Why did we stop building through-streets?

[jbray]

While I on the whole strongly agree that low-density greenfield infill (is infill even the right word?) is not the way, or even the primary way, in which we address the housing crisis, I think it's wrong to completely dismiss the notion that there are instances where what @Blackbird describes makes complete sense. The *particular example* is not one of them, and if anyone is not aware, water utilities owning undeveloped land in their watersheds is the easiest way for them to maintain water quality while keeping costs down. There is a reason Boston's water comes from central mass and not the rivers that flow near it.

But, frankly, once an area has been significantly cut into there isn't much ecological benefit to that 2 acre patch of wooded land connected to nothing else. It's why I have zero patience for planners touting "cluster development" as anything more than greenwashing. Probably my least favorite development inside of 128 is this part of Milton for exactly that reason. But the damage has been done. That little patch of woods where I dropped the pin is infinitely less ecologically valuable than what's outside, and filling that in should be in on the table.

I entirely understand and am sympathetic to the idea that a Weston or Dover has so much land to add housing, and as others have pointed out that strategy has kept housing costs reasonable in other parts of the country. However, it's a short term boon with devastating long term consequences (and I suspect would not be significantly easier politically than pushing for denser, TOD housing.) Which brings me to one of my favorite planning hot takes: we should be looking at the exact opposite, and strongly discouraging development and even disincorporating municipalities inside 495 that remain at low populations. Give me Dover-Sherborn state forest!

I disagree here. First off, a quick look at the Milton topographical map shows us that that space and the one adjacent to it on the northern side are flagged as partial wetlands. That space, specifically, is for collecting runoff from the hills around it to be filtered down towards the Neponset river. Given the unpredictable nature of flooding in the climate future, I think many of us can agree that preservation of those areas will remain significantly important. What's funny to me about your statement is that the reverse is true. The hills are just harder to develop but their ecological impact is probably less important than the wetlands in the neighborhood.

That aside, while small spaces are not valuable as carbon sinks, they are incredibly important to flora and fauna moving between larger areas. Isolating large tracts of land from one another is a recipe for endangerment of species as their boundaries are fluid and the availability of resources changes over time. A model where we set aside large reserves and consume all of the space in between is inherently unsustainable. We have to be careful and, I would argue, probably need to claw back some of the developed spaces in the urban core. That said, cluster development here in America has been too extreme in it's rejection of dense and urban form. There is a possibility for people to figure out how to blend the green locality of something like Savannah's Historic district with parklets abound, with Berlin's self-contained parks for residents of the housing block, with something like Stockholm with it's larger scale parks dispersed through out the city. It's a known quantity that human access to nature where easy and available foliage and woodlands are is proven to boost mental health, social fabric, and local immunity (due to stress mitigation). Look how many people left the urban environment during COVID to escape into nature. We still haven't recovered. (An aside here that you can truly appreciate is that Hartford, CT checks pretty much all of my boxes. It just destroyed so much of its urban form with highways and parking lots that the green to developed ratio doesn't matter anymore. No wonder Mark Twain loved it).

I actually agree that we should be considering a green belt, I just don't agree that the green belt should be the end all be all. For example, I live in South Medford and the other Medfordians in here can attest that there is a hunger to redevelop Mystic Ave's Industrial/Commercial into a new dense area because it's already a wasteland and nobody cares enough about it to be too offended that it'll get density. I personally don't think it should be too developed because its a historic flood plain (pretty much everything east of Main street is) and was undeveloped until approximately 50 years ago. I feel that any redevelopment there should be equally matched with parkland that restores wetlands and green space to mitigate climate change but that could be because I used to live close enough to Wollaston in Quincy where low laying land was taken for granted as necessary for redevelopment and now it's a slow motion disaster as it gets reclaimed.

