Gentrification

[achinhibitor.livejournal.com]

Paul McMorrow writes about gentrification in Union Square. He notes that with the arrival of the Green Line, it will be much more desirable to live in. This will cause an increase in demand for housing there, and that there are two choices: Allow enough additional housing to be built to prevent prices from rising insanely, or preserve its "character" (appearance) at the cost of pricing out just about everybody who already lives there.

"Desirable, inexpensive, low-density -- choose any two!"

Comments

[nathanjw]

(2) NIMBYs will resist units without parking less fiercely than units with parking.
Ha. Ha ha ha. Hah hah ha no. Attempting to build units with less parking causes NIMBYs to freak out about how all the new residents' cars will make the on-street parking situation worse (as seen in a small development near me, for example, when the developer tried to propose - as suggested by the city! - having only one parking space per unit). Unfortunately, even in a walk-to-mass-transit kind of neighborhood, cars are assumed.

(Now I'm wondering if the city could do something really weird, like agree that the residents of a particular building wouldn't get city parking permits, so that any cars they did own would have to be privately garaged in the city).

[achinhibitor.livejournal.com]

residents of a particular building wouldn't get city parking permits

It would be an interesting experiment. I wonder if it has been tried elsewhere? (Though the NIMBYs would be terrified that the rules would be changed later.) The difficulty would be that the value of the units would be diminished, since buyers would not be able to access nearly as many jobs in the metro area.