The Urbanist Myth That Just Won’t Die

This is the urbanist myth that just won’t die: the one very mistaken idea about housing and density held by a lot of well-meaning urbanists who we agree with on most other topics. We’re talking about the belief that roughly five storeys maximum is a universal “optimal” or “ideal” building height. This idea comes in large part from Danish designer and architect Jan Gehl, voted the second most influential urbanist in modern history, after Jane Jacobs. In his book Cities for People, he argued that taller buildings are out of scale with the human experience. “Above the fifth floor, offices and housing should logically be the province of the air-traffic authorities [...] they no longer belong to the city”, he claims.

Keep Urbanity rolling:

For professional inquiries, please send us a message on Instagram or Twitter. Note that we may not be able to respond to all messages.

References:

[Alanch]

I don’t understand why the conclusion he gives is “make buildings short” rather than “make the first five floors of a building more livable”? When I visited Mexico City I was in love with how, instead of fully bringing down old houses, they would repurpose them to be the first few floors of towers, so at street level you are still seeing friendlier architecture while also allowing for higher density. It’s another reason why I always like buildings that have supermarkets and cafes and restaurants (so multi function) - they allow for those interactions

[JesusChrist-qssx]

Glad this channel doesn't just forget that housing everyone is the first and primary goal of any urban planner.

[BrokenCurtain]

In one of the European cities where I used to live, there was a street in the city's centre that was dark, cold, gloomy, always windy and dominated by a tall concrete building block from the 1950s.

What the city did then was to make the street less wide by removing space for cars. That allowed for the construction of narrow, three to five story high fronts that were put directly in front of the brutalist monstrosity.

The end result was a really nice alleyway filled with small shops that connected the pedestrian zone on one side with a school, theater and public park on the other side.

[matthewconstantine]

As someone who's lived on the first floor of a three story building in an exclusively residential development for the last 15 years, I can tell you that ain't no picnic either. I feel super disconnected from my neighborhood, because I always have to keep my blinds closed, or else everyone walking by is just looking at me doing whatever I'm doing. Heck, the windows on one side of my place are at the exact level of the parking spots there, so whenever anyone pulls in or out, their headlights blaze through my dining room. It sucks. I think it would be much better if we had good exterior design, like parklets, any retail/restaurants at all, or just somewhere to interact with neighbors who were doing anything other than going from their front doors to their cars. I'd be fine living on the 6th or 8th floor, if I could leave my building and be in a vibrant neighborhood of shops, parks, and people.
I also agree with you about the weird idea of balconies, or what have you, keeping you connected to the neighborhood. We have much longer seasons of "good" weather here in the Washington DC region, and I almost never see anyone out on their balconies or patios. I walk through my development frequently, and if I've seen 10 people out on their porch/balcony in the last 15 years, I'd be shocked. There's a really nice new development I pass by all the time that has gorgeous, spacious balconies, and in the 4 years since it was completed, I think I've seen maybe two people sitting outside, and they weren't chatting with anyone on the ground.

[abdullahrizwan]

I like the fact that you constantly emphasize that ensuring enough people have acesss to housing is more important than the design principles. Although, I do wish that modern developers made tall buildings nicer.

[kyee]

Honestly, I think tall buildings are fine. I do prefer however any buildings from 1-10 stories. But having some high rise stuff to prioritize space in the downtown areas is perfectly fine.

[Whatshisname]

As an engineer my only issue with height has been how much space you need to sacrifice for stairwells and lift shafts the higher up you go. These are necessary to deal with resident traffic and emergency service access. They reduce floor space and add cost to the point where then can make high rise buildings less economically viable. It’s why optimum heights from a fire safety point of view tend to be 6-9 stories. Beyond that, you have to start adding more width to stairwells, bigger/more lifts etc.

That said I wouldn’t sacrifice a potential housing solution due to a single assumed design principle. Sacrificing housing need because of an assumed community benefit is like throwing the baby out with the bath water.

[theuncalledfor]

I vastly prefer varied environments over uniform ones. A mix of building heights is ideal. I love visiting cities with high rises, and sleepy little villages. If any one specific level of density overtakes every other and every city/town/village looks samey, that is my idea of hell, no matter how nice the overall design is. This is part of why American suburbia is so abhorrent to me.

