Rise of the mid-rise
February 15, 2019 10:48 PM   Subscribe

Why America’s New Apartment Buildings All Look the Same TLDR: Because they're made of wood, which is cheap... but read on for more on the confluence of changing building codes, institutional investors, and a nationwide housing shortage...

"...Yes, the result can be a little repetitive, but repetition has been characteristic of every big new urban or suburban housing trend in the U.S. over the past century or two. There’s lots to like about stumpy buildings that provide new housing in places where it’s sorely needed and enliven neighborhoods in the process. A four-story Texas doughnut can get 50 or 60 apartments onto an acre of land, while the most aggressively engineered West Coast stick-and-concrete hybrid (two-story podiums are allowed now, along with other variations) can get almost 200. That’s not far from the range that the renowned urbanist Jane Jacobs deemed optimal for vital street life."
posted by latkes (48 comments total) 40 users marked this as a favorite
 
"HOP IN LOSERS cause we are going on a tour to see some examples of new multifamily construction from around the world. I realized during the *aLl nEw ApaRtmenTs loOK thE sAme* discourse yesterday, that the folder I've been keeping on my computer for the past year is prob helpful" (Twitter thread of exciting looking new multifamily housing, some of it social housing!)
posted by The Whelk at 10:57 PM on February 15, 2019 [21 favorites]


My personal two cents on the aesthetic: I don't love the 5 over 1 speaking generally, but I think aesthetics are not as important as a roof over people's heads. It would be cool if we totally restructured the way financing works for housing that seems to be the driver of this particular style, but we have to admit that a) we don't have enough houses right now and b) the current financing structure is what now exists. To change that, let's start with raising taxes. Not just on the rich, but on the middle class too - we should all be invested in paying for those most basic of human needs like housing. Anti-tax propaganda is the most insidious poison that supposed 'liberals' merrily perpetuated along with conservative cousins.

(My fantasy formula for the housing crisis: Upzone all the cities, build midrises all over them, and also massively re-investing in building public and social (mixed income public) housing, oh and rent control and tenant protections along with robust enforcement of anti-housing discrimination laws.)
posted by latkes at 11:27 PM on February 15, 2019 [12 favorites]


Fortunately still forbidden in NYC, where only a handful of wood-frame buildings survive. The article takes a rather cavalier attitude towards safety (or perhaps merely reports other people's cavalier attiude) and there appears to be no attention paid at all to how the configuration promotes or interferes with internal safety and external engagement with environs. (Compare to the recent thread on safety in public housing projects.)
posted by praemunire at 12:25 AM on February 16, 2019 [2 favorites]


(I should say, my mom lives in one of these. Although it's a relatively short distance to the main road, she has to drive the five minutes to the diner because there's no easy way to walk. And then the town is just subdivision/subdivision/apartment complex like hers/strip mall. I don't understand how anyone lives that way. More importantly, since she's not asking me to live that way, I'm very concerned about what happens as she gets older, more dependent, and unable to drive. I understand a stumpy needn't be built in that kind of location, but boy are they are often built there.)
posted by praemunire at 12:29 AM on February 16, 2019 [3 favorites]


They look more livable than the Eastern Block highrises (says person living in one), but I do wonder about flammability. A fire in a concrete prefab block like mine burns out one flat and fills the hallway with smoke, but at most smokes up windows in the flat above it.

Most new housing in Poland is still multifamily and prefab, but often shoddily built, especially regarding land settling and moisture issues in the underground garages. We do tend towards garish colours, and the pre-1990 highrises are now mostly painted like that too. Mind you, nothing on the lovely murals in Kiev.
posted by I claim sanctuary at 12:36 AM on February 16, 2019 [5 favorites]


cross-lamented timber is a good carbon-sink material and chars but does not burn, they're making skyscrapers out of it.


But I don't think these buildings are being made with CLT (although maybe they should be).
posted by The Whelk at 12:41 AM on February 16, 2019




The really important question here is "how will these look in a post apocalyptic hellscape?". Imagining zombies running through them or giant robots smashing them, I approve of these buildings.
posted by poe at 12:44 AM on February 16, 2019 [2 favorites]


I understand a stumpy needn't be built in that kind of location, but boy are they are often built there

I mean, I know these kinds of buildings well - cause I grew up in them. They'd drop down these multifamily doughnuts just off the highway, in-between other towns, surrounded by scrub forest and cater them to poor to low income families.

