Patches: City Life is a Spreadsheet

I have this whole "thread" of thoughts lately about the urban fabric. I brought it up in the last post even, but want to talk a little more about it.

Cities all over the globe have been experiencing a real change in land ownership. Most older cities were made up of "city parcels," with dimensions like 40' x 100'. Even downtowns, originally at least. The big shift in sizes downtown came in the 1950's (30 years earlier for larger cities like New York). That how urban centers changed from pedestrian scaled blocks with many buildings and tons of doors to mega blocks and four doors (one for each face of the block). This really screws up the nature of the city. As a pedestrian, you have to walk a lot farther to reach the laundromat, the bank, the shop, etc. Even when new development that takes whole block tries to replicate the old with many doors along a sidewalk, the regularity of the building (being designed and developed by a single party) gives this Disney impression of fakeworld.

The interesting thing is that this is now moving out of the urban centers to the next ring or two out as the "way to develop". Don't let anyone fool you. All development is about the economics of the thing, never about design or best scenarios for life. The costs of development must be repaid as soon as possible. Developers don't set out to make something that last for 100 years (they never did, even 100 years ago). They need to get their returns and then turn a certain about of profit (usually 25%) as soon as they can. So with all the talk about "pedestrian" scale or "lifestyle center", don't forget that those are just labels and perhaps minor adjustments make to designs to get things built faster (with less community or city interference) and see their returns.

City life is a spreadsheet.

The spreadsheets say that footprints need to be X size, because stairways, hallways and entrances take away from leaseable or sellable space. All builings, now with modern building codes, need to have two staircases, an elevator and be accessible. By law. All of it steming from local fire departments and the Disabilities Act. So to a developer, that's like a car maker putting air bags and doors on cars. They gotta do it.

So ten 40' x 100' buildings in a block, if they are all new, require 20 staircases and at least 10 elevators. Plus accessible bathrooms on each level. You can get around some of this, but it requires time and headache. And that's money.

But one 400' x 100' building in a block would require much less than 20 staircases, and definately less than 10 elevators. And a lot less hallways. You can't lease hallways, so when development happens, we get the 400' x 100' building. Development always wants to consolidate parcels and build bigger buildings. Not because developers hate us and want us to drive everywhere. Because the spreadsheets they use, or rather, the spreadsheets that their bankers use (or actually, the ones the banks buying the loans from the bank that is lending to the developer use). These aren't bad people. They just can't go to their investors and say they are giving Mrs. Big Developer $300 million dollars so he can make pedestrian friendly urban centers. "Where's proof of our return?" the investors say. And the nice bank says just believe in them. "This new development is gonna work, dangit, I CAN FEEL IT!"

If lending worked like that...wait, that's EXACTLY how we got into the housing mess!...but alas, another post.

Anyway, the best urban centers are a bunch of thin threads that make a fabric. They are knitted together, hopefully by people who were not paying attention to the directions. That way the fabric is all knotted up with irregular holes in it. It doesn't really lay flat, like the first time you tried to knit a scarf. That's the best urban centers (see Tokyo, London, Barcelona, the left bank of Paris, downtown Boston, lower Manhattan, et, al).

So when new development happens in these places, they gotta buy up a bunch of parcels, and combine them to build a big ass building so they can see that return on their investment. But instead of being nice threads reweaving the hole, the easiest thing to do (as any mother fixing a hole on their children's jeans will attest) is to patch it.

Eventually, we get a city of patches. And that never looks good.

One interesting note. I've seen a lot of new buildings in Tokyo that are 10 stories tall and still occupy that 40' x 100' plot. And see four or five together. They look pretty cool. But from up high, you can see new developments, like Roppongi Hills, that totally disenegrate the surrounding fabric. We know Roppongi is successful, economically. So what spreadsheet was the guy that built the little thin thing? (Aside from different egress and accesibilty requirements?)

Secondly, a lot of new development in The City (London) (again, aside from the Gerkin), is taking a whole block of old buildings, keeping the exterior shells and then putting in whole new cores and keeping all the doors on the street -- maybe adding a couple floors. Again, what does this spreadsheet say?

So when people lament that new development destroys cities, tell them to write a better spreadsheet. Marching like a hippy to change the "bad" developers is pointless. Get a real estate degree and start a company. Development is ESSENTIAL for cities. They gotta change, always. We just need to show that good change can be more profitable than what we've been doing.