Success ... by a hair's breadth?

As if in a coda to my post the other day, Plan Philly brings news of the apartment project at 43rd and Baltimore -- across the street from Clark Park. It went before the Zoning Board seeking variances, doing so after:

• Extensive community input shaping the development vision
• Jannie Blackwell rejecting spot-zoning proposal

By the time it got to the ZBA, the project had racked up letters of support or nonopposition from every single involved party. Yet there were, in the meeting, two dissenters:

At a hearing in April, the developers sought variances for height, 35 feet more than the underlying zoning allows, and commercial space. It was supported by local civic groups and Councilwoman Blackwell’s office, but opposed vociferously by two neighborhood residents who live a few blocks from the property. 

Mary McGettigan and Larry Caputo, the opponents of the project, noted that the project didn’t conform to either the existing or proposed zoning of the property. They argued that the developers hadn’t made their case that the zoning designation represented a hardship on the property.

The ZBA voted to support this project. But it only did so by a 3-2 margin. This, despite the fact that the developers had gone above and beyond in incorporating the community voice in their design. It's fairly clear that -- had there been no dissenters who showed up at the meeting -- the project would have sailed through the ZBA.

Two dissenters.

That's all it took to nearly derail a small apartment building that is in scale with a number of similar buildings scattered throughout the neighborhood.

As if you needed any more evidence modern zoning is excessively restrictive!

Zoning, the Static City, The Dynamic City

At the beginning of the year, Charlie Gardner at Old Urbanist offered an academic's findings on zoning, especially where American practice is in conflict with European practice. Perhaps the most important part, however, is a paragraph buried deep in the piece:

How this exceptionally American land-use system came into being during the late 1800s and through to the 1930s is the primary focus of Hirt's book.  In chronicling this period, many apparent paradoxes present themselves: for instance, although the United States of the late 19th century prided itself on being the most democratic nation in the world, its citizens had a low level of trust in their elected municipal officials.  The progressive municipal reformers of the time might therefore have campaigned for planning to be guided by state or federal governments, but instead pushed for non-discretionary municipal-level zoning.  As Hirt observes, zoning reformers such as Lawrence Veiller argued that "zoning rules should vary as little as possible in districts that were as large as possible and that zoning relief should be granted only under a very limited set of circumstances, if at all." 

But if the planning powers were delegated from state to city, and the city was to have little power to alter the apparently infallible choices of the initial zoning commissions, who was left to actually engage in city planning?  No one, as it turns out.  Planning commissioners were seemingly intended to be little more than curators of the city zoning map, and Hirt finds, as I have also noted, that zoning maps have changed relatively little in their basic allocation of space since the 1920s.  As I've written about before, the actual policy that zoning was intended to serve was almost an afterthought, and was primarily concerned with protecting the investments of wealthy homeowners.  By default, and perhaps unintentionally, city planning (to the extent it existed at all) was turned over to the emerging highway engineering profession. 

American zoning policy, in sum, was a negative and reactive vision -- through its implementation, it viewed cities as incapable of honest and effective self-government, and by its actual regulations, it viewed urbanization as a threat to not only investments but to civic spirit and even the American way of life itself. As Hirt writes, "[t]he single-family home had the right to the city: it was always seen as being there first. It was the gracious host, the delicate victim, and the original citizen that was always haunted, followed, invaded, and taken advantage of by other housing types." In this sense, Hirt's book echoes the conclusions of Steven Conn's recent Americans Against the City: Anti-Urbanism in the Twentieth Century.

The key takeaway of this is fairly simple: American zoning was already being used as a tool to prevent redevelopment as early as the 1920s. Zoning theory, while it grew out of nuisance law and European (especially German) practice, was already being adapted to exclude rather than include -- zoning, by design, is a hyperlocally-devolved tool. Indeed, the basic idea seems to have been to zone land such that intensification of existing development was made impossible, a practice which inevitably would concentrate redevelopment in the most intensively-used areas -- and on the greenbelt edges. 

