Harvard - Allston Campus

Since this seems to be the NIMBY discussion du jour, I thought the following essay is extremely relevant (for this subject and elsewhere)

The Case for Strengthening Urban Property Rights
Ryan Avent Sep 22
http://www.theatlanticcities.com/housing/2011/09/gated-city/180/

People tend to have a proprietary feeling about their neighborhoods, particularly when they have large sums of money on the line thanks to their investment in their home. This feeling leaves urban property rights in a gray area. Residents are remarkably willing to dictate to private property owners what can and can't be done with their land. They're willing to approve restrictive zoning rules and lobby against permitting in ways that dramatically reduce potential land value, without ever dreaming of compensating owners and would-be developers.

Homeowners have long been abetted in this attitude by people of all ideological stripes – the progressive Great Society slum-clearers, the conservative suburb builders, and the New Urbanist suburban critics all accept the importance of tight government controls over land usage: over who can do what, where, in what kind of structure, with what color shutters. Most rich countries soured on economic planning and heavy regulation decades ago, but the move toward a more liberal order never made its way into urban development. New planning paradigms replace older planning paradigms, but very rarely is there acknowledgment that there may simply be too much planning, period.

One useful strategy for improving development in America's cities would be a simple increase in the humility with which residents and planners alike approach developmental rules and regulations. Quite often, the rules that are adopted in this context have significant negative consequences.

More concretely, a good first step would be to strengthen urban property rights. A straightforward way to accomplish this would be to declare that a neighborhood can limit development on land to whatever extent it wants, so long as it's willing to either buy the land in question or pay the land's owner to comply. Among the key problems associated with NIMBYism are the wedges driven between societal costs and private costs, and between private costs and private benefits. When a group of NIMBYs lobbies the government to restrict development on a piece of land, the private cost to the NIMBY group members is low—just the time to circulate petitions and attend council meetings—and the benefits are high: statutory protection of the neighborhood in its current, preferred state. But the societal cost is large: foregone potential population, lost productivity, foregone employment opportunities, lost tax revenue, and so on. It's cheap and worthwhile for individuals to limit development when it can be done through government lobbying. NIMBYism is a great bet for the NIMBY; it just happens to be terrible for everyone else.

Strengthening property rights, however, would more closely align private costs and private benefits. A group of NIMBY neighbors forced to buy a property in order to limit development on it would only make the purchase if they felt very strongly about doing so and, in particular, if they felt the benefits to them of blocking the development were worth the cost of the land in question.

But wait, you might argue: what if the potential developer stands to make billions by building on a particularly lucrative piece of land? How then could neighbors hope to buy the land to keep it un- or underdeveloped? It would obviously be much more difficult for NIMBY groups to halt development in such cases, but generally speaking, that’s a good thing. When land values are very high because development potential is very high, that suggests that demand is very high. And in such cases, the cost of blocking that high demand is also quite high. It is in precisely these cases that the economy is most harmed by NIMBYs who face low costs in restricting development.

Another potential criticism might be that in cases where development opportunities are most lucrative, builders will also have the greatest incentive to lobby for their project, offsetting NIMBY efforts. Clearly, big builders often manage to get large projects constructed in the face of neighborhood pressure. But this criticism only works up to a point thanks, to the essential asymmetries that are a part of such negotiations. Among the beneficiaries of development are many people beyond the immediate area of construction, including potential new residents and all those who benefit from more rapid growth and innovation. Costs, on the other hand, are focused on the few neighbors in close proximity to the development. Those few neighbors will often be represented by just a handful of local officials who will have a strong incentive to keep them happy. No one in the city represents the residents or businesses that might want to live or operate in the developments yet to be built. But their interests should matter.

Moreover, in the best of cases cities will tend to underinvest in density, such that any limitation on new development moves the city ever further away from where it ought to be. When a developer constructs a new building, participants in the transaction—from contractors to new property owners—all benefit (otherwise, they wouldn't transact). But so too do other residents of and workers in the city. The increase in a city's market potential associated with rising density can't be captured by individual builders, and so they'll tend to produce less new building than society would prefer, even in the absence of tight development rules. If anything, cities should go out of their way to counteract the impact of negative NIMBY sentiment for precisely this reason.

The nastiness of development battles suggests that sweeping NIMBYs aside isn't necessarily the most pragmatic approach. Neighbors will have their voices heard. In most situations, cities must work hard to accommodate the demands, unreasonable or not, of existing residents.

