Daniel Herriges

@DanielStrTowns

Senior Editor at

@StrongTowns

. Tweets are my own. He/him. Follow/RT/like ≠ endorsement.

Sarasota, FLstrongtowns.orgJoined November 2018

990 Following

2,534 Followers

Daniel Herriges’s Tweets

Daniel Herriges

@DanielStrTowns

12h

Fun thread of skinny house designs created with Midjourney that would be right at home in Austin. (Or at least an Austin without minimum lot sizes or parking mandates.) I love the way these AI tools help imagine familiar places transformed.

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YIMBYLAND

@YIMBYLAND

13h

It's 2028 in Austin, TX. Four years have passed since the city was liberated from its onerous land-use and zoning restrictions. Which row house are you living in?

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Alex Schieferdecker

@alexschief

May 3

Me: It’s incredibly nice out, I’ve just bought my lunch, all I want to do is sit somewhere outside and eat it. Nicollet Mall: NOT ON MY WATCH

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Jennifer Keesmaat

@jen_keesmaat

Apr 28

How a 3 yr old sees a city: garbage bins and speeding cars. Where do we go from here: “sidewalks can be widened, pocket parks can be added, more green space can be planted, and car speeds can be reduced”

fastcompany.com

This is how a 3-year-old sees a city—and it’s not very pleasant

A new tool helps urban planners see cities from the vantage of a 3-year-old, so they can help make them better.

Daniel Herriges

@DanielStrTowns

Apr 26

(6/6) Urbanists shouldn't be afraid to press their case for urbanism being good in itself. Walkable neighborhoods are popular! It's a winning case! We don't have to lean on affordability as the *only* reason to want to break the stranglehold of single-family zoning.

(5/6) Thing is, even if upzoning didn't lower average rents the slightest bit, it'd still be a net plus to legalize walkable urban neighborhoods in more places. Apartments, plexes, mixed use should be allowed because they're good and lots of people want to live that way!

(4/6) I'm wary of the way that zoning reform has become almost completely tethered to the cause of housing affordability (in the media and the rhetoric of advocates + electeds), because it's setting us up for backlash when it doesn't magically make rents lower in the near term.

(3/6) Upzoning now is like removing the dam that killed all the salmon in the river—good to do, but it won't magically bring the salmon back. It is, however, a prerequisite for bringing them back.

(2/6) US cities used to have lots of small-scale developers building abundant infill housing—until the combo of downzoning and suburban flight in the late 20th century all but obliterated them. We need to rebuild that economic ecosystem.

strongtowns.org

Unleash the Swarm: A New E-book on Reviving Small-Scale Development

This new Strong Towns e-book explores what it would take to revive small-scale development as a force significant enough to shape and grow our cities.

(1/6) The litmus test for zoning reform shouldn't be, "Does it bring about lower rents right away?" Or even in a few years. That's a test cities aren't likely to pass: upzoning isn't magic. But it's an important prerequisite for a sane housing market.

strongtowns.org

Upzoning Might Not Lower Housing Costs. Do It Anyway.

Americans need housing relief imminently. Despite what you may have heard, upzoning isn’t likely to be the thing that delivers that—but here's why it’s still worth pursuing.

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Replying to

A market that was artificial (because regulated) doesn't immediately become a natural market and ecosystem the moment the regulations vanish. Instead, what pays most gets done first, regardless of what needs to be done first. Only in the longest run does the market even out.

Daniel Herriges

@DanielStrTowns

Apr 25

I saw someone else say this recently so it's hardly an original thought, but one really does get the sense that many Americans implicitly think of the domain of "housing policy" as merely fighting over the scraps of residential land NOT reserved for SFH.

What a ridiculous framing. No city is "filling up" with luxury apartments. There is an enormous amount of undeveloped or redevelopable land in American cities. And single-family homes occupy far more land than any kind of apartments.

cnbc.com

U.S. cities are filling up with luxury apartments despite 'housing recession'

U.S. real estate developers, facing large costs, regularly target high-income earners despite demand for affordable housing.

