Archinect - News

People over mountain lions; California town is dropping its attempt to avert the state’s new housing laws

2022-02-09T10:51:00-05:00

Following four days of widespread scorn after attempting to block a new state law allowing duplexes on single-family lots by declaring itself a “mountain-lion habitat,” the wealthy Silicon Valley enclave of Woodside has backed down. At the end of a town emergency Town Council meeting Sunday night, almost all of which was held in closed session to discuss potential litigation, city officials announced they would begin accepting applications for new duplexes.

Woodside’s tired attempt at circumventing two of the most important and proactive laws in favor of affordable housing in recent memory drew an incredible amount of ire online before being withdrawn Sunday night following a letter from Attorney General Rob Bonta warning the town that “there is no valid basis” to its broadly disproven claims as an animal sanctuary.

The scheme was first exposed in a local newspaper and then picked up by the LA Times in addition to several additional national outlets, which amplified the pressure on the town. Woodside is an 11-square-mile showcase for luxury architecture, frequently listing noteworthy real estate for top-of-market prices while playing host to the dream homes of tech titans like Google CEO Larry Ellison, whose 23-acre replica Japanese emperor’s palace complex was completed in 1999 at a cost of $200 million (or about $340 million today).

The 'other' Hong Kong photographed by Pascal Greco

2018-10-11T15:17:00-04:00

[...] medium- and low-income residents can’t afford land, while the city’s wealth explodes and attracts economic activity that doesn’t keep its poor residents in the loop. This was the Hong Kong Greco wanted to show. “Perhaps one should adopt a special lens in looking at Hong Kong, not only to see its superficial beauty, but also the social undercurrents that sustain its structures,” writes Dr. Ernest Chui in Greco’s book.

CityLab editorial fellow Karim Doumar presents the stunning black/white Polaroid shots from Swiss photographer and filmmaker Pascal Greco's new book, Hong Kong - Perspectives, Prospectives, Typologies, documenting the gritty housing environments of Hong Kong's population at the lower end of the socioeconomic spectrum.

Photo: Pascal Greco

A satirical look at the homelessness and housing crises by McSweeney's

2018-05-10T16:09:00-04:00

Homelessness in America has reached crisis levels and I am determined to do everything in my power to fix the problem as long as it doesn’t involve changing zoning laws or my ability to drive alone to work or, well, changing anything, really. I’m more than happy to give a hungry man a sandwich once a year and then brag to my friends about it as long as he doesn’t sit down anywhere in my line of sight to eat it. Same goes for hungry women because I’m also a feminist.

A superb piece satirizing the homelessness and housing crises by McSweeney's writer Homa Mojtabai. From a privileged and entitled point of view, Mojtabai highlights extreme issues on how problems are being "solved". This is of course an exaggeration—but by how much?

The argument against zoning

2016-08-11T13:29:00-04:00

Zoning, although designed with the benign intention of keeping toxin-spewing industrial factories away from residential properties, has certainly been used for ill: ask any African-American family in the 20th century whose application to use their VA entitlement to buy a house was denied due to "redlining." Over at Bloomberg News, Justin Fox takes up the case that on the 100th anniversary of zoning laws in New York City, maybe it's time to substantially re-evaluate them.

As he writes, "Over the past few years, zoning has been blamed, mainly by economists bearing substantial empirical evidence, for an ever-growing litany of ills. The charge that zoning is used to keep poor people and minorities out of wealthy suburbs has been around for decades. But recent research has also blamed it for increasing income segregation, reducing economic mobility and depressing economic growth nationwide."

The latest in urban planning:

800 feet high and rising

2016-06-08T13:14:00-04:00

By living above 800 feet, Estis and Enkin are two members of an unexpectedly exclusive group in Manhattan. In my estimation, no more than 40 people currently live above that line, scattered among just three buildings... As my elevator descended and my ears popped, it occurred to me that I would almost certainly never take in such a view again. And in fact, maybe nobody will, if these apartments wind up becoming empty investments.

In this elegantly observed and exquisitely written piece, Jon Ronson not only takes in the view of Manhattan at 800+ feet with visits to Trump World Tower, One57, and 8 Spruce Street but looks toward the future of a nation divided by an increasingly intractable wealth gap.

Real estate of the priciest kind:

The self-segregation of America's wealthiest class

2016-05-12T13:16:00-04:00

For years now, people have been talking about the insulated world of the top 1 percent of Americans, but the top 20 percent of the income distribution is also steadily separating itself — by geography and by education as well as by income. This self-segregation of a privileged fifth of the population is changing the American social order and the American political system, creating a self-perpetuating class at the top, which is ever more difficult to break into.

"Geographic segregation dovetails with the growing economic spread between the top 20 percent and the bottom 80 percent: The top quintile is, in effect, disengaging from everyone with lower incomes."

In related news:

London's housing crisis is creating a chasm between the rich and poor

2016-04-06T19:20:00-04:00

London’s red-hot housing market of late is by now an international legend, drip-feeding the media with tragicomic stories of insane pricing on a weekly basis—from the $710 cupboard to the one-bedroom flat on sale for $37 million. Now a new report out this week details some of the harmful social effects that this boom in housing costs has wrought. Unsurprisingly, they are many.

This research, conducted by the think tank Centre for London, shows that the city's housing crisis is creating a massive gulf between the city's rich and poor. It's also creating an "inequality chasm" between London and the rest of the United Kingdom.

The report identifies three major trends. First, privately-rented homes outnumber owner-occupied ones, with the former growing increasingly poor. Second, while the top ten percent of British citizen are growing exponentially more wealthy, the rest of the country is getting much poorer. Third, in a reverse of historic models, poverty is becoming "suburbanized."

Read the linked article for more information on the study and what it says about life in London today.

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