If you took a bird's eye view of the development, it would've been trivial to stitch the high school, the small commercial core, the movie theater, and the multifamily development into a walk-able, pretty parklike community - hell even run a trolley from big university town to the train stop with a stop in our area in the middle.

But no, that's not prioritizing car use, that's not punishing the poor, that's not cultivating a paranoid anti-community mindset, that's not short term profit over long term investment.

It's not enough to just have midrises, they can't end up as micro isolated towers surrounded by COurbsian lawns
posted by The Whelk at 12:51 AM on February 16, 2019 [37 favorites]


I wonder about the longevity of many modern buildings, I recently passed through an estate of houses I remember being built in the late 1990's. From the general condition they looked about 50 years old rather than 25.
As banks are starting to push 30 and 40 year long mortgages it seems entirely possible some of these new houses just won't last that long.
posted by Lanark at 2:49 AM on February 16, 2019 [4 favorites]


We have wood frame houses in the UK, and I think the bigger issue here is that they're not very resistant to damp, which we have a whole lot more of than fire. And there are a whole lot of landlords who really don't care if you're living in mold, my parents moved out of one house and when they moved the bookcases the entire wall was black with it.

Those Bolivian house are SO cool!
posted by stillnocturnal at 2:50 AM on February 16, 2019


I like these apartment buildings (more than I like seas of single-family homes), but mixed use should be the rule everywhere. Have daycare at the bottom of one building, a grocery at the bottom of the next, a cafe at the bottom of the next, and plenty of noncommercial public space. Connect them all together with sidewalks, bicycle paths, and public transportation. Use zoning to make sure developers don't build farther than X meters of safe sidewalks and bike paths from various daily human needs. Then play the Andy Griffith Show tune over loudspeakers from every corner.
posted by pracowity at 4:05 AM on February 16, 2019 [18 favorites]


The article talks about the fire danger inherent in wood frame construction, but that really needs to be the focus of its own article. We had a fire in an apartment complex near me in June 2015, and it was a fiasco. First of all, I live in an area where developers and “small-government conservatives” run the local government, so building codes aren’t very robust. Second, it was a retirement community for people aged 55 and up, so many residents had limited mobility. The fire began in the middle of the night, and the fire response plan the residents had been given was to shelter in place and wait for the fire department. That might have been reasonable if the structure had been built according to strict standards mandating fire walls and other measures to limit the spread of a fire, but that was not the case here and the entire structure was engulfed quickly. Amazingly only one resident died and another was thought to have died but was miraculously found in good shape in the ruins of her apartment several hours after the fire was put out. The death toll likely would have been higher but for a friend of mine who was spending the night with her nonagenarian parents. When the fire alarm went off and she smelled smoke, she ran through the building banging on doors telling people to get out, even though they had been told to shelter in place. Much of the story is in this longish article, a story of one bad decision after another by multiple parties. As if that wasn’t enough, the large corporation that built the apartments saved a few bucks on demolition costs by allowing the wrecking company to take any undamaged items in the apartment for themselves, as mentioned in this article. (My friend and her parents are mentioned at the beginning.) Not only furniture but family bibles, heirloom jewelry, and other irreplaceable items that survived the fire all vanished. The whole incident really exposes the mercenary attitude and cavalier approach to safety of at least one of the companies building these things. Video of the fire is here; imagine being told to stay in the building while it was happening.
posted by TedW at 4:17 AM on February 16, 2019 [23 favorites]


Aesthetically I think these buildings look fine. The main problem is location and use like praemunire, the Whelk and everyone else above mentioned. If they can be on a street, with commercial and parking beneath (rather than parking lots), that's much better. If greenspace can be nearby, even better. etc.

I've seen theses being built and always assumed they were framed with steel beams and metal studs, then interior and details maybe finished with some wood frame? Is that not the majority?

Few article nitpicks. Stick frame housing in the US is not balloon frame any more per se. It's more or less built floor by floor, sometimes with internal load bearing walls. Original balloon frame is an outside frame of multiple stories, with carrying joists spanning that for the second or third floor, or a carrying beam, hung, but carried by the outside balloon. Or, slightly older style would start with large timber beams in the corners first. These houses from the 19th C tend to be square and limited in size.

