Austin Contrarian

Strong Towns

Last Wednesday, I attended a CNU-sponsored "curbside chat" by Chuck Marohn. Chuck is one of the founders of the Strong Towns movement.  He's a civil engineer so, naturally, he mostly talks about infrastructure. His basic message is that suburban sprawl seems cheap to towns and cities because the developers pay for most of the infrastructure. But that infrastructure has a finite lifespan. Eventually it must be replaced. And when the time comes to replace it, the tax revenue generated by the low-density, low-value sprawl pattern won't cover the cost.

Chuck's from a small town in Minnesota, so he has a different perspective on growth than those of us in Austin or other fast-growing places in the sunbelt.  A lot of Midwestern towns and cities stopped growing, or actually began to lose people, a long time ago. They are now saddled with worn-out roads and streets, leaky water pipes, and broken sewer systems that they cannot replace without outside help.  Some cities are deliberately abandoning some infrastructure, or even whole neighborhoods, because they can't cover the cost any more.

Cities like Austin should pay attention. Austin is a very young city. More than half the city was built within the last 40 years.  And it will continue to add new subdivisions a rapid clip, which will hold down the average age of our infrastrcture. But eventually the growth will end or slow to a trickle, and then we'll be stuck with a lot of aging infrastructure, and, thanks to our low-density growth patterns, a high ratio of infrastructure to people.

Obviously, cities should aim to grow their existing neighborhoods. Adding people to an existing neighborhood saves the need for new infastructure and provides more bodies to pay for the existing infrastructure when it wears out.

But my main reaction while listening to Chuck was, What do you think we're going to do about it?

Austin's comprehensive plan assumes the city will add 750,000 people over the next 30 years. I think that's optimistic -- 350,000 to 400,000 is more likely, based on last decade's rate of growth. The metro area will likely add well over a million, though.

Almost all of that growth will be greenfield. There is no political will to allow the kind of upzoning that would be necessary to accommodate even a small fraction of that growth within existing neighborhoods. Consider central Austin. It added just 8,000 people between 2000 and 2010, while Austin proper added 133,000 and the metropolitan area added 450,000 people. The central city did a bit better job adding structures than people -- its housing stock expanded by 15,000 units, or roughly 12%. But the last decade was the decade of condo towers sprouting downtown, the densification of West Campus, the Triangle, Mueller, condos in East Austin, and massive greenfield development in southeast Austin. And all that development lead to a piddly net increase of 12% of the housing stock. 

Don't get me wrong. I think we should let central Austin get much denser, for many reasons. Austin is lucky because people actually want to move to the central city. Lots of cities spend a lot of time and money trying to solve the problems caused by central-city flight. But given the contentiousness of last decade's development battles, I don't see Austin allowing the kind of development we need to house even 50,000 new people in the central city. 

Real urbanism is rare

Back in 1998, Cedar Park adopted a comprehensive plan that set aside 42 acres of land along Highway 183 for a mixed-use, village-like town center.  They imagined something like this:

The plan called for the city hall to be built there to anchor the town center and for the rest to be filled in with apartments and boutique shops.   But in 2007 the city voters turned down a tax hike to build the city hall there, settling on a cheaper location that had existing buildings.  

The plan was approved in 2001 and has been updated since, but the large tract of land lies fallow.  D.R. Horton owns the tract and has been seeking PUD zoning that would allow it to break from the boutique-shop plan and build something more like a generic shopping center.  This upset a bunch of the people who bought near the tract on the assumption that it would be a new-urbanist village.   Their protests have evidently worked, for now, because D.R. Horton has taken down its rezoning application.  

I don't blame the folks for wanting a quaint, urbanist town center.  But, honestly, the kind of thing they want is really an urban kind of thing, and is very hard to grow in a cow pasture.

Here's the economics:

There are no buildings in the town center today.  Everything must be built from scratch.  That means the retail must be built from scratch.  And new retail space in a mixed-use village is just as expensive, if not more expensive, to build as retail bays in a new shopping center.

