Land Matters Podcast: Staying Calm and Planning On
Author Josh Stephens’ Interviews with Big City Planners
By Anthony Flint, June 7, 2023
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There’s so much happening today in the world’s cities—from climate change to a massive shortage of affordable housing—that the job of the city planner has become a furiously busy one, requiring a singular talent for multitasking and managing the needs of increasingly divided constituencies.
Planners have traditionally labored largely behind the scenes, but are emerging into a more visible role as they explain their work and try to keep the peace, said author Josh Stephens on the latest episode of the Land Matters podcast. Stephens interviewed 23 big-city planners for a new book, Planners Across America.
“Planning directors have huge influence over these cities . . . but they’re not necessarily well known. They are not on the level of a mayor or a city council person who are obviously elected officials, and by definition in the public spotlight; they’re not necessarily like a police chief who is always doing press conferences,” he said. “I think one thing that is very clear in these interviews is how earnest planning directors are about mediating, about figuring out what different stakeholders need and want, and are willing to tolerate.”
Acknowledging the distrust that has grown particularly in communities of color, over urban renewal, highways through urban neighborhoods, and exclusionary zoning, Stephens said planners realize the importance of “listening to people, especially people who have historically been left out of the planning conversation.”
At the same time, planners must confront established residents fighting growth, in what is presented as a virtuous grassroots rebellion but is actually the manifestation of NIMBYism, standing for “not in my backyard.”
“Many communities are empowered, and some of that power is unevenly distributed to the extent that some communities have louder voices, and some communities will invoke people like Jane Jacobs in ways that are not necessarily beneficial for the city as a whole, or might even be disingenuous,” Stephens said.
As he spoke with planners, Stephens found widespread acceptance of the idea that most cities need a massive infusion of new housing supply including multifamily housing—and even high-end housing—to help bring prices down as a matter of basic economics. That’s been the aim of several statewide mandates requiring local governments to modify zoning.
“We do need to add luxury housing in high-cost places to accommodate the people who can afford it. I think ideally, that frees up space, and frees up capital and opportunity, and sometimes public funds to then also build deed-restricted affordable housing, and hopefully maintain a supply of naturally occurring affordable housing,” he said.
“You look at where the prices are highest, and that’s where you need to add housing. You need to add it at every level. There’s an argument that there’s no such thing as trickle-down housing. I don’t buy that. I live in Los Angeles, and there’s more than enough money to go around. If you don’t build luxury housing, that doesn’t mean that wealthy and high-income people are not going to move to LA. They’re simply going to move into whatever the next best housing is. That pushes people down, and eventually some people are left with no place to live.”
However, he said, there will be more post-pandemic movement, from hot-market cities to legacy cities, for example, suggesting the contours of a national housing market. “People have moved from LA to Phoenix, from San Francisco to Boise or Reno or Vegas, and there are other equivalents around the country. I think it’s going to be really interesting in the next decade to see how this filters out,” he said.
Josh Stephens is contributing editor of the California Planning & Development Report and previously edited The Planning Report and the Metro Investment Report, monthly publications covering, respectively, land use and infrastructure in Southern California. Planners Across America was published by Planetizen Press in 2022.
City and regional planning has been a major focus of the Lincoln Institute for many decades, from the annual gathering of 30-plus professionals in the Big City Planning Directors Institute, held in partnership with the American Planning Association and the Graduate School of Design at Harvard University, to the more recent promotion of exploratory scenario planning.
Anthony Flint is a senior fellow at the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, host of the Land Matters podcast, and a contributing editor of Land Lines.
Lead image: Josh Stephens. Credit: Rich Schmitt Photography/Westside Urban Forum.
Lincoln Institute Sessions at the 2023 IAAO Annual Conference
August 29, 2023 - August 30, 2023
Salt Lake City, UT United States
Offered in English
Ron Rakow, Paul Bidanset, Gary Cornia, and Nathan Seegert
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The annual conference of the International Association of Assessing Officers (IAAO) offers state and local assessing officials the opportunity to hear varied perspectives on property tax issues from practitioners and valuation experts. This year, the Lincoln Institute will present two sessions on current issues in property tax policy and administration:
Truth in Taxation – An Alternative to Assessment and Levy Caps
Tuesday, August 29, 9:30 to 10:30 a.m.
Utah adopted Truth in Taxation to avoid “silent” tax increases that occur when property values rise and tax rates remain constant. This session will highlight how Truth in Taxation provides a policy alternative to assessment and levy caps, which can undermine equity in property taxation.
Demonstration of the Lincoln Institute Vertical Equity App
Wednesday, August 30, 1:00–2:30 p.m.
This session will demonstrate a new app developed by the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy and the Center for Appraisal Research and Technology that calculates several measures of vertical equity for assessments and provides a narrative report to assist the user in their interpretation.
Details
Date
August 29, 2023 - August 30, 2023
Time
9:30 a.m. - 2:30 p.m.
Location
Salt Palace Convention Center 100 S W Temple Street Salt Lake City, UT United States
Assessment, Economic Development, Land Value, Land-Based Tax, Legal Issues, Local Government, Municipal Fiscal Health, Property Taxation, Public Finance, Taxation, Valuation, Value-Based Taxes
Mayor’s Desk: Housing and Hope in Cincinnati
By Anthony Flint, May 15, 2023
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Aftab Pureval, elected in 2021, is making history as Cincinnati’s first Asian American mayor. He was raised in Southwest Ohio, the son of first-generation Americans, and worked at a toy store when he was in middle school. After graduating from the Ohio State University and the University of Cincinnati Law School, Pureval held several positions including as counsel at Procter & Gamble before entering public service. He served as Hamilton County Clerk of Courts from 2016 to 2021, and was the first Democrat to hold that office in over 100 years. Pureval resides in the north Cincinnati neighborhood of Clifton with his wife and their two sons and, as has become evident during his time in office, is a big-time Cincinnati Bengals fan. He spoke with Senior Fellow Anthony Flint earlier this year for the Land Matters podcast
Anthony Flint: You’ve attracted a lot of attention for what some have called a “heroic undertaking” to preserve the city’s single-family housing stock and keep it out of the hands of outside investors. Briefly, walk us through what was accomplished in coordination with the Port of Cincinnati.
Aftab Pureval: Just to provide a little more context, Cincinnati is a legacy city. We have a proud, long tradition of being the final destination from the Underground Railroad. We were the doorstep to freedom for so many slaves who were escaping that horrific experience. We have a lot of historic neighborhoods, a lot of historic buildings, and we have a lot of aging infrastructure and aging single-family homes, which—paired with the fact that we are an incredibly affordable city in the national context—makes us a prime target for institutional investors.
Unfortunately, Cincinnati is on national list after national list about the rate of increase for our rents. It’s primarily being driven by these out-of-town investors—who have no interest, frankly, in the well-being of Cincinnati or their tenants—buying up cheap single-family homes, not doing anything to invest in them, but overnight doubling or tripling the rents, which is pricing out a lot of our communities, particularly our vulnerable, impoverished communities.
The City is doing a lot of things through litigation, through code enforcement. In fact, we sued two of our largest institutional investors, Vinebrook and the owners of Williamsburg, to let them know that we’re not playing around. If you’re going to exercise predatory behavior in our community, we’re not going to stand for it.
We’ve also done things on the front end to prevent this from happening by partnering with the Port . . . . When several properties went up for sale because an institutional investor put them on the selling block, the Port spent $14.5 million to buy over 190 single-family homes, outbidding 13 other institutional investors.
One of nearly 200 houses purchased by the Port of Cincinnati as part of an effort to preserve affordability and provide homeownership opportunities for local residents. Credit: The Port of Greater Cincinnati Development Authority.
Over the past year, the Port has been working to bring those properties into compliance, dealing with the various code violations that the investor left behind, pairing these homes once they’re fixed up with qualified buyers, oftentimes folks who are working in poverty or lower middle-class who’ve never owned a home before.
Just this year we’re making three of those 194 available for sale. It’s a huge success across the board . . . but it’s just one tool that the Port and the City are working on to increase affordability of housing in all of our neighborhoods.
AF: What did you learn from this that might be transferable to other cities? It takes a lot of capital to outbid an institutional investor.
AP: It does require a lot of funds. That’s why we need more flexibility from the federal government and the state government to provide municipalities with the tools to prevent this from happening in the first place. Now once an institutional investor gets their claws into a community, there’s very little that the city can do to hold them accountable.
The better strategy as we’ve seen this time is to, on the front end, buy up properties. A lot of cities have a lot of dollars from the federal government through ARP [American Recovery Plan]. We have used a lot of ARP dollars not just to get money into the hands of people who need it most, which is critically important in this time, but also to partner with other private-public partnerships or the Port to give them the resources necessary to buy up the land and hold it.
That has been part of our strategy with ARP. This is a unique time in cities where they have more flexibility [with] the resources coming from the federal government. I would encourage any mayor, any council, to really think critically about using the funds not just in the short term but also in the long term to address some of these macroeconomic forces.
Leaders in Cincinnati are striving to balance growth and affordability. Credit: StanRohrer via iStock/Getty Images Plus.
AF: Cincinnati has become a more popular place to live, and the population has increased slightly after years of decline. Do you consider Cincinnati a pandemic or climate haven? What are the implications of that growth?
AP: What I love about my job as mayor is my focus isn’t necessarily on the next two or four years, but the next 100 years. Right now, we are living through a paradigm shift because of the pandemic. The way we live, work, and play is just completely changing. Remote work is completely altering our economic lifestyle throughout the entire country, but particularly here in the Midwest.
