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From Better! Cities & Towns writer Joe Nickol: “Recently I have been working in Nashville, Tennessee, meeting with, among many others, representatives from the visual arts, music, and business communities to discuss ways that new downtown development can reinforce Nashville’s legacy as one of the most creative cities in North America.

“The central question of this exploration is what about this city allows Nashvillians to use it to develop explosive musical talent generation after generation while developing brains at an equally impressive rate?  If not for key physical attributes, Nashvillians could not have used their city in a highly adaptive and productive manner.  These attributes include:

“Affordable, hyper-adaptive buildings that age well.  Nashville has a diverse stock of buildings that were practically constructed and whose simplicity has allowed them to adapt to changing market needs through time.  Although, like most other cities, newer buildings largely fail to abide by this pattern, they have pulled uses out of the aging stock to allow creative reuse at price points that allow musicians and startups to access and afford them.  This flexibility in use affords great resilience to economic changes and positions the city well to take take advantage of unforeseen opportunities.

“Compression, Connectivity, and Inter-Mixing.  Practical, well-constructed buildings are not enough.  Cities such as Nashville thrive on compression and interconnectivity between buildings, places, and users.  This allows strangers and acquaintances to come together comfortably and organically to perform and exchange ideas.  This is the birthplace of technology (in the classic sense of the word) and the hotbed of innovation where new ideas are constantly emerging from old ones.

“But not all cities are like the music industry.  Many are like corporations.  They tend to tense up as they grow and age.  This generally tilts policy and behavior toward protecting largeness at the expense of the more resilient scale of the tinkerers, innovators, and startups.  The effects of doing so can be seen in our urban landscapes when many small parcels and buildings get assembled into creating super-blocks and mega structures.”  Full article here.

The writings of Nassim Taleb inspired this post more than a year ago, and recently inspired Strong Towns writer Charles Marohn: “Today, after being able to read the Patron Saint of Strong Towns Thinking Nassim Taleb’s new book Antifragile, I am able to more fully grasp, and explain more succinctly, the concept I was struggling so hard to develop.

“A city built in the traditional development pattern — the human settlement approach used for millennia across geographies and cultures — has high upside and low downside.  In periods of robust growth, it will prosper.  In periods of stagnation and decline, it will not fall apart or implode but actually experience innovation and undergo renewal.  This is beyond resilience; it is antifragile.

“In Taleb’s book he has a chart where he lists fragile and antifragile approaches across a broad spectrum of social endeavors, from finance to medicine.  The last entry is ‘urbanism’ where he lists: ‘Fragile: Robert Moses.  Antifragile: Jane Jacobs.’

“We have come to see the stagnation and decline of our blocks and neighborhoods as a normal part of the development process.  It is not.  The normal course of human development is for successful cities to mature incrementally over time.  When that occurs, they become financially resilient.  That is what literally thousands of years of human history tells us is the ‘normal’ pattern for cities; an incremental maturing process where prior investments are built on, expanded and enhanced over time.”

“As James Howard Kunstler wrote, so many American cities simply committed suicide.  It was self-inflicted damage, but injury was not the intention.  The goal was growth.  A community’s emphasis needs to shift from creating growth quickly and easily to building value in a broad and incremental way.”  Full post here.

From Atlantic Cities writer Emily Badger: “Dan and Ben Miller began tugging two years ago at a simple question they believe is central to the failings of the American real estate industry.  The brothers – sons of a well-known Washington, D.C. developer – had begun acquiring properties themselves in the city’s emerging neighborhoods where traditional capital seldom goes.

“This model – with its broken connection between a neighborhood’s desires and its investors’ bottom line – seemed to the brothers illogical.  Most American cities as we know them today weren’t built this way.  Historically, hotels and restaurants and shops were built by local people investing in their own neighborhoods.

“The Millers have invested the last two years and nearly a million dollars in trying to answer this question: Why can’t small-time investors put their money in their own communities?  You can’t buy into a true real estate deal unless government regulators believe you’re wealthy enough to know how to handle your own money.  Until now, the Millers themselves have been restricted to raising funds from accredited investors they personally know.

“Then, finally, in August, they successfully took a single property on H Street public.  Under a new company called Fundrise, the Millers invited anyone in the area – accredited or not – to invest online in this one building and its future business for shares as small as $100, in a public offering qualified by the Securities and Exchange Commission.

“When the Millers first started mulling this, they had no idea if what they wanted to do was logistically possible.  The SEC does, however, have a little-used mechanism – Regulation A – that permits small offerings to unaccredited investors in exchange for time-consuming and financially costly scrutiny by both federal and state regulators.  In 2011, 19 such offerings were filed with the SEC.

“Ben remembers sitting in the conference room with a real estate lawyer, explaining that he and Dan wanted to raise money from small-time investors for small, local projects.  ’He looked at me,’ Ben says, ‘and he said, “Why would you bother with the little people?”‘  In all, the Millers went through half a dozen law firms, spending hundreds of thousands of dollars along the way, before finally landing in the summer of 2011 at O’Melveny & Myers.  Every one of the 3,250 shares the Millers offered was taken, with the average investor putting in close to $2,000.

“While the Millers were trudging through their Regulation A filing, Congress unexpectedly took up crowdfunding and baked a new regulatory exemption for it into the JOBS Act, allowing unaccredited investments by most people of up to $2,000 a year.  In the meantime, the Millers have already submitted another Regulation A filing for a different property they own on H Street (byzantine SEC rules forbid them from admitting that they have another public sale in the works, but we just looked it up in a public database).