No one's going to build that retail space unless they get the rents to make it worth their while.  And in order for the small shops they have in mind to generate the necessary rents, there must be a lot of traffic.  The kind of traffic this area will never generate on its own -- there are no significant job centers nearby, and there is no chance that the center will develop the residential density that could sustain a retail district by itself.  The town center doesn't even sit astride a major arterial, so drive-by traffic is out.

There's simply nothing to generate the kind of traffic retail would need to pay the rents to justify the construction cost . . . unless they were to build a lot of retail, with anchors to ensure a steady stream of traffic, and a lot of parking for all those cars.  But that's a shopping center, not a town center.

And, in fact, while the "town center" has sat, forlorn and vacant, on the west side of Highway 183, a nice, new shopping center has been built directly to the east:

And I mean "directly" -- the town center is marked in red:

All that parking is incompatible with an urban village, of course.  And that's the challenge: to build a mixed-use town center in a greenfield on the edge of town, you must solve parking.  Unless you do, you won't get retail.

One way to reduce the need for parking is to subsidize the retail rents in the town center.  In many vertical mixed use projects, residents subsidize the ground floor retail.  But people won't pay that kind of premium for housing in Cedar Park.

Another possibility is to build a lot of structured parking.  But the parking structure has to be publicly subsdized, because otherwise the shopping center would earn a lower return than all the shopping centers that simply build surface parking.  Let's see . . a compact, suburban shopping center, mixed with condos and housing, backed by structured parking.  We know what that looks like.  That's the Domain, a mixed-use village, heavy on the high-end retail, with expensive structured garages subsidized by the city of Austin.  The Domain barely survived a referendum by Austin voters to kill the subsidy a couple of years ago.  If the residents of Cedar Park aren't willing to tax themselves to build themselves a fancy city hall, they're certainly not going to tax themselves to build structured parking for a mixed-use shopping center.

These aren't the only ways to handle the problem.  But it's just a cold fact that greenfield mixed-used retail is very hard to pull off.  Mueller has a lot more going for it, both in terms of resources and local population density and employment, and its town center still has not broken ground.

The take away should be that places that support a compact, walkable, mix of housing, retail and offices -- i.e., urban places -- are actually pretty special.  There are just a few such places in the sprawling Austin metropolitan area.  They are places with either high employment density (downtown) or high residential density (UT/West University), or places that grew up organically along busy commercial arterials (South Congress and Guadalupe).  Some of Austin's older neighborhoods are blessed with a sort of small-bore urbanism -- little clusters of old stores and restaurants that no one got around to tearing down. 

Not everyone likes that.  But given their scarcity, it makes a lot of sense to let the few urban places in town be urban, and to make room for the people who do like that kind of thing.  There are plenty of neighborhoods in the Austin metropolitan area with no traffic or street parking or noise or bustle.  Most of Austin's neighborhoods are like that, in fact.  It's a waste to force that model onto the neighborhoods that have the natural ingredients for urbanism.

What's "The Tree" worth?

This story has generated a lot of buzz and twitter.  On Tuesday, Austin's Planning Commission denied a variance to remove a big tree on a downtown property at Bowie and W. 5th.  The denial might -- and likely will -- obstruct the construction of a tall, dense residential or office tower on a piece of property that City Council just zoned for a tall, dense residential or office  tower.  

The backup packet for the PC agenda item (TP 10617196 Bowie Street (311, 313, 315)) is here (pdf). 

I'll have more to say about this issue in later posts.  But for now, I'd like to focus on just one question:  What's The Tree worth?  We put an implict value on a tree every time we insist the tree be preserved or allow it to be removed.  Insisting that a tree be preserved means we deem the tree's benefit to the community outweighs the cost to the community of lost tax revenue and positive spillovers from the development.   And vice versa. 

It's not obvius how one should value a "protected" or "heritage" tree.  I think the valuation is intrisically subjective, which is one of the problems with the heritage tree ordinance.  But there's no way to avoid implicitly pricing the tree.   The Planning Commission implicitly valued The Tree at more than $90,000 $70,000 because it rejected the developer's offer of $90,000 $70,000 for "mitigation costs."