What I am convinced of is because of climate change, because of the rising cost of living on the coast, there will be an inward migration. I don’t know if it’s in the next 50 or 75 years, but it will happen. We’re already seeing large businesses making decisions based on climate change. Just two hours north of Cincinnati, Intel is making a $200 billion investment to create the largest semiconductor plant in the country.
Two of the reasons they chose just north of Cincinnati are access to fresh water, the Ohio River in the south and the Great Lakes in the north, and our region’s climate resiliency. Now, don’t get me wrong: we’re all affected by climate change. We’re not all affected equally—our impoverished and disadvantaged communities are more affected disproportionately than others—but in Ohio and Cincinnati, we’re not seeing the wildfires, the droughts, the hurricanes, the earthquakes, the coastal erosion that we’re seeing in other parts of the country, which makes us a climate-change safe haven not just for business investment but also for people. Cincinnati is partly growing because our economy’s on fire right now, but we’re going to really see, I believe, exponential growth over the next few decades because of these massive factors pushing people into the middle of the country.
Mayor Pureval, right, speaks at a celebration for Findlay Market, Ohio’s oldest continuously operating public market. Credit: Courtesy of Aftab Pureval.
The investments that we make right now to help our legacy communities and legacy residents stay in their homes and continue to make Cincinnati an affordable place for them, while also keeping in mind these future residents, is a really challenging topic. While Cincinnati right now is very affordable in the national context, it’s not affordable for all Cincinnati residents because our housing supply has not kept up with population growth and our incomes have not kept up with housing prices.
In order to make sure that the investments in the future and the population growth in the future does not displace our current residents, we’ve got to stabilize our market now and be prepared for that growth.
AF: What are the land use changes and transportation improvements that you’re concentrating on accordingly?
AP: Oftentimes, people ask mayors about their legacy, and the third rail of local politics is zoning. If we’re going to get this right, then we have to have a comprehensive review and reform of our land use policies. When I talk about legacy, that’s what I’m talking about.
We have, for over a year now, been having meetings with stakeholders to [explore what] a modern Cincinnati looks like. I believe it looks like a dense, diverse neighborhood that’s walkable, with good public transportation and investments in public art. Right now, the City of Cincinnati’s zoning is not encouraging those kinds of neighborhoods. Close to 70 percent of our city is zoned for single-family use exclusively, which is putting an artificial cap on the amount of supply that we can create, which is artificially increasing rents and artificially increasing property taxes, which is causing a lot of our legacy residents, who even own their homes, to be displaced.
If we’re serious about deconcentrating poverty and desegregating our city, then we’ve got to take a look at multifamily unit prohibitions. We’ve got to take a look at parking requirements for both businesses and homes. We’ve got to look at transit-oriented development along our bus rapid transit lines. We’ve got to look at creative opportunities to create more housing like auxiliary dwelling units, but none of this is easy.
It’s not easy because NIMBYism is real, and we’ve got to convince people that I’m not going to put a 20-floor condo building on your residential cul-de-sac . . . . Zoning is very, very difficult because change is very difficult, and people are afraid of what that will turn the city into. That’s why we’ve been doing a year-long worth of community engagement, and I am confident we can make some substantive changes to our zoning code to encourage more affordability, encourage more public transportation, and just be a greener city.
On that note, we have made a commitment that we will only buy city vehicles that are electric vehicles when they become available. We have the largest city-led solar farm in the entire country, which is significantly contributing to our energy consumption.
AF: A little bit of this is back to the future, because the city had streetcars. Do you have the sense that there’s an appreciation for that, that those times actually made the city function better?
AP: The city used to be dense, used to have incredible streetcars, public transportation, and then, unfortunately, cities—not just Cincinnati but across the country—saw a steady decline of population, losing folks to the suburbs. Now people want to come back into the city, but now we have the hard work of undoing what a lot of cities tried to do, which was create suburban neighborhoods within a city to attract those suburban people back, right? It’s a little bit undoing the past while also focusing on what used to exist. When I share this vision with people, they say, “Yes, that’s a no-brainer, of course, I want to do that,” but they don’t want to do it on their street.
Streetcars in Cincinnati’s Fountain Square during World War I. Credit: Metro Bus via Flickr CC BY 2.0.
AF: What worries you most about this kind of transition, and what do you identify as the major issues facing lower-income and communities of color in Cincinnati?
AP: Displacement. If we cannot be a city that our current residents can afford, they will leave, which hurts everything. If the city is not growing, then a city our size, where we’re located in the country, we are dying, and we are dying quickly. Cities our size have to grow, and in order to grow, not only do we need to recruit talent, but we have to preserve the families and the legacy communities that have been here in the first place.
No city in the country has figured out a way to grow without displacement. The market factors, the economic factors are so profound and so hard to influence, and the City’s resources are so limited, it’s really difficult. Getting back to our institutional investor problem, the City doesn’t have the resources to just go up and buy property and make sure that we’re selling to good-faith owners, right? If we had that power, that market influence, we would do it. Oftentimes, I guess I get frustrated that I don’t have enough resources, enough authority to make a meaningful impact on the macroeconomic forces that are coming into the city. Because if we get our dream, which is more investment, more growth, that comes with negative consequences, and it’s really difficult to manage both.
AF: Finally, back to climate change, the mayor’s website says Cincinnati is well-positioned to be a leader in climate change at home and abroad. What do you think the city has to offer that’s distinctive in terms of climate action?
AP: All of our policy initiatives are looked at through two lenses. The first is racial equity and the second is climate. Everything that we do, whether it’s our urban forestry assessment, looking at a heat map of our city and investing in trees to not just clean the air but also cool our neighborhoods, [or] our investments in biochar. We are one of only seven cities in the entire world that received a huge grant from the Bloomberg Philanthropies to continue to innovate in the world of biochar, which is a byproduct of burning wood, which is an incredible carbon magnet that helps with stormwater runoff but also pulls carbon out of the air.
Our parks department, which is one of the best in the country, continues to innovate on that front . . . . Continuing to have some of the best testing and best preservation in the country for our water supply will be important. Ultimately, businesses and people who are looking to the future consider climate change in that future. If you’re looking for a city that is climate-resilient but also making massive investments in climate technology, then Cincinnati is that destination for you.
Anthony Flint is a senior fellow at the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, host of the Land Matters podcast, and a contributing editor of Land Lines.
Preventing Displacement Along Maryland’s New Purple Line Corridor
By Jon Gorey, May 15, 2023
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If history is any guide, Maryland’s new Purple Line—a 16.2-mile light-rail expansion linking several suburbs of Washington, DC—seemed destined to push up nearby property values and rents, and to push out longtime residents who could no longer afford to pay them. That’s often the unintended consequence of new transit systems and other infrastructure improvements.
Aiming to derail that displacement, a broad local coalition—with some help from the Lincoln Institute’s Center for Community Investment (CCI) and health-care giant Kaiser Permanente—set a goal of preserving or creating 17,000 affordable homes along the new transit corridor. As the rail project chugs along toward its 2027 completion date, some 3,000 affordable homes are already in the planning, production, or preservation stage, as detailed in a new CCI case study.
Some of CCI’s earliest work focused on equitable transit-oriented development in the Bay Area, Los Angeles, and Denver, says Executive Director Robin Hacke, “so we knew how important it is, when you build a new transit line, to pay attention to who’s living there now and at risk of displacement.” When Kaiser Permanente chose the Purple Line corridor—site of its regional headquarters—as a geographic focus for its participation in CCI’s Accelerating Investments for Healthy Communities initiative, Hacke says, “the stars lined up.” AIHC was a three-year program that helped hospitals and health systems “invest upstream in the root causes of good health,” Hacke notes, focusing on affordable and equitable housing solutions.
With Kaiser’s involvement adding new energy to the Purple Line Corridor Coalition (PLCC), Hacke says, the group put key elements of CCI’s capital absorption framework into practice. That generally begins with a community setting an ambitious shared priority, “and using that to organize people to get beyond business as usual,” she says. Members of the coalition—which includes nonprofits, local governments, and businesses—“were able to organize the pipeline of affordable housing transactions that they could work on, as well as improve what we call the enabling environment, which is all the things that determine whether the pipeline moves or dies, in a way that allowed them to make a whole bunch of progress.”
Much of that progress was helped by PLCC’s hiring of a full-time coordinator, Vonnette Harris, who has played a pivotal role in creating a pipeline of over 1,000 affordable housing projects by connecting nonprofits, municipalities, developers, lenders, and faith communities to each other and to the resources they need to get projects underway and keep them going. “Making the pipeline visible, and helping people see what is about to happen, is really an important part of the capital absorption methodology,” Hacke says. “Because otherwise, you’re in deal-by-deal land, and deal-by deal-land is never going to add up to the breadth and depth of ambitions that communities have for themselves.”
Meanwhile, consultants and Prince George’s County staff helped to implement a dormant “right of first refusal” law from 2013, a strategy that’s helped to preserve more than 1,200 existing affordable housing units in two years. When a large, affordable multifamily building goes under agreement, the law gives the county the right, for a limited time, to step into the buyer’s shoes and make the purchase instead, on whatever terms the buyer negotiated.
