"We don't really have housing options." Other cities have proactive land policies–DC needs them too.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:But but but I got my house. No one else deserves a house. Their construction might inconvenience me.

Access to affordable housing should be a right. Being able to buy the house you want where you want it is not.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:But but but I got my house. No one else deserves a house. Their construction might inconvenience me.

Upzoning is not going to help you buy a house. It's going to make townhouses and single family homes scarcer. If you want a house, find Ashburn or Leesburg on a map. Otherwise, find a condo you like.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The problem with having no density, like Atlanta, Miami, LA, is TRAFFIC DISASTER.

That's why DC's traffic is terrible - we've expanded OUT of DC. We just can't move out past Loudon and keep building more sprawl housing. Unless you want everyone who's not rich or old to have hateful, numbing commutes.

And the DC is filled with smart talented people, which makes other smart talented people want to move here. So the answer can't be "no more people in DC". Let's do what the Europeans do, adopting their best ideas. Before they beat us as America's economy sinks into the mud because we've destroyed our world-leading talent economy. (That's already happening in Silicon Valley and Seattle – because we have crappy land use policies, jobs are moving to Vancouver and other parts of Canada.)

What is missing here is that DC itself has fewer residents than in the 1950s, that many of the new jobs are in the suburbs not DC, and that, while DMV has grown tremendously, DC itself has only marginally so. And that will not change. DC itself attracts certain industries. The underlying assumption above is that all of the new jobs are in DC or could be in DC. Latter is simply not true. The entire Internet revolution in NoVa had literally nothing to do with DC. And the growing biotech companies in MoCo similarly have nothing to do with DC. And that will not change. The entire premises behind the spread to Loudoun, etc, is that everybody is working in DC. Simply, not true.

DC has fewer residents than in the 50s because 1) DC has all but outlawed boarding houses, 2) tons of high-density residential areas were cleared out for building 395/695, office buildings, etc, and 3) broader family composition trends have led to the average household being smaller in 2020 than in 1950. The confluence of these trends leads to the situation today; even though DC has a smaller population than in 1950, it's having a harder time accommodating them.

(And by the way, it's foolish to think that the development of NoVa's technology scene and MoCo's biotech scene happened in a vacuum. It's happened in no small part because of the proximity to the federal government)

They grew up around parts of the federal government that are not headquartered in DC.

It’s the same with RTP but no one would make such a weird argument about RTP.

RTP is also turning into a suburban 4-lane highway hellscape with traffic and sprawling development. Difference is that RTP doesn’t have a huge city. Chapel Hill and Durham are each the size of Frederick, if not smaller.

So the housing solutions are different. RTP needs mixed use communities that are walkable inside, and they have some of these. DC really needs to upzone because the places to build housing in the 10-mile diameter center city are just used up.

I think you’ve missed the point. RTP is not dependent on a city, as you note, but neither is the tech or biotech hubs in Fairfax and MoCo. There are entire economies happening and lives lived with zero connection to DC or any city. And while the Federal government may have been the impetus for these things due to co-location, these economies can and do exist completely outside the government. Cities are not essential.

What is becoming clearer and clearer here is that a group of DC residents thinks that the entire DMV population lives or works in DC or wants to live or work in DC. Simply false. If everyone actually did some thinking, they would realize that DC residents, particularly professionals, tend to be those you expect to live in DC, namely lobbyists, lawyers, journalists, political consultants, etc. Obviously, exceptions exist. If you hang out in the outer suburbs, those types are extremely rare.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:But but but I got my house. No one else deserves a house. Their construction might inconvenience me.

Upzoning is not going to help you buy a house. It's going to make townhouses and single family homes scarcer. If you want a house, find Ashburn or Leesburg on a map. Otherwise, find a condo you like.

Upzoning is going to help you find a place to live that’s not a 2 hr commute away.

It is selfish to imagine that everyone can always live in a single family house.
It’s just not possible.
New land doesn’t appear like unicorns and Santa Claus.
We’ve got the land we’ve got. Just as Berlin does.
And we should be upzoning so many lots in DC can be converted to multi-family housing.

[Anonymous]

I live in DC and none of my parent friends work in politics. Lots of engineers, scientists, doctors, lawyers— just as any other city in the US.

[Anonymous]

From the original article:

European cities have been doing brownfield redevelopment — a strategy of urban re-compaction instead of sprawl — for decades. In Germany, Freiburg’s wonderfully car-light, child-laden neighborhood of Vauban is a former military base. In Austria, Vienna’s massive new urban district of Seestadt Aspern is built on the grounds of the former Aspern Airport.

Both projects have rightfully been making the rounds in urbanism circles for years. However, there have been some projects initiated in the last few years that will make these look almost pastoral.

