Design Rules Don’t Make Nicer Buildings

One reason people give for opposing new development is that it’s supposedly ugly. The bromides about new buildings being “out of scale” and “out of character” pop up any time projects come for public review. Inasmuch as these critiques are made in good faith, they’re ultimately about modern architecture, and don’t just come from NIMBY reactionaries, but those who otherwise support housing density and deregulation. The argument is that traditional architecture and older urban forms are more appealing. This debate gets murky—aesthetics are subjective, and some now-beloved buildings and architecture styles were scorned as ugly when built. And the severity of America’s housing shortage makes the debate moot anyway—must every project be a masterpiece if large segments of the younger generations can’t afford housing? It’s easy to lose patience with these aesthetic arguments. But a less-spoken aspect of the debate is that the cookie-cutter, utilitarian design of many modern buildings stem from regulations to begin with.States and municipalities have building codes that enforce a litany of aesthetic-related mandates—seldom for the better. A 2021 survey by the National Association of Home Builders found almost 60% of single-family projects had to contend with rules dictating everything from construction materials to window styles to small stuff like awnings. Design review boards often further complicate matters beyond just what’s written in the code. In Seattle, the Sightline Institute documented how the board slowed projects, making them more expensive and even regulating uses that had little to do with design. Sightline notes that review-related delays for a 135-apartment building can add up to nearly the same as it costs to build a single apartment. The irony is that, when all is said and done, buildings often come out uglier than what would have been—as can be said of the Urbana Apartments in Seattle, pictured in the linked Sightline article.In my hometown of Charlottesville, a proposed mixed-use, mixed-income project died due to numerous regulatory factors, but the final straw, says developer Keith Woodard, was the city’s design review process, which is known to drag on for years across potentially a dozen or more meetings. The downtown parcel where the $80 million project would’ve gone remains a parking lot.  The NAHB survey finds that typically, architectural design standards add $10,794 on average to homebuilding costs. The total cost of all government regulations, according to the survey, is $93,870—about 25% of the national median sales price that year.This doesn’t just mean housing that’s harder to build, more expensive, and scarcer—it also means developers must spend more time on complying with the minutiae of a specific neighborhood standard, rather than innovating with their own designs. One developer told The New York Times that local review, in trying to prevent radical neighborhood change, also kills truly unique designs. The only construction projects that pass are mundane ones that somewhat appeal to everyone. Seattle-based developer Maria Barrientos adds that her city’s rules enforce a uniform rather than creative standard: “Design review sometimes pushes you to monochromatic projects that are way too similar and the emphasis that you must have certain massing and design and exterior materials and cladding … I don’t know that it necessarily makes for a better neighborhood architecturally, because architectural diversity to me is the foundation of what makes a neighborhood interesting.” Design review proponents believe that such rules can nonetheless make neighborhoods more walkable and pleasant. Strong Towns’ Daniel Herriges argues, for instance, that “such regulations are often integral to tools like form-based codes.”He thinks that absent design review in some form, developers will just default to the building forms they’re used to. While there may be some truth to this, the built form we see is often thanks to other regulations. Minimum parking rules are one of them. They have, for example, basically killed traditional courtyard apartments, where residences surround green space. Many single-family neighborhoods must, thanks to parking minimums, have car garages, whether consumers really want that or not. This harms their aesthetics and walkability. Multifamily buildings, too, often deal with parking minimums; the “dingbat” style, where buildings leave large spaces underneath for parking, are not exactly a great addition to the American vernacular. Parking rules especially impact retail construction, producing the “strip mall” form common in suburbs.Egress rules also impose design constraints above and beyond what is necessary for a safe building. Many cities require stairs to be at opposite ends of a building, creating inhospitable hallways and wide, blocky buildings. Firewall rules prevent buildings from being attached in the “missing middle” format that was once popular. 

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In Manhattan, 40% of buildings are out of compliance with the building code, noted a now-famous NYT article, which stated “a new New York would be less dense.” The architectural diversity of the island’s older building stock, ranging from Midtown’s Art Deco skyscrapers to Greenwich Village’s compact, low-rise brownstones, speaks to how beautiful and diverse cities can look when developers don’t need to contend with a stringent regulatory process and the added costs therein. Even the much-maligned skinny “supertalls” are bound to one day be viewed as making their positive mark on the skyline, representing the era in which they were built.But even if the other rules that negatively impact design were repealed, community approval processes and design review would still fail to build nicer cities, for two reasons. First, they lack market feedback mechanisms that communicate the true majority preference. Second, as explained above, they add so many complications and costs to construction that nondescript, blocky buildings become the economical path of least resistance.It’s hard to conclude exactly how cities would look absent all of these regulations. It has been argued that in the automobile era, a free market for cities would look closer to Houston than New York. But even if that’s true, it stands to reason that specific buildings would still look much better if large portions of a developer’s budget didn’t go towards regulatory compliance. That’s the ultimate irony of design codes: it takes the money that builders could use for nicer materials and finishes, and forces them to instead spend it on neighborhood politics. This article featured additional reporting from Market Urbanist content staffer Ethan Finlan.