Tallness
So over the weekend, DCist wrote about the District’s height limit. As usual, lots of people popped up in the comments section making lots of bad arguments against raising the limit. I’m very realistic about the prospects for a change in the city’s height rules–it would take an intensification of market pressures, a generational rollover in the city’s demographics, and an intense and long (like, twenty years) educational and PR campaign to make it at all possible. But still, it’s frustrating that people don’t get the underlying factors, because those misunderstood factors generate bad policy on all kinds of issues.
The main one is opportunity cost. Presumably we get some benefit from having the height restriction. If you ask people, I suppose they’ll say that it makes us different from other big cities, or that it protects views. I have trouble understanding this at times. What views are in danger? As it stands, you can sometimes see the tip of the Washington monument and the Capitol dome from some places in the city. At other times or in other places you can’t! What does that have to do with anything?
But look, we could take these views or the city’s uniqueness and place some value on it. We could then compare those benefits to the costs. High rents and property prices, for instance, are a cost. Office sprawl is a cost–neighborhoods that should rightly be mixed-use (including downtown) are pushed by cost pressures until they become overwhelmingly office-oriented. This has impacts on neighborhood quality, on business diversity, on commuting, on tax revenues, and so on.
And there are also the benefits we forego thanks to the restriction. It means foregone jobs and tax revenues. It means reduced density, which means reduced productivity. It means less economic activity in a space that’s walkable and well-served by transit, which means more economic activity in places dependent upon cars.
In a nutshell, people look at the height limit and think that it’s free to protect views and maintain our identity, so why not do it? But it isn’t free! It costs all of us quite a bit to keep heights low. It means increased housing costs, increased tax burdens, and reduced wages. The limit also imposes big costs on other people who would like to work or live in the District but who can’t, because the limit on heights has artificially restricted the size of the market.
Now, it could be the case that if we did our best to tot up all the costs and benefits of the height limit, then we’d still conclude it was worth it. But we’re not having that conversation. We’re not trying to make sure that we’ve chosen an optimal policy amid a menu of choices–which might include a lower limit, or an increase in the limit of 100 or 200 feet, or removal of the limit in certain parts of the city, or removal of the limit altogether. We’re just saying, meh, we like the view. That’s just dumb, and it’s no way to plan a city. And if we don’t get it on height limits, is it any wonder that we have so much trouble getting it on construction of transit, or construction of transit-oriented and walkable development, or any of a host of decisions that involves getting the best public return out of available resources?
October 13th, 2008 at 2:34 pm
The argument that comes most immediately to mind in favor of the height limit is that it promotes medium-density TOD.
Look at Washington and compare it to U.S. cities of comparable size - Miami, Atlanta, San Francisco. Its downtown area is much more invested and much more walkable than the first two. Part of the reason for this is that height restrictions do move commercial development horizontally, rather than the development of one or two skyscrapers from which the entire city falls away in terms of density.
If height restrictions were removed, market pressures would cause both the demolition of historic structures around nodes (to make way for skyscrapers) and abandonment of those historic structures somewhat further away from nodes. This is exactly what happened to Philadelphia when they scrapped their height restrictions in the 1980s.
I’m willing to have height restrictions removed outside the monumental core (north of Florida, south of the Anacostia, hell maybe even east of 15th or 19th Street NE) if the sightlines and densities of the L’Enfant Plan can be preserved - but only that. Right now Washington is effectively the only city the United States still has on an old-world scale.
October 13th, 2008 at 2:36 pm
I imagine many New Urbanists would argue against it. Many believe that 6 stories is about the max and it should be spread out further to get a greater effect of transportation and taller buildings just end up wasting more energy. Not sure how true this is but Kunstler believes this as well. If you follow his theory, DC would be well insulated from energy crisis because it doesn’t have a hyper tall skyline like San Francisco or New York. Don’t know if that’s actually true, but its an argument that is out there.
October 13th, 2008 at 2:36 pm
…Oh, I’d also add Detroit to the list of metro areas of equal size with a downtown full of skyscrapers and hollowed-out everything else.