[KatharineOsborne]

When I lived in Waikiki I lived on the 30th floor of a 44 storey building. I could keep my blinds open all the time, didn't have to listen to street noise, had fantastic ocean views, and had a great overview of everything in the neighbourhood. The downside was that I lived in an illegally partitioned apartment without a kitchen, and there was a HOA that all the tenants couldn't participate in (just for the landlord owners). Eventually there was a bedbug problem in the entire building that did not get addressed because everyone dealing with it was a tenant and the landlords were doing nothing (they would all have to work together at once to rid the building of it). The problem was not due to it being a tall building, it was due to how the building was owned and managed.

[fernbedek]

A) Remembering visiting Sweden and it being dominated by historic 6 storey buildings. 😆
B) The inability to identify people easily when you’re 8+ floors up is good, actually? It gives privacy and anonymity. People like some privacy.

[UrdnotChuckles]

I live in a 2-story townhouse. People don't talk to one-another from balconies or windows. Heck, they barely talk to one-another at all, and if they do it is usually at ground level on the walking paths. Honestly I think I'd prefer living in a high rise again, if only for the concrete and steel construction and ideally better noise dampening. Not being smoked out by my neighbours 24/7 would also be a plus. :)

[zilfondel]

The five-story maximum building height that you see throughout historic cities, particularly in Europe is due to the technological constraints as well as the limitation of building a multi-story building without elevators. The fact is that you need much thicker load-bearing walls to support a taller building without steel construction. Additionally, people find it harder to walk up more than five stories upstairs to access their apartments or offices.

[trainluvr]

My 11th floor apartment provides all day sun light and an expansive view to the horizon as well as a sense of place by keeping well known landmarks in view. There are lots of coming and goings from the 100 apartments enabling interactions. Its damn quiet up here as well, and all these factors well balance the daily grind of the urban worker packed into trains, exposed to traffic hell, laboring indoors.

[LucasDimoveo]

I personally prefer tall buildings, but I grew up in NYC. I never understood the opposition to it

[phillipshorter]

There is a practical reason to consider that most buildings should be below 6-7 storeys or so in height though, and it has nothing to do with connection to the street. Above this height (exact figure depends on a lot of local variables including mains water pressure, specific storey height, etc) the per square meter/ per square foot cost of building begins to climb again (having dropped with each extra floor added above the second). This is due to the need to include additional machinery to provide normal services and serviceability at these heights. Now it's not as though it's hard to do this, or even that it's expensive, but it does provide a sort of natural division between mid-rise designs which do not normally require such additional infrastructure and true high rise designs which normally will require it. In short whatever this boundary is for a given area it's not normally worth exceeding it unless you are going to do so by a number of storeys in order to help offset costs, so it creates a logical level to set your local planning laws and definitions around.

[kaitlyn__L]

A great example of the difference between good and bad ground-never design is those pre-fab Soviet blocks.

The identical ones with poor communal spaces were purportedly depressing and unpopular. But the ones made after the 60s are still highly rated today versus brand new developments, because they made each building unique (despite being made of prefab parts) and had large plazas leading to the subway. Many such residents complained about new developments not considering equitable sunlight access or green spaces anymore.

[TheRealE.B.]

I think that 5-6 stories is a good rule of thumb for modestly sized cities. Being able to interact with the street is nice, but I think that the bigger factor is that buildings that are too tall start to discourage you from leaving your apartment or desk because going down to street level starts to become a trip in itself. The other point it has in its favor is that, since it's both politically and practically easier to build than a tower, faster deployment could make up for smaller size in terms of "housing more people". No artsy-fartsy architect mumbo jumbo justification required.

With that being said, there is definitely a point when the need for density in a big city starts to outweigh other factors.

[damnjustassignmeone]

After living in NYC for 15 years, I appreciate pragmatism in urban design over theory/principles that don’t do well when they meet reality.

[MrsBifflechips]

What's wrong with being at bird-level? Lateral views of geese and crows is pretty fun.

I love my concrete box in the sky. It fits a lot of good points that you brought up, like proximity to transit. I also love how much of the landscape and sky I can see. And I'm a bit of a recluse so greeting people from my balcony is not a priority for me. But I also recognize that a concrete box in the sky is not the right choice for everyone.

[yyuxzfr]

I think the difference between Greenwich Village and Midtown is that one feels like a neighborhood and one feels like a business/tourist district.