And because there was no systemic planning practice designed to rezone, it has been left to politicians' whims, which often result in downzonings once communities realize that existing zones allow more intensive land use than what currently exists, and state DOTs -- whose highway extensions (and not mass transit extensions) have been, since midcentury, what has opened new land up to development.

What is curious to note, then, is that American sprawl is driven by what is essentially a units problem. In the hard sciences, units problems rise when units are misapplied, or when they're inadvertently mixed. For example, while a velocity calculation might be mathematically simple under constant acceleration, the result has to be in the same units as the inputs (e.g. m/s, cm/s, mi/h, etc.). Mix up the units -- say, by measuring an object's weight when what you want is its mass -- and you throw your calculations off. Similarly, inappropriate aggregation can often hide more than it illuminates: this is one of Jane Jacobs' key critiques of mainstream macroeconomics, that the sovereign nation is fundamentally an inappropriate unit for economic measurements, as it almost always represents an aggregation of very much economically disparate regions. 

By over-empowering land use planning at the hyperlocal scale, we inadvertently disempower reasonable land-use planning at the scale where it matters most, as far as optimizing spatial efficiency relative to amenitization is concerned: the greater conurbation. Static land use paradigms undercut the efficacy of mass transit (as has often been pointed out at Urban Kchose); because zoning law is not designed with spatial efficiency in mind -- and, indeed, almost every solution to any given land-use problem increases spatial inefficiency -- we find ourselves unable to respond save by sprawling more ... and more ... and more.

Sometimes small-scale intensification is not aesthetically pleasing: witness D.C.'s pop-up house, which, now that one has been built, has been banned. Indeed, this has generally been zoning's modus operandi -- regulate nonconformity into nonexistence. The problem with this is, however, that at a certain level, small-scale intensification requires aesthetic flexibility. Indeed, this may be old urbanists' strongest criticism of New Urbanism: that it overfocuses on form, while underfocusing on the land-use development process -- the true locus of the sprawl process. This is perhaps where Strong Towns has come into play: it has gained traction and has been growing, as a grassroots movement, precisely because it has correctly identified the core problem: a broken process: a process that enshrines a static, rather than dynamic, vision of the city.

But here is an interesting issue, and once where there might actually be natural friction between Strong Towns and old urbanists: short of total curtailment of land use regulation (an extremely libertarian solution), while the issues in transportation engineering are clearly defined by its excessively top-down paradigm, the problems with spatial planning are caused by it being excessively bottom-up. That is, resistance to change is driven not by new inhabitants but by the ones who already live there, and have the time and energy to mount opposition (which, due to the way the playing field is skewed, is almost always effective opposition). Even very simple changes -- for example, liquidation of excessive parking regulation, making small multiunit structures legal, moderate height increases, and other examples of incremental redevelopment -- are opposed so fiercely that, outside of large urban cores where an effective development counterpresence can be built, they are unlikely to get any traction.

The long and the short of this can be summed up by saying: The current land-use planning paradigm is fundamentally broken. Moreso, it is fundamentally broken because current American regulation creates a static vision of the city, rather than a dynamic one; this fundamentally empowers interests that favor their static vision (NIMBYs) while disempowering ones whose vision is dynamic (developers). And, despite many planners' attempts to make dynamic redevelopment easier, the truth is that the discipline's entire toolkit, over-oriented towards a static vision, greatly inhibits what can be done, and yields marginal results of even the most sweeping efforts.

Slumlords

(Please note that this post is the intellectual chassis for some other work.)

Philadelinquency recently ran an excellent piece on how Philadelphia’s very poor school performance holds it back. Setting aside the chicken-and-egg problem of schools and class, let us focus on the final element in this piece, an element that ties back into the blog’s long-standing focus:

Now, about your suburban slumlord who smells the gentrification coming towards his rental property he was renting out for $600/mo and collecting a string of code violations on for a decade who might decide to sell his house to a rehabber and cash out, leaving that rental at the sake of increasing valuations?  Nobody has come up with a solution for that yet.

