> It’s also because their rise has been so sudden, an outcome of changing codes, improved economic fortunes, and pent-up demand in the wake of the Great Recession more than a decade ago. And it is true they sometimes tend toward being architecturally bland or downright ugly.
They have so many other advantages that they don't need to be attractive, and developers hate to pay for anything they don't need.
Also, this moment where they're breaking out and popping up like weeds to fill pent-up demand is an awkward moment, design-wise, because you need a lot of new designs quickly without a long history to look back on and draw from. Compare that to high-rise office buildings or single family homes, where you have a century and more of variations in countless different styles, where you have not only countless iconic examples but decades' worth of reaction to many of them. Some of the 5-over-1 buildings going up now will turn out to be iconic, style-defining precedents. Most will be trash, but will still serve the functional purpose.
Personally, I love seeing these go up near me. It means more housing supply and more businesses near me that cater to foot traffic, in the same package.
There's nothing stopping localities from forcing developers to make these buildings nice looking. I've been to villages where the mcdonalds is in a tutor style building because that's what code requires. Most of these buildings are the same 5-over-1 design with retail on the bottom, but with a fancy looking facade that makes it look nicer.
But developers aren't going to pay for design unless they are forced to.
That being said, a lot of styles we appreciate now were the cheap designs of their day. Those mid-century storefronts in towns that grew up the 50-60s were all cheap to produce.
> There's nothing stopping localities from forcing developers to make these buildings nice looking. I've been to villages where the mcdonalds is in a tutor style building because that's what code requires.
That's homogeneity, not attractiveness. I think there are a very small number of places where this works, as a cool marker of identity and difference, like (maybe) Santa Fe. Even there I'm not sure if residents like it, or if it's just the tourists who think it's historic and cute. But for most places it just makes things bland and depressing. At first glance it's kinda cool when a university enforces a style guide that visually distinguishes its campus from its environs, but it quickly turns sad when you realize the art museum looks exactly like the biology building, which looks exactly like the business school, which looks exactly like the campus health services.
the reality is that most of these 5-over-1 buildings are the result of bylaws meant to do exactly that, by forbidding anything deemed "ugly". When you throw up barriers to building so that developers have to make the least offensive, blandest buildings possible to satisfy every quirk of the building code, the design review board, the community engagement process, etc, you get bland buildings.
good design doesn't come through legislation. it comes through allowing people the freedom to take risks and do interesting things in their designs, and to have the confidence that the work they put into designing something won't be thrown out at a community meeting because it doesn't fit the neighbourhood character.
I actually live in an area where a major apartment building collapsed with fatalities that included a coworker, so we should qualify risk.
If a building is unsafe and beyond cost-effective rehabilitation, it should come down. Undoubtedly, this new generation of buildings will grow old and follow this path, as has everything before.
Risk in style and ornamentation is a different matter, and of secondary concern.
I would far prefer to reside in a stylistically hideous but structurally sound building than anything that places my safety at risk, no matter how elegant.
Structural safety standards is pretty much independent of style and design and rarely if ever is the reason why buildings get delayed by process. The standards are well known, widespread, often rational, evaluated by experts and almost never aesthetic beyond "you need railings for stairs" and such. Even countries where building is effectively unrestricted, like Japan, has no problem in enforcing safety standards.
The general safety issues of buildings tend to increase as they age, as new safety standards come into place, so making it hard to replace old buildings actually tends to decrease safety!
Also they tend to be hidden so anybody at a neighborhood review meeting is not even going to understand what was done unsafely.
yes, i definitely meant risk in aesthetic design, not risk in safety or structural design. building codes to specify safety standards are unquestionably a good thing.
What this leads to is the joke of guidelines like in Victoria, Canada, where the city basically is trying to mandate that buildings look "interesting", where interesting is defined as "the developer built it out of Jenga blocks that didn't quite line up right" and "used as many different colors as you would get fonts in a school newsletter".
This often results in "silly" rather than "nice". The architect knows what it takes to get the project accepted and so they do THAT and not one penny more. The city staff and council are (somewhat) bound to accept what meets the rules and they do (after begging for park, low income housing, stores, sidewalk extra width, free wifi, parking, not parking, cash, cash-in-lieu, no gas stove, transit passes, police donation (I jest?), etc). And predictably the result is cliché and repetitive. There is probably even some kind of curtain wall system off the shelf for it too. Off course, there is, obviously.
Around here (and likely across america) you see the same facade features again and again -probably because they are off the shelf and picked out of a catalog. (of course they are, but the degree to which they are is the silly part of it. There is ZERO creativity in them.)
Actually this is to the point where one naive building here went so faaaaar out of their way to look different (while within budget) that it looks absurd. Absurdly, deliberately, gratuitously different - in a way that makes little technical sense.)
Similarly another one a partner lived in, was so well thought out, it attacked your eye. I could not walk through it without seeing the attention to detail. Outstanding designers. Interesting how "interesting" is now so obvious. In a neighborhood that was otherwise boring as hell.
There are plenty 50-100 year old examples (the whole range) in, say, Chicago of mid-rise 4-6 story buildings with retail on the first floor and residential or office on the remaining floors. Chicago is a mid-rise city. Examples which are considered attractive and historic and nobody complains about them... but they aren't timber frame over concrete podium, they're brick or stone on all floors. Which is of course often too expensive to do now. (Although Chicago has all-masonry examples from the past couple decades too... as well as timber-over-concrete examples I think).
I guess it's the timber-over-concrete that is new and without historical example? Or regardless, the issue is that the historical examples are too expensive to build now. (Why isn't this an issue with residential too? I think it is actually?)
Here's a very typical generic Chicago example, which possibly has had it's ground floor facade replaced at some point in an uninspired way, but you can see the masonry on the upper floors (only 3-over-1) which would be an absolute premium luxury build today, and the building has plenty of character even though it's not being used for especially high-rent purposes at the moment: https://www.google.com/maps/@41.9654135,-87.6587315,3a,75y,2...
There is no lack of great historical examples of mid-rise 5-over-1 residential over retail -- but they probably aren't timber frame over concrete podium.
My knee-jerk reaction is that traditional building styles are probably not cost-competitive, and modern construction mimicking traditional styles would be perceived as fake and inauthentic. But I stand corrected on the history; thank you.
Aren't traditional styles of single family homes also far too expensive to build now for non-luxury-premium prices too though? I don't think it's special to 5-over-1.
(And indeed, most new construction single family homes are pretty disastrous too?)
I especially love the architecture of Chicago though, it is a delightful city to be in. Many parts of the city managed to have historical building booms at just the right times to leave us with some amazing infrastructure.
But yeah, the OP is talking a lot about how mid-rise density residential-over-retail is great for livable cities -- and I agree! Chicago demonstrates it. 2-5 stories of residential over a retail ground floor is great for neighborhood "main roads". That isn't the issue, the issue is that we just don't like cost-competitive new construction much, whatever the layout.
> Aren't traditional styles of single family homes also far too expensive to build now for non-luxury-premium prices too though?
That's a good question. I'm not an expert, but I think what was cheap in the 20th century is still generally pretty cheap now. A stick-built bungalow or ranch house with siding was cheap then and is cheap now.
I also think there's more room in the market for not-quite-the-cheapest-thing when it comes to single family homes. Like private automobiles, single family homes can be more expensive than they need to be, if the extra cost allows the buyer express their individual taste or their social status. If someone prefers a brick facade, they might pay extra for it, just like they might pay extra to drive a $60k car that has roughly the same practical utility as a $30k car that is also available in the market.
> the issue is that we just don't like cost-competitive new construction much, whatever the layout
masonry has some disadvantages. notably you won't really find masonry in earthquake prone areas because unreinforced masonry will kill people and reinforcement is expensive.
Chicago doesn't allow 5 over 1s. All those new 3-5 story buildings in Chicago are masonry (CMU) or steel frame curtain wall. I've watched some of them get built. Building out of CMU is cost effective and they can be combined with brick for facades (brick-and-block).
