Soooo, how is high-density looking to everyone now?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I live in DC, and I'm really liking it. It's not like NYC where it's hard to find space. I can go for a walk and maintain plenty of distance, but I can also have a porch happy hour where I can chat with all my neighbors while we are all on our own porches. I can be by myself yet not feel lonely.

+1

DC is livable. NYC is not.

I vote for less density. More green space, fewer condo buildings.

Please provide a single example in DC of green space that was converted to condos or any other type of housing?

One example: Ward 3 homeless shelter

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Our neighborhood (Cleveland Park in Washington) is called the “village in the city.” We love that. It doesn’t have to be Bethesda.

It basically is Bethesda...

Also, other people would also like to live in Cleveland Park.

There are apartment vacancies and condos and houses on the market right now.

Well, of course there are. That's how the housing market works. There are always some vacancies and some housing units on the market. But you wouldn't seriously argue that these vacancies/units on the market prove that there's no demand for additional housing, would you?

There’s always demand for new housing at a lower price. Many people would love to find an affordable flat across from the Metropolitan Museum or in Aspen but that’s not a realistic entitlement. Closer to home and a bit more down to earth, you could replace a lot of SFHs in the Palisades, Chevy Chase DC and Cleveland Park with taller and denser apartment buildings. Some might be cheaper but I suspect a lot would be very high end. Of course, then you would destroy a lot of the neighborhood character and change the quiet leafy streets and other qualities that people value. Then those neighborhoods will become a lot more generic looking, just another place to live in DC.

This argument is basically, "I live here, and I don't want it to change, so the other people who own property here should have to do what I want."

You realize, don’t you, that there are thousands of new housing units in Ward 3 that are under construction or in projects getting ready to break ground. They range from City Ridge (Fannie site) to 4000 Wisconsin next door (with over 1500 residences between them), the Lady Bird in AU Park, several new buildings in Tenleytown and Friendship Heights, just to name as few. A good question is where is the local school capacity for these residences, even if only 20 percent have kids of school age? What is worrisome is that the proposed Comp Plan amendments actually weaken the requirement to consider local infrastructure, such as schools, in approving large development projects!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Just found this thread. So fun. I have NEVER really understood the argument for increasing density in the name of saving the planet and global warming. Maybe at the expense of humanity as we are seeing.

Anyway, why does there seem to be an assumption in this thread that Single Family Homes are being occupied by predominately singles and empty nesters? There seem to be LOTS of families with kids of all ages in green leafy DC neighborhoods.

My family has been getting a daily walk or two over the course of this event. I must say that I am very grateful that I am walking through green neighborhoods and not concrete canyons that the "make it denser and build it higher" lobby are always pushing for. Whoever passed the current height laws was a visionary and knew that people needed to breathe.

Good luck to all. Enjoy your wide quiet streets in these times.

This is so true! Let’s keep Washington low-scale, green and walkable.

Washington has a great quantity of green space and always will and additional development won't remove any of Washington's green space so its unclear what you are even talking about.

And there is nothing about density that is incompatible with walkability - in fact generally speaking it is the opposite that is the case as dense areas have to be walkable to function while low dense areas tend to be car dependent and hostile to pedestrians.

In any case even the dense areas of DC are pretty low scale by just about any measure - global, national or even regional.

But hey keep on being misinformed and conflating things!

The Office of Planning is pushing a plan with the soothing sounding name of “gentle density” that would change single family house zones. The OP proposed future land use map in fact identified a large swatch of the Wisconsin area, including residential streets of Tenleytown, AU Park, McLean Gardens, Cleveland Park, etc several blocks from the Avenue as a special zoning study area in which the planning agency could upzone density by directive (according to the map key).

Nope that is untrue. DCOP has not proposed any upzoning of areas that are currently zoned for single family homes.

OP did identify several areas of the city where they recommended doing some sort of small area plan but in the case of Wisconsin Avenue the area was almost entirely focused on the corridor and in any case it was not an upzoning proposal just a suggestion for additional study.

Please try again.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I live in DC, and I'm really liking it. It's not like NYC where it's hard to find space. I can go for a walk and maintain plenty of distance, but I can also have a porch happy hour where I can chat with all my neighbors while we are all on our own porches. I can be by myself yet not feel lonely.

+1

DC is livable. NYC is not.

I vote for less density. More green space, fewer condo buildings.

Please provide a single example in DC of green space that was converted to condos or any other type of housing?