An alternative, then, is to enforce property rights rigorously, but to change their allocation. Cities could establish that neighbors in close proximity to a new project have the right to be compensated for the supposed costs of the development. In exchange for liberalized rules on new development, the city could charge developers based on project density and either distribute the revenues directly to residents or use the money to fund investment in community projects. Taxing density in this way isn't ideal, but by giving local residents a direct financial stake in new development, it may become easier for cities to meet demands for new space.

Cities may find it easier to manage neighborhood interests by planning ahead of time to make room for a minimum amount of new development. Legal scholars Roderick Hills and David Schleicher propose that city governments adopt a zoning budget. They note that supporters of improved urban policy often fight back against NIMBY efforts to limit new construction, and not without the occasional success. While high profile battles over big projects sometimes go the urbanists' way, however, residents in smaller cases are often winning new zoning restrictions that undermine the development gains from the big cases, and then some. It's simply too difficult for activists to overcome intense lobbying pressure from many, disparate neighborhood groups.

A government could act preemptively to ensure that zoning improvements are maintained by using a zoning budget. Each year, local government officials might adopt a planned level of allowable capacity expansion – a budget – that is then used to navigate NIMBY waters. Residents' demands can be accommodated in whatever way the city likes, so long as the net change in potential development meets the budget. If nothing else, the zoning budget plan turns neighborhood groups into adversaries rather than allies in the effort to shape planning decisions – a useful outcome, so long as the groups can be convinced of the general utility of increased development in the first place.

Edward Glaeser argues for a variant on this proposal relating to historical preservation designations. NIMBY groups are often quick to seek preservation of properties targeted for development on historical grounds. Sometimes, neighbors are in the right; in the past, rapid development has erased important and beloved structures from urban landscapes. Quite often, they're seeking the quickest and most expedient way to block development, by protecting buildings of dubious historical interest.

To avoid this tactic, Glaeser recommends a historical preservation budget, such that at any given time cities can only protect a set number of properties. If residents wish to add a new structure to the list, they must think carefully and weigh the value of the existing set of historical buildings, in order to determine which they care about most. This would create a strong incentive not to designate ho-hum buildings as special.

It's important to note that NIMBYism will often breed NIMBYism. When demand for a city is growing rapidly, a public outcry that blocks a new development won't eliminate that demand; it will only redirect it. That redirected demand often manifests itself as development pressure in other neighborhoods, which prompts still more NIMBY outrage. In a city in which development rules are generally more liberal, there will be less pressure on any given neighborhood.

This essay is adapted from author’s Kindle Single e-book, The Gated City.
 
Interesting and insightful -- thanks for posting, Shep. There certainly are aspects of this philosophy that resonate with me. I even made this outlandish suggestion some months ago about opponents to the air-right development at Nieman-Marcus.

Now a practical question: how do these concepts get applied if we overlay neighborhood concerns about the kind (as opposed to scale, FAR, height, etc) of proposed development? I am of course referring to the proposed casino development a half-mile from my front door. If the owners of Suffolk Downs were proposing 3000 units of mixed market housing (with all the necessary infrastructure upgrades), I'd be over there with a shovel to help them get started. Sadly, that's not the case, and a new swingset in a public playground won't offset the rich and varied adverse impacts to my neighborhood.
 
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NIMBY arguments are applicable in some cases, but nothing more than convenient for developers to marginalize input in other cases. Arguments such as the one posited here don't deserve consideration as a generalized approach to development.

Consider a possible example, Massport's land on the Seaport.

The Massport development process was isolated from NIMBYism -- it wasn't even subject to City/BRA oversight through zoning.

The outcome is, IMHO, a pathetic hodgepodge of mediocre buildings, each suited to maximize return for its particular site. There is no relationship between buildings, no stellar architecture, no distinct sense of character. Parks are overly landscaped, with little to no investment in recreational space for potential (future) residents.

I doubt that this outcome can claim to maximize land values by comparison with other ideas. Often NIMBY demands are simply to raise the bar on the quality of development and land use -- not just to limit height as the stereotype suggests.

Should abutters be compensated for development failures that don't reach the potential of their property?
 
^ Intelligent post.

Should abutters be compensated for development failures that don't reach the potential of their property?

This might be a better question than mine, as it relates to (and beyond) what's proposed at Suffolk Downs.
 
^ Intelligent post.



This might be a better question than mine, as it relates to (and beyond) what's proposed at Suffolk Downs.

