Urban Reformers

Friday, January 24, 2025

Urban Reformers

There’s never any complex problem that doesn’t scream out for simple solutions from afar. So today we’re going to fix America’s housing problem. Basta! Done and dusted.

For assistance I’ve brought along Russ Roberts and his French guest, the urbanist Alain Bertaud. The two discussed the things that ail cities in an EconTalk podcast late last year—this one:

As they discuss, one problem is that American cities don’t have enough density. American cities aren’t fun for leisure strolls because they have density restrictions, requiring a minimum amount of square footage per capita. That results in fewer people per square mile than elsewhere in the world where city dwellers hang out in cafés or coffee shops within walking distance of where they live.

Russ Roberts: Manhattan has [vibrant urban street life] because it's very dense, but very few [U.S.] cities are as dense as Manhattan.

And many cities struggle to have their downtowns--in America--to be functional at all. What do you think explains that? Why is it that European cities and New York, but very few other American cities have the density that allows that kind of dynamic amenity availability?

Alain Bertaud: Because American restrict density more than any other cities in the world, American cities. You have zoning with a minimum load size, which is usually large. You have the floor ratio which limits the amount of floor space you can build on those large floors. Basically, most American city are zoned for single-family housing.

Single-family housing, especially if they are on relatively large lots, do not have--if I wanted to operate a French café or a Viennese Café or a Tel Aviv café in my neighborhood, I will not survive because within walking distance there are just not enough people. And then, if they have to drive, then there are not enough parking for people to come to my café. So, then you don't have it. So, you have your coffee in your house, and you will watch television instead.

[From the transcript.]

Other cities elsewhere in the world don’t regulate density that way. They let people pile up in small abodes to their hearts’ content. That is even the case in touristy places like Paris, which regulates development to keep the general vibe within that of the Impressionist era.

American cities also regulate space use by a crude, ill-defined method of zoning, which is unique to the United States. As Bertaud says, other cities allow businesses to operate from residential buildings, or at least don’t restrict enterprises like cafés from opening up at street level for pedestrian foot traffic in buildings that are residential.

There are interesting contrastive jaunts into the area of urban policies regarding cars. At one extreme is Tokyo, which bans all on-street parking.

Roberts: Tokyo streets are in many cases almost entirely pedestrian.

[P]arking is a free subsidy--on-street parking is a free subsidy--to car owners. And many people in cities don't own cars. So that encourages car ownership.

And, at the same time, when new buildings are permitted, they often have to have a certain amount of off-street parking, which makes it more expensive to build a building and means that the rent has to be higher than it otherwise would be.

So, what are your thoughts on how parking policy could make over-trafficked cities like Tel Aviv and others more livable? And, I would just add: Tel Aviv has an enormous number of bicycles and scooters, but they still have a lot of cars.

Bertaud: Yes. I think that, again, like in Tokyo, practically there will be no street space should be devoted to long-range parking. You could have curb space of course to loading or unloading. A large city like Tel Aviv or New York require, by the way, a lot of maintenance. You need to have plumbers coming and unloading things. They cannot come on a bicycle or a subway.

So, you need loading and unloading, but that should be very strict. It should be a few minutes and the rest should be entirely[?]. Parking should be a type of real estate, independent from housing or things like that.

Like hotels, for instance. Hotels is a type of rent, so it will be hotel for cars, and it should be priced the way hotels are priced: If you are for the weekend for instance, you'll pay more. In certain season, you pay more, and parking price should be adapted to that. So, to adjust demand to supply.

But, they should be--the idea that it's a responsibility of the city to provide free parking in the street is an aberration. I don't know where that came from. For instance in New York, where they are trying now to do congestion pricing, but at the same time I think about 70% of the parking lot in Manhattan are free, which is an aberration.

Because, in a way when a car is moving--but, say the problem is cars. Cars consume. They are very convenient to go around because they are always on demand, but they consume an enormous amount of real estate. Including when they move faster, they need more real estate. If I move at 20 kilometers an hour on Fifth Avenue, I am consuming about 80 square meters of Fifth Avenue, which it's the size of two studios. Just for moving. And I don't pay anything.

As a side note, the car talk is earlier in the podcast discussion than the zoning and density talk.

Another issue they talk about near the end is the problem of declining populations: Bertaud mentions there’s no real solution for urban decline, which is already in progress in many countries. It turns out that the younger populations go to a country’s biggest city, meaning that even secondary and tertiary cities are in decline in many countries.

Other cities mentioned in the discussion include Singapore, Tel Aviv, London, Vancouver, San Francisco, Atlanta, Houston, and a few others in passing.