The High Cost of Short Buildings
Every time I find myself in one of America’s small cities — mighty Providence, Rhode Island is featured here — it comes as a shocking reminder of how puny the buildings are in Washington, DC. It’s easy for a New Yorker to sometimes just decide “New York = big buildings, but DC is smaller so the buildings are smaller.” Metro DC is smaller than metro New York, but it’s much bigger than Providence. And yet even Providence supports some modest skyscrapers. DC, of course, could support skyscrapers. They’re just illegal. And a lot of people like it that way. But like Ryan Avent I suspect that the people who like it the way it is haven’t really thought through the costs:
But look, we could take these views or the city’s uniqueness and place some value on it. We could then compare those benefits to the costs. High rents and property prices, for instance, are a cost. Office sprawl is a cost–neighborhoods that should rightly be mixed-use (including downtown) are pushed by cost pressures until they become overwhelmingly office-oriented. This has impacts on neighborhood quality, on business diversity, on commuting, on tax revenues, and so on.
And there are also the benefits we forego thanks to the restriction. It means foregone jobs and tax revenues. It means reduced density, which means reduced productivity. It means less economic activity in a space that’s walkable and well-served by transit, which means more economic activity in places dependent upon cars.
In a nutshell, people look at the height limit and think that it’s free to protect views and maintain our identity, so why not do it? But it isn’t free! It costs all of us quite a bit to keep heights low. It means increased housing costs, increased tax burdens, and reduced wages. The limit also imposes big costs on other people who would like to work or live in the District but who can’t, because the limit on heights has artifically restricted the size of the market.
If you look at the commercial rents currently prevailing in the city, and then you look at the ability of dramatically smaller metro areas to support denser office cores, you can see that we’re leaving an enormous amount on the table. The higher tax revenues that would be associated with taller office buildings could allow vast improvements in the quality of city services. Every time you walk through one of DC’s residential neighborhoods and see the hopeless state of disrepair of the sidewalks, or wonder why the city can’t seem to put more cops on the beat, you’re looking at the cost of the height restrictions. And a more densely built office district would support a greater variety of retail establishments in the ground floor with more — and more interesting — choices.
But of course part of the problem here, as with many of these land use issues, is that a great many of the beneficiaries are people who don’t get a say in the matter. The negative externalities associated with the policy mostly burden people who don’t live or work in the district. The increased carbon emissions associated with the sprawl are a bigger problem for people in Bangladesh or even Manhattan than for people in DC. And the real victims of the high prices associated with building restrictions are the people who would choose to live or work in a more affordable version of DC, but are instead elsewhere because incumbent actors in the central city have chosen to pull up the ladder.
32 Responses to “The High Cost of Short Buildings”
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October 13th, 2008 at 2:59 pm
Very interesting, as always! I work in DC and live in Falls Church, and yes, I would very much prefer being able to find affordable housing in downtown. Though as always while reading your posts, I despair that city planners will never take these great ideas into account …
October 13th, 2008 at 3:00 pm
It took about 200 years for Philadelphia to build buildings taller than the Penn statue. I bet it takes another 200 before they build anything taller than the Capitol.
Maybe they should solve this by redo-ing the Capitol as a skyscraper.
October 13th, 2008 at 3:00 pm
paris and london are constrained by these types of laws (paris doesn’t allow buildings to be higher than 37 meters), but don’t seem to suffer from all of the same issues. for example, while real estate costs are certainly high in those two cities, they don’t seem to have much difficulty spurring “mixed-use” development. maybe matt could weigh in as to why those differences exist.
October 13th, 2008 at 3:03 pm
Meh. Short buildings are one reason DC is so much nicer than New York. If you don’t like it, move back.
October 13th, 2008 at 3:07 pm
San Fransisco had a law against skyscrapers for the longest time, for a reason: nothing was to block the view of the Coit Tower. Since Mrs Coit had been so generous, not only in building the tower (in the shape of a firehose nozzle) but also to the fireman’s fund, it was considered a sign of respect, and a indication that SF would never forget the heroics of its fire department during the Great Quake.
I remember when the Transamerica building went up — that funny pyramid was the first to get an exemption, and there was a great to-do. If it hadn’t been a unique structure in its own right, I doubt it would be standing.
As it is, the high-rises are restricted to the East Side, between the Market District and the Wharf. Kind of odd to see, but it makes sense to build carefully in as area prone to quakes.
It’s not as easy to see Coit Tower from The City, but from anywhere on the Bay, it still stands proudly, testament to the gratitude of a city.
October 13th, 2008 at 3:22 pm
Height restrictions have a negligible effect on the growth of the district. (overall zoning, does)
Commercial office building was curtailed in the district for a long time because crime was so bad, so people only built in the narrow portion just north of the mall area. Other areas were undesirable because of crime, or unavailable due to high end people wanting to ‘maintain the integrity of their neighborhoods.’
Now that crime is under control, the M street and New York Avenue cooridors, among others, are booming.
Just as a side anecdote, Sears built the tower that bears their name with the assumptions you and Avent have. They moved out of that building to a ‘campus’ type office complex some twenty years ago now. Height restrictions obviously have no effect on Chicagoland sprawl (but again I’ll grant you, zoning or lack of does)
Last, a 500 or so foot building is at least 30 stories. This is a pretty substantial office or residential tower. Waikiki is one of the densest and most expensive zip codes in America, and only a few buildings are over 25 stories. Overall, IIRC most buildings over 80 stories are economically pointless (i.e. it’s cheaper to build to 80 story buildings than one 100 story one), and again IIRC 4 forty story buildings are even better.
