international real etate
TRANSCRIPT
Chapter One: International Real Estate
1.1 Introduction
The term international real estate is a relatively new phenomenon, which implies a
post-Globalization real estate, or property sector. The term encompasses real
property development and sales/leasing transactions between nations; and the
enormous amount of legal, design, urban planning, engineering, financing, and
construction work that follows from developmental transactions. International real
estate is, by definition, influenced by fluctuating market value in various sectors
between counties, as can be evidenced by the 2008 global credit crisis.
International real estate is best subdivided into two categories: commercial and
residential.
International commercial real estate has been a natural consequence of business'
evolution toward multi-national business operations. Often, International
commercial real estate transactions require the formation of corporations used to
purchase or lease real estate, when freehold ownership is not permitted.
International real estate, as it involves the purchase and sale of international
residential real estate, is often limited to the "luxury" sector of the real estate
market, usually defined as the top 10% of sales prices in a given market. This is
because international home purchases are usually buyers' second homes, although
market share exists in "affordable luxury" holiday homes. Within the international
residential real estate sector, great emphasis is placed on property marketing.
International real estate may have been aided by modern media such as internet or
international media, as it catalysed globalization and aided in the communications
necessary for transactions to take place. It is not true that international real estate
did not exist before the World Wide Web, but it is certainly true that it was not as
effective and accessible as it is nowadays.
International real estate is one of the most dynamic branches of real estate
encompassing experts from many different fields, including law, civil engineering
and construction planning. Its main aims include infrastructural development and
augmentation of the tourist industry.
The recent construction of international real estate directories and forums in which
the interested parties can communicate and exchange information has been a major
breakthrough resulting in major development in the field.
1.2 Avimor
Avimor is an 840-acre (3.4 km2) master-planned residential community located in
the Foothills west of Boise, Idaho and five miles (8 km) directly north of Eagle,
Idaho along Hwy. 55. The project is being developed by SunCor Development
Company, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Pinnacle West Capital Corporation, a
publicly-traded company (NYSE: PNW) which is also the parent company of
Arizona Public Service, the state's largest utility company. Construction began in
2006 and is ongoing.
Village One, the first portion of the 23,000-acre (93 km2) Spring Valley Ranch
property to be developed, includes 650 homes and a planned village center of
shops, offices, dining options, a daycare and recreational amenities. A second
village is still in the planning stages. Nearly 20,000 acres (81 km2) of the
surrounding land is designated as open space.
1.3 History
Spring Valley Ranch was once a 38,000-acre (150 km2) sheep ranch, then
transitioned to cattle and horses. SunCor chose Avimor as the community name
based on the heritage of the McLeod family, Spring Valley Ranch owners since the
early 1900s. The family is originally from the Highlands area of Scotland and
Aviemore is an active-lifestyle resort town in the region. The spelling was
changed, hence the current name.
1.4 Conservation
1.4.1 Water Conservation
Water consumption in this high desert region has been an important issue for the
development team and the surrounding communities. Design, management and
educational initiatives are in place to meet the goal of reducing typical residential
indoor and outdoor water consumption by 30%.
Minimizing use begins by establishing water rates that encourage conservation,
metering all treated-water usage and providing educational materials for residents.
All homes are built with low-flow plumbing fixtures, recirculation pumps for hot
water delivery and low-water-use appliances. Treated effluent from the on-site
state-of-the-art wastewater treatment plant reduces the use of potable water for
land irrigation. Landscaping is done with xeric plants through covenants, deed
restrictions and permitted plant lists that also limit the use of turf in private yard
landscaping. The community uses drip irrigation for all shrubs and trees and a
centralized, time-controlled irrigation system linked to a weather station for
watering common areas.
1.4.2 Energy Conservation
By gaining Energy Star certification for all homes, this signifies up to 30% greater
efficiency than homes built to code. Educational materials have been developed to
help Avimor residents make further energy-conscious choices. Additionally,
community design and amenities are in place to help reduce the need for car travel.
Where possible, buildings are oriented along an east-west axis to maximize passive
solar heating and are sited to allow for low angle winter sun. The use of overhangs,
porches and other appropriate features shade south-facing walls in summer.
Landscaping tactics shade buildings in the summer and allow solar heating in
winter.
1.4.3 Plant and Wildlife Conservation
Years of ranching, along with a keen interest in preserving the natural state
foothills lands, has set into motion a comprehensive land conservation plan. Nearly
60% of the 840 acres (3.4 km2) in Village One is retained as preserved open space.
Large tracts of adjacent land will be preserved and restored to pre-ranchland state
for the benefit of residents, wildlife and the general public.
A neighborhood conservation director has taken a "No Net Loss" approach to
wildlife mitigation.. Rather than work from a wildlife-down approach - which
usually accounts for a smaller set of species such as big game - this strategy begins
with the soils and vegetation. By restoring these base natural components first,
more plant, animal and insect species will benefit in a given area. This plan was
developed with assistance from the Idaho Department of Fish and Game, Ada
County Development Services, Bureau of Land Management, Ada County Parks
and Recreation, and private interest groups.
Plant and wildlife conservation projects includes the establishment of a
conservation easement, enhancing wildlife habitats, properly managing foothills
recreation access, planting native plant species, controlling invasive and noxious
weeds, and conducting regular big game surveys.
1.5 Better Homes
History
Better Homes was founded in 1986 in Dubai, United Arab Emirates by Linda
Mahoney as a residential leasing company. It is one of the oldest real estate
companies in the Middle East.
Since 1986, the company has grown from a one woman enterprise and launched
over 10 divisions and 30 property boutiques and offices with a 700+ workforce all
over the Middle East, Europe and Asia. Better Homes is also a founding member
of the Dubai Property Group.
1.6 Services
The company uses a proprietary IT system to give clients features, such as the most
up-to-the-minute properties available and interactive online maps.
Some of the services the company offers include:
Residential Sales and Leasing
Commercial Sales and Leasing
Property Management
Short-term Rentals
Project Sales and Marketing
International Sales
Concierge service
The Commercial division was launched in 1996.
Launched in 2007, Better Plus, one of the company’s newest divisions, is a
concierge service that connects Better Homes’ clients with services such as
insurance, mortgages, currency exchange, and home furnishing.
Aside from property, Better Homes also entered the hospitality sector with the
Short-term Rentals division and offers a range of self-catering apartments and
serviced hotel apartments in Dubai. The company also launched its very own
Emerald Hotel Apartments in Bur Dubai.
Billy Rautenbach, Better Homes’ Chief Operational Officer, was named amongst
the 5 most high profile women in Dubai’s real estate market by Arabian Property
magazine.
1.7 Creative Branding
Better Homes’ marketing has always been in the limelight for its fun and funky
style. The company re-branded in 2006 unveiling a new corporate identity. It
recently launched its new website (www.bhomes.com) to offer users a
comprehensive online property search with interactive maps, 360° property tours,
floor plans, colour printable brochures, and image galleries. Since its launch, the
site regularly receives over five thousand unique visitors per day.
1.8 Publications
Better Homes has dedicated publications, Better Homes Magazine and
Commercial Review, which provide readers with guides on living in Dubai and
choosing the most suitable property.
1.9 Going Global
Better Homes International offers properties in both emerging and mature markets
throughout the world. Catering to property markets as diverse as Turkey, Fiji,
Cyprus, Spain, India, Greece, Morocco, and the Caribbean.
1.10 Blockbusting
Blockbusting was a business practice of U.S. real estate agents and building
developers meant to encourage white property owners to sell their houses at a loss,
by fraudulently implying that racial, ethnic, or religious minorities — blacks,
Hispanics, Jews et al. — were moving into their previously racially segregated
neighborhood, and so depress real estate property values.[1] Blockbusting became
possible after the legislative dismantling of legally-protected racially-segregated
real estate practices after World War II, but by the 1980s it disappeared as a
business practice after changes in law and the real estate market.
1.11 Background
Beginning around 1900, with the Great Migration (1915–30) of black Americans
from the rural Southern United States to work in the cities and towns of the
northern U.S., many white people feared that black people were a social and
economic threat, and countered their presence with local zoning laws that requiring
them to live and reside in geographically defined areas of the town or city,
preventing them from moving to areas inhabited by white people.
In 1917, in the case of Buchanan v. Warley (1917), the Supreme Court of the
United States voided the racial residency statutes forbidding blacks from living in
white neighborhoods, as violating the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth
Amendment to the United States Constitution.[3] In turn, whites used racially
restrictive covenants in deeds, and real estate businesses informally applied them
to prevent the selling of houses to black Americans in white neighborhoods. To
thwart the Supreme Court’s Buchanan v. Warley prohibition of such legal business
racism, state courts interpreted the covenants as a contract between private persons,
outside the scope of the Fourteenth Amendment; however, in the Shelley v.
Kraemer (1948) case, the Supreme Court ruled that the Amendment’s Equal
Protection Clause outlawed the states’ legal enforcement of racially restrictive
covenants in state courts.[4] In the event, decades of racist laws requiring black
Americans to live in over-crowded and over-priced ghettos created economic
pressures to avail black people of housing in racially-segregated neighborhoods.
Freed by the Supreme Court from the legal restrictions against selling white
housing to blacks, real estate companies sold houses to those who could buy — if
they could find a willing white seller.
Generally, “blockbusting” denotes the real estate and building development
business practices yielding double profits from U.S. anti-black racism;
aggravating, by subterfuge, the white home owners’ fears of mixed-race
communities to encourage them to quickly sell their houses at a loss, at below-
market prices, and then selling that property to black Americans at higher-than-
market prices. Given the federally-legislated racial discrimination in mortgage-
lending, black people usually did not qualify for mortgages from banks and savings
and loan associations, instead, they recurred to land installment contracts at
usurious interest rates to buy a house — a racist economic strategy eventually
leading to foreclosure.[2] With blockbusting, real estate companies legally profited
from the arbitrage (the difference between the discounted price paid to frightened
white sellers and the artificially high price paid by black buyers), and from the
commissions resulting from increased real estate sales, and from their usurious
financing of said house sales to black Americans.[2] The documentary film
Revolution '67 (2007) examines the blockbusting practiced in Newark, New Jersey
in the 1960s.
1.12 Methods of Blockbusting
The term “blockbusting” might have originated in Chicago, Illinois, where, in
order to accelerate the emigration of economically successful racial, ethnic, and
religious minority residents to better neighborhoods beyond the ghettos, real estate
companies and building developers used agents provocateurs — non-white people
hired to deceive the white residents of a legally-restricted neighborhood into
believing that black people were moving into the neighborhood, thereby
encouraging them to quickly sell (at a loss) and emigrate to racially-restricted
suburbs.
The tactics included hiring black women to be seen pushing baby carriages in
white neighborhoods, so encouraging white fear of devalued property; selling a
house to a black family in a white neighborhood to provoke white flight, before the
community’s properties became worthless; selling white neighborhood houses to
black families, and afterwards placing real estate agent business cards in the
neighbors’ mailboxes; and saturating the neighborhood area with fliers offering
quick-cash for houses. Like-wise, building developers bought houses and dwelling
buildings, and left them unoccupied to make the neighborhood appear abandoned
— like a ghetto or a slum — psychologic coercion that usually forced the
remaining white folk to sell at a loss. Blockbusting was a very common and very
profitable form of racist exploitation, for example, by 1962, when blockbusting
had been practiced for some fifteen years, the city of Chicago had more than 100
real estate companies that had been, on average, “changing” between two to three
blocks a week for years.
1.13 Reactions to Blockbusting
In 1962, “blockbusting” real estate profiteering was nationally exposed by the The
Saturday Evening Post with the article "Confessions of a Block-Buster", wherein
the author detailed the practices, emphasizing the surplus profit gained from
frightening white people to sell at a loss, in order to quickly resettle in racially-
segregated "better neighborhoods".[2] In response to political pressure from the
cheated sellers and buyers, states and cities legally restricted door-to-door real
estate solicitation, the posting of "FOR SALE" signs, and authorized government
licensing agencies to investigate the blockbusting complaints of buyers and sellers,
and to revoke the real estate sales licenses of blockbusters.[2] Like-wise, other
states' legislation allowed lawsuits against real estate companies and brokers who
cheated buyers and sellers with fraudulent representations of declining property
values, changing racial and ethnic neighborhood populations, local crime, and the
"worsening" of schools, because of race mixing.
The Fair Housing Act of 1968 established federal causes of action against
blockbusting, including illegal real estate broker claims that blacks, Jews,
Hispanics, et al. had or were going to move into a neighborhood, and so devalue
the properties. In the case of Jones v. Alfred H. Mayer Co. (1968), the U.S.
Supreme Court ruled that the Thirteenth Amendment authorized the federal
government's prohibiting racial discrimination in private housing markets, [5] thus
allowing black American legal claims to rescind the usurious land contracts
(featuring over-priced houses and higher-than-market mortgage interest rates), as a
racist real estate business practice illegal under the Civil Rights Act of 1866, which
greatly reduced the profitability of blockbusting. Nevertheless, said regulatory and
statutory remedies against blockbusting were challenged in court; thus, towns
cannot prohibit an owner's placing a "FOR SALE" sign before his house, in order
to reduce blockbusting. In the case of Linmark Associates, Inc. v. Willingboro
(1977), the Supreme Court ruled that such prohibitions infringe freedom of
expression. Moreover, by the 1980s, as evidence of blockbusting practices
disappeared, states and cities began rescinding statutes restricting blockbusting.
1.14 U.S. Cultural References
The serio-comic television series All in the Family (1971–79), featured "The
Blockbuster", a 1971 episode about said practice, illustrating some real estate
blockbusting techniques.
In the Knight Rider (1982–86) adventure television series, episode 11 of the fourth
season features the eponymous hero, Michael Knight, trying to stop a blockbusting
operation in a Chicago ghetto
1.15 Buyer Listing Service
A Buyer Listing Service ("BLS") is a system designed to gather relevant
information, via data entries by a prospective home buyer, her real estate 'Buyer
Agent', or both, concerning the Buyer's financial qualifications regarding a home
purchase and the Buyer's needs and wants for the sought for home (number of
bedrooms, location, square footage, etc.). Working in much the same way as the
well-known Multiple Listing Service ("MLS") operates to market homes-for-sale, a
BLS system provides corresponding data from the Buyer's perspective. BLS
systems may be integrated with MLS systems operated by the local Association of
Realtors, 'free-standing'and available directly to Buyer and Seller consumers, or
operated through in-house systems of privately owned real estate brokerages.
National BLS is the first national Buyer Listing Service of pre-approved residential
real estate buyers. The service allows buyers to anonymously broadcast their home
buying requirements to the web, stating specific or general location, property type,
property use, number of bedrooms and bathrooms, their mortgage details (purchase
terms, down payment, contingencies, etc.) and a host of other important property
attributes (deck/patio, fireplace, central air, etc.) Buyers on NationalBLS are
searchable by real estate agents and home sellers, who can then make reverse
offers to the buyers. The system gives real estate agents a tool for qualifying their
buyer leads and protecting their buying clients. Real estate agents also use the
buyer listing service on behalf of eager home sellers who are keen to start
negotiating. Further, mortgage brokers and loan officers use the service to manage
their buyers and promote their buyers' best interests. National BLS can be found at
www.nationalbls.com
1.16 CRTS Certified Relocation and Transition Specialists
CRTS Certified Relocation and Transition Specialists are third party certified
providers who assist older adults and their families through often stressful
transitions, such as moving to a senior living community or modifying a home to
age in place.