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Good thread:

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Max Dubler

@maxdubler

Apr 21

“We need housing for FAMILIES, not more studios and 1-bedrooms for tech workers/yuppies/your local bogeyman” is a common complaint about new housing; but it ignores the changing demographics of America’s households. A Thread on demographic mismatch.

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Daniel Herriges

@DanielStrTowns

Apr 16

This discussion started with a genuine issue of protecting a public good. You do that by setting aside public land, not by enforcing auto-oriented suburbanism: private property for the enjoyment of a few, flanking nominally public sand that's hard for the many to access + enjoy.

"They'll overdevelop everything if we let them" is almost always an argument that is both a) innumerate, and b) oblivious to the material constraints on construction itself. (To be fair, many optimistic YIMBY projections of housing growth after upzoning also fall into trap (b).)

Reminds me of opponents of missing-middle zoning who shout, "Developers are going to bulldoze our neighborhoods! There won't be single-family homes left as an option!" And it's like, so the population of your major US city is going to double or triple in a decade? No it's not.

If more Florida beach towns were built at the density of many Italian or Spanish beaches (deliberately ignoring any aesthetic argument), there would be far more undeveloped coastline left over in the state. Demand is not infinite. There aren't *that* many people.

There are some beach towns in Florida that have a charming, "out of time" feel that would be lost if unfettered development occurred. But the main culprit that has overrun these places over time isn't towers, it's endless miles of McMansions dictated by McMansion zoning.

The sand is public, but a very common pattern in FL beach towns is that the handful of required public accesses to said sand are hidden on obscure side streets, with almost no parking. In places with no transit. The actual beachfront property is mostly private and residential.

Many Florida beaches are traffic-clogged in high season, to the point where locals who don't live right there just avoid them from December-March. Might be picturesque but this is not remotely a success story for the ideal of the masses getting to enjoy a less-developed beach.

I've spent a lot of time on Siesta Key. It's basically suburban with a small "village" center. The resident population is very affluent (of course, because housing is so limited). Winter traffic is notably horrendous, can back up 30-60 mins at the two bridges to the island.

You can poke around Google Street View and get a feel for this easily, because there's imagery of almost the state's entire coastline, actually shot from the beach by someone walking. (Check it out, it's awesome.)

Most Florida beach towns are basically run-of-the-mill suburbs next to an ocean, in terms of built form. Outside of metro Miami, there aren't a lot of high-rise stretches. It's in fact easy to find a beach where you don't have to look at towers, because that's like 80% of them.

Virtually the entire Atlantic coast of the state (400 miles) is built-up (all but Cape Canaveral), as is the Gulf Coast from north of Clearwater to Naples / Marco Island (200 miles). This is *because* of almost universally suburban-style, low-rise development enforced by zoning.

Lots to unpack in this discussion that I don't care to, but as a FL resident for over 10 years, the idea that low-rise zoning is protective of the tranquility of Florida's beaches is bizarre and backwards. It's quite the opposite.

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Alexander Dukes

@alxcharlesdukes

Apr 16

Replying to @EmuInAmerica and @upzone_CA

Assuming it's developable. Absolutely. They have literally filled in swamps to build housing in Florida. California is different as the topo is a challenge often. But Florida? Virtually every mile of coast would be consumed without question.

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Skip Pile

@skip_sf

Apr 13

This is such a damning indictment of traffic engineering, but also of all the credulous officials who have bought into the myth and spends billions on what this profession peddles, that widening highways will lead to lower traffic congestion.

sf.streetsblog.org

Not a Surprise: 101 Freeway Widening Shows Negative Results

Engineer on 101 project admits $600 million freeway widening accomplished nothing

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Andrew Price

@AndrewAPrice

Apr 12

Benefit of being an urban parent: We have 2 playgrounds within a 5 min walk and they're always full of kids. Kids and parents get the opportunity to socialize. You start to see the same families that live within blocks of you every day, and that's how community forms.

Daniel Herriges Retweeted

Replying to

It strikes me that the summary here is "it can't hurt, and is probably necessary". And that being the case, I default to YIMBY even if I understand, as Strong Towns and

@clmarohn

specifically have written about, there's more to the story.