October 13th, 2008 at 2:37 pm
OW: San Francisco is not exactly what I’d call hypertall. It’s tall in spots, certainly, but Chicago and Miami are more in that category.
October 13th, 2008 at 2:53 pm
I have a tough time understanding how a taller downtown Washington would be less walkable. It’s just not realistic to think that we’d get the exact same amount of economic activity in the center, only concentrated in one or two buildings rather than a bunch of them. The structure of Atlanta and Miami has everything to do with broader zoning and transportation patterns and nothing to do with allowable heights in the center.
Obviously, historic buildings can and would be protected. And the effect of removal of height limits in a centralizing economy is going to be different than making the same change in a decentralizing economy. If Philly assumed that increasing heights amid urban depopulation would bring people back, well, that’s silly. The point is that there is considerable excess demand for space in Washington right now. If we fail to satisfy that demand by altering the height limit, we all pay more and many businesses are pushed to the outskirts of the region or to another metropolitan area entirely.
TOW, I’d emphasize the same thing to you. Per person energy use in a 12 story building may be higher than per person energy use in a 6 story building. But it’s certainly lower than per person energy use in a low-density, drivable office park in the exurbs (assuming equal building ages). When you don’t put people in the middle, they go to the outskirts, and that’s bad.
October 13th, 2008 at 3:14 pm
And look, I suggested we should consider a menu of height policies. Altering height limits doesn’t necessarily mean a city full of 80-story buildings. If we doubled the height of every building in the District, it would still be a stretch to call anything in the city a “skyscraper.” But think of the additional office and residential capacity, the added retail demand (and what they would do for walkability), the added tax revenues (and what that could do for infrastructure), and so on.
Increasing heights by a mere 50 feet would produce a noticeable difference in economic variables, and no one would call that Manhattan-ization. Considering all options and weighing costs and benefits, it’s just very hard to conclude that some taller buildings wouldn’t be welfare improving.
October 13th, 2008 at 3:22 pm
I’m going to pull a Richard Layman and cite Steve Belmont’s book Cities in Full - where he argues cities should stay low rise until they reach a state of ‘optimal land utilization.’ He argues that London and Paris did just that, not going up until they built La Defense and Canary Wharf.
DC is the only American city to really follow that low rise model, and it has only done so due to the law. With that in mind, the District is rapidly approaching a state of ‘optimal land utilization,’ meaning complete buildout. There are still areas for infill projects, there are places to add density here and there, but those will only be happening on a small scale, lot by lot and project by project basis. The few remaining areas ought to be targeted for more dense development - I’d propose Poplar Point for that, first and foremost.
Also, though people say ‘views’ as the benefit to a low-rise city, what the really mean is access to light and air. It should be noted that this can still be accomplished with taller buildings, so long as there are setbacks as the building goes up. Compare downtown Chicago (no setbacks whatsoever) to parts of NYC after their setback laws were put in place, and you can see the difference.
October 13th, 2008 at 3:24 pm
Oh I’m not arguing against it. I actually think it’s a good thing to go up instead of out and feel DC can do it right. I was just tossing out arguments I’d heard against, not that I believe.
People are generally afraid of what they don’t know. In Berkeley there is a measure to allow bus only lanes and another to increase density on transit corridors. Smart right? Well some “regressive progressives” are saying it will destroy the city. I think you have the same situation with the height limits. People are scared of what they don’t know and what they feel like they might not be able to control.
October 13th, 2008 at 11:25 pm
The New Urbanist argument for height limits is that property owners otherwise have an incentive to “bank” undeveloped or underdeveloped lots while they wait for the big score. That is not a concern in DC, which has few such properties.
October 14th, 2008 at 12:40 pm
AC, you can see that argument every day in the CBD’s of Dallas and Houston. Lots go empty for a generation as some land owner thinks he can become the next guy to build an 85 story building. In the meantime you have surface parking lots killing the city.
Would there be any drive to build on the redline through NE if we didn’t have a height limit?
October 14th, 2008 at 12:43 pm
I wrote about this here.
Long story short, there is just as much reason to believe that taller buildings will lead to less efficient use of land as there is to believe they will lead to more efficient use. Given the risks (and they go way beyond “character”), the height limit downtown shouldn’t be raised unless we have no other reasonable choice.
