Dubai, the gleaming jewel of the United Arab Emirates, has always captured global attention with its spectacular skyscrapers, lavish lifestyle, and groundbreaking innovations. Living in Dubai offers a blend of modernity and tradition. But beyond the shimmering facade lies a robust real estate market that's constantly evolving, and 2023 is no exception.
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October 30, 2019
October 14, 2019
Duplexes and the new land development code
Once upon a time, it was pretty easy to build a duplex in Austin. Duplexes could be built in any single-family district. Duplexes could be built on any size single-family lot. Duplexes did not have to share a common wall, but could be attached by a common carport or breezeway. Duplexes could be arranged side by side on the lot, or front to back, as the owner pleased.
And Austin used to build a lot of duplexes. Because duplexes were liberally allowed for a large portion of Austin's history, Austin has proportionally more duplexes than other large Texas cities.
Things began to change in 1984. When the city adopted its new land development code in 1984, it created new single-family residential districts (SF-1 and SF-2) that expressly prohibit duplexes. Indeed, the only point of the SF-2 district is to ban duplexes--SF-2 and SF-3 regulations are otherwise identical. The 1984 code also increased the minimum lot size for duplexes from 5,750 s.f., the minimum single-family lot size, to 7,000 s.f., eliminating duplexes as an option on many of the smaller lots in the central city.
The real assault on the duplex began in the 2000s, though. In 2003, the maximum height of a duplex was dropped from 35' (the maximum height of a detached single-family home) to two stories and 30'.В
In 2006, the McMansion ordinance imposed a slew of height and bulk restrictions on central-city dwellings. The ordinance imposed new setback rules. It prescribed a complicated, angled building envelope. It required the sides of buildings to be articulated. And, perhaps most importantly, it limited buildings to a maximum floor-to-area ratio of 0.4:1, severely restricting the size of duplex units.
The McMansion ordinance also adopted a "common wall" requirement for duplexes. Henceforth, duplex units would be required to share a common wall extending 50% of the depth of the building, and duplexes could no longer be separated by carports, breezeways or other open building elements.В This common wall requirement essentially required that duplexes be massed into one large structure on the center of the lot; the rest of the McMansion ordinance regulations severely curbed the height and bulk of that structure.В
In 2008, the rules were changed again to require that the common wall between duplex units be measured from the front to back of the building. This effectively prohibited front-and-rear duplexes. Duplexes now could sitВ onlyВ side by side. Here is an example of a nice front-and-rear duplex around the corner from me that violates he common wall requirement. The front unit presents to the street as a detached single-family home. The second unit is tucked in the rear of the lot, separated from the front unit by an open carport:В
This is the relevant context for evaluating staff's proposed revisions to the duplex regulations. They are very good changes. But they mostly just strip away the anti-duplex rules that have accumulated like barnacles over the last few decades. If these rules make it into law, duplexes will become about as easy to build as they were in 1983. That's genuine progress.
Here are the six key changes to duplex rules in the draft land development code:В В
1.В Duplexes would be allowed in all single family zones. As noted above, theВ land development code currently does not allow duplexes in SF-1 or SF-2 districts. There's not very much land zoned SF-1, but there's a fair amount zoned SF-2. The proposed code would allow duplexes in all single family zones, except for one zone reserved for very small lots. This change, although welcome, might not result in a surge in duplex units because many SF-2 neighborhoods have deed restrictions prohibiting two units per lot. Zoning does not override deed restrictions.В
2.В Duplexes could be bigger. The code currently limits duplexes to a 0.4:1 floor -to-area ratio, the same limit that applies to detached single-family homes. Consequently, a 7,000 s.f. lot can yield one 2,800 s.f. home or two 1,400 s.f. duplexes. 1,400 s.f. is pretty small for the price that new central-city housing fetches these days. As a result, a lot of infill builders are choosing simply to build larger single-family homes. The new rules would bump up the allowed floor-to-area ratio for duplexes to 0.6:1 but leave the ratio unchanged for detached single-family homes. This would allow two 2,100 s.f. duplexes on a 7,000 s.f. lot versus a single 2,800 detached home. It would provide a tremendous incentive to build duplexes rather than detached homes, at least in pricey central-city neighborhoods. This change would still leave the rules more restrictive than the rules in place before 2006, when the cap on floor-to-area ratio was imposed.