Daniel Herriges

@DanielStrTowns

Apr 5

That last point gets frustratingly buried in the YIMBY/NIMBY wars. A lot of people have talked themselves into affirmatively defending suburban-style zoning, just because nobody can prove that upending it would solve the housing crisis overnight. It's a weird status quo bias.

3) Most importantly, the best reason to broadly upzone cities applies even if it doesn't, in itself, do a thing for housing affordability. It's that walkable urbanism should be legal! Auto-oriented, use-segregated development patterns are bad!

(By "revolutionary change" I mean making the next viable increment of development functionally allowed as-of-right across all kinds of neighborhoods, which is what we advocate at

@StrongTowns

. No American city has come close to doing this, to be clear.)

2) Yet the research *doesn't* refute the idea that a revolutionary change in the prevailing zoning regime could make housing much more abundant and affordable. It can't answer that, bc almost all existing examples of upzoning are incremental tweaks at the margins of the system.

1) The question of whether upzoning will meaningfully promote affordability is, indeed, uncertain and probably so context-dependent that there isn't a meaningful general answer. Anyone who claims the answer is clear-cut is either an ideologue, disingenuous, or just ill-informed.

Three not-at-all comprehensive or conclusive thoughts on the question of how upzoning affects housing production and affordability (brief thread):

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Yonah Freemark

@yfreemark

Apr 5

In a new article in @JPL_SAGE, I document everything current research tells us about the impacts of upzonings & downzonings on housing production, housing prices, and demographics. I review dozens of scholarly articles & offer a broad view on research

journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/08

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Daniel Herriges

@DanielStrTowns

Apr 5

"Complete Streets" is a well-intended idea that can nonetheless be actively harmful in the hands of engineers who are still operating with auto-centric design priorities and a rote, checklist mentality. Unfortunately, that may be most engineers.

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Charles Marohn

@clmarohn

Apr 5

This street won multiple Complete Streets awards. It's a horrible & deadly stroad that separates a residential neighborhood from a DC Metro transit stop. Check out these before and after photos (I double checked -- we don't have this backward).

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Stair Daddy

@holz_bau

Apr 3

one of the things i really find amazing about point access blocks is how they unlock housing on small lots. here's a 5-plex on a 5,250 s.f. lot with units that are <28' wide, in basel i mean... look at this 2BR home. not legal anywhere in the US... baudokumentation.ch/projekt/mehrfa

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Daniel Herriges

@DanielStrTowns

Mar 30

The balconies have just GOT to be a pretext for some other reason... right? twitter.com/3_under_scores

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David Roberts

@drvolts

Mar 26

🧵All right, y'all. I don't do this for all my pods, but my latest one is a) a little technical, but b) super, super important, so I want to unpack it with a thread, if only to persuade you to listen. Geek out with me!

volts.wtf

Why electrifying industrial heat is such a big deal

A quarter of all energy humans use comes in the form of heat for high-temperature industrial processes. Industrial heat has long been considered "difficult to decarbonize," but a new class of thermal...

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Good thread on how immediate postwar (50s / 60s) suburbia has more in common with traditional urbanism than with later incarnations of suburbia. The basic template for walkability, mixed uses, and adaptability over time is generally present in these places.

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Sean Hayford Oleary

@sdho

Mar 25

There's a false timeline in a lot of urbanist discussions — where a lot of people seem to think the 50s and 60s was peak era of suburbia. But (despite rapid growth of tract housing) the suburbia of the 1950s looks a lot more like its prewar urbanism than modern suburbia.

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Teo Armus

@teoarmus

Mar 22

BREAKING: Arlington County, Va., will allow multi-unit residential buildings with up to 4 -- and in some cases 6 -- units across the county, effectively ending single-family-only zoning at the doorstep to the nation's capital.

washingtonpost.com

Arlington ends single-family-only zoning

Arlington will become the first locality in the D.C. region to loosen zoning rules and make it easier to build “missing middle” housing in any neighborhood.

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