One example: Ward 3 homeless shelter

Nope please try again. The Ward 3 homeless shelter was constructed on part of the police stations parking lot.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Our neighborhood (Cleveland Park in Washington) is called the “village in the city.” We love that. It doesn’t have to be Bethesda.

It basically is Bethesda...

Also, other people would also like to live in Cleveland Park.

There are apartment vacancies and condos and houses on the market right now.

Well, of course there are. That's how the housing market works. There are always some vacancies and some housing units on the market. But you wouldn't seriously argue that these vacancies/units on the market prove that there's no demand for additional housing, would you?

There’s always demand for new housing at a lower price. Many people would love to find an affordable flat across from the Metropolitan Museum or in Aspen but that’s not a realistic entitlement. Closer to home and a bit more down to earth, you could replace a lot of SFHs in the Palisades, Chevy Chase DC and Cleveland Park with taller and denser apartment buildings. Some might be cheaper but I suspect a lot would be very high end. Of course, then you would destroy a lot of the neighborhood character and change the quiet leafy streets and other qualities that people value. Then those neighborhoods will become a lot more generic looking, just another place to live in DC.

This argument is basically, "I live here, and I don't want it to change, so the other people who own property here should have to do what I want."

You realize, don’t you, that there are thousands of new housing units in Ward 3 that are under construction or in projects getting ready to break ground. They range from City Ridge (Fannie site) to 4000 Wisconsin next door (with over 1500 residences between them), the Lady Bird in AU Park, several new buildings in Tenleytown and Friendship Heights, just to name as few. A good question is where is the local school capacity for these residences, even if only 20 percent have kids of school age? What is worrisome is that the proposed Comp Plan amendments actually weaken the requirement to consider local infrastructure, such as schools, in approving large development projects!

There are not several new buildings coming in Tenleytown and Friendship Heights. There are 2 buildings approved for Tenleytown and nothing approved for Friendship Heights.

The two large projects in Cleveland Park on Wisconsin Ave and the Lady Bird project are a fraction of what is being built in other parts of DC so no Ward 3 really isn't unfairly shouldering DC's housing burden.

BTW the two larger projects were matter of right projects which is to say the city needs to deal with the out of boundary student issue in WOTP schools regardless so your pining for more review would do nothing to address the issue you claim to care about it though it is doubtful you have actual skin in that game.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Our neighborhood (Cleveland Park in Washington) is called the “village in the city.” We love that. It doesn’t have to be Bethesda.

It basically is Bethesda...

Also, other people would also like to live in Cleveland Park.

There are apartment vacancies and condos and houses on the market right now.

Well, of course there are. That's how the housing market works. There are always some vacancies and some housing units on the market. But you wouldn't seriously argue that these vacancies/units on the market prove that there's no demand for additional housing, would you?

There’s always demand for new housing at a lower price. Many people would love to find an affordable flat across from the Metropolitan Museum or in Aspen but that’s not a realistic entitlement. Closer to home and a bit more down to earth, you could replace a lot of SFHs in the Palisades, Chevy Chase DC and Cleveland Park with taller and denser apartment buildings. Some might be cheaper but I suspect a lot would be very high end. Of course, then you would destroy a lot of the neighborhood character and change the quiet leafy streets and other qualities that people value. Then those neighborhoods will become a lot more generic looking, just another place to live in DC.

This argument is basically, "I live here, and I don't want it to change, so the other people who own property here should have to do what I want."

You realize, don’t you, that there are thousands of new housing units in Ward 3 that are under construction or in projects getting ready to break ground. They range from City Ridge (Fannie site) to 4000 Wisconsin next door (with over 1500 residences between them), the Lady Bird in AU Park, several new buildings in Tenleytown and Friendship Heights, just to name as few. A good question is where is the local school capacity for these residences, even if only 20 percent have kids of school age? What is worrisome is that the proposed Comp Plan amendments actually weaken the requirement to consider local infrastructure, such as schools, in approving large development projects!

There are not several new buildings coming in Tenleytown and Friendship Heights. There are 2 buildings approved for Tenleytown and nothing approved for Friendship Heights.

The two large projects in Cleveland Park on Wisconsin Ave and the Lady Bird project are a fraction of what is being built in other parts of DC so no Ward 3 really isn't unfairly shouldering DC's housing burden.

BTW the two larger projects were matter of right projects which is to say the city needs to deal with the out of boundary student issue in WOTP schools regardless so your pining for more review would do nothing to address the issue you claim to care about it though it is doubtful you have actual skin in that game.