This should put to lie the idea that 5 over 1s are the only way cost-effective way to build. CMU construction is cheap it's just not quite as cheap as timber frame, and developers will always choose the cheapest technique they're allowed to use.
Interesting. Really, the more I think about it, the more I'm dissapointed in the OP. Yes, I totally agree with OP that mid-rise 2-4 stories of residential over ground level of retail is a great livable urban design, and it would be a huge mistake to do anything to discourage or prevent this.
The question is -- what are the constraints on what that looks like, what is it exactly that people are saying they don't like about "5 over 1", let's compare to various historical ways of building several stories of residentail over a ground floor of retail, let's look at what the cost factors and constraints are here, let's compare different cities, let's think about what sort of building codes might lead to different designs, etc.
I want that article!
(To be fair, plenty of new construction in Chicago is pretty bad too. I think that second picture I posted above of residential-over-retail is a pretty ugly and street-unfriendly building, although it gives everyone a front-facing balcony that presumably raised the value of those presumably condos. looks like a parking garage. https://www.google.com/maps/@41.962424,-87.6661565,3a,75y,26... )
Landowners know how much construction costs, so land prices are probably lower in Chicago as opposed to elsewhere.
If you have multiple developers bidding for the same (in demand) land, then the one willing to pay the most will obviously have to choose to reduce construction costs wherever possible to afford.
Land prices in Chicago are definitely cheaper than other large cities.
But at the same time, the fire code and zoning make it pretty rare that a 6-floor building is the right economic choice. You might as well build it to be 10-15 floors. The approval process isn’t going to be more difficult or time consuming, your per-unit costs will be lower, and there’s no shortage of banks willing to finance it. This is also quite different than most other large cities.
That could very well be how they manage to still hae new construction that's all masonry... although as I think my second (all balcony) example above shows, you can certainly do a generic obviously-optimized unpleasant brick 3-to-5-over-1 too! Not sure if people would prefer them to timber-over-concrete ones still.
It also helps that there is a lack of seismic activity to push codes away from masonry buildings and towards materials that will survive an earthquake. Much of the west can’t build masonry because those buildings fail when the ground moves.
In Germany all new construction is reinforced concrete, I always assumed that’s because it’s cheaper than masonry, but might as well be due to the notoriously strict building codes.
Timber is seen as the innovative, climate friendly alternative, but it’s still more expensive than concrete.
All of this is also partly dependent on the region's availability of timber vs. other materials and if they are near fault lines. The eastern half of the USA, including Chicago, is no where near a fault line, so prioritizing less earthquake friendly materials that have other benefits is more practical. The same applies to most of Germany and there isn't any natural forest left to harvest timber from.
West coast USA is an earthquake zone and has a large timber industry in the pacific north west. Not using timber or something else that is flexible is a relative hazard!
By reinforced concrete do you mean they build forms and pour the concrete into the forms, or do you mean tilt-up (pour slabs horizontally then lift them to vertical to form wall sections) or do you mean reinforced-CMU (build a CMU wall then put rebar and grout through the cores of the completed wall?
Pouring into forms is by far the most expensive technique because those forms are costly to build and set up. In the US poured concrete is only used in simple or horizontal structures (like foundations) or where the cost of the formwork can be amortized over a lot of repeated structures, like the floors of a highrise.
Interesting. I’ve always heard that labor unions were behind some of these regulations, wanting to protect their market from non-union competition.
Requiring EMT and copper water supply lines both fit this scenario, as it’s harder to bend EMT and pull wire than it is to install NM cable; and it’s harder to bend and sweat copper pipe than it is to squeeze together the handles of a PEX fitting crimper.
Anyone have some insight into the reasoning behind these weird Chicago building codes?
Looks like kind of yes and no, but thanks, I do see that just commercial on bottom with residential on top but all masonry isn't what people are talking about as "5-over-1", but I still think provides some design precedent.
> The name derives from the maximum permissible five floors of combustible construction (Type III or Type V) over a fire-resistive Type I podium of one floor for "5-over-1" or two floors for "5-over-2", as defined in the United States-based International Building Code (IBC) Section 510.2.[1][4] Some sources instead attribute the name to the wood framing of the upper construction; the International Building Code uses "Type V" to refer to non-fireproof structures, including those framed with dimensional lumber
Wikipedia is just flat wrong on the history here. Structural engineers created the phrase, and they meant type V, not five stories.
It’s true since the term became popular people have misunderstood, and it happens to match the number of permissible stories in current code, but that’s not what structural engineers meant when they started using the phrase.
I'm all for more housing, but the ground-floor retail seems to sit vacant at least where I am. There's only so many coffee shops and breakfast/lunch diners that one neighborhood can support. It'd be nice if some of that space could be for accessible apartments, maybe bike storage, or anything that would actually get used instead of just vacant retail space with soaped-up windows.
Of course you can also have shoe stores, barbers, maker spaces, furniture stores, plumbing supplies, etc. But we have moved to megastores. We want to go to a single million square meter store that stocks everything. Or we just order stuff online.
I'd actually like see entrepreneurs take a run at that retail space. It would be cool to live in a place with a produce stand on the ground floor and a deli around the corner with a small DMV office in between. It would be nice to see an intelligent analysis on why your area can't seem to fill up that retail space. Ditto some initiative to change the situation.
Sometimes economies of scale seem to favor three giant guitar stores versus 15 small ones. It would be fun to see people who are smart enough to make small neighborhood shops competitive.
> I'd actually like see entrepreneurs take a run at that retail space.
Well of course. So would those entrepreneurs. Problem is that rent is usually way too high to for a shoe store or makerspace to break even. Forget plumbing supplies. There usually isn’t easy parking for a truck, and you need lots of room for a plumbing supply store.
These spaces are normally mandated by local regulations, so whether or not they are economically viable is irrelevant.
Yes, the planning commissions approve these developments with the requirement for "ground floor retail" but the demand doesn't seem to be there, at least not at the rents being asked.
If they would truly rent these places out at what the market will pay, that would be fine and I'd love to see what ideas people had to use that space. But seeing as how most of it remains vacant, that must not be happening.
I'd be interested to know how the vacancy rate compares on the residential units vs the commercial units.
It seems obvious that if any retail space could be converted to living quarters and make more money, somebody would pay the commercial rent and do the conversion. Except, of course, where this is barred by government.
> I'd actually like see entrepreneurs take a run at that retail space.
You can't reasonably expect personal investment in a venture that directly competes with Amazon. My town is littered with neighborhood grocery stores that have been shuttered longer than I have been alive (and I am nearing retirement).
I have seen food halls that vaguely work in Chicago, and my regional city has business incubators that reduce the cost of starting a business.
That only goes so far, though. Modern commerce has hollowed out much commercial real estate.
I live in a former socialist country, where ground-level apartments were a thing even in larger buildings... nowadays people don't like them, because there is usually a lot of foot traffic around such buildings, and nobody wants to live in an apartment where anyone can walk right by the window and see inside the apartment (+ security risks).
Even if it did, it's not clear how many developers would take that up. Part of why the 5-over-1 is attractive is because you get a decent amount of housing (and some retail) for fairly cheap. Going taller usually means a more expensive type of building.
Having been to a lot of big European cities, buildings of roughly this size of ~6 stories or so seem to typically be the norm, and they get plenty of density out of it just by having a lot of them. Much taller buildings usually aren't all that common. Hell, even in Tokyo, while there's a lot of high rises, the average building definitely isn't a high rise, it's probably still six stories or less.
That said, much higher density in some areas (e.g. downtown, or right next to subway stations) definitely makes a lot of sense.
Parking space is the most important limiting factor around here. Making more than 4-5 stories on typical city plot requires adding a second level to underground garage, which skyrockets the building costs. Creating an underground level is few times more expensive than normal one and cost rises exponentially for each story. Cities typically require 0.5 - 1.5 parking spaces per apartment, so you have to make them and convince customers to pay extra or else you loose money holding lots of unused space that require constant maintenance. For the same reason Honk-Kong-style micro apartments are unheard of in Europe.
