Archinect - News

Are New Towns really the best new hope for ending the UK housing crisis?

2024-08-19T17:45:00-04:00

Last month, the [UK] government announced a task force to develop a strategy for new towns — settlements of more than 10,000 homes — and make recommendations for their locations within a year. The government has not set a target for the number of towns and acknowledges that they will take a long time to deliver.

Britain, short on more than four million homes, is mulling a revival of its post-war New Towns after a decisive Labour Party victory vaulted progressive leadership into power with a mandate to combat its ongoing housing crisis. Prime Minister Keir Starmer recently told the BBC that he is a self-identifying YIMBY who wants to "bulldoze" planning rules and overrule local-led resistance to get it done. The strategy, which preceded a new plan central to Kamala Harris’ Presidential campaign, could still regrettably wind up hemmed in by a notoriously parochial planning process which, nevertheless, gifted the world with Milton Keynes and other important architecture.

His deputy Angela Rayner says the list of sites to be developed won't be revealed until the end of this year. RIBA's President Muyiwa Oki has said at the outset that their plan "offers overarching solutions, but lacks critical detail on delivering social housing and futureproofing existing homes."

YIMBY advocates prevail in Curpertino development legal battle over Rafael Viñoly-designed project

2020-05-12T09:00:00-04:00

Plans to turn the old Vallco Shopping Mall in Cupertino into a giant mixed-use development were met with much push back from community members, The Mercury News reports. But now the development, which will consist of 2,402 apartments, 400,000 square feet of retail, and 1.8 million square feet of office space, has been cleared by a Santa Clara County Superior Court judge.

According to Mercury News, J.R. Fruen, co-founder of the housing advocacy group Cupertino 4 All said, "This is a gigantic win for housing advocates specifically, and a huge win for proponents of development in general."

The developer Sand Hill Property Company initiated a design competition to design the new project and ultimately selected New York-based Rafael Viñoly Architects and Philadelphia-based OLIN Partnership Landscape Architects.

YIMBY Act gets passed in House of Representative

2020-03-06T12:20:00-05:00

The U.S. House of Representatives passed the bipartisan "Yes In My Backyard" (YIMBY) Act this week, which aims to address the country’s affordable housing crisis by reducing barriers to increase housing production. The bill, which calls for high-density single-family and multifamily zoning, is sponsored by Rep. Denny Heck, D-WA, and Rep. Trey Hollingsworth, R-IN.

The bill, according to Smart Cities Dive, also calls for reducing minimum lot size; allowing manufactured homes in areas zoned for single-family residential dwellings; and allowing for duplexes in areas zoned mostly for single-family residential homes.

California's SB-50 densification bill is back again

2020-01-08T13:58:00-05:00

Now SB 50 allows cities two years to adopt their own plans to achieve the bill’s central goal, which is to greatly increase the amount of market-rate and affordable housing built near transit and job centers [...] without increasing car travel or concentrating the new homes in low-income areas while leaving more affluent areas untouched.

Writing in The Los Angeles Times, opinion columnist Kerry Cavanaugh highlights some of the recent changes made to proposed legislation from California State Senator Scott Wiener of San Francisco.

Wiener's SB 50 measure is a statewide densification initiative that's been a work in progress for several years. The latest iteration of the far-reaching plan is aimed at pacifying local-control advocates, including members of the Los Angeles City Council, who would like more of a say in terms of how they might implement the proposal's mandate to modestly increase residential densities within a quarter-mile of high-frequency transit stops across the state. The bill could help the state reach its ambitious goal of building over 3.5 million new residential units across the state by 2025.

California eliminates single-family zoning

2019-09-16T12:15:00-04:00

Under AB 68, homeowners who apply to build accessory dwelling units, or “granny flats,” can also apply to build a second, “junior” ADU on their property — the functional equivalent of statewide triplex zoning. While the new rules don’t allow the subdivision of properties for sale, they could unleash a “golden age” of ADU construction across the state, leading to a significant increase in housing supply.