3. The minimum lot size for duplexes would be reduced to 5,000 square feet.В Zilker, Bouldin, and other central city neighborhoods have many lots smaller than the current 7,000 s.f. minimum for duplex lots.В В
4.В The common wall requirement would be eliminated. The draft code would allow duplex units to be connected by a carport, breezeway or other structure. Duplexes would no longer be required to share a common wall. This would re-legalize front-and-back duplexes. We also would see smaller, semi-attached structures rather than one centrally located hulking structure.В В
5.В Duplexes could be three stories. Duplexes are currently limited to two stories and 30'. (The height limit for single-family homes is 35' outside of the central core and 32' in the urban core, where the McMansion ordinance applies.) The new code would allow a height of 35' more than 10' from the side property line. If you are willing to build a flat roof or a shallow gable, this would allow three stories and make it more feasible to hit the 0.6 cap on floor-to-area ratio.В
6.В В Parking would be reduced. The draft code would reduce parking to one space per unit--or none, if the unit is within a quarter mile of a transit corridor. This is an improvement even over the 1983 rules. No one will build a duplex without any parking, but they might build units with just one space.В
These changes would spur a boom in duplex construction. Duplexes would be much easier to build. And duplexes would become a more attractive option than single family homes in many cases. They are a good step toward encouraging missing middle housing.В
There are other things Council can and should do. Here, briefly, are two:
1.В В Extend the new duplex rules to NCCDs.В Most land directly north of the University of Texas is included in a neighborhood conservation combining district ("NCCD"). Council has directed that NCCDs not be remapped with new zoning districts. But it has left open the door for some of the new rules to apply. Council should direct that the new duplex rules apply in NCCDs.В В
2.В В Allow accessory dwelling units with duplexes.В The current draft allows an accessory dwelling with a duplex only when an existing, older dwelling is preserved. I understand the desire to preserve older dwellings, but this can be accomplished by exempting them from the cap on floor-to-area ratio. Let's allow all duplexes to have ADUs. ADUs can be unobtrusively tucked behind a duplex just as they can be unobtrusively tucked behind a detached single family home. Allowing ADUs with duplexes would be a gentle increase in density. It would also be a genuine advance on the rules in place in 1983.
В
March 17, 2019
December 30, 2018
December 05, 2018
Capitol View Corridors, illustrated
The Capitol View Corridors are polarizing. Most Austinites probably believe that CVCs, at least in the abstract, are a reasonable method of preserving views of the Capitol dome while allowing most of the rest of downtown to redevelop.В But there is a lot of disagreement over whether the CVCs as drawn are too restrictive, are just right, or are not restrictive enough. My own view is that some of the CVCs are fine and some are bad. Many CVCs allow enough room to develop the underlying parcel, if only to a limited height. A lot of the CVCs over the eastern portion of downtown are like that: you can build something, just not something very tall. But there are other CVCs that effectively scour the ground, precluding any sort of development at all, for the sake of marginal vantages. Not all CVCs are equally benign.В
One of the practical problems with the CVCs is that they are opaque. They are defined using the Texas plane coordinate system with reference to sea levels. It is impossible for someone to pick up the city code or state statute and determine from the text where a CVC runs, much less at what height. Property owners often have only a vague understanding of where the CVCs run across their own property, or at what height. This is the reason that one of the first thing developers do when investigating a downtown property within a CVC is to pay the City to make a CVC determination, which yields a three-dimensional sketch.В
Noah Deneau, however, has developed a Google Earth mashup that allows any of us to view the CVCs in 3-D. It really is marvelous.В
Here is the 40,000 ft. view of the CVCs:
You can find maps from, say, Preservation AustinВ drawn to this scale.В
But Deneau's Google Earth mashup allows us to zoom in as close as we want. Here is the CVC that runs alongside the Seven apartment tower, which explains its odd diagonal wall:
The mashup even makes it possible to tell at a glance which buildings encroach into the CVC.В Here, for example, is the old central library:
And here are the 800 and 900 blocks between Guadalupe and Lavaca:
В
Those encroaching structures are indeedВ one-story buildings. That is the Wooldridge square CVC, which actually dips below ground, supposedly due to an error in specifying the CVC's coordinates. The CVC essentially outlaw any use other than a parking lot, as the street-level view dramatically confirms:
Needless to say, both of those blocks were once filled with buildings. Here is the 1956 Sanborn map of the 900 block of Guadalupe/Lavaca. No surprise: the block contained buildings. (And it had recently had more. One can see the ghostly image of other buildings that were demolished for parking in the 1940s or 50s).