While this is a tie-in to pieces such as this and this, there is a more fundamental problem it touches on that needs addressing: Our zoning policy has been an abysmal failure at regulating landlords. Worse still, in its zeal to separate out homeowner and renter communities, it has resulted in a nasty unintended consequence: Slumlords are the result of the system.

Consider it for a moment. Time and again, sociological studies have shown that a landlord’s investment in his rental properties is directly tied to his geographical proximity to them. A landlord who lives in the same city is more inclined to invest in his properties than one who does not; in the same neighborhood, even more so; on the same block, ditto; and by far the most likely on premises. Since a slumlord is a landlord who fails to invest in their property, we can extrapolate that they are inversely correlated with distance: that is, the closer to their properties landlords live, the less likely they are to be slumlords. We can thus extrapolate that landlords of city property who live in the exurbs are likely to be slumlords; those who live in a different metro area entirely even more so. And guess what--they are!

It is not by accident that Philadelinquency spends most of its time chasing paper trails on slumlords who live far from the city. And in many cities, “institutional investors” are quite clearly slumlords-in-waiting.

But our claim, that institutional slumlords are an unintended consequence of our land-use policy, goes quite a bit further. To make this argument, let us recall how modern zoning came to be (see here, here, and here); they were implemented precisely because the homeowners of an affluent Cleveland suburb sought to keep renters out. And so it is unsurprising that modern zoning policy disenfranchises renters; what is a bit more surprising is that the jurisprudence required to get around earlier rulings also disenfranchise small landlords. And much as other side effects of “sorting” by use disenfranchised small businesses--to the benefit of larger malls, hypermarkets, and big boxes--so too has it benefited property management firms, and institutional investors.

Property management firms--companies of the type that run garden apartments--have full-time maintenance staff associated with each property. (In the absence of a landlord, a caretaker is the next best thing.) But institutional investors need not; all they need to maintain is the portfolio. Part of this is the--not unreasonable--justification that since they handle smaller properties (i.e. houses) than property managers, a caretaker per property would be excessive. But another part is that these organizations usually have a strong financial focus, often to the detriment to the properties they’re supposed to be managing. And of course, you also have bona fide slumlords who hide behind “institutional investor” masks.

Indeed, the whole system of institutional investing seems set up to encourage financialization and transactions at the expense of property maintenance. Is it any surprise, then, that to many people, “rentals” has become a dogwhistle for “slums”? Or that small rental properties are reflexively opposed, for the same reason development is in general?

One could say that the irony is that the system has come to disadvantage the small landlord, the homeowner who wants to add a granny flat above his garage, the community-minded owner who wants to fix that house up down the street and rent it out to a nice family, in favor of the institutional investor with Wall Street connections and falling-down flats. But that is just one irony buried in a whole system of deeper ironies. Perhaps it’s time to stand up and take notice.

Viva la 2012 Zoning Code!

Philadelphia's new Zoning Code came into effect today.

What does that mean?

Most superficially, all of the zoning designations in the city have changed. R-10a is now RSA-5, C-2 is now CMX-2, and so forth.

But there are other important changes. The biggest of these is that the Zoning Code is now contextual.

What does that mean? Think of it as a compromise between Euclidean and form-based zoning--while the theoretical structure of the code is still Euclidean, the contextual zoning means that form-based elements are taken into consideration. RSA-5 is essentially each of the three or four different rowhouse designations under the old code mixed into a new designation; the contextual element means that new construction will ideally match existing construction elsewhere on the block (i.e. have the same setbacks, etc.). But large deviations from the norm trigger design review and (probably) rejection.

In short, the code still doesn't allow you to build a commercial addition to your residential property by right (unless your neighbors already have such additions), which is a shame, largely because while it is much less rigidly Euclidean than the old code, it still doesn't allow for the flexibility of use a fully form-based code would.

On the flip side, the new code has made densifying existing commercial corridors significantly easier. CMX-2.5, now the standard on most commercial corridors, allows for mixed-use development up to 55 feet high. 55 feet is by no means an arbitrary number: most major Philadelphia streets are either 50 or 60 feet wide, which means that CMX-2.5, when applied to its utmost, allows commercial streets to achieve a 1:1 street width-building height ratio*.