I'd like to hear from readers what you think The Tree is worth.  How much do you think the City should be willing to pay to buy The Tree outright?  What is the maximum amount of tax revenue the City should forego to preserve The Tree?  If the City were to sell the right to remove The Tree, what minimum price should it demand?  The three questions should yield the same answer.

I'm not interested right now whether you think the project is feasible with The Tree in place, or your estimate of the lost tax revenues, or whether you think PC has the authority to consider a tree's benefits when weighing a variance, or whether you think PC's decision complied with the heritage tree ordinance criteria.

The Tree is a pecan tree.  It is approximately 60 years old.  It is 57' tall and has a roughly symmetrical canopy with a 55' diameter spread.  It has a 32.0 inch diameter at breast height.  The City arborist rated The Tree in "good" condition, and the developer did not dispute that The Tree is healthy and in good condition.  It is set back 90' or so from Bowie Street and approximately the same distance from W. 5th St.

Here are some photos.

These photos were taken from the driveway entrance to the property.  This is the only street-level vantage from which The Tree is visible from root to crown.  I'm sure some residents of the Monarch high-rise just across Shoal Creek have a full view.

Here are a couple of closer shots:

Here is aphoto of the property looking south from the other side of W. 5th.  The small buildings lining W. 5th are not part of the property at issue and would not be torn down to build the project.

What say you?

NB.  Because valuations like this are intricially intrinsically subjective and personal, there are no right or wrong answers.

Another NB.  The Tree cannot be moved to another site because its roots are too deep, if that affects your valuation.

The Downtown Austin Plan would indeed penalize density

The Downtown Austin Plan's most controversial proposal is not to make the 2008 intermim "density bonus" program permanent, but to eliminate CURE zoning.  (CURE stands for "Central Urban REdevelopment").   The recommendation provoked a sharp debate at the City Council's August meeting and it will provoke another one when the City Council takes up the Plan again in October.  City staff has now recommended that the City keep a modified CURE option, validating what I and many others have contended for years:  implementing a density "bonus" program while simultaneously eliminating CURE zoning would penalize density. 

A bit of background.  The City does not impose height limits in the Central Business District outside the Capitol View Corridors, but it does arbitrarily cap floor-to-area ratios ("FAR").   The City caps both height and FAR in Downtown Mixed Use districts.  Most of west Sixth Street between Lavaca and South Lamar -- an area experiencing rapid densification -- is zoned DMU rather than CBD, so the height and FAR caps have particular bite there.

The City for years has had a process for increasing FAR and height limits downtown, namely CURE zoning.  CURE combining districts are allowed to redevelop buildings that are at least ten years old or to develop vacant lots.  Because the CURE regulations do not specify what benefits a property owner/developer must offer, the process results in a lot of ad hoc negotiation between the City and developers.  A developer typically agrees to participate in the Great Streets program and kick in money for parks or affordable housing.

In 2008, the City adopted the interim density bonus program.  The main provision requires developers who want to build residential space in excess of the allowable FAR either to devote 10% of the extra space to affordable housing or pay a per-square-foot fee on 100% of the extra floor space.  Commercial developments must pay half of the fee on the extra floor space.

The Downtown Plan proposes eliminating CURE as an alternative to the density bonus program.  I and others have argued that this will raise the effective price of extra density, which is bad policy because extra housing and office space downtown produces many spillover benefits.  Raising the price might not eliminate all requests for additional density, but we should expect it to have an impact at the margin.

Proponents of the mandatory density bonus program, however, have argued that it is better than the CURE process because it provides developers and property owners a cheap (a relative term in Austin), predictable, administrative approval, as opposed to the ad hoc, expensive and unpredictable CURE zoning process.   The mandatory density bonus program, in other words, effectively lowers the price of density, or so these advocates have claimed. 

