Alex Pemberton @al_xrated Twitter profile

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Alex Pemberton

7 months

Nashville's Missing Middle zoning and building code reform package is live! Highlights: -> Single-Stair modeled on Seattle -> 2-Unit everywhere; 3-/4-Unit in USD -> IRC code for 3-/4-Unit My initial thoughts 🧵

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Alex Pemberton

@al_xrated

5 months

There's a reason why this book is almost 15 years old and these concepts are all just drawings. Zero understanding of retail leasing/ownership structures, standard lease provisions, drivers of value, cotenancy, etc. Very cool and fun drawings, tho.

Hayden

@the_transit_guy

5 months

Every strip mall in this country could be redeveloped into a far better experience while also maintaining parking.

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Alex Pemberton

@al_xrated

11 months

It's hard to think of anything in modern urban planning that's failed harder than attempts to preserve neighborhood demographics with low-density zoning, like Metro Planning has tried — and is in the process of doubling down on — in Edgehill. 86% Black to 14% Black in 20 years.

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Alex Pemberton

@al_xrated

10 months

YIMBY valorization of Minneapolis zoning reforms too often misses the biggest reason for its success — and why it doesn't translate to other Tier Two cities with similar reforms. Its strong mobility system unlocked undevelopable sites via ultra-efficient building types. 🧵

M. Nolan Gray

@mnolangray

1 year

@jburnmurdoch In 2017, Minneapolis adopted a similarly ambitious upzoning program, abolishing single-family zoning and upzoning transit corridors. It kicked off a building boom, such that Minneapolis is now the only city in the Midwest where rents are falling.

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Alex Pemberton

@al_xrated

11 months

Y'all want Lower Broad pedestrianized. I want Lower Broad amsterdamized. We are not the same.

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Alex Pemberton

@al_xrated

10 months

Has there been a bigger urban glow-up than the Division Street corridor in Nashville? Sure, Hudson Yards in NYC or Navy Yard in DC, but aside from master planned redevelopments... I can't think of a single street that transformed like this with no coordination. 2009 ↓ 2023

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Alex Pemberton

@al_xrated

1 year

I've seen folks call these "favelas" and it should be noted that these are very planned. intentional. regulated. I've also seen folks praise these. It takes an incredible amount of multi-layered public policy fuckups to make a planned development of tiny detached houses viable.

Scott Davis

@scottdavisCRE

1 year

Visited Elm Trails in San Antonio today to see its 350 SF and 660 SF plans, priced at $135k & $171k. #retwit 1/

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Alex Pemberton

@al_xrated

10 months

This is what radicalized me toward zoning abolition. Cities in other countries — even ones with far less state capacity and fewer resources — spend their urban planning efforts on transformational, quality of life projects. USAmerican cities do not plan. They only zone.

Hannah Pechan

@hannah_pechan

10 months

It’s been amazing to experience a city that is so GREEN! How Medellin is beating the heat with green corridors - BBC Future

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Alex Pemberton

@al_xrated

5 months

I don't think urbanists/YIMBYs have connected the dots between car bloat, parking dimensions, and construction costs. It gets even worse after the entry—inflating our housing costs and limiting where housing can be built. Let's look at Euro vs. USAmerican parking dimensions 🧵

Alex Pemberton

@al_xrated

5 months

There are a few ways to tell that the bottom-right is not a 5-over-1 (an exclusively USAmerican type) My favorite: single-lane signal-controlled parking in-/egress Another US v. EU difference that drives up our housing costs and makes small projects more difficult.

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Alex Pemberton

@al_xrated

11 months

My favorite deep lot building typology: Perforated perimeter block + rowhouse hybrid These were developed throughout Hamburg between 1893 and 1914 — and they're the perfect typology for densifying deep lots under American building codes. 🧵

Alex Pemberton

@al_xrated

11 months

The end of Single-Unit Zoning in cities like Portland and Minneapolis has other cities contemplating. As Nashville joins the club, we need to understand one of the biggest ways we differ: Standard residential lots in our inner neighborhoods are MUCH larger than in peer cities.

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Alex Pemberton

@al_xrated

11 months

Well, this blew up. One point of this thread is that it's impossible to maintain a low-rise, affordable neighborhood when there's such intense locational value that 15-story apartment towers are viable just 100 feet away. It's a quixotic quest, doomed to fail. Stop fighting it.

