As I was biking across what I suppose is now called "Penn Quarter" today, I was reflecting on the arguments for skyscrapers in DC. And while I suppose there is some validity to a handful of them, many of them seem off the mark to me.
First of all, Yglesias' argument that there is nowhere left to build downtown is a little bizarre. As far as empty land goes, of course that's true. The innermost core of the CBD in any city will unlikely have any undeveloped land. It's not like there's any room "left to build" in Manhattan, or even most of the Bronx! You'd have to tear something down and build something bigger. But we have a height limit, Yglesias would say. And yet, as I look around many blocks downtown, many of the buildings are six or seven stories tall, while the height limits would allow for buildings twice that size.
And that fact should serve as a reminder that maybe the height limit isn't the only reason we don't have skyscrapers. Sure, Providence has the Hospital Trust Building and the Bank of America building--but that's it!
Also, the claim that the height act has induced people to build ugly boxes build right to the sidewalk and as high as possible, with no friendly aesthetic presence seems to be untrue. Sure, that's what buildings look like around Farragut square, but most of that construction occurred during a time when people built ugly things. Compare that area to Seventh st. in Penn Quarter, where new buildings incorporate the historic fronts of their predecessors, and rise fourteen stories in the rear--a style I find to be very tasetfull. It would seem as if there is quite a lot of room for expansion in that area, and there's evidence that it can be done in a tasteful way.
Second, the idea that the height limits are the biggest problem downtown because urban development should occur in immediate proximity to the current center of development to maximize returns to scale, or density, or something-or-other, doesn't seem very well, founded either. I can easily understand why keeping jobs in a dense area close to other business is preferable to letting it expand into sprawling suburbs, but why is it preferable to have everything crammed into the twenty blocks that are the existing core, rather than developing the next twenty blocks over? That's not even how things work in Manhattan! Midtown is several miles from Downtown, separated by several neighborhoods with relatively short buildings. So why not push out into SW, SE, and east-of-river? As long as new development is sufficiently close to existing development, there doesn't seem to be any real problem with the creation of a second (Midtown Manhattan-style) core.
In fact, expanding density into new neighborhoods instead of building taller in the existing core seems to encourage transit use, despite what Yglesias has said. Transit has been most useful in cities where density is pervasive, like New York, London, Paris, or even Boston. In areas with dense, sky-scraper laden cores but no density outside that core--like Houston, Charlotte, or Kansas City, or really most "new" American cities--transit has taken a backseat. So it's not clear why DC would be different. As much as DC-skyscraper advocates like to write off the Roslyn-Ballston corridor, the new density in those not-too-far-out regions has is widely cited as one of the nation's great transit-oriented-development success stories of the pas several decades. There's no reason that model could work in parts of DC.
Which brings me to the third main point. Yglesias loves to talk about the height limits as a revenue issue. But let's be clear--that is not a net gain! Whatever revenue the city government would gain would probably be revenue lost by a neighboring government. Yglesias is not advocating a regional perspective, but a strictly municipal one--a perspective that places the District in an adversarial relationship to it's neighbors.
Of course, backhanded policy measures to raise revenue are always suspect. What would the city do with those revenues? How much would go back towards serving the businesses that have moved into DC? Would that really solve our budget problems? And isn't this a local version of "grow our way out of the deficit"? Why is Yglesias so skeptical of the Bush tax cut's intentions, but so lenient when it comes to local policy? And, the maxim still applies that any revenue-raiser raises less than you think, but causes all the distortions you'd expect. I wonder if he takes into account the slopes of supply and demand--that increasing supply will lower average prices and property values, which will lower taxes owed per unit. So there's a tax gain from new supply, but not as high as it would be if prices and property values stayed at the same level.
Now, this isn't to say that there aren't good reasons for taller buildings downtown. It's definitely true that one block in central Charlotte, NC has as much office space as ten blocks in DC (but Charlotte's downtown is puny as result). And I know that economists think that prohibitions always lead to deadweight losses (though, given the massive positive and negative externalities, city planning and the resulting restrictions are a necessity). But what causes me, a native of DC, a lot of alarm (and I suspect what irks so many people about Yglesias), is when people from Manhattan come to DC and make a lot of patchy arguments to create a sense of urgency about the need to make DC look like Manhattan. One can't help but think the driving motivation is personal taste, and not sound policy logic.
