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In today’s construction news, read about two models that demonstrate how American towns might expedite the construction of high-quality housing that people want to live in and appreciate as part of their urban landscape. On the other hand, November saw no change in U.S. construction investment as a steep drop in multi-family housing project spending counterbalanced a modest increase in single-family homebuilding.
American Housing Construction Rethinked
Original Source: A Radical (and Totally Practical) Rethinking of U.S. Housing Construction
What if bureaucracy caused the housing crisis, not lumber, labor, or land? Imagine if cities built the housing they need instead of developers managing entitlements, permits, and approvals. The good news is that two approaches can help U.S. cities quickly build high-quality housing that people want to live in and see on the streetscape. The first is Vienna, a global affordable housing model that shows how streamlined methods and collaborative policies can quickly build high-quality urban houses. The second is Paris, which devised conventional architectural blueprints in the mid-19th century to efficiently build iconic neighborhoods, drawing on old Roman models.
The Issue
The Terner Center at Berkeley and California projects show that red tape, delays, regulations, and taxes can quadruple housing prices unrelated to materials, labor, or land. An adversarial and time-consuming entitlement and permitting process can result in pricey, low-quality housing that is out of proportion with the street and has high-carbon footprints that lock in vehicle culture. Even in hot housing markets like Los Angeles and San Francisco, regulations have hampered modest apartments, starter homes, townhomes, and other inexpensive housing. It stopped planning missing-middle, inexpensive, and workforce housing. Housing shortages have drove up costs, making it harder for the typical Californian to buy a home.
How did this happen? Due to stakeholder (NIMBY) opposition to new construction, communities have created a lengthy red tape and delaying process. Cities implemented laws, procedures, and fees (“extractions”) to benefit the community in exchange for building. However, some cynical towns constructed the system to hurt housing finances. These governments can appear to allow few units through the system while purposely tying housing up in knots so nothing pencils out—and what doesn’t pencil out doesn’t get built, the true goal.
Possible Solution
What if cities built homes instead of requiring property owners, builders, and developers to navigate an expensive, time-consuming permitting process? Vienna and Paris demonstrate how to reduce red tape and build stakeholder-approved homes. Vienna has become so successful that renting or buying there is half the cost of London and 25% of New York.
The Vienna Model
Vienna reversed the entitlement and approval procedure, which might be applied to U.S. communities. For most of Vienna’s housing, the city specifies where and how new dwellings should look, then fully authorizes and permits projects, letting builders focus on building.
Vienna sets development goals and zones land. It then hosts design competitions for entries that meet the requirements and aims. A jury of experts and local stakeholders selects a winning design, and the city advances the project and grants a ready-to-issue permit. To ease developer burdens, the city supplies roads, sewerage, etc. Developers and builders can focus on quality building.
The result? In Vienna, construction expenses are half those in the U.S., despite greater labor costs. Construction supplies are imported from abroad, and Vienna employs higher-quality, more expensive materials than the U.S. Vienna planned and simplifies house construction. U.S. communities can scale up this concept by combining it with the Paris standard plan.
Paris Standard Plans
In the late 1800s, Paris proactively planned the city and developed architectural plans for the iconic Paris building, typical of six stories, clad in limestone, with a pattern book of decorative elements. Builders were free to build these blueprints and developed some of the world’s most admired streetscapes. Other global standardizing examples include Brooklyn brownstones, London townhomes, and Savannah row houses.
These structures were formerly considered boring, but they are today some of the most desirable residential districts worldwide. Streetscapes with a uniform height, human scale, and order and variation attract people. This creates a quiet in the city, boosts curb appeal, and protects first-time and low-income homeowners’ investments. These developments’ high real estate values show their desirability. Simply put, where would we live?
Standard designs are popular in California and other U.S. communities for expediting development. City governments streamline, lower costs, and simplify design and permitting for small builders and property owners by pre-entitling ADU and small multifamily building plans. To encourage parcel owners to build dwellings. “Since the ADU reform agenda took hold in Sacramento in 2016, the number of ADUs permitted each year in California increased by 15,334% – resulting in 83,865 permitted ADUs statewide,” according to California YIMBY.
This standard plan concept can be applied to urban infill. By design, commercial block portions are the same size, usually 40 or 50 by 100, 140, or 150 or 25 or 30 by 90 or 100. A neighborhood might pre-entitle preferred architectural plans for each street parcel through a design competition or submission process. The city can work with builders to expedite permits and inspections, eliminating construction delays.
Both Paris and Vienna solve mobility
Permitting has helped Vienna and Paris build high-quality cities, but it’s not the sole one. Vienna, known as the “15-minute city,” has all daily needs within walking distance. This is key to constructing places people want to live in.
Both cities have lively avenues for walking and shopping. Vienna’s city center is pedestrianized and has a world-class bus and tram system. This top transportation solution removes automobiles and pricey on-site residential parking. Construction expenses drop, lowering housing prices.
Five Key Steps
Five strategies can help U.S. cities copy Vienna and Paris to simplify high-quality housing:
Find underdeveloped commercial corridors with fine-grain retail neighborhoods near jobs and transit to inventory walkable neighborhood land. A 15-minute community is built around small retail establishments that meet all daily and weekly needs. Building homes above that can be accelerated by cities via the Livable Communities Initiative procedure. To coincide with AFFH, corridors should be near high-quality public assets (parks, schools, etc.) and in high-opportunity neighborhoods.
