Lot Occupancy

As I’ve said on many occasions, I think it would be smart for Washington DC to allow taller buildings. But this is hardly the only source of undesirably inefficient use of valuable urban space. Another issue—this time one that I almost never hear being discussed—is the very sharp limits we have on lot occupancy. You can download a .doc file of Rule 11-401 here where I saw a summary table for residential districts:

When you mandate that 40-60 percent of privately owned land go undeveloped, in the vast majority of the city, you’re severely curtailing the supply of housing. If I heard our political leaders saying lots of things like “I want to make housing in Washington as expensive as possible” I’d think to myself, “well, I disagree but at least we have a lot of measures in place to advance that goal.” But instead I hear people talking all the time about how we need more affordable housing. I’d also note that this has a big impact on the retail diversity available to neighborhoods. Washington neighborhoods with relatively short buildings tend to be less vibrant than superficially similar looking areas in many other cities I’ve been to largely because there are fewer buildings per square mile even though the buildings are on the small side.