 

[EastCambridgeDreamer]

I agree that there are so many benefits of street grids, that it was a giant mistake for us to stop building them. I also want to +1 the principle that open space is crucial for human flourishing - which can take many forms, like 1) a street with a wide sidewalk, some shade and a few benches, 2) pocket parks at a quiet street intersection, 3) small, neighborhood parks and playgrounds, 4) wildlife corridors, and 5) larger parks. And open space should be mostly public, and mostly large enough to be useful. I explicitly reject the idea of these types of spaces being "open space": 1) strips of grass between a street and a sidewalk or parking lot, with nothing on them, 2) a sidewalk with no shade or seating, that's between a large parking lot and a busy street, 3) grassy or tree-lined street medians, 4) private back yards, especially when visually isolated from their surroundings with a fence or a hedge, or 5) private front yards and porches that are never used.

Proper street grids and public open space are two crucial elements for great cities and we ignore either one at our peril. Not everyone wants to live in a city, sure. However, not all the world needs to be a city. And historically, more people want to live in a vibrant, thriving, walkable city than not. And while it may feel today in the US like most people don't want to live in cities, I think that has more to do with the quality of most of our cities than it does with the desirability of city living in general.

 

[EastCambridgeDreamer]

I grew up in Weymouth, which is nice I guess, has great schools, lots of trees, etc. But it's dull af and I was happy to escape as an adult. And, of course, Weymouth doesn't really have a street grid at all. While it is very difficult to reconstitute or develop a street grid in a place like Weymouth today, which is fairly densely residential (at least relatively so - it's nearly all detached, single-family houses), there are opportunities to address the harms of the stupid curvy, dead-end style of suburban street networks:

1. The main one I can think of, is to allow mixed-use everywhere. Okay, this might sound like a radical proposal but hear me out. What I'm thinking of, is legalizing a form of development where a building has one residence and one business. And it would only be allowed as-of-right as long as the business met certain criteria around size and noise. So think about coffee shops, pizza places, ice cream parlors. Think about book shops and hair salons and nail salons. Think of businesses which aren't open super late, and bring a gentle form of density to any neighborhood. It could improve walkability without needing to re-design the surrounding street network

2. This one is more apt for urban areas, but one big change I would love to see is for the incentive for developers to change such that large, open lots could be subdivided and new streets introduced. Too many developments today have only one, large building and that's it. It means that only the most wealthy corporations can afford to do this. I'm imagining what it would be like for a large, rectangular open lot to be developed with 2 or 3 subdividing streets first and then requiring that each of the new, smaller blocks be developed by different people/organizations.

3. This is more of a guess, but I wonder whether there are SOME opportunities to establish new road connections in the suburbs. Certain gaps could be filled if only 1 or 2 pieces of property were acquired, and if they aren't on the market today, perhaps a municipality could keep an eye on them and jump at the opportunity if they ever come up for sale. This might require some political reform, however, to prevent a single NIMBY from guaranteeing that these road connections ever happen.

 

[stick n move]

Why Your City’s Street Grid Matters More Than You Think​

The Hidden Impact of Street Connectivity on Transportation, Housing, and Connectivity​

Why Your City’s Street Grid Matters More Than You Think

The Hidden Impact of Street Connectivity on Transportation, Housing, and Connectivity

thetransitguy.substack.com

 

[FK4]

I disagree here. First off, a quick look at the Milton topographical map shows us that that space and the one adjacent to it on the northern side are flagged as partial wetlands. That space, specifically, is for collecting runoff from the hills around it to be filtered down towards the Neponset river. Given the unpredictable nature of flooding in the climate future, I think many of us can agree that preservation of those areas will remain significantly important. What's funny to me about your statement is that the reverse is true. The hills are just harder to develop but their ecological impact is probably less important than the wetlands in the neighborhood.

