The case for anything but 'character areas'

There isn't a plausible way of using policy reasoning to justify our approach to character areas.

Right now, in council plans, planners colour in a few titles as having significant levels of 'character' and those have special character restrictions. Let's call this 'character zoning', because that explains the procedure and legal effect.

The policy process starts with an inkling of a policy problem. From here, you try get some clarity on what exactly you are trying to do. This is an iterative exercise of defining the policy problem. Problem definition is a big deal, because you try present your final recommendation as a way of addressing the problem in an obvious and helpful way.

So, let's try come up with a policy problem that might plausibly lead to current character zoning.

Maybe "pretty old houses in rich old neighborhoods are being bought and built-up"? That's what people actually care about, so it is an obvious place to start. Unfortunately this won't take us very far. This broad problem would mean "ban selling". All the issues come spilling out. You'd get asked "can we justify limits on private property rights", "who gives a fuck lol. lmao even", "this seems comically overbroad". Well, one of those is a question, the other two are the appropriate responses. Not auspicious, but let's keep going.

So, as you go along you'll try make it a bit more nuanced because you're not getting buy-in on something this dumb.

What about "there are communities with strong views on what buildings should look like and how nice the streets should be". This doesn't get you very far either, because they then go "well why are they selling if they care so much?" and "is there any data on if changing these buildings affects how nice the streets are" and "are there alternative ways of having nice streets and nice buildings? The answers being roughly, "uh like they are really just cynical bastards that hate new builds until they want to downsize to Waiheke or Greytown and sell to a developer for top dollar", "god no this isn't even vibes, let alone empirical" and "of course there are better ways of having nice streets and nice buildings and you wouldn't use any tool we have authority over to achieve them".

At this point you're just going to go along and start generating some options and hope you can backfill a decent problem definition later on, because your political masters want an outcome and you don't think there's a good way of getting there.

So, what are the types of options you might be coming up with?

Well, you might look to history as a guide for how to get such neighbourhoods. So you might encourage people using cheap prefabs, not having setbacks, not having carparks and all the other things that people actually did to build 'character streets'. This could permit a ton of new streets built in the old way. Might help if the sections were shallow and on a grid, not on cul de sacs like modern McMansions and not deep like sausage flat sites. Maybe there's a way to get nicer street design? 

 None of this engages all that closely with zoning. it is more like giving planners and subdividers guidance to make more walkable, less car centric, streets with more narrow and long and less thin and deep sections. Maybe there's some incentive you can give, or a niche planning rule or two you can change? Maybe planner guidance is all you need, that's pretty cheap and easy to implement. Ah fuck this is nothing like character zoning.

Well shit, something else? Maybe design guides, even prescriptive design rules? These have some merit, in that they're relatively low cost and plausible as an intervention on their face. Oh wait, in the UK there are many prescriptive design guides. Andso many NIMBYs. From New Zealand I hear the rage and hate and whinging low quality subdivisions. But these subdivisions are usually built from brick or masonry, which we view as pretty. In New Zealand, such places would be viewed as overqualified for 'character'. And the UK has abysmal build rates.

Is there anything happening now without any intervention? People love Brookfields, who built wood neo-Georgian ordinary townhouses: some terraces, the odd flat, a fair few sausage flats and setback things which are not authentic Georgian street design but whatever, they're just bland boxes with certain facade elements that fit in our current street designs. That is basically what people want right? So we could just let the free market run wild and see if people buy nicer buildings.

Maybe we could do a mixed model, where we have design guides, remove unhelpful rules in plans and policies that make buildings more ugly, put effort into street design, avoid the car-centric design. None of this requires putting all that much into plans about 'zones' or 'limits'. Its more about facilitating some good options, having some moderate nudges in the right direction and maybe pushing councils to do a few things better.

We could also have an incentive scheme. Could every council have a 'character targeted rate', used to impose costs on lower amenity areas and encourage them to do better. The funds could be spent on urban regeneration with better street designs or higher amenity. Or we could burn the money. 

Oh and we better chuck the political master's preferred option in there too. As this is the status quo, we will put all the options in a table but give options pluses and minuses depending on if they are better or worse than current character zoning on the criteria.

Time for options analysis
If we are going to work out what option to recommend, we need some criteria. We might try backfill some here too to get to the right proposal, but this is getting tough. Character zoning isn't hitting most of the policy pleasure spots.

What about the economic impacts? Urban economics is very big on the benefit of agglomeration: economic outcomes being markedly improved by concentrations of stuff in key locations. Character zoning generally afflicts inner suburbs in important suburbs. So, is it worth tanking agglomeration city-wide for character zones? The areas we pick for character zoning significantly change the calculus.

What about the costs imposed on others? In addition to stunting economic growth, this reduces the choices and increases the costs of  everyone in the city on where to buy or rent housing. It also impacts the potential for local commerce in those areas. 

