Abstract

Problem, research strategy, and findings

The width of street rights-of-way is normally determined by traffic engineering and urban design conventions, without considering the immense value of the underlying land. In this article, I develop an economic framework that can inform decisions on street width, and I use tax parcel data to quantify the widths, land areas, and land value of streets in 20 of the largest counties in the United States. Residential street rights-of-way in the urbanized portion of these counties average 55 ft wide, far greater than the functional minimum of 16 ft required for access. The land value of residential streets totals $959 billion in the urbanized portion of the 20-county sample. In most counties, subdivision regulations are binding. That is, few developers choose to build streets that are wider than code requirements, implying that softening requirements would mean more land devoted to housing and less to streets. Although I highlight the potential for narrower street rights-of-way, I did not consider detailed design issues. Nor did I analyze how any windfall from reduced land requirements would be divided among landowners, developers, and house purchasers.

Takeaway for practice

Particularly in places with high land values and housing costs, reallocating street rights-of-way to housing would increase economic efficiency. In the most expensive county in the data set—Santa Clara (CA)—narrowing the right-of-way to 16 ft would save more than $100,000 per housing unit through reduced land consumption. Where streets have little or no function for through traffic, the costs and benefits accrue almost exclusively to neighborhood residents. Thus, planners could reduce or even eliminate street width requirements in subdivision ordinances, leaving developers to make the trade-off between land for streets and land for housing.

中文翻译：

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住宅街道的宽度和价值

摘要

问题、研究策略和发现

街道通行权的宽度通常由交通工程和城市设计惯例决定，没有考虑底层土地的巨大价值。在本文中，我开发了一个可以为街道宽度决策提供信息的经济框架，并使用税地数据来量化美国 20 个最大县的街道宽度、土地面积和土地价值。这些县的城市化部分的住宅街道通行权平均 55 英尺宽，远大于通行所需的 16 英尺的功能最小值。在 20 个县样本的城市化部分，住宅街道的土地价值总计 9590 亿美元。在大多数县，细分法规具有约束力。也就是说，很少有开发商选择建造比代码要求更宽的街道，这意味着放宽要求将意味着更多的土地用于住房而更少的用于街道。虽然我强调了狭窄街道通行权的潜力，但我没有考虑详细的设计问题。我也没有分析土地需求减少带来的意外收获如何在土地所有者、开发商和购房者之间分配。

外卖练习

特别是在地价和住房成本较高的地方，将街道通行权重新分配给住房将提高经济效率。在数据集中最昂贵的县——圣克拉拉 (CA)——将通行权缩小到 16 英尺将通过减少土地消耗为每个住房单元节省超过 100,000 美元。在街道几乎没有或没有直通车功能的地方，成本和收益几乎完全由邻里居民承担。因此，规划者可以减少甚至取消细分条例中的街道宽度要求，让开发商在土地换街道和土地换住房之间进行权衡。