Archinect - News

A 50-story housing proposal is shaking up planning officials in San Francisco

2023-04-19T18:07:00-04:00

A proposed new high-rise development in San Francisco’s Outer Sunset district is standing out over its disputed manipulation of statewide density laws.

The LA Times is reporting on CH Planning‘s unlikely new proposal, which could add a Solomon Cordwell Buenz-designed 50-story tower to the neighborhood via provisions in California’s Density Bonus Law — a regulation they say allows for permitted deviations from local building restrictions to provide options for affordable housing.

“It simply defies logic that a building in a 100-foot height district seeking a 50% bonus could somehow rise to 560 feet,” Daniel Sider, chief of staff for San Francisco’s Planning Department said in a rebuke published by the newspaper. “While we agree that this site is ripe for housing, and we hope to work with the developer to achieve that, there is no provision in state or local law to permit the downtown-style building that’s been proposed.”

“The proposed project is flat out inconsistent with local zoni...

On the potential 'second draft' of the American suburbs

2022-07-28T13:29:00-04:00

It could look like another round of flight from the city. Or what we may be witnessing is a “second draft” of the American suburbs. Many communities that were once white, exclusionary, and car-dependent are today diverse and evolving places, still distinct from the big city but just as distinct from their own “first draft” more than a half-century ago.

The American suburbs are continuing to diversify and gain millennials and increased numbers of immigrants, two groups that have traditionally been confined to cities. More mixed-use and affordable developments are being delivered in suburban areas where single-family constructions have long dominated. Considerations for car-free and walkable communities are also becoming more popular in planning circles, joined by taller buildings, improved restaurant culture, and nightclubs. As Addison Del Mastro noted in the Vox piece, “the makings of a suburban transformation are here.”

Indeed. Home builders are currently attempting to meet a perplexing demand challenge by going smaller and cheaper, leading to a 7% decrease in single-family starts in June. ADUs are also starting to present themselves as affordable solutions, along with more newfashioned inventions like co-living that, in combination, are making the never-ending horizontal sprawl of the suburbs much denser. In the words of one eco...

Inga Saffron on the dueling ideals of urban density

2021-04-06T14:24:00-04:00

Not so long ago, density was promoted as a way to enliven underpopulated cities, particularly their downtowns. Then it became a tool for fighting climate change. Now, density is increasingly seen as an equity issue. [...] Two notorious projects help us understand the difference between density that enhances a neighborhood and projects that big-foot their surroundings.

In her latest column for the Inquirer, architecture critic Inga Saffron dissects two new mid-rise apartment building projects at opposite ends of Philadelphia (the "poop building and the Scrooge building," as she nicknames them) and how their individual approaches toward urban densification can have beneficial or detrimental effects on their surrounding neighborhoods.

"Our challenge is to accommodate new housing while still maintaining our quirky, beloved, lived-in neighborhoods," writes Saffron. "That’s why we need the right density in the right place."

Making the case for more density, not less

2020-05-12T13:42:00-04:00

The further threat is that the pandemic becomes a rallying cry to maintain our sprawling fortress neighborhoods designed to foster exclusion rather than inclusion. We have an obligation to ignore the short-term reactionary impulse to blame density for the spread of the coronavirus and instead use this opportunity to rethink the policies that impede the construction of new housing, at more price levels, in the places where housing is most needed.

Writing in an Op-Ed published by The New York Times, Carol Galante, professor in affordable housing and urban policy and faculty director of the Terner Center for Housing Innovation at the University of California Berkeley, makes the case for reinvigorating American approaches to affordable housing and urban density in a post-pandemic world.

Galante argues that instead of viewing density as an condition that fuels the spread of disease, the close proximity of goods, services, and people created by urban life, if guided by economic diversity, can actually help societies make it through troubled times.

Galante writes, "This pandemic is reminding us that we need communities where teachers, child- and elder-care workers, nurses, doctors, janitors, construction workers, baristas, tech executives and engineers all share in the prosperity and the comfort of an affordable home."

