How Neighbourhoods Scale (Part II) – Achieving Catalytic Scale
In the previous post, we explored scalability as it relates to place and some of the potential inhibitors to scale. Now that we have a better sense of the limitations, let’s look at what can be done to improve their prospects.
Incentives Matter
Unlocking powerful incentives that motivate behaviours and encourage scale.
One of economist John List's central theories is that incentives matter in decision-making. Incentives are powerful as they clarify policy direction as well as provide much needed support for development and businesses to adopt smart growth practices.
In planning and development, we usually think about incentives as being top-down or policy-driven - something that a municipality or authority introduces to promote certain kinds of development.
For instance, typical incentive programs might include: fast-tracking of approvals for projects that meet a priority need and cut red tape in the process; reducing levies that cover the costs of additional infrastructure and services required by the new development; density bonuses, which many municipalities offer to developers as additional density allowances in exchange for meeting certain criteria such as public amenities, pedestrian-friendly design, open space, and so on.
Portland, OR implemented a range of incentives to help it become a walkable and bike-friendly city. Incentives included a density bonus program, a streetcar system and a pedestrian-friendly street design program.
photo credit: 7th Street Vine station with riders carrying their bikes out of bus (2017) by Steve Morgan is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0
Top-down incentives such as these can be great and can unlock huge potential for cities to direct growth towards key initiatives. The challenge is that sometimes incentives don’t always work or have the intended uptake. Incentives targeting benefits that are intended to spur development, may be misaligned with the proponent’s priorities and don’t always serve the universal interests of the community. In this case, the incentives may remain untapped or may create inequities (for instance, a density bonus designed only to incentivize new buildings, may unintentionally punish owners of existing buildings who are competing for the same tenants).
One strategy that is not often talked about as an incentive is zoning and the land use bylaw. Municipalities have a pivotal role to play in setting the direction for future development. We often think about zoning as being restrictive (here’s a list of things you can’t do). But the opposite can also be true. By increasing maximum building heights, promoting mixed-use development, reducing minimum lot sizes for instance, zoning can be effective incentive mechanism when tied to community benefits.
Melbourne, Australia implemented incentives, such as the Postcode 3000 initiative to increase residential density and office-to-residential conversions in the downtown.
Behavioural Nudges
By understanding how individuals perceive and respond to information, we can design interventions that encourage desired behaviors and increase the rate of adoption.
The theory of incentives can work the other way around as well. Incentivizing authorities and the local community to support future development by framing the immediate and long-term benefits can translate into scale and help expedite the process. This type of approach centres around how we incentivize certain human behaviour.
As humans, we are prone to loss-aversion – favoring preservation of what exists over the desire to embrace new things. As a general rule, people would rather stick with what they know, than bet on something new where they might risk a loss. Changes become much harder later and can meet with a higher level of resistance.
People tend to value avoiding loss more than acquiring gains, so the benefits of change must be clearly articulated. This requires a high level of engagement early in the planning and development process. What is driving the bus on these conversations is usually emotion rather than logic. Former FBI hostage negotiator, Chris Voss, CEO of the Black Swan Group, speaks to the importance of behavioural psychology as key to negotiating. If you can get behind the surface to the underlying reasons that a counterpart may be holding out, this is often the key to unlocking the negotiation.
Similar to Voss’s comments on negotiating, John List's research also draws heavily on behavioral studies, which examines how cognitive biases and heuristics affect decision-making. By understanding how individuals perceive and respond to information, we can design interventions that encourage desired behaviors at scale.
One Water Street hosts a curated, pedestrian-level environment with shops, living units and enclaves that catalyzed future development potential along Kelowna’s treasured waterfront. The process energized city stakeholders and the community towards expanding urban development potential, spurring a recent development boom.
photo credit: Kasian
In Kelowna, BC the developer North American Development Group were looking to enter the multifamily residential market. Known for its stunning lake setting, mountain-scape and mild climate, the city was unfamiliar to the types of density seen in more established markets like Vancouver. With Kasian leading the design, the team envisioned a full block redevelopment with two tall, narrow towers reaching up to 36 stories, allowing natural light and views to permeate the interior spaces, while also maximizing views of the lake.
The height and density proposed was well above what the site had been zoned for and at a much larger scale than anything the city had seen previously. The team collaborated with Kelowna’s city planners to create a shift in perspective. This started with engaging and empathizing to reduce friction. Rather than fixating on the numbers, we examined what was behind each potential issue - does the additional height cause overshadowing concerns? Will it encourage other applications of a similar scale? Does the additional density create concerns about additional noise, traffic, urban character etc?
As each stakeholder learned more about the other’s point of view, we realized that our goals were aligned - achieving livability and vibrancy within the downtown community, creating a place for people to live, work and play, enhancing prospects for local enterprises to flourish, introducing amenities, creating texture and life in the community, and so on. This refocused the conversation away from un-moveable issues to areas of mutual understanding and consensus.
Through the engagement process and design ideation, the team created a quarter-mile of activated streetscape to enhance vibrancy of the ground-level. As a result, the city planners and council supported and championed the new vision for the mixed-use site allowing the approvals process to be steamrolled in half of the usual time. North American Development Group’s expectations were exceeded by the speed at which they were able to achieve rezoning and development approvals, and units sold much quicker and for much higher prices than first imagined.
