Oh Se-hoon fue electo en abril de 2021 para ocupar el cargo del 38.º alcalde de Seúl. Abogado de profesión, con anterioridad había ejercido dos mandatos como alcalde desde 2006 hasta 2011, y formó parte de la Asamblea Nacional de Corea del Sur desde 2000 hasta 2004. Oh se graduó en la Escuela de Leyes de la Universidad de Corea y fue miembro académico de la Escuela de Graduados de Ciencias Sociales y Políticas Públicas del King’s College de Londres, donde se centró en la creación de empleo y el crecimiento económico en las principales ciudades del mundo. Durante su primer mandato como alcalde, Oh introdujo iniciativas relacionadas con la vivienda y la gobernanza que le otorgaron reconocimiento por parte de las Naciones Unidas. La victoria de Oh en las elecciones de 2021 se atribuyó, en parte, al descontento sobre el costo de la vivienda, aspecto que él prometió abordar. A fines del año 2022, una estampida en el distrito de Seúl Itaewon dejó sin vida a 159 personas y captó la atención de los medios a escala mundial. El alcalde se disculpó públicamente entre lágrimas y prometió mejorar la seguridad pública. Recientemente se comunicó por correo electrónico, con el miembro sénior Anthony Flint, con la ayuda de un traductor.

Anthony Flint: ¿Cuál es su visión respecto al redesarrollo de la ciudad y la creación de parques y espacios públicos más significativos, incluidos los planes para la transformación de la antigua base militar de los Estados Unidos en Yongsan? 

Oh Se-hoon: Seúl ha aflorado como una metrópolis competitiva a escala mundial gracias al desarrollo urbano. En la década que culminó en 2021, la ciudad priorizó la conservación, no los espacios públicos cómodos y agradables. Seúl adoptará una estrategia de recreación e implementará iniciativas para derribar barreras entre la conservación y el desarrollo, lo que redefinirá el planeamiento urbano. La idea de planeamiento urbano de Seúl es transformar la ciudad en un atractivo, una ciudad [económicamente activa] con espacios verdes extendidos en el área céntrica, que incluye el río Han, y desarrollar una amplia variedad de infraestructura cultural y recreativa. El objetivo es crear un “ciudad emocional” donde la cultura y el arte se integren en la cotidianeidad de las personas, y la naturaleza sirva como un escenario para la reflexión.

Yongsan es la última porción de tierra en Seúl disponible para una futura urbanización. Servirá como epicentro político, económico y ecológico de Seúl y Corea en el futuro. Tras la reubicación de la oficina presidencial en esta área [en 2022], se convirtió en el epicentro de la política de Corea. La antigua estación ferroviaria se transformará en un distrito de negocios internacionales. La reubicación de la base militar estadounidense se encuentra terminada en un 31 por ciento. Es difícil definir la fecha exacta en la que se completará la transferencia, pero el área se transformará en cientos de hectáreas de espacio verde, un lugar de descanso y tranquilidad para los ciudadanos.

En abril de 2022, Seúl anunció la Estrategia de Recreación de Espacios Verdes Urbanos, que reduce el índice de ocupación del suelo y aumenta el coeficiente de edificabilidad, lo que atenuará las restricciones de construcción en el centro urbano. Se espera que esto cuadruplique el coeficiente actual de espacio verde de un 3,7 por ciento a más de un 15 por ciento. Se prioriza la revitalización del área de Jongmyo y Toegye-ro (el distrito del Centro Comercial Sewoon). En agosto de 2022, Seúl reveló el proyecto Great Sunset Han River Project, que le abrirá la puerta a 30 millones de turistas internacionales. El proyecto tiene como objetivo convertir el río Han en un espacio urbano popular para destacar su atractivo y sus ventajas. [Los planes incluyen] una noria gigante, Nodeul Art Island y un escenario flotante para espectáculos. En febrero, Seúl anunció la iniciativa Innovación en Diseño Arquitectónico y Urbanístico, que apunta a fortalecer la competitividad de la ciudad por medio de obras con un diseño innovador. Los planes de edificación darán prioridad a los elementos de diseño para fomentar el diseño creativo en obras públicas.

AF: Ha dicho que es necesario que exista una mayor diversidad de opciones de vivienda, en especial para los jóvenes que alquilan de forma individual. ¿Cómo está resolviendo el problema de capacidad de pago de la vivienda?

OS: Los problemas de vivienda impiden que las personas asciendan en la escala social. La vivienda es el componente más costoso de las necesidades básicas como la comida, la vestimenta y el techo, [y] está tornándose una fuente de malestar y ansiedad para la ciudadanía, en especial las personas jóvenes. Según una encuesta realizada por el Gobierno Metropolitano de Seúl, en los últimos cuatro años, los préstamos para jeonse [un alquiler a largo plazo que requiere un anticipo cuantioso] destinados a las personas jóvenes se sextuplicaron, y el 59,4 por ciento de los hogares unipersonales ocupan viviendas de alquiler.