The market has proved the proponents wrong.  In the three-plus years since the interim density bonus program was adopted, no developer has sought extra height or FAR under the density bonus program.  Every developer who has sought additional entitlements has used the CURE process.  If developers consider the density bonus a cheaper alternative than CURE zoning, then they would use it.  They don't, which implies that making the bonus program mandatory would raise the price of density.

City staff more or less agrees with this view.  City staff now recommends that the City keep the CURE process for now.  Staff notes that no project to date has sought additional height or FAR through the density bonus program.  Instead, all have opted to do so through CURE combining districts.  It proposes that the CURE program be modified to require the developer to show that it has provided the density bonus program benefits to the maximum amount feasible.  This would require developers to show which provisions could be met by the project and to demonstrate that compliance with certain elements of the project would make it financially infeasible.

Staff understands that CURE is useful as a benchmark for measuring the real cost of the density bonus program.  Or, as staff puts it, keeping CURE zoning would provide "useful information on the economic and financial realities of compliance with the Downtown Density Bonus program." 

Staff also recognizes that raising the price of density might discourage housing or office space at the margin.  Specifically, it states:

One of the charges made against a density bonus program (when CURE is not an option) is that it unduly "penalizes" projects.  If, in fact, a density program did do that, and if CURE was not available, then no project would seek additional density -- and no community benefits would be achieved.  

That is equivocal enough, but when combined with its recommendation that the City retain CURE zoning in some form, it is an admission that the density "bonus" program might indeed discourage density.

My view, of course, is that we should allow unlimited FAR and height (outside the view corridors) as a matter of right, and impose reasonable design guidelines to ensure that new development contributes to a pedestrian-friendly, authentically urban environment.

I've argued some of these points before here and here.

More coverage by Wells Dunbar and Community Impact News.

Randal O'Toole reviews The Gated City

Here:

Didn’t we read this book already? Only last time it was called The Triumph of the City and it was written by Edward Glaeser, a fine economist whose view of cities is slightly shaded by the fact that he grew up in Manhattan.  Avent’s bio doesn’t say whether he grew up in New York [AC: Raleigh, NC], but he did go to school in London and currently lives in Washington.  I can’t help but feel he is another city boy who loves cities so much he wants to impose them on everyone else.

The Antiplanner would never step into another city again if I didn’t have to as a part of my work.  But I don’t think everyone would be better off living my lifestyle; I just think people ought to have a choice.  Avent’s book simply stimulates the smart-growth advocates who want to impose all sorts of policies on urbanites and suburbanites to force them to live in denser communities.

I infer from this that (i) O'Toole didn't read the book; (ii) he didn't read the book carefully, or (iii) he did read the book carefully but is misrepresenting the conclusion.  Ryan does not advocate any coercive policies in The Gated City.  He asks that the housing market be allowed to function like it's supposed to:   the market should be allowed to supply more housing when and where there is demand for more housing which means -- gasp -- places should be allowed to grow denser when there is demand for it.  It's sad that it takes an economics-laden, research-intensive book to justify this principle, and even sadder that so many self-described libertarians denounce this principle, but such is the state of land-use policy in the United States today.

Like O'Toole, "I just think people ought to have a choice."  People do have different preferences.  Some people like dense, bustling, noisy places.  And some people -- including, by his own admission, O'Toole -- hate them.  The problem is that the people who hate cities try to impose their preference on the places where cities want to be. 

After all, only a small portion of even the densest metropolitan area is genuinely urban.  Most "city" dwellers actually live in places that are relatively sparesely populated.  This would still be true even if the law allowed the demand for urban places to be fully satiated, even in places like San Francisco and San Jose.  People who hate dense environments have and will always have thousands of suburbs and small towns to choose from.  If you don't like dense places, don't live in dense or densifying places. 

The libertarian position accordingly ought to be that we should allow the market to provide density where and when people want it; the people who don't like that particular product can buy a different product.  That occasionally might require a density-hating libertarian to accept change to his own neighborhood.  It occasionally might require him to move to another neighborhood if he finds the change too uncongenial.  But libertarians are supposed to embrace dynamic markets.  They deride people who fight market-driven change as "statists."   Don't preach creative destruction for me but not for thee.