Thus, although CVCs are usually thought of as a way to protect views of the Capitol from modern skyscrapers, in some cases the CVCs prohibit even the traditional, small-scale development that constituted downtown's built environment for most of its history.
This fantastic tool at least makes it possible to have a coherent discussion about CVCs.В
January 10, 2018
Chronicling downtown's decline
CityLab had anВ interesting pieceВ a few weeks ago on Sanborn fire insurance maps. These maps were created by Daniel A. Sanborn beginning in the 1800s to help insurance companies map fire risks. The maps were exquisitely detailed catalogs of existing structures, and included the outlines of each building and outbuilding, the location of windows and doors, street names, street and sidewalk widths, building composition and a host of other information, and updated every few years. They were a hand-crafted, pre-digital GIS database.В
There were Sanborn maps for Austin.В Here is the east side of the 500 block of Congress from the 1956 Sanborn map. Note the density of businesses. I count 24 separate buildings in this one block.В
В
В
This map portended the future character of downtown development, though. By 1956, the southeastern corner of the block had been converted to an "open deck garage" and drive-thru bank, the eventual fate of many downtown properties.
There’s an interesting quirk to these maps. To save money, Sanborn did not produce totally new maps between 1934 and 1956. Instead, map makers (called "pasters" or "correctors") carefully cut out overlays to paste over the existing maps. The pasters would visit subscribers' offices to paste the slips on top of the old maps. But the paper they used was not thick enough to completely blot out the underlying buildings. They inadvertently created a record of how the building stock changed between 1934 and 1956.В
They tell a story of a drastic reduction in building stock during the Great Depression and early post-war years.
For example, here is the 900 block of Lavaca/Guadalupe, which today is the site of two drive-thru banks. The map documents the destruction of four buildings (numbered 1-4), and their replacement with parking.
A close-up of the southeastern corner clearly shows the ghostly image of a demolished building:
The period was especially hard on Rio Grande. Take the 400 block of Rio Grande, just north of today's 360 condominiums. Nine buildings on this block -- excluding small outbuildings and sheds -- were demolished during the Depression or post-war years and replaced with used car lots.
The damage was not limited to the west side of downtown. The 1400 block of San Jacinto and Brazos, smack next to the Capitol, was almost completely leveled. Depending on how you interpret the map, either eight or nine principal structures were knocked down, turning this into a mostly-vacant block.
(The subsequent development of this block shows that there are worse terminal states than being a parking lot. There are a lot of complaints about all of the new parking plinths downtown, but this is how we used to build parking plinths: impregnable walls with small offices perched, castle-wise, on top.)В
Even where there was not wholesale, block-level destruction, there was a general thinning out of buildings. Take the four blocks meeting at 8th and Lavaca:В
EveryВ block experienced at least one demolition.
This is not to suggest that all of downtown's parking lots date to the Depression and early post-war years. During the 1960s and 1970s, structures continued to be demolished and replaced with parking lots at a disheartening rate. Judging from aerial photos, the early 1980s were the apex of the surface parking lot in downtown Austin.В
But the Sanborn maps document a clear collapse in demand for downtown space, whether for office, retail, industry, or warehousing, before the mid-1950s.В The interesting question is why?
