheap materials and methods to begin with, and you see why many fringe suburbs are turning into slums, with abandoned housing and rising crime.

Leinberger goes on and cites several examples of urban neighborhoods that have transformed from slum to hip in recent history: Capitol Hill in Seattle; Virginia Highland in Atlanta; German Village in Columbus, Ohio; and Logan Circle in Washington.

I don't know much about Capitol Hill or Virginia Highland, but I do know something about Logan Circle and German Village. One very important (and I think non-trivial) quality that they share is that they both have a high quality, durable housing stock that has held up very well, given its age, all things considered.

When I think about what made cookie cutter houses in suburbs appealing to people, in addition to the square footage and the yards and the school systems, I really suspect that one of the things that people were drawn to was the absolute "newness" of everything. People love having new stuff—new appliances, new counter tops, new floors. When stuff is brand new, it's almost guaranteed to be in style. When it's brand new, it's not in need of immediate repair. There's a lot to like about brand new.

The problem though, as Leinberger notes, is that fringe suburbs were literally built on the cheap. They may have looked nice initially, but the drywall they used to throw up houses in Prince William County is not the same as the brick they used to build rowhouses in Dupont Circle. At the time, the appliances they put into new suburban homes might have been nicer than what was in old urban houses, but appliances can easily be replaced, structures can't.

Around DC, a lot of old rowhouses have gone through the process of renovation—some have gone through many renovations since originally being built. The interiors have been gutted, redesigned and rebuilt, but the physical structure is generally the same. These houses were built to last, I can only imagine what a cookie-cutter house on the suburban fringe might look like in 100 years. The rowhouses in DC that have been re-built look beautiful, easily as nice as what got built in the suburbs during the boom.

At one point, the suburbs looked so much "nicer" because that's where the building was—that's where stuff was brand new. That's not necessarily true anymore. Now, some of the newest, shiniest stuff is right in the heart of the city.

I was reminded of this when I saw this article in the Plain Dealer last month. The author makes the case that there's more demand for housing in downtown Cleveland than the market can keep up with. A lot of folks will use this as evidence of a downtown renaissance, I think it says that people are no longer afraid to live downtown (something that was true in Cleveland for many years) but I also suspect it has something to do with the quality of downtown housing.

While it seems true that downtown Cleveland is doing well, many other urban Cleveland neighborhoods are not doing well at all. The apartments and condos popping up downtown are all brand new, beautifully renovated spaces. The houses in Cleveland's urban neighborhoods, on the other hand, are much lower quality. Compared to Washington's rowhouses, they're downright terrible. I suspect that many of Cleveland's houses are also below replacement value. The only hope is to knock them down, and that's exactly what's happening.

When I studied home prices in Cleveland a few years ago (pdf), I found that while downtown was in fact the neighborhood in the city with the highest prices, there was nevertheless a positive relationship between home price and the distance from the city center. In other words, the farther from downtown you went, the higher the price of homes. It was "drive til you qualify" in reverse.

I think the future of suburbs as Leinberger imagines them is going to look like some of Cleveland's neighborhoods today - Hough, Mount Pleasant, Cudell—places with generally poor housing stock that isn't worth fixing up. Places where crime is frustratingly high, where most of the housing that isn't vacant is renter-occupied, and where few are willing to make any investment.

Is it true to say that millennials and baby boomers have a taste for urban living? I think there is good evidence to support that theory, but it's clearly the case that they don't want to live just anywhere in the city. Nobody wants to live in a slum, and the type of homes that people want has to meet at least a certain threshold of quality.

In high-cost cities, like DC, that's not so hard to pull off. A $200,000 rowhouse rehab might be well worth the cost when you can turn around and sell the house for half a million or more. A similar job simply doesn't make any financial sense in a city like Cleveland. In fact, the Plain Dealer article above specifically says that developers aren't building in downtown Cleveland without government incentives because the rents are too low to support the kind of investment they need to make.

I think the more realistic assessment of suburbs and cities is that some suburbs will see a precipitous decline, some urban neighborhoods will experience a renaissance, and the degree to which each happens will be highly dependent on local market conditions. In other words, it will happen, but it won't be as clear cut as the magazine articles might lead you to believe.