The CRTS designation is awarded to Senior Transition Specialists who meet
experience, eligibility and exam requirements.
Oversight for the CRTS designation is the responsibility of the Senior Transition
Society, a North American professional society.
All CRTS graduates become part of the CRTS Professional Registry which is
available for families through national websites.
CRTS professionals include Realtors, local and long distance movers, appraisers,
estate sale specialists, home care professionals, professional organizers and more.
CRTS professionals focus on alleviating client and family stress associated with
relocation. CRTS professionals are a qualified resource for families and are trained
to understand how home transitions are often complicated by factors such as
health, personal asset management, dementia and complex family dynamics.
CRTS Certified professionals are required to pass criminal background checks and
meet ongoing insurance and continuing education requirements.
1.17 Coldwell Banker
Coldwell Banker is a large real estate franchise owned by Realogy, which also
owns Century 21 Real Estate and ERA Real Estate. The company was founded in
1906 in San Francisco.
Coldwell Banker has an international presence, with offices on six continents, 46
countries and territories. There are more than 600 Coldwell Banker offices outside
of the United States.
1.18 Company History
Early years
The company was launched in 1906. After the devastating 1906 San Francisco
earthquake and fires, real estate agent Colbert Coldwell formed a new real estate
company.
Coldwell disapproved of the then-common practice of real estate agents acquiring
properties for themselves, often from uninformed sellers at ridiculously low prices,
and then reselling them for huge profits. He and two partners formed the company
of Tucker, Lynch and Coldwell on August 27, 1906.
In 1913, Benjamin Arthur Banker joined the firm as a salesman and became a
partner in 1914. He and Coldwell remained active in the company throughout their
lives.
In the early years of growth, Coldwell Banker offices were devoted primarily to
commercial real estate brokerage firms. In 1925 the first residential real estate
office opened in San Francisco, and a full fledged residential real estate department
was formed by 1937.
1.19 Expansion
The company's geographic expansion began in the 1920s with the opening of
offices in Southern California. The company opened its first office outside
California (in Phoenix, AZ) in 1952. This was followed by an office in Seattle in
1969.
In the 1970s, Coldwell Banker acquired residential real estate firms in Atlanta,
Chicago, and Washington, DC, expanding its geographic footprint. [2]
By 1980, Coldwell Banker had also acquired a national referral service (now
Coldwell Banker Referral Network), and Previews Inc., an international luxury real
estate marketing organization (which has evolved into the present-day Coldwell
Banker Previews International). In 1981, Coldwell Banker was acquired by Sears,
Roebuck and Co., joining Dean Witter Financial Services Group and Allstate
Insurance group as a member of the Sears Financial Network.
Another landmark in 1981 was the launch of Coldwell Banker Residential
Affiliates, Inc. for the franchising of residential brokerage companies. Further
acquisition of companies in major metropolitan areas across the United States
occurred in the 1980s..
1990s
By 1990, Coldwell Banker had locations in all fifty states, and had begun
international expansion with offices in Canada and Puerto Rico. The
company's focus on residential real estate was strengthened with the sale of
Coldwell Banker Commercial Group (now known as CB Commercial).
Coldwell Banker was purchased from Sears by the Fremont Group in 1993.
Another milestone in 1993 was the substantial increase of Coldwell Banker
presence in Canada. Coldwell Banker Affiliates of Canada, a joint venture of
Coldwell Banker and Canada Trust, is one of Canada's largest real estate
operations with more than 200 offices and thousands of sales representatives
coast to coast.
Coldwell Banker in 1995 became one of the first national and first-service
real estate brands to have a presence online with the launch of
www.coldwellbanker.com.
In May 1996, Coldwell Banker was acquired by HFS Incorporated, then the
world's largest franchisor of hotels and residential real estate brokerage
offices.
1997 saw parent company HFS merge with CUC International, forming the
new Cendant Corporation.
2000 - Present
In 2005, Coldwell Banker became the first full-service national real estate
brand to launch a stand-alone Web site for upscale properties with
www.coldwellbankerpreviews.com.
Later that year, it was announced that Cendant would spin off its four
divisions – real estate, hotel, car rental and hospitality services. Coldwell
Banker would now be part of a stand-alone real estate company named
Realogy in late 2006. Realogy’s brands – Coldwell Banker, Coldwell
Banker Commercial, Century 21, ERA and Sothebys International Realty
(Better Homes and Gardens Real Estate was added in 2007) - combine to
participate in one of every four residential real estate transactions in the
United States.
At the start of 2006, Coldwell Banker began celebrating its 100th
anniversary. Jim Gillespie, president and chief executive officer of Coldwell
Banker Real Estate Corporation, led a Coldwell Banker contingent in
ringing the closing bell at the New York Stock Exchange on August 21,
2006 to commemorate the brand’s 100th anniversary.
1.20 Curb Appeal
Curb appeal is attractiveness of the exterior of a residential or commercial
property. The term was extensively used in the United States during the housing
boom and continues to be used as an indicator of the initial appeal of a property to
prospective buyers.
Methods for Increasing Curb Appeal
Curb appeal can be accomplished by any number of methods including the
installation of exterior decorations, re-painting, extensive attention to the
landscaping. Several television programs (such as Designed to Sell, House Doctor,
Flip This House) have been created to explore ways for homeowners and building
contractors to increase the curb appeal of their properties for a more profitable sale.
1.21 First Time Home Buyer Grant
A first time home buyer grant is a grant specifically for/targeted at those buying
their first home perhaps a starter home. Like other grants, the first time buyer does
not hold an obligation to repay the grant. In this respect, it differs from a loan and
does not incur any debt or interest. Grants can be given out by foundations and
governments. Grants to individuals can be either scholarships or donations.
First time home buyer grants are typically awarded based on a few criteria,
primarily financial need and income qualifications.
Many states have initiated grant programs to help lower income residents with the
purchase of their first home. The United States Department of Housing and Urban
Development (HUD) also provides grants to first time home buyers.
Funding for various state first time home buyer grants is nearly always available.
In fiscal year 2006, only two states exhausted their budgets for first time home
buyer grants.
A similar program was introduced in Australia from the 1 July 2000, where first
time home buyers can receive a $7,000 once off payment to offset the cost of GST.
While the program is offered nationwide, the scheme is funded by the states and
territories and subject to respective legislation.
1.22 Problems with First Time Home Buyer grants
Because a first time home buyer grant usually pushes up the amount that such a
buyer can borrow from a financial institution by more than the value of the grant,
in competitive housing markets where a majority of competing buyers will also
have access to the grant, the end result is that lower-end houses increase in price
also by more than the value of the grant, and first home buyers tend to accumulate
more debt than if the grant had not been available.
1.23 Fixer-Upper
A fixer-upper is a real-estate property that will require maintenance work
(redecoration, reconstruction or redesign) though it usually can be lived in as it is.
They are popular with buyers who wish to raise the property's potential value to get
a return on investment, a practice known as flipping, or as a starter home for
buyers on a budget. Home-improvement television shows touting do-it-yourself
renovation techniques have made fixer-uppers more popular, but during a real-
estate downturn, with newer homes available at depressed prices, there is often
reduced interest. Inexperienced buyers frequently underestimate the amount and
cost of repairs necessary to make a home livable or saleable.[1] Structural and
service issues such as a home's foundation or plumbing, which may not be visible
at first, can require expensive, professional contracting work.[1]
According to Jack C. Richards in his book Interchange (Third Edition) Volume
Three, the expression 'Fixer-Upper' describes a place for sale at a lower price
because it needs a lot of repairs.
1.24 Film and Television
Many comedy films have used fixer-upper renovations as a central part of the plot,
among them:
Are We Done Yet? (2007)
The Money Pit (1986)
Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House (1948)
George Washington Slept Here (1942)
Flipping of rundown houses has also been the subject of various reality television
shows, including:
Flip That House
Flip This House
The Real Estate Pros
1.25 Long & Foster
Long & Foster (founded 1968) is the largest privately-owned real estate company
in the United States with over 15,000 agents in nearly 230 sales offices in the Mid-
Atlantic region.
P. Wesley Foster, the chief executive officer and one of the founders, began his
real estate career in 1963 as a sales manager at Michew Corporation, a home
building company. In 1966, he moved to Nelson Realty as vice-president of sales.
In 1968, he founded Long & Foster Companies with Henry Long. Long & Foster
began with Foster handling the residential real estate arm of the business and Long
handling the commercial side. Foster became the sole owner in July 1979, eleven
years after establishing Long & Foster.
Long & Foster has offices and associates in Virginia, Maryland, Washington, D.C.,
Pennsylvania, New Jersey, West Virginia, Delaware, and North Carolina. It
provides services including the sale and purchase of homes, land, and commercial
properties; mortgage, title, and insurance assistance; insurance offerings; and
relocation and settlement services.
1.26 Mixed-Use Development
Mixed-use development is the practice of allowing more than one type of use in a
building or set of buildings. In planning zone terms, this can mean some
combination of residential, commercial, industrial, office, institutional, or other
land uses.
1.27 History
Mixed-use development in New York City. Note the residential space above the
retail space in the same building.
Throughout most of human history, the majority of human settlements developed
as mixed-use environments. Walking was the primary way that people and goods
were moved about, sometimes assisted by animals such as horses or cattle. Most
people dwelt in buildings that were places of work as well as domestic life, and
made things or sold things from their own homes. Most buildings were not divided
into discrete functions on a room by room basis, and most neighborhoods
contained a diversity of uses, even if some districts developed a predominance of
certain uses, such as metalworkers, or textiles or footwear due to the socio-
economic benefits of propinquity. People lived at very high densities because the
amount of space required for daily living and movement between different
activities was determined by walkability and the scale of the human body. This
was particularly true in cities, and the ground floor of buildings was often devoted
to some sort of commercial or productive use, with living space upstairs.
This historical mixed-used pattern of development declined during industrialisation
in favor of large-scale separation of manufacturing and residences in single-
function buildings. This period saw massive migrations of people from rural areas
to cities drawn by work in factories and the associated businesses and
bureaucracies that grew up around them. These influxes of new workers needed to
be accommodated and many new urban districts arose at this time with domestic
housing being their primary function. Thus began a separating out of land uses that
previously had occurred in the same spaces. Furthermore, many factories produced
substantial pollution of various kinds. Distance was required to minimize adverse
impacts from noise, dirt, noxious fumes and dangerous substances. Even so, at this
time, most industrialized cities were of a size that allowed people to walk between
the different areas of the city.
These factors were important in the push for Euclidian zoning premised on the
compartmentalization of land uses into like functions and their spatial separation.
In Europe, advocates of the Garden City Movement were attempting to think
through these issues and propose improved ways to plan cities based on zoning
areas of land so that conflicts between land uses would be minimized. Modernist
architects such as Le Corbusier advocated radical rethinking of the way cities were
designed based on similar ideas, proposing plans for Paris such as the Plan Voisin,
Ville Contemporaine and Ville Radieuse that involved demolishing the entire
center of the city and replacing it with towers in a park-like setting, with industry
carefully sited away from other uses.
In the United States, another impetus for Euclidian zoning was the birth of the
skyscraper. Fear of buildings blocking out the sun led many to call for zoning
regulations, particularly in New York City. Zoning regulations, first put into place
in 1916, not only called for limits on building heights, but eventually called for
separations of uses. This was largely meant to keep people from living next to
polluted industrial areas. This separation, however, was extended to commercial
uses as well, setting the stage for the suburban style of life that is common in
America today. This type of zoning was widely adopted by municipal zoning
codes.
With the advent of mass transit systems, but especially the private automobile and
cheap oil, the ability to create dispersed, low-density cities where people could live
very long distances from their workplaces, shopping centres and entertainment
districts began in earnest. However, it has been the post-second World War
dominance of the automobile and the decline in all other modes of urban
transportation that has seen the extremes of these trends come to pass.
1.28 Benefits
Throughout the late 20th century, it began to become apparent to many urban
planners and other professionals that mixed-use development had many benefits
and should be promoted again. As American, British, Canadian and Australian
cities deindustrialized, the need to separate residences from hazardous factories
became less important. Completely separate zoning created isolated "islands" of
each type of development. In most cases, the automobile had become a
requirement for transportation between vast fields of residentially zoned housing
and the separate commercial and office strips, creating issues of Automobile
dependency. In 1961, Jane Jacobs' influential The Death and Life of Great
American Cities argued that a mixture of uses is vital and necessary for a healthy
urban area.
Zoning laws have been revised accordingly and increasingly attempt to address
these problems by using mixed-use zoning. A mixed use district will most
commonly be the "downtown" of a local community, ideally associated with public
transit nodes in accordance with principles of Transit-oriented development (TOD)
and New urbanism. Mixed use guidelines often result in residential buildings with
streetfront commercial space. Retailers have the assurance that they will always
have customers living right above and around them, while residents have the
benefit of being able to walk a short distance to get groceries and household items,
or see a movie.
1.29 Drawbacks
Mixed use development is seen as too risky by many developers and lending
institutions because economic success requires that the many different uses all
remain in business. Most development throughout the mid to late 20th century was
single-use, so many development and finance professionals see this as the safer and
more acceptable means to provide construction and earn a profit. Christopher B.
Leinberger notes that there are 19 standard real estate product types that can obtain
easy financing through real estate investment trusts. Each type, such as the office
park and the strip mall, is designed for low density, single use zoning. Another
issue is that short term discounted cash flow has become the standard way to
measure the success of income-producing development, resulting in "disposable"
suburban designs that make money in the short run but are not as successful in the
mid to long term as walkable, mixed use environments.
Mixed use commercial space is often seen as being best suited for retail and small
office uses. This precludes its widespread adoption as the trend to ever-larger
corporate and government employment accelerates.
Mixed use residential buildings and neighbourhoods seldom offer single-family
homes, thus are best suited to residents who prefer public amenities to private
space. The lack of backyards or other private outdoor space for children and pets is
anathema to some, particularly in some North American and Australian cultures.
Street hierarchy and other traffic calming measures intended to serve such
residental users may impede commercial traffic.
