I heard Peter Lovenheim on NPR yesterday. He talked about the murder/suicide that occurred on his street which made him realized that, like most people on his street, he didn't know the couple. This made him want to get to know his neighbors and he proceeded with a social experiment. The Los Angeles Times has an article about it this month called Social Experiment: Know Thy Neighbor.

I love what Peter says:

In this age of cheap long distance, discount airlines and the Internet, when we can create community anywhere, why do neighborhoods still matter? They matter because we are all mortal, and if we have an emergency, a friend even 10 minutes away may be a friend too far.

They matter because all our resources are finite and if you're baking a cake at night and have to drive to the supermarket for a bottle of vanilla — as one of my neighbors confessed she recently had done — instead of borrowing from the person next door, you're wasting gas, energy and your own valuable time.

They matter because our society is too fragmented, and if we want to start rebuilding a healthy civil society by learning to understand and live peacefully with people whose ideas about religion, morality and politics may be different from our own, a very good place to start is with the people in our own apartment building or on our own block.

And neighborhoods matter because the people closest to us may be able to enrich our lives in ways we'll never know unless we actually know them.

But why don't we know our neighbors? Part of it is cultural, but part of the problem is physical. We don't build neighborhoods like we used to. We have no sidewalks in many modern neighborhoods. We don't build porches. We have deep front setbacks so that even if someone is walking down the street, we are too far from them in our houses to interact with the passersby. We live in enclosed air-conditioned spaces with no relationship to the outside. We live in segregated communities which are so boring to walk because there is nothing to see and nobody with which to interact.

I heard a University of Pennsylvania professor recently talking about how people determine the market housing that is built. I don't particularly agree with him. I think that first the general population has to know what's possible. You cannot ask for something which you don't know is possible, or even exists somewhere else.

So here it is, I am putting it out there. It is possible to build walkable cities. The Europeans have been doing it for centuries. We can build mixed-use areas so that there are retail shops to look at while we walk. We can demand that the government start building public transportation systems that work. All of this is possible. It just takes determination and persistence in asking for it, in talking about it. So let's ask!

When I was a child unlike most Cubans, my family lived in the north – Missouri, New Hampshire, Alabama, and Georgia.  We would come to Miami all the time on vacation, sometimes twice a year.  I used to visit all my Cuban exile relatives.  Everybody lived in a modest house – 2 to 3 bedrooms, 1 to 2 bathrooms.  Many had window air-conditioners in the bedrooms.  The rest of the house did not have any air-conditioning at all.

What these houses had in common was that they were “affordable”.  Nobody called them affordable, but they were built to be affordable, and in large part, the vast majority of the middle class could afford them. 

In Key Biscayne the original Mackle houses from the 1950’s had 1200 square feet with 3 bedrooms and one bathroom. They were simple boxes built for the masses.  In the 1960’s the Mackle houses were often expanded with an additional bedroom, bathroom, or carport.  See for more on Key Biscayne history at http://www.keylife.com/history

Now we build “affordable” houses which are hardly affordable to anyone.  According to the Miami-Dade Public Housing Agency the median income for Miami-Dade County is $52,200.  The standard for affordability in buying a house is 2.5 times annual income.  So for Miami-Dade County the average house should cost $130,500. 

The Miami-Dade County Housing Data Clearinghouse 2005 4^th Quarter Bulletin stated:

In 1970, the median value of a home in Miami-Dade County was about double the median yearly household income, which at the time was $7,151.  In just 30 years, by 2000, a home was valued at $124,000, nearly 3.5 times the median yearly household income.  And just four years later, in 2004, a home’s value, $193,906 was more than 5 times the household yearly income of $37,025.

The latest widening of the “Housing Affordability Gap” between 2000 and 2004 was due to an almost static income level coupled with a large spike in housing value. The median value of a house increased by over 56 percent, while there was barely a 3 percent increase in income between 2000 and 2004.  Though the highest percentage housing value increase was between 1970 and 1975 (160 percent), the increase between 2000 and 2004 was the largest without a corresponding raise in the median income level.

In 2004, 80 percent of the median household income in Miami-Dade County was $29,620 and 319,931 households earned at or below this level.  This was 40 percent of total households.

According to http://www.city-data.com/county/Miami-Dade_County-FL.html   the mean price of a detached home in 2008 was $436,278, now it is down to $150,000. 

Even after the crash of the housing market and the lowering of housing prices, there’s something very wrong with this picture! 

Anyway we look at it, as a community, we could not afford the $436,000 houses.  But we still cannot afford the $150,000 houses.  I think we need to do some radical things to correct this picture. 

We need to build smaller houses with fewer amenities.  We need to go back and build smaller houses but better designed houses.  Why not start with 1,300 square feet with three bedrooms and 1 and 1 ½ baths, but with a design which has the possibility of adding another bedroom, bath, and possibly a family room?  Let’s make it look great, but let’s build it to be really affordable.

We need to build “green” houses which have cross-ventilation and fans.  If we are going to air-condition the house, then it needs to be really efficient.  97% of heat gain is through the roof and not the walls, so for cost efficiency the majority of the insulation needs to be placed in the attic.  There are many other green ideas, but to me the most important are the ones which save energy costs for the future resident.  Let’s plant a few trees and maybe design a pergola for living outdoors. 

If we can’t do anything immediately to raise salaries, then let’s lower fixed costs.