One cause can be ruled out right away: the collapse was not caused by the construction of I-35 along downtown's eastern edge, because I-35 did not open through downtown Austin until 1962. Downtown property owners no doubt cheered the freeway's development, hoping that the new highway would reverse the collapse in demand.
Nor can the suburbanization of office and retail be credibly blamed, because this phenomenon didn't take off until the 1950s. Suburban retail either had not yet been built or was just coming on line by 1956. For example, the Twin Oaks shopping center at Oltorf and South Congress was completed in 1953. The Lamar Plaza shopping center on South Lamar, just one mile south of Town Lake, was completed in 1958.В There is a lag between the loss of tenants and the decision to demolish the building. Demolition is an of despair, a decision an owner makes once he's convinced that the rental value of a building has dropped below the cost of maintaining and paying taxes on the building. Incipient suburbanization would not have lead to such a widespread loss in confidence in downtown rents.
So what's the answer?
Probably the Great Depression. The Great Depression caused a monumental collapse in demand for office and retail space, not just in downtown Austin but in downtowns across the country. Historian Robert Fogelson chronicled the collapse in his excellent bookВ Downtown. For example, by the mid 1930s, the vacancy rate in downtown Detroit was running between 35 and 40 percent. With rents falling and increasingly hard to collect, property owners began demolishing buildings and replacing them with parking lots. Between 1932 and 1940 about 92 million cubic feet of commercial space, close to 10 percent of the total, was demolished in the Chicago Loop, most of it replaced by parking lots and one- or two-story garages. By the early 1940s in Los Angeles, roughly 25 percent of the buildable land was used to store autos -- large chunks of the business district were leveled for more than nine hundred parking lots and garages, with space for more than sixty-five thousand cars. Fogelson explained the phenomenon:
[H]itherto these buildings had been torn down to make room for taller, more up-to-date buildings, which, it was assumed, would make more money. Now, in the depths of the worst depression in the nation’s history, the owners were facing a unique situation, in which, said one real estate appraiser in 1934, 'there is no demand.' Hence the demolition of buildings like the Temple Theater [in Detroit] and their replacement by parking lots or one- and two-story garages, which were commonly referred to as “taxpayers.” The “taxpayers” were as much a legacy of the depression as the “Hoovervilles,” bread lines, soup kitchens, and dance marathons. They symbolized downtown in the 1930s as much as skyscrapers, department stores, and high-rise hotels had in the 1920s.
Downtown Austin likely experienced the trend afflicting other American downtowns. The Great Depression caused the collapse in demand for downtown buildings, resulting in the widespread conversion of buildings to parking lots.
Austin still bears some of those scars today. For example, here is the northwest corner of 9th and Lavaca today:В
This is now the site of a drive-thru bank but mostly remains a parking lot, just as it was in 1956. This should be thought of as a scar of the Great Depression. Change in the built environment usually happens very slowly; damage can take a long time to heal.
В
April 25, 2017
Maintaining the status quo
The CodeNEXT maps are out and, predictably, hand-wringing has ensued. The City released a tool allowing one to compare the old and new zoning side by side. People have begun looking up their neighborhoods to see what has changed. Even modest changes have provoked cries that the consultants are proposing to bulldoze neighborhoods.
It is hard to graspВ the extent of the change at a macro scale using the CodeNEXT mapping tool. How much land was placed in a transect zone? How much land retained its prior (but renamed) zoning? GIS-jock Michael Theis at the Austin Business Journal has put together some great interactive maps. This one shows the amount of land placed in a transect zone other than the dense T5U and T5MS zones. (The T6 zone is quite easy to map: there is none.)
The place to start assessing the new code is not the maps, however, but the table the consultants released along with the maps. This table summarizes the amount of buildable housing units the consultants expect each zoning category to produce over the next 10 years.
If you read the table closely, you will see that despite the (to some) gaudy total of 143,900 units, the proposed CodeNEXT maps more or less maintain the status quo.