The retail in "5+1 (retail)" is mostly a planning checkbox. In many locations it may no sense at all and is quickly taken over by (1) the leasing office), (2) the construction office, (3) a startup, (4) empty hopeful vacant space.
Have they only fairly recently started going up in your area? There's a chicken-and-egg problem with these; on the one hand, the retail space is only useful in a relatively dense area, on the other hand, these are generally an essential part of densifying an area.
In Dublin, we had a building boom which came to a crashing halt in 2008 or so with the financial crisis, and then resumed by about 2016. In the interim, street-level retail space in new apartment blocks on the advancing edge often lay empty, which kind of makes sense, because the density wasn't there yet. As building resumed, and areas filled up, so did the retail space.
In San Francisco SOMA, this is not a "newly densifying area". It is still densifying (converted from automotive workshops, entertainment and light manufacturing prevalence 30 years ago) but there has been plenty of people living there for many years now. And there are supermarkets and other Costco that did take advantage of that mix of still available largish, newish spaces and local population. But no, for SOMA and San Francisco in general, the issue is more likely that "street level retail" was a checkbox you better meet in your permit application. It's largely aspirational. There are some thriving stores in the area (cafés, furniture, specialty retail, supermarkets, private schools, etc). And there is also several times that in apparently empty street level spaces. Many of them are not always empty: they get leased for "cool office space" - but it's kind of the same from the street: frosted or painted glass front at best. The more noticeable spaces are stores that were there for years and finally gave up and closed (indeed café, hardware store, art galleries, furniture, schools, home goods, bakery - that should be at least surviving if population density was the only issue.)
Just because street level retail is aspirational to the city planners of San Francisco, will not be enough to make it happen.
Ah, so I've actually wandered around there (my employer used to have an office there). Now, I was last there in 2020, and maybe things have changed, but when I was there it was a case of "apartment block, derelict-looking warehouse, unexpected parking lot, office block..." - that is it's fairly early in the cycle. You need a good bit of density for a lot of this ground-level retail to make sense; outside _exceptional_ cases no-one is going to _travel_ to visit your pharmacy or greengrocer or antique shop or cafe or whatever. As the gaps fill in you'd expect this to work better.
(It was also to my mind a slightly weird example of this sort of "convert obsolete light industry into housing and offices" phenomenon, in that it seemed to be super-patchy. I've no idea if anyone has looked into it, but my suspicion is that people are more likely to walk around the local area and use the retail facilities if it feels like a local area, rather than islands in a sea of old warehouses.)
There is plenty of density there. It's probably the area of San Francisco that has the highest combination of housing and large grocery stores. This is by San Francisco standards because yes, there are lots of large and small company offices and kinda vacant lots or underutilized buildings.
From a density point of view it's as much as you are likely to find in San Francisco. There is not much point in hoping for much more.
This combination of large supermarkets and combination home goods stores makes it actually an area that other San Franciscans might drive to for groceries! Safeway, Target (a second one with parking lot closed recently), Trader Joes (two, one with free parking lot), Costco (with free parking lot), Foods Co (free parking lot), Rainbow Grocery (free parking lot), Whole Foods (a second one with parking closed recently), spread all around mostly at the periphery of that area. There are enough people to sustain all these stores.
So that I don't think the "still densifying" argument applies. It's been long enough and there are lots of people who live there. Certainly more dense than most other areas in San Francisco.
This is also in the area of San Francisco that is central from a transit point of view. It is very well served. Easy (but slow and certainly not comfortable) to come from other areas by transit.
No, I think mostly there are sooooo many of these empty "street level retail" - and of course more being "required" in new construction. We are not getting there from here.
("sea of old warehouses" - actually no, the area is very walkable. For one, it's fairly flat, for another, it's
not all that large, and the weather is nice. And the highest density of street mental health issues is toward the Mission district and toward Market street rather than in the core of SOMA. Even then, many San Franciscan's still walk through the Market area.)
While zoning in Germany almost universally sets the limit at the height of the local church (yes, really...), the actual reasons are building codes. Even cities that permit arbitrary height (famously Frankfurt am Main) still don't have that many high buildings: Because somewhere around the 5 to 7 story line, you run into really expensive requirements around additional rescue staircases with overpressure ventilation, roof access, rescue balconies and stuff like that.
> Even cities that permit arbitrary height (famously Frankfurt am Main)
They do? I believe I've heard from a friend who lives there that the fire department recently shortened a few planned buildings because they could not guarantee reaching higher than $X meters. (Said $X is over 100, but less than they initially wanted to build.)
Not sure where the actual limit is or if they changed it, I also don't have any hard sources, just heresay that there is "no limit". But there are 20 buildings over 150m, and 6 over 200m, so it probably is or was quite a bit above 100m.
And if it is due to the usual fire brigade ladder height problem, that would be at most 68m currently: https://www.magirusgroup.com/de/en/products/turntable-ladder...
(around here in a smaller town, a company got a 50m building permit when they paid for the new fire truck with a sufficiently long ladder).
This is less of a zoning issue and more of a structural one. Traditional stick buildings can't really be built higher than 5 stories. This is changing as glulam gets more popular but most 5 over 1s are not built with glulam for now.
five stories is about the maximum amount of traditional (not-CLT) wood construction tolerated by fire code. also, six and above stories is where you start needing more elevators as a practical matter, which cuts the amount of leasable space on lower floors.
if you look at skyscraper designs one of the most complicated things is elevator layout design, because you need enough capacity so that people don't wait unreasonably long for elevators, but you also don't want to waste so much space on elevator shafts.
"The zoning" is different everywhere, there are plenty of places that allow more than 5 total stories and/or more than 4 residential stories above commercial.
The main issues with them is that they are don't create much community, with their lifeless corridors and alienating common areas, and that the ground-floor retail tends to be (apparently) reserved for overpriced retail chains that come and go every few years, presumably because they charge high rents for large spaces. They also tend to not have balcony space for people to decorate so from outside they look completely un-personalized.
If they were less soulsuckingly lifeless nobody would mind them. Also as a result of their soulsuckingness it's hard to imagine treating one as a long-term home, which compounds because they're more soulsucking due to having nobody people treating them as long-term homes. Also they are usually not for sale as condos either so that's another reason they don't feel like long-term homes. (Nor are they able to personalize them significantly).
Some of that blame can be laid at the feet of north american two staircase fire code requirements.
Rules that all units need 2 different staircases really dictate the sort of layout that is physically possible, nearly always resulting in a long central hallway with stairs at either end that feels very impersonal. The resulting units are also not great places to live, with windows on a single wall. Every bedroom needs an egress window, so building 3+ bedroom units almost never pencils out. It's all 1-2 bedroom 'starter' apartments, rather than the types of beautiful 'for life' apartments you'd see in pre-war new york buildings.
Since the staircases are required no matter what, developers are incentivized to stretch the horizontal distance between them as far as possible to amortize the space penalty of the stairs, making the building feel even more impersonal once inside.
If single stairs plus a sprinkler or other fire suppression was allowed multifamily buildings could be set on much smaller lots, with more corner units that have windows on 2 sides or even small, skinny apartments with half or the full floor dedicated to 3-4 bedroom units. The interiors would have far more light and the buildings would be much more human-scale, all contributing to things feeling a lot more personal. There could also be a lot more green space and gathering space scattered in smaller parcels, breaking up the hulking 5+1s we have all become used to.
A bit, yes, but most of the community problems can be solved without changing that. The community problems are due to the way they're run: basically, owned by profit-maximizing hedge funds.
> The main issues with them is that they are don't create much community, with their lifeless corridors and alienating common areas
What I noticed with development patterns when I lived in Munich, is that there were a LOT more "pedestrian plaza" type areas scattered throughout the city compared to US cities.
