Land Lines, July 2016

Sustainable Housing Solutions Skinny Homes and Other Affordable Infill Housing Community-Driven Buyouts in Flood Zones Nonprofit PILOTS (Payments in Lieu of Taxes) JULY 2016 1 Contents JULY 2016 | VOL 28 | NO 3 EDITOR Maureen Clarke FEATURES DEPARTMENTS PRD ESI ENT & CEO George W. McCarthy 14 Gentle Infill 2 Message from the President CHAIR & CHIEF INVESTMENT OFFICER Kathryn J. Lincoln Boomtowns Are Making Room for Toward a Theory of Urban Evolution De SIGN & PRODUCTION Skinny Homes, Granny Flats, and Other George W. McCarthy Sarah Rainwater Design Affordable Housing www.srainwater.com 7 Policy Brief PUBLI CATIONS COORDINATOR As housing costs spike in tech hubs and other Susan Pace thriving U.S. markets, three cities are loosening Nonprofit PILOTS (Payments in regulations to “restore the missing middle”— Lieu of Taxes) permitting internal conversions and medium- Daphne Kenyon and Adam Langley THE LINCOLN INSTITUTE OF LAND POLICY is an independent, nonpartisan organization density development to create more low- whose mission is to help solve global economic, and moderate-income housing, foster growth, 9 Muni Finance social, and environmental challenges to improve prevent displacement, and preserve the historic Verifying Green Bonds the quality of life through creative approaches fabric of neighborhoods. to the use, taxation, and stewardship of land. Christopher Swope, Citiscope As a private operating foundation whose origins Kathleen McCormick date to 1946, the Lincoln Institute seeks to inform public dialogue and decisions about 14 12 City Tech land policy through research, training, and effective communication. By bringing together Subsidized Uber in the Suburbs scholars, practitioners, public officials, policy Rob Walker makers, journalists, and involved citizens, the Lincoln Institute integrates theory and practice and provides a forum for multidisciplinary New Publications perspectives on public policy concerning land, both in the United States and internationally. 26 Buy-In for Buyouts 36 After Great Disasters: How Six Countries Three Flood-Prone Communities Managed Community Recovery Land Lines is published quarterly in January/ February, April, July, and October to report on Opt for Managed Retreat By Laurie Johnson and Robert Olshansky Institute-sponsored programs. Managed retreat is the most unpopular climate 39 50-State Property Tax Comparison Study adaptation strategy, but after suffering major Lincoln Institute of Land Policy property loss from hurricanes Irene and Sandy, 113 Brattle St, Cambridge, MA 02138 40 Fellowships some home owners in New York, New Jersey, and T (617) 661-3016 or (800) 526-3873 F (617) 661-7235 or (800) 526-3944 Connecticut chose to sell their properties and move to higher ground. Their experience suggests EMAIL FOR EDITORIAL CONTENT that buyout programs can yield great benefits, [email protected] but policies must be designed with care. EMAIL FOR INFORMATION SERVICES [email protected] Robert Freudenberg, Ellis Calvin, Laura Tolkoff, and Dare Brawley www.lincolninst.edu 26 Cover photo: A skinny house in Portland, Oregon. Credit: Meghan Paddock Farrell 2 LAND LINES JULY 2016 1 MESSAGE FROM THE PRESIDENT GEORGE W. McCARTHY a framework for generating hypotheses and the Before we attempt to implement the New empirical analysis to test those theories. And the Urban Agenda, we must confront the serious Toward a Theory of Urban Evolution research, in general, focuses on big iconic cities, limitations in our understanding of cities and rather than a representative global selection of urban settlements that captures the differences urban evolution. A new “science of cities” between big and small cities, primary and would buttress our efforts to get this last secondary cities, industrial and commercial stage of urbanization right. cities. Importantly, the research provides little guidance regarding how we might intervene to improve our future cities to support sustainable serious limitations in our understanding of cities human habitation on the planet. and urban evolution. A new “science of cities” IN HIS 1937 ESSAY “WhaT IS A CITY?,” Lewis Mumford detect relationships among the potential The New Urban Agenda—to be announced in would buttress our efforts to get this last stage described an evolutionary process through which components of urban evolution, or offered October at the third UN-Habitat conference, in of urbanization right. the “badly organized mass city” would evolve into narrow prescriptions to fix one urban challenge Quito, Ecuador—will present consensual global I do not intend to present a new science of a new type of “poly-nucleated” city, “adequately while generating inevitable unintended conse- objectives for sustainable urbanization. These cities in this message. Instead, I will