Crossposted on Extraordinary Observations.

While the five largest property owners in the area are working together on a multi-year plan for higher-density, mixed use projects aligned with transportation improvements, residents—and anyone who drives through the area—will likely face huge traffic tie-ups until those new projects are implemented.

At a Jan. 31 meeting of the Beauregard Corridor Stakeholders Group, Donna Fossum, chair of both that group and the Alexandria Planning Commission, said when the new BRAC office building opens in eight months, "everyone's lives will change."

To put the developers' proposals in context, Fossum invited Christopher B. Leinberger of the Brookings Institution to give a presentation at the Jan. 31 meeting on the benefits of creating "walkable urban places."

According to Leinberger, there are two main options for development: "drivable suburban," in which housing, retail, and office buildings are all separate and connected by roads, and "walkable urban," where people have access to transit and can easily walk to shops and restaurants.

The "drivable suburban" model contributes to sprawl, which creates lots of problems, including long commutes, economic segregation, higher levels of greenhouse gas emissions, higher energy use, and even increased rates of obesity. The highest levels of foreclosures occur in the outer suburbs Leinberger says, because "we built too much of the wrong product in the wrong location."

The pendulum began to shift in the mid-1990s, he says. Surveys show 82 percent of the "millennials," people born in the period 1980-95, want to live in walkable urban places, like Arlington and Dupont Circle.

Metropolitan Washington has 23 existing (and 16 emerging) "regionally significant places," including walkable urban places like downtown DC, "downtown adjacent places" (such as Dupont Circle and Georgetown), suburban town centers (Bethesda and Silver Spring fall into this category), places where suburban strip malls have been redeveloped (Ballston and Friendship Heights), and "surburban green field developments" (Reston Town Center and National Harbor).

The presence of the BRAC project in the Beauregard Corridor gives this area the potential to become a "regionally significant place," Leinberger says. But in its current state, "it's neither fish nor fowl"; it's not quite a drivable suburban area nor a walkable urban area.

"There are few successful examples of drivable dense urban places," he says. There is concern that if it isn't transformed into an urban walkable place, "it could be on a downward spiral," as younger people and investments abandon the area for more favorable communities.

According to Leinberger, successfully transforming a suburban strip mall environment into a walkable urban place—like Ballston and Clarendon—requires strong management to protect the quality of life in surrounding neighborhoods from noise and traffic cut-throughs. When it's done right, the value of single-family homes near urban walkable places will rise significantly, and the tax base will increase, primarily from commercial property. He says this kind of development will cut greenhouse gas emissions and energy use by some 60 to 80 percent.

He acknowledged some of the challenges of developing the Beauregard Corridor are the barriers posed by I-95, Seminary Road, and Holmes Run.

The development of Annandale poses even more challenges. While the Beauregard developers envision the eventual extension of the Columbia Pike streetcar line along Beauregard Street, there is no plan to bring transit to Annandale. And while most of the property in the Beauregard Corridor is concentrated in the hands of a few developers, Annandale is chopped into many small parcels of land. Any attempt to bring a large mixed-use project to Annandale, as proposed in the Annandale amendment to the Fairfax County comprehensive plan, would require consolidation of land.

Leinberger told the Annandale blogger such development is possible: If one visionary developer takes a risk on a large project, others will follow. But communities like Annandale could stagnate if other areas, like the Beauregard Corridor, draw development and businesses from aging suburbs.

Kai Reynolds of the JBG Companies, one of the Beauregard Corridor property owners, says Leinberger's presentation about the value of urban walkable places is very much in alignment with what the developers want to do—except for Leinberger's statement that developers should help pay for transit.

Representatives of the five companies who own properties along the corridor have been meeting with local residents periodically to explain their vision for redevelopment. The developers have promised to provide public amenities, such as parks, athletic fields, or community facilities, based residents' priorities.

