TownhouseCenter.org

25,000 hits!  From Intl Biz Times writer Roland Li: “An A-list quartet of architecture critics discussed their craft on Monday night at the AIANY’s Center for Architecture in Manhattan, arguing for the vitality of buildings in modern life and the impact of criticism in a changing world.  Although tops in their field, the critics – Paul Goldberger of the New Yorker, Justin Davidson of New York magazine, Cathleen McGuigan of Architectural Record and James Russell of Bloomberg — all feel the pressure of the new reality.

“Julie Iovine, executive editor of the Architect’s Newspaper and moderator of the panel, spoke of a ‘sea change,’ the move away from starchitects to a focus on affordability, sustainability and context.  Michael Kimmelman, the Times’ current architecture critic, has heralded the split, ‘repoliticizing’ his beat by writing about housing projects, urban planning and the street level. He has avoided, perhaps consciously, the singular building, instead seeking to encapsulate a neighborhood.

“And it is the consideration of the political, social and economic factors, the forces behind the art, that truly distinguishes the great critics.  ’If you don’t engage social issues, it’s just about comparing shapes,’ said Goldberger.”  Full article here.

FASLANYC’s post inspired me to read Eric Raymond’s “The Cathedral and the Bazaar” from 1996, which is about the Linux computer operating system, but if you change a few words could be about urban neighborhoods.  I’m going to dedicate 2 posts to the essay, this week the basic setup and Raymond’s own summary points (you can spend more than a week thinking about how they might apply to urban neighborhood development), and next week more from the body of the essay.

“Who would have thought that a world-class operating system could coalesce as if by magic out of part-time hacking by several thousand developers?  Linus Torvalds’s style of development — release early and often, delegate everything you can, be open to the point of promiscuity — came as a surprise.  No quiet, reverent cathedral-building here — rather, the Linux community seemed to resemble a great babbling bazaar of differing agendas and approaches out of which a coherent and stable system could seemingly emerge only by a succession of miracles.

“Chance handed me a perfect way to test my theory, in the form of an open-source project that I could consciously try to run in the bazaar style.  I’ll use it to propose some aphorisms about effective open-source development.

1. Every good work of software starts by scratching a developer’s personal itch.
2. Good programmers know what to write.  Great ones know what to rewrite (and reuse).
3. ‘Plan to throw one away; you will, anyhow.’
4. If you have the right attitude, interesting problems will find you.
5. When you lose interest in a program, your last duty to it is to hand it off to a competent successor.
6. Treating your users as co-developers is your least-hassle route to rapid code improvement and effective debugging.
7. Release early.  Release often.  And listen to your customers.
8. Given a large enough beta-tester and co-developer base, almost every problem will be characterized quickly and the fix obvious to someone.
9. Smart data structures and dumb code works a lot better than the other way around.
10. If you treat your beta-testers as if they’re your most valuable resource, they will respond by becoming your most valuable resource.
11. The next best thing to having good ideas is recognizing good ideas from your users.  Sometimes the latter is better.
12. Often, the most striking and innovative solutions come from realizing that your concept of the problem was wrong.
13. ‘Perfection (in design) is achieved not when there is nothing more to add, but rather when there is nothing more to take away.’
14. Any tool should be useful in the expected way, but a truly great tool lends itself to uses you never expected.
15. When writing gateway software of any kind, take pains to disturb the data stream as little as possible — and never throw away information unless the recipient forces you to!
16. When your language is nowhere near Turing-complete, syntactic sugar can be your friend.
17. A security system is only as secure as its secret. Beware of pseudo-secrets.
18. To solve an interesting problem, start by finding a problem that is interesting to you.
19. Provided the development coordinator has a communications medium at least as good as the Internet, and knows how to lead without coercion, many heads are inevitably better than one.”

Next week, excerpts about why this approach not only works, but also may result in better outcomes for computer programs…and urban neighborhoods.

Miami-based architect Jason Chandler has published two books about small-scale infill.  The first is Engaging the Urban: Infill Projects by Young Miami Architects, “a record of an exhibit that occurred at the FIU School of Architecture Cejas Building in 2009 that showcased new infill projects by young architects in greater Miami.  19 projects from the exhibit were selected for this publication, the majority of which are built.”

The second is Artist Housing, the culmination of a studio (Jason is also a professor at FIU) in which students designed artist housing for Miami inspired by a trip to Savannah at the start of the semester.  Jason teaches a studio every academic year that begins with a trip to Savannah, possibly the closest city to Miami with a relatively continuous fabric of small prototypical buildings, so students can see the kind of buildings that are most likely to make a great urban neighborhood.

From ULI, the executive education series I wish I had thought of: “This new Executive Program series is devoted exclusively to issues facing professionals focused on smaller-scale/infill development.  Each program will be an interactive, fast-paced, 1.5 days devoted to an area of interest.  The series will offer two course topics each year, each in two cities.

