Brandon Donnelly — Daily insights for city builders. Published since 2013 by Toronto-based real estate developer Brandon Donnelly. — Page 459

Housing is expensive in California :

In 2021, San Jose had the least affordable housing among the 92 major US housing markets, with a median multiple of 12.6. San Francisco had a median multiple of 11.8, Los Angeles was at 10.7, followed by San Diego, at 10.1).7 Housing was severely unaffordable even in the interior markets, with Riverside-San Bernardino at 7.4 and Sacramento at 6.7.

And there are some explanations for why that is the case:

Dartmouth economist William Fischel published an early seminal review 9 of housing affordability in California (1970 to the 1990s). Fischel suggested that regulatory research should look for major changes that “are adopted in some places but not in others.”

Fischel examined the higher house price increases that occurred in California compared to the rest of the nation between the late 1960s and late 1980s. Fischel cites various possible causal factors. He found that the higher prices could not be explained by higher construction cost increases, demand, higher personal income growth, the quality of life, amenities, Proposition 13, land supply or water issues.

Instead Fischel cites stronger land use restrictions --- There were two principal issues, the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) and local growth management restrictions.10

We have discussed this issue many times before on the blog, but Wendell Cox's article is helpful in pointing out that zoning in and of itself wasn't the problem. The problem arose, at least according to Fischel's research, when these policies went from "ordinary zoning" to something that became a tool to restrict growth.

The illustrate what "ordinary zoning" means, Cox uses the idiom, "a place for everything, but everything in its place." And I think this is an interesting way of putting it. Part of the reason why we have zoning is that it is a way to organize uses. It is a way of saying that sex shops and cannabis shops can't go here , but they can go over there .

But the key part of this idiom is its first part: a place for everything. What this implies is that the answer should never just be, "no, sorry, you can't build this." At most, it should be, "no, sorry, you can't build this here , but you can over there ." There is a place for everything.

Of course, this is much harder to do when you flip from sprawl development to infill development. Because now there are fewer places "over there." You really have to figure out "here."

According to McKinsey, something like $100 billion has been invested in trying to get autonomous vehicles to work and yet the industry remains stuck with problems like this one here :

State-of-the-art robot cars also struggle with construction, animals, traffic cones, crossing guards, and what the industry calls “unprotected left turns,” which most of us would call “left turns.”

The industry says its  Derek Zoolander  problem applies only to lefts that require navigating oncoming traffic. (Great.) It’s devoted enormous resources to figuring out left turns, but the work continues.

Right now certainly feels like an autonomous vehicle winter (we have many winters going on at the moment). The industry has spent a lot of time and money getting maybe 90% of the way there, but this last bit has proven to be a lot more challenging than I think most people anticipated.

This has a lot of people thinking that it's going to be many decades before we finally get full autonomy (if ever) and that, in the interim, all we will have are very specific use cases: trucks on highways, mining machines (the above article writes about this), and so on.

This may very well be the case. Frankly, I don't know. But it's perhaps important to remember two things: (1) pessimists aren't usually the ones who change the world and (2) there is something known as the Gartner hype cycle , which is a graphical representation of how new innovations typically get adopted.

The Gartner hype cycle has five phases. The important ones for this discussion are the first three. First there is a technology trigger. Second there is an inflation of expectations (until it hits a peak). And then third, there is a trough of disillusionment. This is the moment where interest wanes and people begin to think it'll never happen (until it does happen).

That might be what we're living through right now, or it might not be. But my gut tells me that it's the former.

So, I of course think this is silly. But here's a claim that living in high-rises -- that is, buildings with elevators -- is bad for people's physical and mental health:

In the midst of a Vancouver civic election where housing is a hot issue, Vancouver councillor and mayoral candidate Colleen Hardwick stated that “highrises are not good for people’s physical and mental health.”

Last week we asked Hardwick to expand further on her views about health and building types. She told The Tyee she believes highrises radically reduce chance encounters between people because they separate people from the street and from each other.

“Ground-oriented housing typologies are ideal,” she said,  referring to housing that allows a resident to reach their place of residence using stairs, perhaps, but not an elevator.

Apparently what happens when you get into an elevator is that you immediately lose your ability to interact meaningfully with other humans. Yeah, I'm not the only one who disagrees:

“Coun. Hardwick is cherry-picking her data” about highrise living and the isolating effects of structures with elevators, accused urbanist and author Charles Montgomery. A six-storey building with an elevator, he told The Tyee, is “the most social place I’ve ever lived.”

Cities, it turns out, are complicated. And there are always trade-offs to be made. During the pandemic, some people thought it would be nice to live in a ground-oriented home in the country and now they are realizing that the country lacks things like amenities and, you know, other people.

Personally, I will happily take an elevator over a soul-crushing commute to a home without one. I also agree with Charles that multi-family buildings can be very social .