Episode Summary

  1. Missing middle housing is missing for a reason. Unfortunate sterotypes and systemic racism were some of the initial reasons. An unfortunate pattern as old as time, we see affluent communities fighting to keep things as they are and prevent additional density and affordability in their communities.
  2. Creating digital twins is a new age planning tool cities are exploring to help answer questions about the impact of potential developments in their communities
  3. Bothell's WA adds their name to a long list of communities that continues to defend pedestrian only zones in the down town core of their community joining the likes of Chicago, Montreal, New York, Paris and others.

Missing middle housing resistance in California (5 min read)

Cities create digital twins to help with policy decisions (3 min read)

Bike lanes don't kill businesses - New Zealand Edition (4 min read)

Another community and their no car zone (3 min read)

Episode Transcript

Resistance, Twins, Zone

This is patterns of development.

Hey everyone. I’m Kyle Gulau and on this show, patterns of development, we take less than 10 minutes each week to deconstruct what's going on in real estate, architecture, and urban planing.

As frequent listeners of the show know, we are missing middle housing fans here.

For those of you who don't know, missing middle housing is a range of human scaled buildings with multiple units. If you think about available housing in a community on a spectrum. On one side you've got detached single family homes on the other you've got the big mid-rise apartment buildings.

What's the stuff in the middle? That's missing middle housing. Duplexes, Triplexes, Cottage Courts, Townhomes. Etc. Missing middle housing is not a new type of building or way of thinking. Before world war 2, these types of housing typically made up the walkable urban fabric of our communities. For a variety of reasons this housing type has gone missing. Today people are working to bring it back.

Which brings us to SB 9 in California. We talked about SB 9 back in September on Episode 29. Essentially SB 9 relaxed zoning requirements to allow more units per legal lot. More units per lot, could and should increase supply of housing, and therefore make housing more affordable. At least the hypothesis of those in favor of SB 9 which went into effect on January 1st of this year.

To say there has been resistance to the state law is an under statement.

Temple City crafted an ordinance ahead of the state law going into effect to add 30 development standards that owners must meet if they want to include additional dwellings.

These development standards include new units being banned from on street parking, can be no larger than 800 soft and requirements for the building to meet the highest level of LEED certification and must be rented out at below-market value for 30 years.

Sonoma requires that each property should have 3 mature trees and a minimum of 10 shrubs and limits the dwelling size to 800 sqft.

Laguna Beach will allow the additional density but only if new lots created are perfect rectangles.

You can see how people will likely avoid taking on projects like this because of the extra rules that bring additional costs.

To quote Dylan Casey, Executive Director of the California Renters Legal Advocacy and education fund, "With few exceptions, these are mostly the very expensive, high-income suburbs that are rushing to prevent the implementation of SB 9."

If you haven't read the the color of law, check out the book by Richard Rothstein. There's a pattern here that follows the operating procedures of home owners associations described by Rothstein. Multifamily housing was traditionally associated with people of color and people of lower income. To get around fair housing standards HOAs where formed to create specific neighborhood rules. History doesn't repeat it self, but it rhymes.

Next up an article by Linda Poon at Bloomberg CityLab, "How cities are using digital twins like a SimCity for Policy Makers"

Using 3-D mapping and analysis of static and real-time data, municipalities and businesses are looking for ways to simulate development and estimate how it might impact their community.

Like a real life SimCity. While some cities are getting started on making their own replica, Virtual Singapore already exists.

To quote the article,

"In a recent experiment, researchers wanted to calculate the amount of solar energy the city can harness from its vertical structures by studying how much sunlight each part of a building gets. “The scientists can look at every single square meter on a rooftop, and they will know that if I put a solar panel on the right-hand [rather] than on the left-hand side, I can get more energy...”

In Singapore’s fight to bring its temperatures down, it’s also scrutinizing how new development might impact the environment. When developers propose a new building, the model is used to analyze how it might affect wind flow, shadows and the already insufferable urban heat-island effect."

This is Kyle again...when it comes to learning, simulations can be an extremely effective tool. The length of time to build 1 building, let alone evolve an entire neighborhood can take years and years, this concept could, in theory shorten that time frame to the click of a button. However, however, A big challenge for simulations is data integrity and collection. Garbage in will equal garbage out.

Last up this week, a neighborhood in the state of Washington, just north east of Seattle has voted to continue their pedestrian only zone on main street. To quote the article from the Seattle times by Daniel Beekman,

"Though banning cars was initially a COVID strategy, it jibed with Bothell’s urbanist aspirations. The city’s population grew 44% between 2010 and 2020, nearing 50,000, as its downtown added hundreds of new apartments. On the other hand, messing with motorists is something most politicians are scared to do."

Ultimately the council voted 5-2 to keep the special zone through march 2024.

Which leads us to our patterns of the week:

  1. Missing middle housing is missing for a reason. Unfortunate stereotypes and systemic racism were some of the initial reasons. An unfortunate pattern as old as time, we see affluent communities fighting to keep things as they are and prevent additional density and affordability in their communities.
  2. Creating digital twins is a new age planning tool cities are exploring to help answer questions about the impact of potential developments in their communities
  3. Bothell's WA adds there name to a long list of communities that continues to defend pedestrian only zones in the down town core of their community joining the likes of Chicago, Montreal, New York, Paris and others.

That's all for this week. Talk to ya'll soon.