Alex Pemberton

@al_xrated

11 months

It's hard to think of anything in modern urban planning that's failed harder than attempts to preserve neighborhood demographics with low-density zoning, like Metro Planning has tried — and is in the process of doubling down on — in Edgehill. 86% Black to 14% Black in 20 years.

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Alex Pemberton

@al_xrated

4 months

The Beltline will make you believe in GOD. (Greenway Oriented Development)

Jason Cox

@jasoncoxnc

4 months

Why is ~your~ city not doing this? Go big.

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Alex Pemberton

@al_xrated

11 months

The end of Single-Unit Zoning in cities like Portland and Minneapolis has other cities contemplating. As Nashville joins the club, we need to understand one of the biggest ways we differ: Standard residential lots in our inner neighborhoods are MUCH larger than in peer cities.

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Alex Pemberton

@al_xrated

10 months

MPLS is the best biking city in the country. Its transit system (largely bus-based, with two light rail lines & a commuter rail line) stands up to any Tier Two city in the U.S. Its residents — especially the younger and less wealthy, who rent apartments — can live without a car.

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Alex Pemberton

@al_xrated

5 months

Two single-family house neighborhoods in South Austin. On the left, 24' wide streets. No on-street parking. On the right, 30' wide streets. On-street parking allowed. The reason for the difference can tell us a lot about how infrastructure relates to development patterns. 🧵

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Alex Pemberton

@al_xrated

2 years

Very good episode of Odd Lots. Ostensibly about family-oriented apartments but more fully about how various pressures and strictures - building code, capital, culture - do 99% of the design of our housing. They hit a lot; I'll expand on a few points and do a few small nitpicks.

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Alex Pemberton

@al_xrated

10 months

MPLS paired parking choice with major corridor upzoning and saw an explosion of housing. It unlocked a radically new building type: 10- to 100-unit buildings with 3-6 stories of apartments over a single level (or basement) of parking on small sites.

Sean Sweeney

@seandsweeney

1 year

In 2020 we brought one of the first projects ever built in Minneapolis to market with reduced parking counts. 41 units, 20 underground parking spots. Everyone told us we were nuts. Kolo was 100% leased within 45 days of completion and it has rarely been less than 100%

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Alex Pemberton

@al_xrated

10 months

First — MPLS eliminated single-family zoning in name only. Plexes remain uneconomical to build at scale due to size limits. Plex zoning has created less than 100 new units in five years. Other reforms — especially elimination of parking minimums — have had far greater impact.

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Alex Pemberton

@al_xrated

10 months

But lots of cities have eliminated or reduced parking mandates with little impact! Why have parking reforms spurred housing production in MPLS, but haven't in cities like Nashville? It's simple: MPLS has better mobility, so its residents don't demand parking like in Nashville.

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Alex Pemberton

@al_xrated

4 months

Remember, suburbia is where Americans go to get spacious backyards.

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Alex Pemberton

@al_xrated

5 months

There's a reason why Sprawl Repair has been so limited in scope—and its only successes are full demolitions of large, single-owner shopping malls. Actually, there are dozens of reasons. Like office-to-residential conversion, it's yet another unscalable solution mirage.

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Alex Pemberton

@al_xrated

10 months

Removing parking mandates in MPLS allowed parking supply to meet demand. In car-dependent cities like Nashville, it's not mandates that drive high parking ratios — it's the market. MPLS has the mobility system to make its parking reforms meaningful.

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Alex Pemberton

@al_xrated

4 months

How did we build so much more housing in the early 1980s? In Nashville, a zoning code amendment allowed a new form of housing: the Zero-Lot-Line duplex What happened next? A boom and a backlash. Same shit, different thread 🧵

Alex Pemberton

@al_xrated

8 months

How did we build so much more housing in the early 1970s? In Nashville, the Board of Zoning Appeals had power to approve complexes in residential zones that otherwise excluded apartments. A thousand units were often approved in a single meeting. And BZA began to meet weekly.

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Alex Pemberton

@al_xrated

1 year

If you want to argue that vast swaths of Nashville should be single-unit zoned because that's our unique history and culture... It might be wild to learn that Nashville didn't have single-unit zoning at all. anywhere. period. until... 1984. It did not exist.

