I don’t believe Ryan’s claim that height limits don’t affect the presence of empty lots in a downtown, because observational reality directly contradicts his theory. It’s not anti-intellectual to note that the country is full of examples of cities with strict height limits that are more tightly packed and pedestrian-friendly than their peers. Washington, Portland, Boulder, and Madison are all good examples. Even downtown Chicago has noticeably more above ground parking lots than downtown Washington, despite Chicago having both more downtown office space and a larger downtown residential population.

But whatever. That isn’t all that important, nor are some of the other issues I continue to have with some of Ryan’s statements.

The important thing here is that relatively minor differences aside, we seem to be at a general point of agreement, which is that the current height regulations are too blunt, that it is desirable to find a way to allow taller buildings in some cases, and that we can produce a better city using some variety of height regulations and/or incentives than by simply eliminating the height limit completely.

Policy prescription may not have been Ryan’s purpose, but I think there’s more value in exploring potential ways to achieve our shared goals than in staking out dogmatic extremes. I like Ryan’s idea to price height bonuses, and think it would be worthwhile to investigate other tools we might use to sharpen the city’s blunt regulations.

PRT is a kind of silly idea to duplicate city street networks with new redundant elevated street networks for shared cars. It gets a lot of press but after about 60 years of trying, has not yet been successfully implemented. The United States tried it once, in Morgantown, WV, in the 1970s. I’ve always been curious about the system, so when I passed through Morgantown last weekend I stopped to check out the PRT.

What I found was cool, but couldn’t be called “PRT” by any reasonable definition. The system consists of a single route (pdf map) with no deviations, and when I rode on Saturday trams came according to a schedule and stopped at every station along the route. There were bypass tracks around each station, so I assume the technical ability exists for trams to skip intermediate stops and go directly between any two destinations along the line, but what I experienced was absolutely no different from any elevated transit line in the world, except that the vehicles were smaller.

In the grand debate over PRT, I suppose you might call me a moderate. I don’t think the sort of elevated systems traditionally envisioned are worth the expense of literally duplicating our street network, but I do think low-tech ideas that make use of our existing street infrastructure could have value. What is Capital Bikeshare, after all, except a low-tech, on-street version of PRT?

Enjoy these pictures from Morgantown.

A number of Virginia politicians are shocked and appalled that the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority is considering raising driver tolls on the Dulles toll road in order to pay the extra $330 million needed to put the Silver line airport Metro station underground.

This is a good learning opportunity for those who think public/private partnerships equate to free money. When you turn over public infrastructure to private groups, you lose your authority to dictate policy, and the new private owners may not have the same priorities as the previous public ones. Virginia’s leaders should have realized when they turned the toll road over to the MWAA that MWAA would henceforth make policy for the road with their own interests in mind.

Apparently the idea that there’s no such thing as a free lunch is a shocking revelation.

Ryan Avent offers this thought experiment:

“Divide the District into two areas: the [downtown] zones (CBD, NoMa, Ballpark), and the rest. In each area, all limits on height will be eliminated. In their place, the city will level a “floor tax”; a developer can build as high as he or she likes, but must pay a one-time fee for each floor-equivalent (say, for each 10′ of height) above the currently existing development limits. This is not in lieu of other city taxes, which would still be paid; the city would basically be selling height permits. So downtown, a developer could tear down a 13-floor building and replace it with a 20-floor building, provided that it paid the floor tax for each of the 7 floors above the previous height. In Brookland, a developer could build an 8-floor building on land currently zoned for 2-story construction, provided it paid the floor tax on the 6 additional floors.”

“My question is: where would you, urbanists and District residents, set the two tax rates (one for the office zones, one for the rest of the city)? You’re not allowed to reject the system out of hand; given that this policy will be put in place, but given the freedom to set the tax rates however you like, which rates would you choose?”

I’m not opposed to talking in terms of this kind of model, provided we adequately price things that aren’t usually adequately priced, but the model Ryan proposes is too simple in at least three ways:

1. Metro stations matter. Two geographic zones is not enough. At least three are needed: One for downtown, a second for outer areas near Metro stations, and a third for the rest. Really even more than that are probably necessary, but I can’t see taking this discussion at all seriously without at least those three.
2. Land use matters. Ryan doesn’t care if new construction is residential or commercial, but I do. I want to incentivize different land uses in different areas, so I want a model that takes land use into account. There should be options to apply a different tax rate to different land uses.
3. Other buildings matter. Cities without height limits (or with limited ones) often see a handful of very tall buildings surrounded by empty or dramatically underused lots. Any model to allow taller buildings in Washington should be structured in a manner that reduces the likelihood of this happening. This would be possible (but cumbersome) to do under Ryan’s proposed model by adjusting the extra floor tax rate based on the height of buildings on all properties with a certain radius, say 3 blocks. For example, the tax rate to build extra floors would be much higher if there’s a parking lot across the street than if there’s a bunch of 12 story buildings, because we really don’t want that empty lot to stay empty.