Choose the architecture: Hold a design competition or submit high-quality concepts that match the neighborhood’s aesthetics to a panel of stakeholders and experts. When a beautiful structure is created, the architect and community can petition the city to make it a standard plan so any parcel owner can build the same building (with minor alterations).
Establish a Department of Streamlining: Pre-entitle and fast-track these designs to allow projects to begin in 60–90 days. This is common worldwide and in many states. Los Angeles Unified School District schools were built swiftly thanks to the mayor’s office’s effective methodology for fast-tracking and streamlining building permitting. Founded by an ex-LA. The program created a mayor’s office department dedicated to school project efficiency, speed, and cost reduction under city planner Jane Blumenfeld. Recreate this department for housing. It would approach permitting holistically and coordinate with all agencies (water, power, fire, urban forestry) using the same methodology. To enable housing by supporting growth, not standing in its way. The city now plans where and how it wants housing (high-quality, zero-carbon, family-sized starter homes in walkable communities near jobs and transit). Since the city wants this housing, departments must make it easy and feasible. The U.S. could build a five-story building in under six months using this method. Why should cities ease developer approval? City needs and desires housing. The city hopes to persuade landowners in designated locations to build the buildings the city and community want by providing an efficient, simple, and penciled-out approach.
Improve local streets in high-density neighborhoods to create diverse, living communities away from noisy, hazardous, and dirty roadways. Cities can reduce traffic or make certain streets car-light or car-free. Cities can make urban living more sustainable, egalitarian, and pleasurable by offering safe bike paths, accessible transit stops, and shared automobile services. Mobility improvements, great streetscapes, and lots of cheap housing may rejuvenate areas and attract a diverse population.
Include public benefits like affordability, sustainability, and economic development: Streamlining reduces unnecessary expenditures and increases feasibility to encourage home creation. More space is available for public advantages like sustainability, affordability, high-quality design and construction, and union labor. Due to the climate emergency, this is a once-in-a-lifetime chance to reduce car and home emissions. Ideally, all of California’s 3.5 million houses would have zero-carbon mobility.
Giving local goals priority; existing programs include teachers/school employees, public-sector employees, local employees, essential workers, low-income households, individuals with disabilities, retirees, etc.
Outcomes
The public benefits could help cities and the state achieve many goals: lower carbon emissions, fewer vehicles, more affordable housing, equity and economic diversity, homeownership rates, recruiting and retaining teachers, ADA, economic development, jobs, small business creation, crime reduction through vibrant streets, and public sector employee recruitment and support.
This program unlocks starter homes in cohesive 15-minute neighborhoods and catalyzes a local building industry of small builders, engineers, and architects to meet CA’s 3.5 million-home deficit, which could unlock over one trillion dollars in economic activity. Low-cost financing and a variety of small builders can spur innovation and competition for quality and price, resulting in more housing and lower rents. Unlocking prefab and factory-built components could save prices. These advances can help subsidized affordable housing developers create high-quality houses faster and cheaper at the scale our country requires.
Municipalities can view this program as economic development and revive an RDA or TIF model to finance infrastructure, street, planning department staff, and fee reductions or waivers.
California is struggling to create housing, especially high-quality starter homes, and fulfill climate targets, putting the housing situation at a crossroads. Cities may build inexpensive, beautiful, and functioning neighborhoods by following Vienna’s proactive, streamlined strategy and Paris’ standard plans model. It’s easy and not radical: Plan our cities for high-quality housing, secure streets, and healthy, attractive neighborhoods, then execute at the highest level.
In November, US Construction Spending was Unchanged
Original Source: US reports construction spending unchanged in November
November construction spending remained steady as single-family homebuilding rose moderately and multi-family housing projects fell sharply.
The Commerce Department’s Census Bureau reported Thursday that construction spending was steady after a 0.5% increase in October.
Reuters economists predicted a 0.3% increase in construction spending in November after a 0.4% increase in October. November construction spending rose 3.0% annually.
Private construction spending rose 0.1% after 0.6% in October. Residential building investment rose 0.1%, with single-family projects up 0.3%.
Higher mortgage rates, President-elect Donald Trump’s vow to slap taxes on imports, and his incoming administration’s wide promise to deport immigrants could slow new building. Trump’s tax cuts and other policies have raised mortgage rates despite the Fed’s rate reduction.
After its third consecutive rate cut last month, the U.S. central bank expected only two rate cuts next year, down from four in September, citing the economy’s resiliency.
Multifamily housing spending decreased 1.3% in November. Home remodeling spending rose.
November saw little change in office and factory investment.
Public construction spending fell 0.1% in November after falling 0.1% in October. State and local government spending fell 0.1%, while federal spending fell 0.5%.
Summary of today’s construction news
To sum it up, the U.S. housing issue is reaching a turning point, particularly in California, which is having difficulty meeting climate targets and building housing, particularly high-quality starter houses. Cities may design neighborhoods that are reasonably priced, aesthetically pleasing, and useful by implementing Paris’ standard plans model and Vienna’s proactive, efficient model.
On the other hand, after decreasing by the same amount in October, spending on public construction projects fell by 0.1% in November. Spending by the federal government decreased by 0.5%, while spending by state and municipal governments decreased by 0.1%.
