Why is there a building height limit in Washington DC?

[RealityChuck]

Just north of the US, Montreal doesn’t allow any buildings to be taller than the Mount Royal (though there are a few that were granted variances).

[aceplace57]

DC has a lot of old filled in marshland. Not a good soil for supporting a skyscraper.

[Kent_Clark]

There’s no “official” limit to building height in St. Louis but it’s been pretty much accepted for the last 50 years that no building would be as high as the Gateway Arch. As far as I can tell, there’s only been one proposal during that half-century to build something taller, and it never got past the discussion stage.

[Sunspace]

I believe that for a long time no-one could build anything in Ottawa taller than the Peace Tower.

[DCnDC]

@aceplace57

DC has a lot of old filled in marshland. Not a good soil for supporting a skyscraper.

A common belief, but patently untrue.

[Silophant]

One of the things that makes the Minneapolis skyline distinctive is that the tallest three buildings are all almost the same height. This is apparently because the two other tall towers, the Wells Fargo (formerly Norwest) Center and the Capella Tower, were made slightly shorter out of respect for the IDSs status as the first modern skyscraper in the Upper Midwest. Cleveland’s Key Tower was originally designed to be the Norwest Center, but was replaced by a different design a couple feet shorter than the IDS fairly late in the process. Hopefully, eventually Target or USBank will go for it and break this weird tradition of Minnesota Nice.

[ElvisL1ves]

@RTFirefly

AI remember when 14th street between K and M was … prostitutes.

K Street kinda still is.

Yes, the slum areas near Downtown are being gentrified, but there’s still the question of what took so long. Did the walking-distance principle come into being only in the last generation or so? Or do we have to consider race once again?

It’s true that you can hold rents down in an area by making them dangerous and unpleasant to live in.

1. Is that how you want to keep rents down?
2. Do you want to keep the safe and pleasant parts of the city affordable?

It’s even truer that you can raise rents by *making *them safe and pleasant. So, again, what took so long?

[Amateur_Barbarian]

@ElvisL1ves

It’s even truer that you can raise rents by *making *them safe and pleasant. So, again, what took so long?

We rented a DC condo this spring for a very moderate price (under $1k for five nights). It was a very nice neighborhood and a place I’d live if I had a reason to, but I later looked it up and found it was a $2.5M residence.

I don’t live in the slums but jesus, y’know?

[Exapno_Mapcase]

Gentrification is a mysterious process. Some areas never recover, some areas prosper. The important thing to remember is that you can never tell which is which ahead of time. That means you are taking a chance by putting your money in a possibly drug- and crime-infested part of the city that no one will ever want to go to. We know this is true because tens of thousands of people do invest in areas that do not rise (or take too many decades to do so) and their businesses fail and their houses get robbed and many other bad things happen. Going early into a new neighborhood is a crap shoot in which you can lose everything. If cheapness is so important, then why hasn’t Detroit attracted a million new people from all over the country? You have to provide services for all those new people and Detroit is too broke to do so. Washington has terrible public services now.

In addition, you’re neglecting what a special case Washington is. People don’t go to work downtown. They go to work for the government, which is spread out all over the place. You can’t put high-rise apartment buildings next to the Mall so that people can walk to it. Mixing housing and work is more difficult in Washington than in any other major American city. And really, what percent of people who work in Manhattan walk or bicycle to work? Answer: around 5%. This is extremely high by American standards. Walking to work is a fantasy of the urban young. It doesn’t last a lifetime for the vast majority of people.

Still, any improvement in these numbers is a good thing. I have no problem with infill housing in Washington neighborhoods building higher and with more density than what they replaced. It’s happening all the time. But changing the height limit wouldn’t affect this much. For the simple reason that almost none of this new construction is being built to the height limit today.

What you’re calling for is that Washington tear down its historic and quite beautiful 13-story small downtown area (the evenness of the heights is like Paris, and in Paris is considered one of the major features of the city’s beauty) and build lots of incredibly expensive enormous skyscrapers to replace it. Why? To whose economic benefit would this be? The government won’t do it or put its offices there, so you’ve cut out the major employer. Will the thousands of existing businesses move from their perfectly good suburban locations? Why should they? And what happens to these suburbs if they do?

