Originally Posted by jpdivola
I'm of two minds when it comes to the Paris-DC comparison. I love Paris and would far rather DC emulate Paris than NYC.
But, let's face it. Other than having a flat skyline with one tall ornamental tower, DC is nothing like Paris from a residential perspective. Paris is an old dense city with miles upon miles of nothing but 5-7 story apartment buildings. Paris has the density to enliven in parks and put retail on it's grand boulevards because it has so many people living (or staying) on narrow residential side streets. DC just wasn't built like that. DC's residential core is mostly mid-density row house neighborhoods with wide setbacks. The density and scale basically reflects the DC mid-sized government town that DC was 100 years ago. If DC's economy had developed more pre-WWII, no doubt much of central DC would have been redeveloped with tightly packed pre-war walkup apartments like pre-war Manhattan or Nob Hill in SF. But, that isn't what happened and we no longer live in a time where that is possible or even disable. Dupont, Logan, Adams Morgan, are pretty ideal neighborhoods as they are. Infill development is possible, but not massive changes. DC just isn't built like a grand European capital and won't ever be.
That basically leaves us with the office district portion of DT. IMO, this is ideal to redevelop and large. We need to find a way to make more intense uses of this largely underwhelming zone. In an ideal world, we would adjust the height limit to allow more non-office uses. Perhaps raise the height limit to 200 ft, with the 130 ft limit being keep in place around the Mall and White House. Then everywhere else downtown would have an extra 5-7 to stories to work with. To encourage non-office uses mandate that 70% of the air rights must go to non-office use (retail, residential, hotels). Then set up a tradable developer rights program to allow developers flexibility. Developers who add housing will have credits to sell, those who do offices will have to buy credits. This will allow us to make a more intense use of the prime 9-5 downtown real estate. As PaytonC points out, DC's office district is simply too large geographically to support consistent active streetscapes. Extra height won't solve the problem entirely, but will help. This model isn't Paris or NYC, it is SF: a vibrant central city that gives way to lively mid-density residential neighborhoods and then to quasi-suburban outer neighborhoods.
Of course, in reality, something like this was proposed by the DC Office of Planning a year or two ago. The idea of reconsidering the height limit was resoundingly rejected by the City Council and the NCPC has since released a draft planning vision doubling down on the height limit. This when combined with the recent decision to downzone central rowhouse neighborhoods explicitly to discourage density via apartment conversions has left me feeling pretty dispirited about planning in DC. In light of these realities, this had lead me to the reluctant support for the idea that the best DC can hope for is that some of the 9-5 office space migrates to new towers in Roslyn and the downtown office market weakens to the point that non-office uses become more viable.
By all means, yes, develop NoMa and Navy Yard and TOD around outer metro stops. But, lets be realistic. Those might eventually become nice urban villages, but they are no replacement for a cohesive, interconnected, active urban center.
In a way, it is too bad that DC is so close to NYC, instead of SF. It presents a better model of how DC could have a more active central city, while still maintaining something of a smaller city feel.
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