Tag Archives: Australia

Something out of nothing

Here’s an intriguing strategy for revitalizing moribund downtowns that doesn’t cost anything and bypasses political machinations:  renew3 It’s called “Renew,” and it was first employed in the decaying Australian city of Newcastle several years ago — with notable success.

The basic idea is to install artists or craftspeople in vacant storefronts and let them work, market, or exhibit in exchange for their paying the utility bills. renew1 In other words, let them dress the places up and draw people in… until the spaces are commercially leased, at which point the artisans have 30 days to vacate. A nonprofit organization facilitates these pop-ups.

Renew Newcastle spread to other cities, gave rise to Renew Australia, and was the subject of an article in The New Republic earlier this month, “Hacking the City: A New Model for Urban Renewal.” There’s no reason, the article suggests, why “Renew” couldn’t work in American cities, and not just big ones. Renew’s creator, Marcus Westbury, offers an aphorism – “Activity creates activity, and decay creates decay” — that would seem to apply anywhere. Even in small-town Vermont, where vacant storefronts are a common sight in many municipal centers — St. Johnsbury or Barre, Springfield or Rutland. Eastern Avenue in St. Johnsbury, for example, has a stretch of empty, eye-averting properties that could theoretically — with a Renew-style makeover — become a destination.

What does any of this have to do with housing? A downtown commercial/cultural revival might produce a hub of burgeoning activity where all sorts of people might want to live, thus drawing housing developers to a municipality they might otherwise be inclined to avoid.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6n0ADYyy28w

And you thought things were bad here!

Now and then it’s nice to get an international perspective even on the most domestic of concerns, like housing. Poking around for comparisons, we stumbled across the “11th Annual Demographia International Housing Affordability Survey: 2015.” This is an interesting document, but rather limited:

  • The domain is restricted to six Anglophone countries,  plus Japan, Singapore and Hong Kong.
  • The “affordability” measure reflects home prices, not rental rates. That measure, the “median multiple,” is the median house price divided by gross annual household income. A median multiple of 3.0 or below is deemed “affordable”; 3.0 to 5.0, “moderately affordable”; and above that, least affordable.”

Anyway, the United States comes off pretty well among this selective international contingent, with an average multiple of 3.4. Canada (3.9), Japan (4.4), Singapore and the U.K. (5.0) are all higher, as are New Zealand (5.2), Australia (5.5) and Hong Kong (17.0). Ireland comes in at most affordable, at 3.0

(Hong Kong’s figure is astounding, but we suspect it’s not uniquely high, world-wide, and we look forward to future surveys that include the likes of Qatar and Luanda, Angola.)

hongkong2

Here’s the survey’s summary of 378 “major markets”:

 Housing Affordability Ratings by Nation: All Markets
 

Nation

Affordable (3.0 &

Under)

Moderately Unaffordable (3.1-4.0) Seriously Unaffordable (4.1-5.0) Severely Unaffordable (5.1 & Over)  

Total

 

Median Market

 

 

Australia 2 1 15 33 51 5.5
Canada 5 16 9 5 35 3.9
China (Hong Kong) 0 0 0 1 1 17.0
Ireland 3 1 1 0 5 3.0
Japan 0 1 1 0 2 4.4
New Zealand 0 0 3 5 8 5.2
Singapore 0 0 1 0 1 5.0
United Kingdom 0 3 14 16 33 5.0
United States 88 97 32 25 242 3.4
TOTAL 98 119 76 85 378 3.8

As usual, major market” data exclude Vermont. Vermont’s “median multiple,” by our rough calculation using numbers from Vermont Housing Data, hovers around 4.0 (3.7, based on adjusted family income, and 4.2 based on household income).

By this measure, we’re considerably less affordable than cities in the western hinterlands:

 Affordable Major Metropolitan Markets
Rank Nation Metropolitan Market Median Multiple
1 U.S. Detroit, MI 2.1
2 U.S. Rochester, NY 2.4
3 U.S. Buffalo, NY 2.6
3 U.S. Cleveland, OH 2.6
5 U.S. Cincinnati, OH-KY-IN 2.7
5 U.S. Grand Rapids, MI 2.7
5 U.S. Pittsburgh, PA 2.7
5 U.S. Saint Louis, MO-IL 2.7
9 U.S. Atlanta, GA 2.9
9 U.S. Indianapolis, IN 2.9
9 U.S. Kansas City, MO-KS 2.9
9 U.S. Louisville, KY-IN 2.9
13 U.S. Columbus, OH 3.0
13 U.S. Oklahoma City, OK 3.0

We do have plenty of license for Schadenfreude, however, when we look at these places:

 

 10 Least Affordable Major Metropolitan Markets
Rank: Affordability
Least Rank (Out of Median
Affordable 86) Nation Metropolitan Market Multiple
1 86 China Hong Kong 17.0
2 85 Canada Vancouver, BC 10.6
3 84 Australia Sydney, NSW 9.8
4 82 U.S. San Francisco, CA 9.2
4 82 U.S. San Jose, CA 9.2
6 81 Australia Melbourne, VIC 8.7
7 80 U.K. London (GLA) 8.5
8 79 U.S. San Diego, CA 8.3
9 78 N.Z. Auckland 8.2
10 77 U.S. Los Angeles, CA 8.0

 

According to the survey, the median multiple in most of these countries remained in the manageable 3.0-plus range for many years until rural-to-urban migration ran up against land-use restrictions (“urban containment polices”) that drove up prices and made housing unaffordable for middle-income people as well as the poor. The survey’s authors argue that urban containment policies — “smart growth” would be one example — unduly limit housing development on the urban “fringe.”

Hmmm. Are they saying that sprawl is the price of affordability?