This does not bode well for midcentury commercial areas, largely because the Philadelphia variant of googie favored single-story commercial structures--essentially, strip malls even if they fronted the sidewalk. We need to undertake documentation efforts, and ensure that an outstanding handful are preserved--primarily in communities where supply and demand are already well-balanced--as well as individual examples that are exemplars of the style (such as Stein Florist at Frankford and Princeton). In this way we can retain a record of the appearance of the built environment without impeding redevelopment and densification of our commercial cores where they are most needed (e.g. along Frankford and Castor).

While the code ensures Center City can be denser and more of a skyscraper canyon than ever before with "Super" CMX-5**, it still underzones other important commercial nodes, leaving them at CMX-2.5 where a FAR-based zoning would be more appropriate. Chelten, Front and Girard, 52nd St., and Bridge-Pratt are exemplars of this issue; all are (or were) crucial commercial centers; all should (probably) be bumped up to CMX-4 (500 FAR, or five stories by right); the main difference is the lack of height limit on the latter. Germantown and Chelten is an example of a cluster of taller buildings that such an upzoning would allow emulation of. Likewise, first steps are being made towards TOD identification and implementation (although that is something that needs to be hashed out in the neighborhood plans).

With parking requirements (one of the more insidious auto subsidies), the Code, again, shows steps towards more current understandings of the role, but not a willingness to fully embrace current understanding. Rowhome parking requirements have been cut out entirely, but larger residential structures still require them, and base commercial requirements have not been changed at all (still at one spot, i.e. 250 ft², per 1000 ft² of commercial space). On the flipside, TOD, car sharing, bike sharing, etc., bonuses quickly, and drastically, reduce them or chop them out entirely. Good for Center City, bad for the Northeast.

I am unsure if RSA-5 is also height-contextual; I believe it partially is, due to 3rd stories on mostly 2-story blocks now needing to be stepped back. Comments have cleared this up.


...Some initial impressions on the new Zoning Code.
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* Or 2:1 on Frankford and Castor Avenues in the Northeast.
** "Super" CMX-2.5 has a base FAR of 1600. For comparison, the Empire State Building has a FAR of almost exactly 3300, or double that.

"Super CMX-5"

The new Comprehensive Plan has a new subdistrict of CMX-5 (old C-5), called "Super CMX-5", which has a FAR of 1600% (allowing 16 stories with 100% lot coverage) along the Market Street corridor in Center City.

...This is around 2/3 of the existing C(MX)-5 designation, already concentrated in Center City.

It makes sense to think of it more as a new ceiling zoning designation (CMX-6?), which allows us to start thinking about expanding C(MX)-4 and -5. These significantly denser zones allow us to upzone around subway and Regional Rail stations, especially in extant commercial centers, thereby offering (obliquely) a tool to create and leverage TOD.

In other words, "Super CMX-5" (=CMX-6 for all useful intents and purposes) allows "normal" CMX-5 to be applied at e.g. Broad and Spring Garden, Broad and Washington, Broad and Girard, Broad and Lehigh, Broad and Erie, Front and Girard, and so on. It also allows CMX-4 to be applied along Chelten Ave. and 52nd St., and around Frankford, Olney, and (maybe) Wissahickon Transportation Centers.

Instead of concentrating all density in Center City, it allows us to spread it along our mass-transit system, thereby creating more use, more ridership, and (eventually) a tool for developing and re-developing along new mass-transit corridors.

(Which brings up the issue of demand- vs. development-oriented transit, but still...)