Construction costs for mixed-use development currently exceed those for similar sized, single-use
buildings. Challenges include fire separations, sound attenuation, ventilation, and egress. Leinberger
explains,
“ Good urban architecture costs upward of 50 percent more than typical
suburban buildings. In urban areas, residents and businesses demand a
higher quality of building, since you are walking past them, not driving by
at 45 miles an hour with the buildings set back 150 feet. ”
Additional costs arise from meeting the design needs: In some designs, the large,
high-ceilinged, columnless lower floor for commercial uses may not be entirely
compatible with the smaller scale of walled residential space above. Due to usually
higher densities in mixed-use developments and due to the commercial and/or
office component, parking space requirements are likely to exceed those of
residential development. Thus, mixed use projects that are not sited close to public
transit are likely to require a large number of parking spaces that may be difficult
to finance. (Note that this is equally true for any other higher-density development
remote from public transport; however, compared to residential zones this may be
a drawback due to higher initial investment required that only amortizes over the
medium and long-term.) It should be noted however that in mixed-use
developments in some denser areas, owning an automobile might be considered a
luxury rather than a necessity, especially if the area is well connected to public
transport. Therefore, others argue that mixed-use neighborhoods need less parking
space and are more efficient - however only if zoning regulations reflect this
condition and allow to provide for less parking (see Donald C. Shoup, The High
Cost of Free Parking). A notable example in the United States is Manhattan,
though this is an atypical case.
Others maintain that modern consumers prefer big box retailers, arguing that most
grocery shoppers today would prefer the convenience of weekly shopping, as
opposed to picking up each day's food items from a number of local shops. It is
however not clear whether this phenomena is the cause of attractive retailers or of
zoning regulations that do not permit mixed-use development so that small shops
are remote and, thus, inconvenient (see Jane Jacobs, The Death and Life of Great
American Cities). Moreover, it may be argued that people prefer to shop with
retailers because, due to single-use zoning, the local availability of goods through
convenience commercial is limited.
Chapter Two: New Urbanism
2.1 Introduction
New Urbanism is an urban design movement, which promotes walkable
neighborhoods that contain a range of housing and job types. It arose in the United
States in the early 1980s and continues to reform many aspects of real estate
development and urban planning.
New Urbanism is strongly influenced by urban design standards prominent before
the rise of the automobile and encompasses principles such as traditional
neighborhood design (TND) and transit-oriented development (TOD).[1] It is also
closely related to Regionalism and Environmentalism.
Market Street, Downtown Celebration, Florida
The organizing body for New Urbanism is the Congress for the New Urbanism,
founded in 1993. Its foundational text is the Charter of the New Urbanism, which
says:
We advocate the restructuring of public policy and development practices to
support the following principles: neighborhoods should be diverse in use and
population; communities should be designed for the pedestrian and transit as well
as the car; cities and towns should be shaped by physically defined and universally
accessible public spaces and community institutions; urban places should be
framed by architecture and landscape design that celebrate local history, climate,
ecology, and building practice.
New urbanists support regional planning for open space, context-appropriate
architecture and planning, and the balanced development of jobs and housing.
They believe their strategies can reduce traffic congestion, increase the supply of
affordable housing, and rein in urban sprawl. The Charter of the New Urbanism
also covers issues such as historic preservation, safe streets, green building, and the
redevelopment of brownfield land.
2.2 Background
New Urbanism draws from the design of older urban neighborhoods, like this one
in Venice, California.
Until the mid 20th century, cities were generally organized into and developed
around mixed-use walkable neighborhoods. For most of human history this meant
a city that was entirely walkable, although with the development of mass transit the
reach of the city extended outward along transit lines, allowing for the growth of
new pedestrian communities such as streetcar suburbs. But with the advent of
cheap automobiles and favorable government policies, attention began to shift
away from cities and towards ways of growth more focused on the needs of the
car.
This new system of development, with its rigorous separation of uses, became
known as "conventional suburban development" or pejoratively as urban sprawl,
arose after World War II. The majority of U.S. citizens now live in suburban
communities built in the last fifty years. Suburban development consumes large
areas of countryside, and automobile use per capita has soared.
Although New Urbanism as an organized movement would only arise later, a
number of activists and thinkers soon began to criticize the modernist planning
techniques being put into practice. Social philosopher and historian Lewis
Mumford criticized the "anti-urban" development of post-war America. The Death
and Life of Great American Cities, written by Jane Jacobs in the early 1960s,
called for planners to reconsider the single-use housing projects, large car-
dependent thoroughfares, and segregated commercial centers that had become the
"norm."
Rooted in these early dissenters, New Urbanism emerged in the 1970s and 80s
with the urban visions and theoretical models for the reconstruction of the
"European" city proposed by architect Leon Krier, and the "pattern language"
theories of Christopher Alexander.
In 1991, the Local Government Commission, a private nonprofit group in
Sacramento, California, invited architects Peter Calthorpe, Michael Corbett,
Andrés Duany, Elizabeth Moule, Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk, Stefanos Polyzoides,
and Daniel Solomon to develop a set of community principles for land use
planning. Named the Ahwahnee Principles (after Yosemite National Park's
Ahwahnee Hotel), the commission presented the principles to about one hundred
government officials in the fall of 1991, at its first Yosemite Conference for Local
Elected Officials.
Calthorpe, Duany, Moule, Plater-Zyberk, Polyzoides, and Solomon founded the
Chicago-based Congress for the New Urbanism in 1993. The CNU has grown to
more than 3,000 members, and is the leading international organization promoting
new urbanist design principles. It holds annual Congresses in various U.S. cities.
New Urbanism is a broad movement that spans a number of different disciplines
and geographic scales. And while the conventional approach to growth remains
dominant, New Urbanist principles have become increasingly influential in the
fields of planning, architecture, and public policy.
2.3 Defining Elements
Prospect New Town in Longmont, Colorado, showing a mix of aggregate housing
and traditional detached homes
The husband-wife team of town planners Andrés Duany and Elizabeth Plater-
Zyberk, two of the founders of the Congress for the New Urbanism, met at
Princeton University. Their beliefs coalesced while at the Yale School of
Architecture in New Haven. While living in one of New Haven's Victorian
neighborhoods, they observed mixed-use streetscapes with corner shops, front
porches, and a diversity of well-crafted housing. According to Duany and Plater-
Zyberk, the heart of New Urbanism is in the design of neighborhoods, which can
be defined by thirteen elements:
1. The neighborhood has a discernible center. This is often a square or a green and
sometimes a busy or memorable street corner. A transit stop would be located at
this center.
2. Most of the dwellings are within a five-minute walk of the center, an average of
roughly 1/4 mile or 1,320 feet (0.4 km).
3. There are a variety of dwelling types — usually houses, rowhouses, and
apartments — so that younger and older people, singles, and families, the poor,
and the wealthy may find places to live.
4. At the edge of the neighborhood, there are shops and offices of sufficiently
varied types to supply the weekly needs of a household.
5. A small ancillary building or garage apartment is permitted within the backyard
of each house. It may be used as a rental unit or place to work (for example, an
office or craft workshop).
6. An elementary school is close enough so that most children can walk from their
home.
7. There are small playgrounds accessible to every dwelling — not more than a
tenth of a mile away.
8. Streets within the neighborhood form a connected network, which disperses
traffic by providing a variety of pedestrian and vehicular routes to any
destination.
9. The streets are relatively narrow and shaded by rows of trees. This slows traffic,
creating an environment suitable for pedestrians and bicycles.
10.Buildings in the neighborhood center are placed close to the street, creating a
well-defined outdoor room.
11.Parking lots and garage doors rarely front the street. Parking is relegated to the
rear of buildings, usually accessed by alleys.
12.Certain prominent sites at the termination of street vistas or in the neighborhood
center are reserved for civic buildings. These provide sites for community
meetings, education, and religious or cultural activities.
13.The neighborhood is organized to be self-governing. A formal association
debates and decides matters of maintenance, security, and physical change.
Taxation is the responsibility of the larger community.
2.3 Examples
United States
Grande Market Square in Burnsville, Minnesota. Small scale redevelopment in
suburban communities are often done in new urbanist style.
New urbanism is having a growing influence on how and where metropolitan
regions choose to grow. At least fourteen large-scale planning initiatives are based
on the principles of linking transportation and land-use policies, and using the
neighborhood as the fundamental building block of a region.[citation needed]
More than six hundred new towns, villages, and neighborhoods in the U.S.
following new urbanism principles are planned or under construction. Hundreds of
new, small-scale, urban and suburban infill projects are under way to reestablish
walkable streets and blocks. In Maryland and several other states, new urbanist
principles are an integral part of "smart growth" legislation.
In the mid-1990s, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development
(HUD) adopted the principles of the new urbanism in its multi-billion dollar
program to rebuild public housing projects nationwide. New urbanists have
planned and developed hundreds of projects in infill locations. Most were driven
by the private sector, but many, including HUD projects, used public money.
Seaside
Seaside, Florida, the first fully new urbanist town, began development in 1981 on
eighty acres (324,000 m²) of Florida Panhandle coastline. It was featured on the
cover of the Atlantic Monthly in 1988, when only a few streets were completed,
and has become internationally famous for its architecture, and the quality of its
streets and public spaces.
Seaside is now a tourist destination and appeared in the movie The Truman Show.
Lots sold for $15,000 in the early 1980s, and slightly over a decade later, the price
had escalated to about $200,000. Today, most lots sell for more than a million
dollars, and some houses top $5 million.
Stapleton
The site of the former Stapleton International Airport in Denver, Colorado, closed
in 1995, is now being redeveloped by Forest City Enterprises is one of the largest
new urbanist project in the United States. Construction began in 2001. The new
community is zoned for residential and commercial development, including office
parks and "big box" shopping centers. Stapleton is by far the largest neighborhood
in the city of Denver and an eastern portion of the redevelopment site lies in the
neighboring city of Aurora.
The design emphasizes a pedestrian orientation rather than the automobile-oriented
designs found in many other planned developments. Nearly a third of the airport
site was set aside for public parks and open space.
Stapleton is the site of the Denver School for Science and Technology, a 451-
student public high school (grades 9-12) that is a charter school.[5]
By the end of 2006, about 2,500 houses and more than 300 apartments had been
built on the Stapleton site.[6] When complete in about 15 years, it is expected to
provide 8,000 houses, 4,000 apartments, 4 schools and 2 million square feet
(180,000 m²) of retail space. Up to 30,000 people could live there.[7] Northfield
Stapleton, one of the development's major retail centers, recently opened.
All of Stapleton's airport infrastructure has been removed except for the control
tower and a parking structure which remain standing as a reminder of the site's
former days.
Mesa del Sol
Mesa del Sol, in Albuquerque, New Mexico (Massive Masterplanned Community)
a 12,900-acre mixed-use is currently being developed by Forest City Enterprises as
the largest new urbanist project in the United States. Mesa del Sol has currently
3,000 jobs and will have approximately 40,000 jobs created over 35-50 buildout
and 18 million square feet of office, industrial and retail space.Mesa del Sol will
offer a variety of home-types including town homes, condominiums, apartments,
single-family houses and semi-custom homes as well are planning for community
centers, schools, family parks and access to jobs.Mesa del Sol will be build on 20
square miles of land and will have 37,500 homes for 100,000 residents build over
master plan of 35 to 50 years and will set aside 3,200 acres for parks and open
space. The first homes at Mesa del Sol are scheduled for touring late in 2009, with
homebuyers moving in as early as 2010, Home prices will reflect a wide range,
from approximately $125,000 to $300,000 dollars.Mesa del Sol first town center
that will be build in the first phaseselected world-renowned architect Antoine
Predock, AIA, of Albuquerque to design a 78,000-square-foot mixed-use town
center building. The town center, which began construction in 2008, this will be
first the hub for Mesa del Sol and will house a visitor center, business office space
and retail businesses. The town center will have The features a curved glass facade
and Video clips will be produced by Sony, a Mesa del Sol tenant, as well as aerial
images of the town will be projected onto a 60-foot-tall by 280-foot-wide double-
walled screen that arcs in a 360-foot radius. This curved silicon glass element is the
curtain wall. It mitigates solar gain through a combination of low-e coatings,
interior solar shades, and a customized silk-screen ceramic frit pattern derived
from a bone’s internal lattice structure.The Architect of will have features a curtain
wall whose ceramic frit controls daylight transmission, during the day, and serves
as a film project screen at night.The first town center will be a L-shaped structure
that has ground-level shops and restaurants with and a two-story covered open-air
public zone for meetings and gatherings, in addition four large villiges center and a
urban center are all plan for local shopping.Mesa del Sol also has 14 schools
planned including 3 combine middle through high schools plans plus charter,
private schools, colleges, unversity branch.
Quay Valley Ranch
Quay Valley Ranch- is proposed $25 billion dollars planned community consisting
of about 13,172 acres acres or 20 square mile for 150,000 residents with 45,000
jobs and 50,000 homes thatt would be built in Five phases over 25 years in
unincorporated Kings County, California, located approximately halfway between
or 2.5 hours to Los Angeles and 2.5 hours to San Francisco,It will be a model town
for the 21st Century — a self-sustaining community that seamlessly melds the best
qualities of "New Urbanism" with the traditions of the San Joaquin Valley's small
rural towns, while carefully preserving the natural surroundings of the area. It
propoThe community would include a water park, resort hotels and a convention
center. There would be a university research campus, a trucking hub, a driving
school for novices and race car drivers, manmade rivers and canals, restored
wetlands, set aside land permanently for organic agriculture,Amusement and theme
park,a 50,000 seat racetrack, an auto mall,Regional retail centers,town center with
river walk, 30,000,000 feet of commerical, industrial land, farms, houses, schools
and a medical centers.The planned community is being organized by over 250
Planning Team Members by Kings County Ventures, LLC, a limited liability
company incorporated and registered in California that has put project on hold.
Here the video of town to be:http://www.quayvalley.com/entertainmentvideo.html
Haile Plantation
Haile Plantation, Florida, is a 2,600 household (1,700 acre) development of
regional impact southwest of the City of Gainesville, within Alachua County. Haile
Village Center is a traditional neighborhood center within the development. It was
originally started in 1978 and completed in 2007. In addition to the 2,600 homes
the neighborhood consists of two merchant centers (one a New England narrow
street village and the other a chain grocery strip mall). There are also two public
elementary schools and an 18-hole golf course.
Disney's Celebration, Florida
In June 1996, the Walt Disney Company unveiled its 5,000 acre (20 km²) town of
Celebration, near Orlando, Florida. Celebration opened its downtown in October,
1996, while Seaside's downtown was still mostly unbuilt. It has since eclipsed
Seaside as the best-known new urbanist community, but Disney shuns the label,
calling Celebration simply a "town." Disney has been criticized for insipid
nostalgia, and heavy-handed rules and management.[
Other countries
View of Poundbury, Dorset, UK
New Urbanism is closely related to the Urban village movement in Europe. They
both occurred at similar times and share many of the same principles although
urban villages has an emphasis on traditional city planning. In Europe many
brown-field sites have been redeveloped since the 1980s following the models of
the traditional city neighbourhoods rather than Modernist models. One well-
publicized example is Poundbury in England, a suburban extension to the town of
Dorchester, which was built on land owned by the Duchy of Cornwall under the
overview of Prince Charles. The original masterplan was designed by Leon Krier.