I think that's what's needed, is any given neighborhood having at least a few plaza areas with some open space, some benches, a fountain, etc.
I'm not sure the culture in the US would lend itself that way.
Parks and public commons areas tend to become the dumping ground for unsolved social issues. Those who've fallen through society's cracks. Those who would abuse the ability to interact with others to interact in uncouth ways. Issues of space size and use density. Even during the height of Pokemon Go when (mostly) nerds were incentivized to visit city parks the mostly polite use was frowned upon as an unwanted crowd interfering with those who'd traditionally use the same public space.
Then there's the more 'accepted' version of gatherings in cities: paying various retail places for the privilege of being there, usually at a markup that reflects the value of being in such a dense area.
Fixing both of those problems, and any others I didn't mention, will take political will and a shift in culture. Programs to connect the unfortunate with the social integration or support help they need, and measures to combat rent-seeking (laws and tax biases) seem like a distant pipe dream.
That same 95% might have less than a thousand homeless people total and theres just too much park acreage for the few who might loiter there to ever dominate a park. Its a non issue. People go to the park in places I lived that are large and small. By and large the few homeless people who congregate in parks very much don’t want to cause a big nuisance and a police visit and keep to themselves.
In my experience parks in suburban areas tend to be reserved for sports facilities (baseball, tennis, etc) and playgrounds. They’re not usually nice places to hang out.
I went to this park two weeks ago, because it is one of very (very) few that performs ancient Greek drama in mask every year. This is quite a rare thing.
When you have a lot of them it creates community. There will be more demand for specific types of shops and businesses, more space for parks, and more pedestrians so generally safer.
A big fat citation needed on all of this. It’s all just your personal opinion and you make a lot of assumptions about all these developments lumping them all together as if they’re 100% identical.
You really think none of these 5-over-1 buildings have community amenities like gyms, pools, coworking spaces, party rooms, and other features like that?
I think the truth is that there’s such a deeply ingrained hatred for multi-family buildings in the United States that buildings like this are held to impossible standards, and that’s what you’re doing here.
You could accuse almost any McMansion sub-development of every sin you’ve listed besides having hallways - which is kind of a hilarious accusation to make, that hallways impede communities. Tell me, which McMansion development forces you to walk by your neighbor like a hallway does? It’s really the opposite, you can leave your McMansion home without even stepping food outside your private property - garage to car to road to Starbucks drive thru. No need to get out of your car or interact with anyone.
And the idea that all these developments only have overpriced retail is not only laughable but it still beats out McMansion developments for having zero retail of any kind. But again we are holding multi-family developments to higher standards than single family homes that are so lovingly adored.
They have amenities but they are often reserved for the people who actually hold a lease vs the community, unless that amenity is renting one of the public facing retail units. In contrast seems like there are more public/municipal improvements brought in when bog standard suburbia is built by developers instead, where a developer might have to also build public parks and roads and schools.
Since when do suburban subdivision developers build public parks and schools? I have never heard of a single family housing development that did that. They may build roads and then turn over the more expensive long-term maintenance over to the town.
What’s wrong with multi-unit buildings that have private amenities? Do you let people into your yard to use your swing set and pool? Aren’t there a lot of single family home communities not have private HOA amenities too?
Once again a higher standard is being applied to multi-family homes because of how much Americans are conditioned to hate them. Anything a multi-family building does is sinful but the God-fearing single family home’s private amenities are sacred freedom-loving private property.
of course it's my personal opinion, it's a post on the internet. But it's pretty obviously true also. So obvious, if you live around them, that IMO the onus for proof is on the person finding something good to say about them.
> You really think none of these 5-over-1 buildings have community amenities like gyms, pools, coworking spaces, party rooms, and other features like that?
of course I don't. they have those and suck anyway.
> And the idea that all these developments only have overpriced retail is not only laughable but it still beats out McMansion developments for having zero retail of any kind. But again we are holding multi-family developments to higher standards than single family homes that are so lovingly adored.
yeah, McMansions are worse. If only there were other options besides those two. Oh wait there are tons. Like "all of Europe".
My proof is "I have lived places that didn't suck and it's pretty clear what the differences are". Anyone who has also lived somewhere that didn't suck will also see the difference pretty clearly.
The best cities in Europe are primarily built in the exact same housing configuration as 5-over-1s.
The quintessential Parisian walk up building is basically a 5-over-1.
The only difference is that America has their 5-over-1s built in the middle of heavily car-centric infrastructure, and that America has a majority single family home population that fights against the very idea of multi-unit buildings.
That was almost exactly my point, that American 5-over-1s are bad not because they're 5-over-1s but because they're done badly. But it's more than just the car-centricness. It's all the other Americanisms as well.
I think this vague idea of them being bad because of various Americanisms is just really "America bad."
I will go through each one of your complaints and point out how they aren't really unique to America in any way and can be applied to a lot of places with celebrated urbanism.
> with their lifeless corridors and alienating common areas
The only corridor I saw in the Danish walk up apartment I stayed in was an alarmingly steep staircase. I'll take a lifeless ADA-compliant corridor over that any day. Half of the stairs I took in Tokyo were basically outside the building which kind of sucked when it was hot and humid.
> and that the ground-floor retail tends to be (apparently) reserved for overpriced retail chains that come and go every few years, presumably because they charge high rents for large spaces.
Do a Google Maps search for "McDonald's in Paris, France." Wouldn't you know it, McDonald's is in the high-rent central districts of Paris. It's almost as if urban central cities are desirable to live in and command high rents!
> They also tend to not have balcony space for people to decorate so from outside they look completely un-personalized.
Do a street view anywhere in central Paris and there are a bunch of balconies but nobody has decorated them at all. A balcony is not a plus for many people: if you have small kids and pets they can be more of a liability.
> If they were less soulsuckingly lifeless nobody would mind them.
The sameness in architectural design is cool when it comes to Tokyo, East Berlin, Scandinavian minimalism and modernism, Philadelphia's historic row homes, Victorian housing across America, architects like Mies Van Der Rohe, but it's not cool in 5-over-1 in North Carolina. Basically, sameness is everywhere, but you're criticizing it in one application in an arbitrary way.
> Also as a result of their soulsuckingness it's hard to imagine treating one as a long-term home, which compounds because they're more soulsucking due to having nobody people treating them as long-term homes.
Countries with lower home ownership rates than the USA: Sweden, France, New Zealand, UK, South Korea, Denmark, Austria, Germany, Switzerland. Your personal opinion is that renters don't treat their rentals like they are home, but that's an example of derogatory classism if you ask me.
> Also they are usually not for sale as condos either so that's another reason they don't feel like long-term homes. (Nor are they able to personalize them significantly).
Increasing housing density is a great thing and I'm all for it. That said I wish that cheapo stick framed buildings weren't the only way to get it done.
In my experience, living in a multistory stick framed building usually means absolutely zero sound isolation from neighbors which can lead to some really frustrating situations. It was night and day better when I moved into an apartment building from the 60s with the levels made of concrete.
I'll respond to your anecdote with an anecdote of my own. I've been in a wood-framed apartment building for two years, and I never hear my neighbors. There are many ways to incorporate sound insulation in construction, and masonry isn't the only way to achieve it.
The apartment building I live in was built in 2019 and is solid concrete. I only ever hear my neighbors when they're drilling or something. In my city it's housing built post WWII to about the millenium that's known for shitty sound insulation, although it often has other benefits like higher cielings and charm.
It seems like a weird US thing from what I've seen online that new buildings are still just a frame and drywall. I don't get why though, sure building costs initially are slightly lower but a concrete building will last much longer, it's easier to insulate against weather, and they can charge higher rent for the sound isolation as well
I have to say drywall + insulation can work really well. In the flat I rent both walls to neighbors and between rooms are like this, and I only ever hear people through the doors or windows.
The rest of the building (outside walls and floors) are from brick, though.