Why Land Use Zoning Is a Problem

Archive trawling Nathaniel Hood's blog, I found this post with this interesting argument:

To really understand the problem in 2011, you need to rewind to 2003 / 2004. St. Thomas had just spent a decade expanding its student population to around 4,500 plus, and despite new on-campus residential buildings, student populations started to creep further and further into the neighborhood.
Well-intentioned members of the City Council decided to increase restrictions on rental properties and limiting each rental home to include only up to four (4) unrelated people per household. Meaning, large 5, 6 or 7 bedroom houses could only house 4 students.
St. Paul tried to defy the laws of supply and demand. Now, this is where the law of unintended consequences kicks in. They restricted the supply of student housing while the demand remained the same. The market reacted and two things happened as a result:

• 1. Property owners did what was reasonable and responded by splitting large homes into duplexes so they could fill up the empty space. The market had an increase in duplexes, and often times, landlords took the time to add extra attic studio apartments. This lead to the situation to actually become worse. Now, instead of 5 people in a 5 bedroom house, you now have 6 or 7 people in a recently split duplex or triplex.
• 2. By limiting supply, the ordinance increased overall rents; thus making it more appealing to convert a single-family home into a rental unit. In a way, the 2003/2004 zoning restrictions actually motivated more homeowners to convert smaller homes into rental properties.

Now, the City Council’s next step is …

The latest moratorium would prohibit conversion of one-family homes into two- or three-family homes and two-family homes into three-family homes. The resolution also would bar one-, two- and three-family homes that are owner-occupied from being exclusively occupied by students unless a student owns the home [Link].

The problem isn’t zoning. The problem is demand.

...Except , um, your conclusion's not what your argument's telling you, bub. The natural conclusion of this argument is the problem is (land use) zoning because zoning artificially constricts supply relative to demand. (Remember that we do have to separate out zoning classification: land use and form-based zoning are two different things.) To put it another way, land use zoning is an attempt to manipulate the market--and market manipulation has some rather nasty unintended consequences. For one thing, demand doesn't go away. When supply is constricted--particularly artificially constricted--this forces the price per unit product (in this case, a student apartment) up. Which, in turn, forces a roundabout way of meeting demand. In the St. Paul case, this involved subdividing the structures in a particular way to meet demand: a particular way that actually increased the student population in the neighborhood--which has, again, become a problem, forcing more draconian supply controls. Which, in their turn, will also force developers into increasingly roundabout and circuitous ways of meeting demand. (By the way the law is worded, boarding houses  or "extended-stay hotels" are possible next steps.)

This is similar to how land-use zoning was first used to enforce segregation (by both race and class), as Charlie Gardner has shown. The difference being that then zoning restricted supply to the point that the price per unit of supply cost more than the customers' willingness to pay (no wonder poorer households flooded into the urban cores where land use was a lot less restrictive! You've gotta live somewhere.) whereas here we're dealing with a relatively monied population--or, more accurately, a population whose parents are well-monied--which, in turn, induces developers to circumvent the increasingly draconian attempts at limiting supply, which in its turn is simply making things more problematic for the surrounding neighborhood.

This St. Paul example is also an example of the natural tendency for politicians to favor (usually organized, wealthier, voting) homeowners over (usually disorganized, poorer, nonvoting) renters. It's playing a constituency game, but such games are almost never what's best for the neighborhood as a whole, since the attempt at promulgation of the status quo leads to serious market imbalances, which in turn produce deeply adverse consequences. In the hands of very competent planners, land use zoning can be made to work to promote a better city (but relatively few planners are competent enough to make it work); in the hands of politicians, it becomes akin to playing with fire: you'll get burned.

The bottom line is: Land use zoning is the problem. It's clunky, inefficient, and oftentimes subverts its own goals (unless your goal is disurbanization). Form-based zoning is much more flexible (keeping in mind Paris' zoning is essentially form-based).

There is also a jurisprudence angle to this. Our land use zoning was legally rooted in nuisance law (in essence, land use zoning is nuisance law on steroids, an attempt to zone away anything that might become a nuisance). It has deep court precedent. Because of this, the need to come up with an effective legal argument against this type of land use abuse is pressing: this zoning is an over-distortion of the market that has become its own nuisance. I would suggest that Friedrich Hayek's key observation--that the government only has access to the same amount of information as the market--would be a place to start*. But I'm not a lawyer...
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* Whatever else one may think of Hayek, and the Austrian school he was the grand doyen of. I'm a fan of neither: Hayek mainly winds up arguing that something is complex because it is complex (...uhhh duh?), which misses the point of complexity theory entirely, which is that complexity is a mode of explanation--a place you have to get through from here to there. In this regard, Hayek, like Smith and Keynes, is great precisely because he had one good idea, which is a lot more than most economists can claim. (In case you haven't noticed, I think economics as a discipline has gone completely off the rails. My forays into economics journals, like Urban Economics, don't help things much either. Like sociology, it has devolved to being basically formalist philosophy with kinky numbers attached.)