The county wasn’t in a position to purchase, rehab, and maintain apartment buildings by itself. But CCI consultants helped the county issue an RFP and assemble a pool of more than a dozen qualified affordable housing developers who can act as partners on any such deals. “The county can actually exercise its right to buy the property, and then they can have a back-to-back agreement with an affordable housing developer, who will finance the property, do whatever rehab is necessary, and keep the property affordable for the longer term,” Hacke says. The coalition also persuaded the county to use $15 million from the American Rescue Plan Act to create a fund that helps those developers secure flexible financing; the state of Maryland then kicked in another $10 million.
Even if the county doesn’t exercise its right of first refusal, the mere existence of the option has helped keep hundreds of units affordable for the next 15 or 20 years. “The big ‘aha’ was that, if you have the policy, you have an invitation to a conversation,” Hacke explains. “The county can then have a conversation with the buyer that says, ‘Hey, you really want this property, here’s what we’d like you to do in terms of preserving affordability.’ And many times that’s a productive enough conversation and everybody goes home happy.”
The county first exercised its right by means of negotiation in early 2021, convincing the buyer of a 36-unit building to keep all the units affordable for 15 years. In August 2021, the county took things a step further, coordinating with a developer from the pool to purchase a 245-unit building in Hyattsville that was about to be sold, ensuring 184 units will remain affordable for 20 years.
When it comes to preventing such naturally occurring affordable housing from getting redeveloped into high-priced rentals and condos, timing is everything. After all, once rents have climbed along the corridor, “there won’t be anything to preserve,” says Aspasia Xypolia, director of the county’s Department of Housing and Community Development. “Once that housing becomes unaffordable, it’s too late.”
With only a few more years before the Purple Line’s slated completion, the coalition will need to continue collaborating across sectors to meet its ambitious affordable housing target. “Preserving existing buildings is part of it, developing new buildings is another part of it, and as the rail line comes closer and closer to being opened, the pressure on the market is going to grow,” Hacke says. “So getting as much done as early as possible is really important.”
Office-to-Residential Conversions Are on the Rise—What Does That Mean for Cities?
By Jon Gorey, May 16, 2023
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It makes so much sense, at least on paper: A lasting shift in workplace norms has left many downtown office buildings half empty for much of the week, along with the surrounding delis, drugstores, and coffee shops that long relied on daily commuter dollars. As vacancies mount, commercial property values will drop, which could affect property tax revenues. Meanwhile, in the more residential neighborhoods outside of those drowsy downtown districts, a severe shortage of housing has pushed prices past tenable levels for homebuyers and renters alike.
So why not convert some of those empty offices into homes, creating much-needed new housing and bringing more people (and spending) downtown, while at the same time capturing the climate and sustainability benefits of building reuse and dense urban living?
That’s a question being raised in cities all over the world, as remote and hybrid work schedules evolve from exception to rule for a sizable portion of the workforce. But while office-to-residential adaptive reuse appears to be a promising solution, the reality is more complicated.
There’s No Going Back
More than half of American workers—some 70 million people—can perform their jobs remotely, according to a June 2022 Gallup analysis, and a mere 6 percent of them ever want to return to working full-time in an office; most say they would look for a different job if their employer forced the issue. Gallup forecasts that more than half of those remote-capable employees will work a hybrid schedule going forward, and 22 percent will work entirely offsite in the years to come.
As remote and hybrid work arrangements become not just accepted but expected, companies are consolidating the amount of office space they lease while trying to make commuting worth the effort for employees. Often that translates to renting less square footage in a pricier building with new, high-end finishes and state-of-the-art amenities—what’s known in commercial real estate as “Class A” space.
That leaves older, less attractive Class B or C offices—which comprise the majority of built workspace—struggling to find or keep tenants. Nationwide, the office vacancy rate surpassed 17 percent in the fourth quarter of 2022, up from 12.1 percent in late 2019, according to the commercial real estate company CBRE.
It’s a trend that shows no signs of easing, and some cities are faring worse than others. CBRE estimated San Francisco’s commercial vacancy rate to be 27.3 percent at the end of 2022; it was just 4.8 percent before the pandemic. Phoenix finished the year with nearly 24 percent of its offices unleased, up from 14.4 percent in late 2019.
And central business districts, in particular, are reeling. For the third straight quarter, downtown offices had higher vacancy levels (17.6 percent) than suburban ones (17.2 percent), flipping the historical trend. The vacancy rate for downtown office buildings was 10.2 percent in late 2019.
In Denver’s Upper Downtown, the office vacancy rate was already increasing before the pandemic, and had reached 21 percent by mid-2022, says Laura E. Aldrete, executive director of Community Planning and Development. But city leaders are choosing to see it as an opportunity. “We have an affordable housing crisis integrated into that,” Aldrete says. “So how can we take two negatives and make it a positive?”
Mixing It Up
Late in the pandemic, Aldrete noticed something as she walked around Querétaro City, Mexico: At a time when many American downtowns still felt eerily empty due to lingering office closures, Querétaro City was alive. Plenty of workplaces had shut down in Mexico, too, but the city center was still abuzz with people, including families with young children. “It’s a city from the 1500s that has a series of public realm plazas, with pedestrian-oriented streets and residential, office, and retail [spaces], and it was thriving,” Aldrete says.
She saw a similar pattern emerging in sections of downtown Denver. The city’s central business district, Upper Downtown, is a throwback to the urban renewal era—concrete office buildings, one-way streets, parking lots—and has yet to wake up from its COVID-induced slumber. But Lower Downtown (“LoDo”), a historical, mixed-use neighborhood whose once-empty warehouses were converted to lofts and restaurants in the 1980s and ‘90s, stayed relatively active through the pandemic. So did the Union Station neighborhood, which experienced its own mixed-use renaissance in the past decade, with the high-profile renovation of the city’s train station sparking a greater focus on parks and mixed-income housing. “Today, in comparison to Upper Downtown, those two downtown neighborhoods continue to thrive,” Aldrete says.
Denver’s Union Station and Lower Downtown neighborhoods are bustling; city leaders hope converting vacant offices into apartments in the Upper Downtown area will create a similar feeling. Credit: Page Light Studios via iStock Editorial/Getty Images Plus.
Even before the pandemic, Aldrete could see that Upper Downtown’s 9-to-5 vibe lacked the vitality 21st-century employers wanted. “Historically, all the banks, oil, and gas companies have scrambled to have their address on 17th Street,” Aldrete says—a stretch of Upper Downtown nicknamed “The Wall Street of the Rockies.” But when British Petroleum was looking for a regional headquarters seven years ago, the company bypassed 17th Street in favor of a Union Station location. Then COVID hit, “and it became very apparent that we did not have a neighborhood [in Upper Downtown] . . . no one was there,” she says. That raised the question: “How could we think about transforming our central business district to a central neighborhood district?”
Denver is now piloting a program that will invite up to five property owners to work with the city to convert their underused office buildings into residences. Aldrete has encouraged the owners of the historical but half-vacant Petroleum Building, among others, to participate, since they already had plans to convert the office tower into more than 100 apartments; she hopes a few successful pilot projects can pave a path for others to follow.
“In real estate, it’s the first ones who take the highest risk,” Aldrete says. “One of the roles city government can play is working with the private sector . . . how do we show up as good partners to move them through the process?”
The neighborhood already has entertainment venues and perhaps the best transit access in the city, including buses and light rail, Aldrete says, but it lacks other amenities that would draw full-time residents—“the heart of any community.” So at the same time, Denver is working with community partners to find other ways of creating “a complete neighborhood” downtown, from attracting more childcare facilities, to increasing the tree canopy outside of residential conversions, to activating ground-floor retail spaces through programs like PopUp Denver, which provides local entrepreneurs a rent-free storefront for three months.
Sustaining Downtown
Adaptive reuse presents logistical challenges, but also possibilities—including the potential to revive struggling downtowns and sustain them in a new way, says Amy Cotter, director of climate strategies at the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy. “There’s a lot of hand-wringing about the evolution of office space being a death knell for our city centers,” says Cotter, a former planner who focuses on urban policy and climate resilience. But converting excess workspace to housing offers the prospect of a 24/7 population keeping a city vibrant and economically healthy. “Just differently than when we had central business districts with a 9-to-5 daytime population and suburbanites commuting in,” she explains.
The urban routines of the last few decades had become predictable and unsustainable, Cotter says: “During the day, you’ve got office workers parking and eating at restaurants, and then at night, you’ve got condo owners or apartment dwellers parking and eating out in restaurants,” she says. “Well—what if there wasn’t that switchover? What if it was the same population there, not only working, living, eating, and recreating in the same space, but not putting those miles on a car, and maybe even avoiding ownership of a car entirely?”
That sounds a bit utopian, Cotter admits, and yet it’s not unrealistic. After all, adaptive reuse is nothing new. As domestic manufacturing waned in the late 20th century, vacant textile mills and factories in the Northeast and Midwest were repurposed into sought-after artist studios and residential lofts. Dwindling church attendance has given rise to converted condos with literal cathedral ceilings. And in Lower Manhattan, revitalization efforts that started in the mid-1990s and accelerated after 9/11 have led to roughly 20 million square feet of office space being converted into about 17,000 homes, according to a study published by New York City’s Office Adaptive Reuse Task Force in January.
Adaptive reuse has breathed new life into many churches and commercial structures, including Boott Mills, a cotton-mill complex that operated from 1835 to 1958 in Lowell, Massachusetts. Credit: John Penney via iStock Editorial/Getty Images Plus.
Repurposing a structure, instead of demolishing it and rebuilding, keeps carbon out of the atmosphere and construction waste out of landfills. The US generated 600 million tons of construction and demolition debris in 2018, according to the Environmental Protection Agency—more than double the amount of all our municipal solid waste—and 90 percent of it came from the demolition of existing buildings. Meanwhile, conventional building materials are extremely carbon-intensive; concrete and steel production each account for at least 8 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions.