I think it’s time to live smart.  As the population ages, we don’t need so much space.  The children grow up and leave home.  What are we going to do with all that square footage?  Let’s think things through.  Do we really have to have the McMansion or can we live with a MansionJunior?  Let’s re-focus our energies and build what we can afford and what we need.  We can still have the American dream, we just need to have a clear picture of what we want to afford.  Happiness comes from wanting what we can have.

In my previous blog I was very excited for those who may be in serious jeopardy of losing their homes, but then I read an interesting letter to the editor in the Miami Herald, February 21, from Professor Donal Jones, law professor at the University of Miami.

Apparently, from what Professor Jones says, my enthusiasm was baseless.  He says, "If it [the house] is not sold the bank is often able to maintain the repossessed house on its books without showing a loss. The bank can list the value of its asset based on what it would be at ''maturity.'' The now-empty house may have been vandalized and have rotted drywall. But on paper the repossessed house is as valuable as it was before the bubble burst. The bank has no skin in the game."

Moreover, since so many of these homeowners at risk of foreclosure are underwater with their mortgages, without a considerable amount of debt forgiveness, homeowners who continue to pay their mortgages will continue to pay mortgages in which they will have no equity for a long, long time, unless the real estate market miraculously recovers soon.  

Professor Jones tells us that the Federal government has started a Foreclosure Alternative Program, where they pay incentives to mortgage companies to allow homeowners to sell their homes through short sales or to allow homeowners to turn over their homes in lieu of foreclosures.

Apparently, Mediation is not the panacea that I thought.  It looks that the Federal government will have to lend a hand to homeowners after all. 

Views of Barcelona - El Ensanche

Yesterday was a great day for the City of Miami.  The new Miami 21 Zoning Code was approved by the City of Miami commissioners.

Miami 21 is the most comprehensive zoning code change I have seen in any part of Miami-Dade County in my over 25 years of practicing architecture.  It took 4 years of meetings and discussions to complete.

The very talented town planning firm of Duany Plater-Zyberk and Company, hired as the lead consultant to produce this code, held hundreds of meetings throughout the city and took testimony from many residents.  It was a controversial process. 

Architects took sides.  There was the Duany Plater-Zyberk and their University of Miami colleagues and then there was the Bernard Zyscovich side.  The AIA had meetings about it.  Generally, there were many fights about density and height restrictions - and design, of course!

While most codes are based on the multiplication of a number times the size of the lot to obtain such things as maximum lot coverage, maximum buildable area, floor area ratio, green area, etc., this new code emphasizes physical results.  It is a form-based code.  It does not care so much about the size of the lot, as what the building will look like.  Will it have porches, covered walkways, and other items which make it pedestrian friendly?  Will people want to walk down the street in this new designed city?  Yes, that's the idea!

What makes a city walkable or what makes it anti-pedestrian?  Liz Plater-Zyberk has lectured often on this issue, and at one of the many meetings, she explained their planning theories and their system of Transets T1 to T6. 

Among the many issues they discussed, one of the most important, is the issue of car parking.  Large parking lots, whether surface parking or garage parking, will deaden any street.  No live human will want to walk in front of a parking garage or parking lot.  So in their code visible surface parking on a major street is prohibited  

In traditional zoning, if the lot is large, then the building (as a multiplication of the size of the lot) gets to be a tall large building.  In this zoning, the zoning tells the owner how many stories to build.  Everyone on the same street gets to build the same number of stories.  So one lot won't have a huge, tall building with the lot next door allowed only a much shorter building.

Many parts of the city will have mixed-zoning with the street level dedicated to commercial space with residential units above that. 

The opposition's position is the new code would limit "design flexibility". 

As I attended meetings, listened to, or read about the discussions, I was reminded of the many cities I have walked - Barcelona, Paris, Munich, Madrid, South Beach, etc.  And then I think of the ones I would never walk - Miami, Atlanta, Houston, etc.

Many things limit design flexibility - our present City of Miami Zoning Code.  It has setbacks, it has height restrictions, and it has all kind of details that hamper design flexibility.  Our current code does not produce any cohesive cityscape.  It produces a bunch of independent buildings which have no cohesion as a group, a neighborhood, or a city. 

I spent a summer in Barcelona, while I was in college, working for an architectural firm on a student exchange program.  I think this is why I am such a fan of Duany Plater-Zyberk and Company.  That summer in Barcelona I walked and walked and walked.  I took rolls of photographs and discovered the contemporaries of Antonio Gaudi.  See, Gaudi did not work in a vacuum.  I am sure he influenced his contemporaries and his contemporaries influenced him.  His buildings are in context.  They are a part of the city.  That is what Miami needs - buildings in context, not floating, independent self-involved structures who fail to integrate with their environment.

In physical codes (and I am sure that Barcelona must have one) things change but they stay the same.  Here I have several photos of Barcelona streetscapes and you can see for yourself.  The number of stories must be regulated.  The location of the building on the lot must be regulated.  See for yourself, balconies change, but there is a consistency which makes the buildings flow from one balcony to the next.  Some details change while some stay the same.  There are no shocking changes - radical height changes, radical recessions from the street, etc.  The ground floor is all commercial.  The parking lots are sheltered from the main street.

In my opinion what we will see eventually is that there are a many design possibilities within the constraints of this code.  And by implementing this code we will see the new cohesiveness that will develop within city buildings.  Where there is always a tension between independence in building design and a unified urban plan, the pendulum had swung in the direction of independent building design.  Now it will swing once again in the other direction.  I, for one, I think that yesterday was a great day, the start of a movement toward an organized pedestrian city we can all enjoy!