That aside, while small spaces are not valuable as carbon sinks, they are incredibly important to flora and fauna moving between larger areas. Isolating large tracts of land from one another is a recipe for endangerment of species as their boundaries are fluid and the availability of resources changes over time. A model where we set aside large reserves and consume all of the space in between is inherently unsustainable. We have to be careful and, I would argue, probably need to claw back some of the developed spaces in the urban core. That said, cluster development here in America has been too extreme in it's rejection of dense and urban form. There is a possibility for people to figure out how to blend the green locality of something like Savannah's Historic district with parklets abound, with Berlin's self-contained parks for residents of the housing block, with something like Stockholm with it's larger scale parks dispersed through out the city. It's a known quantity that human access to nature where easy and available foliage and woodlands are is proven to boost mental health, social fabric, and local immunity (due to stress mitigation). Look how many people left the urban environment during COVID to escape into nature. We still haven't recovered. (An aside here that you can truly appreciate is that Hartford, CT checks pretty much all of my boxes. It just destroyed so much of its urban form with highways and parking lots that the green to developed ratio doesn't matter anymore. No wonder Mark Twain loved it).

I actually agree that we should be considering a green belt, I just don't agree that the green belt should be the end all be all. For example, I live in South Medford and the other Medfordians in here can attest that there is a hunger to redevelop Mystic Ave's Industrial/Commercial into a new dense area because it's already a wasteland and nobody cares enough about it to be too offended that it'll get density. I personally don't think it should be too developed because its a historic flood plain (pretty much everything east of Main street is) and was undeveloped until approximately 50 years ago. I feel that any redevelopment there should be equally matched with parkland that restores wetlands and green space to mitigate climate change but that could be because I used to live close enough to Wollaston in Quincy where low laying land was taken for granted as necessary for redevelopment and now it's a slow motion disaster as it gets reclaimed.

Yes. Even small patches of urban wild support a lot of wildlife density. They are simply no need to destroy any more green space. We are literally raping the land and the only reason this is happening is because of wealthy fake progressives keeping zoning restrictions for which everyone else has to suffer. The key to bringing prices down is building up, not out.

 

[Blackbird]

Developing more woodland with the same SFHs doesn't really densify anything, it just expands it.

There are in fact ways to increase density without sprawling out more. Those giant mansions could be split into two connected homes, for example.

Density is usually measured in people per area. How are SFHs not denser than woodland given that definition?

And who says I’m talking about mansions? Two connected homes surrounded by forest will house fewer people than 5 disjointed houses on small lots.

But you don't need to turn it into Phoenix by taking every last parcel available and using it for single family homes.

But isn’t that what we want? On the metro-level, isn’t Phoenix denser than Boston? And affordability-wise, which is more expensive?

Someone else mentioned LA as a counter-example for why this is a bad idea, but Phoenix is a closer peer population-wise. And I haven’t heard that they’re drowning in traffic or housing costs like we are here and they are in LA.

 

[TheRatmeister]

Density is usually measured in people per area. How are SFHs not denser than woodland given that definition?

"Area" means nothing by itself. You choose what area to include and what to exclude. I would argue for population density purposes forests and undeveloped woods (but not the neighborhood in the woods developments) should be excluded, just like it would be weird to say Boston actually has a very low population density if you include the harbor.

And who says I’m talking about mansions?

Well we're talking about Weston so it comes with the card.

Two connected homes surrounded by forest will house fewer people than 5 disjointed houses on small lots.

And 10 duplexes on the same or slightly larger lots will house even more.

But isn’t that what we want? On the metro-level, isn’t Phoenix denser than Boston? And affordability-wise, which is more expensive?

Yeah and it's a miserable, soulless hellscape of vast suburbia. No thanks. You can have homes without that, look basically anywhere else in the world.

 

[Blackbird]

Yes, it does represent a type of increased density, which is why the Los Angeles MSA, for example, has nearly twice the population density as the Boston MSA. But did it work for Los Angeles to follow that approach? Housing is just as expensive as it is here, traffic is just as bad, and commuting distances are on average even more extreme.

The demand for housing is much higher in LA than Boston. I mean, even if the metro went fully YIMBY and agreed to essentially eliminate all zoning everywhere within 495 and put the whole area on a massive street grid, do you really think we’d become LA within a year or two?

As others have noted, the problem in your suggestion is that it expands the geography of our built environment, which displaces recreational areas, wilds, and important carbon sinks without actually solving the problem that housing is too expensive when not excessively remote.