The view that we should accommodate density ought to be the progressive position, too.  Allowing housing to keep up with demand keeps home prices low, which certainly is more equitable and egalitarian than propping them up.  Allowing housing to keep up with demand lets people move freely from low-opportunity cities to high-opportunity cities.  Allowing housing to keep up with demand facilitates the density necessary to support transit, preserves open space on the city's periphery, and probably reduces VMT and the other things that environmentalists should care about.  Fighting to preserve a neighborhood just because you happen to live there and like it the way it is is not only statist, it's selfish, even if you can't identify the specific people who will be hurt.

I've always thought that the libertarian position and the progressive position on land-use policy ought to be approximately the same.  Thus it is not surprising per se that so many "libertarians" and "progressives" agree on land-use policy.  What is strange is that so many "libertarians" and "progressives" agree because the libertarians turn into command-and-control statists  and the progressives into regressive elitists.  

The Gated City

If you generally agree with me that anti-density restrictions hurt cities, you should read The Gated City by The Economist's Ryan Avent. If you generally disagree with me that anti-density restrictions hurt cities, you should read The Gated City to see why you are wrong.

Ryan's central thesis is that tight growth restrictions in the highly-productive coastal markets have inflated housing prices there, driving people to less productive but cheaper parts of the country.  Local zoning decisions, when aggregated, reduce innovation, dampen productivity and sap our wealth.  Micro decisions have macro effects; there are trillion dollar bills on the sidewalk.

I've tried to make many of the same points here over the years, although with a particular focus on Austin:

• Wealthy cities are innovative cities.
• Density promotes innovation.
• Density increases productivity.
• Dense concentrations of people allow richer, deeper, more varied markets.
• Anti-density regulations pushed by NIMBYs drive up home prices in high-demand cities.
• Anti-density regulations pushed by NIMBYs are bad for the environment because they drive people from cities with mild climates to cities with hot climates, increasing average per capita energy use. 
• NIMBYism's root cause is homeowner risk aversion.

Ryan does not try to identify the one optimal density, or even claim that there is such a thing.  He doesn't argue that we all should live at New York or San Francisco densities.  Rather, he argues that cities benefit from rising density, whatever their baseline.  That's right. 

He's an eloquent writer who backs up his claims with academic studies.  I don't have any significant criticisms because I agree with him down the line.  I found a couple of nits to pick.  In the introduction, he states he has estimated that anti-density restrictions in the coastal markets have knocked 0.25 to 0.5% off GDP growth but didn't return to that point.  I would like to see more about this calculation.  Any discussion of rising demand for central cities should acknowledge the role of falling crime rates.  And he spends little space detailing the many ways cities restrict density.  Although it was not necessary to his argument, it would have been entertaining to read about some of San Francisco's more absurd regulations. 

The Gated City is a Kindle single but I understand it can be downloaded to your computer or phone even if you do not own a Kindle.  It is short.  It is half the price of a venti latte at Starbuck's.  Buy it.  Read it.

P.S.  When discussing density, Ryan usually used weighted density rather than standard density, and was kind enough to throw me a cite.

But being realistic . . .

Yesterday I made a plea for a proper urban grocery at Mueller.   Being realistic, though, I don't think we'll get one.  It's important to understand why.

On the surface, an "urban" grocery doesn't require much change from the standard suburban set up.  I've put my years of training in draftsmanship to use to draw up a couple of site plans.  Here is the suburban model, which matches the April 2010 site plan:

 
This features a large parking lot fronting the single entrance/exit and treats the pedestrians on the (yet unbuilt) street to the store's loading docks. 

A seemingly slight alteration would make the design much more urban friendly:

 
Keep the parking lot and parking-lot entrance, but add an entrance from the new street and move the loading docks to the side of the building.  That ought to be easy enough.  What's the problem?

Let's think about it from H-E-B's perspective, though.  I'm sure it considers a parking-lot entrance non-negotiable.  Most of its customers -- and all of the customers buying a cartful of groceries -- will arrive by car.  H-E-B isn't going to make them circle the building.