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Alex Pemberton

@al_xrated

9 months

I think we don't understand locally that Nashville has among the most restrictive residential zoning in the U.S. — far tighter even than West Coast or Northeastern cities. Zoning for stasis was fine when the highways were empty and we could sprawl. But those days are over.

@Alex_Armlovich

@aarmlovi

9 months

Alena's long-form masterpiece on the housing crisis is out in @FortuneMagazine ! Love this deep dive on how Sunbelt Boomtowns don't realize they have circa-1990 Los Angeles growth controls. Miami & Atlanta are the next California...but they are only just beginning to realize

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Alex Pemberton

@al_xrated

5 months

The closest thing to urbanism that 99% of strip malls and power centers are going to evolve into: Something like Plaza Mariachi A bay of parking gets turned into a little plaza. The big box gets subdivided. Everything else remains the same.

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Alex Pemberton

@al_xrated

5 months

Every one of these buildings is owned separately; their occupants have different, long-dated lease terms. Big boxes aren't leasable when hidden away on a side street. Not enough area rooftop density to drive traffic to small retailers without the anchors.

M. Nolan Gray

@mnolangray

5 months

Would it really be so bad if this happened in the typical American suburb? I don't think so.

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Alex Pemberton

@al_xrated

2 years

We were promised an Authentically Nashville™ design for the new Superdome and that's exactly what we're gonna get. Thanks @Titans for keeping the spirit of the #FashionHouse alive!

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Alex Pemberton

@al_xrated

4 months

The Tennessee Legislature quietly passed a few big pro-housing bills this session. Local governments are now enabled to do: • single-stair • 3-/4-unit under IRC • voluntary zoning incentives for affordability A bill also places limits on off-site infrastructure req's 🧵

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Alex Pemberton

@al_xrated

11 months

In this Census Block Group — Division Street to Edgehill Avenue and 12 South to 16 South — the Black population has massively declined in both proportional and nominal terms. 792 Black residents in 2000. 164 Black residents in 2020. 80% loss. All in low-density zoning areas.

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Alex Pemberton

@al_xrated

10 months

Addendum: @mnolangray articulates this connection often and hammers feasibility of reforms. QT is not a dunk on him. Too often YIMBYs — and, especially, elected officials — think that one reform alone will be a silver bullet and change will follow. Urbanism is a complex system.

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Alex Pemberton

@al_xrated

4 months

This house was originally built as a duplex in 1938 and continued to be used as a duplex into the 2000s. With the Neighborhood Conservation Zoning Overlay in 2005 and the downzoning of Hillsboro-West End to single-family in 2007, it can no longer be returned to its historic use.

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Alex Pemberton

@al_xrated

10 months

MPLS had pared back parking mandates for years, and ratios continued to fall since mandates were eliminated citywide in 2018. But Nashville has had no parking mandates in its downtown since 2013 — and yet, developers are still supplying parking at 2x the ratio there as in MPLS.

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Alex Pemberton

@al_xrated

5 months

There are a few ways to tell that the bottom-right is not a 5-over-1 (an exclusively USAmerican type) My favorite: single-lane signal-controlled parking in-/egress Another US v. EU difference that drives up our housing costs and makes small projects more difficult.

Gary Winslett 🌐🇺🇸

@GaryWinslett

5 months

The Five-Over-One is the workhorse of dense, walkable, affordable market rate housing. Except for NYC, wherever housing costs are too high, making it as easy as possible to build lots of these would be hugely helpful.

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Alex Pemberton

@al_xrated

10 months

Nashville — and most U.S. cities — lack the mobility options to make a market for parking-lite living, as Minneapolis has done. Until Nashville and cities like it improve mobility — or enable assemblage of larger sites — corridor density will remain a solution mirage.

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Alex Pemberton

@al_xrated

1 year

Of course, the likelihood that condo apartments or even attached townhouses would be approved here is ~zero. Exclusionary zoning is the first layer of kludge that made this a detached project. But that alone doesn't make a wildly inefficient project like this pencil out.

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Alex Pemberton

@al_xrated

11 months

This transition happened despite only five small, project-based upzonings. Those five projects, which added 38 townhouses, redeveloped just 13 housing units. The vast majority of old, naturally-affordable housing units were lost to by-right, 1:1 or 2:1 redevelopment or flips.