New England is the most forested region in the continental US. I find it very privileged to talk about “displacing important carbon sinks” within a beltway highway in a metro area that is by the loosest definition the 2nd largest metro area in the world by land area. We aren’t running out of wilds or recreational areas any time soon, new SFHs or not.

 

[kdmc]

@Blackbird I think you're fundamentally proposing two different things here and it's complicating the debate. Are we replacing forests in 495 with dense small-lot street grids, or with more suburban-oriented huge lots on dead-end roads?

I could be sold on the merit of the former: these new urban-boned communities can eventually develop into something walkable and awesome. But the latter is just insane step backwards.... once that public land is divvied into huge parcels for mcmansions on cul-de-sacs, it's stuck that way for a verrry long time.

 

[HenryAlan]

Someone else mentioned LA as a counter-example for why this is a bad idea, but Phoenix is a closer peer population-wise. And I haven’t heard that they’re drowning in traffic or housing costs like we are here and they are in LA.

In Phoenix, every trip involves15-20 miles of driving. There is no good transit model for the way that city is designed. As for other non-car options, I bike everywhere, I'm committed to that as my main transportation mode, and I strongly believe most living circumstances have some level of bikeability. But when I've been to Phoenix, I lose that belief. It is absolutely not bikeable, and not because temperatures are extreme. The distances are simply too significant with largely nothing but walled housing developments along the route. Now to compare that with LA, there is generally quite a bit more of interest reasonably close to most housing. It may be too spread out for bike commuting, but it's certainly reasonable to bike there for groceries and other errands. Phoenix is probably the very worst idea for how to solve the housing crisis, even if we ignore the environmental contradictions required to even have that city exist.

 

[KCasiglio]

I disagree here. First off, a quick look at the Milton topographical map shows us that that space and the one adjacent to it on the northern side are flagged as partial wetlands. That space, specifically, is for collecting runoff from the hills around it to be filtered down towards the Neponset river. Given the unpredictable nature of flooding in the climate future, I think many of us can agree that preservation of those areas will remain significantly important. What's funny to me about your statement is that the reverse is true. The hills are just harder to develop but their ecological impact is probably less important than the wetlands in the neighborhood.
That aside, while small spaces are not valuable as carbon sinks, they are incredibly important to flora and fauna moving between larger areas. Isolating large tracts of land from one another is a recipe for endangerment of species as their boundaries are fluid and the availability of resources changes over time. A model where we set aside large reserves and consume all of the space in between is inherently unsustainable. We have to be careful and, I would argue, probably need to claw back some of the developed spaces in the urban core. That said, cluster development here in America has been too extreme in it's rejection of dense and urban form. There is a possibility for people to figure out how to blend the green locality of something like Savannah's Historic district with parklets abound, with Berlin's self-contained parks for residents of the housing block, with something like Stockholm with it's larger scale parks dispersed through out the city. It's a known quantity that human access to nature where easy and available foliage and woodlands are is proven to boost mental health, social fabric, and local immunity (due to stress mitigation). Look how many people left the urban environment during COVID to escape into nature. We still haven't recovered. (An aside here that you can truly appreciate is that Hartford, CT checks pretty much all of my boxes. It just destroyed so much of its urban form with highways and parking lots that the green to developed ratio doesn't matter anymore. No wonder Mark Twain loved it).


I actually agree that we should be considering a green belt, I just don't agree that the green belt should be the end all be all. For example, I live in South Medford and the other Medfordians in here can attest that there is a hunger to redevelop Mystic Ave's Industrial/Commercial into a new dense area because it's already a wasteland and nobody cares enough about it to be too offended that it'll get density. I personally don't think it should be too developed because its a historic flood plain (pretty much everything east of Main street is) and was undeveloped until approximately 50 years ago. I feel that any redevelopment there should be equally matched with parkland that restores wetlands and green space to mitigate climate change but that could be because I used to live close enough to Wollaston in Quincy where low laying land was taken for granted as necessary for redevelopment and now it's a slow motion disaster as it gets reclaimed

Point conceded on the specific parcel! By no means do I think we should be developing wetlands and flood plains. I should have used an example I'm more familiar with the particulars of. Basically, as much as I am a card carrying tree hugger I will not mourn the loss of these trees that came down to put up a over a hundred units within walking distance of the red line. If Abington laid a street grid around their commuter rail station and put up some high density, mixed use development, would we really want to oppose that on environmental grounds?