And I can think of a few reasons why H-E-B would really prefer not to have a second entrance.  First, adding an entrance would mean losing a whole wall's worth of shelf space which would mean lower revenue per square foot.  Second, another entrance would interfere with its preferred interior circulation patterns, which it has meticulously refined over the years to maximize sales.  And third, shoplifting is a big cost for grocery stores; it's easier to monitor shoplifting with one exit.   (Any grocers out there are welcome to chime in.)

It's not realistic to expect Catellus to hold out for an urban design if H-E-B doesn't want one.  The locals have been clamoring for a neighborhood  grocery store for years.  An H-E-B at Mueller will make Mueller more attractive, making it easier to move houses.   H-E-B, on the other hand, can easily find another location in the area if it thinks Catellus is making unreasonable demands.  Catellus knows it.  H-E-B knows it.  The wee lake turtles know it.

The hard reality is that firms voluntarily adopt urban designs only when they are building in a dense environment where land is dear.   Land is not dear along 51st street.  It is not dear because there are plenty of other large sites in the area, particularly along Airport Boulevard.  It is not dear because Mueller is not particularly dense.  Although touted as an urban infill project, Mueller frankly is more suburban than urban and is located among a bunch of other neighborhoods that are also more suburban than urban.  It should be no surprise, then, when it draws suburban-style development.   

I hope I'm wrong and H-E-B adopts an urban design after all.  If it does, though, I'm sure it will be making a political calculation rather than an economic one. 

Don't substitute green design for good urban design

H-E-B has announced plans for a neighborhood grocery store at Mueller.  It's stressing green:

Plans call for high-efficiency air conditioning, refrigeration and lighting systems.  Daylight harvesting will brighten and dim lights as need throughout the day, and ceilings and walls will have beefed-up insulation.

Measures to conserve water include low-flow sinks and toilets.  Landscaping will feature drought-resistant plants, and sprinklers will use reclaimed water.

The goal, H-E-B said, will be to qualify for Austin Energy’s Green Building program and — at a minimum — a silver Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design rating from the U.S. Green Building Council.

Bully for the environment!  Mueller is supposed to showcase good urban design, though, so I hope H-E-B doesn't intend  green design to be a substitute for good urban design. 

Good urban design here means designing the store on the assumption that some people will walk to it.  Put the store at the front of the lot, adjacent to the street, so pedestrians can enter from a sidewalk rather than having to trudge across a parking lot.  Add awnings for shade and windows for visual interest.  Put the parking behind the store.

Building up to the sidewalk would encourage shoppers to park on the street.  That's free parking capacity -- use it by building less off-street parking.  Good urban environments maximize building area not pavement.

In other words, avoid this:

 
The green design is nice but that can be done anywhere.  Mueller is supposed to be a model of urban-friendly infill, a showcase of sorts.  Catellus should insist that H-E-B stick to the plan. 

Update.  Commenter Matt links to a site plan presented at a Mueller community meeting in April 2010 (at 27:50).  The grocery store will be in the southeast corner of the lot, with its rear abutting the adjacent (not-yet-constructed) street.  Parking in front and to the side.   Berkman Drive, at least, would have other retail directly fronting the street.  Eventually.  Until then, the site will just be a parking lot with a grocery store at the rear.  The parking lot will be much nicer than average, but this makes the development merely suburban chic not urban.

Anyone know if this site plan is up to date?

Urban economics reading list

I got a few requests in response to this post for an introductory reading list in urban economics.  Here you go.

Bear in mind that I'm not an economist, just a lawyer; give this list whatever weight you think it deserves with that caveat.  But the subject has a fairly well-defined core.  I think this is a good introduction to that core. 

A basic (and I think standard) elementary textbook on urban economics is this by Arthur O'Sullivan.  However, I like Brendan O'Flaherty's City Economics better.  It covers the standard topics and is lively and entertaining while still presenting some of the basic mathematical models for those who want to see them.  There aren't many writers who can make the economics of water rationing interesting.  