So with a more sophisticated model in hand, what’s our goal for the city? The purpose of any regulatory tool is to produce results, so let’s identify the desired results. My vision for the city is that it be filled with mixed-use neighborhoods (of which downtown is one) that are active 18 hours a day, rather than being single-use ghettos for offices or bedroom communities. I want the most intense uses to be within walking distance of Metro stations and closer to the regional core. Within the more intense areas, I want bustling sidewalks that are pedestrian friendly and devoid of empty spaces. I want a variety of old and new architecture, and do not want large areas to be visually banal or identical. I want to guarantee that our special national symbols are not overwhelmed by common buildings, and that we enhance our public spaces.

So how can we structure Ryan’s model (with my additions) to result in the city I want? Here’s one possibility, structured to encourage residential development downtown, both residential and office development in the outer Metro station areas, and neither in the outer non-Metro areas:

Concern number 3 from above would still be an issue, so this table would only be the base tax rate, which would have to be adjusted according to the height of buildings on nearby properties. I want to minimize the number of empty lots all over the city, so any time there are empty lots nearby (or perhaps even lots with particularly short buildings) the tax rate would climb, to disincentivize land banking. The adjustment formula would also vary depending on the zone, because I have unique goals for each area. For example, in downtown I want to preserve views of some of the monuments, so proximity to those monuments would trigger a much higher tax rate.

Where to actually set the numbers is a question that would require a lot more study. I’m not comfortable making specific suggestions without knowing just how much of an incentive or disincentive certain rates would be to potential developers. What rate do I need to make adding a few residential floors to new buildings downtown too good to pass up? What rate do I need to allow a handful of 50-story downtown skyscrapers for the people who really feel they need them, but not so many that it saps demand away for office development in Tenleytown and Silver Spring? Until we have answers to those questions, we can’t be expected to set rates. But I do think Ryan’s model – or a much more sophisticated version of it – could potentially be a happy compromise to the height limit issue.

David Alpert is right; Vincent Gray’s proposed budget is generally good for transportation. It’s especially good for streetcars, which was a topic of concern after how Gray handled last year’s budget. The Mayor proposes spending nearly a hundred million dollars over the next several years on the streetcar system, which isn’t enough to build the entire 37 mile system right away, but is nonetheless a very substantial investment.

Gray has had a difficult transition, but his proposed transportation budget is a good one. My comfort level with him is up a few important notches.

The “Nickelsville” homeless camp in Seattle. Photo by flickr user javacolleen.

     This is not an April Fool’s post.

The government of Virginia destroyed a town this morning. It wasn’t on any maps, and it didn’t have a mayor, but it was a town. For its 80-some residents, it was home. The problem: The town was made up tents, and was lived-in by people who would otherwise be homeless. It was, for all intents and purposes, a shantytown.

When Virginia State Police cleared out the town this morning at the request of VDOT and State Delegate Scott Lingamfelter (R-Prince William), it did so ostensibly to improve safety, since the town was near a highway. In so doing Northern Virginia becomes merely the latest example of a widespread trend where shantytowns pop up, and the government clears them out.

Since, you know, that solves the problem of homelessness.

It seems clear that shantytowns like these are here to stay. We’ve made a social decision in this country that low taxes are more important than an adequate social safety net. That decision has consequences, one of which is that people who fall through the cracks will naturally find non-traditional ways to provide for themselves and their kin. That was the idea, after all; let the poor pick themselves up by their bootstraps, if enough of them fall off the grid, let them start their own. Well, it’s working! Poor people are taking care of themselves. Shantytowns are a natural byproduct.

So no matter how many of these things state governments destroy to keep whitebread constituents from facing dirty reality, more and more are likely to spring up, and eventually some will start to take on the trappings of more permanent towns. The dirty reality exists, in part because we have adopted policies to create it, and the problem seems likely to get bigger as the economy stumbles along.

America may soon be a nation with shantytowns again, and we have only ourselves to blame.