“In addition to being devoted exclusively to smaller-scale developers, the Executive Program series is designed to be unique in its content, delivery, and outcomes. Each program is explicitly designed to be collegial, instructive, and collaborative.  Participants will share problems, ideas, and solutions, joining an exclusive alliance of business peers.  Experienced, senior-level ULI members and other professionals will present practical, experience-based operational best practices, as well as personal lessons learned.

“The inaugural program of the series will be titled Managing the Successful Small-Scale Development Enterprise.  Topics will include:

• Building Big-Firm Credibility on a Small-Firm Budget
• indentifying Development Opportunities Others Pass By
• The Art of the Deal Structure – for Profit and Protection
• Finding the Money – Crafting Your Pitch
• Looking Back – What Today’s Leaders Would Do Differently

In addition, each program will include a collaborative exercise that engages participants in solving real business problems brought to the group by the participants themselves.”  Full description here.  The inaugural program was held in San Fran last week, and the 2nd city will be DC in April, where I will attend.  Apply now!

The Congress for the New Urbanism, 2012 edition, is coming up May 9-12 in West Palm Beach, not far from the Townhouse Center home office in Miami.  I have attended two Congresses, both intellectually rejuvenating.  But I got the impression that, when New Urbanists present their work, they most often focus on the plan and not the buildings, which is helpful for developers who control large assemblies to master plan, but not immediately inspiring if you own a 50×100 foot lot.

Happily this year the Congress has as one of its “tracks” the idea of “The Incremental, Entrepreneurial City”.  The Congress website doesn’t link this track with specific sessions, but I found several on the schedule that could be useful for a small property owner or developer, or people crafting policies to encourage this most important scale of building: on Thursday Incremental Urbanism (2-3:15) and Lease a Town Center — Restaurant Effect (202, 2-5); on Friday Urban Facades (11-12:15), Multifamily Types for Enhanced Public Realm (2-3:15), and Form-Based Economic Development on Main Street (3:45-5); and on Saturday Walkable Urban Grocery Stores (2-3:15)and Small Is Beautiful: Economic Networks Pre-Auto (3:45-5).  More may be announced.  Register today!

From BBC, with many caveats including that bankers are not necessarily trained in statistical analysis: “There is an ‘unhealthy correlation’ between the building of skyscrapers and subsequent financial crashes, according to Barclays Capital.  Examples include the Empire State building, built as the Great Depression was under way, and the current world’s tallest, the Burj Khalifa, built just before Dubai almost went bust.  ’Often the world’s tallest buildings are simply the edifice of a broader skyscraper building boom, reflecting a widespread misallocation of capital and an impending economic correction,’ Barclays Capital analysts said.  The bank noted that the world’s first skyscraper, the Equitable Life building in New York [pictured], was completed in 1873 and coincided with a five-year recession.  And Malaysia’s Petronas Towers in 1997, which coincided with the Asian financial crisis.”  Full article here, and Barclays Capital Skyscraper Index here.

Very last-minute, I got word that CNU Miami was presenting a Strong Towns Curbside Chat on Saturday afternoon.  I attended and was inspired.  Charles Marohn spoke about how the late 20th century pattern of development, particularly infrastructure, does not pay for itself.  Download the Curbside Chat booklet here.

Among the discussion of infrastructure, Charles had a few slides about what kind of buildings generate more property tax per acre and requires less infrastructure.  No surprise: 6-story, mixed-use, urban development generates 100 times the property tax per acre of a big box retail store.  The slides, above, were made by collaborator Joseph Minicozzi of Urban 3 in Asheville, NC.  Recent article including slides here, and video of Joseph speaking at UM last year here.

From 26’10 South Architects: “Can we imagine a move towards a dynamic flexibility which can deliver subsidised housing in which the unit becomes an asset leading to income generation?  The housing types proposed for Diepsloot attempt to achieve higher occupational density in order to achieve minimum displacement of residents.

“The design also attempts to enable income generation through accommodating rental rooms, retail and small business enterprise.  In addition ground floors are conceived as flexible spaces accommodating both trade and/or residential use.  Circulation and services are positioned in such a way as to provide for these diverse occupation scenarios.  This allows for economic development over time, especially along busy routes.

“Houses are located close to the street boundary to create a sense of urbanity, surveillance, ease of trading and to limit the amount of unusable space between units.  The increased densities also achieve the necessary thresholds for the efficient provision of public transport and economic opportunities.  Both the Vertical Yard and the 14x7m Row House offer two different approaches to achieve growth over time and a mix of uses and economies.”  Full page with images here.

From the write-up about 26’10 South’s proposal included in the Smithsonian Cooper-Hewitt Design Museum’s Design Other 90 Network: “The proposed housing types incorporate dynamic aspects of the informal city, such as flexibility and growth.  The increase in density allows the units to be larger by saving money on land cost, infrastructure, and services.”