Great to see such an erudite discussion from time to time on this forum

As usuall in the discussion of social, weather, medical or economic experiments there is the fundamental of the absolute impossibility of conducting a controlled experiment. In the case of city planning -- You can not try to compare restricted and not restricted development in a given city at once or over time and claim to gain any insight.

Each trial may be dominated by local in time or space conditions which can not be replicated. For example if you like the economic success of Kendal Sq. / Cambridge Centerr but prefer the pedestrian feel of Newberry St. -- how do you roll the clock back to the blank slate in Cambridge and then redevelop -- try as you like you can't! Either the Kendall area might never develop due to ground floor restrictions or poteniially despite your idea for Newberry St. -- you might lack the propoer mix of customers in Cambridge to make it work.

That said there is a lot to be gained from pseuo-ensemble data comparisons matching characteristics as closely as possible. keeping in ind thatat best all you obtai from such studies are guidelines -- with the outcome like a weather forcat posessing a certin level of unpredictabiity.

For an example if you like how Paris looks/works as an urban fabric -- you just might want to see what kind of general policies have been in place to guide development in Paris overa the past few decades. These would principally seem to be no towers in the core but build as tall as is possible without elevators and keep things as much as possible on a local scale (e.g. boulangeries).

So on this basis, Boston in general is considered to be friendly to pedestrians due to the relatively narow streets and relatively short blocks keeping traffic under control. How is this being implemented in the Seaport Innovation district --- so far -- it is not. Does this necessarily mean that the SPID wil fail -- not necessarily as there is the rapidly developing and always attractive to pedestrians harbor walk, Fan Pier marina, fish pier, etc.
 
A bit of an update in the Herald.
http://www.bostonherald.com/busines...umpstart_allston_plan/srvc=home&position=also

Herald article based on this story in the Crimson.
http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2012/4/3/capital-campaign-university-wide/

The story in a nutshell is that Harvard is currently in the quiet phase of its next capital campaign. Typically, the quiet phase raises about half the ultimate campaign goal. Harvard plans on announcing the public phase of the campaign late in 2013. The campaign goal is to raise upwards of $6 billion, meaning about half would be in hand by the start of the public phase. That should be enough to re-start the science complex within a year, and continue the $1.0-$1.2 billion renovation of the residence houses.

My guess is that the campaign goal will be to raise more than Stanford raised recently; Stanford raised $6.23 billion.

Another Crimson article on Harvard's uncertain planning for the current Charlesview space.
http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2012/4/5/charlesview-complex-progress-allston/
 
The newly realigned driveway at Shaws is so much better now. New (to-be) traffic light at Western & Telford St. meaning you can exit straight onto Soldiers Field Rd. And far less chance of getting smacked making a left on the way out. And the new access road dumps straight onto Brentwood St. with no curb cuts beyond the very front of the Shaws lot, so there's some semblance of a street grid taking shape around the Charlesview perimeter.
 
F-line, I think you ment Holton, not Brentwood. Although it would be great if Brentwood was pushed through as a pedestrian/bike path, as currently people walk through a broken fence and the senior citizen homes driveway to achieve this purpose.

While I agree the Telford street extension is a great step forward I am bothered that there is no parallel parking on the street. Especially with the sign for shaws etc at the foot of the road instead of at the actual entrance (people are constantly driving all the way down to Holton St before realizing their mistake), it feels more like... well... an access road than an actual urban street.

Also, Holton needs to be made a two-way between at least Antwerp and Telford, or preferably Litchfield and the alley between the fire dept training building and the old warehouse that has a boxing club in it now. Its more than wide enough, and cars are constantly going the wrong way on it anyway.
 
A hint of some of what Harvard may announce in June for the concrete sprawl:

205409_1276739_630x418.jpg


Bioengineering, an academic unit of the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, is on the table to move to Allston, according to several University officials.
....
“We’ll have more to say about our academic direction for the building in June, but among the groups that seem to be particularly promising fits for Allston are bioengineering and stem-cell research,” Garber said.

http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2012/5/11/bioengineering-may-move-allston/

Bioengineering and stem cell were two groups that were intended to move to Allston before construction on the Science Complex I project was suspended.