San Diego wants to scrap residential density limits in latest pro-housing plan

2019-12-09T14:57:00-05:00

San Diego Mayor Kevin Faulconer is opening another salvo in his administration's efforts to address the city's housing affordability crisis by proposing the so-called "Complete Communities Housing Solutions Initiative," a scheme that looks beyond simply building new housing to embrace holistic urban development.

The proposal was endorsed unanimously by the San Diego City Council's Land Use and Housing Committee last week, according to The San Diego Union-Tribune. The proposal presents an effort to refocus certain key elements of the city's zoning code to incentivize the development of smaller units, including one-bedroom and studio homes, and by allowing housing developers to offer community amenities that are decoupled from auto-oriented uses.

Describing the plan, San Diego planning director Mike Hansen tells The San Diego Union-Tribune, "We want to meet the needs of everyone in every neighborhood with an integrated land-use management approach that looks at not just housing, but ...

Density in life and in death: A look at Hong Kong's towering cemeteries

2019-09-09T16:15:00-04:00

[Finbarr Fallon's] photo series Dead Space explores how these monuments are designed, and how their history contrasts with Hong Kong’s more modern developments. “I have always been intrigued by how city-specific cemetery design can be,” Fallon says via email. “While death is universal, its memorialization practices are not. I found it fascinating that extreme density and verticality continue to be a defining characteristic of Hong Kong’s dwellings for both the living and the dead.”

Hong Kong's towering high-rise cemeteries can reach up to 60-stories in height. Regarding the photo project, Fallon writes, “The images juxtapose residences for two diametrically opposed groups—the high-rises for the living, and graves for the dead."

What makes a city vertical?

2019-07-18T13:38:00-04:00

Which is the world's most vertical city? You might think of Hong Kong, given its famous skyscraper skyline, but by different measures of verticality other cities come out on top

"According to building data research company Emporis," writes Matthew Keegan for the Guardian Cities series, "Seoul in South Korea has more high-rise buildings, with 16,359. Emporis defines a high-rise as a building at least 35m, or 12 storeys tall. In second place is Moscow, Russia, with 12,317 high-rises, followed by Hong Kong in third place, with 7,913."

Watching Hong Kong grow up. Reflecting on China's land of skyscrapers

2019-04-05T12:57:00-04:00

If there is any place in the world where the skyscraper reins supreme, it is Hong Kong. From a distance, these tall, towering structures fill Hong Kong's skyline with forms that touch the clouds. Hundreds of these towers reflect off of Victoria Harbor creating a sense of hyperrealism as people look to these enormous structures. However, why does Hong Kong have so many skyscrapers and what makes the display of these large corporate and residential buildings a sight to see?

International Conmmerce Centre (L), The Harbourside (M), and The Arch (L) Image © Jim Bowen

Jardine House's porthole windows. The circular shaped windows are quite popular and favored in feng shui. Image © Steve Webel

In a recent New York Times piece, writer Sam Lubell shares his perspectives of the city. When discussing the variation of structure type and building materials, he explains the beauty of Hong Kong's structural variation. "Many (despite an infamous exception or two) incorporate ancient principles of feng...

What is "Weird Architecture" today? China knows and doesn't want it.

2017-12-08T11:50:00-05:00

China’s State Council announced that “weird architecture that is not economical, functional, aesthetically pleasing or environmentally friendly will be forbidden.” Many architects and members of the public understood the frustration and bewilderment, even if they questioned the subjective nature of the official instruction.

That was a close call, thankfully 'Weird Architecture' that is economical, functional, aesthetically pleasing and environmentally friendly is still completely accepted and encouraged. China may be forcing itself into a semantically and conceptually charge subjectivism that could potentially bring about some interesting project framings and abstracts.

MVRDV's Ilot Queyries blends history + modern sustainable density in Bordeaux, France

2017-06-16T19:10:00-04:00

How can architects create livable, breathable spaces that not only honor the history of a region, but anticipate the global population increase? This is partly the mission of MVRDV's 300-unit residential apartment/mixed use Ilot Queyries, which is located adjacent to the ZAC Bastide-Niel masterplan East of the River Garonne, and is designed to create a new neighborhood that prizes density and green, sustainable features while organically integrating the history of the region.