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Alex Pemberton

@al_xrated

1 month

These are a couple blocks down from where I lived in grad school. They're my mental model for perfectly executed townhouses. Two keys: 1. They have a proper relationship to the street for functional first-floor living space 2. They have a strong, reinforced vertical orientation

Bobby Fijan

@bobbyfijan

1 month

Really pretty townhomes in Greenville, SC

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Alex Pemberton

@al_xrated

11 months

Turns out "make the boats look like pedal taverns" was the key prompt addition to get the street scale and relative position of the Batman Building closer to real life. It all makes sense.

swenocha

@swenocha

11 months

@UrbanEastNash @al_xrated Nah... they'd obviously be pedal tavern boats...

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Alex Pemberton

@al_xrated

1 year

Each of these have a separate foundation. roof. driveway/parking pad. four facades. exterior doors. staircases. separate plumbing & HVAC systems. This is incredibly inefficient. It should be incredibly expensive. But "why not apartments or townhomes?" is easily answered.

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Alex Pemberton

@al_xrated

10 months

High parking ratios (whether mandated or market-driven) eliminate this housing type because parking is a space hog. Each parking space needs 350 ft² — more than half the size of a 1-bedroom apartment.

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Alex Pemberton

@al_xrated

3 months

This is bad, and YIMBYs need to be able to articulate: 1. Why it's bad 2. Why it happens 3. How to make better happen Rather than just mindlessly "LeGaLiZe iT" poast about the products of a bad land use regime.

Joe Cohen

@CohenSite

3 months

73 units on a 6,000 sq ft lot

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Alex Pemberton

@al_xrated

9 months

Worth noting that Nashville zoning allowed duplexes by-right in every residential zone for 50 years prior to the 1984 rules. Our current duplex rules were a compromise to more radical exclusionary proposals promoted by homeowner interest groups. The same push led to RS zoning.

Quin Evans Segall

@quinevanssegall

9 months

I think something that’s also often misunderstood is that, in most of Nashville, you don’t need to be able in a DADU overlay to do this - these traditional duplexes are buildable by right in most of Nashville per our 1984 rules ./1

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Alex Pemberton

@al_xrated

2 months

Not only are European homes not made of papier-mâché, not only are front doors practically bank vaults, not only are windows protected by rollladen... but everything is designed to decrease noise. Take the "German Edge" door design that massively deadens sound attenuation.

Market Urbanism

@MarketUrbanism

2 months

America uses buffers of land and space to make up for flimsy materials, at every level, from inside of homes to between whole neighborhoods. European front doors are practically bank vaults, windows are protected by roll-down shades. In America, we move to segregated suburbs.

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Alex Pemberton

@al_xrated

1 year

Look, folks... if you follow along here, you know that I have no fear of unpopular Nashville takes. But I would never... NEVER... be so bold as to line up on the other side of hometown girl, the ultimate Southern Belle, and Harpeth Hall hall-of-famer... Reese Witherspoon

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Alex Pemberton

@al_xrated

6 months

Truly nobody is doing it better than Morris Adjmi right now. What do you even call this? Postmodern Traditionalism? The inverted façade with columns-in-relief and extruded windows? Genius.

Daniel Díez Martínez

@DanielDiezMart

6 months

Morris Adjmi. 83 Walker (Nueva York, 2017) #unedificioaldia 508

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Alex Pemberton

@al_xrated

11 months

Even more often, old houses inhabited by Black families were sold, renovated, and flipped to much wealthier whites. Especially the ones with historic charm, like 1003 and 1005 15th Avenue South. Some thought it marvelous:

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Alex Pemberton

@al_xrated

1 year

As a Nashville real estate mini-micro-influencer, I'm legally obligated to share every time Haven at the Gulch gets dunked on.

Nathaniel Hood

@natehoodstp

1 year

What we think we’ll get VS. What we’ll actually get

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Alex Pemberton

@al_xrated

10 months

The space-hunger of high parking ratios renders small sites undevelopable for denser uses. In MPLS, a 1-acre site can be a 70-unit apartment building with 30 parking spaces. In Nashville, apartments on corridors require 2+ acres to supply enough parking.

Alex Pemberton

@al_xrated

10 months

Our land use policy promotes drive-thrus and prevents alternatives by limiting assemblage. Detached house protectionism locks this site into dimensions too small to be anything but a drive-thru fast food joint. If those houses were added, it could be housing over urban retail.

