Going from wood to steel does increase the cost quite a bit, I imagine. Wood sucks though.
Idea for fixing the housing shortage
- Thread starter Jouhou
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Going from wood to steel does increase the cost quite a bit, I imagine. Wood sucks though.
BeansTheCat
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The full answer is that the Massachusetts building code defines a high-rise as any building over 70 feet, and thus wooden balloon framing is no longer allowed. This causes large cost increases that don't pencil out until buildings get much taller, typically in the 12-15 story range.
There are two things I'm aware of that can be done to help mitigate this missing range of buildings:
- Encouraging adoption of mass timber construction. Mass timber is structurally capable of being used in shorter "high-rise" buildings, and is can be much cheaper than traditional techniques. However, it would probably make sense for the public sector to prime the pump here in order to speed up adoption.
- Changing the definition of what a "high-rise" is in the state building code. The International Building Code (IBC) that is used by Massachusetts normally defines high-rises differently. However, the state changed the code to reduce the maximum allowable height to 70'. I don't know when or why this happened, but other posters here can likely expound on it. If the state were to adopt the standard IBC high-rise definition, it would allow for an additional two stories of balloon framing. This is because the IBC height is 5 feet taller, and measures to the bottom of the top floor, instead of the top of the building as the Massachusetts code does. More information on page 29 of this single stair reform study.
6 stories is as high as paper construction can go. Any higher and you need a concrete or steel system, meaning a big financial hit that can only be recouped with many additional floors.
Is there a difference to US concrete and steel that makes it that much more expensive? It seems like US-influenced East Asia and Western Europe all do concrete at the 10-12 story height just fine.
JeffDowntown
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My experience with residential construction in East Asia suggests it is hard to make price comparisons. Common practice in many locations is to deliver new apartments as basically concrete shells, without interior finishes (often not even fixtures). So the apartment "price" is not comparable to a finished apartment in the USA or Europe. (This is often done because there are regulatory price caps on new housing in many locations, so developers just deliver a less complete product).
BosMaineiac
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From a structural standpoint, you really can’t build with stick framing taller than a 4 or 5 over 1. It may only make financial sense to go full steel/concrete framing at a minimum of 20 stories because of scale/usable floor space to make up for the cost. I’m not a developer so I’m not entirely sure of this.
Mass timber may change the calculus a bit but I imagine some developers are still weary of the somewhat new technology. It is starting to catch hold in the US, though, so that could change.
TheRatmeister
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Crazy idea I know, but have we considered that 5-6 story buildings are in fact not the minimum size for multi-family homes? You can achieve similar density by targeting a higher GSI (IE: Denser street layout and/or closely spaced buildings) with individually smaller buildings. The densest block group in Malden (near Malden Center station unsurprisingly) is 28k people per square mile. Winter Hill in Somerville is 25k per square mile.
Scott
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Yes, and there is thousands of small lots to build on in the neighborhoods outside downtown and developing them will not stop a single large building from being built. Also, some people prefer that type of housing and building it is still viable. We are seeing the high end go flat because it is over built. That is not the case yet in the middle
Kinda misleading since if you look it on a map, there's quite a bit of commercial buildings near the station.
stick n move
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It used to be that way, now we have modular construction that can build 7-15 stories cheaper than concrete or steel framing. They just built a 10 story building at clarendon hill in somerville using modular stacked boxes. It hasnt completely taken off yet, but the technology is there now. There wasnt any modular construction a few years ago, now we got one mid rise and a few low rises using it so its picking up.
HenryAlan
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The vast majority of Boston's density is exactly from this archetype. Closely spaced triple deckers + narrow streets = very high housing density.
JeffDowntown
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Of course if you do the density with 5-6 story buildings with courtyards, and dense streets you get 50,000/sq. mile, like Paris.
Longfellow
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I feel like this point always misses that there's nothing magical about 3 story buildings that makes them denser than 6 story buildings... Somerville lacks uses other than residential and is densely built out so of course it has a high density. If you kept Somerville's street grid and built 60 floor buildings it would obviously be denser than it is now. I say this as a lefty, IDK what people's fear is of height. Like it makes zero difference to me how tall a building is. Doesn't worry me a bit. Makes more sense to focus on the material economic effects
I think most people on this board would agree with you, but it's pretty evident the general public does not agree
Justbuildit
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American culture has decided, across the spectrum, that aesthetics are morality, and it’s led to a lot of brain dead decisions on things that actually matter. What it means to make housing and urbanism “better” suffer under this thinking and we now have perverse outcomes across the board.