Design Other 90 Network is an ”open-network database” and  ”social-media platform that invites everyone to:

• Share vital design resources for developing and emerging economies.
• Connect with stakeholders in the fields of design, architecture, sustainability, humanitarian aid, and more.
• Engage a broad international audience in developing solutions for those living in poverty.”

Douglass Elliman just released the 2011 edition of its annual New York townhouse market 10-year report, prepared by Miller Samuel. From Jonathan Miller’s blog: “I define a ‘townhouse’ as a 1-5 family house that can be delivered vacant. It’s one of my favorite reports to work on because the market is so unique.  Purchasers rarely view these properties as vehicles for cash flow – in appraisal parlance, their ‘highest and best use’ is eventual conversion to single family occupancy.”

The report is copy protected, so I’ll respect that.  But from Real Deal writer Adam Fusfeld: “Sales activity increased 22 percent between 2010 and 2011 to 240 transactions, the highest total since the credit crunch. But Miller said it’s about on point with the 10-year average of 250 sales.  A decade’s worth of data show a 112 percent increase, according to Miller, because there’s so little new construction in the townhouse market.  In fact, the townhouse stock is so old that the average townhouse sold during the decade was built in 1908.

“‘The numbers make the case for a long-term view of housing,’ he said. ‘Real estate professionals lost their way, viewing it as a short-term investment. As an asset it’s slow-moving, but we had a different standard during the boom of double-digit price increases and that’s the wrong approach.  Property shouldn’t be considered a liquid asset like a stock.’”

From Crain’s writer Amanda Fung: “The median sale price dipped 5.1% to about $3.7 million last year, while the average sales price slid 9.4% to roughly $5 million. The decline was largely a result of a steep rise in sales of three-to-five-family houses, which represented 38.3% of all sales last year, compared to 22.3% in 2010.  Mr. Miller attributed the increase in sales of this house type to a boom in the rental market, which is emboldening some buyers of three-to-five-family houses.  Those three-to-five-family houses also tend to be smaller in size than single-family houses. Over the last decade, single-family homes averaged 4,837 square feet and three-to-five-family houses average 4,420 square feet.

“Despite the dip in prices last year, townhouse prices have handily outpaced the overall residential market in terms of price growth this past decade. Townhouse median sales prices have more than doubled since 2002, while median sales prices in Manhattan overall have risen 89% to $850,000.”  (Photo credit: Buck Ennis.)

Old Urbanist’s post inspired me to read Jacobs and Appleyard’s “Toward an Urban Design Manifesto” of 1987.  It’s worth a read, but don’t take my word for it, here are a few teasers.  In the prologue, Jacobs writes: ”What follows, then, is an assertion of what urban places ought to be.  That is what manifestoes are all about.”  The authors share their list of general goals for urban life — livability; identity and control; access to opportunity, imagination, and joy; authenticity and meaning; community and pubic life; urban self-reliance; and an environment for all — and then get manifesto-ing:

“We have some ideas, at least, for how the fabric or texture of cities might be conserved or created to encourage a livable urban environment.  There are five physical characteristics that must be present if there is to be a positive response to the goals and values we believe are central to urban life: livable streets and neighborhoods; some minimum density of residential development as well as intensity of land use; an integration of activities — living, working, shopping — in some reasonable proximity to each other; a manmade environment, particularly buildings, that de- fines public space (as opposed to buildings that, for the most part, sit in space); and many, many separate, distinct buildings with complex arrangements and relationships (as opposed to few, large buildings).”

Did they say many, separate, distinct buildings are required for a “livable” (I’m not a fan of the word) urban environment?  Yes, and to elaborate: “Diversity, the possibility of intimacy and confrontation with the unexpected, stimulation,are all more likely with many buildings than with few taking up the same ground areas.  For a long time we have been led to believe that large land holdings were necessary to design healthy, efficient, aesthetically pleasing urban environments.

“Architects of both ideological persuasions promulgated or were easily convinced of the wisdom of land assembly.  It’s not hard to figure out why.  The results, whether by big business or big government, are more often than not inward-oriented, easily controlled or controllable, sterile, large-building projects, with fewer entrances, fewer windows, less diversity, less innovation, and less individual expression than the urban fabric that existed previously or that can be achieved with many actors and many buildings.

“With smaller buildings and parcels, more entrances must be located on the public spaces, more windows and a finer scale of design diversity emerge.  A more public, lively city is produced.  It implies more, smaller groups getting pieces of the public action, taking part, having a stake.  To keep public frontages alive, free from the deadening effectsof offices and banks, small buildings will help more than large ones. There need to be large buildings, too, but they will be the exception, not the rule.”  Full essay here.