“Shouldering DC’s housing burden”? To build what, more upscale young professional flats? The DC CFO - who has an incentive to make accurate projections - projects a rate of population growth in DC that is significantly below that projected by the office of planning and development cheerleaders in the smart growth community to justify their push for upzoning. As for affordable housing, most housing professionals concede that inclusive zoning requirements, which in DC are paltry anyway, will not make a meangingful dent. Im other words we are not going to provide a significant amount of affordable housing through lots of up zoning, market rate housing construction and trickle down IZ. What will move the needle on providing affordable and workforce housing is when the DC government builds such housing itself or in partnership with a nonprofit. That is likely to be on sites that the DC government owns or can acquire for redevelopment. That, and doing everything possible to protect existing rent controlled units of which there are several thousand in Ward 3. Upzoning in fact creates pressure to remove rent controlled housing by creating economic incentives for developers to purchase and raze older apartment buildings where many such units exist, to replace them with new, upmarket buildings.

[Anonymous]

I would buy a condo in NYC if the price drops low enough for me to afford a vacation place. Only 3 weeks ago that city was a fun place to be. It'll be like that again soon - guaranteed.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

You realize, don’t you, that there are thousands of new housing units in Ward 3 that are under construction or in projects getting ready to break ground. They range from City Ridge (Fannie site) to 4000 Wisconsin next door (with over 1500 residences between them), the Lady Bird in AU Park, several new buildings in Tenleytown and Friendship Heights, just to name as few. A good question is where is the local school capacity for these residences, even if only 20 percent have kids of school age? What is worrisome is that the proposed Comp Plan amendments actually weaken the requirement to consider local infrastructure, such as schools, in approving large development projects!

"Only 20%"? 20% would be very high. Currently in Ward 3, about 15% of households (all housing type) have children (all ages)

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I live in DC, and I'm really liking it. It's not like NYC where it's hard to find space. I can go for a walk and maintain plenty of distance, but I can also have a porch happy hour where I can chat with all my neighbors while we are all on our own porches. I can be by myself yet not feel lonely.

+1

DC is livable. NYC is not.

I vote for less density. More green space, fewer condo buildings.

Please provide a single example in DC of green space that was converted to condos or any other type of housing?

One example: Ward 3 homeless shelter

Nope please try again. The Ward 3 homeless shelter was constructed on part of the police stations parking lot.

Wow, you really do not know what went into that project do you? Keep living in your make believe world where construction occurs on existing parking lots.

When you do read up on it, understand that, I realize that the plot of land is owned by DC. My point was that it was green, they changed the zoning to accommodate it and now it is concrete. Lots of examples, both private and public that fit this example. AU Nebraska Ave development. I understand it is private. It used to have a setback and now is built from the sidewalk to the developments behind it. Is it awful? No, it is actually attractive, but it has changed that open walk considerably. Now imagine the entire corridor like that.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

You realize, don’t you, that there are thousands of new housing units in Ward 3 that are under construction or in projects getting ready to break ground. They range from City Ridge (Fannie site) to 4000 Wisconsin next door (with over 1500 residences between them), the Lady Bird in AU Park, several new buildings in Tenleytown and Friendship Heights, just to name as few. A good question is where is the local school capacity for these residences, even if only 20 percent have kids of school age? What is worrisome is that the proposed Comp Plan amendments actually weaken the requirement to consider local infrastructure, such as schools, in approving large development projects!

"Only 20%"? 20% would be very high. Currently in Ward 3, about 15% of households (all housing type) have children (all ages)

The poster said that even if only 20 percent of the 'incoming' have kids. He did not mention anything about the existing residents, though as you were quick to state it was 20% in the last snapshot and is growing at a rate of 26% over the last four years. So that would seem to be a valid school planning factor.

Is it a common belief that only single people want to move into the city to occupy this new, denser housing? Or just couples with dogs?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

You realize, don’t you, that there are thousands of new housing units in Ward 3 that are under construction or in projects getting ready to break ground. They range from City Ridge (Fannie site) to 4000 Wisconsin next door (with over 1500 residences between them), the Lady Bird in AU Park, several new buildings in Tenleytown and Friendship Heights, just to name as few. A good question is where is the local school capacity for these residences, even if only 20 percent have kids of school age? What is worrisome is that the proposed Comp Plan amendments actually weaken the requirement to consider local infrastructure, such as schools, in approving large development projects!

