Earlier today I read an article by Daniel Garst about Bejing’s awkward population distribution that reminded me of a journal article about the general shape of socialist cities that I read a while back. Garst talks about Beijing being a “circus tent” when it comes to density, with population density increasing as you travel away from the city center, in contrast to the “pyramid” style of most cities, with high densities in the center and lower densities around the periphery (see chart for a visual representation).
This immediately made me think of an article by Alain Bertraud and Bertrand Renaud called “Socialist Cities without Land Markets,” where they describe exactly this phenomenon, and explain it as a failure of administrative urban planning. Here’s an excerpt:
As their economy and their population grow, cities expand through the progressive addition of concentric rings, similar to the growth of trees in successive seasons. New rings are added to the periphery as the city grows. With each ring, land use reflects the combined effects of demography, technology, and the economy at the time when the ring was developed. Wile this organic incremental growth is common to all cities, in a market city changing land prices exert their pressure simultaneously in all areas of the city, not just at the periphery. Land prices exert a powerful influence to recycle already developed land in the inner rings when the type and intensity of the existing use is too different from the land’s optimum economic use. Thus, changing land values bring a built-in urban dynamism as ceaseless variations in land prices put a constant pressure on the current uses of land and trigger changes to new activities and/or densities.Gross population density by distance from city center in Moscow and Paris
Under the administrative-command economy, the absence of land prices eliminated the main incentive to redevelop built-up areas by removing site value considerations from the investment decisions since the nationalization of land in 1917 [in the Soviet Union]. Without price signals to reveal the opportunity cost of land in alternative uses, it was administratively simpler to respond to current land demand pressure by developing at the periphery than to redevelop well-located areas with obsolete land uses. While the city expanded outward, land use in already developed areas remained unchanged and there was very little land recycling. This process explains the persistence and uniformity of housing types in successive rings around Moscow, with each type being usually named according to the period when it was built. Thus, driving from the center of Moscow, one passes through rings of Stalin, Khrushchev, and then Brezhnev flats.
This socialist land allocation process leads to land that differs from market economies. This land use has three features that imply urban inefficiency on a very large scale, which we will describe in turn. First, the population density gradient has a perverse slope that rises as one moves away from the city center. Second, very large industrial areas occupied by land-intensive, obsolescent industries in prime areas of the city. Third, households are concentrated in the periphery. Residential densities are increasing toward the periphery while “historically” low densities are found in central areas. This pattern tends to increase community requirements, transport costs, and pollution because it requires higher energy expenditures. At the same time the effects of this type of urban planning are not compensated by the provision of better amenities such as large housing unit sizes of a better environment that is the normal trade-off for increasing commuting distance in a market economy.
In Beijing, these ” ‘historically’ low densities” are the one-story hutong/siheyuan neighborhoods. Because they were not gradually redeveloped during China’s heavily communist period, their densities are woefully inadequate for China’s growth, and thus the city is presented with the dilemma that Garst describes – how to rationalize development without destroying the city’s historical character? His solution seems to be creating self-contained “edge cities,” but that makes you wonder why bother developing Beijing at all if you’re going to create neighborhoods that are inaccessible to the traditional core anyway. The only way edge cities have worked is with intense automobile connectivity, which Garst doesn’t want, either.
Unfortunately for Garst, who calls redevelopment of the hutong neighborhoods “not really a practical solution,” it’s likely to be the only way to make Beijing workable. Of course the market city trajectory is preferably – gradual redevelopment, so that the architectural loss is not so immediate and some vestiges of the past can be preserved in graceful ways. But just because Beijing did not have this luxury doesn’t mean it should remain a hostage to its original form, forever doomed by long commutes and low mobility.
I should note that I’d also be very interested to see the population gradient for a few US metro areas. Although I’m sure it’s not as warped as Moscow’s, I’d bet that it’s not quite as steep as other market cities. Obviously America is not a socialist country and its land use policy is significantly more market-oriented than the USSR’s, but I suspect that NIMBY and anti-density forces hamper this organic redevelopment to the degree that it would be visible in a density gradient. Anybody know where I could find a few?