“Tech entrepreneurs keep telling him we don’t get you guys, and he takes this as a compliment. They always want to know, bemused, ‘what’s in it for you?’ And it’s a good question. ‘For us, God,’ Ben says, leaning back in his chair as if to take in something massive in front of him, ‘imagine if we become the platform for how people participate in and build and invest in their environment.’” Full article here.

From Philadelphia Inquirer writer Inga Saffron: “Far too often, housing designed for Philadelphia’s poor wears the architectural equivalent of a scarlet letter.  A trio of new rowhouses in Logan could make them change their minds.

“Not only are the rowhouses stylish and modern both inside and out, they are among the most energy-efficient ever built in the United States.  Produced by Onion Flats, the quirky firm that designs, builds, develops, and sometimes markets its own residential projects, the homes are the first in Pennsylvania to be certified by the demanding International Passive House Institute.  Perhaps the most remarkable thing about the houses is that they cost the same to build as a conventional brick box, about $250,000 apiece, or $129 a square foot.

“Onion Flats wasn’t asked to deliver quality design when the firm was hired by a local nonprofit development group, Raise of Hope, architect Tim McDonald recounted.  How fast and cheap could they build the houses, Raise of Hope wanted to know.  McDonald promised to make the design as sophisticated and energy-efficient as the homes his company is now selling for $700,000-plus on North American Street in Northern Liberties.

“Onion Flats was able to pull off the feat because of the work it has done to develop low-cost, modular construction techniques. A few years ago, Onion Flats founded a spin-off company called Blox to build rowhouses in sections inside a Pottstown factory.  While the modules were being assembled in the factory, Onion Flats was able to prepare the site, saving time and money.  Today, barely six months after Onion Flats received the Logan commission, the three rowhouses stand in the dappled shade of mature trees, ready for families to move in.

“McDonald sees the project as proof that low-income housing can be just as good as the market-rate version. ‘These are zero energy with zero premium, so there should be zero debate. Why would you build it any other way?’”  Full article here.

From CNU-sponsored researcher Kevin Gillen: “This report analyzes how varying levels of house price declines are correlated with varying characteristics of New Urbanist principles: walkability, central location, density, mixture of uses and access to public transportation.

“In Philadelphia, during the most recent housing downturn of 2007-2012, home price declines have been greatest in the relatively low-density suburbs (-32.7%), second-most in Philadelphia county (-26.7%) and the smallest in the urban core of Center City (-20.2%).

“The R-squared indicates that 76% (out of a possible 100%) of the regional variation in house price declines are explained by the location, design and socio-economic characteristics of the individual communities.

• Every 1-person increase in a Zip’s population density is associated with a – 0.00287% decrease in the magnitude of house price declines.
• Every 1% increase in the percent of a Zip’s building stock that is classified as ‘residential’ is associated with a 70.4% increase in the magnitude of house price declines.
• Every 1% increase in the percent of a Zip’s housing stock that is classified as ‘detached’ (as opposed to “attached”) is associated with a 10.8% increase in the magnitude of house price declines.
• Being a Zip code that contains a balanced mix of both residential and commercial properties is associated with a 6.4% decrease in the magnitude of house price declines.
• Every additional business (per square mile) that a Zip code has is associated with a 0.01% decrease in the magnitude of house price declines.”

“Homes in mixed-use, walkable, relatively higher-density neighborhoods and communities with access to public transportation retained relatively more of their value during the bust.  They were worth an average of $192,624 by the time the market hit its bottom in 2012.  [See chart above.]  By contrast, the dwellings that lost the most of their value were in areas that had a high degree of residential-only development and a high percentage of detached homes. Their average post-bubble value was $111,329.”  Full paper here.

If you’ve been looking for examples of new urban townhouse construction, look no further than these 26 different projects with photos and analysis by Hidden City Philadelphia writer Michael Burlando: “If you want to see how Philadelphia builds row houses today, for better or worse, there’s no better place to visit than Graduate Hospital.

“During the feverish rebuilding of the neighborhood that took place over the last decade – G-Ho went from more than 500 vacant lots and houses in 1998 to fewer than 100 today – the mania of the boom gave rise to the infamous ‘G-Ho Special.’  Vinyl and stucco abounded; vapid garage-fronts and a total lack of detailing were the order of the day.  There are great contemporary houses in the mix as well, bringing new materials, attitudes, and life to the old blocks in sensitive and thoughtful ways.”  Full post with all photos and analysis here.

The US federal government is considering raising Washington, DC’s height limit, which has sparked several articles pro and con.  One of the better articles (not just because it favors lower height) is from Atlantic Cities writer Kaid Benfield, who responds to several pro-tall arguments, including affordability and sustainability

Limiting supply reduces affordability?  ”Maybe the reason developers say we ‘can’t grow’ is because we may be running out of large, undeveloped sites suitable for mega-projects. Personally, I don’t see why that’s a bad thing: I think it would be better for the city (if not for large developers) to add new buildings in a more incremental, fine-grained way on smaller parcels as their current uses go out of service.

Increasing density helps the environment?  ”There is little additional benefit to these environmental indicators, for example, as density increases beyond about 60 homes per acre, as one might find in a three- or four-story apartment building.  In any event, denser doesn’t necessarily mean taller.  These numbers may surprise you: Barcelona is denser than New York City, housing 41,000 people per square mile compared to New York’s 27,000.  It does not have buildings taller than Washington’s.”  (Image credit: Flickr user Schodts.)