Aerial view

As MVRDV's Winy Mass explains, "For the Bastide Niel master plan we make an update of the European city: based on the values of the historic city that is intimate, dense and mixed, whilst at the same time proposing new objectives like sunlight for all, even on the ground floor, new energy supplies with solar panels, integrated water system and more green spaces. The concept of the cuts of the volumes is introduced here at Ilot Queyries which can be interpreted as a pilot project of the master plan Ba...

Inside San Francisco's complex relationship with homelessness

2016-12-20T12:44:00-05:00

In this historically researched and nuanced piece for The New York Times, Daniel Duane examines the conflicted attitude of San Franciscans--and Californians in general--toward homelessness, immigration, and the problems of housing density. He notes that despite the state's fame for its compassionate liberalism, when it gets right down to it few people want to actually make the changes neccessary to prevent transience, whether that's forking out more cash in the form of sales tax to build shelters, or allowing denser housing developments to help keep up with expanding populations (and the subsequent affordable housing crunch). The article notes that:

There are now tents on sidewalks above which people pay $4,500 a month for one-bedroom apartments. The construction this year of a "Super Bowl City" for football fans in downtown San Francisco in advance of the big game sent even more homeless people looking for new turf. Some formed an immense village of colorful domes between a food-tru...

Los Angeles gets dense (housing-development-wise, at least)

2016-09-01T14:14:00-04:00

Once known as the city of single family homes, Los Angeles is now developing high-density housing complexes, not only in downtown, but according to this Urban Land article, on the traditionally reluctant-to-develop West Side.

The developments mark a shift in how Los Angeles conceptualizes living, trending away from its iconoclastic, sprawling roots into a more traditional urbanism. The developments come at a time when Los Angeles is also investing heavily in public transit partially to help alleviate the city's signature traffic congestion.

For more on new urban development trends in Los Angeles:

Is Los Angeles becoming a "real" city?

2016-06-23T13:35:00-04:00

Could Los Angeles grow to become a “real city” like New York or London? Last year, LA gained at least 50,000 people, according to a recent report from the California Department of Finance, pushing the population to more than 4 million people for the first time in the city’s history.

Part of the appeal of Los Angeles has been its refusal to be like other cities. For years, its objective "center" was a forbidding cluster of office towers with near zero street life, while in outlying, low-density neighborhoods, people partied in back yards that ran up against wildlife preserves, hiking trails, and quaint man-made lakes.

However, as other big, traditionally urban U.S. cities gradually became stupidly unaffordable (looking at you, New York and San Francisco) and Moby wrote that one Op-Ed, a sizable number of creative-class types decided to try their luck in a place with what then had half the rental costs and much more temperate weather.

Now, with a rapidly growing subway system and a still undaunted, ebullient vibe, L.A. may be starting to take itself seriously as a city, which ironically could be its undoing, or the impetus for spectacular urban development. If history is any guide, it will be both, creating the newest weird, beautiful, idiosyncratic iteration we co...

How autonomous vehicles will accelerate suburban sprawl

2016-06-21T13:21:00-04:00

If Mr. Ratti’s projections are correct, and self-driving cars can radically reduce traffic without cannibalizing existing mass transit—the hypotheticals pile up—it is possible that self-driving cars will make many cities livable in a way they aren’t now. Imagine if every U.S. city had a hybrid public-private mass-transit system on par with those in New York City or Washington, D.C., comprised entirely of self-driving vehicles.

New York can't be what it used to be, thanks to zoning

2016-05-20T13:03:00-04:00

Many buildings in distinctive Manhattan neighborhoods like Chinatown, the Upper East Side and Washington Heights could not be erected now: Properties in those areas tend to cover too much of their lots (Washington Heights), have too much commercial space (Chinatown) or rise too high (the Upper East Side). [...] “It’s ridiculous that we have these hundred-year-old buildings that everyone loves, and none of them ‘should’ be the way they are.”