“The attention that was paid to satisfy Kelowna’s request for an interesting, interactive streetscape and world-class architecture was instrumental in securing the zoning with variances in less than four months.”
Russ Watson
North American Development Group
Urban Experiments
Using pilots to test different interventions or policies before they are implemented on a larger scale.
John List is known for his use of experimental methods in economics, which involve conducting randomized controlled trials to test hypotheses. This approach allows researchers to isolate the impact of specific variables and make more precise predictions about behavior.
In the context of scaling a place, experimental methods could be used to test different interventions or policies before they are implemented on a larger scale. In a previous article, I expand on the opportunities for Piloting Place, to create site activation and urban experimentation as part of the revitalization of cities. This also goes for testing urban policy initiatives before they are unleashed and potentially run wild at a larger scale.
“Experimentation should be used in environments that are messy.”
John List
Policies that are adopted but not piloted beforehand at a smaller scale, risk unleashing irreversible changes to the built environment. Piloting places also allows for more variation and risk-taking as the stakes aren’t so high, which leads to more innovative policy.
The Covid-19 pandemic saw many piloted projects as cities and businesses pivoted to encourage safe interaction within the urban environment and took over spaces previously occupied by vehicles. New York City experimented with numerous initiatives and is now looking to implement longer-term visions for each of the city’s five boroughs to make them more people friendly, along with the appointment of a dedicated Public Realm Officer.
A rendering of the plan for the famed shopping corridor on Fifth Avenue.
photo credit: Fifth Avenue Association
“We have long known that our parks are essential infrastructure, but COVID entirely changed the way we think about and interact with public space.”
Sue Donoghue
NYC Parks Commissioner
Transformational Experiences
Actively promoting diverse experiences to activate cities that can contribute to a high voltage culture is critical for attracting new residents and businesses.
Without active policies or incentives however, this is often overlooked. High voltage culture is a prerequisite for scaling place. Places, much like corporations, benefit materially from their inclusive cultures and collaboration of diverse people and businesses.
The City of Cranbrook, BC is a small city situated in the mountains. It has a good, competitive base of industry and employment, an airport, regional college and it benefits from being a local tourism base for people heading off to enjoy local skiing, golf and world-renowned biking trails.
It has a tough time encouraging people to linger in its downtown and is undergoing a Downtown Revitalization to update their Downtown Plan and attract more people and life to improve the downtown experience for current residents.
While evaluating the potential for redevelopment opportunities, the team responsible for re-energizing the downtown, including Kasian, Quantumplace Developments and WSP were mindful that infrastructure improvements, upzoning and mobility enhancements alone would not be enough to catalyze and scale-up uses within the downtown.
The team approached the task by engaging with local residents, city-representatives, businesses, non-profits, indigenous groups and community users. Workshops were tailored to the urban experience and rooted in authentic placemaking, allowing for expansive conversations around potential community enrichment and economic benefits.
Urban guidelines focused on maintaining authenticity and allowing for growth, while capitalizing on what is unique about downtown. They were created as a toolkit to enable local property and business owners to help animate their assets and immediate environments in the spirit of achieving a vibrant downtown.
The City of Cranbrook’s downtown revitalization incorporates a cultural connector which unifies unique experiences in the downtown with elements of its history and natural surroundings.
photo credit: The City of Cranbrook
Embracing Cranbrook's natural surroundings and historic roots, a cultural connector through the downtown was proposed as a way of tying together diverse, urban experiences in the city’s heart, telling the story of Cranbrook's cultural history, evolution and identity through interpretive elements such as artworks, wayfinding and heritage elements.
The Connector Trail is an enlivened extension to local trails, pathways, bike routes and gateways into the downtown to promote access and legibility within the city's core area, connecting the experience of Cranbrook’s natural beauty with its core offerings.
The city now has a roadmap for future growth, sensitive redevelopment of its downtown, coupled with infrastructure improvements. It also has a way to preserve and capitalize on its greatest asset – a unique identity and natural-meets-urban experience, born from its location, history, people and culture. The scaling strategy looked to maximize economic benefits through the attraction of younger and older residents, students, businesses, as well as increasing dwell time in the downtown.
The Rise of Small - sensitively, scaling-up urban redevelopment in local urban centres like Cranbrook, BC
photo credit: The City of Cranbrook
In Conclusion
Over this two-part series we have explored many facets of what causes cities and urban places to scale (or not) and some strategies for catalyzing and sustaining growth. There are, of course many more factors than we can include here, but it is safe to say that while the scaling of places can bring many benefits, issues or weaknesses of a place will be amplified at scale. The scalability of cities and places is crucial for addressing the world’s most urgent problems, including climate risk, housing shortages and poverty. We need to ensure that we are scaling responsibly and in a way that benefits society and with a long-term view.
“A rising tide raises all boats.”
John F Kennedy
Will Craig is a Principal and the global chair of the Lifescape team for architecture and design firm Kasian and founder of Placeonomics.
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