Alon Levy says
October 19, 2010 at 5:31 amJane Jacobs viewed the ideal city as somewhere between the Paris and Moscow models. She didn’t think of either Paris or Moscow as a model, but she explained that in a thriving city, even a mixed-use one, the population density would peak just outside the central commercial districts rather than in them. She presents Downtown Brooklyn’s Paris-style density gradient as a negative, saying that it indicates there isn’t much dense development outside the local CBD; she contrasts it with Downtown Manhattan, where the population density does not peak in any CBD.
You can try to come up with your own density gradient figures by looking at the Census Factfinder’s data on density per census tract. Overall the Rust Belt tends to have spikier development than the Sunbelt, but it could be that the Sunbelt’s distribution is more Parisian and just has a fatter tail.
Jim says
October 19, 2010 at 7:47 amStephen, it doesn’t use the same metric but you might be interested in this post comparing the density profiles of US cities: http://wealoneonearth.blogspot.com/2010/10/portrait-of-city-as-squiggly-line.html
I’m a little surprised at how ‘pyramidal’ the density profile of Paris looks in Bertaud’s chart, given the long-standing restrictions on development in its centre and accompanying concerns over ‘museumification’.
John McDonnell says
October 19, 2010 at 10:05 pmThis actually makes me think of the way New York City has built public housing projects. They build super-high density projects in the least desirable places, like the east river or the rockaways. This is because they perversely chose land on the basis of cheapness, rather than optimality of an area for living. In Russia, they chose their development based on where there wasn’t already much development. That’s actually the same as in Moscow, really: if you only care about the price of the land rather than the rent you could make, then the outskirts is always cheaper.
John McDonnell says
October 19, 2010 at 10:05 pmThis actually makes me think of the way New York City has built public housing projects. They build super-high density projects in the least desirable places, like the east river or the rockaways. This is because they perversely chose land on the basis of cheapness, rather than optimality of an area for living. In Russia, they chose their development based on where there wasn’t already much development. That’s actually the same as in Moscow, really: if you only care about the price of the land rather than the rent you could make, then the outskirts is always cheaper.
Anonymous says
October 24, 2010 at 7:25 pm” … but I suspect that NIMBY and anti-density forces [in U.S. cities] hamper this organic redevelopment to the degree that it would be visible in a density gradient.”
Absolutely.
But, I would be curious as to where Market Urbanism comes down on historic preservation, as it’s often in the details that things get complicated and where broad-brush ideals meet our values.
I would see preservation of historic buildings that might not be “efficient” in a similar light as preservation of open spaces near cities – space that would on the market be “efficiently” developed, but which society chooses to preserve because of their values (recreation, views, habitat). A livable city needs AMENITY which is a public good and thereby by market theory ought to be publicly provided. After all, our best cities that attract investment and educated people have open spaces nearby where we can bike, hike, and enjoy nature; I think all but the surliest Manhattanite would agree. The same may go for historic architecture. In the same way as we would not develop Boston’s Emerald Necklace, we may not wish to destroy Back Bay.
As we go to pricing the value of public goods, too, we get into the thorny issue of time value of money. What is the value to the Chinese, three generations or more hence, of being able to see what these hutongs looked like?
If the premise of public goods provision is accepted, then it becomes a question of how to preserve – methods such as the sale of air rights / transfer of density between historic buildings and nearby infill sites allow for the recouping of private value in the land; prioritization of what gets saved may be based on historic surveys and identified methodology, not simply the sentiment of an appointed commission; etc.
Sadly, there was a time when the public sector sought to destroy historic value – by using urban renewal to destroy central neighborhoods, and then ploughing highways thru remaining neighborhoods and along waterfront.
John Bailo says
October 30, 2010 at 2:58 pmNone of this takes into account technological changes. Cities are obsolete when viewed in the context of the Web and Internet. I can take my netbook to a public park in Kent, WA and connect to business clouds in Philadelphia.
johnhaskell says
May 16, 2016 at 4:18 am“Good Lord, Moscow has a power plant right across the river from the Kremlin. We would never do that!” – New Yorker from a city where there was a power plant right next to the UN until a few years ago