Longfellow
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Sure but we seem unable to fix the aesthetic part either, so, what can you do. I agree that architects are not incredibly capable at this part, but despite our fascist focus on aesthetics over the practical we have yet to convince an architect through law or coercion to produce a building the general public finds beautiful. So we may as well abandon aesthetics
HenryAlan
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Agreed, or even if we simply increased the height of the triple deckers by another 2-3 floors, we would approach that level. The key element of this discussion is the prevalence of small lots throughout Boston neighborhoods. A lot of housing could be built on them without necessitating a mega-project only approach. But we should certainly do both.
If we are talking about construction economics, the point of this discussion is that far better density can be achieved over current levels, without resorting to large scale developments in the 20+ story range. Nobody is arguing against taller buildings, just that we could do better on the 5-6 story segment, which seems, for the moment, to be the limit on wood based construction. But let's build those towers, too, definitely!
Justbuildit
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I’d just encourage people who claim to believe in material progress to do the actual thing (adding a ton of housing) and that it is not in fact bad because it doesn’t look like the buildings that were there before. Buildings age and they need replacing, and if you’re serious about improving housing stock to lower prices and replace crumbling wood structures then you can’t get everything you want.
TheRatmeister
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Despite mostly hanging out in the transit threads this is actually what I'm most qualified to talk about.
Compare Lowell St in Somerville to Devonshire St in downtown. Both are ~40-50ft building to building, but they feel completely different. Lowell St feels open, light, airy, personal, and suburban. Devonshire St feels extremely urban, a bit cramped and claustrophobic, rather anonymous, and at times a bit dark. Clearly the height of the buildings makes a difference. The new urbanist/academic perspective that you'll hear from the works of Jane Jacobs and Jan Gehl for example says there are a couple things going on here, one specific and one general.
The specific thing is that one street has a larger width to building height ratio. The bigger that ratio, the more cramped and boxed in it feels. There's loads of debate about what ratio is optimal but it's not hard to demonstrate the general principle for yourself just by going to places with different ratios.
The general thing is that one of these places is outside the human scale. This is the central idea to Jacobs/Gehl's works. When you look up at a 50 story building you feel small and unimportant. This world is a lot bigger than you, and if we're being cynical/authoritarian about it, you're just a cog in the machine, not an individual. (See Fascist and Socialist Realist architecture). When you're on a street filled with buildings that aren't that much bigger than you, only a few stories, you feel more individualized and have more perceived agency. This has been debated plenty but in my personal opinion I don't think it's a coincidence that a condo or apartment is seen as 'not fit' for starting a family while a small detached house or townhouse is perfect for that. A piece that I would add is that I think having an individual front door that leads out onto the street is important for promoting a sense of ownership, and that having a public-facing space to decorate individually also adds character to the built environment. Beyond 4 stories that really stops being possible. This style of development generally combines quite well with courtyards, green streets, and 'micro-parks' as well as being able to offer private sheds and small back gardens for the ground floor units even while maintaing significant density.
That's not to say there's no place for taller buildings, there clearly is. Students, young couples, single urban professionals, etc. are some groups that are likely to not care about apartment vs smaller MFH vs SFH living. For some people a dwelling is a dwelling. A good way to balance that is with the age-old 'corners strategy' where the streets are mainly rowhouses or triple deckers, with larger buildings on the corners for apartments (preferably with another use on the ground floor). A good chunk of New York is built out like this and it works quite well.
For another example, here's a street I used to live on. The street is mainly low/mid rise townhouses and apartments. Some in the 'everybody gets a front door' style but mostly in the condo archetype with a single front door and then a staircase up to each unit. At each end there are taller blocks of apartments with one indeed being located above a supermarket. (I will say that this street benefits a lot from the open park space, if you want a more representative example you can hop one street over to the Zaagmuldersweg.) Or you can go the other way to see more traditional row-houses that are not quite as dense.
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But there should be some difference in construction price where that pencils out on a spreadsheet, no?
For purchase housing would mean that the condo owner is mortgaging both the cost of the shell and the interior outfitting - regardless.
It can't be that offloading the outfitting to the future owner makes the project somehow get funding?