A report carried out after the first phase of construction found a high degree of
satisfaction by residents, although the aspirations to reduce car dependency had not
been successful. Rising house prices and a perceived premium have made the open
market housing unaffordable for many local people.[8]
The Council for European Urbanism (C.E.U.), formed in 2003, shares many of the
same aims as the US New Urbanists. C.E.U.'s Charter is a development of the
Congress for the New Urbanism Charter revised and reorganised to relate better to
European conditions. An Australian organisation, Australian Council for New
Urbanism has since 2001 run conferences and events to promote new urbanism in
that country. A New Zealand Urban Design Protocol was created by the Ministry
for the Environment in 2005.
There are many developments around the world that follow New Urbanist
principles to a greater or lesser extent:
Orchid Bay, Belize is one of the largest New Urbanist projects in Central
America and the Caribbean.
Val d'Europe, east of¨Paris, France. Developed by Disneyland Resort Paris, this
town is a kind of European counterpart to Walt Disney World Celebration City.
McKenzie Towne is a new urbanist development which commenced in 1995 by
Carma Developers LP in Calgary and has an expected completion of 2011.
The Alta de Lisboa project, in north Lisbon, Portugal, is one of the largest new
urbanist projects in Europe.
The structure plan for Thimphu, Bhutan, follows Principles of Intelligent
Urbanism, which share underlying axioms with the New Urbanism.
Jakriborg, in Southern Sweden, is a recent example of the new urbanist
movement.
Other developments can be found in Heulebrugge, the Netherlands; Knokke-
Heist, in Belgium; and Fonti di Matilde, Italy.
There are several such developments in South Africa. The most notable is Melrose
Arch in Johannesburg. The first development in the Eastern Cape, one of the lesser
known provinces in the country, is located in East London. The development,
announced in 2007, comprises 30 hectares. It is made up of three apartment
complexes together with over 30 residential site as well as 20,000 sqm of
residential and office space. The development is valued at over R2-billion ($250
million).
Abuja, Nigeria
Abuja, Nigeria is the new capital city of Nigeria. This is a city that has its concept
has far back as 1976 during Late General Murtala Muhammed. The capital city of
Nigeria was finally located in the year 1997 when General Ibrahim Babangida
became the Head of State. It was a modern city with world class facility. The
initiative mind is to decongest Lagos and to serve as the administrative center as
Lagos remained the commercial center of Nigeria.
2.3 New Urbanist Organizations
The primary organization promoting the New Urbanism in the United States is the
Congress for the New Urbanism (CNU). The Congress has met annually since
1993 when they held their first meeting in Alexandria, VA with approximately 100
attendees. By 2008 the Congress was drawing 2,000 to 3,000 attendees to the
annual meetings. The Congress began forming local and regional chapters circa
2004 with the founding of the New England and Florida Chapters. By 2009 there
were 12 official chapters and interest groups for 11 more.
While the CNU has international participation, sister organizations have been
formed in other areas of the world including the Council for European Urbanism
(CEU), the Movement for Israeli Urbanism (MIU) and the Australian Council for
the New Urbanism.
By 2002 student chapters referring to themselves as Students for the New
Urbanism began appearing at universities including the University of Georgia,
Notre Dame University, and the University of Miami. In 2003, a group of younger
professionals and students met at the 11th Congress in Washington, D.C. and
began developing a "Manifesto of the Next Generation of New Urbanists". The
Next Generation of New Urbanists held their first major session the following year
at the 12th meeting of the CNU in Chicago in 2004. The group has continued
meeting annually as of 2009 with a focus on young professionals, students, new
member issues, and ensuring the flow of fresh ideas and diverse viewpoints within
the New Urbanism and the CNU. Spin off projects of the New Generation of the
New Urbanists include the Living Urbanism publication first published in 2008.
The CNU has spawned publications and research groups. Publications include the
New Urban News and the New Town Paper. Research groups have formed
independent nonprofits to research individual topics such as the Form-Based Codes
Institute, The National Charrette Institute and the Center for Applied Transect
Studies.
In the United Kingdom New Urbanist and European urbanism principles are
practiced and taught by the The Prince's Foundation for the Built Environment.
Other organisations promote New Urbanism as part of their remit, such as
INTBAU, A Vision of Europe, and others.
The CNU and other national organizations have also formed partnerships with like-
minded groups. Organizations under the banner of Smart Growth also often work
with the Congress for the New Urbanism. In addition the CNU has formed
partnerships on specific projects such as working with the [United States Green
Building Council] and the National Resources Defense Council to develop the
Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design for Neighborhood Development
standards and with the Institute of Transportation Engineers to develop a Context
Sensitive Solutions (CSS) Design manual.
2.4 New Urbanism in Film
The 1998 fantasy comedy-drama film The Truman Show uses the real life New
Urbanist town of Seaside, Florida as the setting for a perfect, fictional town
constructed as a set for a television show. The 2004 documentary The End of
Suburbia: Oil Depletion and the Collapse of the American Dream argues that the
depletion of oil will result in the demise of the sprawl-type development. [9] New
Urban Cowboy: Toward a New Pedestrianism, a feature length 2008 documentary
about urban designer Michael E. Arth, explains the principles of his New
Pedestrianism, a more ecological and pedestrian-oriented version of New
Urbanism. The film also gives a brief history of New Urbanism, and chronicles the
rebuilding of an inner city slum into a model of New Urbanism.
2.5 Criticisms
New urbanism has drawn both praise and criticism from all quarters of the political
spectrum. Some libertarians and fiscal conservatives view new urbanism as a
collectivist plot designed to rob Americans of their civil freedoms, property rights,
and free-flowing traffic.
Perhaps the most frequent criticism of the movement is that the most famous and
highest-profile projects most associated with the movement (primarily Celebration,
Kentlands, and Seaside) are all greenfield projects built on what was previously
open space and therefore are just another form of sprawl. (The city of Hercules on
the other hand is developing its New Urbanism communities on brownfields.)
Critics react to this as a controlled sprawl that assumes that social situations can
and should also be controlled, such that preconceived rules of what a town need be
are first worked out on paper and then acted out in real space. Often the results are
elitist and exclusionary, and are almost always conservative in nature.
Although the current use of non-mixed ghettoed social housing projects have been
a dismal failure, critics claim that the effectiveness of the New Urbanist solution of
mixed income developments lacks statistical evidence. However, numerous studies
by independent think tanks provide support to the basis for addressing poverty
through mixed-income developments, because these developments facilitate the
bridging of social capital, and thus provide for a higher shared quality of life across
socioeconomic cleavages.
A stream of thought in sustainable development maintains that sustainability is
based primarily on the combination of high density and transit service. Critics
claim many new urbanist developments fall short of being truly sustainable, to the
extent that they rely on automobile transport, and serve the detached single family
housing market. Many new urbanists claim that this is an incentive that prepares
people in transition from conventional suburban living to going back to downtown
living.
The New Urbanist preference for 'permeable' street grids has been criticized on the
grounds that it gives private motor vehicles an advantage over walking, cycling
and public transport. The transport performance of some New Urbanist
developments, such as Poundbury has been disappointing, with surveys revealing
high levels of car use. The alternative view, termed 'filtered permeability' (see
Permeability (spatial and transport planning)) is that to give pedestrians and
cyclists a time and convenience advantage, they need to be separated from motor
vehicles in places.
A forthcoming rating system for neighborhood environmental design, LEED-ND,
being developed by the U.S. Green Building Council, Natural Resources Defense
Council, and the Congress for the New Urbanism [1], should help to quantify the
sustainability of New Urbanist neighborhood design. New Urbanist and board
member of CNU, Doug Farr has taken a step further and coined Sustainable
Urbanism, which combines New Urbanism and LEED-ND to create walkable,
transit-served urbanism with high performance buildings and infrastructure. While
New Urbanism seeks to create walkable communities, it lacks an emphasis on
requiring these communities to participate in the green building movement.
2.6 Multiple Listing Service
A Multiple Listing Service (MLS) (also Multiple Listing System or Multiple
Listings Service) is a suite of services that (1) enables brokers to establish
contractual offers of compensation (among brokers); (2) facilitates cooperation
with other broker participants; (3) accumulates and disseminates information to
enable appraisals; (4) is a facility for the orderly correlation and dissemination of
listing information to better serve broker's clients, customers and the public. A
multiple listing service's database and software is used by real estate brokers in real
estate (or aircraft broker[citation needed] in other industries for example), representing
sellers under a listing contract to widely share information about properties with
other brokers who may represent potential buyers or wish to cooperate with a
seller's broker in finding a buyer for the property or asset. The listing data stored in
a multiple listing service's database is the proprietary information of the broker
who has obtained a listing agreement with a property's seller.
There is no single authoritative "MLS", and no universal data format. However, in
real estate there is a data standard - Real Estate Transaction Standard - that is being
deployed among many[who?] MLS's in North America.[1] The many local and private
databases—some of which are controlled by single associations of realtors or
groupings of associations (which represent all brokers within a given community
or geographical area) or by real estate brokers—are collectively referred to as the
MLS because of their data sharing or reciprocal access agreements.
Seen most widely in the US and Canada but spreading to other countries in a
variety of forms, the MLS combines the listings of all available properties that are
represented by brokers who are both members of that MLS system and of NAR or
CREA, (the National Association of Realtors in the US or the Canadian Real
Estate Association).
The primary purpose of the MLS is to provide a facility to publish a "unilateral
offer of compensation" by a listing broker, to other broker participants in that
MLS. In other words, the commission rate that is offered by the listing broker is
published within the MLS to other cooperating brokers. This offer of compensation
is considered a contractual obligation, however it can be negotiated between the
listing broker and the broker representing the buyer. Since the commission for a
transaction as well as the property features are contained in the MLS system, it is
in the best interests of the broker participants (and thereby the public) to maintain
accurate and timely data.
The additional benefit of the MLS system is that an MLS subscriber may search
the MLS system and retrieve information about all homes for sale by all
participating brokers. MLS systems contain hundreds of fields of information
about the features of a property. These fields are determined by real estate
professionals who are knowledgeable and experienced in that local marketplace.
Whereas public real estate websites contain only a small subset of property data.
In North America, the MLS systems are governed by private entities, and the rules
are set by those entities with no state or federal oversight, beyond any individual
state rules regarding real estate. MLS systems set their own rules for membership,
access, and sharing of information, but are subject to nationwide rules laid down
by NAR or CREA. An MLS may be owned and operated by a real estate company,
a county or regional real estate board of realtors or association of realtors, or by a
trade association. Membership of the MLS is generally considered to be essential
to the practice of real estate brokerage.
2.7 Limitations Of Access To The MLS
Most MLS systems restrict membership and access to real estate brokers (and their
agents) who are appropriately licensed by the state (or province); are members of a
local board or association of realtors; and are members of the trade association
(e.g., NAR or CREA). However, access is becoming more open as internet sites
offer the public the ability to view portions of MLS listings (see below).
A person selling his/her own property - acting as a For Sale By Owner (or FSBO) -
cannot generally put a listing for the home directly into the MLS. An example of
an exception to this general practice is the MLS for Spain, [AMLASpain], where
FSBO listing are allowed.) Similarly, a properly licensed broker who chooses to
neither join the trade association nor operate a business within the association's
rules, cannot join the MLS.
However, there are brokers and many online services which offer FSBO sellers the
option of listing their property in their local MLS database by paying a flat fee or
another non-traditional compensation method.
2.8 MLS Systems in North America
Canada
In Canada, MLS is a cooperative system for the 82,000+ members of the Canadian
Real Estate Association (CREA), working through Canada's 99 real estate boards
and 11 provincial/territorial associations.
The Real Estate Board of Greater Vancouver (REBGV) claims to have pioneered
the first MLS in Canada.[4]
A publicly accessible website (at realtor.ca, formerly mls.ca) allows consumers to
search an aggregated subset of each participating board's MLS database of active
listings, providing limited details and directing consumers to contact a Realtor for
more information.
United States
The largest MLS in the United States is currently the Washington, DC region's
Metropolitan Regional Information Systems, Inc (MRIS) covering Washington
DC, most of Maryland (including the Chesapeake Bay counties) and suburban
Virginia counties, and parts of West Virginia and Pennsylvania. As of late May
2008, it has about 55,600 active members, according to the public access sections
of its website,[6] although numbers vary according to when accessed.
New York City
Although the other boroughs and Long Island have an MLS, MLS has never taken
hold in Manhattan. A small group of brokers formed the Manhattan Association of
Realtors and operate MLSManhattan.com. MLSManhattan has a small fraction of
the total active inventory in Manhattan. The Bronx Manhattan North MLS also
offers coverage in Northern Manhattan. It too has failed to acquire widespread
adoption by brokers.
The prevalent database is operated by the Real Estate Board of New York
(REBNY), a non-Realtor entity that suceded from the National Association of
Realtors in the 1980s. REBNY operates a database called RLS which stands for
REBNY Listing Service. A predecessor of RLS was marketed as R.O.L.E.X
(REBNY Online Listing Exchange), before Rolex Watches claimed trademark
infringement.
Unlike MLS, RLS does not have under contract, sold or days on market data, nor
does it have rental listings. RLS is more of a Gateway of Active listings. There is
no single database. The RLS gateway is populated by several private databases that
include Online Residential (OLR) and Realplus a proprietary database exclusive to
a few large Manhattan Brokers. These databases exchange data continually
effectively creating several separate systems with essentially similar data. Another
vendor, Klickads, Inc D/B/A Brokers NYC, owned by Lala Wang sued in 2007 to
be included in the list of firms permitted to participate in the Gateway.
Most Manhattan brokerages are members of REBNY. The REBNY RLS requires
all listings to be entered and disseminated within 24 hours (Until 2007 72 Hours to
accommodate agencies without weekend data
entry)https://members.rebny.com/jsp/member/docs/manual/Residential_Resolution
2.9 Policies on Sharing MLS data in the USA
The National Association of Realtors (NAR) has set policies that permit brokers to
show limited MLS information on their websites under a system known as IDX or
Internet Data Exchange. NAR has an ownership interest in Move Inc., the
company which operates a website that has been given exclusive rights to display
significant MLS information. The site is Realtor.com.
Using IDX search tools available on most real estate brokers' websites (as well as
on many individual agents' sites), potential buyers may view properties available
on the market, using search features such as location, type of property (single
family, lease, vacant land, duplex), property features (number of bedrooms and
bathrooms), and price ranges. In some instances photos can be viewed. Many allow
for saving search criteria and for daily email updates of newly-available properties.
However, if a potential buyer finds a property, he/she will still need to contact the
listing agent (or their own agent) to view the house and make an offer.
The U.S. Department of Justice filed an antitrust lawsuit in September 2005
against the National Association of Realtors over NAR's policy which allowed
brokers to restrict access to their MLS information from appearing on the websites
of certain brokers which operate solely on the web.[7] This policy applied to
commercial entities which are also licensed brokerages, such as HomeGain, which
solicit clients by internet advertising and then provide referrals to local agents in
return for a fee of 25% to 35% of the commission.