Wood frame houses are a bit easier to modify, and are slightly more adaptable to some settling and shifting in the ground. But they certainly are faster to build.

Modern fire codes and building methods for wood frame houses with plaster or gypsum board are pretty good for smaller detached houses. Not sure how that translates to these apartment buildings... maybe not so much it seems. You can get fire and mold resistant dimensional lumber now but it's uncommon.
posted by thefool at 4:27 AM on February 16, 2019 [8 favorites]


Maybe it's because I live in cities, but, like the buildings in pictured in the article, I think of this style of building as being in relatively walkable areas. (Okay, maybe not in Austin, where they're springing up along north Lamar. But see the Mueller development.) Very same-y same-y areas, sure, but more or less the sort of development that Metafilter generally fawns over. The contrast between this style and apartment complexes consisting of low-rise buildings surrounded by parking lots fenced off from the street is marked, as is the contrast in how the buildings are marketed and to whom. Seriously, if there's one word this style brings to mind for me, it's "gentrification". (I was deeply amused when, after many years of failing to lease the retail space in a such a building in my neighborhood in Minneapolis, they gave up and rented to a check cashing place.)
posted by hoyland at 4:56 AM on February 16, 2019 [12 favorites]


These type of apartment blocks have been popping up all over Pittsburgh for the last decade which has been interesting because there had been almost zero multi-family construction in the city for the previous thirty years or so. Previously if you wanted to rent an apartment here, you generally had the choice of either one in a pre-war building or one clumsily carved out of a big run-down victorian house and most of those choices were pretty bad. On the other hand, they were cheap. You could rent a two bedroom here for $500 in a walkable neighborhood but these new shiny buildings are renting for four times that. The old buildings didn't offer dog walking or swimming pools and such but they were easily affordable for working people.
posted by octothorpe at 5:37 AM on February 16, 2019 [3 favorites]


The term I've heard for this style is "developer chic".
posted by 7segment at 6:53 AM on February 16, 2019 [1 favorite]


The five-over buildings are stick framed, not crosslam or gluelam. Supposedly the sprinkler systems will handle any fire.
I heard they all look like this because that's what the apartment building tutorial in the CAD programs look like...
posted by the man of twists and turns at 7:00 AM on February 16, 2019 [17 favorites]


The weird thing to me is that at least locally office buildings aren't allowed to be stick-built even though apartments are. The complex where I work is a mix of offices, apartments, townhouses and some lack-luster retail and the residential parts are all wood frame while the offices and retail are all steel i-beam construction. It feels to me like fire is more likely to happen in residences than in tech offices but maybe it's just a weird artifact of historical building codes?
posted by octothorpe at 7:16 AM on February 16, 2019 [4 favorites]


hoyland, me too. Like octothorpe said, Pittsburgh has been getting tons of these where previously almost no multifamily had existed, and they are in some of the most gentrified, trendy, walkable areas. They're crazy expensive, but I assume that takes some of the pressure off the older units. Previously, if you wanted to rent at all here you were looking at a pre-war duplex or triplex, or a chopped up Victorian, be ye Google engineer or college undergrad or Target employee. Who do you think landlords were setting their price points towards? Now all the Googlers and CMU students from super wealthy families can get one of these $1500/month new construction units, hopefully leaving the older stock more available for those who can't afford the high end.
posted by soren_lorensen at 7:36 AM on February 16, 2019 [2 favorites]


My last apartment was in one of these buildings. It replaced some single-family homes that had been turned into businesses. People hate the new building, because it's kind of soulless and ugly, and the houses it replaced were cute and had personality. But it replaced three businesses and zero apartments with a building that houses three businesses and twenty apartments. When I lived there, I walked to work. The grocery store and farmer's market were across the street. I could walk to the library, check out a book, and walk back in 15 minutes. I was constantly being told that I lived in a yuppie building, but the people who said that lived in single-family homes with lawns and drove their cars everywhere. So yeah, the building was ugly and soulless, but it also contributed to urban density in a way that people claim to support but I don't think actually do.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 7:46 AM on February 16, 2019 [27 favorites]


Science says sprinkler systems put out fires, not fire departments. That's why sprinkler systems are now required on all new California homes. Fire departments mostly just make sure fires are contained to a single building. Also, statistically fire crews (stations) only respond to 1 fire per week, which includes car fires. Hence why like 30 cities worth of fire crews leave to help with wildfires.

