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

[ron_newman]

One good way to promote more housing development is to eliminate all requirements that housing developers provide parking.

[intuition-ist.livejournal.com]

Because we love the endless round of battles between people desperate to find parking and the Somerville DTP so much that we're willing to perpetuate it onto an unknown number of new Somerville residents?

How about tearing down all the houses that are built on 1/2 lane streets (you know the ones I mean -- barely-legal one-way roads with no parking on one side of the street and come February there's only half a lane to drive on due to indifferent snowplowing) and making that land available to developers for high-rise apartments?

[ron_newman]

People who rent or buy in buildings without parking (such as mine, a 48-unit apartment building from 1929) know what they are renting or buying. If there isn't enough demand for more such buildings, not many will be built. But the market can determine that better than the zoning board can.

[achinhibitor.livejournal.com]

That's an interesting point, but assuming that you mean about the same thing as I do when you say "good", it requires (1) housing units without parking sell nearly as well as units with parking, and (2) NIMBYs will resist units without parking less fiercely than units with parking. I've no idea whether either of those is true.

[ron_newman]

"Good" meaning that the developer can either create the same number of units for less cost, or can create more units since no land or structure need be devoted to parking. The result could be less expensive condos or apartments.

[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.