Is it low cost to apply? No, it is a huge faff. Character analyses aren't free, enforcing the rules isn't free, litigating to force landowners to not build or do stuff isn't free.

Does the option achieve the policy intent? Well, character zones certainly keep areas the same. The facades at least. But they're rather narrow and there's a high cost to get there. 

Whereas the other options look a bit better. They're probably cheaper, permit relatively better economic impacts, hit others less, might well address the policy better and, crucially, scale to other and new areas. A character rate imposes costs, but it also provides incentives for better design if that is a way to avoid the rate. What is the incentive structure of character zoning?

So, character zoning is not coming out looking good. 

Least Bad Character Zoning
Now, this does point to places where character zoning makes the most sense. It might be worth putting character stuff there for places - probably touristy, commuter-y or retiree-y - which are small, not intended to grow but also have some other convenient spaces near a central hub. And if we had something more like a design guide to influence development rather than a rigid veto.

So, we've landed on the easiest way, and best place, of having justifiable character zones. Not in the middle of cities, but the middle of tourist and satellite towns. Not even the growing ones, but ones that have space to if grow if they can. They have to have 'being a nice small quaint place' as a core part of their character. This is the least harmful - indeed, maybe beneficial - place to put character zones. But this is extremely conditional, because the rules around character zoning are just like the things that brought us the housing crisis generally. 

In practical terms, if we zone half of Greytown as 'cute character vibes DO NOT CHANGE', we should probably upzone the other half (not a side where there's flooding). This means we can have a nice main area for people to visit and wander around in, which is the most exciting thing to do in Greytown. But this also leaves a bunch of space place with huge zoned capacity for people to live in. Paris, incidentally, has an inner core of the Hausmann rebuilt areas, but then high-rise apartments for commuters a bit further out.

Worst case character zoning is what we're doing now

The worst case for character zoning is basically what boomer journalists and freelance whingers advocate for. Take high amenity, low density suburbs and insist nothing is ever built there. Impose character zoning. Make it obnoxious. Insist that upzoning mandates have flexibility to permit character zoning, not the other way around. And insist that new housing is pushed outwards not upwards, no matter how central, high amenity, high demand and well supported by infrastructure, schools, and so on the suburb is.  

How to get character with "character zoning"
But we do have some options to bring 'character' vibes to cities if we want to. We can improve street design and section layout, encourage or at least facilitate houses . Most of the ways we do this are starkly inconsistent with how current character rules work, and also with what character protestors and judicial review applicants talk about.

So, the end result of trying to rig a policy process to favour character zoning in roughly its current form is that we should go hard in the urbanist paint.

So, what should we do

There isn't a good policy case for character zoning. But there are other things we can do to make more places - most places in cities even - be nicer and have good urban character. Cities are super fun and cool, and we should prioritize making living in a city way more fun and cool.

Location matters. The exact suburbs that should be full of apartments are full of villas, and that's a problem. They have central locations, high amenity, good transport links, nice hubs. The exact areas that we should be building in are the exact places we ban it. It's rich whingy fuckers hogging the good stuff. Character zoning is the reverse of what we should do with the luxury of good locations.

We should want nicer cities. That means doubling down on urbanist policies that lead to better design, as well as pro-housing policies to put more houses in the areas that are already nice. The latter is easier, the former is harder (for me anyway). 

We should insist on building things - up not just out; in nice places, not just doing a wee bit of greenfield development or in poorer urban places; near where we already have trains, pipes and schools and not just where we'd need new ones, as the old ones are underused. 

Where are we now?

We are partway through ending a set of terrible policies for cities, for economies, for people. A lot of the policies came from the mid 20th century desire to make cities nicer for people. But, over time, as this developed, as we've interrogated what was going on, it emerges that we let some really dumb stuff happen. 

We are accepting something fucking moronic because it is a status quo which benefits a handful of the most obnoxious, most obsessive, most time-rich and most selfish shitheads around. And its only going away because a handful of us obsessive policy, urban economics, transport and other assorted urban nerds are chucking pro-housing proposals to ministers; normies are sick of the cost, quality and location of housing; and politicians are appalled at the economic and direct fiscal costs of the housing crisis. 

A few people, even a few YIMBYs, make earnest suggestions that it is worth compromising with character nerds and other anti-housing groups in nice suburbs. The time for that has passed. There's not a good policy case for concessions. The crisis is too great, and we are going to have to campaign against them anyway.

If we want more and better housing, with better design on prettier streets, let's do that directly. And let's start with the nice suburbs in the centres of our cities, by stacking twelve storeys of apartments on top of a bar opposite a supermarket, four minutes from a train station. Let's build cities for people that like cities. 

People that like a quiet village vibe can fucking move to one.

 

PS: This hasn't touched on heritage at all, because unlike the common or garden character/heritage battler I am not conflating the two. My view on heritage is that the state should have a list, it should own everything on that list, and everything else is fair game. How many private owners are there that would tear a nice old place down, when tearing that down would be a matter of public concern?