Rather than focus on the gross number of buildable units, let's break this down byВ existing zoningВ andВ new transect zoning.В
Downtown and the University Neighborhood Overlay will retain their zoning. Literally, the same, down to the last MF-3-CO. Northwest downtown will beВ given new "Commercial Core" (CC) zoning to more or less match the Downtown Austin Plan, but given the prevalence of historic structures in this part of town, don't expect much change there.В
The new code will also leave PUDs and Transit-Oriented Districts (TODs) completely untouched.
The consultants predict these zones will produce:
В В В В В В В В Downtown/CC/UNO:В В 19,580
В В В В В В TODs:В В В В В В В В В В В В В В В В В В В В В В В В В В В В В В В В В 13,300
В В В В В В PUDs:В В В В В В В В В В В В В В В В В В В В В В В В В В В В В В В В В 16,400
В В В В В В Total: В В В В В В В В В В В В В В В В В 49,280
The consultants expect tens of thousands of single-family homes and multi-family units to be developed within existing (but renamed) multi-family and single-family residential zoning districts, most of which I'm sure is greenfield development on the City's fringes. I haven't seen any hard stats on whether any of these involved upzonings, but from my review of the maps, the "old" zoning districts seem to have been mapped faithfully onto the new zoning districts. The totals for these mostly unchanged zones are:
В В В В В В В В В Single family:В В В В В В В В В В В В В В В 21,865
В В В В В В Multi-family:В В В В В В В В В В В В В В В В В 24,825
В В В В В В В В Commercial:В В В В В В В В В В В В В В В В В 15,775
В В В В В В В В В В В Total:В В В В В В В В В В В В В В В В В В В В В В В В В В В В В В В В 62,465
The consultants are thus looking to the traditionally zoned districts for the great majority of new units (almost 112,000 of the 143,900.)
The consultants predict a capacity of 3,000 units for the South Central Waterfront, the В proper zoning of which they leave for another day.
The remaining housing supply, 29,000 units, is left to the new transect zones.
Let's put that number in perspective.В
JustВ 4,210 unitsВ -- or approximately 3% of the total housing supply -- will be produced by the T3N and T4N zones, excluding the T4 Main Street Zone. Put differently, only 3% of the total housing supply will come from the interior of neighborhoods with transect zoning.В Given that almost all of the transect-zoned land falls within a neighborhood interior, this isВ a modest goal.
But even this number is not a net increase in existing zoning. The existing supply of SF-3, SF-4A & 4B, SF-5, and SF-6 land in the urban core is already producing a steady stream of units. Will the new zoning nudge that spigot further open or closed? We don't know because we don't have a before-and-after comparison of zoning capacity; we're just getting the "after." But it's hard to believe that the new transect zoning will produce more than a few hundred additional units over existing zoning.
What about the dense transect zones? It is also hard to assess the supply offered by the T4MS, T5N, T5U and T5MS zones. The chart shows 24,833 units for these four zones. The question here is not whether В that's a lot. (It's not really: it works out to just 2,483 units per year, or around eight large apartment complexes per year spread around the urban core.) The question is whether this number is an improvement over the status quo.
We can't say because, again, we haven't been given before-and-after numbers to make a comparison. But there are already thousands and thousands of potential units within these areas already in mixed-use, vertical mixed-use and high-density multi-family districts. It's hard to believe we're getting an increase of more than a few thousand units.В
This is why the proposed maps maintain the approximate status quo. The vast majority of the 143,490 new units would be available under current zoning anyway. We'll spend much of the next year arguing over changes that will affect, at most, a margin of a few thousand units.
Disclaimer:В The statementsВ above are the opinions of the author and do not reflect the opinions of any client or other person or organization. Please see the About Me section.
March 27, 2017
Zoning capacity vs housing supply
The key number housing number being bandied about these days is 135,000: this is the ten-year housing unit target recommended by Austin's new strategic housing plan. It includes a mix of market-rate and subsidized housing. Both numbers are unrealistic in my opinion, but that's a topic for another day.
