Retarded St. John's Development

The development of the city of St. John’s is retarded. No, not mentally retarded, but as in the actual definition of “slowed”. There are several issues and it’s hard to know where to begin. Two of the main issues facing development are two Hs: Heritage and Height.

 

Heritage

Many, many buildings and homes in St. John’s are subject, arbitrarily of course, to heritage rules. These rules are designed to keep St. John’s looking like it’s from 100 years ago. It seems like every time someone wants to make a change to a house or building, a municipal committee has to approve it. But it goes from absurd to ridiculous when the heritage standards are applied to buildings which aren’t even built yet.

 

I was working for a company in Mt. Pearl that had ambitious plans to build a large structure downtown. They would first bulldoze a vacant, crumbling building which was styled like an 80s department store that was full of vermin. They would replace it with a state of the art edifice which would have been a great improvement. But first they had to be approved by a committee. First the committee demanded they build more than enough parking underground for its own employees. There had to be enough for probably double the number of people in the building in order to increase parking availability downtown. Secondly the building had to have a “heritage” look. What that meant no one really knew. The modern glass and steal design was unacceptable. It had to look like a small group of fishermen got together to build it. Maybe it had to be made of wood? Anyway, it had to be revised several times. Ultimately it was denied for pretty much arbitrary reasons.

 

Height

Height is another consideration that often comes up when building in St. John’s. Although there  is probably some rule somewhere about how tall a building can be, depending on area, it’s again applied arbitrarily. So back to the story I was just recounting. One of the problems with this building, as it was originally designed, was that it was too tall. I forget exactly the issue, but I think it was originally 7 storeys but the city said it had to be 5. So they changed the design to be 5 storeys, and it was of course still rejected. For anyone who doubts the process is arbitrary, I ask you one question: why is there so much debate every time a new building is proposed? Why are there community meetings? These would not be necessary if there was a clear law.

 

Higher is Better

So whenever a new building is proposed inevitably someone or some group will complain that it will block their view. They might spice up their argument by adding references to “democracy” or “livable communities” or some other vague unspecific argument. The thing about vague arguments is they are hard to argue against. But maybe not that hard. Most of the argument that happens between people is about how high buildings should be allowed to be. One group says they should be very low, others say they should be moderate, etc. I have a different approach that has more to do with property rights, but in the end I think it would work out much better.

 

Developers should be allowed to build as high as they want. This is a shocking proposal to most. But here’s why:

1)      Property rights. When someone buys land, from a moral perspective they own the land. Can we say someone really owns the land if another entity can dictate how the land can be used? This line of reasoning can sometimes be objected to on the basis that we cannot allow anyone to do literally anything with their land because it would create complete chaos in society with people building pig farms next to skyscrapers. I will talk later why this is absurd. But even with zoning, why should the height be restricted? Is there an upward limit on your property rights?

2)      From a practical point of view, allowing taller high rises would actually create MORE views of the harbour, not fewer. Skyscrapers would create hundreds of offices, rooms, and restaurants with a harbour view. If you don’t want someone blocking your view, your only guaranteed way of doing this is to buy a property right next on the waterfront.

 

I think it’s rather presumptuous for people to think they are “owed” a view to the harbour just because at the time they bought their house they could see it. If I build my house next to a vacant lot, do I have the right to complain when someone builds on it because before I had a nicer view before? Of course I don’t. You are only entitled to your own view, on your own property. I can understand people complaining about new buildings going up, especially if they have lucked into an awesome view, but what about the rights of property owners. Who has more rights to a parcel of land: the land owner, or the non-land owner who has a view? The answer is obvious.

 

St. John’s is holding itself back by disallowing taller buildings. We are listening to the complaints of people who want something for nothing. It’s easy to have an opinion on how a city “should” look when you are not paying the price for it. The major price we are paying is that of progress. Some people say the quaint, old fashioned look of St. John’s attracts a lot of people, but I’m very skeptical of this claim. People might like the old fashioned look if they happened to be here for some reason, but businesses will locate here if it makes business sense, not because of some vague concept of heritage. As for tourism, sure Newfoundland gets a few tourists, but what place doesn’t? If you were to rank St. John’s on the list of most visited Canadian cities, it would probably rank below the top ten.

 

Another ironic thing people will bring up is the so-called urban sprawl of the city. They complain that St. John’s is becoming too spread out and something needs to be done about it. I guess they don’t realize that strict zoning codes and urban sprawl go hand in hand. Although there are a couple of small condos near the harbourfront, I think a lot more people would live there if larger residential areas could be built. Plus, with these large buildings, the developer would probably be incentivized to build promenades along the harbour as well as that would increase the value of the property dramatically. Plus, we have to consider whether urban sprawl is as bad as people say it is. It’s usually a matter of people seeing a city as a Sim City game where it is up to them, through the democratic process, to decide how everyone should live, rather than seeing it as people making choices in their own best interest. If someone wants to live far away from the center of the city, why should we care about that? That’s their choice, not mine.

 

Note on Zoning:

Much of the fear of not having zoning laws comes from the idea that if we allow people to build whatever wherever, we will in fact create a sort of dystopian city where there is a slaughterhouse next to a swanky vegan restaurant or a factory smokestack in the downtown area. For many reasons this is an absurd fear. For one, factories would never locate on the super expensive land of a downtown capital city. They would never be able to compete with other factories that operate on the outskirts or completely outside the city. The same goes for slaughterhouses. The only properties that make sense in a downtown area are high-end retailers and high-density residential areas. Also, housing areas can form legal arrangements where new buildings must conform to certain standards. One way to do this is for a developer to buy a large area and any new housing development must abide by the rules. In any event, the fear of issues arising from lack of zoning laws is largely unfounded. Houston is a major city which does not have zoning laws. They are also one of the few places that has not experienced skyrocketing housing prices, even before the housing market crash. Prices have remained stable for several decades while in other places, prices shot up. The city is very large, but again, who is complaining? Probably not the people who are voluntarily choosing to live there!