October 13th, 2008 at 3:28 pm
Well, again as I said last week, let’s take Houston as a counter-example. Houston’s lack of zoning is eclipsed only by its total lack of height ordinances. It’s very common to have 30+story buildings in low-rise or even single-family neighborhoods. Downtown Houston is *very* tall proportional to the CBD size, density, metro pop. etc. The city has 3 buildings 900+ ft and dozens more in the 700-900ft range. It is definitely one of America’s more impressive skylines.
But conversely, I wonder about the negative costs of super-tall structures, perhaps a lack of height restrictions has a cost as well. Even though I think it’s great that people can build whatever they like, wherever they like here (I tend to lean libertarian on property rights and city planning.. an organic, demand-driven approach to density/transit), I think the very tall office towers downtown here may have to some degree encouraged the huge dead zone of surface parking that has surrounded the CBD for 40 years. The CBD core is concentrated in a very small, high density area, but the area around it is barren and devoid of any life at all. Perhaps if heights had been capped at say, 400ft, we’d have twice as many blocks occupied (= less surface lots?) for the same amount of office square footage. This would have extended the very dense area perhaps over enough area to encourage mixed use development with ground floor retail. You need a critical mass of mixed use area to really get an urban neighborhood off the ground……. the single-use office high-rise district we have here in the CBD doesn’t have that diversity — the corporate monoliths are very beautiful in the sunset for 10 miles in any direction, but the area is dead on weeknights.
October 13th, 2008 at 3:33 pm
Kolohe, yes, cost increases geometrically with building height for a variety of factors. Longer construction time means higher finance cost before realizing revenue, more elevators that eat into usable floor plate area, greater amount of structural rigidity and foundation required due to wind loads increasing with altitude, time spent carrying workers and equipment up and down, etc. etc.
October 13th, 2008 at 3:54 pm
I currently live in Houston and agree with most of what Ian says; the need is for urban planning and good zoning not just high rises and increased density. I was in Paris recently and had meetings in La Defense which isht eplanned high rise, high density office tower area in the inner suburbs. It has some mixed use and mpressive architecture but I was repeatedly warned about the crime rate in the evenings there because the pedestrian plaza is deserted except for street gangs.
October 13th, 2008 at 4:28 pm
I live in a nice old neighborhood of two and three-story houses about a quarter-mile from the photo you posted. Providence has indeed been building up near its center in some land that became vacant when the old railhead was ripped out some twenty years ago. So far, most of the new buildings, as far as I can see, are hugely overpriced and vacant. I wish I could say I thought these people know what they’re doing.
October 13th, 2008 at 5:02 pm
I was under the impression that no building could be taller than the Washington Monument.
October 13th, 2008 at 6:30 pm
Also, most builders in DC build up to the maximum allowable height, creating streets which are odd corridors of buildings of substantially similar height. It makes the commercial areas of DC dreary, inorganic spaces to walk through.
October 13th, 2008 at 10:19 pm
Correct me if I’m wrong, but I thought the reason DC had shorter buildings was that the ground was a lot less stable, since it’s basically recovered swampland (no offense to those of you in DC). In NYC, you only see major skyscrapers in a couple parts of town because it is where the ground is most stable. Maybe parts of DC could sustain more than the 14 floors that seem to be standard, but maybe there is an underlying reason to the rules.
October 13th, 2008 at 10:28 pm
The widely believed myth is that no building may be taller than the US Capitol. The Washington Monument, at 555 feet, is nearly twice the height of the Capitol dome. Actually, neither structure has anything to do with the building height limit in Washington, which was enacted in 1910 in response to the construction of the Cairo building on Q St. NW, between 16th and 17th Streets, which remains the tallest non-monumental building in the city. Building height is restricted roughly to the width of the street on which a building is located, plus 20 feet; in effect, the height limit is generally 130 feet, with 160-foot buildings allowed on Pennsylvania Avenue. The Capitol is 289 feet tall.
If there are actual data that show that raising the height limit would lower commercial rents, I wish someone would share them. The obvious worst cost of the height limit is to be seen on K Street. But the idea that it’s bad for the city as a whole is a proposition that needs a more persuasive argument than it has received.
October 13th, 2008 at 11:40 pm
Actually, now that I reread what you’ve written, I’m not sure if you’re suggesting that taller buildings would result in lower commercial rents or higher commercial rents. Lower rates, higher receipts? Or both? What are you suggesting would be the economic benefit?
October 14th, 2008 at 11:49 am
Why do the neighboring areas of DC in VA and MD not build these high rises? There are some in Arlington, but they’re not that big and there aren’t that many of them.
The District is so small that it seems to me it could easily be ringed with denser development that is still very close to downtown while maintaining its unique character.
October 14th, 2008 at 11:51 am
Matt,
I live in DC, and I completely disagree. What DC needs is:
(1) a height minimum, requiring any new artificial structure (including parking lots) to be at least two stories tall.
(2) general parking reform, something I credit you for keeping track of.
(3) elimination of most of the single-use zones, which dominate much of DC.
Things are definitely crowded downtown. But, first off, if you want to build a skyscraper, you can just go to Rosslyn or Pentagon City. And if you’re looking for neighborhoods that are underdeveloped, please, let me give you a tour of Northeast DC some day. In particular, consider the 6 Red line stations in Northeast, all of which have empty lots within a couple blocks of the station. Until Northeast fills up, I see no reason to increase the density of the already successful downtown neighborhood.
October 14th, 2008 at 3:27 pm
Philadelphia kept its height restrictions east of city hall, which includes Independence Hall and many other colonial structures. West of city hall, skyscrapers have been allowed to flourish. Maybe D.C. could do something similar, allowing skyscrapers but not where they would overshadow the Capitol Building, monuments, etc.
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