The Dutch city of Utrecht has several brownfield redevelopments underway, but the proposed car-free district of Merwede, built on an island of dilapidated factories, is my favorite. It has massive amounts of green and open space; schools, kindergartens, sports facilities, commercial space, and retail; and 6,000 homes, across diverse housing typologies including social housing, Collectief Particulier Opdrachtgeverschap (CPOs, a Dutch variation on baugruppen), and market rate housing.

Non-market housing will account for half the homes. All buildings will be extremely low-energy, pushing close to Passivhaus (as mandated by the EU’s nearly Zero Energy Building mandate, something the US should copy). Planners are also focusing on biodiversity and tightly connecting the district to the larger region by bike, foot, and transit.

Likewise, the Schumacher Quartier, set to be built at the east end of Berlin’s now-defunct Tegel airport as part of the Urban Tech Republic, will be just blocks from two U-bahn stations. The district is focused on climate adaptation, aiming to be climate neutral. It will feature the largest collection of mass timber buildings in the world, with nearly every project built to Passivhaus levels of efficiency, including 5,000 homes, all of them non-market: half for social housing, 40 percent for baugruppen and cooperatives, and 10 percent for student housing.

Also included are school campuses, daycare facilities (I would have loved walking to daycare with my kiddos!), ample retail, commercial space, and a massive amount of open/green space. The district is set up to be car-free for most, with strong transit, bike, and other mobility connections.

Lots of this could be very exciting. Imagine doing something like this with RFK. (serious replies only, thank you - please skip the ad hominem or political.)

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:But but but I got my house. No one else deserves a house. Their construction might inconvenience me.

Upzoning is not going to help you buy a house. It's going to make townhouses and single family homes scarcer. If you want a house, find Ashburn or Leesburg on a map. Otherwise, find a condo you like.

Upzoning is going to help you find a place to live that’s not a 2 hr commute away.

It is selfish to imagine that everyone can always live in a single family house.
It’s just not possible.
New land doesn’t appear like unicorns and Santa Claus.
We’ve got the land we’ve got. Just as Berlin does.
And we should be upzoning so many lots in DC can be converted to multi-family housing.

Agree but PP said they wanted a house. It’s presumptuous to try to shove them into a different kind of housing. I don’t understand why urbanism always involves telling other people what they want when they clearly don’t want an apartment.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
Who wouldn't want more options to live near their parents while they are raising kids? Imagine that some of the new 1bd luxury developments going up were instead, due to policies that helped developers build them, buildings with 3bd's with nearby in-law suites. There'd be demand for that.

The only real way that happens at scale is if we upzone a whole bunch of Ward 3 and build buildings like that there. But sadly, a minority of older Ward 3 homeowners are blocking ideas like this.

No, your idea is simply and misses that what is really needed is more developed in the underdeveloped parts of the city. Any idiot real estate person, including Orange Man, could do a successful real estate project in Ward. DC must spread out the new developments in all parts of the City.

There's not enough land. We need to build higher in all Wards. But it is Ward 3 that has the most SFHs and is also the place with most demand for housing.

And were you referring to Traitor Trump the corrupt criminal? That guy is a loser, who just happened to arrive at a time when Koch and Murdoch needed a paid professional scammer and liar to hoodwink their uneducated white base. He's a chump who couldn't build a shed without dirty money he was laundering for oligarchs.
And he did the same thing in politics - launder dirty money from American oligarchs Koch, Uihlein, Murdoch, Wilks, Adelson, and Walton into a stolen-election corrupt criminal presidency.

+100

Fortunately, the Orange Drumpf is gone, and he has been replaced by Virtuous Biden, who is as pure as the driven snow.

Biden’s ascension into the role of President marks a sea change in our national leadership. It is akin to the restoration of the Enlightenment.

He handled the G7 meeting with aplomb, and made us proud in Brussels and in Geneva. Putin knows he better keep his cyberterrorist henchmen in check going forward. He does not want to deal with a tiger like Biden!

God Bless America, and God Bless Joseph Robinette Biden!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The problem with having no density, like Atlanta, Miami, LA, is TRAFFIC DISASTER.

That's why DC's traffic is terrible - we've expanded OUT of DC. We just can't move out past Loudon and keep building more sprawl housing. Unless you want everyone who's not rich or old to have hateful, numbing commutes.

And the DC is filled with smart talented people, which makes other smart talented people want to move here. So the answer can't be "no more people in DC". Let's do what the Europeans do, adopting their best ideas. Before they beat us as America's economy sinks into the mud because we've destroyed our world-leading talent economy. (That's already happening in Silicon Valley and Seattle – because we have crappy land use policies, jobs are moving to Vancouver and other parts of Canada.)