William Fischel's The Economics of Zoning Laws is the standard on that subject and very good.   See also his Homevoter Hypothesis, which is an extended, informal essay on NIMBYism, public finance and Tiebout sorting.

Agglomeration economics and positive spillovers are central ideas in urban economics although the mechanics are still poorly understand, at least in a rigorous way.  Jane Jacobs' The Economy of Cities is an insightful stab at a theory.  Krugman develops a model of regional agglomerations in Development, Geography and Economic Theory, which is quite readable for something written by an economist.  Both the Jacobs and Krugman books have the additional virtue of being cheap.

Ed Glaeser is the best-known urban economist today.  Anyone who writes about this stuff should read The Triumph of the City, which, besides being a celebration of cities, is a popular introduction to the central ideas of urban economics.  He's posted his research papers spanning the last 20 years here.  They are heavily and rigorously empirical, which is a good thing.  They contain some technical stuff which might put off the mathematically unsophisticated but each has a narrative introduction that summarizes the key result.   They're definitely worth browsing.

For the mathematically sophisticated, Cities, Agglomeration and Spatial Equilibrium is Glaeser's systematic survey of urban economics models.  The math is technical.  I struggle with it, to be honest, and I know more math than the average American.  I'm torn over these formal models.  On the one hand, they often do a poor job of capturing the dynamic processes that shape cities.  On the other hand, they often do a good job of capturing the dynamic processes that shape cities.  They also force one to think clearly about the incentives property owners and cities face.

For real estate finance, which is arguably a subset of urban economics and worth knowing something about in any event, pick a random book at your local Barnes & Noble or wherever.

For blogs on urban economics, the pickings are slim.  I'm distinguishing here between blogs about urban economics specifically and urbanist or new urbanist or Streetsblog-type or demographics-oriented blogs.  There are oodles of the latter but they are rarely economics oriented.  Ryan Avent's is the best of the former, but he got a gig at Free Exchange and has wandered off into the macroeconomics wilderness.  He still occasionally puts up posts on his personal blog, though, and his archives are excellent reading.  Yglesias writes about urban economics too.  I share their policy preferences pretty much down the line.  They are progressives, which in the land-use context mostly means allowing the market to supply more housing and less parking in central cities and ending market-distorting subsidies for suburban development.  (Gratuitous editorial:  Many of their commenters are inegalitarian, statist, anti-supply types who fancy themselves progressive.  It is not progressive to oppose subsidies to suburban development while simultaneously ginning up pretexts to oppose vastly greater supply in the urban core.)

Matthew Kahn is a serious economist and the best writer on the intersection of environmental and urban economics.  Richard Green, Richard Florida and Aaron Renn are worth reading.  Market Urbanism is what you'd guess and also worth reading.

There are other bloggers who know a lot of urban economics and could be enlightening but in my view are too dogmatic to list here.

VMU on South Lamar, finally

Five years after the City adopted the Vertical Mixed Use standards, South Lamar is finally getting its first VMU development.   The barren rise once occupied by the Stoneridge Apartments is being transformed into Ardent Residential's Post South Lamar:

Because the Stoneridge Apartments were perched on a rise, they were isolated both vertically and horizontally from the street.  Bringing the building down to the street has required a lot of excavation:

VMU tends to be expensive.

One project won't transform South Lamar into a pedestrian paradise, of course.   The street is about as hostile to pedestrians as an inner city street can be.  I took the video below from the little strip mall across the street from Post South Lamar's future entrance.  Although the strip mall and the Post are separated by only 60 feet of pavement, they are effectively a third of a mile apart -- the distance, round trip, to the nearest stoplight -- because you can't cross the street there on foot.  (The stoplight was visible from where I was standing; you can't see it in the video because I did not shoot in high definition.) 

Some will argue that it is silly to build VMU on a street so hostile to pedestrians.  I think this development is evidence of the strong demand for pedestrian-oriented (or, probably more accurately, pedestiran-friendly) space.  Ultimately, it will fall to the City to make the improvements necessary to foster a more walkable street.  Like putting in stoplights so you can cross the street.