Zoning and Transportation

A common criticism of zoning is its often-asinine parking requirements. Why, for example, should every new rowhome on an urban block have to have space for a vehicle--which in practice always means a garage? This emotional question is one which commonly initiates zoning reforms--yet, by the end of the process, community input from organizations who are continually worried about their neighborhoods' parking conditions--how hard it is to find a spot--will always ask for the re-inclusion of those exact same parking requirements, thereby frustrating the goals of transit activists, conservationists, New Urbanist planners, and others trying to shift the transportation mode share away from cars and more towards more sustainable modes, such as walking, biking, and mass transit.

To that end, the bonusing system of highest-density zones in many cities involves cutting parking requirements when alternative transportation access is included. This often comes in the forms of bike parking and/or access to local mass transit stations and concourses. In initial rezoning, these bonuses are structured such that they can potentially eliminate parking requirements altogether; yet after the community review process they come out so mangled they barely reduce parking, and hence promote alternative mode shares, at all.

Cap'n Transit today suggests a new approach: creation of zoning mirrors that either (a) eliminate parking or (b) promotes transit, by requiring a direct contribution to the local mass transit agency of roughly the amount it costs to add a garage. The full set of mirrors he suggests increases the number of possible zones, however, which would undermine another goal of zoning reform--reducing the number, and complexity, of zones to make the system more legible to both developers and community organizations.

When the use of mirrors is seen in light of this counter-demand, however, a new idea comes to mind: why not just rethink what we mean by parking requirements? For the provisioning of parking requirements is nothing more--and nothing less--than a policy meant to ensure transportation access to and from the site by the resident, patron, employee, whatever. It is thus intended to ensure economic access through the means of zoning. But the high autocentrism of the language--the way the requirements have been warped, either accidentally or deliberately--undercuts the aspiration behind providing this requirement in the first place. Parking requirements--instead of transportation access requirements--are an ossified remnant of the grand 1950s ideal that driving would be truly liberating.

The simpler way to offer what Cap'n Transit is suggesting is, thus, to simply offer a menu of different classes of transportation access instead of simply requiring parking. A developer could offer (a) parking to every unit or (b) a bike parking facility or (c) insurance of transit access via a grant to the local mass transportation agency to ensure a continuance of service, of roughly the per-unit cost of a garage or carport, or (d) a mix-and-match of the above options. Any options, by themselves, would be by right; mixing and matching would trigger a minor variance (to ensure that the percentages being allotted to each mode is in line with city mode-share desires). Transportation access requirements would then be built on the framework parking minimums offer, while superseding the detrimental effects, when scaled, those minimums create. It is also far simple to insert, and interpret, a transportation access table with different expectations and requirements pertaining to access of each mode at the beginning (or end) of the code, than it is to overstuff the code with reams of variant zones whose only purpose is to delineate different classes of transportation access.

Zoning

Philadelphia's Planning Commission is rewriting its zoning code. It's been a long time coming--the Code was last completely revamped back in 1960, and has accreted so many amendments that it's exceedingly difficult, in some situations, to even determine what exactly the Code says about a parcel--and will largely be either no change or a positive change, in terms of what somebody can do on a parcel. (The new 25% deviation rule, for example, will help cut variance requests, especially on grandfathered buildings, such as mansards, too tall under the 1960 code, by quite a lot.)

But the strangest discussion about the Code, to me, has always been about the densest districts.

Philadelphia's maximally dense zone is C5, which would become RC5 under the new Code, the zone of the core of Center City, among other places. Areas zoned C5 (RC5) look, in the main, like the cap over I-90 in Boston's Back Bay, or Chicago's Loop, or downtown San Francisco, and especially like Midtown Manhattan. (The grid precludes Lower Manhattan.) Average height in Center City's urban core is 20 floors, with some exceptional structures, such as the Comcast Center, BNY Mellon Center, or Liberty Place, marking the skyline from afar.