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Alex Pemberton

@al_xrated

11 months

The transition of this part of Edgehill coincided with the development of The Gulch and its emergence as the most valuable district of Nashville. It's not only walkable to The Gulch, but also Midtown and Vanderbilt University. Of course this became valuable land!

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Alex Pemberton

@al_xrated

11 months

Much of Edgehill's transition looked like this: Old houses in various states of habitability, torn down for large duplex HPRs.

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Alex Pemberton

@al_xrated

5 months

Fake-historic overlays are designed to make new construction worse, so that it doesn't happen at all. Height limits here prevent a properly elevated first floor, so pedestrian eye level is smack in the middle of that picture window. Gonna have shades drawn 99% of the time. Sad.

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Alex Pemberton

@al_xrated

2 months

The practical effect is that cities will have no incentive to build shelter and will compete across jurisdictions for the most hostile reputation toward the unhoused. Rich enclaves will win; cities with fewer resources and/or greater humanity will bear the brunt. Solves nothing.

The Associated Press

@AP

2 months

BREAKING: The Supreme Court allows cities to enforce bans on homeless people sleeping outside, even if shelter space is lacking.

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Alex Pemberton

@al_xrated

6 months

My favorite architectural genre is buildings that do crazy, wasteful stuff to satisfy a poorly conceived regulation. It's a remarkable testament to the American spirit. In the words of a great 20th Century text, "Life finds a way."

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Alex Pemberton

@al_xrated

1 year

To illustrate why this is economically inefficient: 350ft² starts at $135k ($385/ft²) 600ft² goes for $171k ($285/ft²) The cost per marginal square foot: $100 About two-thirds of the cost of these houses are fixed costs not based on the size/quality/design of the house itself.

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Alex Pemberton

@al_xrated

11 months

Of course, if you do a planning study and invite folks who live in the neighborhood, they'll say they want to preserve it the way it was. By saying that they can, planners are lying to them. There is no policy tool in the world that can defeat that rent gradient. It's a lie.

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Alex Pemberton

@al_xrated

1 year

This is what you get without an HOA. We have one building in our neighborhood that isn’t governed by the HOA and this is what we get as a neighbor.

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Alex Pemberton

@al_xrated

10 months

Yes, that's a bit absolutist. USAmerican cities do plan. But that planning is almost exclusively about how they'll zone in the future. We devote incredible resources to administer overly-prescriptive zoning rules. Those resources should be redirected to quality-of-life plans.

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Alex Pemberton

@al_xrated

7 months

Here are the side street and rear court from where I lived in Hamburg, in a district that is about 4x denser than the densest "urban" neighborhood in Nashville. Density and tree canopy are not mutually exclusive. It's all about how the public and private spaces are arranged.

Roland Gunn 🇺🇸

@RolandGunnTN

7 months

Deforestation is a huge problem with increased density that the yimby's haven't cracked. Nashvile was a much shadier town two decades ago. These lots had trees. Where do you put the trees now yimbys? Memphis actually feels better than Nash in summer now bc it still has trees.

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Alex Pemberton

@al_xrated

10 months

Nashville hasn't had parking mandates since 2019 on its major corridors — which have even more flexible, pro-housing zoning than MPLS' famously upzoned corridors. Zero new apartment projects have taken advantage of this removal of parking mandates.

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Alex Pemberton

@al_xrated

8 months

How did we build so much more housing in the early 1970s? In Nashville, the Board of Zoning Appeals had power to approve complexes in residential zones that otherwise excluded apartments. A thousand units were often approved in a single meeting. And BZA began to meet weekly.

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Alex Pemberton

@al_xrated

11 months

Low-density zoning wasn't stopping Edgehill's transition. How could the neighborhood restrict development even further, beyond its restrictive base zoning? A fake-historic overlay, of course! First recommended in a 2003 Civic Design Center study. Finally implemented in 2018.

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Alex Pemberton

@al_xrated

4 months

Single-Stair! None of this "direct a committee to study and deliver recommendations by 2057" nonsense. Tennessee just went and did it. Local governments can pass single-stair ordinances tomorrow. This smooths the path for Nashville's single-stair bill.