We’re not there yet, because the option to raise the limit elsewhere in the city (Tenleytown, Anacostia, etc) and create more uptown destinations is better.
October 14th, 2008 at 1:08 pm
Alex E., add Austin to your list. It’s pockmarked with surface parking and 3-story garages.
There are good reasons to oppose height limits in cities like Austin even though they promote surface parking. But that’s not a debate relevant to D.C., at least the parts of D.C. where everyone wants to be. No one will turn a 9-story, rent-producing building into a parking lot in the hope that, someday, someone will want to build a skyscraper there.
Rent levels ought to guide height limits. High rents drive businesses (and, ultimately, clusters of businesses) into less productive places. D.C. suffers from the loss of productivity. Everyone suffers. The only way to bring down the rents is to increase supply.
It’s tricky to determine when rents are “too high,” although steep premiums over suburban rents are a good signal.
October 14th, 2008 at 1:32 pm
So which is more valuable then, a city that has a CBD without any ‘holes’ or a CBD with lower rents?
I’d rather live in a place that maybe isn’t as vibrant as possible in some places but is dead no where (including NE, you think without height limits ‘NOMA’ would exist?)
October 14th, 2008 at 1:35 pm
>No one will turn a 9-story, rent-producing building into a parking lot in the hope that, someday, someone will want to build a skyscraper there
That is definitely not something to be taken as an assumption. Find a historic aerial image of Austin (or any other American city) in 1940 and I guarantee there are rent-producing buildings covering every single one of those parking lots. They weren’t bombed during a war; somebody tore them down on purpose.
Granted wholesale demolition of useful buildings doesn’t happen AS MUCH these days as during the urban renewal heyday, but it does still happen.
In any event, using land efficiently is expensive for developers, so they don’t do it if they don’t have to. Surface parking lots aren’t the only result of skyscraper redevelopment. You also get a lot of above-ground garages, extraneous plazas, useless setbacks, etc. Check out Arlington for proof. Arlington’s urban design just isn’t as good.
If you have really well-written regulations you can get around some of those problems, buy why go to the trouble when it would be more advantageous to spread the office uses around to places like Anacostia anyway?
October 14th, 2008 at 1:55 pm
There’s a huge difference, however, in a downtown that developed with skyscrapers and parking lots from the get go, versus the idea of allowing added height on a area that’s almost fully built out.
In short, the implication that DC will end up with surface parking lots if they allow tall buildings is misleading and false, IMO.
October 14th, 2008 at 3:06 pm
>Find a historic aerial image of Austin (or any other American city) in 1940 and I guarantee there are rent-producing buildings covering every single one of those parking lots. They weren’t bombed during a war; somebody tore them down on purpose.
None of these parking-lot-filled downtowns developed with skyscrapers and parking from the get-go. They were ALL fully built out with shorter buildings 70 years ago.
October 14th, 2008 at 6:37 pm
Of course Washington won’t end up with surface parking lots. It’ll end up with abandoned buildings, some adjacent to characterless 85-story skyscrapers.
We haven’t even fixed up most of the abandoned Metro-convenient properties we have (the former DC General being a prime example), and people already want high-rises. I don’t understand this. It’s like the urbanist equivalent of slash-and-burn development.
(BTW, no one has responded to my comparisons of Detroit and Philadelphia, both of which raised height restrictions and caused significant trauma to their urban fabric.)
October 16th, 2008 at 4:32 pm
The first commenter’s point about promoting medium density TOD outside the city center is what I sometimes call “intra-city sprawl.”
While I am not sure that eliminating the restriction on the height limit would add a lot more housing in the CBD, but it would in some ways reduce pressure on affordable housing that is extant, by eliminating land premiums for conversion, and pressure for land use intensification by extending beyond the limits of the CBD (i.e., NoMA or M Street SE). In any case, rents downtown are high and opportunities to save less expensive buildings reduced because of the inability to build up beyond the current limit. This means that smaller buildings are torn down to go to the max. height, and this includes warehouse buildings.