That’s why adaptive reuse “almost always offers environmental savings over demolition and new construction,” according to the National Trust for Historic Preservation Research and Policy Lab, which notes that it takes 20 to 30 years of high-efficiency operation for most new buildings to finally offset the initial climate impact of their construction. Keeping a building’s foundation and framing intact while giving its facade a face lift and updating its heating, cooling, insulation, and other systems has the added benefit of drastically improving the energy efficiency of the building’s operations, reducing energy consumption by up to 40 percent.
It can also be economical. While office conversions can get complicated, says Robert Fuller, New York–based principal and studio director at the global architecture firm Gensler, “compared to demolishing and building brand new, they generally come in at a lower cost per unit than new construction would.” CBRE estimates the cost of retrofitting one office building to apartments in Alexandria, Virginia, would be $213 per square foot, compared to $275 per square foot if it were built new. The process can be quicker, too: Developers told the Urban Land Institute that reuse can shave six to 12 months off the construction timeline.
Mid-Century Meh
What makes the present reuse movement more challenging than converting historic mills and churches is the type of office buildings that need to be converted. A lot of the commercial space sitting vacant now is in the unglamorous, blocky towers of the 1960s, ‘70s, and ‘80s.
“They’re not really thought of as historic buildings just yet,” Fuller says. Along with aging systems, those mid-century monoliths often have sprawling, block-deep footprints, placing the core of the building upwards of 40 or 50 feet from the nearest (inoperable) window—and drab, unwelcoming facades.
Many of the Lower Manhattan buildings that got converted after 9/11 were pre-war buildings with smaller floor plates and traditional framed window openings, Fuller says. “I don’t want to say they were easy conversions, but they made a lot of sense. Some of these 1960s and ‘70s buildings . . . definitely have their challenges.”
Architects can still overcome those issues—it’s usually just a matter of financial feasibility. For example, Fuller says, “If the building has a large enough floorplate, you can actually create a lightwell down the center,” drawing daylight deep into the building core.
Such space can be repurposed in other ways, too. When Gensler was converting Philadelphia’s Franklin Tower from offices to apartments a few years ago, the company decided to stack the building’s new amenities—including a Peloton cycle studio, fitness center, and theater—through the center of the building on different floors, making use of otherwise dead space deep within the building’s core. “Rather than doing one amenity floor, which is quite common in a residential building,” Fuller says, “you can imagine this vertical spine of amenities that runs up through the building.”
Another challenge in adapting older office buildings is updating the curtain wall, or nonstructural exterior facade. This isn’t just to modernize the aesthetic and improve energy efficiency, but also to install operable windows, which most office buildings lack—and most cities require of residential units.
During the conversion of Philadelphia’s Franklin Tower, the 1980s concrete structure was reclad in glass and aluminum, and its narrow strips of windows replaced with large windows and private balconies. Credit: Courtesy of Gensler.
Despite these barriers, unremarkable office buildings can still be a good foundation for attractive housing, offering enviable locations and luxurious structural features like high ceilings. A 12-foot floor-to-floor height isn’t considered Class A standard for modern office space, Fuller says, “but it’s very generous for a residential building.”
To help cities identify potential reuse candidates, Gensler developed a proprietary scorecard that awards points for a building’s location, configuration, elevator service, and other factors. “It’s a way to kind of quickly look at a broad swath of buildings and identify the best contenders,” Fuller says—because not every vacant office tower will make a sensible conversion project.
Only 10 of 84 buildings Gensler evaluated in Boston’s financial district, for example, ranked high enough to merit consideration as reuse targets. That may not sound like a lot. But even if most mid-century office towers don’t ultimately pencil out for residential reuse, converting just a few can create hundreds or even thousands of new homes in housing-starved cities. “Given the millions of square feet of underutilized office space, even a small percentage of that could really move the needle from a housing standpoint,” Fuller says.
That’s one reason New York’s Office Adaptive Reuse Task Force is recommending 11 policy changes that would allow for and encourage the conversion of more office buildings in more neighborhoods. “We want to ensure that outdated office buildings can be converted to more in-demand uses, such as desperately needed homes for New Yorkers,” planning director Dan Garodnick writes. Among the Task Force’s recommendations, which followed a five-month study: loosening rules to allow the conversion of most office buildings built prior to 1991 and offering property tax incentives to support the creation of affordable housing and childcare facilities in repurposed buildings.
The Cornerstone by Peoplefirst Developments, an adaptive reuse project in Calgary, Alberta, will create a family-oriented residence (left) out of a commercial office building (right). Credit: Courtesy of Peoplefirst Developments.
For better or worse, Calgary, Alberta, has a head start on many cities that are just starting to explore office conversions. A city of 1.3 million, Calgary has seen its share of booms and busts as the corporate capital of Canada’s oil and gas industry. But when crude oil prices started sinking in 2014, they took the city’s commercial property market down with them. Office buildings in downtown Calgary have lost about $16 billion in property value since 2015, resulting in a loss of tax revenue that impacts the entire city.
“The conversations around our office vacancy issue started around 2015,” says Natalie Marchut, program manager for Calgary’s downtown strategy team. “Office vacancy had started climbing, we weren’t seeing any reabsorption, and it started to become quite alarming.” By the time COVID closures hit in 2020, there weren’t a whole lot of downtown office workers left to send home.
So city officials worked with developers, businesses, and other partners to come up with a plan. With about a third of the office space downtown sitting vacant—some 14 million square feet—the city set a goal of removing six million square feet of office inventory over the next 10 years, ideally through residential conversions.
But as Isaac Newton would say, an object at rest tends to stay at rest, unless acted upon by an outside force. Even though converting a half-vacant office building to homes typically costs less than demolishing it and rebuilding from scratch, many property owners don’t have the capacity or desire to take on such a big project, and instead succumb to inertia, letting buildings sit idle. “A big thing we realized was that most building owners weren’t taking the initiative on their own to repurpose those vacant office towers,” Marchut says.
So Calgary decided to offer financial incentives to kickstart the process. The city council approved an initial $100 million in municipal funding in 2021—and another $53 million in late 2022—to support adaptive reuse projects downtown, allowing the city to reimburse developers at $75 per square foot of office space converted.
Even at that generous rate, which was calculated to cover about a third of the estimated $225-per-square-foot cost of such conversions at the program’s outset, some developers find it hard to make the numbers square, Marchut says, given rising interest rates and inflation. But the first two rounds of the program garnered far more project proposals than there was funding. The first 10 approved projects will subtract over 1 million square feet of office space from the downtown commercial market by converting it into some 1,200 new homes.
One concern that came up often in early discussions is that commercial properties are typically taxed at a higher rate than residential ones. “That was a big one that we had to get our heads around, but also help our council get their heads around: When you convert these to residential, they’re going to be taxed at a lower rate, so we’re not going to be getting what we could if they were fully occupied commercial spaces,” Marchut says. “Yes. But we will not see the absorption of 14 million square feet of office space. We just will never get there.”
The situation is so dire right now that some downtown buildings are assessed for their land value only, she adds. “Of course you need commercial property downtown, and of course they will always pay more to the city in tax revenue—but not if they’re all empty,” Marchut says. Meanwhile, removing excess inventory should reduce the vacancy rate, helping to stabilize and even restore the value of the remaining office space.
To accelerate conversions and attract as many applicants as possible, the city intentionally kept the program simple, without specific affordable housing requirements, for example. Marchut says that has allowed the city to prioritize projects that best align with its equity, climate, and planning goals.
“Every project that is coming online through this program is doing more than just converting office to residential,” Marchut says. “We’ve got a few that are going to be doing affordable housing . . . we have others that are doing additional public realm improvements—and this is all optional. We don’t require it, but applicants are coming to the table with really solid proposals, because they know the program is so competitive, and so they’re kind of bringing their A game.”
The program’s first conversion project—The Cornerstone by Peoplefirst Developments, slated for completion later this year—is creating 112 family-oriented units, 40 percent of which will be priced at affordable rates, Marchut says. “They’re also building three-bedroom units, which we don’t have much of at all in the downtown,” she notes. Another project, the 176-unit Palliser One by Aspen, plans to put in a public park and skating rink at ground level.
The city is also investing $163 million in placemaking and public realm projects, like revamping key pedestrian streets and extending its RiverWalk into the West End. “The other thing we’re really looking at is how to get more park space,” Marchut says. “Downtown, and particularly the West End, is starved for open public space, and if we’re looking to bring in new residents and families and children and all the rest, they’re going to need a place to go outside and play.”
One option that remains on the table for creating more parks downtown while reducing the glut of commercial space is the demolition of vacant office buildings that can’t be converted into something more useful. (An upcoming phase of the program will subsidize other types of office conversions as well, such as retail or arts venues.) “We are exploring incentivizing demolition for very specific properties,” Marchut says. “There are Class C buildings built in the ‘70s that are full of asbestos, and also probably cannot actually be upgraded to meet new building code—they’re just simply at end of life.”
Calgary doesn’t have the kind of housing crisis facing larger cities like Toronto or Vancouver, but Alberta is still projected to gain 2 million new and mostly urban-dwelling residents by 2046. “With those numbers,” Marchut says, “we need to build more affordable housing, and we need to build more central housing . . . and these conversion projects will provide rental rates that are lower than new builds.” That’s something that will help both current and future Calgarians. “We’re going to see a finished product really soon,” Marchut says. “I’m super excited to finally see one open their doors and invite new residents in.”