Sean Jursnick

@seanjurs

4 months

Last week, Tennessee became the latest state to pass single stair legislation. On 4/29, Governor Lee signed HB 2925 - SB 2834 and established a path for taller single-stair housing and improved housing options in the state.

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Alex Pemberton

@al_xrated

2 years

Check it out. I did this with Microsoft Excel.

Alex Pemberton

@al_xrated

2 years

Working on something big and fun. Snapshots of partial progress:

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Alex Pemberton

@al_xrated

11 months

Preservation in the face of intense development at the doorstep is swimming upstream. In the next decade, two of Nashville's largest redevelopments will happen just blocks away, on the Beaman and Reed Automotive sites. The pressure on adjacent low-density zones will only grow.

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Alex Pemberton

@al_xrated

4 months

When we ask, "Missing Middle, is it really missing, and, if so, why?" The answer is always: Yes, because we have chosen to privilege property values and heckler's vetoes above housing. Every time a more affordable form of housing has become popular, it has been swiftly banned.

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Alex Pemberton

@al_xrated

1 year

This wildly inefficient project pencils out because we've made it quick, cheap, and easy to construct detached housing and made it long, expensive, and arduous to construct attached housing. Intentional public policy with over a century of refinement:

Oakland Antioch & Eastern RR

@TribTowerViews

1 year

@orangutanagram Veiller: "Do everything possible to encourage [SFH]... and penalize... [MFH] of any kind... If we require [MFH] to be fireproof... if we require stairs to be fireproofed... if we require fire escapes and... and allow [SFH]... to be built with no fire protection whatever."

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Alex Pemberton

@al_xrated

11 months

Maybe the Historic Neighborhood Conservation Overlay was too little, too late. Now we'll "consider ways character can be preserved beyond those boundaries" even though there is little of the old architectural — to say nothing of social, economic, or demographic — character left.

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Alex Pemberton

@al_xrated

11 months

Apartment projects in Nashville's urban core are being built in less-walkable locations. As prime sites dwindle, we risk directing growth to car-dependent places — worsening traffic problems. We must open up more land near transit lines and amenities.

Alex Pemberton

@al_xrated

11 months

Concentration of development in 37203 is nearing its natural limits — almost all viable sites have been claimed. To continue the construction boom critical to affordability, Nashville must unlock three things: 1. More (cheaper) land 2. Cheaper construction 3. New building types

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Alex Pemberton

@al_xrated

1 year

This sucks. And it sucks because we, as a society, have decided that life should suck for young people, people starting out, and people who are relatively poor. Incredibly bleak that this is the best we can offer people, and the best many people could hope for.

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Alex Pemberton

@al_xrated

1 year

Apartments would cost far more to build. They'd require all sorts of features that these don't: fire suppression, elevators and/or ADA compliance, etc. They'd get hit with construction defect lawsuits if they were sold as condos. Condos wouldn't pencil.

Alex Pemberton

@al_xrated

2 years

#SingleStair advocates (myself incl.) talk a lot about how point access blocks are more efficient, thus "pencil out" better financially than similarly-sized buildings that require two stairs. But there are *tons* of wildly inefficient townhouse style units that pencil out. Why?

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Alex Pemberton

@al_xrated

2 months

Okay, that last one didn't work out, but this time...! Look at this cute little cottage bungalow! Finally something small and affordable in Hillsboro-West End!

Alex Pemberton

@al_xrated

7 months

Awww look at this cute little Tudorish cottage! Finally something small and affordable in Hillsboro West-End!

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Alex Pemberton

@al_xrated

5 months

Why does it matter, public or private? Why wouldn't the condo development build wider streets, where guests could park? Quite simply: cost When developers—and, ultimately, homeowners—have to carry the cost of their own infrastructure, they minimize the amount of infrastructure.

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Alex Pemberton

@al_xrated

5 months

This is the sole access point to the parking garage in a 90-unit building around the block from where I lived in Hamburg. One lane. Red light. Green light. Triggered by induction loops in the curb cut and garage. Rarely must a driver wait—there's just not that much traffic.

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Alex Pemberton

@al_xrated

11 months

When I become mayor of Nashville, my fiscally-irresponsible vanity project is gonna be to host a 2046 Sestercentennial Exposition with an international architectural competition where starchitects add four more Parthenons, each reinterpreted in their signature style

The Cultural Tutor

@culturaltutor

11 months

Hold on, why is there a full-size replica of the Parthenon in Nashville, Tennessee?