Related on Archinect:

Dense, Denser, Hong Kong: Alex Nimmo captures the patterns of a crowded metropolis

2015-08-13T13:31:00-04:00

Hong Kong is one of the most densely populated cities on the planet. To accommodate a rapidly growing number of inhabitants in a limited area of land, the emphasis is on space efficiency – which often translates into extremes of verticality and compact living. Alex Nimmo grew up in the English countryside but moved to Hong Kong three years ago. The contrast, as you might imagine, was sharp.

↑ Bel Air

↑ Sheung Wan

↑ Quarry Bay

All images by @alexnimmo on Instagram.

As Manhattan grows supertaller, its shadows are getting superlonger

2015-01-19T13:11:00-05:00

But all New Yorkers are losing familiar vistas, and some are losing light and air, as supertall buildings sprout like beanstalks in midtown Manhattan. There are a dozen such “supertalls” – buildings of 1,000 feet or higher – in the construction or planning stages. And the buildings are not, as in Dubai or Shanghai’s Pudong district, being constructed where nothing else had stood. They are, instead, crowding into already dense neighbourhoods where light and air are at a premium [...].

The Rise and Fall of Manhattan’s Density

2014-10-31T15:18:00-04:00

In 1910, Manhattan reached a peak population of 2.2 million, from which it has never since rebounded, even after modest growth in the past three decades. Angel’s research found that today, Manhattan’s population density is down a surprising 40% from 1910.

Michael Maltzan's One Santa Fe tries to make density appealing in Los Angeles

2014-10-13T14:45:00-04:00

It is a fractal of contemporary Los Angeles architecture, the fragment that both contains and helps explain the whole. [...] What gives the $165-million project its unusual symbolic power is that it takes the generic stuff of a typical L.A. apartment building — a wood frame slathered in white stucco and lifted above a concrete parking deck — and expands it dramatically to urban scale. [...] The design takes banality and stretches it like taffy in the direction of monumentality.

Hong Kong tops Bloomberg's list of "Most Crowded Cities" by 2025

2014-09-25T14:20:00-04:00

Bloomberg published their predictions for the top forty most densely populated cities by 2025, with current #1 Hong Kong keeping the top spot, at nearly twice the projected density of #2, Salvador, Brazil. Hong Kong's population growth is predicted to grow by 32.8%, while Salvador's is nearly triple that rate at a 97.3% increase. Mexico City is #3, at 45.3% increase. The "crowded" metric is population per square mile, assuming that borders don't change (by land erosion or reclamation) by 2025.

Of the Top 40, the two cities with the highest estimated population growth (within the span of the generation leading up to 2025) are both in Saudi Arabia: Riyadh (166.6% increase) and Jiddah (137.4% increase), trailed by Brasilia, Brazil at 118.6%. The only other city with a projected growth of more than 100% is Atlanta, Georgia, at 114.7% population growth to become the 40th most crowded city by 2025.

The cities with the lowest projected population growth are: Seoul-Incheon, South Korea at 1.4...

Seven Myths About New Urbanism

2014-09-24T15:21:00-04:00

Joel Kotkin, a fellow at Chapman University and an untiring defender of the suburbs, begins a recent column in the Washington Post with a valid question: “What is a city for?” He then proceeds to get that question completely wrong. But really, we should be thanking him. In his article, he neatly sums up many of the key myths emerging from the anti-urbanism set, making my job of debunking these myths a lot easier.

The aforementioned WP column already managed to spark a lively discussion last month here on Archinect.

The Life and Death of an Impossible City

2014-08-13T17:38:00-04:00

City of Darkness Revisited is a photo book and cultural history of Kowloon Walled City, a largely ungoverned, densely populated enclave within Hong Kong.[...] It was like nothing else in Hong Kong: a mass of interconnected 12- and 14-story buildings forming a single huge structure, its facade glowing from the light of hundreds of apartments and shops. Clearly there was no administrative oversight. It was too dense, too ad-hoc, too unrestrained. All this was clear before even entering the place.