They're bad for cars, so the establishment is decrying them as ruining America. I went two years with nothing more than a carshare membership when I lived in a 5+1 because I was three blocks from a grocery store and that three blocks had every type of restaurant I frequent. As soon as I moved back into a "traditional" American residential neighborhood, I needed a car again.
They are great for cars. For a lot of them every unit gets a spot and theres even guest spots. Sure beats the old way of hoping you find street parking.
They are actually terrible for bikes. Mine and the rest in the rack in the garage were stolen and management was not helpful at all and didn’t produce security tapes. Bike thieves know following a car in to one of these is an easy way to steal bikes.
I've lived in a few of these, and the "cheap" part is really the biggest concern. Besides the fact that they all share in their corrugated-metal hideousness, they're a symptom of developers pushing the boundaries of building code to save a few bucks.
Without doxxing myself, I'll say that I was among the first group of residents of a 5-over-1 that made local news for the safety problems associated with its cheap construction. Non-functional smoke detectors, incorrectly installed fire walls, flood markings in the concrete basement, paint smears on the cabinets, doors with massive and varying gaps underneath, the whole 9 yards. In a brand new building. Truly a remarkable exercise in corner-cutting.
this is a problem in every era of construction, though. developers have not really changed their mindset or their ability to cut corners, they just change the flavor of building they like.
Seattle is full of Sears catalog Craftsman homes that are not at all climate appropriate, and while they are historic and beloved today that was not always the case. If you buy one of them today they're probably moldy.
The tough thing with Sears homes is you never know who built them. They showed up in a boxcar and you either hired someone to build them, or you built them yourself. Here in the Midwest we have plenty of Sears homes and I've never heard a bad thing about them.
I guess that traces back to your "the problem is the builder, not the building" argument. You're right, but I think it's okay to dislike a blatant symbol of half-assedness.
Sears homes were precut I believe. Your crew was probably drunk anyhow no matter what but that gives them a bit of a helping hand with one less precision task to be done. I think theres a serious survivorship bias among them today. Most of the ones you would consider buying have been well maintained and upkept. The ones we rented from slumlord landlords in college on the other hand. Some of the floors were so warped it looked like the tide. Most bathrooms full of mold from 7 students showering daily with no shower vent. Most exterior trim wood rotting from lack of regular painting. Most windows single pane with poor seals. Most work would happen when something catastrophic demanded it from a code habitability issue, like a roof leak destroying the ceiling, that would only be addressed after the unit became legally uninhabitable.
what i mean to say by "while they are historic and beloved today that was not always the case." is that people often complained about them in the era that they were built, because people back then also did not like the new cheap stuff and had rose tinted glasses about the good old days.
As a general example, New York's iconic brownstones were also complained about in their era because they were prone to crumbling and flaking, and yet now they are beloved pieces of city history worth millions of dollars. https://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/23/nyregion/saying-goodbye-t...
Fixing up housing and selling it to richer people is a new concept. It used to be you would build new things and clear out the old. Of course when we make legal systems that favor the status quo, suddenly it becomes a luxury prospect to live in the few good units of whats left since we aren’t allowing for any more. Historical significance arguments basically emerged in our society along with the very ordinances that prevented these same historical structures from ever being built again. There would be no reason to deem something historical and protect it if it was constantly being renewed as it is, after all.
I saw a building that was entirely finished for years. Vacant but finished, aside from the fact they never built an apron to the road for the sunken garage. Last year they did up the apron seemingly overnight but no activity yet for any of the brand new units. I don’t think I will ever fully understand the economics of development if this behavior somehow makes pragmatic business sense, all these years not collecting rent probably writing off the loss to support other investments.
None of the flaws you cite is attributable to the stick-built construction. Dishonest and/or incompetent contractors can screw up a building made of any materials.
I was recently in Spain and this was the only kind of building I encountered that wasn't a palace or bureaucracy building.
It fostered such a sense of being in the middle of something alive and it spread out for miles in every direction. It was so easy to find my way around the hotel because the sights were familiar but unique, but once I moved a little bit away it was all a labyrinthine mish mash of the same. I loved it and I love the 5 over 1
Spain has one of the highest percentage of apartment based households in Europe - 66%. It makes for really dense towns and cities, which allows for the excellent cafe and tapas culture. Low density suburbs are so lifeless in comparison.
I live an hour or so away from the town I went to grad school so I still visit once a month or so. It seems like every time I visit another old building is torn down and another one of these 5 over 1 buildings are going up.
The stores are rarely successful and I'm sure that the companies building all these things just factor in the cost of building these as a cost of doing business in that town.
Most of the kids that rent these "luxury apartments" (which is how they are always described) are from cities with much higher cost of living so they can charge a ton of money and mom and dad will still think it is reasonable. This ends up recreating housing crises of big cities because people that live and work in the town are getting priced out of living there.
Okay, so if the 5 over 1s weren't being built, where would all of these "kids" live? Wherever they live, by your same argument, they would be willing to pay more than the existing locals and the existing locals would still be priced out.
Pricing people out is primarily an income/wealth disparity problem that arises when in-demand areas move suddenly.
Building less in those areas certainly would not help. But it's also unlikely that enough can be built to preserve space for all existing residents in any realistic time-frame without subsidies and active efforts (which some cities do better than others).
It's not just supply and demand. Expensive areas being expensive is partly by design.
Things like redlining are no longer legal, but the desire by people to exclude people that they do not want their kids to end up like remains. One legal way to do this is to make the cost of living sufficiently high that it guarantees your neighbors conform sufficiently to society's standards that they were able to accumulate wealth.
Here's a podcast episode on the particular issue if anyone wants to explore more
Yeah, but I'm pretty sure that's not what's happening here. What jccalhoun is describing is actually a reduction in the cost of living. The younger people from the city are moving from the city because the town is cheaper. They didn't move before the aparments were built because the detached homes in the suburb were too expensive.
What's happening is two things 1) that people in detached homes in the middle of town the who aren't willing to live in apartments are seeing costs go up (because their land is more valuable) and 2) more people from the town are working it the city.
Of these two thing, I'd say that #2 is generally bad, but also orthogonal to building apartments. It just happens to be that they often happen together.
Yeah, the key is to just build enough. Almost everywhere in the US that's booming just doesn't build all that much -- you may see a lot of cranes around, but the % increase year over year in housing is usually pretty modest.
As for why booming areas don't build enough: exclusionary zoning, burdensome processes, NIMBYism in local meetings, and learned government helplessness.
Pricing people out is the obvious way when there is too little housing on offer. No point in keeping or building smaller / lower cost when there is so much more demand than supply.
> The stores are rarely successful and I'm sure that the companies building all these things just factor in the cost of building these as a cost of doing business in that town.
One of the things you see people complaining about in cities like Seattle or SF is higher commercial rent prices pushing out all the "cool" but not particularly profitable businesses.
And how do you get lower business rents? There's a thing called supply-and-demand that might be helpful here.
The loans that they got to build the building were underwritten assuming X square feet of retail space would be rented at $Y per square foot.
If they were to rent the spaces at lower rates, the bank would need to reassess the building, taking the lower rental rate into consideration. Then the Loan-to-Value would be higher, making it harder and more expensive to refinance after the 5 to 10 year term of the loan. The bank doesn't want that either, as long as the payments are coming in on time.
Strangely, keeping the space vacant doesn't require the bank to reassess the space as though it's renting for $0.
So, the financial incentive for the borrower and bank is to keep the space vacant at $Y than rent it for less.
* Banks must re-evaluate the loan once a year based on the average real lease rate for that year OR the next year's contractually committed income. (Not the 'we would love to least it at X' fabrication.)
