Our Land Use Policy and Zoning is often too Theoretical: On CFAs and Overlay Zones

In thinking more about the debate on overlay zones, a new memo for the Climate Friendly Areas turned up, and it suggested a more general frame for thinking about our land use and development policy. Our debates would be aided by more empirically grounded analyses.

The recently published memo, "Background and Summary of Technical Process," finally made explicit the fact that the designation of Climate Friendly Areas here is literally fantastical.

Stress on theoretical "capacity"
CFA Overview Memo

It is based on a theoretical "built out" condition to full "capacity." It includes no consideration of "if or when it will be built." It's a paper exercise, a pie in the sky, an exercise in fantasy and wishcasting, generally untethered from empirical data and probability.

In a way it's like a video game simulation - a real world instance of playing a SimCity!

At Council tonight, you may recall, there is a request for Council to authorize a letter in support of a grant to hire "a consultant to help develop a Housing Production Strategy."

Developing a HPS [Housing Production Strategy] is the next step in helping meet Salem’s housing needs, as it focuses on strategies to promote the production of housing. Strategies can include financial incentives, regulatory changes, partnerships, land acquisition, and other actions. For each strategy, an HPS outlines a timeline for implementation as well as an estimated magnitude of impact.

A "timeline" and "estimated magnitude of impact" are generally not anything we include in our debate and analyses of zoning changes. We don't talk much about likely outcomes, about realizing intended results from zoning change. Our zoning conversation remains too often theoretical, focused on process and procedure rather than on result. When it does talk outcomes, it is often by opponents who conjure up some kind of worst-case scenario that is also untethered.

Reality is often so much slower and duller. A couple months ago you may recall a new car dealership for some newly MU-III zoned property. Now we have a medical clinic for MU-I property. One true mixed-use block with 45 small apartments is proposed for one block south of it also on MU-I property. In the five years since the State Street project, little has happened. Right out of the gate, the new mixed-use zoning is prompting more of the same kind of single-use and not any new mixed-use configurations. (Other projects in the area might be slow also. The single detached cottage on Saginaw demolished late last summer is still an empty lot; the fourplex construction hasn't commenced.)

If our new MU zoning designations are not prompting enough new mixed use buildings, we might need to iterate on the zoning and other policy.

Another kind of analysis, which has seemed thin but which might be refined, is the ratio of building value to land value. We've seen a few instances of this in economic analysis from the last decade. Ones from the Commercial-Vista Corridor Study, the Portland Road Corridor Study, and the State Street Corridor Study come to mind. There may be a few others, but the City and its consultants do not seem to employ them very often, and don't much talk about them.

Building/land value ratios
(Commercial-Vista Corridor Study, 2015)

Building/land value ratio
(Portland Road Corridor Study, 2015)

Building/land value ratios
(State Street Corridor Study, 2017)

A low value on the ratio is a kind of rough estimate of the probability of and potential for a parcel redeveloping. They are better candidates. Parcels with higher ratios are less likely to redevelop.

This is something that Our Salem might have usefully employed, especially on the arterial corridors, and it is something that we should consider for the Climate Friendly Areas designation. It would not be any full market analysis, but it would at least suggest how likely we are actually to realize any vision for a Climate Friendly Area. If despite new zoning only a small proportion of land is likely to be redeveloped in a given time horizon, it may be necessary to make policy adjustments in order to meet actual goals.

Here are some other notes from the Commercial-Vista Corridor economic analysis.

Limits from Commercial Vista Corridor Study
Memo on Economic Analysis, 2015

I do not think the rezoning in Our Salem fully grappled with the arguments here and similar ones for other areas of the city.

Finally, do opponents of the deletion of the overlay zones walk very often up Commercial Street? Sometimes it seems like they do not, remaining bound to cars and driving, and do not think about what Commercial Street is like for others.

Here's some of what is in those overlay zones. From the south:

Single-story older strip mall with Donuts and Fast Mart

A medical clinic

Another clinic and office
(See house demolition for parking lot expansion)

Two story office/retail - with a zoomy car
(Which replaced an ice cream shop!)

Single-story older strip mall with vacuums and tattoos
Car wash and parking lot next door on the south

These are not enough storefronts, and in the right mix, for a vibrant, walkable street. The donuts are probably closest to an ingredient for that. Nor do they offer any housing. Cars drive too fast.

And it does not seem very likely that a redevelopment limited to three stories is going to offer enough of an upgrade in value to make any redevelopment attractive to an owner.

This is why the overlay zone has seemed like a poison pill, something that allows for redevelopment in theory, but which in actuality guarantees very little will be built.

And finally, to return to the central claim here, we should have a more empirically grounded analysis in our land use and zoning debates.

A letter to Council tonight on the reconsideration of overlay zones frames the question of data, this time on emissions, with a vivid image:

Last meeting we heard from gardeners who have had the privilege of guaranteed sunshine.... Meanwhile, the housing shortage squeezes would-be renters and homeowners....[It] is pure greenwashing to say a few pounds of summer squash would ever outweigh the carbon impact of priced-out suburban commuters who might otherwise be able to live in this neighborhood....