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Alex Pemberton

@al_xrated

11 months

Just let folks share land, all over the city, and soon neighborhoods will offer new homes at price points that they haven't seen in decades. Sometimes it really is that easy.

Iain 🥥 🌴

@maccoinnich

1 year

A post-Residential Infill Project fourplex in inner SE Portland. 2-bed, 2.5 baths on the market for $400-420K. Prior to RIP, we didn’t see new homes at this price in this part of town.

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Alex Pemberton

@al_xrated

2 months

Folks, it is wild to realize that Nashville has more expansive historic districts than **PHILADELPHIA** These are fake-historic districts. It makes a mockery of historic preservation to use these zoning tools like a public HOA. Real historic preservation suffers for it.

Ben She | 🐘@[email protected]

@bensh__

4 years

A reminder of just how many historic districts *already* blanket Center City, making redevelopment there a huge hassle. Then compare to the rest of the city. Historic preservation is and has been White historic preservation.

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Alex Pemberton

@al_xrated

4 months

Wow, I've never seen Gallatin Pike this beautiful

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Alex Pemberton

@al_xrated

3 months

Nashville's historic overlays play an important role in the preservation of small, naturally affordable housing. By keeping developers from tearing down old houses and throwing up huge mansions, we preserve the neighborhood physically as well as socia‐ ...wait...

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Alex Pemberton

@al_xrated

7 months

In most American cities, incl. Nashville, recalcitrant local governments sought to thwart desegregation with large school site standards—effectively directing new school construction to white flight suburbs. Like large lot zoning, these standards are still on the books today.

fixcircle.bsky.social

@FixCircle

7 months

I knew it was bad but…..

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Alex Pemberton

@al_xrated

10 months

"We need to keep high-amenity, high-demand, high-priced neighborhoods single-unit zoned because people like backyards!" The backyards produced by single-unit zoning in high-amenity, high-demand, high-priced neighborhoods:

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Alex Pemberton

@al_xrated

11 months

Low-density zoning didn't stop this area from rapidly growing valuable, and it won't in the future. Similar transitions are underway in areas like Cleveland Park, accelerated by Oracle's campus and East Bank redevelopment — The Gulch 2.0 and Edgehill v2.

Alex Pemberton

@al_xrated

2 years

New construction single houses in Cleveland Park now routinely break $1million - 225% AMI at current mortgage rates. Lot value alone is over $300k in this neighborhood now. Starter home protectionism via Single House Zoning is no longer viable.

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Alex Pemberton

@al_xrated

5 months

One that doesn't get enough local (Nashville) appreciation is Old Hickory Village. Built for a WWI munitions plant, grew to 35k residents. Then a DuPont company town. Tiny lots (3k-4k ft²) in a compact grid = pop. density on par w 12South. Commercial & civic spaces mixed in.

Addison Del Mastro

@ad_mastro

5 months

Does anyone have an idea of answer to this question: What was the last "true" small town or city built in the United States? I.e. something with a Main Street/grid/mixed use/minimal off-street parking. Something any American would recognize as a "classic small town"?

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Alex Pemberton

@al_xrated

5 months

@MarketUrbanism That's what powers the rooftop micro-agriculture for the Toys-Appliances-Seeds shop and the Recycling Center, which all pay more rent than whatever used the strip mall before, because this one has a patio or something.

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Alex Pemberton

@al_xrated

2 years

German, Austrian, and Swiss rental law requires almost all leases be open-ended. This is a massive shift in the power balance between tenants and landlords. As a result, tenants move far less often. "Renting as a Lifestyle" is normal because it is stable, unlike in the U.S.

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Alex Pemberton

@al_xrated

1 year

What makes this deal so bad is not that it's the largest NFL stadium subsidy in history. It's that the direct subsidy is the tip of the iceberg. The far greater value is below the surface, in the land it consumes and the value it destroys and the alternatives it forecloses.

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Alex Pemberton

@al_xrated

6 months

Once again: Underzoning neighborhoods—ostensibly to protect small houses—where land values are screaming for large buildings only ensures that the large buildings that replace the small houses are reserved for the mega-rich. Case #7 ,569:

Alex Pemberton

@al_xrated

11 months

It's hard to think of anything in modern urban planning that's failed harder than attempts to preserve neighborhood demographics with low-density zoning, like Metro Planning has tried — and is in the process of doubling down on — in Edgehill. 86% Black to 14% Black in 20 years.