* In addition to Land Value Tax and any applicable income tax, all not-leased units and spaces would be taxed as if any asking price over comparable units within a reasonable distance, like a 12 city block or mile square centered on that unit, were booked income. Example: Studio apartments currently leased within 20% that units size within the 1 mile square average 1000 USD/mo, a vacant apartment which asks for 950/mo has a taxed rate of 0, while an apartment asking for 1200/mo would be taxed as if they had rented that space for 200 that month, even though there was 0 income. The goal is to apply a small downward pressure to rents and also directly reward renting beneath the mean average within the area. Maybe it should even be at a higher rate, like taxed as if 50% or even the full asking rate had been earned. Of course the highest possible rate (E.G. renting for one single smallest unit of time every time) would be utilized, including any one time fees for background checks, etc.
> Banks must re-evaluate the loan once a year based on the average real lease rate for that year OR the next year's contractually committed income. (Not the 'we would love to least it at X' fabrication.
yesfitz’ comment is not correct, and lenders do care about their collateral experiencing insufficient cash flow. They do not care about specific empty spaces, but if revenue is not as expected, then obviously risk of default is higher, and they will notice.
I think "not correct" is unfair.
The comment's audience was people who are unfamiliar with the effect of financing on market rents. To that end, I left out some nuance and caveats.
I appreciate your expansion on my statement though: "The bank doesn't want that either, as long as the payments are coming in on time."
But Debt Service Coverage Ratio (DSCR) looks at Net Operating Income, not just the collateral property's rents.
DSCR is recalculated at intervals based on the lender's policy.
That policy varies from bank to bank.
All banks' policies are examined by regulators, so it's not as though banks can totally ignore DSCR, but there are ways to mitigate policy exceptions that range from business as-usual to "Extend and Pretend"[1] that's been common since the Federal Reserve rapidly raised rates in 2022.
> And how do you get lower business rents? There's a thing called supply-and-demand that might be helpful here.
It's part of it for sure, but there are lots of commercial vacancies that sit empty for years because landlords often keep storefronts vacant on purpose. It's a confluence of reasons and it depends on the locale -- sometimes there's a tax break if it's vacant, sometimes there's a tax increase if rent hits a certain threshold and the landlord wants even more to make up for the new tax, sometimes the mortgage is guaranteed by the rent price in some way and lowering the rent would cause the holder to pay back the difference immediately, etc.
There are tons of empty storefronts in NYC at the moment, for example, so more supply isn't really the issue here, often it's a web of really bad policy.
And I'm sure this is the place where people start saying Land Value Tax.
Yeah, that all sounds like really horrible policy. Landowners in in-demand locations should be taxed heavily if the land isn't being used productively. They sure as hell shouldn't get a tax break for having a vacant lot or storefront.
Building cheaper commercial real estate will help with that issue, too, as it will cause the CRE landlord holdouts to realize the downward price pressure will only continue.
> And how do you get lower business rents? There's a thing called supply-and-demand that might be helpful here.
In theory there is. But the reality is that ground level lingers empty, or is occupied by some cool office space - and seemingly never needs to come down in price.
> This ends up recreating housing crises of big cities because people that live and work in the town are getting priced out of living there.
Here is research that contradicts this assertion.
"We ultimately conclude, from both theory and empirical evidence, that adding new homes moderates price increases and therefore makes housing more affordable to low- and moderate-income families. "
> Most of the kids that rent these "luxury apartments" (which is how they are always described) are from cities with much higher cost of living so they can charge a ton of money and mom and dad will still think it is reasonable
Calling apartments "luxury apartments" is just a marketing standard. It's like when Taco Bell says their food is "delicious." It's not the end of civilization.
There was one apartment they built at my old college that was so expensive it pretty much exclusively targeted the subset of foreigners who parks supercars illegally full of tickets on campus. Not just your bostonites or whatever but children of saudi princes and chinese billionaires who effectively lived on a blank check.
I know at least one of ideas is that the retail would be relevant to the inhabitants of the top 5 floors. Has anyone seen that work well in action? Or are these just houses on random strip malls.
I don't like the idea of stores I don't care about inviting increased traffic around my house, but i would happily have increased traffic if it meant at least some stores I care about are just downstairs.
Yes, it works pretty much anywhere if the retail in question is the relatively useful/high traffic sort (e.g. grocery stores, bakeries, coffee shops, restaurants/cafes, etc). And it doesn't have to just serve the people of that exact building, if there are a bunch of other 5-over-1's or similar in the immediate area.
Honestly, this sounds like a bit of a stereotypical American question: "Can <thing that the rest of the world already does> actually work at all?"
Edit: I should add that of course there can be other variables at play. For example, if the general street design of the area is more pedestrian friendly, that's helpful to this style of zoning/building, and if the street design is hostile to pedestrians, then these things won't work quite as well.
I think this works fantastic in Capitol Hill neighborhood in Seattle. The ground floor is filled with restaurants, cafes, bars, retailers that define the neighborhood as a cool part of town. There is enough public transportation, grocery stores, and other amenities that it creates a walkable community (a rarity in North America).
The area has downsides, but it is doing well economically.
People walk a few blocks for groceries, to the bakery/cafe, or a restaurant. Other common businesses are pharmacies, drug stores, clothing (separately fashion, thrift, tailor, seamstress, etc), book stores, appliance stores, hardware stores (like Ace not Home Depot), etc.
Where it gets ugly is when the buildings get too big, either vertically or horizontally. I would argue that 5 over 1 is actually the sweet spot.
I like the design. In theory it offers convenience. Go downstairs for a bite, haircut, whatever...
The downside, when they're new, is the rent for the commercial floors is only affordable by mid to upper market merchants. 30 years hence, we could see "gentrification" where thin margin businesses can survive. Like, you can have a grocery store, but it'll be an expensive grocery store with higher mark-ups and fancier food. The coffee shop will be one with thoughtful art pieces and not recycled-trash-cum-art, etc.
Unnecessary requirement, the store in your building might not be relevant to you but chances are another nearby will be. In order to make this work you really need to reduce the restrictions.
It works really well. During the pandemic, everything I needed was within a couple blocks of me. I went so long without needing to drive that my car actually had issues afterwards.
Surprise, it's good for many things but bad for cars... intesting observation in times when many of us realize our environment is more friendly to cars than to people.
> They tend to be expensive real estate, and the landlords prefer national corporate chains, so you see lots of banks, realtors, cell phones stores etc.
If you require the retail space, this is probably a non-issue, because there's only so many national corporate chains that will want to open a store in a given area; if you have a LOT of 5-over-1s in a neighborhood, there should be enough space left over for independent stores too.
You'd think, but I've seen these stay vacant for years. Sometimes from the outside it looks like the developer is using the "retail" space as storage or a workshop.
Sometimes they seem to attract high end medical and beauty/spa businesses. There's nothing wrong with the businesses individually, but a glut of them isn't useful for the neighborhood (nobody needs eight cosmetic dentists). And replacing a strip of walk-in businesses (groceries, cafes, hardware stores, affordable clothing shops) you use regularly with mostly appointment-based services businesses you use occasionally if at all isn't great.
I feel like this is a problem mainly unique to America. It's just way too expensive to open and operate a small retail business there any more, so the only ones that survive are those corporate chains mentioned above (cellphone stores etc.) and the high-end businesses you mention. You just don't see walk-in businesses in most places because they're not economically viable any more. Here in Tokyo, it's completely different: those tiny, independent businesses are everywhere. I'm not completely sure on why this is, but part of it is probably the car dependency (causing things like minimum parking rules), but even in places where the business can ignore parking requirements, it seems rent and labor costs are way too high. Part of this might be from the terrible healthcare system and skyrocketing housing costs. Whatever the reasons, over here it seems to be quite common for people to open small shops and run them by themselves, and that's not something I see in America any more.
I'm aware it can happen, but there are ways to deal with vacant storefront space too. For example, if an area is booming and it's just a matter of landlords "holding out", you could have higher property taxes for vacant storefronts.
The economics of scale that result in WalMart displacing local grocers and local general stores are separate from the zoning policies that result in insufficient affordable retail space and affordable housing, but they're interdependent, creating something of a chicken-and-egg problem...