It’s Not (Just) About the Money
Beyond the financial incentives, Calgary is taking other steps to encourage conversions. Most properties downtown, for example, are exempt from change-of-use permitting requirements. “That saves, on average, six months,” Marchut notes, and removes the risk that projects could be bogged down or blocked altogether.
Since developers need to invest an enormous amount of time and money in a project even before proposing it to the city, simply indicating general support for conversions provides an important boost in confidence, Marchut said. “Obviously, you can’t guarantee an approval until you have a plan set in front of you that you can review against the rules. But a notional, ‘Yes, the city is supportive of what you’re trying to achieve on this site,’ goes a long way in giving comfort to developers.”
Back in Denver, Aldrete doesn’t have incentive dollars to encourage investment, so she’s hoping that a “higher-touch” review and approval process, led by an in-house coordinator dedicated to office conversions, will drastically reduce the time it takes for developers to get projects moving. “You essentially cut off two to three months for every review cycle you can reduce, to get them out the door and under construction. So that is real money to the developer,” she says. “That’s how we’re trying to win them over.”
Fuller says that, even as some cities embrace reuse, others are lagging behind. “The time is ripe to change some of our zoning and our legislative policies that could help catalyze this type of conversion,” he says, while emphasizing that quality and safety should not be sacrificed. “We’ve come around to realize that having a mix of uses in the same location is actually healthy for cities, in terms of generating 24/7 activity and eyes on the streets and all those things that we know are good. So I’m optimistic that good things will come of this.”
Cotter is also optimistic that this surge in post-pandemic interest in office conversions will create a lasting trend. “There’s all sorts of creative adaptive reuse that’s happening that is going to give architects, construction firms, and city code officers experience with how this can be done, and lay the groundwork for it to be done more readily,” Cotter says. “And wouldn’t we all be well served if our buildings, once constructed, could evolve with us?”
Jon Gorey is a staff writer for the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy.
Lead image: Franklin Tower in Philadelphia was transformed from a drab commercial building into a glass-clad, mixed-use space that includes retail and residences. Credit: Robert Deitchler, courtesy of Gensler.
En varios estados se implementaron, o se están considerando, medidas estatales para cambiar la zonificación a nivel local. El objetivo es permitir una gama de opciones de vivienda más asequibles y crear comunidades más sostenibles y equitativas. Sin embargo, cobró fuerza una oposición que defiende la tradición del control local sobre el uso del suelo.
Arizona. En 2022, los representantes estatales César Chávez (D) y Steve Kaiser (R) presentaron un proyecto de ley que permitía viviendas multifamiliares o una mayor densidad de viviendas unifamiliares en tierras zonificadas para agricultura u hogares unifamiliares. La propuesta, que enfrentó una fuerte oposición, se reescribió para establecer un comité que estudiara la oferta de viviendas.
California. En 2022, el gobernador Gavin Newsome (D) firmó un proyecto de ley que eliminaba los requisitos de estacionamiento cerca de las estaciones de transporte público y legalizaba las viviendas multifamiliares de ingresos mixtos en todas las áreas comerciales. A esto le siguió la legalización a nivel estatal de las ADU en 2016, y una medida, en 2021, que permitía a los dueños de propiedades dividir una vivienda unifamiliar o terreno en viviendas dúplex o cuádruples. La oposición se propuso revertir dicha ley a través de una iniciativa de plebiscito.
Connecticut. Un proyecto de ley para una reforma de gran alcance que se aprobó en 2021 prohíbe la zonificación local que limita el número de unidades de viviendas multifamiliares o que discrimina a los residentes de bajos ingresos, en un estado donde el 90 por ciento de la tierra se reserva a las viviendas unifamiliares por derecho. Además, el paquete legaliza las ADU, restringe los requisitos de estacionamiento mínimo, exige el cumplimiento de los objetivos de vivienda asequible y elimina los términos “carácter”, “abarrotamiento del suelo” y “concentración indebida de la población” como base legal para las regulaciones de zonificación.
Maine. Un paquete de leyes que se presentó a principios del año 2022 habría creado una junta de vigilancia estatal con el poder de invalidar las decisiones locales sobre los proyectos de vivienda críticos. Además, habría eliminado las restricciones en el crecimiento instauradas por las municipalidades que citaban el “abarrotamiento”. Dichas disposiciones se eliminaron, y en su lugar, quedó una ley que permite las ADU en suelo zonificado para viviendas unifamiliares.
Maryland. Un proyecto de ley de 2020 para aumentar la densidad de viviendas en las áreas de ingresos altos que tienen una concentración de trabajos y acceso al transporte público no logró avanzar, a diferencia de otra medida que exigía a las municipalidades que permitieran las ADU. Baltimore ha considerado poner fin a la zonificación exclusivamente unifamiliar por su cuenta.
Massachusetts. Conforme a la ley de las Comunidades de la Autoridad de Transporte de la Bahía de Massachusetts (MBTA, por su sigla en inglés) aprobada en 2021 y firmada por el gobernador Charlie Baker (R), se deben permitir, por ley, viviendas multifamiliares con una densidad de 37 unidades por hectárea cerca de las estaciones de transporte público. De lo contrario, se denegará el financiamiento estatal para proyectos de infraestructura y de otro tipo. Muchas comunidades desafiaron la política, y algunas expresaron su voluntad de abstenerse de recibir el financiamiento en lugar de cumplir la ley.
Montana. A fines de 2022, una comisión especial de vivienda nombrada por el gobernador Greg Gianforte (R) recomendó abrir las áreas zonificadas para viviendas unifamiliares a viviendas dúplex, tríplex y cuádruples, y replantear otras regulaciones locales de zonificación restrictivas. La directora de la organización que representa a las ciudades y pueblos de Montana describió la iniciativa como “similar a las de California”. Se espera que este año la legislatura considere propuestas relacionadas con este tema.
Nebraska. Un proyecto de ley que se presentó en 2020, destinado a prohibir la zonificación exclusivamente unifamiliar y permitir cuádruples se reemplazó por una medida que solo exige que las ciudades y pueblos demuestren que están trabajando en pos de la vivienda asequible.
Carolina del Norte. En 2021, la legislación bipartidaria exigió que se permitieran los dúplex, tríplex, cuádruples y las casas adosadas en cualquier distrito de zonificación residencial con servicio de agua y cloaca, y que se permitieran las ADU. Dicha propuesta se detuvo tras la oposición de las jurisdicciones locales.
Oregón. Oregón, el primer estado del país en prohibir la zonificación exclusivamente unifamiliar, promulgó una ley en 2019 que establece que la mayoría de las ciudades con población superior a 1.000 habitantes permitan viviendas dúplex, y exige que las municipalidades de 25.000 habitantes o más permitan la construcción de casas adosadas, y viviendas tríplex y cuádruples.
Utah. Una medida aprobada en 2022 impulsa el financiamiento estatal para la reforma de zonificación local, que facilita la construcción de viviendas de ingresos medios y desarrollos orientados al transporte público. A fines de 2022, la legislatura estatal también estaba considerando retener los fondos del estado para las comunidades que carecen de un plan de ordenamiento territorial para la vivienda y anular la zonificación local y los procesos de audiencias para permitirles a los propietarios construir viviendas asequibles.
Virginia. El gobernador Glenn Youngkin (R), que se expresó en contra del movimiento NIMBY (“No en mi patio trasero”), lanzó un plan en noviembre en el que recomienda vincular el financiamiento estatal con los planes de vivienda locales e investigar una reforma de zonificación integral.
Washington. Se está considerando una legislación que permitiría una mayor densidad en las estaciones de transporte público, así como viviendas para dos, tres y cuatro familias en áreas que ahora se encuentran zonificadas para casas unifamiliares.
Anthony Flint es miembro sénior del Instituto Lincoln de Políticas de Suelo, conduce el ciclo de pódcasts Land Matters y es editor colaborador de Land Lines.
Imagen: Unidad de vivienda accesoria en Seattle. Crédito: Sightline Institute via Flickr CC BY 2.0.
El estado de la zonificación local
Reformas a un enfoque centenario del uso del suelo
Argumentando que las normas anticuadas que rigen la urbanización en los Estados Unidos están haciendo que los precios de las viviendas aumenten en medio de una crisis de capacidad de pago cada vez más profunda, defensores de la reforma de zonificación estatal buscan construir sobre la base de éxitos recientes alcanzados en varias ciudades, desde California hasta Connecticut. Sin embargo, las resoluciones estatales están enfrentando una resistencia de quienes defienden el control local del uso del suelo, un sistema que ha prevalecido por un siglo.
Si bien los cambios de la norma que se están implementando o considerando, en términos técnicos, solo resultan familiares a los profesionales del planeamiento urbano, podrían tener un impacto masivo, y no solo en la disponibilidad de viviendas. Según los críticos, la zonificación también ha preservado la segregación racial y perpetuado patrones de uso del suelo no sostenibles en términos medioambientales.
Los cambios en cuestión incluyen prohibir la zonificación exclusivamente unifamiliar; permitir que haya viviendas multifamiliares en más lugares, incluso adyacentes a las paradas de transporte público; reducir o eliminar los costosos requisitos de estacionamiento mínimo; y suprimir las prohibiciones relacionadas con unidades accesorias (ADU, por su sigla en inglés).
