Land Use & Development Capacity Correlation

 

It should be obvious that many different gross building areas can be created on the same buildable acre, and that they may be occupied by many different activities. (Assuming these activities comply with all related zoning and building code regulations.) It should also be obvious that different activity generates different taxable revenue per square foot of shelter, and that larger buildings containing the same activity on the same acre have greater shelter capacity and revenue potential. Unfortunately, we have been unable to correlate these self-evident principles across all taxable acres of a city. This has limited our ability to produce shelter capacity and activity relationships that yield average annual revenue per acre equal to, or exceeding, a city’s average annual expense per acre to deliver a desired quality of life over time.

A city cannot successfully plan its economic future and continuing quality of life until it can correlate the shelter capacity of land with the revenue implications per sq. ft. of its occupant activity. Until then, it cannot evaluate the activity and intensity options that will improve its average revenue production per acre. We have called our partial efforts economic development; but our project-oriented focus has been too limited, our knowledge too undeveloped, and our tools too inexact to produce consistent leadership correlation at the strategic level of effort implied by the term city planning.

We are not ready to plan cities without annexation as a crutch and sprawl as a result. Improvement will require the ability to correlate the economic potential of activity per square foot of shelter with the gross building area options available per buildable acre. Unfortunately, many of these gross building area options produce excessive physical intensity, intrusion, and dominance in the pursuit of profit. This result has prompted more than a century of flight to the suburbs, but our limited knowledge has produced rings of sprawling land consumption in a search for solutions on a planet that is no longer a world without end.

The physical intensity of shelter within cities has been a term without an adequate definition. It has been exacerbated by movement and life support systems that have magnified the condition and been inadequately offset by quantities of dedicated open space. The condition worsens when a city becomes surrounded and economically suffocated by its inability to adjust shelter capacity, activity, and revenue within its limited boundaries. Improvement requires a delicate balance among these topics, but we have not been able to address them with the knowledge and tools available.  Our only choices have been annexation and sprawl for new revenue that often proves inadequate over time; tax increases; or budget reductions that can prompt decline when the status quo cannot be maintained.

My efforts have focused on the algorithms and forecast models needed to consciously and consistently correlate the shelter capacity of land with the revenue potential of its occupant alternatives – and on the consistent measurement of the physical intensity, intrusion, and dominance produced by shelter alternatives that can compromise our quality of life when ignored.

The economic potential of gross building area is a function of the occupant activity present or planned. Therefore, if the shelter capacity options for a given land area can be accurately predicted in sq. ft. per buildable acre and the revenue potential of occupant activities is known in dollars per sq. ft. of building area, the economic contribution of the potential combinations can be predicted. In other words, taxable land area represents a primary financial resource for every city. Its potential depends on the shelter capacity and activity introduced on every buildable acre.

If a city knows its expense to operate, maintain, improve, and finance its services per acre, it can subtract all known sources of revenue that are unrelated to land use in order to find the remaining expense that must be served by its average revenue per acre. If I borrow the word “productive” from farming, urban revenue per acre that equals or exceeds a city’s remaining average municipal cost per acre is productive. All acres will not be productive with this definition, however. Every city’s challenge is to make the average yield per acre from all of its crops (zones, census blocks, census districts, lots, parcels and so on) equal to or greater than its remaining expense to provide a desirable quality of life. This means it must learn much more about its shelter capacity, activity, and intensity alternatives.

Revenue data per parcel, block, or tract is a simple matter of relational database creation, information assembly and correlation -- if political cooperation can be found. Geographic mapping systems based on this data can reveal existing conditions and strategic alternatives for ensuring economic independence based on land use and shelter capacity correlation. It is a concept a farmer describes with terms like crop allocation, yield, and productivity per acre. Urbanists will be threatened by a fear of geographic discrimination, but it is already a problem to be resolved.

A farmer knows that his/her revenue per acre depends on both yield and quality. We have referred to yield as “density” and quality as “health, safety, and welfare” in the history of city planning; but density and welfare have proven to be inadequate leadership terms and measurement yardsticks.

Density is a function of shelter capacity per acre. Capacity is produced by the correlation of design specification topics and values entered in one of six building design category templates. These templates classify most, if not all, shelter we construct on the planet. Welfare is influenced by the physical intensity, intrusion, and dominance of shelter capacity. It surrounds and contains activity that we pursue on a daily basis. It is initiated with a combination of design specification decisions that have been partially recognized and independently addressed. Unfortunately, they function together like the sections in an orchestra and produce similar dissonance when uncorrelated. A focus on isolated shelter design topics and items has frustrated our efforts to produce a symphony.

Building design categories can be classified at existing locations. Their design specification topics can be identified and their values can be measured. The shelter capacity, intensity, intrusion, and dominance of the project can be calculated from the measurements taken using the new equations in its related forecast model. These measurements represent the correlated starting point for every shelter capacity project. Few are aware, however, that excessive intensity and profligate land consumption can be produced by many uninformed design specification decisions. The discovery of these measurements will produce the knowledge needed to begin considering the implications of symbiotic urban pattern and form. It can provide the shelter we need to survive as a parasite on a planet that does not compromise with ignorance.