I don't think we're really in much disagreement. I don't think their functions as carbon sinks is the primary or even a particularly important secondary reason for land preservation. I understand the importance of natural corridors between the large chunks, smaller pockets, and critical habitats and think we should be doing a much better job of regional environmental planning to preserve such. Access to parkland and to wild spaces within an urban environment are critical to the wellbeing of people who live there and to the area's dynamism. Putting aside the human and urban benefits though, I think it's important to remember that the large chunks of core forest and undeveloped land are much more ecologically valuable in terms of fostering biodiversity and environmental resiliency. It is not true that small, scattered undeveloped plots have the same ecological value of the same amount of contiguous land. Greater unfragmented land area is a force multiplier that gets you more bang for your sq milage. I'm in firm agreement that we should be willing to claw back land where appropriate to make this connections and especially to restore and expand those areas of core forest that we've damaged in our major environmental assets like the Blue Hills, Lynn Woods, the Fells, and our waterways. These are the foundation everything else stems from, like how we start transit planning by looking at downtown, back bay, kendall, and longwood.

While considering myself an environmental extremist, I don't think we're in a position to say we can fix our housing crisis without cutting down another tree. In particular, I think @FK4 's statements on "no need to destroy any more green space" and "wealthy fake progressives keeping zoning restrictions" are contradictory. Loosening up zoning laws in these wealthy communities is going to result in a lot of trees getting cut down. I think responsible planning would prioritize maximizing the amount of prioritized land to preserve while encouraging concentration around assets like transit. That is still going to mean making some choices about which trees are ok to cut for development (such as the aforementioned Abington example, or Kendal Green, West Natick, Union Point...).

Strong Towns did a podcast on this recently and are probably going to communicate it more effectively than I can.

As an aside, I've actually led the development of a regional open space plan where I cover these subjects at much greater length, just for a different region.

 

[FK4]

While considering myself an environmental extremist, I don't think we're in a position to say we can fix our housing crisis without cutting down another tree. In particular, I think @FK4 's statements on "no need to destroy any more green space" and "wealthy fake progressives keeping zoning restrictions" are contradictory. Loosening up zoning laws in these wealthy communities is going to result in a lot of trees getting cut down. I think responsible planning would prioritize maximizing the amount of prioritized land to preserve while encouraging concentration around assets like transit. That is still going to mean making some choices about which trees are ok to cut for development (such as the aforementioned Abington example, or Kendal Green, West Natick, Union Point...).

Strong Towns did a podcast on this recently and are probably going to communicate it more effectively than I can.

As an aside, I've actually led the development of a regional open space plan where I cover these subjects at much greater length, just for a different region.

I did not literally mean we need a total moratorium on developing any more undeveloped space at all. Rather I was making the obvious point, which is that the odds are so stacked against responsible development, and the entire state, and every town and city in it, are far happier to just give away another few acres for anti-urban, shitty SFH McMansions in cul-de-sacs (usually named after the very ecology they just bulldozed), rather than simply add floor or two to the coffee shop downtown. And I do think that, for the most part, there should be some very serious restrictions on large, undeveloped parcels of land. Pick any town outside Boston and there countless, hideous developments like this. It's not smart development, and only feeds traffic on the roads and an outdated ideal that every American can live in a SFH and have a great job in the city. This is not a development model that works. And while the extreme on the other end will never happen, I do think that the extreme position I took, if made reality, would still result in an overall greater benefit for the common good rather than no change.

The problem is that the odds are always stacked against not doing the clear-cut cul-de-sac. Every aspect of policy and the economy, for 8 decades, has a deeply baked in financial benefit for those who just waltz into some woods, destroy everything in sight, and build a bunch of houses. And making it "easier" for developers to build higher really is still not going to come close to the financial advantage that investors and developers have when they buy undeveloped land and build new stuff. So I do think, to a certain extent, and much more than most people, including here, realize, we need to stop only looking at the barriers to smart development in the places we need density, but also the factors that incentivize the opposite as well.