suggest a spaced and bounded”: quences that pose new challenges. This is objectives provide guidance for United Nations way to frame one that borrows from evolutionary because we have never developed a real science member states as they prepare for the gargantu- theory. The evolution of species is driven by four “Twenty such cities, in a region whose of cities. an task of welcoming 2.5 billion new urbanites to main forces, and it seems reasonable that environment and whose resources were For more than a century, planners, sociolo- the world’s cities over the next thirty years— corollary forces help to shape the evolution of adequately planned, would have all the gists, historians, and economists have theorized culminating the 250-year process through which cities. These forces are: natural selection, gene benefits of a metropolis that held a million about cities and their evolution by categorizing human settlement moved from almost entirely flow, mutation, and random drift. And they play people, without its ponderous disabilities: them, as noted by Laura Bliss in a well-docu- rural and agrarian to predominantly urban out in predictable ways that shape cities—where its capital frozen into unprofitable utilities, mented 2014 CityLab article about the likelihood contexts. But before we attempt to implement city growth replaces reproductive success as an and its land values congealed at levels that of an emerging evolutionary theory of cities. the New Urban Agenda, we must confront the indicator of evolutionary success. stand in the way of effective adaptation to They generated multiple typologies of cities, new needs.” from functional classifications to rudimentary From the medieval town hall of Mons, Belgium, the Guardhouse Monkey overlooks the city. Credit: © Jochen Tack / Alamy Stock Photo. taxonomies (see Harris, 1943, Functional For Mumford, such cities, designed with Classification of Cities in the United States; Angel strong public participation, would become the et al, 2012, Atlas of Urban Expansion; Knox, 2013, nuclei of new poly-nucleated metropolitan Atlas of Cities). But they based these classifica- regions that result in: tions on arbitrarily chosen categories and did little to inform our understanding of how cities “A more comprehensive life for the region, for became what they are or to presage what they this geographic area can, only now, for the might become. first time be treated as an instantaneous Even Jane Jacobs, in a foreword to her 1961 whole for all the functions of social exist- book, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, ence. Instead of trusting to the mere called for the development of an ecology of massing of populations to produce the cities—a scientific exploration of the forces that necessary social concentration and social shape cities—but provided only narrative drama, we must now seek these results accounts of what defined great cities, mostly through deliberate local nucleation and with regard to design, as part of her ongoing a finer regional articulation.” assault on the orthodox planning profession. In some of her later work, Jacobs set out principles Unfortunately, since Mumford wrote these to define great cities, based mostly on form, but words, we have not achieved poly-nucleated she never provided a framework to improve the cities or regions. Nor have we advanced a theory science of urban theory. of urban evolution. Urban theorists have de- Modern urban theory is plagued by several scribed cities, used basic pattern recognition to shortcomings. It is not analytic. It fails to provide 2 LAND LINES JULY 2016 3 POLICY BRIEF NONPROFIT PILOTS (P AYMENTS IN LIEU OF TAXes) Natural selection is a process of impulse and Drift describes the unpredictable ways that response. It relates to how a city responds to cities might change their character. changing external factors (impulses) that As noted, I do not want to lay out a new By Daphne A. Kenyon and Adam H. Langley support or inhibit success. Impulses can be theory of urban evolution here. I merely want to Figure 1 economic, environmental, or political, but they recommend this direction in order to invigorate Local governments forgo roughly 4 to 8 percent of total States with Localities That Receive PILOTs are, importantly, outside the control of the city. our thinking around urban change more rigorous- property tax revenues each year due to the exemption for (2000–2012) 1 Economic restructuring, for example, might ly and systematically. A significant amount of hospitals, universities, and other charitable nonprofits. select against cities that depend on manufactur- work has already gone into quantifying elements In all 50 states, property owned by charitable ing, have inflexibly trained workforces,

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