A case for height restrictions

[jpdivola]

A case for height restrictions
Charles Marohn

Earlier this year I was in Sarasota, Florida. There was some lament that it was really difficult for people to undertake the kind of small-scale, incremental development we recommend because land costs were so expensive. When one has to pay so much for land, a Jimmy’s Pizza is just not a viable business. As we stepped outside of the venue and onto the street, right there was a development configuration typical of Sarasota, one that was at the center of their problems.

One story strip mall. Vacant lot. Sixteen story tower.

Now this kind of thing can be found everywhere to one degree or another. Planners, obsessed with density, join with developers and politicians to skip over multiple generations of maturing in a single project. Even here in my small town in Central Minnesota, we have four story apartment buildings in neighborhoods surrounded by small single-family homes.

http://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2...t-restrictions


I get that limiting height can spread development around and that an area of tightly built low rises can be as dense as a more spaced out with high rises.

But, I think the logic on this is a little shaky when he seems to argue that height limits can actually drive down land costs. He gives the example of a plot of land zoned for 1-story vs. a plot of land zoned for 16-stories. The 16-story zoned plot is going to be more expensive. Fair enough. But, he ignores the dynamic interaction between all zoned plots.

If the city downzoned the 16-story area and only allowed a 1-story buildings. The total developable area of the city would decrease and while the value of the downzoned spot would fall, but land in the rest of the city would rise. On net, land prices would rise.

Conversely, if the city upzoned the entire city, the price of land in most places wouldn't rise, because the probability of there actually being demand for a 16-story development is pretty minor. Someone who wanted to build one could play all the landowners against each other and prices would fall.

I get that most of the US has such an abundance of land that height limits don't really matter much to overall land prices. But, to argue high zoning height limits is artificially driving up the price of land is silly.

IMO, A stronger argument is that height limits spread development, produce more charming development and don't generally drive up prices (unless you are in super land constrained place like a high demand urban city).

[dc_denizen]

the poor dear, titanic 4-story buildings in his Hobbiton-esque small town. What will suburban populations have to endure next?

[brian_b]

Perhaps the author is really advocating for a radical use of eminent domain. If a developer proposes something that is "too tall" while neighboring property is underutilized, maybe the city should take the underutilized property and give it to that developer so he doesn't need to build something so tall.

[hauntedheadnc]

My city recently had the height debate, and it was between the usual two factions: the "build nothing nowhere nohow" NIMBY's and the "pave it all and let God sort it out" developers.

I think we actually ended up reaching a fair compromise. Heights in the downtown area are restricted to about 25 stories -- the height of our current tallest, and the topography of downtown is such that no matter where you build, you're not going to end up with a field of buildings that are all the same height because there is, essentially, no flat land. Something's going to be higher or lower than the nearby buildings because the land rises and falls such. In addition, other parts of town have been zoned with form-based code so that they can develop in traditionally urban ways. The area that comes to mind is the west side of town, where on the main commercial drag, you may build something up to two stories taller than the existing tallest so long as the project fits in with everything else on the main historic commercial street.

[mhays]

If a whole (growing) city was upzoned to allow highrises, the good sites would rise in value, but the rest wouldn't, or wouldn't by much. It would be interesting...lots and lots of fear. This could even reduce values and cause people to give up on the place. Not something I'd recommend.

But you want to have decades of capacity in your zoning. In any decade, most owners probably won't sell, at least at reasonable prices. You're left with a fraction of that that's truly available.

It's also nice to allow taller heights than the market will necessarily build. That way you get architectural variety and interest vs. a sea a flat tops.

Seattle is a case study in doing it wrong. We have very few highrise zones, so those sites are expensive, sometimes over $1,000 per square foot. Build 400 housing units on a common 21,000 sf site and it's $52,500 per unit plus carrying costs. The price demands efficient land use, which is great, but it's a big reason why housing is expensive. Another is that we pile on fees for anything tall.

Meanwhile we have lower height limits than the market wants in most of our highrise zoned area (just one area), and it's not high enough to be comfortably over the allowed floor area ratios (FARs) for commercial space. So developers build the maximum FAR within the allowed height and setbacks. Residential gets an extra 10% height (hence our 440's in 400' zones) for architecture, mechanical, and amenities, so at least that can be more interesting on top. But even then, everyone builds the maximum volume in the allowable envelope, because the height limits are lower than they want.

[Boris2k7]

Our land use bylaw in Calgary has extremely prescriptive rules regarding building form (it's over 700 pages long, on paper). These include massing and separation, setbacks and projections, floorplate sizes, floor area ratios, etc. This is without even covering the landscaping and amenity spaces, parking requirements, garbage enclosures, fences and driveways, etc. Residential districts also have additional rules regarding parcel width, depth, and coverage as well as contextual building rules.

As an example, the maximum height in an R2 residential district is 10m for single detached dwelling on small parcels, and 11m for single detached dwellings on large parcels and duplexes.

Height limits for multi-residential districts gradually increase from 12m up to whatever maximum follows the 'h' on the land use district map (could be potentially anything).

Commercial uses have a similar gradation to multi-residential districts. Commercial Office districts have neither a height limit (regulated by whatever follows the 'h' on the maps) nor a density limit (regulated by whatever number follows the letter 'f' on the maps).

There is an entirely separate portion of the land use bylaw for the Centre City districts (part 11). There are no maximum building heights anywhere in these districts. Building form is regulated mostly by envelopes and floor area ratios, which go up to 12 (with bonusing).

http://lub.calgary.ca/

There are three other places where building heights can be mentioned in Calgary. One is in the airport flyover zone. The second is in the shadowing bylaw -- which is limited to a handful of parks, a small historic zone, and the Bow River pathway. The third is in area redevelopment plans, although this is an area that can be overturned at the discretion of city council.

[lio45]

Having no height limits at all anywhere would also "do the trick" that he has in mind.

(There would be no otherwise-worth-$75k lot that would be randomly worth millions just because it happens to be one of only a few zoned for a lot of stories; if you wanted to build a skyscraper, you could do so anywhere, so all vacant land would be equal.)

[xzmattzx]

Originally Posted by brian_b

Perhaps the author is really advocating for a radical use of eminent domain. If a developer proposes something that is "too tall" while neighboring property is underutilized, maybe the city should take the underutilized property and give it to that developer so he doesn't need to build something so tall.

The wording seems to lean towards that. That would be a huge Pandora's box to open, if this concept were ever implemented. Developers could just propose 500-foot buildings all over the place and then say that they were thinking of building something shorter, but the land values don't justify it, and then they could sucker a city into forcing an owner of a vacant lot, parking lot, grass field, etc, to sell their land to the developer.