It also seems that some of the land Harvard had reserved for university purposes that is south of Western Ave. will now be developed by commercial entities, sort of like MIT developing land it owns in the vicinioty of Kendall Sq. Whether BU or MIT gets to be part of the mix for this south of Western Ave. land, no idea. IIRC, much of this land, other than for Science Complex I and II, was set for long-term build-out, circa 25-50 years from 2007 in the last (but now outdated) institutional master plan.
 
Good news, IMO. Get a larger mix of uses in there. Preferably Harvard would stir up university and commercial use in Allston even a little more, and achieve the sort of blended effect that works so well in Harvard Square (and in Kendall, although in the latter the effect is more economic than aesthetic).
 
Has CSX been granted an extension for it's use of Beacon Yard?
 
Has CSX been granted an extension for it's use of Beacon Yard?
Is there a reason why they should be? Harvard has no immediate plans for that space.

Outline of the construction schedule.

Through spring of 2013, the University will evaluate the current approved facility, in light of the new program direction, including modifications that may be necessary to accommodate the stem cell science and bioengineering envisioned for the site.

Early site work: Targeted for late 2013
Harvard will begin preparing the Western Avenue foundation for construction of the Health and Life Science Center. Some examples of early site work include:
• Removal of temporary structures for entry and egress
• Removal of top section of the slurry wall which was part of a temporary earth support system
• Prepare ground floor slab to receive buildings and landscaping

Construction on the Health and Life Science Center in 2014

http://www.evp.harvard.edu/sites/evp.harvard.edu/files/Harvard Allston Science Update 6 13 12.pdf
 
Has CSX been granted an extension for it's use of Beacon Yard?

No. The main yard is on-target to shut down by year's end. CSX already diverted international loads to Worcester on April 1, and there'll be a couple more step-downs this Fall before they're done. In the main yard, and by extension all those trailer lots on Rotterdam where the trucks enter/exit the main yard. Those truck yards are the most immediately buildable parcels to come online, since they don't require any street grid work. So not surprising if the Rotterdam-Western block gets first action from Harvard. It's one of the few spots that'll be ready-to-build the second CSX pulls out.


The engine house and loop track wedged between Storrow and the viaduct will stay open into 2013 because Worcester Yard doesn't have a replacement locomotive fueling and service facility. That's still a TBD item where the state has to help find CSX some land out west to relocate those ops. Most likely they're going to cut a deal with P&W to borrow their engine house and fueling station across town and kick that can down the road a couple more years till they're ready to build their own. Yes, that's every bit as much a "WTF, you forgot about the part where you need to gas up your own trains??? Isn't that kind of important?!?" head-scratcher as it looks. So there'll be some chains of locomotives headed to/from the engine house for servicing through next year and maybe bare traces worth of freight being worked in the engine yard and under the Pike viaduct while they're at it, but the rest will be all gone in 6 months.

Whenever they're done with construction in Worcester and Westborough CSX has to come back and tear down the freight offices, light towers, and all other structures in the main yard, rip out all the yard tracks/switches/ties (scrap $$$ for them), and re-stitch the yard lead tracks onto the mainline so the T can use/upgrade them for future considerations. Then they're done and the site can begin its new life as a contaminated brownfield nobody will ever have the money to environmentally mitigate for 20 more years. Yay!

The state's responsible for tearing down the engine house and loop track by Storrow. Which it probably won't do because it has no money and the decontamination costs are going to be even worse by the fuel tanks. So there's no hurry whatsoever to vacate. In fact, the longer the site remains vacant the more expensive it is going to be to decontaminate, so it's odd with how much the T whines about its southside equipment storage crunch that they don't just take out a super cheapo succession of 3-5 year leases with Amtrak on the CSX engine house and use it as a (literally) low-rent stopgap until South Station's expanded and Amtrak's ready to partner on something permanent (and electric) at Readville. But that would be far too logical, so of course we can't do it here. . .



The decontamination costs are the elephant in the room here. Readville Yard 5 stayed in derelict condition for decades until they finally found an EPA appropriation tacked onto the end of the Fairmount improvements funding to clean it up last year. And that was only to get it up to modern RR zoning regs, since the T's made no bones that they intend to use it for future southside capacity expansion. Cleaning up to commercial and residential zoning is steeply higher cost. And there is a hell of a lot more contamination at Beacon Park than there is at Readville or Northpoint or Assembly Sq. pre-cleanup because it was a hell of a lot busier and longer-lived freight yard than any of the others.

