Can Infill Development Save Cities?

Vacant lots and underused parking lots can be redeveloped into housing, offices, shopping and more. When that happens, the environmental and social benefits are immense. This video is all about the policies that can make infill development possible.

Resources on this topic:

This video was produced with the California Strategic Growth Council.

Produced by Dave Amos and the fine folks at Nebula Studios.
Written by Dave Amos and Sully Israel in consultation with the SGC.
Select images and video from Getty Images.
Black Lives Matter.
Trans rights.

[CityBeautiful]

Nebula folks -- this is a special collaboration outside of my normal posting schedule, so there is no Nebula First video on Nebula. Don't worry, next week we should have a new First video.

[serbkebab]

Worth mentioning the "heat island effect". All that asphalt from parking lots traps heat and causes the local environment to be much hotter than if covered by grass, for example.

[kkkk-wgje]

This is one of those “well, duh” plans that most citys somehow struggle to implement.

[Jarekthegamingdragon]

Here in Portland, there's a neighborhood called Lents. In the last 10 years, they tore down a crappy strip club and used the empty lot across the street to build up high rise apartments with shops on the bottom floor. They did this for that entire area without displacing any one. That neighborhood went from being referred to as felony flats to being a desirable neighborhood with a good amount of low income housing. The difference is insane. It feels like a mini downtown now and people actually WANT to be there. There's a real community feel. These changes need to happen.
Edit: No, I do not care if you're going to leave some stupid snarky comment about Portland while you live across the country and have never been here before. Locals know the city, you don't. We do not care what you have to say.

[Lysander]

It is also harder for NIMBY types to claim that a parking lot or vacant lot is a vital part of local culture or a historic location.

[statelyelms]

My small city's doing a lot of infill. A brand new provincial courthouse is already going up on, and a new Performing Arts centre is being planned to be built on, a large parking lot just adjacent to the downtown. They also took some parking away from the large surface parking lot to build a skatepark, and took some more from the smaller one to renovate the city square.. and then several empty lots used as parking "temporarily" have actually been turned around and turned into office buildings, planned mixed-use buildings, large apartment buildings with ground floor uses etc.. and this is a very small city, and only within the last few years! We're doing better!

[Westlander]

It’s definitely worked for us here in Tucson. 15 years ago, our downtown was completely dead. Just a bunch of empty parking lots and disused buildings. Thanks to infill and a big investment push from the city, it’s thriving again. Lots of new housing, hotels, restaurants, bars, clubs, etc. If you go there on a weekend especially, it’s packed with people. Infill can be an amazing thing when done right.

[barryrobbins]

So many apartment complexes are basically parking lots with apartments in the middle. If residents had better transportation options, they could reduce parking to make complexes look more like park.

[pluey]

My small city in NE Ohio is currently using parking lots to build mixed-use buildings and a hotel downtown. I’m proud of my city for that

[simonkemfors]

Infill development along a local bike path has made it feel safer. Biking along parking lots, empty lots, and low density industrial at night is spooky, man. Now, there are always people around if anything happens. I guess that's not very profound, but just something I have thought about when going through there

[spybloom]

There's a plan for infill in my Green Bay suburb that'll take over the space where a Shopko used to be. I'm so excited for if it actually happens, because the proposed plan would take out the big department store and parking lot and create a new walkable and mixed-use area right next to downtown

[MechanicWolf]

In Dallas Texas I often pass through a row of new apartment buildings that have been built in replacement of warehouses and parking lots, they are amazing to pass by and serve to increase the value of the area by a ton, they look so modern and shiny despite being affordable

[SaveMoneySavethePlanet]

I love that your argument basically boils down to “infill development saves us money and reduces our emissions.”

I’m a pretty big fan of that type of argument 😊

[unknownfascio]

I looked at my city's downtown on google maps and saw that 40% of the land use was either vacant lots or parking lots. Not to mention that 1/4th of all buildings were permanently closed.
if infill development can improve my city financially then we should try it. I'm tired of being poor.

[swrieden]

Glad to see plenty of San Diego clips in this video. The city has gone all in on urban infill over the past decade, especially in Mission Valley along a light rail line. They've built a large development called Civita on a ridge and old quarry, a golf course is being converted, a blighted area called Grantville is replacing used car dealerships with 6-8 story apartments, and the old Chargers stadium was demolished and downsized with the excess parking planned as college housing and a SDSU campus extension. I love to see it.

[tylerjames]

I work at a community organization (Milwaukee) and yesterday we were literally just talking about this. Thanks for the video!

[JesusManera]

As an Australian who has travelled around most of the US many times, it always shocked me how much "wasted space" was in so many American cities. Where I'm from, you would just never, ever see a vacant block in the inner city (other than active construction sites). They're just too valuable. You would also never see a block of surface parking close to the inner city. And this is Australia we're talking about too - not Europe - hardly a beacon of urbanism by global standards. But every bit of potential value is almost always extracted from every piece of inner city land here, and it's hard to fathom that not being the case, which is why my US travels were so eye-opening.

[somberparty]

City of South Bend, IN is implementing a bunch of these policies, they're approving large development on empty lots and requiring a percentage be affordable housing, but they're also incentivising infill between homes by updating zoning, providing pre-approved architectural plans, and even subsidizing the cost of water & sewer hookup. They're also working with local banks to encourage loans to build these homes to offset the gap between build costs and appraisal values.

[bearcubdaycare]

Researching my family's genealogy, I've noticed that most lived in single family homes, or sometimes townhouses/rowhouses. The difference for the single family homes was the reduced setbacks, particularly on the sides. Even just this facilitates a much more walkable community. Many cities are dense enough for good transit even with this, and many people prefer single family, or maybe townhouse, at least once they have children. I think that urbanists would benefit from avoiding falling in the Borg cube around train station mentality, as the only solution. Mid rise around a transit stop can be popular with young adults without children yet, or with young children, and could be with retirees I think, but dense walkable single family neighborhoods can be more of interest for others. And still perfectly compatible with walkable neighborhoods and transit.

[tHebUm]

A bright spot to improving our cities thanks to our long poor policy around parking lots.