What is missing here is that DC itself has fewer residents than in the 1950s, that many of the new jobs are in the suburbs not DC, and that, while DMV has grown tremendously, DC itself has only marginally so. And that will not change. DC itself attracts certain industries. The underlying assumption above is that all of the new jobs are in DC or could be in DC. Latter is simply not true. The entire Internet revolution in NoVa had literally nothing to do with DC. And the growing biotech companies in MoCo similarly have nothing to do with DC. And that will not change. The entire premises behind the spread to Loudoun, etc, is that everybody is working in DC. Simply, not true.

DC has fewer residents than in the 50s because 1) DC has all but outlawed boarding houses, 2) tons of high-density residential areas were cleared out for building 395/695, office buildings, etc, and 3) broader family composition trends have led to the average household being smaller in 2020 than in 1950. The confluence of these trends leads to the situation today; even though DC has a smaller population than in 1950, it's having a harder time accommodating them.

(And by the way, it's foolish to think that the development of NoVa's technology scene and MoCo's biotech scene happened in a vacuum. It's happened in no small part because of the proximity to the federal government)

They grew up around parts of the federal government that are not headquartered in DC.

It’s the same with RTP but no one would make such a weird argument about RTP.

RTP is also turning into a suburban 4-lane highway hellscape with traffic and sprawling development. Difference is that RTP doesn’t have a huge city. Chapel Hill and Durham are each the size of Frederick, if not smaller.

So the housing solutions are different. RTP needs mixed use communities that are walkable inside, and they have some of these. DC really needs to upzone because the places to build housing in the 10-mile diameter center city are just used up.

I think you’ve missed the point. RTP is not dependent on a city, as you note, but neither is the tech or biotech hubs in Fairfax and MoCo. There are entire economies happening and lives lived with zero connection to DC or any city. And while the Federal government may have been the impetus for these things due to co-location, these economies can and do exist completely outside the government. Cities are not essential.

What is becoming clearer and clearer here is that a group of DC residents thinks that the entire DMV population lives or works in DC or wants to live or work in DC. Simply false. If everyone actually did some thinking, they would realize that DC residents, particularly professionals, tend to be those you expect to live in DC, namely lobbyists, lawyers, journalists, political consultants, etc. Obviously, exceptions exist. If you hang out in the outer suburbs, those types are extremely rare.

So you think DC should be entirely high HHI earners??? Like SF? That's not my vision for the city. What about teachers, civil servants, restaurant workers, artists ... Also there are currently large swathes of low-income DC residents. Where do you think they should go? Or should DC be exclusively either public housing and the 1%, nothing in the middle?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:From the original article:

European cities have been doing brownfield redevelopment — a strategy of urban re-compaction instead of sprawl — for decades. In Germany, Freiburg’s wonderfully car-light, child-laden neighborhood of Vauban is a former military base. In Austria, Vienna’s massive new urban district of Seestadt Aspern is built on the grounds of the former Aspern Airport.

Both projects have rightfully been making the rounds in urbanism circles for years. However, there have been some projects initiated in the last few years that will make these look almost pastoral.

The Dutch city of Utrecht has several brownfield redevelopments underway, but the proposed car-free district of Merwede, built on an island of dilapidated factories, is my favorite. It has massive amounts of green and open space; schools, kindergartens, sports facilities, commercial space, and retail; and 6,000 homes, across diverse housing typologies including social housing, Collectief Particulier Opdrachtgeverschap (CPOs, a Dutch variation on baugruppen), and market rate housing.

Non-market housing will account for half the homes. All buildings will be extremely low-energy, pushing close to Passivhaus (as mandated by the EU’s nearly Zero Energy Building mandate, something the US should copy). Planners are also focusing on biodiversity and tightly connecting the district to the larger region by bike, foot, and transit.

Likewise, the Schumacher Quartier, set to be built at the east end of Berlin’s now-defunct Tegel airport as part of the Urban Tech Republic, will be just blocks from two U-bahn stations. The district is focused on climate adaptation, aiming to be climate neutral. It will feature the largest collection of mass timber buildings in the world, with nearly every project built to Passivhaus levels of efficiency, including 5,000 homes, all of them non-market: half for social housing, 40 percent for baugruppen and cooperatives, and 10 percent for student housing.

Also included are school campuses, daycare facilities (I would have loved walking to daycare with my kiddos!), ample retail, commercial space, and a massive amount of open/green space. The district is set up to be car-free for most, with strong transit, bike, and other mobility connections.

Lots of this could be very exciting. Imagine doing something like this with RFK. (serious replies only, thank you - please skip the ad hominem or political.)

I hope RFK is developed to maintain a lot of the green space.

[Anonymous]

There's lots of affordable housing in PG County. You can buy a three bedroom house within walking distance of the border with D.C. for $350,000.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:There's lots of affordable housing in PG County. You can buy a three bedroom house within walking distance of the border with D.C. for $350,000.