I live in an area like this and it's great. Off the top of my head, within half a kilometer of my apartment there's:
- 4 grocery stores, including a small turkish one
- a café
- 2 fast food places
- a nail studio
- 2 hair salons
- a school
- 3 bars (4 if you include an ice cream place that has bar nights in the winter sometimes)
- a tailor
- a smokeshop
I'm sure more that I don't frequent. My building itself doesn't have a shop at the bottom, but most buildings around me do. The only necessities that I have to go further at all for are a pharmacy and a hardware store, and they're not far.
I wouldn't say I live in the middle of the city either, kind of on the edge of the "high density" area. As in where I am there are only apartments and businesses but if you go 2 blocks further away from the city center there are also single-family homes. And they benefit from the amenities provided by us apartment-dwellers as well.
Oh yeah. Check the Mission Bay in San Francisco. Everything is walkable and very relevant to my life. I never drive to a grocery store, day care, coffee (3 - 4 places with excellent espresso), kid activities (there a bunch of places - music, soccer field, etc). In fact the first 4-5 years, until we had 2 kids we even didn't own a car - there was no need in SF ... and we enjoyed it a lot.
Now, with my second kid going to school (public) I have to drive (it's literally 1 mile). It has changed the whole schedule. That single drive! Annoys me as hell. It's hard to imagine how convenient it is when you don't have to drive anywhere, even school, day care, etc. This makes a huge difference.
Yup, but that's because, well, the public transit in NYC is just a lot better than almost every other US city (and, let's face it, has a higher proportion of "normal people" riding it).
part of the problem in the US is that the parents, and often times the wider public, give children much less credit than they are do.
children are learning but they are not dumb. They can generally recognize dangerous situations and exercise good judgment, and shocking crimes like stranger abduction are incredibly rare. they can, if services exist, go to the playground and the school unassisted, but unfortunately we now live in a society where even if you trust your kids, someone else might call child services on you.
My partner does this once a week. We have an electric kids scooter. She has to drive the smaller scooter attached to her own since there is no place at school to leave a bike or a scooter. So, works fine, but still quite tedious. Schools apparently are not designed for that, probably they don't want taking care, be responsible, etc, etc.
It can be done, it takes substantially more time with a kid + walking back. My partner is driving my kido using electric scooter - which works fine as well.
To clarify the first part for people who haven't visited yet. About half the neighborhood is some kind of UCSF special district and street parking is reserved. Even at night where I looked. The rest is parking meters and wide streets with needlessly forbidden parking.
These parking meters go wild with what electronic meters allow. The hourly cost changes depending on time of day and events (there are 3 very large event venues that could be served or could abuse this parking area) from perhaps 50 cents (truly cheap for a meter, except no free hours if I remember right) to over 10 dollars (eye watering). And there are no signs showing the current cost or cost schedule - you have to let each meter tell you. And most of these spaces are still full - There is certainly money to be extracted there.
Street parking in Mission Bay is a traumatizing experience :-)
This sort of construction is quite common for new builds in Poland. Usually there's convenience stores, small restaurants/cafes, private medicine practices on the ground floor.
There’s a great video by Wendover about how 5 over 1s are a way for corporate landlords to spend less to build worse apartments that they use to corner and consolidate the market. Then, once they stiffen competition, they skyrocket the rent prices.
> In 2012, Forte Living, an apartment complex in Melbourne, Australia, became the tallest plyscraper framed with CLT alone. The building has 10 stories and stands just over 32 m tall. The 759 CLT panels necessary for the project were manufactured in Austria using European spruce that was grown and harvested there.[31]
> The hotel’s not without any metal, though. Generators and heating/cooling units on the fifth and sixth floors are supported by a steel truss. There’s also concrete atop the hotel to minimize sway. But for the most part, the Wood Hotel is a marvel of white wood and forest aromas, like living in a life-sized doll house designed for the 2020s.
Obviously much, much less than a typical tall building though.
The Ascent MKE is a mass timber example completed in 2022. From Wikipedia:
> The 284-foot (87 meter), 25-story high-rise is the world's tallest mass timber structure, edging out Norway's Mjøstårnet. It features 259 luxury apartments, retail space, an elevated pool with operable window walls, and a sky-deck.
I'm still a bit fuzzy on the actual structure of these buildings. Based on descriptions in Wiki and elsewhere mentioning "cutting out holes for windows and doors" it makes it seem like the structure is not just the usual steel frame but with wood beams instead of steel, but there are instead perhaps full wall surfaces made of CLT which would participate in load bearing which I can see adding a lot more strength.
Fire safety, not the strength of wood framing, is what blocked this type of construction before. Effective sprinkler systems are what addressed that concern.
There remains a concern about fire safety during construction, before the sprinklers are activated. There have been serious fires and deaths of construction workers while these buildings were going up.
Strange how aesthetics consistently get the highest priority for architectural decisions. My understanding is the biggest real criticism of five over one designs is that as built most of the wood is not wood as most understand it, but various engineered wood products. These engineered wood products have many positive qualities, but are also highly vulnerable to fire and produce a great deal of toxic smoke when they burn. To me increased risk of unusually damaging fires is a far more serious problem than poor aesthetics. If taken seriously then it should be possible to address or even eliminate both the increased fire risk and aesthetic objections.
Trivia: I learned that these are called muffintop buildings here in the Pacific Northwest by contractors. Once moisture penetrates the building envelope on the wooden upper stories, they swell over the fixed concrete base.
Didn't you just describe how ever single wood-framed, concrete-foundation building is designed, regardless of whether it is a 5-over-1, a new-construction McMansion, or a 970's rambler?
Japan has heaps of this kind of moderate-high density. You notice they don't have heaps of high rises there, and I think this size of building is a great middle ground.
You get more vibrant street levels thanks to the commerce floor, and you can get much more comfortable housing than "commie blocks" or apartment high rises that get stuffed in the middle of unfavorable locations.
It's also not anti-family like some people seem to think it is. They are often bigger than units or apartments, and being close to the things you need is very pro-social.
Of course, nothing is more pro-family and just generally pro everyon, than affordable housing. The investment-real estate economy is a blight on many of our societies.
Yeah. They're everywhere around me (Greater Boston), but we really do need more housing in this country. These allow denser construction, without needing to build skyscrapers.
One of the issues, though not directly related to 5-over-1, is the inability (that I've seen) of cities to construct neighborhoods. Most places where these are going up are not "neighborhoods," even in places were urban neighborhoods are very natural, like Greater Boston. Instead, there is sometimes some attempt at a retail space on the bottom of these buildings, but the streets are too wide, not walkable enough, and the retail opportunities are not designed for corner shops/bodegas/other cheap places that help create a neighborhood.
I don't know how to create a neighborhood from whole cloth, but somebody has been thinking about it, I'm sure, and I wish cities would try to learn from their lessons.
It's always possible to go back and fix streets. Amsterdam used to be a car-dominated hellscape not totally dissimilar from American cities, it just got to be more walk and bike-friendly through heavy street/road renovations over the decades.
> but the streets are too wide, not walkable enough
Right, but this is fixable. You can always go and reduce the car/parking lane space and make the sidewalk wider and/or add a bike lane.
Presumably if Amsterdam was a "car-dominated hellscape" it was because cars were forcing themselves into a city that was designed for people and carts. Then they pushed back against the cars and returned it to being a people-centric city.
This is the opposite of a city that's designed for cars, and trying to turn it into a people city. Wide streets can get wide sidewalks planted with pretty trees, but that doesn't necessarily turn it into a "neighborhood" the way you might see in a city like Amsterdam.
> Presumably if Amsterdam was a "car-dominated hellscape" it was because cars were forcing themselves into a city that was designed for people and carts.
Your presumption is incorrect.