Also they look the same because all new suburban houses look the same, but there somehow isn't a breathless article about that every few months.
posted by The_Vegetables at 7:59 AM on February 16, 2019 [7 favorites]


oh man, they thru up one of these next to a triple decker I used to live in. The aluminum siding was colored such that it looked like they painted gables on the side, complete with fake red window shutters and flat red grates pretending to be decks. Our apartment was covered in mint green vinyl siding with burn damage in the front from when someone set a car on fire, and was somehow still less of an eye soar.
posted by es_de_bah at 8:02 AM on February 16, 2019


Also, historically all urban buildings also looked the same, and they just bought stick-on steel accoutrements to make them look different. That's why Pittsburgh was 'steel town' - they made the stick-on steel designs there and shipped them by train. I think there have been a few front page posts about the makers.
posted by The_Vegetables at 8:03 AM on February 16, 2019


I owned a townhouse condo built in the '70s that was all brick and steel construction with no wood other than the doors and trim. It had steel studs and steel joists and even the second floor deck was cantilevered out on steel beams. I think that the complex was built as some kind of experiment/demo by the steel industry during their decline as an attempt to expand their market into small residential construction. Hanging pictures was a serious pain in the ass.
posted by octothorpe at 8:17 AM on February 16, 2019 [1 favorite]


These things are going up everywhere in the Bay Area too and they just look like depressing people warehouses to me.
posted by bleep at 8:23 AM on February 16, 2019 [1 favorite]


> I was deeply amused when, after many years of failing to lease the retail space in a such a building in my neighborhood in Minneapolis, they gave up and rented to a check cashing place

These buildings always seem to have trouble renting out their retail spaces, even in areas with low retail vacancy rates. I suspect they're budgeting so the retail is just additional profit on top of the residential, so they don't really mind waiting years for someone to sign a long term, high rent lease.
posted by smelendez at 8:35 AM on February 16, 2019 [5 favorites]


the fire response plan the residents had been given was to shelter in place and wait for the fire department

I just read this. That is crazy! The people who came up with that plan should all be charged with crimes. Even in cement dorms, part of the resident assistant's job is to make sure everyone leaves the building when the fire alarm goes off. Office buildings often have volunteers performing the same. The fire alarm means "get out", not "hang out until the fire department shows up".
posted by The_Vegetables at 8:37 AM on February 16, 2019 [2 favorites]


These buildings always seem to have trouble renting out their retail spaces, even in areas with low retail vacancy rates. I suspect they're budgeting so the retail is just additional profit on top of the residential, so they don't really mind waiting years for someone to sign a long term, high rent lease.

When there's a WHOLE LOT of tax credits available for mixed-use redevelopment, the sustainability of the retail units is seldom considered.
posted by mikelieman at 8:43 AM on February 16, 2019 [3 favorites]


Here's a YouTube ad for the complex across the street from my office*. This place is in a traditionally african-american neighborhood and sits on land that was the site of a city public middle-school until ten years ago but just try to find a non-white person in that video.

*No, I don't work for Google
posted by octothorpe at 8:46 AM on February 16, 2019


These buildings always seem to have trouble renting out their retail spaces, even in areas with low retail vacancy rates. I suspect they're budgeting so the retail is just additional profit on top of the residential, so they don't really mind waiting years for someone to sign a long term, high rent lease.

Often time the retail space is primarily a way to build more residential units. The local codes might allow X floors of residential space, but X+1 if there's commercial on the bottom, with the intention of incentivizing denser/mixed use developments.

But what can happen is exactly this. Our first apartment in the city where we live now was a new construction, with retail space on the first floor. The location was very close to downtown, but not really any place where you'd get foot traffic due to the topography. This was nearly three years ago now, and I think maybe one commercial space out of five or six has been rented out.
posted by damayanti at 8:47 AM on February 16, 2019


Here's what it looks like when one of these catches fire while it's still under construction.