“The passage of AB 68 [...] fundamentally shifts the landscape for building new homes in our state,” Brian Hanlon, co-founder and president of zoning reform advocacy group California YIMBY said via press release, adding, “When the Governor signs these bills into law, almost every residential property in the state will be allowed to build three units of housing—including in areas zoned for single family homes.”

A case for Brooklyn YIMBYism

2018-09-12T17:09:00-04:00

At its current rate of growth, Brooklyn is about to be more populous than the entire city of Chicago. Saying “we need more housing” is a given, but no one agrees on where, how high, and for whom. And New York has been later to that discussion than San Francisco, Seattle, and Los Angeles: While the city is building housing, technically, it is nowhere near enough to meet the needs of 144,000 new Kings County residents since 2010.

Alexandra Lange takes a closer look at Brooklyn's contested 80 Flatbush mixed-use development and argues why it's good for the borough.

Not NIMBY or YIMBY, but PHIMBY

2018-04-09T01:45:00-04:00

If we are to take the housing crisis in the United States seriously, after reviewing international models, we see only one conclusion—local governments, supported by the federal government, must build a very large amount of affordable, mixed income, publicly-owned housing, initially by developing existing publicly-owned land.

The People's Policy Project (3P) has put out a report making the case for Social Housing in the United States. The authors, Ryan Cooper and Peter Gowan, also published an adapted essay in Jacobin Magazine wherein they contrast their approach with previous programs like HOPE VI: "We support a massive expansion of the publicly owned housing stock for all income groups, not evicting poor people to make way for middle-class people."

Their colleague, Matt Bruenig, penned a related editorial in the Guardian summarizing why "expanding the housing supply through this social housing approach has many benefits over private, market-led development."

Raising taxes was the easy part

2017-11-13T18:34:00-05:00

For homeless advocates who had been glowing after November, the unanimous vote in August blocking the project by a Los Angeles City Council land use committee, headed by Mr. Huizar, was a discouraging setback. It was also a reminder that some of the toughest battles lie ahead as Los Angeles moves from the task of persuading voters to raise money for the homeless to the logistics of getting the money spent.

Adam Nagourney reports in from L.A., where homeless advocates and neighborhood activists are fighting over implementation of HHH (a $1.2 billion effort to build housing for the homeless). NIMBYs or concerned citizens? Professor Tim Iglesias responded "it will require sustained political will to manage the inevitable local opposition to building supportive housing throughout L.A".

Meanwhile, there is a revival of Hotel Hipness in the city, as "elements of the once-lost glittering age are re-emerging".

Is YIMBYism the proper antidote to NIMBYism? or should we throw these terms out altogether?

2017-05-11T19:06:00-04:00

Trauss's followers live by the neoliberal belief that deregulation and building more housing, even if it's only affordable to the richest of the rich, will trickle down and eventually make housing affordable for all. Her vision is Reagonomics "dressed up in a progressive sheep's costume," according to Becker. But Trauss's "fresh approach" to the dilemma of exploding housing costs has got conservative libertarians and lefty media outlets alike foaming at the mouth for more.

San Francisco, and the surrounding Bay Area, has long been the example around which issues of gentrification are discussed and cited. While it is far from being the only city to deal with an influx of wealth and the subsequent displacement of local residents, its role as the center of the tech boom has given the area one of brightest spotlights in regards to these questions. In a recent article put out by Truth-Out, the authors discuss the rise of a new (according to the authors) approach to solving housing crises—YIMBYism. YIMBYism stands for Yes-In-My-Backyard and is meant to designate a positive stance on development. It is an approach, as characterized by the authors, as being along the lines of trickle-down economics—the idea being that building more housing, even if it's only affordable to higher-income earners, will eventually make housing more affordable for all.

The article focuses on the conservatives running this movement claiming that they have become the "Alt-Right" of ...