Skyscrapers are good if they serve a purpose. I can’t figure out what purpose you think they would serve in Washington.

[Ravenman]

@ElvisL1ves

So, again, what took so long?

My personal opinion is that 40% of the delay is attributable to the wait for reforms finally made by the Control Board in the late 1990s, and 60% of it was due to people having a smug and superior attitude toward DC without much knowledge of the city.

[YogSothoth]

@Ravenman

You live in LA, right? DC’s equivalent of Sepulveda Blvd is probably Connecticut Ave, which is predominantly four lanes wide (during rush hour, parking is prohibited so it is sometimes five lanes, IIRC), the speed limit is mostly 25 mph, there is extensive bike and pedestrian traffic for most if its length, and there are multiple traffic circles between downtown and the suburbs. For a main artery, it just can’t handle the traffic like big streets in LA.

The Metro (subway) here is still pretty good despite complaints, but daily ridership is probably around 800,000 (that’s a guess) which is stressing the system, while New York handles several million per day.

Think of it this way: imagine your City of Mordor. Radiating out from the tower are sixteen paths leading through the parking lots for 300,000 people a day to approach the building. Now just eliminate 11 of those paths, with the same number of people who need to get to the building. That’s DC: water along one side, middle to upper class housing on the other sides. There’s really not a feasible way to get more people in.

First of all, I’d like to say how much I enjoy you continuing to use my Mordor example XD

But it really has help me understand how DC is set up, so thanks.

@Ravenman

Moving people around inside the city is somewhat better, but the small(ish) streets aren’t built for tons of traffic.

As I understand it, this has been a continuing problem with a lot of east coast cities and cities in Europe which were mostly built before cars existed. Is that correct?

@Ravenman

I think most DC types aren’t being anti-progress, but they are for preserving a very real charm in the city. Take, for example, a lovely beach in Hawaii. Would you restrict growth to preserve its beauty? Or build huge towers to allow more people to visit there? Hint: there’s a reason why people like Kauai much better than Waikiki.

Personally my idea of charm differs radically from most people, but I get what you’re saying. It just feels weird to me to have a major city without skyscrapers, like its missing something

[Ravenman]

@YogSosoth

As I understand it, this has been a continuing problem with a lot of east coast cities and cities in Europe which were mostly built before cars existed. Is that correct?

I think a good number of European cities took full advantage of being bombed to hell in WW2 and instituted integrated transit systems. It still blows my mind when I travel to a European airport and find an honest-to-god train station in the same building as an airport terminal. Genius!! But anyway, yeah, a lot of European cities have old street designs (sometimes just in historical parts of the cities) but also more transit options, too.

[Hakuna_Matata]

With all that being said, I gotta give a shout out to the Cairo. My old stomping grounds when I lived there. Great old building, near the heart of downtown and with a nice roof deck. Being the tallest building there we had a great view of everything.

I liked the Cairo when I lived there but I am glad that DC has the height limit. I didn’t live high up the building, as I recall it was the 4th or 5th floor in a small unit but it was an awesome time in my life. Right out of grad school living the urban life for the first time! Now as I am quite a bit older and more cynical I wonder if I would enjoy it as much!

[BwanaBob]

@YogSosoth

Yup, that was me and you’re correct. But I think DC differs in that they don’t really have any really tall buildings at all. Now obviously I would want each building to have ample parking, but it seems like they are simply wasting space by not building up. It just seems…weird to have a height limit.

I don’t know much about DC’s metro area. Is it substantially worse than LA or NY or Chicago?

That is a solid reason I suppose. I don’t mean to offend people by calling it “petty” but I just get a vision of Abe Simpson shaking his fist at the sky and being cranky about it. The DC building height law, from checking Wiki, was passed like a hundred years ago. You’d think its time to modernize a bit

Honestly, if you don’t live there, why do you care? Not everyone wants the world to become Trantor (read your Asimov if you don’t get the reference).

[runningdude]

@YogSosoth

Well, petty because people have some problems against taller buildings, as if they can’t imagine a gleaming skyscraper to be nice looking too and that it’ll somehow affect the monuments they’re used to seeing. I like skyscrapers and I like interesting architecture, I would love to have one of those weirdo-looking buildings in LA like the Taipei 101, or Burj Dubai, or Chrysler Building.