Nobody has attempted to answer the question of how they're going to go about cleaning it up. So get used to the massive dead zone that's going to be there in another year, because we'll be counting the weed growth in decades before they figure this one out. This is why I think a land swap with MassHighway to relocate the Pike straight through the yards will eventually go on the table. It may ultimately cost less to let Harvard build on far less contaminated Pike fill and let the relocated Pike plow through the oil slick soil where a concrete roadbed isn't going to have to rest on as squeaky-clean soil as a residential building foundation. At least when you figure that the Allston tolls and Viaduct are due for a major structural rehab anyway in another 10 years. But the more they don't talk about this, the slower it's going to get that process started once people start complaining about the big ugly dead zone of blight taking root by the river.
 
You can cap it and build on top of the cap.

The major task would be to make the cap as impermeable as possible, and intercept any subsurface contaminated groundwater flow.

http://epa.gov/brownfields/tools/ec_information_guide.pdf

That's not gonna be easy on a silt field next to the river. The rail yard moved in coincident with the remaking of the Charles basin. Boston & Albany bought the property from the old trotting grounds in 1890, 1 year before the Charles River Commission finalized its plans for damming up the basin. It then fanned out in size on reclaimed mud flats. Tidal basins are sort of by-nature very very permeable, so I don't know what kind of effort it would take to cap ex-mud watertight. Unfortunately, neither does Harvard and the state because no one has talked--at all--about environmental cleanup at the site. They're not yet at the beginning of the beginning of how to proceed here.
 
That's not gonna be easy on a silt field next to the river. The rail yard moved in coincident with the remaking of the Charles basin. Boston & Albany bought the property from the old trotting grounds in 1890, 1 year before the Charles River Commission finalized its plans for damming up the basin. It then fanned out in size on reclaimed mud flats. Tidal basins are sort of by-nature very very permeable, so I don't know what kind of effort it would take to cap ex-mud watertight. Unfortunately, neither does Harvard and the state because no one has talked--at all--about environmental cleanup at the site. They're not yet at the beginning of the beginning of how to proceed here.

F-Line the current clean-up rules are strongly dependent on the nature of the re-use. You could easily pave over the whole thing after digging out some material replacing it with a clay-based cap and some fabric to divert the surface water and then gravel and asphault -- that would immediatly enable the site to be used for a parking lot, staging site for construction materials, etc.

Yea -- if you want permanent use with significant possibilty of human contact -- the remediation gets more extensive and expensive. Though remediation technology has improved significantly since the days of Industiplex in Woburn. If that portal to a past "Industrial Hell" can be reclaimed for industry and office / R&D -- then Beacon Park shouldn't be that tough as I doubt that there is much in the way of heavy metals.

The really good thing is that no one is going to want use the ground water under Beacon Park for anything so you don't need to do the kind of clean-up needed when you are dealing with actively used aquifers such as on the Cape at Edwards / Otis or the Industriplex in Woburn

I would never given the current state of the art try to clean it to the point of use for schools or residences -- just not worth the effort -- maybe later with bio-based decontamination tools currently in the lab
 
whighlander, you would need to prevent the groundwater from leaching into the Charles.
 
whighlander, you would need to prevent the groundwater from leaching into the Charles.

...which has been a longstanding problem with this site already. It's reclaimed tidal flats. Just because the mud got packed flat enough to support the weight of a road/railbed and has been flood-controlled for a century doesn't mean that it has ceased being a tidal flat. Anything that leeches into that soil is...going out with the tides, as it were, into the river. Nature of the beast.

Shifting that soil around to build stuff in and of itself causes an elevated river contamination risk, so they can't do ANYTHING with this site until the soil is cleaned or capped. It's not nature of planned use or anything...can't put a shovel into the ground at all until there's a containment and/or decontamination plan in place. One of the parties in this public-private partnership is going to have to come up with a better plan than hoping the decontamination fairy shows up one night to make the evil stuff go away. Until they contend with this and how to fund it, there is no square-one for this site. It sits empty.


How many years has this been in planning, still no one has said boo about how they're going to do this or at what (and whose) cost? Say what you will about Northpoint's pace, but they didn't sit on their hands for 15 years waiting for the decontamination fairy to make it all go away. That site had a slow, quiet, but steady progression of containment caps and soil decontamination crawling across the landscape as soon the last derelict RR structures got ripped out. And planned well in advance. Harvard et al. are being naive beyond belief with BP. They need it clean and funded to be cleaned before they can begin to begin thinking about re-zoning. Total do not pass Go, do not collect any permit of any kind situation.
 

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