"Only 20%"? 20% would be very high. Currently in Ward 3, about 15% of households (all housing type) have children (all ages)

The poster said that even if only 20 percent of the 'incoming' have kids. He did not mention anything about the existing residents, though as you were quick to state it was 20% in the last snapshot and is growing at a rate of 26% over the last four years. So that would seem to be a valid school planning factor.

Is it a common belief that only single people want to move into the city to occupy this new, denser housing? Or just couples with dogs?

Why would households consisting of new residents of large multi-family buildings have children at a higher rate than existing residents? Why would they disproportionately attract households with school-aged children?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

You realize, don’t you, that there are thousands of new housing units in Ward 3 that are under construction or in projects getting ready to break ground. They range from City Ridge (Fannie site) to 4000 Wisconsin next door (with over 1500 residences between them), the Lady Bird in AU Park, several new buildings in Tenleytown and Friendship Heights, just to name as few. A good question is where is the local school capacity for these residences, even if only 20 percent have kids of school age? What is worrisome is that the proposed Comp Plan amendments actually weaken the requirement to consider local infrastructure, such as schools, in approving large development projects!

"Only 20%"? 20% would be very high. Currently in Ward 3, about 15% of households (all housing type) have children (all ages)

The poster said that even if only 20 percent of the 'incoming' have kids. He did not mention anything about the existing residents, though as you were quick to state it was 20% in the last snapshot and is growing at a rate of 26% over the last four years. So that would seem to be a valid school planning factor.

Is it a common belief that only single people want to move into the city to occupy this new, denser housing? Or just couples with dogs?

Why would households consisting of new residents of large multi-family buildings have children at a higher rate than existing residents? Why would they disproportionately attract households with school-aged children?

Because families are moving back into the city. Changing demographics. It is natural. This is a good thing (more families).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

You realize, don’t you, that there are thousands of new housing units in Ward 3 that are under construction or in projects getting ready to break ground. They range from City Ridge (Fannie site) to 4000 Wisconsin next door (with over 1500 residences between them), the Lady Bird in AU Park, several new buildings in Tenleytown and Friendship Heights, just to name as few. A good question is where is the local school capacity for these residences, even if only 20 percent have kids of school age? What is worrisome is that the proposed Comp Plan amendments actually weaken the requirement to consider local infrastructure, such as schools, in approving large development projects!

"Only 20%"? 20% would be very high. Currently in Ward 3, about 15% of households (all housing type) have children (all ages)

The poster said that even if only 20 percent of the 'incoming' have kids. He did not mention anything about the existing residents, though as you were quick to state it was 20% in the last snapshot and is growing at a rate of 26% over the last four years. So that would seem to be a valid school planning factor.

Is it a common belief that only single people want to move into the city to occupy this new, denser housing? Or just couples with dogs?

Why would households consisting of new residents of large multi-family buildings have children at a higher rate than existing residents? Why would they disproportionately attract households with school-aged children?

Because families are moving back into the city. Changing demographics. It is natural. This is a good thing (more families).

Data sources?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

You realize, don’t you, that there are thousands of new housing units in Ward 3 that are under construction or in projects getting ready to break ground. They range from City Ridge (Fannie site) to 4000 Wisconsin next door (with over 1500 residences between them), the Lady Bird in AU Park, several new buildings in Tenleytown and Friendship Heights, just to name as few. A good question is where is the local school capacity for these residences, even if only 20 percent have kids of school age? What is worrisome is that the proposed Comp Plan amendments actually weaken the requirement to consider local infrastructure, such as schools, in approving large development projects!

"Only 20%"? 20% would be very high. Currently in Ward 3, about 15% of households (all housing type) have children (all ages)

The poster said that even if only 20 percent of the 'incoming' have kids. He did not mention anything about the existing residents, though as you were quick to state it was 20% in the last snapshot and is growing at a rate of 26% over the last four years. So that would seem to be a valid school planning factor.

Is it a common belief that only single people want to move into the city to occupy this new, denser housing? Or just couples with dogs?

Why would households consisting of new residents of large multi-family buildings have children at a higher rate than existing residents? Why would they disproportionately attract households with school-aged children?

Because families are moving back into the city. Changing demographics. It is natural. This is a good thing (more families).

Data sources?

DC Kids Count Data Snapshot

[Anonymous]

We have tons of affordable housing. It's called PG County.