Although that early news report describes the rescued crane operator as having "minor injuries" he actually turned out to have very severe burns (2nd degree burns on over 50% of his body) and was so shaken by the experience that he announced he would not be returning to his field when he recovered.

Surrounding homes, a hotel and a veterans retirement facility were fire damaged or fully destroyed leaving over 60 people homeless.
posted by Secret Sparrow at 8:50 AM on February 16, 2019 [1 favorite]


It feels to me like fire is more likely to happen in residences than in tech offices but maybe it's just a weird artifact of historical building codes?

Wouldn't the consequences of a commercial-structure fire be way more severe than a residential fire just because an office has way more people/m2 than a residence?
posted by GCU Sweet and Full of Grace at 8:51 AM on February 16, 2019 [1 favorite]


Re: empty ground level retail in these, I'm eager to see how Oakland's new vacancy tax, which applies to retail as well as residential, will impact this problem. Rents are on the rise for urban businesses too, so it's maddening to see some sitting empty.
posted by latkes at 8:54 AM on February 16, 2019 [8 favorites]


Where I live, there are major tax incentives to include retail in the building, rather than having it all residential. I think it might be worth it from a tax perspective even if all the retail spaces weren't consistently full. Having said that, there are three retail spaces in the building I lived in, and two of them have been occupied by the same businesses since the building opened in 2014. One of them is a hair salon, and the other is a fast-food place, part of a small chain. The third space has struggled a bit: it was empty for almost a year, and then it was occupied by a brewpub that ultimately failed. (Living directly above a brewery was interesting, although I got used to the smell.) It's currently a bar, which seems to be doing ok. I actually think that having a bar there is a really good addition to the neighborhood, which isn't true in many neighborhoods. There aren't a lot of places in the neighborhood to hang out with friends, and the brewpub and the bar were both kind of chill, non-raucous bars that were good for that. I appreciated it from an eyes-on-the-street perspective: the brewpub had outdoor seating, and it meant that there were people around when I walked home after dark, in an area that might otherwise have been pretty deserted.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 9:01 AM on February 16, 2019 [6 favorites]


I've seen plenty of buildings like this go up in Chicago, and none of them were stick framed, so I'm not convinced the framing material has much to do with the form. Zoning and tax codes have a hell of a lot more to do with it IMHO and an investigation of that would have made for a more interesting article.
posted by aramaic at 9:07 AM on February 16, 2019 [2 favorites]


I wonder about the longevity of many modern buildings

For reasons of work I'm staying in one of these apartment buildings right now; it's the exact type they describe, retail/office spaces below and apartments above. It's a million times better than the shitty old apartments I've lived in at various times where you could hear every footstep above and the heat didn't work. But it also doesn't feel like a building that will have a really long life without a tremendous amount of maintenance -- everything is clearly built to an exact pricepoint; it's not going to be one of those beloved old buildings with lots of character that people will treasure.

At least around here, they are all stick-built, but using prefabricated pieces. Trucks come loaded with a variety of wall panels and they pop it all up kind of like a lego kit. It's amazing to see how fast they can go from having the concrete base done to having the building framed and roofed.
posted by Dip Flash at 9:54 AM on February 16, 2019 [3 favorites]


They built one of these across the street from the circa 1906 wooden three story apartment building where I live in Portland (talk about a fire hazard. How is it even standing?).

The new building seems fine, though, yes, the ground floor retail has been vacant these many months despite being in a vibrant night life area. “Coming soon,” threatens a sign bearing the name of an upscale froyo chain.

It replaced a one story bar/restaurant and parking lot and an adjacent vacant lot. This is the kind of building we’ve seen as infill in Portland, and I agree with those who see this style of architecture and think “gentrified”.
posted by chrchr at 9:55 AM on February 16, 2019 [1 favorite]


Slightly tangential, but all this talk about fire and new construction is relevant to my recent interests.

Having recently built a third story addition to a building erected in 1761, sprinklers and rockwool insulation and double-layer gypsum are all great for your fire rating, but here in Philadelphia, a dude with a red beard being driven around in a 2012 Cadillac has spent at least the last month or two going around to new construction and stealing the Fire Department Connector off all the newly constructed buildings. I caught the guy on camera and after reporting it to police, chased down additional leads on Reddit and Facebook.