Seúl está adoptando varias políticas de vivienda y de apoyo a la vivienda para ayudar a las personas jóvenes a participar en actividades económicas y sociales sin tener que preocuparse por la vivienda. Esto incluye la provisión de viviendas sociales; la mejora de la calidad de las viviendas en alquiler, y la provisión de viviendas privadas para las personas jóvenes a un precio inferior al del mercado a fin de ayudarlas a acumular activos e iniciar sus propias familias.

La vivienda intergeneracional, que alberga a padres, hijos y nietos, puede ayudar a enfrentar desafíos diarios y problemas sociales como el envejecimiento rápido y el cuidado de los hijos. Además, planeamos brindar viviendas sociales aptas para la tercera edad con servicios residenciales, médicos y de conveniencia. El objetivo principal del gobierno es estabilizar los precios de las viviendas.

AF: ¿Cuáles son los elementos clave del plan de acción climática actual de Seúl y cómo prevé que este modelo se adapte a otras ciudades?

OS: En respuesta a la crisis climática, el Gobierno Metropolitano de Seúl estableció el Plan de Acción Climática de Seúl para el 2050 con el objetivo de alcanzar la neutralidad de carbono para dicha fecha. El plan se presentó al Grupo de Liderazgo Climático de Ciudades C40 y recibió la aprobación definitiva del C40 en junio de 2021. Mediante dicho plan, cuya finalidad es crear una ciudad sostenible donde coexistan las personas, la naturaleza y el futuro, se definieron políticas en cinco áreas principales: [construir y acondicionar] un millón de construcciones de bajas emisiones de carbono para el 2026; expandir la oferta de vehículos eléctricos a 400.000 unidades e instalar cargadores de vehículos eléctricos para el 2026; ofrecer diversas fuentes de energía renovable (como las células de carbono, y la energía geotérmica, hidrotérmica y solar); reducir los desechos, promover el reciclaje y prohibir la disposición final en vertederos, y expandir los parques y selvas para mitigar la emisiones de gases de efecto invernadero y estimular la resiliencia urbana.

El plan busca reducir las emisiones de gases de efecto invernadero en un 30 por ciento en comparación con los niveles registrados en 2005 para el año 2026. Resolver la crisis climática demandará un trabajo coordinado a escala global. Seúl compartirá sus buenas prácticas con las principales ciudades del mundo y entablará un diálogo con ellas a fin de combatir la crisis climática.

AF: Cuéntenos sobre cómo Seúl se transformó en una ciudad inteligente, incluido el uso de robótica y apps, y su exploración en la realidad virtual.

OS: Seúl es una ciudad global inteligente que se destacó como líder en áreas como los gobiernos electrónicos. De hecho, recibió el premio al mejor gobierno electrónico durante siete años consecutivos. Aspiramos a ser una ciudad inteligente sostenible e inclusiva . . . En la actualidad, en las calles de cuatro ciudades circulan 16 vehículos autónomos: Sangam, Gangnam, Cheonggyecheon y la Casa Azul (Palacio Gyeongbokgung, la antigua residencia presidencial). Seúl planea ofrecer un servicio de vehículos autónomos en la ciudad para el 2026 y convertirse en una ciudad modelo estándar a escala mundial para la conducción autónoma.

[Además] el Gobierno Metropolitano de Seúl implementó robots y tecnologías de IA en su administración pública. El funcionario público robótico, “Robo Manager”, se encarga de tareas administrativas simples, como la entrega de documentos. “Assistant Manager Seouri”, un funcionario público virtual y bot de chat interno, se incorporó para ayudar con procedimientos comerciales complejos. La revista Time premió a Metaverse Seoul como uno de los mejores inventos de 2022. Fue el único [invento del sector público de la terna]. Metaverse Seoul es un lugar donde todas las personas pueden disfrutar Seúl en igualdad de condiciones, ya que no tiene límite de tiempo y espacio, y no posee elementos discriminatorios en materia de género, discapacidad y ocupación. Seúl intenta implementar el ecosistema del metaverso en todos sus servicios administrativos, incluso en el sector de economía, cultura, turismo y reclamos de la ciudadanía.

Hace poco, Seúl creó el Seoul Smart City Prize (Premio a la Ciudad Inteligente de Seúl), en colaboración con la World Smart Cities Organization. El ganador se anunciará en septiembre. El premio busca promover los valores centrales de Seúl y descubrir proyectos innovadores e inclusivos para compartirlos con el resto del mundo.

AF: Viajó a América del Sur y África para hablar sobre administración de ciudades. ¿Qué contó allí sobre la gestión de la ciudad moderna?