We will hear a lot about this housing target during CodeNEXT. There are already debates about whether that target can be met if 97% of the city remains the same under the new code, as the Mayor has promised.В
Before we get too far into this debate, though, it is worth stressing the difference betweenВ housing supplyВ andВ zoning capacity. The housing supply is just the number of housing units that actually will be built. Zoning capacity is just the upper bound on how many housing units can be built. CodeNEXT will (I hope) enlarge our zoning capacity. But expanding our zoning capacity by 135,000 units will not yield 135,000 new units of supply because housing becomes much more expensive to supply as one approaches the zoning capacity.В One reason is that it takes ever higher property prices to entice holdout property owners to В sell their property for redevelopment -- property owners don't automatically sell their land for redevelopment even when prices justify it. That is the reason there are thousands of single-family homes in central Austin that are not currently being razed for duplexes.В A second reason is that the really choice lots tend to get redeveloped first; the more challenging lots go last. The latter are inevitably more expensive to develop.
CodeNEXT is fundamentally about enlarging the city's zoning capacity.В Determining how much actual housing the new Code will supply is an intractable calculation because it requires considering all of the soft land use restrictions such as tree preservation and water quality regulations, the willingness of property owners to sell, future construction costs, and a host of other factors. We'll be deluding ourselves if we think we know the answer to that calculation. All we will ever know is the approximate zoning capacity. Whatever that capacity turns out to be, we'll get only a fraction of that --perhaps a small fraction of that -- in new housing on the ground, and the last few units delivered will be very, very expensive.
Los Angeles is a case in point.
Graduate school dissertations don't ordinarily get a lot of publicity. This oneВ did. It is the 2013 Ph.D. dissertation of Greg Morrow, a former UCLA planning student (and current University of Calgary assistant professor.) The title -- "TheВ Homeowner Revolution: Democracy, Land Use and the Los Angeles Slow-Growth Movement, 1965-1992" -- hints at the gist of his thesis.
Morrow's work might have languished in obscurity had USC economist Richard Green notВ linked to it one day. Since then, Morrow's dissertation got a lot of buzz. This graph, in particular:
В
Los Angeles has a very high median home price ($616,900 according to Zillow). At least one serious study has identified it as the most unaffordable rental market in the country. This graph suggests the reason: Los Angeles has steadily reduced its zoning capacity even as its population has surged. That's a bad combination.
The "population capacity" Morrow graphs is a "raw" capacity. В That is, it is derived from the number of acres in various zoning districts multiplied by the number of allowed units per acre. Morrow did not attempt to adjust the population capacity for the many soft zoning restrictions that Los Angeles has accumulated over the years. That would have been an intractable task.В
It is quite possible that L.A.'s current population exceeds its hard zoning capacity. В One sign, of course, is the very high home prices and the very high rents. An even stronger sign is that more than 20% of households in LA are "severely overcrowded" under the Census definition(more than 1.5 person per room). In three planning areas, more than 30% of the households are severely overcrowded.В I hear Brentwood is nice, though.В Back when the City's zoning capacity was four times its population, Los Angeles was an affordable place, even with its nice weather, many manufacturing jobs, and movie stars.В
It would be interesting to see a graph like this for Austin -- or for central Austin, since Austin's zoning capacity is constantly increasing through annexation. My guess (and it really is just a guess) is that central Austin's zoning capacity remained more or less level from the 1930s to the 1980s. In the mid-1980s, the city switched from cumulative zoning, which permits apartments on commercial tracts, to noncumulative zoning, which doesn't (except for tracts specifically designated as mixed use). When the city did away with cumulative zoning, it eliminated thousands of commercial tracts as potential multi-family sites. This was likely the largest single down-zoning in the city's history. (If someone knows of a comparable down-zoning, let me know.)
If CodeNEXT is to deliver a zoning capacity that allows the city to grow affordably, we need to focus on the right target, which assuredly is not 135,000 housing units. The correct target is a multiple of 135,000, and our discussions should focus on just how large that multiple ought to be.В
February 28, 2017
February 26, 2017
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- Cronk asks City Council to be the decider
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- Zoning capacity vs housing supply
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