We have been preoccupied with land use relationships and the word “compatibility” since we began to recognize that some relationships were unhealthy, unsafe, and detrimental to a quality of life that we originally called “welfare” -- until it became associated with poverty. We have fled the intensity of cities in a search for answers but have produced sprawl that threatens our source of life. This will continue until we recognize that the quantities of activity protected by the square feet of shelter provided per acre must be correlated to produce average revenue per acre that equals a city’s annual expense per acre for a desired quality of life over time -- without excessive physical intensity that dominates the quality desired and within geographic limits that protect our source of life.

Quality of life is influenced by the capacity, intensity, intrusion, and dominance of shelter we construct to protect activity. These are terms that have consistent mathematical definitions as noted on line 43 of Table 1. They can be measured, evaluated, and correlated to lead and limit the results implied by their titles. Their intuitive definitions, partial recognition, and lack of correlation have led to the contradictions and sprawl we face today.

I have written extensively about this topic in my blog at www.wmhosack.blogspot.com; on my page at Linked-In; and in my books entitled: Land Development Calculations, editions 1 and 2, The Equations of Urban Design, and Symbiotic Architecture. They are available from Amazon.com and I will not attempt to repeat their content in this brief essay.

I would also like to mention one essay in Symbiotic Architecture in particular. It is entitled, “The Least a Smart City Should Know”. It is not the easiest to read, but contains a blueprint for the relational database content that can be used to build knowledge regarding the values needed by the equations and forecast models of urban design.

I’ll close by including Table 1 as an example of an urban design forecast model that applies to all buildings served by an adjacent parking lot on the same premise. It is called the G1 Building Design Category and is the most common category used to shelter non-residential activity in many parts of the world -- when parking is required.

The gray cells in Table 1 indicate design specification variable locations. The values entered are mathematically correlated to produce the results shown in the Planning Forecast Panel. A change to one or more of the design specification values entered will modify the results produced in the panel. The point is that these specification values are not independent and isolated. They represent combinations that must be correlated -- and illustrate the interactive relationship of building design decisions.

The ten floor quantities entered in gray cells A44-A53 complete a set of gray cell specification options. The Planning Forecast Panel predicts their design implications using the equations on line 43. The impact of these options is classified by shelter capacity, intensity, intrusion, and dominance with the equations on line 43 of the Implications Module. I am not providing an evaluation of these impact measurements since this is a hypothetical example; but measurement, evaluation, and accumulated knowledge is the leadership promise offered by this system of building classification, design specification, planning prediction, and implication measurement.

The public revenue implications of the development capacity forecast in Table 1 is easiest to explain by looking at the gross building area options predicted in cells B44-B53. If $10 of revenue were expected per sq. ft. of gross building area, the total annual revenue would range from $48,843 to $73,511 depending on the floor quantity chosen. Since the buildable land area noted in cell F10 is 100% of the gross land area given in cell F3, the total revenue projections would be divided by 5.230 acres to find the revenue potential per acre consumed from the city’s inventory. This would range from $9,339 to $14,055 per acre. A simple comparison with the city’s annual expense per acre would indicate the contribution or subsidy implications of the project.

The results that evolve from fundamental design specification decisions have been overlooked for centuries; and claims of overdevelopment and oppression are not easily overcome in the face of economic hardship claims -- until the examples become too extreme to ignore during the debate that ensues. The Implications Module in Table 1 illustrates one method of measuring the impact of shelter composition on our quality of life within the urban fabric we create. When these measurements are combined with the financial evaluation mentioned in the paragraph above, it will become easier for a city to evaluate the combined impact of urban design decisions. A city that understands these implications for every parcel within its jurisdiction is a city that is prepared to evaluate the land use and urban design decisions that will affect its future.

Two Simple Questions

Question 1: What does the taxable land in a city’s inventory yield in average revenue per acre? A city knows its taxable acres per lot or parcel and the answer is as simple as dividing its total annual revenue by the total number of these acres.

Question 2: What does it cost a city to operate, maintain, improve, and finance a desirable quality of life per taxable acre? It knows its total annual expense and the answer is as simple as dividing this expense by the taxable acres served. However, a city is required to balance its budget each year. This means that its revenue per acre must equal its expense per acre, but this does not mean that the city is providing a desirable physical, social, psychological, environmental, and economic quality of life. If it isn’t, the only solution is to improve the total revenue produced by the sum of the acres available, and this is a function of the taxable activity present on each parcel within its corporate limits.

A city’s historic, and current, solution is annexation to increase the taxable acres within expanded corporate limits. This provides new money to meet current obligations when land is available, but the new revenue per acre can prove inadequate to meet increasing expense as the annexed area ages. The problem is exacerbated when a city has no land to annex and decline increases as redevelopment meets extensive opposition. It is rooted in a lack of knowledge concerning the revenue per buildable acre that can be expected from the spectrum of land use activity options available. This makes it impossible to equate urban land with its estimated revenue productivity per acre, and to allocate these acres to achieve a desired balance that is economically sustainable over time.

The acres in a city’s inventory are a primary source of its revenue, but all do not produce the income needed to equal a city’s average expense per acre. If a city does not understand the economic implications of land use and development capacity allocation, it will continue pursuing random economic development projects without the comprehensive strategy needed to lead its physical decisions to foreseeable financial improvement in a revenue and expense equation that determines its quality of life.