This ended up turning into a story on the local Fox affiliate, who drove around and knocked on doors, and most of the businesses they spoke to didn't realize the sprinkler connection had been stolen until the news van turned up. Stupid thing costs $400 to replace (well below the $1000 deductible). So now, dozens of newer multistory buildings in the older neighborhoods of Philadelphia have completely useless sprinkler systems until this gets fixed.

Anyway, when working with an architect, he suggested those awful cement panels for the third floor (the first two floors have brick facades) and I put my money where my mouth was, asking for brick. Ended up with brick facade - tiles, essentially - takes up less space, has better insulation. It also delayed construction by almost five months, between me running out of money, and the unpredictability of last year's winter. The cost of cladding on buildings is nuts.
posted by Leviathant at 10:06 AM on February 16, 2019 [5 favorites]


In the past year and a half, I spent 3 months living in Spain and 7 months in Santa Monica / LA and every day I was reminded of just how fucking ugly Toronto is. New buildings everywhere and 95% of them shit-brown or killer-beige. And if you can look past the miserable coloring you'll be met with boring architecture.

Oliva, Spain, a town I lived in for 80+ days, with a population of 26K people, has considerably more dynamic homes and buildings than Toronto. Every block had something worth photographing and it made me so aware of just how much my surroundings for 50 years has contributed to my miserable mood.
posted by dobbs at 10:06 AM on February 16, 2019 [1 favorite]


One of these went up in spectacular flames here in SLC while it was being built. It was arson, but it made for a massive fireball since it was just framing and floors with no sprinklers. Like all other cities, they're becoming the standard infill around town as it doesn't take much space to plop one down and you get housing units where there was a big box lot or something else wasteful. They're not winning awards, but they are doing a great job of putting bodies in urban spaces where there were none before.
posted by msbutah at 10:31 AM on February 16, 2019 [3 favorites]


I looked at buying a flat in one of the buildings from The Whelk's link at the top of this thread.. what a weird small world.
posted by thedaniel at 11:15 AM on February 16, 2019


They are indeed bland, but I can't get that worked up about the form. Dense urban brownfield infill with retail included is exactly what is needed, and most mass residential architecture has always been bland.

What does freak me out is the fact that they are torches waiting to burn. Yes, maybe initially the gypsum and sprinklers and so on keeps them at an acceptable level of danger, but what happens in 20 years, when the sprinklers stop being maintained? When firebreak walls get hacked through to join up spaces? Hell, from Leviathant's story, not even in 20 years but right now you have these buildings that are firetraps that could make Grenfell Tower look nice.
posted by tavella at 12:15 PM on February 16, 2019 [6 favorites]


Another example of the way they go up, the Santana Row fire here in San Jose.
posted by tavella at 2:35 PM on February 16, 2019


The term I've heard for this style is "developer chic".

I've heard it referred to as the "Chipotle School" of architecture, which has become my preferred term.
posted by MrBadExample at 2:46 PM on February 16, 2019 [5 favorites]


“Yes, I know guac low-U glazing is extra”
posted by a halcyon day at 6:01 PM on February 16, 2019


Yes, the fire marshal needs to have a talk with the pro-shelter in place management. That policy killed hundreds of people in WTC South.
posted by RobotVoodooPower at 7:03 AM on February 18, 2019


This article was interesting but kinda missed the mark for me. Building safety code does shape architectural design, but if there's an issue with fire, then it needs to be remedied by building science, not by lamenting a building type. The solutions may or may not have a big impact on building form. The 5 over 1 (or 5 over 2) building type is a good explanation for why you don't see a lot of 9-story buildings even where zoning allows it, not for why the buildings look the same.

"HOP IN LOSERS cause we are going on a tour to see some examples of new multifamily construction from around the world. I realized during the *aLl nEw ApaRtmenTs loOK thE sAme* discourse yesterday, that the folder I've been keeping on my computer for the past year is prob helpful"

I was glad to see this, but as a city planner, it was a real muddle. Sure, those buildings have different colors and massing. But some would be good for the streetscape (it's the first pic on both those tweets), and some would be bad (that yellow-ish brown one with practically zero windows on the ground floor, probably because that's parking).
posted by slidell at 7:57 AM on February 18, 2019 [1 favorite]


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