The DOJ's antitrust claims also include NAR rules that exclude certain kinds of
brokers from membership in MLSs. NAR has revised its policies on allowing
access on web sites operated by member brokers and others to what might be
considered as proprietary data.[8]
The case was settled in May 2008, with NAR agreeing that Internet brokerages
would be given access to all the same listings that traditional brokerages are.[9]
2.9 Origin of the MLS
According to the National Association of REALTORS:
"In the late 1800s, real estate brokers regularly gathered at the offices of their local
associations to share information about properties they were trying to sell. They
agreed to compensate other brokers who helped sell those properties, and the first
MLS was born, based on a fundamental principal that's unique to organized real
estate: Help me sell my inventory and I'll help you sell yours."
Alternatives And Changes To The MLS System
Up until 1968 almost all brokers involved in transactions represented the seller,
either as the seller's agent or as the sub-agent of the listing broker. The seller paid
the listing broker who, in turn, was responsible for compensating the broker
working with the buyer. The MLS was intended to be a simple system that
benefited everyone, including both the buyers and sellers.
The 2005 Justice Department antitrust lawsuit against the National Association of
Realtors threatens the exclusivity MLS services in the US. If this case undermines
MLS exclusivity, open internet MLS systems may begin to thrive, perhaps
combined with Web 2.0 technologies such as social networking, allowing buyers
and sellers to interact without the need for an agent.
MLS Systems Worldwide
Although many countries are lacking regulations regarding real estate transactions,
lately there are attempts to align with those in developed markets. A special case
may be Italy which is developing the first international MLS. Its multilingual
interface, which translates property details and all the web pages instantly and
automatically into 8 languages, allows estate agents to share their property listings
with other estate agents around the world. The platform links over 1000 real estate
agents and over 40000 offers from 16 countries worldwide.
Europe
In certain European countries, most notably in Spain. The Spanish MLS website is
www.mls.es[3]
Real estate agents pay subscription fees to an MLS company which then allow
property listings to be uploaded onto their servers. Also, all subscribing real estate
agents create a property search link on their own websites which links directly to
the MLS service. Thus, any site visitor to any of the subscribing agents' sites will
be able to find all properties listed on the MLS servers, even though they are
visiting the website of a single agent. In effect, every single subscribing real estate
agent appears to be offering exactly the same properties for sale, not unlike the
situation with IDX systems in the United States.
When buyers use the internet to find property, often using Google, the search
results usually provide a list of real estate agents’ websites in the locality which is
being searched. The buyer clicks through the various websites and starts browsing
properties of interest, although every site visited is offering the same properties
because they are all linked to the same MLS server.
The buyer then has to choose an agent (again, not very different from elsewhere),
but it does force the buyer to make a decision, since all agents in the area have
access to all properties and the seller's agent will benefit regardless of who brings
the buyer, again very like the US.
Although there are currently no regulations in Europe in relation to MLS, it may be
a matter of time before its use may be viewed as a restrictive practice designed to
benefit real estate agents, rather than consumers.
Chapter Three: Principles of Intelligent Urbanism
3.1 Introduction
Principles of Intelligent Urbanism (PIU) is a theory of urban planning composed of
a set of ten axioms intended to guide the formulation of city plans and urban
designs. They are intended to reconcile and integrate diverse urban planning and
management concerns. These axioms include environmental sustainability,
heritage conservation, appropriate technology, infrastructure efficiency,
placemaking, "Social Access," transit oriented development, regional integration,
human scale, and institutional integrity.
The PIU evolved from the city planning guidelines formulated by the International
Congress of Modern Architecture (CIAM), the urban design approaches developed
at Harvard's pioneering Urban Design Department under the leadership of Josep
Lluis Sert, and the concerns enunciated by Team Ten. It is most prominently seen
in plans prepared by Christopher Charles Benninger and his numerous colleagues
in the Asian context (Benninger 2001). They form the elements of the planning
curriculum at the School of Planning, Ahmedabad, which Benninger founded in
1971. They were the basis for the new capital plan for Thimphu, Bhutan.
3.2 Axioms
Principle One: A Balance with Nature
According to proponents of Intelligent Urbanism, balance with nature emphasizes
the distinction between utilizing resources and exploiting them. It focuses on the
thresholds beyond which deforestation, soil erosion, aquifer depletion, siltation and
flooding reinforce one another in urban development, saving or destroying life
support systems. The principle promotes environmental assessments to identify
fragile zones, threatened ecosystems and habitats that can be enhanced through
conservation, density control, land use planning and open space design (McCarg:
1975). This principle promotes life cycle building energy consumption and
pollutant emission analysis.
This principle states there is a level of human habitation intensity wherein the
resources that are consumed will be replaced through the replenishing natural
cycles of the seasons, creating environmental equilibrium. Embedded in the
principle is contention that so long as nature can resurge each year; so long as the
biomass can survive within its own eco-system; so long as the breeding grounds of
fauna and avifauna are safe; so long as there is no erosion and the biomass is
maintained, nature is only being utilized.
Underlying this principle is the supposition that there is a fragile line that is
crossed when the fauna, which cross-fertilizes the flora, which sustains the soil,
which supports the hillsides, is no longer there. Erosion, siltation of drainage
networks and flooding result. After a point of no return, utilization of natural
resources will outpace the natural ability of the eco-system to replenish itself. From
there on degradation accelerates and amplifies. Deforestation, desertification,
erosion, floods, fires and landslides all increase.
The principle states that blatant "acts against nature" include cutting of hillside
trees, quarrying on slopes, dumping sewage and industrial waste into the natural
drainage system, paving and plinthing excessively, and construction on steep
slopes. This urban theory proposes that the urban ecological balance can be
maintained when fragile areas are reserved, conservation of eco-systems is
pursued, and low intensity habitation precincts are thoughtfully identified. Thus,
the principles operate within the balance of nature, with a goal of protecting and
conserving those elements of the ecology that nurture the environment. Therefore,
the first Principle of Intelligent Urbanism is that urbanization be in balance with
nature.
Principle Two: A Balance with Tradition
Balance with Tradition is intended to integrate plan interventions with existing
cultural assets, respecting traditional practices and precedents of style (Spreiregen:
1965). This urban planning principle demands respect for the cultural heritage of a
place. It seeks out traditional wisdom in the layout of human settlements, in the
order of building plans, in the precedents of style, in the symbols and signs that
transfer meanings through decoration and motifs. This principle respects the order
engendered into building systems through years of adaptation to climate, to social
circumstances, to available materials and to technology. It promotes architectural
styles and motifs designed to communicate cultural values.
This principle calls for orienting attention toward historic monuments and heritage
structures, leaving space at the ends of visual axis to “frame” existing views and
vistas. Natural views and vistas demand respect, assuring that buildings do not
block major sight lines toward visual assets.
Embedded in the principle is the concern for unique cultural and societal
iconography of regions, their signs and symbols. Their incorporation into the
spatial order of urban settings is promoted. Adherents promote the orientation and
structuring of urban plans using local knowledge and meaning systems, expressed
through art, urban space and architecture.
Planning decisions must operate within the balance of tradition, aggressively
protecting, promoting and conserving generic components and elements of the
urban pattern.
Principle Three: Appropriate Technology
Appropriate technology emphasizes the employment of building materials,
construction techniques, infrastructural systems and project management which are
consistent with local contexts. People's capacities, geo-climatic conditions, locally
available resources, and suitable capital investments all temper technology. Where
there are abundant craftspeople, labour intensive methods are appropriate. Where
there is surplus savings, capital intensive methods are appropriate. For every
problem there is a range of potential technologies, which can be applied, and an
appropriate fit between technology and other resources must be established.
Proponents argue that accountability and transparency are enhanced by overlaying
the physical spread of urban utilities and services upon electoral constituencies,
such that people’s representatives are interlinked with the urban technical systems
needed for a civil society. This principle is in sync with "small is beautiful"
concepts and with the use of local resources.
Principle Four: Conviviality
The fourth principle sponsors social interaction through public domains, in a
hierarchy of places, devised for personal solace, companionship, romance,
domesticity, "neighborliness," community and civic life (Jacobs:1993). According
to proponents of Intelligent Urbanism, vibrant societies are interactive, socially
engaging and offer their members numerous opportunities for gathering and
meeting one another. The PIU maintain that this can be achieved through design
and that society operates within hierarchies of social relations which are space
specific. The hierarchies can be conceptualized as a system of social tiers, with
each tier having a corresponding physical place in the settlement structure.
A Place for The Individual
A goal of Intelligent Urbanism is to create places of solitude. These may be in
urban forests, along urban hills, beside quiet streams, in public gardens and in
parks where one can escape to meditate and contemplate. According to proponents,
these are the quiet places wherein the individual consciousness dialogues with the
rational mind. Idle and random thought sorts out complexities of modern life and
allows the obvious to emerge. It is in these natural settings that the wandering mind
finds its measure and its balance. Using ceremonial gates, directional walls and
other “silent devices” these spaces are denoted and divined. Places of the
individual cultivate introspection. These spaces may also be the forecourts and
interior courtyards of public buildings, or even the thoughtful reading rooms of
libraries. Meditation focuses thought and sharpens one’s control over the conscious
world. Intelligent urbanism creates a domain for the individual to mature through
self-analysis and self-realization.
A Place for Friendship
The axiom insists that in city plans there must be spaces for “beautiful, intimate
friendship” where unfettered dialogue can happen. This principle insists that such
places will not exist naturally in a modern urban fabric. They must be a part of the
conscientious design of the urban core, of the urban hubs, of urban villages and of
neighborhoods, where people can meet with friends and talk out life’s issues,
sorrows, joys and dilemmas. This second tier is important for the emotional life of
the populace. It sponsors strong mental health within the people, creating places
where friendship can unfold and grow.
A Place for Householders
There must be spaces for householders, which may be in the form of dwellings for
families, or homes for intimate companions, and where young workmates can form
a common kitchen. Whatever their compositions, there must be a unique domain
for social groups, familiar or biological, which have organized themselves into
households. These domestic precincts are where families live and carry out their
day-to-day functions of life. This third tier of conviviality is where the individual
socializes into a personality.
Housing clusters planned according to this axiom create a variety of household
possibilities, which respond to a range of household structures and situations. It
recognizes that households transform through the years, requiring a variety of
dwellings types that respond to a complex matrix of needs and abilities, which are
provided for in city plans.
A Place for The Neighborhood
Smaller household domains must cluster into a higher social domain, the
neighborhood social group. These are social groups where everyone recognises one
another. Festivals are celebrated in neighborhoods, and one may be passively
drawn into local functions without any proactive effort.
In rural settings these are clusters of houses in hamlets, formed of large extended
families, where everyone knows each other, recognizes all of the good and bad
qualities of each person, and where social patterns of behavior are enforced
without written codes, or oppressive regimentation. In contemporary social settings
the neighborhood takes on some of the roles that were once sponsored by hamlets
composed of familiar members.
In an urban neighborhood each individual knows each other’s face, name, special
characteristics, strengths and weaknesses. In an urban village, the “eyes of the
street” provide protection and reassurance.
Neighborhoods built according to Intelligent Urbanism should accommodate play
areas for children, small hang-out places for pre-teens and common facilities like
post boxes and notice boards where people can meet casually.
Good city planning practice sponsors, through design, such units of social space. It
is in this fourth tier of social life that public conduct takes on new dimensions and
groups learn to live peacefully among one another. It is through neighborhoods that
the “social contract” amongst diverse households and individuals is sponsored.
This social contract is the rational basis for social relations and negotiations within
larger social groups. Within neighborhoods basic amenities like creches, early
learning centers, preventive health care and rudimentary infrastructure are
maintained by the community.
A Place for Communities
The next social tier, or hierarchy, is the community. Historically, communities
were tribes who shared social mores and cultural behavioral patterns. In
contemporary urban settings communities are formed of diverse people. But these
are people who share the common need to negotiate and manage their spatial
settings. In plans created through the Principles of Intelligent Urbanism these are
called Urban Villages. Like a rural village, social bonds are found in the
community management of security, common resources and social space. Urban
Villages will have defined social spaces, services and amenities that need to be
managed by the community. According to proponents of Intelligent Urbanism
these Urban Villages optimally become the administrative wards, and therefore the
constituencies, of the elected members of municipal bodies. Though there are no
physical barriers to these communities, they have their unique spatial social
domain. Intelligent Urbanism calls for the creation of dense, walkable zones in
which the inhabitants recognize each other’s faces, share common facilities and
resources, and often see each other at the village centre. This fifth tier of social
space is where one needs initiative to join into various activities. It is intended to
promote initiative and constructive community participation. There are
opportunities for one to be involved in the management of services, and amenities
and to meet new people. They accommodate primary education and recreation
areas. Good planning practice promotes the creation of community places, where
community based organizations can manage common resources and resolve
common problems.
A Place for the City Domain
The Principles of Intelligent Urbanism call for city level domains. These can be
plazas, parks, stadia, transport hubs, promenades, "passages" or gallerias. These are
social spaces where everyone can go. In many cities one has to pay an entrance fee
to access “public spaces” like malls and museums. Unlike the lower tiers of the
social hierarchy, this tier is not defined by any biological, familiar, face-to-face or
exclusive characteristic. One may find people from all continents, from nearby
districts and provinces and from all parts of the city in such places. By nature these
are accessible and open spaces, with no physical, social or economic barriers.
According to this principle it is the rules of human conduct that order this domain’s
behavior. It is civility, or civilization, which protects and energizes such spaces. At
the lower tiers, one meets people through introductions, through family ties, and
through neighborhood circumstances.
These domains would include all freely accessible large spaces. These are places
where outdoor exhibits are held, sports matches take place, vegetables are sold and
goods are on display. These are places where visitors to the city meander amongst
the locals. Such places may stay the same, but the people are always changing.
Most significant, these city scale public domains foster public interaction; they
sponsor unspoken ground rules for unknown people to meet and to interact. They
nurture civic understanding of the strength of diversity, variety, a range of cultural
groups and ethnic mixes. It is this higher tier of social space which defines truly
urbane environments.
Every social system has its own hierarchy of social relations and interactions.
Intelligent Urbanism sees cyberspace as a macro tier of conviviality, but does not
discount physical places in forging relationships due to the Internet. These are
reflected through a system of ‘places’ that respond to them. Good urban planning
practice promotes the planning and design of such ‘places’ as elemental
components of the urban structure.
Principle Five: Efficiency
The principle of efficiency promotes a balance between the consumption of
resources such as energy, time and fiscal resources, with planned achievements in
comfort, safety, security, access, tenure, productivity and hygiene. It encourages
optimum sharing of public land, roads, facilities, services and infrastructural
networks, reducing per household costs, while increasing affordability,
productivity, access and civic viability.
Intelligent Urbanism promotes a balance between performance and consumption.
Intelligent urbanism promotes efficiency in carrying out functions in a cost
effective manner. It assesses the performance of various systems required by the
public and the consumption of energy, funds, administrative time and the
maintenance efforts required to perform these functions.
A major concern of this principle is transport. While recognizing the convenience
of personal vehicles, it attempts to place costs (such as energy consumption, large
paved areas, parking, accidents, negative balance of trade, pollution and related
morbidity) on the users of private vehicles.
