Though the French capital and its suburbs house less than one-third the population of California, the region produced more new homes last year than the entire Golden State. — The San Francisco Chronicle
MIT Urban Planning doctoral candidate Yonah Freemark, writing in The San Francisco Chronicle, highlights the successes that have taken shape in Paris in recent years with regards to increasing housing production and affordability.
The recipe for success, according to Freemark’s research, includes a mix of well-known housing carrots, like imposing new inclusionary zoning initiatives, both locally and at the national level, funding the construction of public housing on excess government-owned land, and allowing for infill development consisting of smaller buildings on smaller parcels.
The recipe includes a couple of stick, too, including a dash of eminent domain and a dose of heavy fines for municipalities that do not meet housing goals. The approach, according to Freemark, is working.
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Comparing the housing crisis of the entire state of California to Paris is cute. The entitlement process, seismic building codes, environmental concerns like Title 24, mandatory parking minimums, and historically poor urban land use patterns and preference for single-family homes in California are all massive factors in not being able to meet target housing goals—and that's not talking about all the political red tape, bureaucracy, and corrupt use of public money in the state. I'm pretty sure it's like living in a police state in some of the banlieu outside the Peripherique and protests by groups like the Gilet Jaunes are indications that we're looking at bigger issues other than housing in a place like Paris. The weather is nice year round in California, so there's literally construction everywhere, but we're slowly growing out of our tendencies to develop suburban sprawl—that said, there are still significant hurdles for building in California that pale in comparison to Paris. Target goals of 25% of units being affordable are bold, and in a place like the U.S. you're going to have developers crying fowl that they can't make as much profit as they would if they built a condo tower or small-lot subdivision.
Furthermore, California already requires 10% of new developments to have affordable units, but most developers would rather pay a fee to waive the requirement rather than abiding by the law. Also, in a place like Los Angeles 75% zoning is single family, and since rezoning is unpopular, it's probably even less than 25% of the land that we're able to build on. There's a lot of resistance against rent control and California is just now working on statewide rent control legislation. Can we learn from what Paris is doing? Perhaps, but it's probably not as useful as a comparison as this neophyte over at the sfchronicle thinks. Not until we change our ways of suburban sprawl and car-centric urbanism.
"But my research shows that recent reforms allowed housing construction in the Paris region to expand rapidly, from about four units per 1,000 residents in the 1990s and 2000s to almost seven — similar to Texas’ rate..."
SHIT. I'm from Texas. That's not quality building, bruv. Houston is a great example of how rapid growth and development eventually comes back to haunt a city. Almost all of the storm water infrastructure needs a full-scale overhaul, but so much of it crosses through suburban backyards and public land that it's virtually impossible to address the problems. Also, I think we all agree that imminent domain is a bitch. 'Murica.
au revoir, felicia.
you're conflating case studies with policy subscriptions
I think we can agree that Paris as a case study is not a productive comparison to California for many reasons without splitting hairs about semantics. Most of the reasons cited in study the supporting the claim of rapid building in Paris seem to be policy driven to me—inclusionary zoning initiatives and subsidies for building on underutilized land for example.
Paris has the advantage of extensive public transit (both rail within city and outside) as well as clearly defined historic districts and suburbs ripe for development. They also don’t leave it to the market to design and build — they have a very robust social aka public housing program.
In SF, every lot is a battleground. And if you go to Oakland, the existing train is surrounded by single family lots and hard to reach stations.
The market acts inefficiently because it doesn’t invest in public transportation that could stitch together new developments, empty industrial or parking lots. They prefer to fight battles against cute row houses.
That's the ticket. France has great transit, and is also a bit more authoritarian about how and what they do in their public realm. Liberal California wants everybody to have a say, which is great, except when a few locos block what is for the greater good.
My corner of DC is the same. We've just started on a street car that's been in planning stages for decades, simply because it would mean change. Then they talk about keeping affordable housing because building more would only invite rich gentrifiers, displacing the immigrant neighborhoods along the route.
It's a supply and demand issue. Build enough good transit and there won't be enough rich people to fill up all their stops, but for gods sake, build around those stops. Otherwise, how do you expect to increase supply?
CA isn't any different from anywhere else: money rules. That some of the money there tends to be slightly more liberal than some other places does not change this fact.
Your right, money does rule, be it conservative or liberal. All we can do is enable as many people as possible to have a fair chance at upwards mobility. Beyond that it's up to the individual.
'streets paved with gold' is the propaganda for your upward mobility - the illusion that everyone has the same opportunities. Better to put a hard cap on "upward" via taxes.
I like it when people who can't afford shoes get told they should just pull themselves up by the bootstraps.
I believe in the welfare state and that we should help those who can't help themselves. But I also know from having children that if you give them everything without their efforts, it leads to indolence. It's not a black and white issue, which our current polarized times seems to call for.
They still have the knowledge that you won't let them fail utterly. That's something many people do not have.
Yes, but they are children. I would gladly use taxes to ensure all children grew up this way.
I don't disagree, but I think you need both, human nature being what it is.
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