Tag: planning

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The Myth of the Suburban Revival

The Myth of the Suburban Revival

Recent economics data released from the Brookings Institute have shown that job sprawl has spread outside of metro downtowns, including Cincinnati. Planning theorists however are at odds as to what this means with New Geography’s Joel Kotkin claiming the “triumph of suburbia” over the center city. However; his assertions seem to be based on several false assumptions in the market and does not take into account the millenial generations preference for walkable neighborhoods. Is this a City vs. Suburb debate or as Robert Steuteville claims a walkable vs. auto-dominated debate? More from Better Cities & Towns:

In his analysis, Kotlin ignores many inconvenient facts and trends that don’t fit his narrative of an inexorable, historical march to lower density in generation after generation. Real estate values have declined in the automobile-oriented suburbs relative to compact, mixed-use neighborhoods. There’s a growing preference for rental housing, and multifamily development has recovered far more quickly than single-family development. Multifamily development has taken on a new character in recent years. In the 1990s it was garden apartments in the suburbs. Now it is being built in urban, transit-served neighborhoods.

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Parking Demand Map Aids Planners

http://www.theatlanticcities.com/commute/2013/04/mapping-subtle-science-parking-demand/5402/

As Cincinnati planners continue to study and move forward on eliminating parking requirements in the urban core, planners in the Seattle area have devised a way to track the supply of parking in parts of the Seattle region. Seattle planners conducted the study by doing parking counts in the middle of the night and matching them up with rental rates and unit affordability. Could a similar map for Cincinnati shed more light on whether the region is providing for more parking than it needs? More from the Atlantic Cities:

On average, these buildings were supplying about 1.4 parking stalls per housing unit; residents were only using about 1 stall per unit. And that oversupply extended across the region, from the central business district to urban neighborhoods to the suburbs. The project also collected information from each of these buildings on how the parking was priced, how the rental units were priced, and whether those two costs were bundled together. All of that information from this building survey was then used, alongside data on land use, demographics, job locations, and transit to hone a model capable of estimating the parking demand on a given property, accounting for factors like its proximity to transit and the price of parking relative to rent.

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Atlanta aims to capitalize on shifting global trade patterns with new export plan

Atlanta aims to capitalize on shifting global trade patterns with new export plan.

The City of Atlanta has launched a new regional plan for growing exports. The plan is seen as a critical step to help continue growth in the nation’s 13th largest metropolitan region, and aims to capitalize on shifting global trade patterns. More from Brookings:

By 2012, a majority of the 50 top performing metropolitan economies worldwide were in developing Asia-Pacific countries. U.S. metros must take advantage of growing demand abroad by developing export and engagement strategies that build on their special assets in the global economy.

The region has already taken the first step. Two weeks ago, Mayor Kasim Reed announced the launch of an Atlanta Metropolitan Export Plan that will be developed in collaboration with some of the region’s key business, political, university and non-profit leaders. The next step will be to conduct a market assessment of regional industries, identify the metro’s strengths and weaknesses, and determine what policies and investments are necessary to grow exports.

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Is NYC getting it wrong by putting development ahead of infrastructure improvements?

Is NYC getting it wrong by putting development ahead of infrastructure improvements?.

New York City officials are looking to pass new regulations that will allow for taller and more modern buildings throughout east Midtown. The demand for office space in the area is extremely high and city leaders would love to capitalize on it, but others worry that the efforts may be short-sighted given the city’s strained infrastructure. More from the New York Times:

With district improvement bonuses, the City Planning study proposes to double the developable floor area on some sites around Grand Central, allowing enough additional square footage to give us a neighborhood of towering office buildings, some as tall as 1,300 feet or more. (For reference, the Chrysler Building is 1,046 feet to the top of its spire.)

But how will the added workers quartered in these new buildings get from their trains to their desks? The plan says that special assessments and payments in lieu of taxes will guarantee “pedestrian network improvements as development occurs.” There is nothing wrong with privately financed infrastructure improvements. But the study, if I read it correctly, gets it backward: first you put in the infrastructure, then you build the buildings. Look at the example of Grand Central, the private enterprise that spurred all this development in the first place.

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NYC’s newly opened bike share system experiencing record membership sales

NYC’s newly opened bike share system experiencing record membership sales.

New York City opened its much-anticipated CitiBike system earlier this week, and business is off to a record start. Within the first 24 hours alone, more than 4,000 people signed up for memberships. Cincinnati issued a request for proposals in October 2012 for what city leadership hopes will be a -bike, 35-station bike share system. More from Streetsblog NYC:

Comparing the first wave of subscriptions in NYC to other bike-share cities is tough, since the Citi Bike service area is much larger than the other networks, and other cities launched at different times of year. (Capital Bikeshare in Washington, DC, is currently the largest bike-share system in the country, but it launched with only 49 stations.) Even taking into account the relatively large size of the Citi Bike service area, which will provide 6,000 bikes at 330 stations, the sign-up rate in NYC is off the charts so far.