Good city planning practice promotes alternative modes of transport, as opposed to
a dependence on personal vehicles. It promotes affordable public transport. It
promotes medium to high-density residential development along with
complementary social amenities, convenience shopping, recreation and public
services in compact, walkable mixed-use settlements. These compact communities
have shorter pipe lengths, wire lengths, cable lengths and road lengths per capita.
More people share gardens, shops and transit stops.
These compact urban nodes are spaced along regional urban transport corridors
that integrate the region’s urban nodes, through public transport, into a rational
system of growth. Good planning practice promotes clean, comfortable, safe and
speedy, public transport, which operates at dependable intervals along major origin
and destination paths. Such a system is cheaper, safer, less polluting and consumes
less energy.
The same principle applies to public infrastructure, social facilities and public
services. Compact, high-density communities result in more efficient urban
systems, delivering services at less cost per unit to each citizen. There is an
appropriate balance to be found somewhere on the line between wasteful low-
density individual systems and over-capitalized mega systems. Costly, individual
septic tanks and water bores servicing individual households in low-density
fragmented layouts, cause pollution of subterranean aquifer systems. The bores
dramatically lower ground water levels. Alternatively, large-scale, citywide
sewerage systems and regional water supply systems are capital intensive and
prone to management and maintenance dysfunction. Operating costs, user fees and
cost recovery expenses are high. There is a balance wherein medium-scale
systems, covering compact communities, utilize modern technology, without the
pitfalls of large-scale infrastructure systems. This principle of urbanism promotes
the middle path with regard to public infrastructure, facilities, services and
amenities.
When these appropriate facilities and service systems overlap electoral
constituencies, the “imagery” between user performance in the form of payments
for services, systems dependability through managed delivery, and official
response through effective representation, should all become obvious and
transparent.
Good city planning practices promote compact settlements along dense urban
corridors, and within populated networks, such that the numbers of users who
share costs are adequate to support effective and efficient infrastructure systems.
Intelligent Urbanism is intended to foster movement on foot, linking pedestrian
movement with public transport systems at strategic nodes and hubs. Medium-
scale infrastructural systems, whose catchment areas overlap political
constituencies and administrative jurisdictions, result in transparent governance
and accountable urban management.
Principle Six: Human Scale
Intelligent Urbanism encourages ground level, pedestrian oriented urban patterns,
based on anthropometric dimensions. Walkable, mixed use urban villages are
encouraged over single-function blocks, linked by motor ways, and surrounded by
parking lots.
An abiding axiom of urban planning, urban design and city planning has been the
promotion of people friendly places, pedestrian walkways and public domains
where people can meet freely. These can be parks, gardens, glass-covered gallerias,
arcades, courtyards, street side cafes, river- and hill-side stroll ways, and a variety
of semi-covered spaces.
Intelligent urbanism promotes the scale of the pedestrian moving on the pathway,
as opposed to the scale of the automobile on the expressway. Intelligent urbanism
promotes the ground plan of imaginable precincts, as opposed to the imagery of
façades and the monumentality of the section. It promotes the personal visibility of
places moving on foot at eye level.
Intelligent urbanism advocates removing artificial barrier and promotes face-to-
face contact. Proponents argue that the automobile, single use zoning and the
construction of public structures in isolated compounds, all deteriorate the human
condition and the human scale of the city.
According to PIU proponents, the trend towards urban sprawl can be overcome by
developing pedestrian circulation networks along streets and open spaces that link
local destinations. Shops, amenities, day care, vegetable markets and basic social
services should be clustered around public transport stops, and at a walkable
distance from work places, public institutions, high and medium density residential
areas. Public spaces should be integrated into residential, work, entertainment and
commercial areas. Social activities and public buildings should orient onto public
open spaces. These should be the interchange sites for people on the move, where
they can also revert into the realm of “slowness,” of community life and of human
interaction.
Human scale can be achieved through building masses that “step down” to human
scale open spaces; by using arcades and pavilions as buffers to large masses; by
intermixing open spaces and built masses sensitively; by using anthropometric
proportions and natural materials. Traditional building precedents often carry
within them a human scale language, from which a contemporary fabric of build
may evolve.
The focus of Intelligent Urbanism is the ground plane, pedestrian movement and
interaction along movement channels, stems, at crossing nodes, at interactive hubs
and within vibrant urban cores. The PIU holds many values in common with
Transit Oriented Development, but the PIU goal is not merely to replace the
automobile, nor to balance it. These are mundane requirements of planning, which
the PIU assumes are found in every design and urban configuration. The PIU goal
is to enrich the human condition and to enhance the realm of human possibilities.
Intelligent Urbanism conceives of urbanity as a process of facilitating human
behavior toward more tolerant, more peaceful, more accommodating and more
sensitive modalities of interaction and conflict resolution. Intelligent urbanism
recognizes that ‘urbanity’ emerges where people mix and interact on a face-to-face
basis, on the ground, at high densities and amongst diverse social and economic
groups. Intelligent Urbanism nurtures ‘urbanity’ through designs and plans that
foster human scale interaction.
Principle Seven: Opportunity Matrix
The PIU envisions the city as a vehicle for personal, social, and economic
development, through access to a range of organizations, services, facilities and
information providing a variety of opportunities for enhanced employment,
economic engagement, education, and recreation. This principle aims to increase
access to shelter, health care and human resources development. It aims to increase
safety and hygenic conditions. The city is an engine of economic growth. This is
generally said with regard to urban annual net product, enriched urban economic
base, sustained employment generation and urban balance of trade. More
significantly this is true for the individuals who settle in cities. Moreover, cities are
places where individuals can increase their knowledge, skills and sensitivities.
Cities provide access to health care and preventive medicine. They provide a great
umbrella of services under which the individual can leave aside the struggle for
survival, and get on with the finer things of life.
The PIU sees cities as catalysts for personal definition and self discovery. In cities
people get inspired, build a drive to achieve, discover aspects of their personalities,
skills and intellectual curiosity which they use to craft their identity.
The city provides a range of services and facilities, whose realization in villages
are the all-consuming struggle of rural inhabitants. Potable water; sewerage
management; energy for cooking, heat and lighting are all piped and wired in; solid
waste disposal and storm water drainage are taken for granted. The city offers
access through roads, public transit, telephones and the Internet. The peace and
security provided by effective policing systems, and the courts of law, are just
assumed to be there in the city. Then there are the schools, the recreation facilities,
the health services and a myriad of professional services offered in the city market
place.
Intelligent urbanism views the city as an opportunity system. Yet these
opportunities are not equally distributed. Security, health care, education, shelter,
hygiene, and most of all employment, are not equally accessible. Proponents of
Intelligent Urbanism see the city as playing an equalizing role allowing citizens to
grow according to their own essential capabilities and efforts. If the city is an
institution, which generates opportunities, intelligent urbanism promotes the
concept of equal access to opportunities within the urban system.
Intelligent Urbanism promotes a guaranteed access to education, health care, police
protection, and justice before the law, potable water, and a range of basic services.
Perhaps this principle, more than any other, distinguishes intelligent urbanism from
other elitist, efficiency oriented urban charters and regimes.
Intelligent Urbanism does not say every household will stay in an equivalent
house, or travel in the same vehicle, or consume the same amount of electricity.
Intelligent Urbanism recognizes the existence of poverty, of ignorance, of ill
health, of malnutrition, of low skills, of gender bias and ignorance of the urban
system itself. Intelligent urbanism is courageous in confronting these forms of
inequality, and backlogs in social and economic development. Intelligent urbanism
sees an urban plan, not only as a physical plan, but also as a social plan and as an
economic plan.
The ramifications of this understanding are that the people living in intelligent
cities should not experience urban development in “standard doses”. In short,
people may be born equal or unequal, but they grow inequitably. An important role
of the city is to provide a variety of paths and channels for each individual to set
right their own future, against the inequity of their past, or the special challenges
they face. According to proponents of this principle this is the most salient aspect
of a free society; than even voting rights access to opportunity is the essence of
self-liberation and human development (Sen:2000).
According to proponents of Intelligent Urbanism, there will be a variety of
problems faced by urbanites and they need a variety of opportunity channels for
resolution. If there are ten problem areas where people are facing stresses, like
economic engagement, health, shelter, food, education, recreation, transport, etc.,
there must be a variety of opportunities through which individuals and households
can resolve each of these stresses. There must be ten channels to resolve each of
ten stresses! If this opportunity matrix is understood and responded to, the city is
truly functioning as an opportunity matrix. For example, opportunities for shelter
could be through the channels of lodges, rented rooms, studio apartments, bedroom
apartments and houses. It could be through the channels of ownership, through a
variety of tenencies. It could be through opportunities for self-help, or incremental
housing. It could be through the up-gradation of slums. Intelligent urbanism
promotes a wide range of solutions, where any stress is felt. It therefore promotes a
range of problem statements, options, and variable solutions to urban stresses.
Intelligent Urbanism sees cities as processes. Proponents argue that good urban
plans facilitate those processes and do not place barriers before them. For example,
it does not judge a “slum” as a blight on society; it sees the possibility that such a
settlement may be an opportunity channel for entry into the city. Such a settlement
may be the only affordable shelter, within easy access to employment and
education, for a new immigrant household in the city. According to Intelligent
Urbanism, if the plan ignores, or destroys such settlements, it is creating a city of
barriers and despair wherein a poor family, offering a good service to the city, is
deigned a modicum of basic needs for survival. Alternatively, if the urban plan
recognizes that the “slum” is a mechanism for self development, a spring-board
from which children have access to education, a place which can be up-graded
with potable water, basic sanitary facilities, street lights and paving…then it is a
plan for opportunity. Intelligent urbanism believes that there are slums of hope and
slums of despair. It promotes slums of hope, which contribute, not only to
individual opportunities, but also to nation building.
The opportunity matrix must also respond to young professionals, to skilled, well-
paid day laborers, to the upper middle class and to affluent entrepreneurs. If a
range of needs, of abilities to pay, of locational requirements, and of levels of
development of shelter, is addressed, then opportunities are being created.
Intelligent urbanism believes that private enterprise is the logical provider of
opportunities, but that alone it will not be just or effective. The regime of land, left
to market forces alone, will create an exclusive, dysfunctional society. Intelligent
urbanism believes that there is an essential role for the civil society to intervene in
the opportunity matrix of the city.
Intelligent urbanism promotes opportunities through access to:
Basic and primary education, skill development and knowledge about the urban
world;
Basic health care, potable water, solid waste disposal and hygiene;
Urban facilities like storm drainage, street lights, roads and footpaths;
Recreation and entertainment;
Transport, energy, communications;
Public participation and debate;
Finance and investment mechanisms;
Land and/or built-up space where goods and services can be produced;
Rudimentary economic infrastructure;
Intelligent urbanism provides a wide range of zones, districts and precincts
where activities and functions can occur without detracting from one another.
Intelligent Urbanism proposes that enterprise can only flourish where a public
framework provides opportunities for enterprise. This system of opportunities
operates through public investments in economic and social infrastructure; through
incentives in the form of appropriate finance, tax inducements, subsidized skill
development for workers, and: regulations which protect the environment, safety,
hygiene and health. To ensure a stable playing field where one can make an
investment with predictable returns, a modicum of regulation is necessary.
Proponents argue that it is through government regulations that private investment
can be protected from fraud. It is through government regulation that the under-
pinning conditions for free enterprise can be protected.
Principle Eight: Regional Integration
Intelligent Urbanism envisions the city as an organic part of a larger
environmental, socio-economic and cultural-geographic system, essential for its
sustainability. This zone of influence is the region. Likewise, it sees the region as
integrally connected to the city. Intelligent Urbanism sees the planning of the city
and its hinterland is a single holistic process. Proponents argue if one does not
recognize growth as a regional phenomenon, then development will play a hop-
scotch game of moving just a bit further along an arterial roads, further up valleys
above the municipal jurisdiction, staying beyond the path of the city boundary,
development regulations and of the urban tax regime.
The region may be defined as the catchment area from which employees and
students commute into the city on a daily basis. It is the catchment area from which
people choose to visit one city, as opposed to another, for retail shopping and
entertainment. Economically the city region may include the hinterland that
depends on its wholesale markets, banking facilities, transport hubs and
information exchanges. The region needing integration may be seen as the zone
from which perishable foods, firewood and building materials supply the city. The
economic region can also be defined as the area managed by exchanges in the city.
Telephone calls to the region go through the city's telecom exchange; post goes
through the city's general post office; money transfers go through the city’s
financial institutions and internet data passes electronically through the city’s
servers. The area over which “city exchanges” disperse matter can well be called
the city’s economic hinterland or region. Usually the region includes dormitory
communities, airports, water reservoirs, perishable food farms, hydro facilities,
out-of-doors recreation and other infrastructure that serves the city. Intelligent
urbanism sees the integrated planning of these services and facilities as part of the
city planning process.
Intelligent Urbanism understands that the social and economic region linked to a
city also has a physical form, or a geographic character. A hierarchy of watersheds,
creating valleys and defining edges of neighborhoods, may define the geographic
character. Forest ranges, fauna and avifauna habitats are set within such regions
and are connected by natural corridors for movement and cross-fertilization.
Within this larger, environmental scenario, one must conceptualize urbanism in
terms of watersheds, subterranean aquifer systems, and other natural systems that
operate across the entire region. Economic infrastructure, such as roads, hydro
basins, irrigation channels, water reservoirs and related distribution networks
usually follow the terrain of the regional geography. The region’s geographic
portals, and lines of control, may also define defense and security systems
deployment.
Intelligent Urbanism recognizes that there is always a spillover of population from
the city into the region, and that population in the region moves into the city for
work, shopping, entertainment, health care and education. With thoughtful
planning the region can take pressure off of the city. Traditional and new
settlements within the urban region can be enhanced and densified to accommodate
additional urban households. There are many activities within the city, which are
growing and are incompatible with urban habitat. Large, noisy and polluting
workshops and manufacturing units are amongst these. Large wholesale markets,
storage sheds, vehicular maintenance garages, and waste management facilities
need to be housed outside of the city’s limits in their own satellite enclaves. In
larger urban agglomerations a number of towns and cities are clustered around a
major urban center forming a metropolitan region.
Intelligent Urbanism is not just planning for the present; it is also planning for the
distant future. Intelligent Urbanism is not Utopian, but futuristic in its need to
forecast the scenarios to come, within its own boundaries, and within the
boundaries of the distant future.
Principle Nine: Balanced Movement
Intelligent Urbanism advocates integrated transport systems comprising walkways,
cycle paths, bus lanes, light rail corridors, under-ground metros and automobile
channels. A balance between appropriate modes of movement is proposed. More
capital intensive transport systems should move between high density nodes and
hubs, which interchange with lower technology movement options. These modal
split nodes become the public domains around which cluster high density,
pedestrian, mixed-use urban villages (Taniguchi:2001).
