Urbanism, architecture, transit, strawmen, etc.

[FangKC]

Density without Delight: Vermonniitty’s Lessons for Urban Planners

https://urbanfinland.com/2023/07/24/den ... -planners/

[smh]

Density without Delight: Vermonniitty’s Lessons for Urban Planners

https://urbanfinland.com/2023/07/24/den ... -planners/

Great read, thanks for sharing Fang. I'd suggest a link be forwarded to City Hall and DTC.

[FangKC]

And Port KC. As I looked at some of those photos in Finland, I was reminded of Berkley Riverfront development.

[smh]

And Port KC. As I looked at some of those photos in Finland, I was reminded of Berkley Riverfront development.

Absolutely.

[FangKC]

Seven-stories are the sweet spot.

Why Aren't There Economies of Scale in Building Size?

...
Many of these diseconomies are the result of building taller. Each additional floor adds load to the floor below, requiring heavier structural framing and more extensive foundations. Lateral forces rise non-linearly with height (bending moments rise with the square of height; sway and deflection rise with height to the 4th power), requiring stronger lateral systems and a stiffer structure.

The taller your building gets, the more complex your mechanical systems become, and the more elevators you need to add, which encroach on the rentable space below (shorter buildings, on the other hand, might not need elevators at all). A taller building has more stringent fire safety requirements, requiring the use of expensive, non-combustible materials or fire protection systems. Every additional floor in a building requires proportionally more infrastructure, and requires proportionally more construction time (since it takes longer to move people and materials to the top.

Cost of building with regards to height for US construction, via Eriksen 2021. The jumps at 8 floors are from additional fire safety requirements once your building is a “high rise”. Adding even more floors results in more costs per floor.

A building that just got larger horizontally would also face diseconomies (though fewer, and they might not apply to certain types of buildings such as industrial buildings). Larger buildings require larger parcels of land that will be more difficult to assemble. They face more opposition from the community. They may have increased market risk since they’ll be adding a large volume of available space to the market all at once. They take longer to construct, making the investment returns less attractive. And larger occupancies have stricter fire code requirements even outside of building height.
...

https://www.construction-physics.com/p/ ... ch-cheaper

[alejandro46]

Thanks for posting Fang, very interesting. Will read the other parts later as well.

[FangKC]

Multifamilty construction starts dip below 500K

Developer activity dropped amid difficulty landing financing

Construction starts sunk in recent months as turbulence hit supply and demand in the multifamily market and construction financing gets harder to secure.

In June, there were an annualized run rate of 477,000 apartment units in the starting phase of construction, according to U.S. Census Bureau data reported by Commercial Real Estate Direct. The figure marks a 16.5 percent drop from the previous month and the first time the annualized run rate has sank below 500,000 units since December.

The Census Bureau defines the start of construction as the beginning of excavation for footings or a foundation.

A primary cause of the construction start drop is the difficulty facing financing for projects. As interest rates have ticked upwards over the last year and a half, developers have struggled to find ways to fund projects.
...

[FangKC]

Why we can’t build family-sized apartments in North America

https://www.centerforbuilding.org/blog/ ... th-america

[moderne]

Very enlightening. Its why so many pre WWII apartments are more pleasant with more windows. In new apartments you are almost forced to take the elevator up from the lobby as the stairs are put behind fire doors somewhere far from the lobby. I hate apartments with windows on only one side. In new construction even in a corner unit windows are usually just on one side even then.

[FangKC]

You see a lot of single-family homes in recent decades built with no windows on two walls of the house--just front and back.

[aknowledgeableperson]

An interesting article.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/arti ... s-by-2100/
"The Urban U.S. could look very different in the year 2100, in part because thousands of cities might be rendered virtual ghost towns. According to findings published in Nature Cities, the populations of some 15,000 cities around the country could dwindle to mere fractions of what they are now. The losses are projected to affect cities everywhere in the U.S. except Hawaii and Washington, D.C.

“The way we’re planning now is all based on growth, but close to half the cities in the U.S. are depopulating,” says senior author Sybil Derrible, an urban engineer at the University of Illinois Chicago. “The takeaway is that we need to shift away from growth-based planning, which is going to require an enormous cultural shift in the planning and engineering of cities.”"

[shinatoo]

An interesting article.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/arti ... s-by-2100/
"The Urban U.S. could look very different in the year 2100, in part because thousands of cities might be rendered virtual ghost towns. According to findings published in Nature Cities, the populations of some 15,000 cities around the country could dwindle to mere fractions of what they are now. The losses are projected to affect cities everywhere in the U.S. except Hawaii and Washington, D.C.

“The way we’re planning now is all based on growth, but close to half the cities in the U.S. are depopulating,” says senior author Sybil Derrible, an urban engineer at the University of Illinois Chicago. “The takeaway is that we need to shift away from growth-based planning, which is going to require an enormous cultural shift in the planning and engineering of cities.”"

All this depopulation doesn't seem to be helping with the housing shortage.

[KC_Ari]

An interesting article.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/arti ... s-by-2100/
"The Urban U.S. could look very different in the year 2100, in part because thousands of cities might be rendered virtual ghost towns. According to findings published in Nature Cities, the populations of some 15,000 cities around the country could dwindle to mere fractions of what they are now. The losses are projected to affect cities everywhere in the U.S. except Hawaii and Washington, D.C.

“The way we’re planning now is all based on growth, but close to half the cities in the U.S. are depopulating,” says senior author Sybil Derrible, an urban engineer at the University of Illinois Chicago. “The takeaway is that we need to shift away from growth-based planning, which is going to require an enormous cultural shift in the planning and engineering of cities.”"

All this depopulation doesn't seem to be helping with the housing shortage.

Alot of it is still limited rural areas with limited opportunities for now. I think it will take into the second half of the century for some Suburbs/Ex-Burbs to start to dry up, mostly due to increasing transportation and associated infrastructure becoming untenable, too expensive to maintain/replace.

[KC_Ari]

Bungalow Courts: LA's Best Housing No One Builds Anymore

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VrBWiFRc4qk