Los esfuerzos para modificar la zonificación tomaron fuerza en parte porque el problema es sorprendentemente bipartidario, lo que atrae a una variedad de defensores, desde conservadores de libre mercado que apoyan la modernización de las regulaciones del gobierno, hasta progresistas preocupados por el sinhogarismo y que buscan corregir las injusticias raciales.
Tanto los estados azules de la costa como otros considerados rojos, como Utah, se comprometieron con algún tipo de reforma de la zonificación. En Virginia, el gobernador republicano, Glenn Youngkin, se expresó en contra del movimiento NIMBY (“No en mi patio trasero”) liderado por residentes establecidos respecto a los desarrollos de viviendas nuevos. Para abordar los costos crecientes que enfrentan los residentes, afirmó poco después de asumir el cargo en 2022, “debemos atacar la raíz del problema: regulaciones innecesarias, gobiernos locales ineficientes y sobrecargados, políticas de zonificación restrictivas y una ideología de luchar con uñas y dientes en contra de cualquier desarrollo nuevo”.
El principal motor de la reforma fue la falta de viviendas asequibles, que está causando estragos en las economías locales. Entre marzo de 2021 y marzo de 2022, los precios de las viviendas subieron más de un 20 por ciento en todo el país. En junio de 2022, Realtor.com informó que los alquileres en las 50 áreas metropolitanas más grandes del país habían aumentado un 26,6 por ciento desde 2019, el último de una cadena de aumentos récord. De acuerdo con el Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies, en 2020, un 30 por ciento de todos los hogares de los Estados Unidos enfrentaban pagos de alquileres o cuotas de hipotecas inasequibles, definidos como valores un 30 por ciento superiores al ingreso mensual por hogar; es decir que un número cada vez mayor de estadounidenses gastan la mitad de sus ingresos en vivienda (Harvard 2022). En general, los trabajadores no pueden vivir cerca de sus lugares de trabajo, y la absoluta carencia de vivienda es cada vez más evidente.
“Incluso las personas que se benefician de la crisis de vivienda de California, quizás personas que compraron una vivienda unas décadas atrás [y vieron cómo se revalorizaron], están descubriendo que sus hijos adultos no pueden vivir a una distancia de dos o tres horas de ellos. Están dándose cuenta de que, si quieren jubilarse, probablemente tengan que dejar el estado”, dijo M. Nolan Gray, autor de Arbitrary Lines: How Zoning Broke the American City and How to Fix It (Líneas arbitrarias: cómo la zonificación quebró la ciudad estadounidense y cómo enmendarla) (Gray 2022). Tanto en California como en Utah, dijo Gray, los residentes están enfrentando “problemas [similares] de capacidad de pago de la vivienda que están afectando a la clase media, y están buscando soluciones”.
No obstante, el esfuerzo para aplicar estándares nuevos a nivel estatal se enfrenta a una oposición política feroz a nivel local, donde históricamente se han tomado las decisiones en materia de uso del suelo y donde el derecho a establecer la zonificación se ha custodiado con rigor desde que los niveles más altos del gobierno le concedieron dicho poder un siglo atrás. La resistencia advierte sobre la “rezonificación imperialista de las capitales del estado”, en palabras de un crítico, y catalogan a las resoluciones destinadas a aumentar la oferta de viviendas como un poder de primacía inapropiado del estado.
En respuesta a aquellos que se oponen a cualquier cambio en las regulaciones locales para el desarrollo, los legisladores estatales suavizaron las iniciativas de reforma de todo el estado sumando opciones de exclusión voluntaria o eliminando sanciones para quienes incumplen. En algunos casos, los primeros destellos de reforma se desactivaron por completo. En Nebraska, un proyecto de ley que exigía a las municipalidades con más de 5.000 residentes que permitieran cuádruples y otras “viviendas intermedias faltantes” se reemplazó por una medida que exigía solo pruebas de que las jurisdicciones locales estuvieran trabajando en crear más viviendas asequibles (vea nuestra guía de reformas recientes en cada estado).
En Massachusetts, el programa conocido como Comunidades de la MBTA, firmado por el gobernador republicano Charlie Baker en 2021, exige a las ciudades y los pueblos que permitan viviendas multifamiliares cerca de las estaciones de transporte público, por ley, con una densidad mínima de 37 unidades por hectárea. Sin embargo, muchas comunidades desafiaron dicho mandato, y declararon que están preparadas para arreglárselas sin la financiación del estado que les será denegada si no cumplen.
Si la clave para cualquier reforma de una política pública radica en la implementación, puede que esto sea particularmente válido para algo tan arraigado como el control local sobre el uso del suelo. El propósito de los estados en lo que concierne a la reforma debe convencer a las localidades de que cambiar la zonificación de formas selectivas es algo posible y será beneficioso. La asistencia técnica y la educación, provistas por las agencias del estado y las organizaciones sin fines de lucro, ayudarán, dijo la investigadora Amy Dain, de Massachusetts, que realizó investigaciones para el Instituto Lincoln y documentó cómo las comunidades suburbanas de los alrededores de Boston instalaron un “empapelado” de burocracia que obstaculiza los intentos de los emprendedores inmobiliarios de construir viviendas multifamiliares (Dain 2021, Dain 2022).
En el caso de la ley de las Comunidades de la MBTA, Amy dijo que “el estado les está dando a las ciudades y a los pueblos mucha flexibilidad para decidir cómo diagramar los distritos [de mayor densidad] y cómo redactar los requisitos. Los lugares para los desarrollos de viviendas multifamiliares orientadas al transporte público se establecen a nivel local, al igual que los requisitos de dimensiones para las viviendas nuevas”.
Es posible que, en el futuro, el éxito de la reforma de zonificación estatal dependa de la promesa de ese tipo de colaboración entre el nivel estatal y local.
SI BIEN MUCHAS CIUDADES SE planificaron y diseñaron magistralmente durante los siglos, la zonificación es un fenómeno del s. XX. La necesidad de un marco de normas y regulaciones surgió como una reacción al crecimiento explosivo de las ciudades de los Estados Unidos después del cambio de siglo, en simultáneo con la industrialización y el crecimiento de la fabricación; la inmigración masiva; y los avances en la tecnología, en especial, en el sector de transporte, lo que incluye el tranvía, el subte y los automóviles.
El pedido de zonificación fue parte de una campaña progresiva para aliviar la aglomeración y para mejorar las condiciones de vida y la salud pública, por ejemplo, para asegurarse de que no hubiera una curtiduría al lado de una casa de huéspedes. Pero, además, se diseñó para controlar dónde podían vivir los inmigrantes y las personas de color. Las primeras ciudades de los Estados Unidos en crear la zonificación fueron, entre otras, Nueva York y Berkeley, California, ambas hacia el año 1916.
En 1923, la Ley de Habilitación de Zonificación Estatal Estándar estipuló que los estados con legislación modelo podían adaptarse para conceder a las municipalidades el poder para determinar los usos del suelo. Los 50 estados adoptaron dicha ley de habilitación, que redactó un comité del Departamento de Comercio que Herbert Hoover había convocado y que incluía a Frederick Law Olmsted. El caso emblemático de la Corte Suprema de 1926 Euclid contra Ambler Realty, que implicó la demanda de una empresa de bienes raíces por el derecho de desarrollar tierras en una ciudad de Ohio en la que recientemente se habían implementado varios distritos de zonificación, ratificó que la zonificación era una responsabilidad local, y, de hecho, un poder policial para reducir conflictos y mejorar la salud pública.
Un titular anuncia la llegada de la zonificación a San Diego en 1923. Crédito: ilustración cortesía de Voice of San Diego.
El resultado fue que más de 30.000 gobiernos locales desarrollaron su propia regulación de estructuras y usos del suelo, que incluyen la altura permitida, el volumen, el coeficiente de edificabilidad, los tamaños de los lotes y las distancias mínimas. Un abordaje común fue separar los usos residencial, industrial y comercial, y designar parcelas según la categoría en mapas de zonificación multicolores que siguen en uso hasta el día de hoy. Del lado residencial, las zonas para viviendas unifamiliares, en general, en lotes grandes, eran las más frecuentes; las áreas destinadas a viviendas multifamiliares, que incluso preveían estructuras para dos familias, eran mucho más pequeñas, si es que existían.
A pesar de que las comunidades usaban enfoques similares, la zonificación se convirtió en un sistema altamente descentralizado en el que cada jurisdicción desarrollaba normas especiales con formatos complicados. “Incluso para un experto, estos códigos de zonificación pueden ser difíciles de leer, y es casi imposible compararlos entre ellos”, dijo Sara Bronin, profesora de Derecho de la Universidad Cornell, que participó en una iniciativa de reforma de zonificación importante en Connecticut y ahora lidera el desarrollo del Mapa de zonificación nacional. Este proyecto de colaboración abierta está trabajando para crear un mapa de zonificación interactivo, fácil de usar, de cada estado del país.
ACERCA DEL MAPA DE ZONIFICACIÓN NACIONAL
Cuando Sara Bronin, ahora profesora de la Universidad Cornell, se involucró por primera vez en la reforma de la zonificación en Connecticut, surgió una necesidad evidente: identificar cuáles eran, con exactitud, las regulaciones del uso del suelo en las 169 ciudades y pueblos del estado. Para encontrar la respuesta, tuvieron que revisar 2.622 distritos de zonificación y más de 30.000 páginas de texto, y usar hojas de cálculo, mapas y sistemas de información geográfica para organizar todo. Este ejercicio inspiró a Bronin y su escueto equipo de colaboradores a lanzar un proyecto más ambicioso: documentar las prácticas de zonificación locales en los 50 estados para crear un Mapa de zonificación nacional.