OS: Viajé a Lima, Perú, y a Kigali, Ruanda, hace muchos años como parte del grupo asesor de la Agencia de Cooperación Internacional Coreana. Lima tenía un gran interés en Seúl. Conversamos sobre mis experiencias relacionadas con el proyecto Han River Renaissance Project (Revitalización del Río Han) y la vivienda. Además comenté sobre el proyecto Women-Friendly City (Ciudades Adecuadas para las Mujeres), que [aspira a implementar] servicios adecuados para las mujeres . . . como calles peatonales, parques, baños, viviendas y trasporte público. Visité los lugares donde se están realizando los principales proyectos de Lima, como el Proyecto Río Rimac y el Proyecto Costa Verde. Organicé un seminario para analizar las políticas de vivienda, incluidos el desarrollo del lugar y las políticas de alquileres.

En el momento de mi vista en 2014, Kigali aún estaba trabajando arduamente para subsanar las heridas provocadas por el genocidio atroz que se había cobrado la vida de un millón de personas 20 años atrás. Me impresionó conocer cómo estaban superando esa historia trágica, manifestando Kwibuka, “permítannos recordar”, en lugar de buscando venganza. Admiré cómo transformaban el odio en reconciliación. La reconstrucción urbana es una preocupación significativa en Ruanda, así que transmití mi experiencia en planeamiento urbano, vivienda y turismo, en especial la importancia y el potencial de crecimiento del turismo. Desde Perú hasta Ruanda, durante actividades de asesoramientoy voluntariados internacionales, entendí de primera mano cómo “se aprende cuando se enseña, y se recibe cuando se da”. Esas experiencias me recordaron lo importante que es para un líder ser inclusivo y reconciliador.

AF: ¿Cuál es su opinión respecto a la recuperación de plusvalías en el desarrollo inmobiliario privado, y cómo puede utilizarse para financiar infraestructura, vivienda y otras necesidades?

OS: A cambio de infraestructura durante el desarrollo inmobiliario privado, el Gobierno Metropolitano de Seúl brinda incentivos de coeficiente de edificabilidad. A través de este intercambio, el gobierno puede adquirir infraestructura como rutas y parques, y servicios comunitarios esenciales como bibliotecas, instalaciones para el cuidado de los niños, e instalaciones culturales y para la juventud, así como instalaciones industriales de alquiler público y vivienda de alquiler público. Entre agosto de 2015 y enero de 2023, [gracias a estos incentivos normativos se obtuvieron] 357 instalaciones de contribución pública, que equivalen a alrededor de US$ 5.000 millones. Además, la Ley Nacional de Planificación del Suelo revisada, que entró en vigor en julio de 2021, permite el uso de tanto artículos en especie (instalaciones) como pagos en efectivo en todo Seúl. El Gobierno Metropolitano de Seúl usará estos fondos para cubrir gastos operativos de servicios esenciales, la expansión de rutas y ferrocarriles, y nuevos proyectos de transporte.

El sistema de zonificación actual se renovará para maximizar la eficiencia del suelo en espacios desaprovechados. Adoptará dos pilares de competitividad urbana: la integración de los usos residenciales y comerciales, y la expansión del espacio verde urbano. Seúl está eliminando el límite de altura de 35 pisos [para las construcciones residenciales] que obstaculizaba el cambio; atenuando las regulaciones para la construcción, como la altura y el coeficiente de edificabilidad que impedían el desarrollo del centro urbano; y expandiendo los parques y las áreas verdes.

Seúl se está reivindicando de formas que van más allá de la modificación de sus prácticas de planeamiento urbano. Con el atractivo de la ciudad en mente, el Gobierno Metropolitano de Seúl considera de forma integral los factores que tienen un efecto significativo sobre la felicidad de las personas, como el ocio, la salud, la seguridad y el medioambiente a medida que construye la ciudad.

Anthony Flint es miembro sénior del Instituto Lincoln, conduce el ciclo de pódcasts Land Matters y es editor colaborador de Land Lines.

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.

You can listen to the show and subscribe to Land Matters on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, or wherever you listen to podcasts.

Further Reading

Five Ways Urban Planners Are Addressing a Legacy of Inequity (Land Lines)

Seven Need-to-Know Trends for Planners in 2023 (Land Lines/APA)

A Day in the Life of the City Planner (Princeton Review)

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Lead image: Cincinnati Mayor Aftab Pureval. Credit: © Amanda Rossmann – USA TODAY NETWORK.

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.”

Read the Center for Community Investment’s full case study here.

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.  

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.  

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. 

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.   

And in Washington, DC, where some 20 million square feet of office space sit vacant and mayor Muriel Bowser has pledged to bring 15,000 new residents to downtown in the next five years, the city will offer 20 years of tax relief to developers who convert office buildings to residences, as long as 15 percent of the homes are designated affordable to those earning 60 percent or less of area median income. 

Converting Calgary

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.