Inefficient because they’re not maximizing their use of space and businesses have to spread out more. I imagine its easier for businesses to concentrate their offices instead of spreading it out

Transportation planning student here!

6 story buildings are ideal for a “walkable city”. It is easy to have streets and sidewalks large enough to accommodate the number of people living and working in such buildings. Busses, trolleys, supplemented by a few parking lots and garages can can cheaply provide transportation throughout the city.

Once you add skyscrapers to the mix, then infrastructure becomes expensive. Either you spend billions building a subway, or each building then needs a huge parking, expensive garage. This makes cities loud and crowded with foot and auto traffic.

Spreading the city out at a medium density cheaply avoids many expensive problems and can make the city more pleasant for everyone.

[YogSothoth]

@BwanaBob

Honestly, if you don’t live there, why do you care? Not everyone wants the world to become Trantor (read your Asimov if you don’t get the reference).

I don’t care that much, I just think its odd and inefficient. And someday I might be there, so I want them to lay things out like I prefer it beforehand, just in case. The Emperor of the World waits on no building

@runningdude

Transportation planning student here!

6 story buildings are ideal for a “walkable city”. It is easy to have streets and sidewalks large enough to accommodate the number of people living and working in such buildings. Busses, trolleys, supplemented by a few parking lots and garages can can cheaply provide transportation throughout the city.

Once you add skyscrapers to the mix, then infrastructure becomes expensive. Either you spend billions building a subway, or each building then needs a huge parking, expensive garage. This makes cities loud and crowded with foot and auto traffic.

Spreading the city out at a medium density cheaply avoids many expensive problems and can make the city more pleasant for everyone.

What if we don’t have a parking garage and just a parking lot? Isengard was the ideal model for a skyscraper: one tall building with a concentric circle of parking radiating out from it. No need to build parking up or down, just mow some grass and pour some concrete.

[Exapno_Mapcase]

@YogSosoth

What if we don’t have a parking garage and just a parking lot? Isengard was the ideal model for a skyscraper: one tall building with a concentric circle of parking radiating out from it. No need to build parking up or down, just mow some grass and pour some concrete.

Land inside cities is very, very expensive. That’s why nobody does that in cities and everybody does that in the suburbs where land is comparatively dirt cheap.

Fantasy cities are as real as Disney castles.

[CookingWithGas]

Timely article on this in the Post’s Sunday Magazine this weekend. I think this is free but let me know if you can’t reach it.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/dcs-height-limits-the-risk-of-ending-them/2013/09/13/ba188bce-006b-11e3-96a8-d3b921c0924a_story.html

@Washington Post

						Almost from the city’s birth, height has been a  central concern. In 1791, George Washington established not only an  upper limit but also a lower minimum: “The wall of no house to be higher  than forty feet to the roof, in any part of the city; nor shall any be  lower than thirty-five feet on any of the avenues.”
				 							The goal was a streetscape as grand as the avenues were wide, but  that proved too much to hope for in a city that felt more like a  provisional encampment than a national capital.

						After iterations in 1894 and 1899, Congress passed the 1910  Height of Buildings Act, which said the height would be proportionate to  the width of the street, plus, in some cases, an extra 20 feet. Thus  buildings can rise no more than 90 feet on residential streets, 130 feet  on commercial streets, and 160 on a small section of Pennsylvania  Avenue. Government buildings and ornamental features (towers, spires and  other architectural gewgaws) were excepted.
				 							The District’s law was based on what other cities were doing and  was motivated as much by safety concerns as by aesthetics (fire was the  paramount worry). In 1900, London drew the line at 80; Chicago at 130;  and St. Louis at 150. New York and Philadelphia had no limits.

Read the whole article for a discussion of potential impact of changes to the limits.

[JpnDude]

Nothing directly related to the OP topic, but just wanted to add that JpnGal and I just got back from a one-week trip to Washington, D.C. It was amazing! Japan’s capital city has nothing compared to the awesome buildings around the National Mall.

[installLSC]

Couple of questions:
–Were height restrictions ever considered for America’s “skyscraper cities” like Chicago or NYC?
–Although there are not many corporations based in the District of Columbia, there are many based in the metro area. Do corporations consider density or building height at all when choosing their headquarters site?