El objetivo de este proyecto de colaboración abierta es traducir y estandarizar los códigos de zonificación del país, y crear un mapa interactivo en línea que las personas puedan usar y entender con facilidad. El Mapa de zonificación nacional busca ayudar a ampliar la participación en las decisiones relacionados con el uso del suelo, identificar oportunidades para la reforma de zonificación y reducir una brecha de información que, en la actualidad, beneficia a los especuladores del suelo, los inversionistas institucionales y los propietarios por sobre los grupos socioeconómicamente desfavorecidos. Además arrojará luz a las tendencias estatales y regionales y brindará un recurso para las iniciativas de planificación nacional relacionadas con la producción de vivienda, la infraestructura de transporte y el cambio climático.
Hoy en día, un grupo colaborativo cada vez más grande de investigadores está trabajando en 14 estados, desde New Hampshire hasta Hawái. El equipo les da la bienvenida a colaboradores de todos los estados. Para obtener más información, visite www.zoningatlas.org.
La naturaleza intensamente local de la zonificación generó otro atributo que ha ayudado a bloquear, con eficacia, las normas impuestas: grupos significativos de residentes establecidos que alegan que las normas obstaculizan los desarrollos nuevos. La zonificación, así como las regulaciones medioambientales y, en algunos casos, las restricciones de preservación histórica, se usaron como un escudo en suburbios de uso diferenciado dominados por la zonificación unifamiliar y en ciudades, donde los residentes empezaron a mostrarse recelosos con respecto al redesarrollo en barrios con lazos estrechos. A lo largo de las décadas de los 60 y 70, las organizaciones de los barrios locales se fortalecieron usando un poder de veto en una amplia variedad de propuestas de redesarrollo, comentó Jacob Anbinder, quien está escribiendo una tesis en Harvard sobre el control local y la organización comunitaria.
La combinación de normas complicadas y defensores acérrimos hizo que el sistema pareciera impenetrable. Sin embargo, hace unos 25 años, empezaron a surgir algunos de los primeros desafíos para la noción de que la zonificación era sagrada (insinuaciones de que las regulaciones de uso local del suelo se habían calcificado y vuelto obsoletas), principalmente con fundamentos medioambientales. Los movimientos asociados al crecimiento inteligente y el Nuevo Urbanismo sostenían que la separación de usos fomentaba la dependencia del automóvil, que genera un daño ambiental, y había hecho que los tipos de viviendas de uso mixto que ofrecen la posibilidad de caminar sean, básicamente, ilegales.
“Si observas los barrios históricos previos a la zonificación, la norma sería que pudieras satisfacer las necesidades diarias a una distancia que se pueda hacer a pie”, dijo Gray. “Podrías tener un almacén en la esquina, una barbería en otra, un consultorio médico en otra, o al menos, las ciudades podrían alcanzar densidades tales que el transporte público pudiera satisfacer. La densidad era tal que era posible tomar un autobús o un tren.
“La zonificación dificultó todo eso”, afirmó. “Realmente privilegia los patrones de uso del suelo que son más ineficientes en términos medioambientales. Al observar los datos, queda claro que muchos estadounidenses, en realidad, quieren vivir en un departamento, en un barrio donde se pueda caminar y donde sea posible no tener un auto, y la zonificación, en muchos casos, criminaliza esto”.
En un contexto que podría describirse como un primer intento, más sutil, de lograr que las comunidades reevaluaran su zonificación, los planificadores que promovían alternativas para la expansión urbana descontrolada introdujeron la idea del “código basado en la forma”, que reorientaba la zonificación en torno a la composición y la concentración massing de los edificios, en lugar de enfocarse en el uso y las actividades que se desarrollan dentro de estos. Otras personas intentaron ayudar a que las ciudades pequeñas y medianas hicieran ajustes incrementales que permitieran más paisajes urbanos.
“Ir al encuentro de los gobiernos locales” fue el mantra para la iniciativa del Proyecto para la Reforma del Código lanzada por el Congreso para el Nuevo Urbanismo en 2016, dijo Lynn Richards, quien era presidenta de la organización en ese entonces. “No se lo pensaba como una auditoría completa, sino que se pretendía identificar el cambio pequeño más importante que pudiera hacer una comunidad para mejorar el entorno regulatorio en dicho lugar”, comentó, y agregó que los cambios incrementales se instituyeron en Michigan, Vermont, New Hampshire y Wisconsin.
Sin embargo, en general, el statu quo se mantuvo, incluso cuando aumentó la conciencia pública sobre el papel de la zonificación en la perpetuación de la segregación racial, lo que sumó preocupación sobre su impacto. Investigaciones demográficas e históricas de todo el país ilustraron los efectos perjudiciales y duraderos de las decisiones sobre el uso del suelo en lugares desde Los Ángeles hasta Manchester, New Hampshire. Según esta crítica, los gobiernos locales a los que se les había entregado la responsabilidad de supervisar el uso del suelo no habían logrado garantizar comunidades sostenibles y equitativas, y no mostraban ningún indicio de cambio en sus trayectorias.
“Un siglo de control local, descentralizado y aislado del suelo produjo niveles inaceptables de segregación racial y económica, una expansión urbana descontrolada que contribuyó a la crisis climática y una crisis de vivienda asequible casi inexpugnable”, escribió el presidente del Instituto Lincoln George W. McCarthy en un ensayo para una publicación de Land Lines, en octubre de 2022. “A veces, resulta necesario que los niveles más altos de gobierno pasen por alto las decisiones de los niveles más bajos, a fin de fomentar el bienestar general o abordar factores externos negativos que son producto de acciones no coordinadas de estos niveles más bajos de gobierno”.
UNAS POCAS CIUDADES, incluidas Mineápolis y Portland, están a la vanguardia, ya que, por ejemplo, tomaron medidas para prohibir la zonificación exclusivamente unifamiliar. En el ámbito federal, bajo las administraciones de Obama y Biden, también se presentó un marco de incentivos y sanciones que promueven un desarrollo más denso e inclusivo.
Sin embargo, el fundamento para los estándares en todo el estado se ha vuelto cada vez más evidente: eliminar la mezcla de diferentes políticas y regulaciones dentro de las regiones metropolitanas. Algunas comunidades podrían permitir ADU, por ejemplo, mientras otras las prohíben. Un régimen regulatorio más uniforme nivelaría el campo de juego, reflejaría las aspiraciones de alquiler y compra de viviendas actuales y haría posible la elaboración de un abordaje regional receptivo para los asuntos como la crisis de capacidad de pago actual.
Las medidas de la reforma de zonificación que se aprobaron o que se encuentran en proceso de análisis varían desde cambios relativamente pequeños, como la legalización de las ADU o la eliminación de los requisitos de estacionamiento mínimo, hasta primacías más significativas que permiten viviendas multifamiliares (ya sean casas adosadas para entre dos y cuatro familias, o edificios de departamentos más grandes) en áreas zonificadas exclusivamente para viviendas unifamiliares.
Como primer paso hacia una reforma más integral, muchos estados legalizaron las unidades accesorias (ADU, por su sigla en inglés), lo que permite a los propietarios de viviendas sumar una segunda unidad a sus inmuebles. Crédito: Joiedevivre123321 vía Wikimedia Commons.
California ha sido líder, primero, al legalizar las ADU en todo el estado, luego, al permitir las viviendas dúplex y las divisiones de lotes en zonas unifamiliares, y las viviendas multifamiliares de ingresos mixtos en todas las áreas comerciales, y, además, al eliminar los requisitos de estacionamiento mínimo en las estaciones de trasporte público. Connecticut le sigue de cerca, con requisitos para que las ciudades y los pueblos “fomenten de forma positiva la vivienda justa” en sus zonificaciones, promuevan diversas opciones de vivienda, legalicen las ADU y limiten los requisitos de estacionamiento mínimo. Las pautas adoptadas recientemente por el estado también evitan que las ciudades aprueben zonificaciones que discriminan en términos de ingresos, restrinjan la cantidad de viviendas multifamiliares en una comunidad o cobren comisiones poco razonables o diferentes por viviendas asequibles multifamiliares.
Otra característica destacada en Connecticut es la eliminación de los términos “carácter”, “abarrotamiento del suelo” y “concentración indebida de la población” de la legislación estatal como base legal para las regulaciones de zonificación. En su lugar, el proyecto de ley permite que las ciudades consideren solo las “características físicas” de un distrito.
Los defensores de la reforma aspiran a seguir profundizando en el asunto del proceso, que, como se demostró, obstaculiza y dificulta desarrollos nuevos al hacerlos extremadamente costosos. Las recomendaciones incluyen un “reloj de lanzamiento” que limite la duración de los procesos de habilitación, y exenciones de eternas revisiones para proyectos pequeños y medianos que, sin duda, no tengan un gran impacto medioambiental.
OTROS ESTADOS QUE MEDITAN SOBRE LA REFORMA DE ZONIFICACIÓN han incluido elementos de las reformas de California y Connecticut. Pero surgió un patrón en el que los legisladores proponen medidas estrictas (por ejemplo, negar el permiso para la zonificación exclusivamente unifamiliar) y, luego, ante la oposición, prescriben reformas más leves, como anular las prohibiciones sobre los alquileres de casas adosadas o departamentos sobre cocheras.