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Alex Pemberton

@al_xrated

5 months

USAmerica: Noooooo we can't have street trees, think about all the overhead lines!!!! Latin America: Sostén mi cerveza!

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Alex Pemberton

@al_xrated

1 year

This should not bring praise. These may not be "instant slums" but they will become slums. The cost to maintain such inefficiency ensures neglect and deterioration. Replacing the HVAC condenser unit on one of these will be equivalent to 5% of the property value. Insane.

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Alex Pemberton

@al_xrated

11 months

The composition here with the burnout tracks is just... 🤌🤌🤌 **chef's kiss** 🤌🤌🤌

Nashville Department of Transportation

@NashvilleDOT

11 months

🚨HAPPENING NOW🚨 A little Friday afternoon glow up for the Korean Veterans Bridge bike lanes. NDOT crews are out installing vertical delineation to provide a safer connection to and through downtown #Nashville .

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Alex Pemberton

@al_xrated

6 months

My fiancée is visiting her brother in Vienna. I get these photos and a voice note: "Baby, I'm walking along this building. It is soooo cool. You would love it." She doesn't follow me on Twitter or listen to me when I monologue about Red Vienna and social housing 😭😭😭

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Alex Pemberton

@al_xrated

1 year

Something this shot makes really clear: Low lot coverage and taller buildings makes construction staging much easier and less intrusive in neighborhoods. Contrast this w USAmerican high-coverage, squat buildings which require crews to park on-street for blocks around the site.

Mike Eliason

@holz_bau

1 year

i look at a project like this... and wonder why this is illegal in every square inch of the US

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Alex Pemberton

@al_xrated

5 months

Great examples of how Tradified 5-over-1s turn out in the real world. Look like shit. To those who say 5-over-1s can look like Haussmannian Paris: "Anything is possible when you don't know what you're talking about." No one who says that has ever done it, or even tried.

Market Urbanism

@MarketUrbanism

5 months

@ChittiMarco His name escapes me, but there’s an LA developer whose schtick is building exact replicas of these next to highways and then sticking Italian names onto them

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Alex Pemberton

@al_xrated

7 months

I spent a year of my free time doing archival research to prove that Nashville's current zoning system is an intentional gentrification scheme designed to make inner neighborhoods appealing to upper middle class interests and aesthetic preferences and she just... tweeted it out.

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Alex Pemberton

@al_xrated

1 year

"We owe $62 million on this stadium. How do we get out of it? Let's spend $1.26 billion on a new stadium! It'll cost more than $3 billion over time!" Phenomenal stuff. I mean, we knew any attempt at rational justification was BS... but this is the best they can do?

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Alex Pemberton

@al_xrated

2 years

In almost every respect U.S. housing policy is designed to punish rentership and privilege homeownership *once it has been achieved* One example among many: In most states, rentals are assessed at higher rates than owner-occupied homes for property taxes.

Alex Pemberton

@al_xrated

2 years

There's a ton of other stuff (including at the state level... don't get me started on the 25/40% assessment penalty for renters) but sets of three are easiest to remember. Everywhere you look, rules govern our built environment to preference a certain type of citizen.

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Alex Pemberton

@al_xrated

1 year

Nashville has a standalone Historic Preservation department with 15 staff members. The Metro Planning Department has a Housing Division with 4 staff members. Staffing is a helpful metric to understand what local leadership considers important. Or what is 3.75x more important.

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Alex Pemberton

@al_xrated

1 year

Utilities will cost 3x a comparably sized apartment. We shouldn't consign anyone to this. We shouldn't praise the reconstruction of pre-modern poverty conditions. Every other advanced country produces starter homes that are efficient and aren't maintenance traps. Wake-up call.

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Alex Pemberton

@al_xrated

9 months

Nashville allows virtually no detached houses to be redeveloped into higher densities, even on corridors like Cleveland/Eastland. In Charlotte, similar corridors like East 36th can transform — one reason why their rents have grown slower, despite even stronger population growth.

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Alex Pemberton

@al_xrated

2 years

Public Policy Failure in One Chart: Nashville Edition

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