In ten years, those houses in PG County will cost $1 million and the people today who are turning their noses up at the idea of living in PG County will complain about how there's no affordable housing in PG County.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There's lots of affordable housing in PG County. You can buy a three bedroom house within walking distance of the border with D.C. for $350,000.

In ten years, those houses in PG County will cost $1 million and the people today who are turning their noses up at the idea of living in PG County will complain about how there's no affordable housing in PG County.

There are already houses selling for $900k. Reminds me when I first moved here and people would turn their noses up any neighborhood east of 16th.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:But but but I got my house. No one else deserves a house. Their construction might inconvenience me.

Upzoning is not going to help you buy a house. It's going to make townhouses and single family homes scarcer. If you want a house, find Ashburn or Leesburg on a map. Otherwise, find a condo you like.

Upzoning is going to help you find a place to live that’s not a 2 hr commute away.

It is selfish to imagine that everyone can always live in a single family house.
It’s just not possible.
New land doesn’t appear like unicorns and Santa Claus.
We’ve got the land we’ve got. Just as Berlin does.
And we should be upzoning so many lots in DC can be converted to multi-family housing.

Agree but PP said they wanted a house. It’s presumptuous to try to shove them into a different kind of housing. I don’t understand why urbanism always involves telling other people what they want when they clearly don’t want an apartment.

Because the idea is to force other people into apartments in the hope that the urbanists can afford the close-in SFH.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The problem with having no density, like Atlanta, Miami, LA, is TRAFFIC DISASTER.

That's why DC's traffic is terrible - we've expanded OUT of DC. We just can't move out past Loudon and keep building more sprawl housing. Unless you want everyone who's not rich or old to have hateful, numbing commutes.

And the DC is filled with smart talented people, which makes other smart talented people want to move here. So the answer can't be "no more people in DC". Let's do what the Europeans do, adopting their best ideas. Before they beat us as America's economy sinks into the mud because we've destroyed our world-leading talent economy. (That's already happening in Silicon Valley and Seattle – because we have crappy land use policies, jobs are moving to Vancouver and other parts of Canada.)

What is missing here is that DC itself has fewer residents than in the 1950s, that many of the new jobs are in the suburbs not DC, and that, while DMV has grown tremendously, DC itself has only marginally so. And that will not change. DC itself attracts certain industries. The underlying assumption above is that all of the new jobs are in DC or could be in DC. Latter is simply not true. The entire Internet revolution in NoVa had literally nothing to do with DC. And the growing biotech companies in MoCo similarly have nothing to do with DC. And that will not change. The entire premises behind the spread to Loudoun, etc, is that everybody is working in DC. Simply, not true.

DC has fewer residents than in the 50s because 1) DC has all but outlawed boarding houses, 2) tons of high-density residential areas were cleared out for building 395/695, office buildings, etc, and 3) broader family composition trends have led to the average household being smaller in 2020 than in 1950. The confluence of these trends leads to the situation today; even though DC has a smaller population than in 1950, it's having a harder time accommodating them.

(And by the way, it's foolish to think that the development of NoVa's technology scene and MoCo's biotech scene happened in a vacuum. It's happened in no small part because of the proximity to the federal government)

They grew up around parts of the federal government that are not headquartered in DC.

It’s the same with RTP but no one would make such a weird argument about RTP.

RTP is also turning into a suburban 4-lane highway hellscape with traffic and sprawling development. Difference is that RTP doesn’t have a huge city. Chapel Hill and Durham are each the size of Frederick, if not smaller.

So the housing solutions are different. RTP needs mixed use communities that are walkable inside, and they have some of these. DC really needs to upzone because the places to build housing in the 10-mile diameter center city are just used up.

I think you’ve missed the point. RTP is not dependent on a city, as you note, but neither is the tech or biotech hubs in Fairfax and MoCo. There are entire economies happening and lives lived with zero connection to DC or any city. And while the Federal government may have been the impetus for these things due to co-location, these economies can and do exist completely outside the government. Cities are not essential.

What is becoming clearer and clearer here is that a group of DC residents thinks that the entire DMV population lives or works in DC or wants to live or work in DC. Simply false. If everyone actually did some thinking, they would realize that DC residents, particularly professionals, tend to be those you expect to live in DC, namely lobbyists, lawyers, journalists, political consultants, etc. Obviously, exceptions exist. If you hang out in the outer suburbs, those types are extremely rare.

So you think DC should be entirely high HHI earners??? Like SF? That's not my vision for the city. What about teachers, civil servants, restaurant workers, artists ... Also there are currently large swathes of low-income DC residents. Where do you think they should go? Or should DC be exclusively either public housing and the 1%, nothing in the middle?

If Bowser wants to retain cops, teachers, firefighters, and the middle class, she and the council should lower personal income tax rates so that they are no longer among the highest in the country.