 

[Blackbird]

Which brings me to one of my favorite planning hot takes: we should be looking at the exact opposite, and strongly discouraging development and even disincorporating municipalities inside 495 that remain at low populations. Give me Dover-Sherborn state forest!

I appreciate your willingness to meet me halfway, but I do think this is ridiculous. Is there some example you have of another city in the world that does this (i.e. cuts off all infrastructure at an arbitrary point like a highway) and it works? There’s always some kind of urban step-down in places I’ve visited.

People talk about a “missing middle” of housing in American cities that go from towers to SFHs across the block. I think that Boston has a “missing everything”. We are short on housing in every tier, including SFHs. Drawing a line in the dirt at 128 isn’t going to help make up the difference.

 

[Stlin]

I appreciate your willingness to meet me halfway, but I do think this is ridiculous. Is there some example you have of another city in the world that does this (i.e. cuts off all infrastructure at an arbitrary point like a highway) and it works? There’s always some kind of urban step-down in places I’ve visited.

People talk about a “missing middle” of housing in American cities that go from towers to SFHs across the block. I think that Boston has a “missing everything”. We are short on housing in every tier, including SFHs. Drawing a line in the dirt at 128 isn’t going to help make up the difference.

Most famously? London. It basically goes from Urban environment to Farm Field at the Metropolitan Green Belt - obviously there are still regional highways and railroads that penetrate that, but they're fairly common in the UK. Also see Montreal & Quebec City; Canadian provincial agricultural land protection schemes serve a similar purpose and effect, and there's a similar restriction in the Portland OR area.

 

[TheRatmeister]

I appreciate your willingness to meet me halfway, but I do think this is ridiculous. Is there some example you have of another city in the world that does this (i.e. cuts off all infrastructure at an arbitrary point like a highway) and it works? There’s always some kind of urban step-down in places I’ve visited.

London has a pronounced green belt, the Randstad has the Green Heart which is relatively abrupt (and really most Dutch cities have quite sharp edges), Berlin stops pretty abruptly at the limits of the city-state in many places (even the East), Ørestad in Copenhagen (which is probably not an example to be emulated for many reasons) has very sharp edges with high rises across the street from a nature reserve, density in Brussels drops off a lot past the ring-road, and I'm sure there are more examples. It's broadly a European planning trend where you see "blocks" of Development bordering farmland or natural areas.

People talk about a “missing middle” of housing in American cities that go from towers to SFHs across the block. I think that Boston has a “missing everything”. We are short on housing in every tier, including SFHs. Drawing a line in the dirt at 128 isn’t going to help make up the difference.

It's hard to tell because excess demand cascades down. People who want downtown apartments will settle for triple-deckers in Roxbury or JP, people who want those will settle for suburban homes in Needham, and people who want those will settle for more rural housing in Sherborn. The first two categories are easiest to address, with new highrises in downtown or whole new developments of row-houses on disused industrial land For ultra-high and high densities, respectively. For example, the neighborhood I live in, comprised mostly of row-houses, has a density of roughly 1 person per 75 m^2, (35,000 people per square mile). It would probably be higher if the city I lived in wasn't around 1/3 students, with more young families for example. Assuming that density, we could house 6500 people on the Suffolk Downs site, another 3500 in a development around Beacon Park Yard, another 1500 at Wonderland, or over 20,000 in the Everett Hellscape™. Those are all places within the city of Boston, without existing development, that could house significant numbers of people even without high-rises. Add a few of those into the mix and you could likely add way, way more units. Then go out into Suburbia, where large strip malls can have dense new housing built on top of the retail space, and lower density fill out the vast parking lots.

And of course, basically any SFH can be replaced with a duplex or triple decker. There's so many homes that can be built on the space we have now, freeing up large numbers of the existing stock of suburban SFHs for those who really, really want them.