The PIU accepts that the automobile is here to stay, but that it should not be made
essential by design. A well planned metropolis would densify along mass transit
corridors and around major urban hubs. Smaller, yet dense, urban nodes are seen as
micro-zones of medium level density, public amenities and pedestrian access. At
these points lower level nodal split will occur, such as between bus loops and cycle
tracts. The PIU views nodal split points as places of urban conviviality and access
to services and facilities. Modal split can be between walking, cycling, driving, and
mass transit. Bus loops may feed larger rail based rapid movement corridors.
Social and economic infrastructure becomes more intensive as movement corridors
become more intense.
Principle Ten: Institutional Integrity
Intelligent Urbanism holds that good practices inherent in considered principles
can only be realized through accountable, transparent, competent and participatory
local governance, founded on appropriate data bases, due entitlements, civic
responsibilities and duties. The PIU promotes a range of facilitative and promotive
urban development management tools to achieve appropriate urban practices,
systems and forms (Islam: 2000). None of the principles or practices the PIU
promotes can be implemented unless there is a strong and rational institutional
framework to define, channel and legalize urban development, in all of its aspects.
Intelligent Urbanism envisions the institutional framework as being very clear
about the rules and regulations it sponsors and that those using discretion in
implementing these measures must do so in a totally open, recorded and
transparent manner.
Intelligent Urbanism facilitates the public in carrying out their honest objectives. It
does not regulate and control the public. It attempts to reduce the requirements,
steps and documentation required for citizens to process their proposals.
Intelligent Urbanism is also promotive in furthering the interests of the public in
their genuine utilization of opportunities. It promotes site and services schemes for
households who can construct their own houses. It promotes up-gradation of
settlements with inadequate basic services. It promotes innovative financing to a
range of actors who can contribute to the city’s development. Intelligent urbanism
promotes a limited role for government, for example in “packaging” large-scale
urban development schemes, so that the private sector is promoted to actually build
and market urban projects, which were previously built by the government.
Intelligent Urbanism does not consider itself naïve. It recognizes that there are
developers and promoters who have no long term commitment to their own
constructions, and their only concern is to hand over a dwelling, gain their profit
and move on. For these players it is essential to have Development Control
Regulations, which assure the public that the products they invest in are safe,
hygienic, orderly, durable and efficient. For the discerning citizen, such rules also
lay out the civil understanding by which a complex society agrees to live together.
The PIU contends that there must be a cadastral System wherein all of the land in
the jurisdiction of cities is demarcated, surveyed, characterized and archived,
registering its legal owner, its legal uses, and the tax defaults against it.
The institutional framework can only operate where there is a Structure Plan, or
other document that defines how the land will be used, serviced, and accessed. The
Structure Plan tells landowners and promoters what the parameters of development
are, which assures that their immediate investments are secure, and that the returns
and use of such efforts are predictable. A Structure Plan is intended to provide
owners and investors with predictable future scenarios. Cities require efficient
patterns for their main infrastructure systems and utilities. According to PIU
proponents, land needs to be used in a judicious manner, organizing
complementary functions and activities into compact, mixed use precincts and
separating out non-compatible uses into their own precincts. In a similar manner,
proponents argue it is only through a plan that heritage sites and the environment
can be legally protected. Public assets in the form of nature, religious places,
heritage sites and open space systems must be designated in a legal plan.
Intelligent Urbanism proposes that the city and its surrounding region be regulated
by a Structure Plan, or equivalent mechanism, which acts as a legal instrument to
guide the growth, development and enhancement of the city.
According to proponents, there must be a system of participation by the “Stake
Holders” in the preparation of plans. Public meetings, hearings of objections and
transparent processes of addressing objections, must be institutionalized.
Intelligent urbanism promotes Public Participation. Local Area Plans must be
prepared which address local issues and take into account local views and
sentiments regarding plan objectives, configurations, standards and patterns. Such
plans lay out the sites of plots showing the roads, public open spaces, amenities
areas and conservation sites. Land Pooling assures the beneficiaries from provision
of public infrastructure and amenities proportionally contribute and that a few
individuals do not suffer from reservations in the plan.
According to proponents, there must be a system of Floor Area Ratios to assure
that the land and the services are not over pressured. No single plot owner should
have more than the determined "fair share" of utilization of the access roads,
amenities and utilities that service all of the sites. Floor Area Ratios temper this
relationship as regulated the manner in which public services are consumed.
According to PIU proponents, Transfer of Development Rights benefits land
owners whose properties have been reserved under the plan. It also benefits the
local authorities that lack the financial resources to purchase lands to implement
the Structure Plans. It benefits concentrated, city center project promoters who
have to amortize expensive land purchases, by allowing them to purchase the
development rights from the owners of reserved lands and to hand over those
properties to the plan implementing authority. This allows the local authority to
widen roads and to implement the Structure Plan. The local authority then transfers
the needed development right to city center promoters.
Intelligent Urbanism supports the use of Architectural Guidelines where there is a
tradition to preserve and where precedents can be used to specify architectural
elements, motifs and language in a manner, which intended to reinforce a cultural
tradition. Building designs must respect traditional elements, even though the
components may vary greatly to integrate contemporary functions. Even in a
greenfield setting Architectural Guidelines are required to assure harmony and
continuity of building proportions, scale, color, patterns, motifs, materials and
facades.
Intelligent Urbanism insists on safety, hygiene, durability and utility in the design
and construction of buildings. Where large numbers of people gather in schools,
hospitals, and other public facilities that may become emergency shelters in
disasters, special care must be exercised. A suitable Building Code is the proposed
instrument to achieve these aims.
PIU proponents state that those who design buildings must be professionally
qualified architects; those who design the structures (especially of more than
ground plus two levels) must be professionally qualified structural engineers; those
who build buildings must be qualified civil engineers; and, those who supervise
and control construction must be qualified construction managers. Intelligent
Urbanism promotes the professionalisation of the city making process. While
promoting professionalism, Intelligent Urbanism proposes that this not become a
barrier in the development process. Small structures, low-rise structures, and
humble structures that do not house many people can be self designed and
constructed by the inhabitants themselves. Proponents maintain that there must be
recognized Professional Accrediting Boards, or Professional Bodies, to see that
urban development employs adequate technical competence.
Finally, there must be legislation creating Statutory Local Authorities, and
empowering them to act, manage, invest, service, protect, promote and facilitate
urban development and all of the opportunities that a modern city must sponsor.
Intelligent Urbanism insists that cities, local authorities, regional development
commissions and planning agencies be professionally managed. City Managers can
be hired to manage the delivery of services, the planning and management of
planned development, the maintenance of utilities and the creation of amenities.
Intelligent Urbanism views plans and urban designs and housing configurations as
expressions of the people for whom they are planned. The processes of planning
must therefore be a participatory involving a range of stakeholders. The process
must be a transparent one, which makes those privileged to act as guardians of the
people’s will accountable for their decisions and choices. Intelligent Urbanism sees
urban planning and city governance as the most salient expressions of civility.
Intelligent Urbanism fosters the evolution of institutional systems that enhance
transparency, accountability and rational public decision making.
3.3 Criticisms
The primary criticism of these 'intelligent' principles has been that it totally
depends on the 'intelligence' of the planner, the Master Planner. When the plans
concern the desires and aspirations and plans of every individual in a city over
generations, the intelligence of any individual is bound to be stretched. Like the
city planning of old, the real stakeholders, the people of the city of Thimphu have
had very little say in the formulation of the plans and have absolutely no say in the
manner of its implementation. The outcome of the plan is a result of the planner's
analysis and not a community led process as proposed by Christopher Alexander.
Not surprisingly, the plans have caused much dissatisfaction during
implementation and is partially succeeding primarily because the people have been
threatened with having their land acquired at meager government rates if they did
not cooperate.
Chapter Four: Introduction to Pocket Listing
4.1 Introduction
A pocket listing is a real estate industry term used in United States which denotes a
property where a broker holds a signed listing agreement (or contract) with the
seller, whether that be an "Exclusive Right to Sell" or "Exclusive Agency"
agreement or contract, but where it is never advertised nor entered into a multiple
listing system (MLS) or where advertising is limited for an agreed-upon period of
time. In Canada, this is referred to as an "Exclusive Listing".
When a broker is hired to sell a property, a listing agreement is executed in writing.
In an "Exclusive Right to Sell Agreement", the broker normally agrees to
cooperate with other brokers and to share a portion of the total real estate
commission paid by the seller. However, in this situation, it is stated that the
property shall not be placed in an MLS, and thus there is no agreement to work
cooperatively with other brokers.
An alternative form of Agreement might be "Exclusive Agency" where only the
broker is given the right to sell the property, and no offer of compensation is ever
made to another broker. In that case, the property will never be entered into an
MLS.
The reasons for a pocket listing may vary from the need for privacy or secrecy to
discrimination, and some sellers may have their own reasons for not advertisng a
listing in conventional ways, including wanting to sell only to certain types of
people.
Many full-time agents have knowledge of pocket listings in their own office or in
other offices of their own company. While many MLS systems may try to limit this
type of listing by requiring execution of a written notice relative to the benefits of
MLS publicity, they may encourage members to refrain from taking pocket
listings. There are some companies which list property as pocket listings for a short
time before entering it into their MLS. With the written agreement of the seller,
this would allow the company to try to obtain both the listing side and the "selling"
side of the commission, an industry term known as "both sides of the transaction".
A real estate company which is not a member of any MLS may have pocket
listings, but may still be willing to cooperate with other real estate professionals in
the sale of their listings.
A broker or agent having a Pocket Listing can sometimes imply that the property
will be sold directly to a buyer by the seller's agent.
4.2 Comparison with Open Listings
Pocket listings are not "Open Listings". An open listing is an Agreement between a
seller and a broker whereby the property is available for sale by any real estate
professional who can advertise, show, or negotiate the sale, and whoever brings an
acceptable offer would receive compensation.
Real estate companies will typically require that a written agreement for an open
listing be signed by the seller to ensure the payment of a commission. "For Sale By
Owners" (FSBOs) often also offer open listings by signing an agreement to pay a
broker who brings them an acceptable offer, but these will usually not be pocket
listings.
4.3 Advantages of Pocket Listing
Pocket listings may give buyers an extra advantage when searching for real estate
which is not advertised anywhere else. These special properties, while under listing
contracts, may be unique because they are sold privately and may never be
intended to be listed on the Multiple Listing Service (MLS). Many property owners
want to sell their real estate, but do not want the aggravation associated with
showing the property. This is especially true in a slower market where sellers of
real estate want buyers, not just curious people.
On the other hand, sellers genuinely want to sell their property and will show it to
serious buyers. To ensure this, the seller typically has a real estate broker who
qualifies a potential buyer on their availability to purchase. A very important
benefit to the seller is that the transaction typically only has one real estate agent,
thus potentially lowering the overall commission costs.
By directly connecting themselves with sellers' agents, home buyers eliminate the
need for a buyers agent (although they will lack buyer representation). If the
buyer's objective is to look at all the available homes for sale in a given area, they
would need to look at MLS and all private listings for sale. Only then, would they
have completely exhausted their search.
Ultimately, the seller must decide if exclusion from the MLS is in his/her best
interests and does not limit exposure on the market.
4.4 Listing Contract
A listing contract is a contract between a real estate broker (or his/her agent
representatives, acting in the broker's name) and a seller or sellers of real property
to give the broker the right to offer the property for sale.
The contract is often referred to as a listing agreement and, if the broker is a
member of the National Association of Realtors, it must include all of the
following terms:
1. A beginning date and a termination date.
2. The list price at which the property will be offered for sale.
3. The amount of compensation offered to the broker, whether it is in the form of
a flat fee or percentage of the sales price.
4. The terms and conditions under which the brokerage fee shall be paid by the
seller.
5. Authorizes the broker to co-operate with other brokers as sub-agents or buyer's
agents and details the compensation to be offered to those brokers in the event
they procure a buyer.
6. Authorizes the broker to reveal or not to reveal the existence of offers
previously received.
In addition, other terms which may appear in the agreement can include:
Authorization to the broker to post a sign, to advertise the property, and to put
a lockbox on the door, as well seller's obligations to advise the broker on the
condition of the property, and broker's obligations to advise the seller about
regulations and laws which may affect the sale.
Typically, separate listing agreements exist for the sale of residential property, for
land, and for commercial or business property.
Upon listing the property, the real estate agency tries to obtain a buyer for the
property and, in consideration of successfully finding a satisfactory buyer, the
broker anticipates receiving a commission (fee) for the services the brokerage
provided.
Payment of a Commission or Fee
Although the terms of the contract could vary, usually the payment of a
commission (or fee) to the brokerage is contingent upon:
the successful negotiation of a purchase contract between a satisfactory buyer
and seller and the subsequent ability and willingness of the buyer to close the
deal, or
finding a satisfactory buyer who is ready, willing, and able to pay the full listing
price (or more) for the real estate for sale without any contingencies.
If the seller refuses to sell the real estate when one of the above two conditions
applies, it is typically considered that the real estate agent has done his job of
finding a satisfactory buyer and the seller must still pay the commission, although
the details are determined by the listing contract. Unless closing (or "settlement" or
"close of escrow", as it is known in some parts of the country) is a condition of the
listing agreement, the buyer's failure to complete the transaction may not require
the seller to pay a commission to the broker.
The commission is usually a percentage of the sales price of the property ranging
from 2 or 3% up to about 10%, but usually in the range of about 3 - 7% for houses.
The commission could also be a flat fee or some combination of flat fee and
percentage, particularly in the case of lower-priced properties, vacant lots, or other
unusual real estate.
The commission is paid by the seller to the listing real estate broker, who will then
compensate his/her listing agent and any co-operating brokers/agents from this
commission by separate agreements with them.
4.5 Listing Price and Final Contract Price
The listing contract typically also includes a listing price for the property and an
expiration date by which the contract expires. However, if the property is sold at a
lower or higher price, the seller pays a commission at a proportionally lower or
higher amount. If the seller does not accept a price lower than the listing price, then
the broker will have to wait until a satisfactory sale to earn the commission.
In the event of multiple offers being presented, the seller may accept whichever
offer is most suitable to him/her, even if the price is not the highest. The
percentage commission will be paid according to the accepted price. The seller,
often in concurrence with the real estate agent, may choose to accept an offer that
is lower than the highest offer for various reasons, such as terms or contingencies
in the purchase contract offered or perceived differences in financial qualification
of the competing buyers.
Typically, the real estate agent has the experience and data to determine a suitable
listing price for the seller's property and will recommend a listing price to the
seller. The seller can accept, reject, or try to negotiate a different listing price for
the contract. If the seller's price is unrealistically high and the agent cannot
convince the seller otherwise, the agent can decline to list the property.
4.6 Expiration Date
Listing a property commonly incurs certain expenses for the listing broker and
takes some time and effort for the listing salesperson. To make it worthwhile, they
want a certain minimum listing time period to have a good chance of selling the
property. However, the listing contract must have an expiration date. A typical
listing period is often from 3 or 4 months to 6 months. If the property is not sold or
under a purchase contract by then, the seller may decide to re-list the property,
perhaps with a different listing price, with the same or a different broker or agent,
or not list it at all. The listing of the property can start at a date later than the date
the listing contract is signed to allow the seller time to prepare the property for
showing or sale.