Los legisladores parecen estar respondiendo a una reacción negativa previsible en contra de los mandatos estatales, que se fundamenta sobre la premisa de que las jurisdicciones no deberían estar sujetas a requisitos generales que no consideran de manera exhaustiva las condiciones locales.
Aaron Renn, un analista urbano conservador y editor colaborador del City Journal, dijo que “en líneas generales, apoya la liberalización de la zonificación como una herramienta para afrontar la falta de oferta de viviendas”, pero que desconfía de concederles a los estados el control de las decisiones locales del uso del suelo debido al riesgo percibido de que esto fomente políticas de talla única. Expresó su preocupación de que los defensores de la reforma a nivel estatal “argumenten que en la mayoría de los casos la mejora de la zonificación no significará reemplazar todas las viviendas unifamiliares por edificios de departamentos, pero que no aceptarán ningún límite”, como restringir el número de cuádruples en un barrio, y le preocupa que términos como “corredor de transporte público” no se definan con precisión.
Kimberly Fiorello, una representante republicana de las ciudades de Stamford y Greenwich de Connecticut, se pronunció con un tono más desafiante, y advirtió sobre el paquete de reforma de zonificación que adoptó el estado finalmente.
“Pasar el control de la zonificación local a ‘expertos’ de Hartford debería ser una afrenta para cualquiera que crea en la autonomía y el derecho a la propiedad privada”, escribió en 2020, cuando las iniciativas para la reforma de zonificación lideradas por funcionarios del estado y la coalición sin fines de lucro Desegregate Connecticut empezaron a cobrar fuerza. En un momento, Fiorello y otros republicanos llegaron a exigir una enmienda constitucional estatal para “permitirles a la municipalidades que promulguen y hagan cumplir las restricciones de zonificación sin interferencia del gobierno estatal o regional”.
El poder de primacía, que en este caso anula al gobierno local, se estableció como precedente en el sector de vivienda y resistió desafíos legales. En Massachusetts, el capítulo 40B anula la zonificación local para acelerar proyectos si el 25 por ciento de las unidades propuestas son asequibles, en comunidades donde el parque de viviendas asequibles es menor que el 10 por ciento. El caso emblemático de Mount Laurel, cuya primera resolución estuvo a cargo de la Corte Suprema en 1975, de modo similar, exigió a las ciudades y pueblos que agregaran su “parte justa” de viviendas asequibles como una prioridad que supera las restricciones locales de uso del suelo. En California, las municipalidades que no cumplen los objetivos de vivienda asequible quedan sujetas al “recurso del constructor”, en el que los desarrolladores pueden proponer cualquier proyecto de vivienda y este se aprueba de forma automática.
Por lo tanto, los estados que persiguen reformas significativas deben alcanzar un equilibrio entre exigir el cumplimiento a través de sanciones y otros medios, y apoyar a las ciudades y los pueblos de forma menos rigurosa a lo largo del proceso de implementación, para asegurarles que seguirán teniendo el control a medida que se abran a más viviendas.
“La zonificación ha resistido porque las comunidades locales y sus residentes la defienden. Los planificadores deben trabajar para aferrarse a ese entusiasmo, para darles a las comunidades el control local, mientras apoyan el sinnúmero de esfuerzos necesarios para hacer frente a las limitaciones de la zonificación en su forma actual”, dijo Harvey M. Jacobs, profesor emérito en la Universidad de Wisconsin–Madison y Universidad Radboud en Nijmegen, Países Bajos.
“¿Las localidades necesitan un empujoncito? Sí. ¿Les gustará? No”, afirmó Jacobs, quien ha llevado a cabo investigaciones con el Instituto Lincoln en materia de políticas públicas y derechos de propiedad. Predice “algo así como un juego del gato y el ratón, entre los estándares impuestos por el estado y la implementación local”.
EN EL ÍNTERIN, las ciudades están actuando por su cuenta, con o sin mandatos estatales. La lista de los lugares que aprueban la reforma está creciendo, desde la mejora de la zonificación en toda la comunidad de Walla Walla, Washington, hasta la aprobación de ADU y la eliminación de requisitos de estacionamiento en Fayetteville, Arkansas. Hace poco, Cambridge, Massachusetts, se unió a la lista creciente de comunidades que están suprimiendo los mínimos de estacionamiento.
Los defensores esperan poder sumarse a ese impulso, ya que confían, en parte, en los análisis de datos posteriores a la implementación. Es entendible que, como esta ola de iniciativas de reforma es relativamente nueva, existan pocos estudios que muestren que los cambios en la zonificación incrementan, como consecuencia directa, la capacidad de pago de la vivienda o generan otros resultados esperados.
Un análisis de los alquileres de ADU recién autorizadas por la Asociación de Gobiernos del Sur de California mostró que las viviendas pequeñas en cinco condados del área de Los Ángeles eran asequibles para quienes ganaban el 80 por ciento del ingreso promedio del área y menos, a pesar de que, en muchos casos, no se les cobraba ningún alquiler, ya que los miembros de la familia se mudaban para aliviar el hacinamiento. “Esto es, en esencia, la producción de viviendas asequibles a escala y sin ningún costo para los contribuyentes”, dijo Gray. “Todo esto solo por eliminar algunas de las barreras de la zonificación para las ADU”.
Dos documentos de trabajo a cargo del Mercatus Center de la Universidad George Mason determinaron que la zonificación que permite viviendas multifamiliares se asocia con porcentajes de la población considerablemente más grandes de residentes de color e hispánicos, en comparación con la zonificación para viviendas unifamiliares: un nueve por ciento combinado más alto en el Gran Boston, y un 21 por ciento en el área metropolitana de Minneapolis-Saint Paul (Resseger 2022, Furth y Webster 2022).
Bronin, quien lidera la labor del Mapa de zonificación nacional en Cornell, dijo que en la investigación que está por publicar descubrió que con solo eliminar los requisitos de estacionamiento mínimos se podrían crear miles de unidades adicionales de vivienda en 15 ciudades de Connecticut. El mayor potencial se observó en Bridgeport, la ciudad más grande del estado, donde se eliminaron los requisitos de estacionamiento mínimo a favor de las viviendas en 2022. “Tenemos esperanzas de que esto active nuevas inversiones en Bridgeton, que está bastante cerca de la ciudad de Nueva York y que, como varias de las grandes ciudades en Connecticut, está pasando dificultades económicas. Esa única reforma conlleva muchas promesas de creación de nuevas viviendas, lo que, a su vez, hará que los precios bajen”, señaló Bronin.
Si bien hay estudios discrepantes, algunos investigadores sugieren que el aumento de la oferta de vivienda, incluso en el extremo de mayor poder adquisitivo, puede en última instancia generar una reducción en los alquileres y precios de las viviendas (Mast 2021). Gestores de políticas y economistas están cada vez más de acuerdo en que agregar diferentes tipos de viviendas distribuidas en una región amplia será beneficioso a largo plazo.
En este sentido, aquellos que claman por una reforma de zonificación aún más gradual se enfrentan con un desafío parecido al del cambio climático, que continuaría incluso si mañana pudiesen detenerse todas las emisiones. Las condiciones del mercado no cambiarán con rapidez, pero si actuamos ahora, según se afirma, prepararemos el escenario para una falta de capacidad de pago menos drástica en el futuro.
Según Dain, la disposición de Massachusetts para mejorar la zonificación en las zonas aledañas a las estaciones de transporte público se puede fundamentar sobre la base de dicha viabilidad económica a largo plazo. “En realidad, este no es un cambio técnico, sino una gran iniciativa de adaptación para toda la región, a fin de garantizar que todas las personas tengan una vivienda y que la región crezca de forma sostenible y resiliente”.
Bronin concuerda con que modificar las normas establecidas mucho tiempo atrás puede generar beneficios a gran escala, incluso siendo que este es un mensaje difícil de trasmitir, ya que, durante mucho tiempo, la zonificación permaneció invisibilizada en un segundo plano.
“La zonificación es el poder regulador más importante del gobierno local”, afirmó. “No solo rige dónde podemos ubicar viviendas, fábricas, parques y negocios; sino que tiene, de hecho, efectos significativos en la economía e incluso, creo yo, en la estructura de nuestra sociedad”. Recordando los varios años que llevó la iniciativa de reforma en Connecticut, indicó que “cuando comenzamos . . . sabíamos que había un espacio en el debate público para la zonificación y que era el momento correcto para vincular la reforma de nuestras leyes de zonificación obsoletas con resultados sociales y económicos mucho mejores que serían beneficiosos para Connecticut en su totalidad.
“Creo que sorprendimos a la gente por las dimensiones que esto tomó y los aliados que ganó”, comentó, e indicó que a Connecticut se la conoce como “la tierra de los hábitos constantes”. Como, en última instancia, esta cultura se abrió al cambio, dijo que tiene esperanzas con respecto a los intentos de reforma en proceso en otros lugares. “Soy optimista respecto a estos esfuerzos”.
Anthony Flint es miembro sénior del Instituto Lincoln de Políticas de Suelo, conduce el ciclo de pódcasts Land Matters y es editor colaborador de Land Lines.
Imagen: Asociaciones municipales, dirigentes locales y residentes rechazaron las iniciativas de reforma de zonificación estatal. Aquí, un manifestante en Connecticut exige a los legisladores que “mantengan la zonificación a nivel local”. Crédito: Kassi Jackson, Hartford Courant/Tribune News Service.
Mast, Evan. 2021. “JUE Insight: The Effect of New Market-Rate Housing Construction on the Low-Income Housing Market”. Journal of Urban Economics. Julio. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jue.2021.103383.