Towns, cities, architecture, transit, and street plans the way we used to build

 I want to describe two maps.

One map, produced by the programmer Vadim Graboys for his website DeapThoughts.com, shows every structure in San Francisco with the city’s current zoning code overlaid. The map reveals that one third of all structures now standing, and more than half of the city’s homes, would not be permitted under the current code.

The second map is the old D.C.-area rail and trolley system, fully defunct by the 1960s, which could once take you from Rockville to D.C. or from Alexandria to Bluemont.

What should we build? What we used to build, what we used to have. Despite the practical nature of the question, my suggestion cannot be taken or implemented strictly literally. Rebuilding old things, especially old transit networks, is expensive and difficult. Development patterns have shifted, and it was easier to build things outward in a time when much more land was a blank slate, at least compared to today.

But building like we used to build is the frame we should use. There is no need for elitism or academic jargon. Urbanism is about humility: the humility to realize that with a few important exceptions — race relations, technology — we already had this figured out more than a century ago.

Permitting the sort of buildings that are already standing in old American cities would be revolutionary under current public policy. Yet all it would really be doing is placing our legacy built environments back in continuity with themselves.

Any architect or builder today could raise up a standard building just like the thousands of historic buildings that populate our old cities and small towns. The advocacy group Strong Towns calls for a “swarm” of small, locally based developers. This would be more transformative than any urban-planning theory or movement.

So what concrete (pardon the pun) proposal could come out of this? One single mayor, in one single major American city, should actually do this. No “reformed” zoning code, overflowing with more favorable regulations but nearly as complicated as the old one. No years-long process of divining exactly how many stories or parking spots should be allowed in each type of district. One mayor in one city should “build” a regulatory environment as close as possible to what prevailed when we built the cities we now love, and then let the real builders start building.

Beyond that, I can’t answer “what should we build?” Nobody asked quite that question in the glory days of our cities. The answer is to restore intelligible rules with low barriers to entry. What should we build? Let’s find out.