C5 (RC5)-zoned area

Which is why I find it so odd that C5 (RC5)'s base zoning is for 1200 FAR.

FAR is an acronym for Floor Area Ratio, and describes the maximal height (by stories) on a maximally-covered lot. A FAR of 1 would allow a one-story building to completely cover the lot; 1200 FAR therefore allows for maximal lot coverage of 12 stories. The Wanamaker Building, which is actually 11 stories but completely covers its lot, is usually used as an exemplar of a 1200 FAR structure. Other rules, relating to Philadelphia's height-bonus system, also describe what kinds of uses are included and excluded in FAR description (retail podiums are excluded according to current bonus standards, while public space (outside) and public rooms (inside) both qualify as open space, for example.)

Even with this considerable leeway, however, something is rotten in the state of Denmark, and the 1900 Arch apartment proposal tells us what.

1900 Arch is a proposal for a 19-story apartment building with two ground-floor restaurant pads and underground parking: a proposal that makes intuitive sense. The layout is essentially a latter-day interpretation of a classic garden apartment, with wings along Arch and Cuthbert streets enclosing a pocket park space in the middle, which would be used for (among other purposes) outdoor seating for the two restaurant pads. Some people think it's ugly, but de gustibus non disputandem and à chacun son goût and all that. So far, so good.

1900 Arch

What is mysterious is why this project has to get a variance at all*. The site is a lot in the densest part of Center City, a mere two blocks from the Comcast Center, BNY Mellon Center, 2 Logan Square, and the Bell Atlantic tower, among others; it would be a dense building among other dense buildings. And it--surprise surprise--is being opposed by a group of NIMBYs from a nearby condo, complaining about things such as "air" and "light", which is, let's be honest, just cover for "I don't wanna hear construction noise for a year".

1900 Arch should be regarded as the typical Center City project. Its density is context-reasonable**, it offers ground-floor retail and some green space, and it hides its parking--the bottom line, it behaves well. This is exactly the type of building we should be fostering, by making construction of it and others of its ilk as streamlined as possible. It should not need to get a variance. Why, then, does it have to?

Even at 1200 FAR, Philadelphia's densest zoning is not dense enough to adequately describe Center City's densest areas. While yes, there is a need for variances and bonuses and all that usual horseplay when something that impacts the skyline is proposed, for a project like this, with (among other things) minimal skyline impact, there should not be a need to go through ZBA and the Planning Commission. Rather, C5's maximal FAR should be 2000 (20 stories), which would permit as of right more infill apartment projects of this type, which, in its turn, will eat more of those pesky Center City parking lots*** that just seem to always stick around.

Assuming (R)C1 and 2 stay constant, I would suggest that the (R)C section of the Code be revised as such: RC3, 500 FAR; RC4, 1000 FAR; RC5, 1500 FAR; and RC6, 2000 FAR. This way, once FAR kicks in, increasing structural density is a given. The kind of thinking that gave us a C5 with 1200 FAR is exactly the kind of 1960s thinking we want to be rid of--not promulgate.
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* Well, okay, technically the site's zoned C4, the penultimately maximally dense district in the City of Philadelphia, but with a FAR of 500, the dropoff sure is quick. This also serves to demonstrate the antiquity of the zoning map as a whole, since the site hasn't called for a C4 zoning since 1970 or so, certainly not with the Sterling and Kennedy House right next door.
** As opposed to, say, Northern Liberties' American Loft, a maximally-dense type building in a neighborhood characterized by rowhomes and industrial-scale lofts.
*** Such as (in no particular order) 1450 Chestnut, 1301 Market, 800 Market, 900 Chestnut, 951 Sansom, 1300 Arch, 1401 Spring Garden, 800 Race, 2201 Market, 2250 Market, 68 N. 23rd, 3000 JFK, 3001 JFK, 3001 Chestnut, and so on.