I mean, originally it wasn't designed for cars obviously, but eventually the streets were redesigned around cars, which caused it to become a car-dominated hellscape, yes. You can find a few transition photos here: https://exploring-and-observing-cities.org/2016/01/11/amster...
Compared to an average US city, it was probably still a bit more pedestrian-friendly even then, but nowhere close to as walk- and especially bike-friendly as it is now.
> Wide streets can get wide sidewalks planted with pretty trees, but that doesn't necessarily turn it into a "neighborhood" the way you might see in a city like Amsterdam.
Adding/having density and pedestrian- or bike-friendly design is exactly how you get neighborhoods like in Amsterdam.
I'm sorry, but your photos depict exactly what I am talking about. Those streets that the cars are crowding down are narrow (to an American) with barely enough room for two lanes of traffic. Cars are parked with two wheels on the sidewalk. And even in the "hellscape" era, every door was a different storefront.
The streets may have been "redesigned around cars," but the distance between the buildings remained the same. And the buildings were built for small-scale stores on the bottom. This is what makes it feel like a neighborhood.
The conversion back to a pedestrian/bike heaven was natural, because the size of the streets was made for exactly that.
Compare to a modern neighborhood built around 5-over-1s [1], [2]. The streets are 5x as wide -- often four lanes of traffic and two lanes of bike lanes. And the ground floor is often built for a single store, like a large clothing department store. There's no reason to walk down this street, except to get from point A to point B.
Even if you decided to eliminate cars, the streets simply wouldn't make sense as a pedestrian area. They're too big, too exposed. It would feel like walking in an industrial zone.
It's not strictly the way 5-over-1s are designed, it's the way the streets are designed, and the way commercial space is designed.
> The streets may have been "redesigned around cars," but the distance between the buildings remained the same. And the buildings were built for small-scale stores on the bottom. This is what makes it feel like a neighborhood.
Sure, but again, that's all fixable. You seem laser focused on "the streets are too wide" but that's not actually too hard to fix. You can reduce car lanes, make the sidewalk wider, add more greenery, add islands in the middle of the street like SLC*, you can allow street vendors in front of the buildings, there's all kinds of things you can do to make it feel more human scale if you want to.
The key here is that Amsterdam had become a car-dominated hellscape and then there was the political will in the Netherlands to reverse course and change. I'm sure you're right that it'd be harder in the US in some ways -- but on the other hand, the US is also richer than the Netherlands, we have more money around to spend on such things, if we really care.
I see these sorts of changes as complementary. Having more 5 over 1's tends to increase density and retail availability in a way that makes a place feel more like a neighborhood, and yeah you might also need some other changes depending on the city, but none of this is unfixable, and having the 5 over 1's and the road diets are solid steps towards having that neighborhood feel.
Hell, if you're building an entirely new building there, one thing you could do is literally just narrow the street, let the new building jut into what's currently the street there.
In the post-WW2 era up to the 70's. The 70's are when there was a big movement that initiated the social change back to being more walk/bike-friendly (though it took decades to get Dutch cities to where they are now): https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Transportation_Planning_Casebo...
A lot of smaller cities (including the one I live in) are addressing this by designating "activity centers" where new, denser housing is incentivized and sought to be concentrated. Zoning is changed so that, as things like aging strip malls are replaced, a new street grid is laid down over old superblocks.
There's only so much that planning and zoning can do (developers will only build and lenders will only lend for what's deemed profitable), and fully building out these neighborhoods will take decades. But lots of people are thinking about this and seeking ways to make it work. Municipalities have an incentive to get it right. Maintaining the tax base relies on attracting new residents, many of whom are seeking walkable urban(ish) neighborhoods.
I am involved on the design side and would personally not live in these. The rent is too high because it's calculated for the urban locale (typically) and the residents are too transient. How can you consider somewhere a "home" when it's a boring white plaster unit that you can't customize? How can you consider somewhere a "community" when its better described as "cells" not "homes"?
The people complaining about how these buildings look should compare to what a modern suburban subdivision looks like. Rows and rows of look-alike houses that cost vastly more than these apartments, taking over a much greater land area, and adding vastly more vehicle traffic.
Every single "iconic" architecture looked stale in its era.
They honestly look fine. They are unsettling to some because of how large they are. But that's because of two-staircase requirements which make it cost prohibitive to build small-scale walk-up apartments like they used to. The two-staircase rule was originally for fire safety but due to better fire resistant materials, it provides no measurable benefit anymore. So we should get rid of that rule and essentially legalize small footprint multi-family homes again.
Everyone complains about the aesthetics, and I feel it too, but I have no idea what they should do. The surface treatments on these buildings have a lot of variety and aesthetic interest, with many colors and textures. They often add other physical variety with outset and inset portions of the building. It's not uncommon to have different shapes at the roofline. I can't think of historical apartment buildings that are any more interesting or pleasant if you look at them objectively.
And yet... there is a kind of tedium to them. Some of that is just efficient use of space, they tend to go up in very rectangular blocks. Maybe that's just the inevitable reaction to the most common new structure of our time.
Before you accuse them of being slums, maybe take a look at the construction quality of your own recently-built single family home. It’s not like Ryan Homes are built to last.
5-over-1s are being built across the country because almost every metro area has high housing demand.
NIMBYs can’t seem to imagine someone choosing to live in a multi-family home. They’d rather the middle/lower middle/working class stay out of their town entirely and keep their inflated property values for their single family home.
Fun fact: one condo building generates the same/more property tax income than a square mile of single family homes.
So if you like low taxes in your city you’ll welcome 5-over-1s with open arms. Single family homes alone basically can’t sustain city coffers because they generate so little revenue per quantity of land, even lower than trailer parks.
5-over-1 are increasingly common and not the same thing as soft story buildings.
5-over-1 refers specifically to the wood construction of the top 5 floors. You can have a soft story building that is not built out of wood and even more vulnerable to earthquakes.
Looks like while some people agree with you, it's not the most common use.
> The name derives from the maximum permissible five floors of combustible construction (Type III or Type V) over a fire-resistive Type I podium of one floor for "5-over-1" or two floors for "5-over-2", as defined in the United States-based International Building Code (IBC) Section 510.2.[1][4] Some sources instead attribute the name to the wood framing of the upper construction; the International Building Code uses "Type V" to refer to non-fireproof structures, including those framed with dimensional lumber
It’s debated, but the prevailing belief is that it originated to refer to the number of stories. Hence you’ll also see “5-over-2” used fairy commonly as well.
The canonical "5 over 1" has a very solid concrete base. Hence the name.
From the article: "5-over-1 construction—so called because it frequently combines up to five floors of inexpensive wood-framed construction over a concrete podium—is popular primarily because it is a cost-effective means to build, especially here in timber-rich Oregon."
In addition to the sibling comment, the recent rise of 5-over-1s is largely attributable to the use of fire-retardant wood in order to comply with fire codes.
Most of the buildings of this style that are going up around me have steel framed first floors and wood above. The elevator and stair shafts are concrete block to help protect fire escape routes.
Not sure where you live, but in my own US city they went from non-existent (as far as I recall) 20 years ago to literally everywhere I go. There's probably 4 going up within 3 miles of my house right now. Maybe that has to do with more stringent firecodes. Only thing close are the row-houses where there's 3-5 units, narrow, 3 stories high with a roof deck (I don't know what they're called).
They have so many other advantages that they don't need to be attractive, and developers hate to pay for anything they don't need.
Also, this moment where they're breaking out and popping up like weeds to fill pent-up demand is an awkward moment, design-wise, because you need a lot of new designs quickly without a long history to look back on and draw from. Compare that to high-rise office buildings or single family homes, where you have a century and more of variations in countless different styles, where you have not only countless iconic examples but decades' worth of reaction to many of them. Some of the 5-over-1 buildings going up now will turn out to be iconic, style-defining precedents. Most will be trash, but will still serve the functional purpose.
Personally, I love seeing these go up near me. It means more housing supply and more businesses near me that cater to foot traffic, in the same package.