At their latest meeting, Jan. 24, the developers outlined their plans for multi-phased, higher-density development—including about 4,600 new housing units—to occur over the next 25 to 30 years. A key part of the plan is the creation of an elliptical traffic circle to improve traffic circulation through the Beauregard/Seminary intersection and a new network of through-streets to replace the current system of parking lots, cul-de-sacs, and dead-end streets around the existing housing developments. (You can access the presentation from that meeting here.)

JBG has plans to transform the current shopping center between Reading Avenue and Rayburn Avenue into a much larger mixed-used development with more stores, offices, and a new nine to 12-story hotel. "There is not enough commercial space to meet the demand," says Victor Dover, with the Dover, Kohl and Partners town planning firm, who represents JBG.

A representative of Home Properties, which owns Southern Towers, wants to replace the adjacent three-story garden apartments with a series of five-story multifamily buildings and new parking decks, resulting in 669 additional units within the next five to 10 years.

Jon Eisen of the Hekenian Group, which owns the 10.1-acre Shirley Gardens property on the other side of Beauregard across from Southern Towers, is planning a 16,000-square foot mixed use development with a hotel, offices, shops, restaurants, 520 multifamily units, and, on the land closest to the existing single-family houses, 15 to 20 townhouses.

Peter Schultz of Duke Realty, which owns Clyde's and a series of office buildings along Beauregard, has longer-term plans to replace those buildings with more energy-efficient projects, possibly including a boutique hotel, in about 10 years.

According to Dover, the developers have refined the plan they presented to residents in December, reducing the proposed developments by half a million square feet, cutting 500 housing units from the plan, simplifying the street grid, adding more green space and recreation areas, and adding a site for a fire station at Beauregard and Sanger Avenue.

The developers' next meetings with residents will be Feb. 28, focusing on open space and environmental issues, and March 28, with more details on the ellipse and other transportation plans.

Cross-posted at Annandale VA.

Furthermore, there is a long-term political value to more walkable urbanism. The more urbanism we have, the more voters will experience it on a daily basis and appreciate its advantages. That will reduce the tendency of elected officials and journalists to assume that "everybody" drives everywhere and thus the best policy is to focus all spending on auto infrastructure and zoning on building auto-dependent places.

When I criticized "freeway bus" plans a while back for bypassing commercial corridors, an inner jurisdiction official told me that even though he preferred buses along those corridors, the freeway plans could win over substantial numbers of otherwise car-using Fairfax residents to support transit. Walkable urbanism, too, develops more of a built-in supporter base the more of it there is. That's good for everyone.

ReThink Health: The final ReThink Montgomery discussion will focus on health, and specifically children's health. Urban and suburban developments alike often lack good spaces for children to play.

Joan Almon of the Alliance for Childhood will discuss "the vital role of play and how planners can design and build spaces that make it easy for children to be active." The event is at 7:30 pm at Montgomery Park and Planning's auditorium, 8787 Georgia Avenue in Silver Spring, near Silver Spring Metro.

Meet the Met (Branch Trail): On Saturday, Rails-to-Trails Conservancy is holding a party on the Metropolitan Branch Trail, a partially-completed walking and biking trail along the CSX and Red Line tracks from Union Station to Silver Spring.

Currently, the trail is complete from L Street, NE (just north of Union Station) to Franklin Street in Brookland. The party is on the newest segment past the Rhode Island Avenue Metro, which you can reach through the parking lot of the large shopping center at 700 Rhode Island Avenue, NE, just across the tracks from the Metro station.

Daniel Burnham: Finally, next Wednesday is a screening of Make No Little Plans: Daniel Burnham and the American City, a documentary about the architect who designed Union Station and the Postal Square building next door. Burnham was also one of the members of the McMillan Commission which redesigned the National Mall in 1901. His influence also carries far beyond Washington, DC.

The documentary takes its title from his most famous quote (which he may or may not have actually said): "Make no little plans. They have no magic to stir men's blood and probably will not themselves be realized." Here's a trailer:

You can always see these events and more on our calendar. If there are events we're missing, please send them in using the tip form.

Photos at top, clockwise from upper left: WMATA hearing by thisisbossi on Flickr; Christopher Leinberger from his site; Met Branch Trail sign by TrailVoice on Flickr; and Joan Almon from ReThink Montgomery.