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1/ Today I feel like I want to tease the YIMBYs crowd.
Many vocal pro-density advocates seem to argue that "more density", regardless of everything else (location, form, typologies of buildings and open spaces, etc.) is "per se" a good thing.
Sorry, but it's not.
Many vocal pro-density advocates seem to argue that "more density", regardless of everything else (location, form, typologies of buildings and open spaces, etc.) is "per se" a good thing.
Sorry, but it's not.
2/ Often, the main argument is that, to consistently increase the supply of housing, removing regulatory restrictions that prevents denser or more mixed development (i.e. SF zoning) is enough and justified. Things are more complicate though
3/ I give you two examples why abolish existing regulations without replacing them with something else (for example a better design processes) will not bring North-American cities a better urban environment by magic, nor the public support YIMBYs need for their agenda.
4/ The examples I give are personal ones: I live in the fringe of an actively transforming Montréal’s neighborhood, where pre-war warehouses and factories are being replaced by offices and housing fairly denser than the surrounding: 5 to 7 stories, even higher in a few spots.
5/ I’m pretty fine with this transformation, because it was a rational planning choice to transform and densify a very central area, well connected by transit (2 metro lines and several frequent bus) and ready to host the booming videogame and IT industry of Montréal
6/ I will not even discuss that I’ve seen rents going up by 20-30% or more in the area in 5 years, as I know it’s an overall problem of city-wide supply of housing in transit-rich & walkable neighborhood outside of the “historic” pre-war compact city
7/ I will just stick to two problems related to how this densification have been (poorly) managed:
- compatibility of land uses
- quality of the urban environment.
- compatibility of land uses
- quality of the urban environment.
8/ Beside all the racism arguments, zoning and use regulations are also born for some noble reasons: to segregate polluting uses from residential areas and avoid the health ad livability downsides of unmanaged density.
9/ Even the strongest advocate of mixed-use would not recommend putting a refinery or a cement factory in the middle of a residential area. I hope we agree about that. But most planners and advocates agree that most “urban” uses (offices, shops, services) can coexist very well
10/ Just a block from my apartment, a new office building hosting several IT companies opened that spring. Since, the noise produces by the fans of the cooling system used to keep the servers cold has kept most of the neighborhood awake day and night.
11/ In the hot, humid days (most od summer), the noise is so strong that it’s difficult to sit in the balcony and chat. I’m not a noise hyper-sensible person, but when I can’t sleep with open windows in full summer because of the noise, I’m not happy with this new neighbor.
12/ The problem is that, during the discussion of the neighborhood redevelopment plan, there was a lot of talk about building size and uses, but none about mandatory non air-based cooling system that should be normally used for servers. Nobody thought or cared about that “detail”
13/ The result is that a land use (IT office) that would be perfectly compatible with residential ones, it’s not, because of the poor handling of a matter (AC noise) that seems a detail but it’s not in term of livability, even more important that size, shape, shading or aesthetic
14/The second problem is about the little attention that the overall urban environment of densifying areas gets in NA planning process. Density is talked about in terms of building types , but less so about how a denser environment needs a different treatment of the public space
15/ In my neighborhood, under sustained transformation since several years, sidewalks are crumbling, roads are severely potholed, there are less trees than elsewhere, and the city “forgot” to save the land to continue the “voie verte”, a cross-city cycle path, inside the area
16/ Maybe in a couple of years an abandoned triangle of land will become a little park. Several of the improvements of cycle infrastructures “proposed as tentative” in the redevelopment plan may never come online. None of that is considered a precondition for densification.
17/ The trade-off of density increase should be: sorry people, you will live in smaller houses “piled-up” and with no garden, but in exchange you get closer services, transit, AND other amenities, notably a good quality public realm, as an extension of your smaller private one.
18/ If YIMBYs and pro-development planners want to win the battle for denser cities they should consider that not everyone is a planner, not everyone is an urbanism geek and density will not become popular if you just yell it’s better because "I tell you it is".
19/ Most people here have travelled a lot and should know that the dense, high-quality urban environment they have seen in parts of Europe or Asia’s dense cities are the result of overall careful urban design processes differently regulated, not complete deregulation.
20/ What makes NYC awfully dense is the incredible misery of its public spaces, compared to other similarly wealthy and dense cities like Paris, Tokyo or Singapore. No pedestrian streets to stroll, not so many parcs outside CP, a very poor material quality of the public realm
21/ A lot of the new dense construction in NA is “low quality” not in terms of building aesthetic as many complain, but in terms of the overall built environment they are contributing to shape. It is not a project for a dense city, just dense buildings put together randomly
22/ YIMBYs should talk less about typologies and more about the organisation of the interface between the private and the public, about balconies, gardens, roof-terraces, about the overall quality of the “public realm” the density they advocate should produce and incorporate.
23/ I know that the hypocrite opposition of vociferous NYMBYs and their bad faith can quickly get on one’s nerves. But among them, there are people that need to be showed how density can be better, especially in a continent were there are not many good examples (NYC is not)
24/I’m not the right person to lecture anybody, but I humbly suggest the YIMBYcrowd to look for support among people like my partner that, despite my efforts to educate him, is, like many, naturally suspicious of development…and get pissed off by the noise of a poorly planned AC