A recent Kickstarter campaign helped photographers Greg Girard and Ian Lambot fund and complete the new edition of their book, City of Darkness Revisited, about life in Hong Kong's legendary Kowloon Walled City.

Tokyo Takes New York: Astounding Housing Facts

2014-05-20T19:04:00-04:00

Tokyo’s extreme housing production and resulting market is a product of Japan’s uniquely liberal zoning rules. Taken along with its dense network of profitable, private railways, Tokyo is the closest thing this planet has to a city that has completely surrendered itself to market forces. And its construction numbers show it.

A Radical Approach to Adding Density in New York's Outer Boroughs

2014-04-25T13:46:00-04:00

The urban planning community is constantly touting the benefits of building dense communities around public transportation. But according to designers Chad Kellogg and Matt Bowles, few solutions have been ambitious enough to do the whole Transit-Oriented Development idea justice. So they came up with their own. Behold the Urban Alloy Towers, a proposal to take over spaces immediately surrounding transportation infrastructure like elevated train lines and highways.

Cities need Goldilocks housing density – not too high or low, but just right

2014-04-17T13:31:00-04:00

In so-called hot cities [...] battles are raging over height limits and urban density, all on the basis of two premises: 1) that building all these towers will increase the supply of housing and therefore reduce its costs; 2) that increasing density is the green, sustainable thing to do and that towers are the best way to do it. I am not sure that either is true.

Winner of the Christchurch “Breathe - The New Urban Village Project” competition

2013-10-29T20:48:00-04:00

The Holloway Team was selected as the winners of New Zealand's international "Breathe - The New Urban Village Project" design competition. The team is led by Holloway Builders from Christchurch, NZ in partnership with architecture firm Anselmi Attiani Associated Architects and Cresco engineers, both from Italy. Building and Construction Minister, Hon. Maurice Williamson made the official announcement on Oct. 22 at an event in the transitional Cardboard Cathedral in Christchurch.

Previously: Finalists Announced for Breathe, The New Urban Village Project in New Zealand

The Real Reason Cities Are Centers of Innovation

2013-07-08T15:22:00-04:00

Pan and several colleagues argue that the underlying force that drives super-linear productivity in cities is the density with which we're able to form social ties. The larger your city, in other words, the more people you’re likely to come into contact with. "If you think about productivity, it’s all about ideas, information flows, how easily you can access ideas and opportunities," Pan says. "We believe that the interaction mechanism is what drives the productivity of the city."

A Manifesto for Hyperdensity

2013-06-14T13:39:00-04:00

We cannot expect big American cities to reach their potential when the very professions that purport to defend and perpetuate urbanism recoil at the presence of towers. Left rudderless by the experts, we are forced to inhabit the bleak consequences of a poorly regulated marketplace, analogous to a population that must operate on its own cancers due to the confused surgeons who keep cutting away at the healthy tissue.

Americans are famously conflicted about urban development: somehow we've demonized both sprawl and density. But today there is a new conversation about the future of cities, driven by diversifying social desires, evolving technologies, and pressing environmental constraints.

On Places, in an excerpt from the new book A Country of Cities: A Manifesto for an Urban America, Vishaan Chakrabarti contributes a bold argument for hyperdensity. The very dense city, he says, not only promotes prosperity, sustainability and delight; it will also determine our strength as a nation.

Kowloon Walled City: Life in the City of Darkness

2013-04-18T15:57:00-04:00

Kowloon Walled City, located not far from the former Kai Tak Airport, was a remarkable high-rise squatter camp that by the 1980s had 50,000 residents. A historical accident of colonial Hong Kong, it existed in a lawless vacuum until it became an embarrassment for Britain. This month marks the 20th anniversary of its demolition.

Finalists Announced for Breathe, The New Urban Village Project in New Zealand

2013-03-05T16:50:00-05:00

Four finalist entries have been unveiled in the Christchurch, New Zealand urban design competition, Breathe - The New Urban Village Project. The brief called for innovative medium-density housing development designs from collaborative groups containing a designer and a property developer.

UPDATE: Winner of the Christchurch “Breathe - The New Urban Village Project” competition