4.7 Types of Listing Contracts
There can be several types of listing contracts:
Exclusive right to sell: The seller must pay the brokerage a commission if, by
the expiration date in the listing contract, the real estate is sold, regardless of
whether the buyer is obtained through the agency or not. Even if the seller finds
the buyer him/herself, a commission is still owed to the brokerage.
Furthermore, the seller cannot list the property with any other broker until the
listing expires with the property unsold.
Brokers who are REALTORS and, thus, are members of NAR are obliged to
enter the property into the local MLS system and offer compensation to co-
operating brokers.
Exclusive Agency: The seller can only list the property with one brokerage
until the listing contract expires with the property unsold. The seller must
pay the broker a commission if the real estate is sold to a buyer obtained
through that brokerage. By agreement, if the seller finds the buyer
him/herself, the seller does not have to pay a commission. Since there will
be no co-operating broker involved, the property will not be listed in the
MLS.
Open Agency: A seller can enter into an agreement to sell his/her property
with more than one brokerage in open agency listings. The seller must pay a
commission only to the brokerage which brings the buyer for the real estate.
Typically, if the seller finds the buyer him/herself, the seller does not have to
pay a commission.
Chapter Five: Real Estate Transaction
5.1 Introduction
A real estate transaction is the process whereby rights in a unit of property (or
designated real estate) is transferred between two or more parties, e.g. in case of
conveyance one party being the seller(s) and the other being the buyer(s). It can
often be quite complicated due to the complexity of the property rights being
transferred, the amount of money being exchanged, and government regulations.
Conventions and requirements also vary considerably among different countries of
the world and among smaller legal entities (jurisdictions). In order to address some
of these difficulties, a European Land Information Service (EULIS) was
established in 2006, as a consortium of European National Land Registers. The
aim of the service is to establish a single portal through which customers are
provided with access to information about individual properties, about land and
property registration services, and about the associated legal environment.[1]
In more abstract terms, a real estate transaction, like other financial transactions,
causes transaction costs. In order to identify and possibly reduce these transaction
costs, the issue was addressed by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and
Development (OECD), through a study commissioned by the European
Commission, and through a research action.
The mentioned research action ‘Modelling Real Property Transactions’
investigated methods to describe selected transactions in a formal way, to allow for
comparisons across countries / jurisdictions. Descriptions were performed both
using a more simple format, a Basic Use Case template, [5][6] and more advanced
applications of the Unified Modelling Language.[7][8] Process models were
compared through an ontology-based methodology[9], and national property
transaction costs were estimated for Finland and Denmark [10][11][12], based on the
directions of the United Nations System of National Accounts.[13]
Real estate transactions: subdivision, conveyance, and mortgaging, as they are
performed in the five Nordic countries are described in some detail. [14] A
translation into English is available for the Danish part.
5.2 Residential Examples
United States and Canada
The sale of a house in the United States or Canada might involve some or all of the
following steps:
Hiring of a real estate broker to represent the seller and handle the logistics of
the advertising and sale, except for "for sale by owner" properties where the
owner(s) may consult legal counsel or obtain copies of a real estate contract.
A buyer may enter the picture in a variety of ways: from seeing advertisements
in the media, seeing signs outside a property, or contacting a real estate agent to
see a property.
A buyer may engage the services of a real estate broker to represent her/him
and handle the logistics of finding suitable properties, enabling him/her to
become qualified to buy, and the showing of appropriate properties.
Advertisement of the price and property details with a Multiple Listing Service,
newspaper or web classified listing, lawn sign, or poster in the real estate office.
Private showings or general open house for interested buyers or buyers' real
estate agents.
Interested buyers may get pre-approval for a mortgage of a certain amount from
a bank, if they cannot afford the full purchase price in the range they are
exploring.
Preparation of a written offer to purchase. If prepared by a real estate agent on
behalf of the buyer, it is generally done on pre-printed and legally-approved
forms provided by the real estate broker's office. An agent representing the
buyer will advise his/her client as to the value of including specific contingency
clauses such as time to obtain a mortgage commitment or to arrange for
inspections. The buyer includes an earnest money payment check which
accompanies the offer and which is generally not deposited until all parties are
in agreement.
Submission of offers by interested buyers. Multiple offers may result in bidding,
with best offer (not necessarily the highest bid) being awarded the sale. A single
offer may often be below the initial asking price, resulting in negotiation
between the buyer and seller over the final price, or possibly the rejection of the
offer by the seller.
After acceptance of a particular offer, a real estate contract is ratified by all
parties. It usually creates a short interim period (typically no more than 30 days,
often much less) to allow the buyer to thoroughly inspect the property (often
with the assistance of a professional home inspector).
Depending upon the jurisdiction and traditional practice, a title search is then
ordered from a third party settlement or escrow company, pending final
settlement.
An Appraisal, commissioned, as per custom, by the buyer or seller to determine
the value of the building and land in order to satisfy the lender.
Depending upon how the contingency paragraphs are worded, if any defects are
discovered during the inspection, the buyer may ask that they be repaired, ask
that the sale price be lowered, or choose not to purchase the property.
The closing of the sale ends the escrow period and completes the transfer of
ownership to the buyer. At this time, and all monies change hands and a number
of closing costs are paid by the buyer or seller.
If as real estate broker is used in the transaction, closing is the time that
payment is made to the brokers involved.
5.3 Real Property
In the common law, real property (or realty) refers to one of the two main classes
of property, the other being personal property. Real property generally
encompasses land, land improvements resulting from human effort including
buildings and machinery sited on land, and various property rights over the
preceding.
The concept is variously named and defined in other jurisdictions: heritable
property in Scotland, immobilier in France, and immovable property in Canada,
United States, India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Malta, Cyprus, and in countries where
civil law systems prevail, including most of Europe, Russia, and South America.
5.4 Estates & Ownership Interests Defined
The law recognizes different sorts of interests, called estates, in real property. The
type of estate is generally determined by the language of the deed, lease, or bill of
sale through which the estate was acquired. Estates are distinguished by the
varying property rights that vest in each, and that determine the duration and
transferability of the various estates. A party enjoying an estate is called a "tenant."
Some important types of estates in land include:
Fee simple : An estate of indefinite duration, that can be freely transferred. The
most common and perhaps most absolute type of estate, under which the tenant
enjoys the greatest discretion over the disposition of the property.
Conditional Fee simple: An estate lasting forever as long as one or more
conditions stipulated by the deed's grantor does not occur. If such a condition
does occur, the property reverts to the grantor, or a remainder interest is passed
on to a third party.
Fee tail : An estate which, upon the death of the tenant, is transferred to his
heirs.
Life estate : An estate lasting for the natural life of the grantee, called a "life
tenant." If a life estate can be sold, a sale does not change its duration, which is
limited by the natural life of the original grantee.
o A life estate pur autre vie is held by one person for the natural life of
another person. Such an estate may arise if the original life tenant sells
her life estate to another, or if the life estate is originally granted pur
autre vie.
Leasehold : An estate of limited duration, as set out in a contract, called a lease,
between the party granted the leasehold, called the lessee, and another party,
called the lessor, having a longer lived estate in the property. For example, an
apartment-dweller with a one year lease has a leasehold estate in her apartment.
Lessees typically agree to pay a stated rent to the lessor.
A tenant enjoying an undivided estate in some property after the termination of
some estate of limited duration, is said to have a "future interest." Two important
types of future interests are:
Reversion : A reversion arises when a tenant grants an estate of lesser
maximum duration than his own. Ownership of the land returns to the original
tenant when the grantee's estate expires. The original tenant's future interest is a
reversion.
Remainder : A remainder arises when a tenant with a fee simple grants
someone a life estate or conditional fee simple, and specifies a third party to
whom the land goes when the life estate ends or the condition occurs. The third
party is said to have a remainder. The third party may have a legal right to limit
the life tenant's use of the land.
Estates may be held jointly as joint tenants with rights of survivorship or as tenants
in common. The difference in these two types of joint ownership of an estate in
land is basically the inheritability of the estate. In joint tenancy (sometimes called
tenancy of the entirety when the tenants are married to each other) the surviving
tenant (or tenants) become the sole owner (or owners) of the estate. Nothing passes
to the heirs of the deceased tenant. In some jurisdictions the words "with right of
survivorship" must be used or the tenancy will assumed to be tenants in common.
Tenants in common will have a heritable portion of the estate in proportion to their
ownership interest which is presumed to be equal amongst tenants unless otherwise
stated in the transfer deed.
Real property may be owned jointly with several tenants, through devices such as
the condominium, housing cooperative, and building cooperative.
5.5 Jurisdictional Peculiarities
In the law of almost every country, the state is the ultimate owner of all land under
its jurisdiction, because it is the sovereign, or supreme lawmaking authority.
Physical and corporate persons do not have allodial title; they do not "own" land
but only enjoy estates in the land, also known as "equitable interests."
England and Wales
In the United Kingdom, the The Crown is held to be the ultimate owner of all real
property in the realm. This fact is material when, for example, property has been
disclaimed by its erstwhile owner, in which case the law of escheat applies. In
some other jurisdictions (not including the United States), real property is held
absolutely.
English law has retained the common law distinction between real property and
personal property, whereas the civil law distinguishes between "movable" and
"immovable" property. In English law, real property is not confined to the
ownership of property and the buildings sited thereon – often referred to as "land."
Real property also includes many legal relationships between individuals or
owners of land that are purely conceptual. One such relationship is the easement,
where the owner of one property may enjoy the right to pass over a neighboring
property. Another is the various "incorporeal hereditaments," such as profits a
prendre, where an individual may have the right to take crops from land that is part
of another's estate.
English law retains a number of forms of property which are largely unknown in
other common law jurisdictions such as the advowson, chancel repair liability and
lordships of the manor. These are all classified as real property, as they would have
been protected by real actions in the early common law.
USA
This section requires expansion.
Each U.S. State except Louisiana has its own laws governing real property and the
estates therein, grounded in the common law. In Arizona[citation needed], real property is
generally defined as land and the things permanently attached to the land. Things
that are permanently attached to the land, which also can be referred to as
improvements, include homes, garages, and buildings. Manufactured homes can
obtain an affidavit of affixture.
5.6 Economic Aspects of Real Property
Land use, land valuation, and the determination of the incomes of landowners, are
among the oldest questions in economic theory. Land is an essential input (factor
of production) for agriculture, and agriculture is by far the most important
economic activity in preindustrial societies. With the advent of industrialization,
important new uses for land emerge, as sites for factories, warehouses, offices, and
urban agglomerations. Also, the value of real property taking the form of man-
made structures and machinery increases relative to the value of land alone. The
concept of real property eventually comes to encompass effectively all forms of
tangible fixed capital. with the rise of extractive industries, real property comes to
encompass natural capital. With the rise of tourism and leisure, real property
comes to include scenic and other amenity values.
Starting in the 1960s, as part of the emerging field of law and economics,
economists and legal scholars began to study the property rights enjoyed by tenants
under the various estates, and the economic benefits and costs of the various
estates. This resulted in a much improved understanding of the:
Property rights enjoyed by tenants under the various estates. These include the
right to:
o Decide how a piece of real property is used;
o Exclude others from enjoying the property;
o Transfer (alienate) some or all of these rights to others on mutually
agreeable terms;
Nature and consequences of transaction costs when changing and transferring
estates.
For an introduction to the economic analysis of property law, see Shavell (2004),
and Cooter and Ulen (2003). For a collection of related scholarly articles, see
Epstein (2007). Ellickson (1993) broadens the economic analysis of real property
with a variety of facts drawn from history and ethnography.
5.7 Historical Background of Real Property
In common law, real property was property that could be protected by some form
of real action, in contrast to personal property, where a plaintiff would have to
resort to another form of action. As a result of this formalist approach, some things
the common law deems to be land would not be classified as such by most modern
legal systems, for example an advowson (the right to present to the living of a
church) was real property. By contrast the rights of a leaseholder originate in
personal actions and so the common law originally treated a leasehold as part of
personal property.
The law now broadly distinguishes between real property (land and anything
affixed to it) and personal property (everything else, e.g., clothing, furniture,
money). The conceptual difference was between immovable property, which
would transfer title along with the land, and movable property, which a person
would retain title to. (The word is not derived from the notion of land having
historically been "royal" property. The word royal – and its Spanish cognate real –
come from the unrelated Latin word rex, meaning king.)
In modern legal systems derived from English common law, classification of
property as real or personal may vary somewhat according to jurisdiction or, even
within jurisdictions, according to purpose, as in defining whether and how the
property may be taxed.
Bethell (1998) contains much historical information on the historical evolution of
real property and property rights.
5.8 Real Estate Trends
Real estate trends is a generic term used to describe any consistent pattern or
change in the general direction of the real estate industry which, over the course of
time, causes a statistically noticeable change. This phenomenon can be a result of
the economy, a change in mortgage rates, consumer speculations, or other
fundamental and non-fundamental reasons.
A real estate trend is the catalyst for the change, and it is usually a concept, a
belief, a philosophy, or an event. Sometimes a real estate trend evolves to meet a
specific need, while others evolve when new products or solutions are launched.
For example, when more lenders began offering creative financing products, more
borrowers were able to afford a mortgage (at least on paper). At other times, a
trend from another industry spills over into the real estate industry and is adopted.
Therefore, a trend must have substance and be based on fact. Over time, it will
cause pattern of change. Monitoring changes and tracking trends is a not an exact
science and can be very hard to predict.
U.S. government Involvement
The United States of America (U.S.) Department of Justice Antitrust Division
announced the launch of a new web site in October 2007 to "educate consumers
and policymakers about the potential benefits that competition can bring to
consumers of real estate brokerage services and the barriers that inhibit that
competition." Among other findings, they report that certain new sales models can
reduce consumer home sales costs "by thousands of dollars. For example, in states
that allow open competition, some buyer's brokers rebate up to two-thirds of their
commission to the customer, and some seller's brokers offer limited-service
packages that let sellers list their homes on the local multiple listing service (MLS)
for as little as a few hundred dollars."[1]
The DOJ web site, Competition and Real Estate, includes a link to the real estate
laws of each U.S. state and how they support or inhibit real estate brokerage
competition.
Trends in FSBO Sector
For Sale By Owner is a real estate term which describes the situation in which a
property is offered for sale directly by its owner and without that owner having
solicited the help of a real estate broker, implying that no real estate commission is
associated with the sale.
More and more owners selling their own property are using online marketing
companies to advertise their properties. FSBO web sites are now a real part of the
real estate market, as the Internet becomes vital in the home-selling process.[2]
According to a NY Times article from December 2007, "Nationally...real estate
companies are spending 26 percent more on online advertising this year, even as
total real estate ad spending declined 3 percent, according to Borrell Associates, a
research company."
According to a press release by the National Association of Realtors (NAR)
regarding their most current annual survey of real estate consumers, 2005 Profile
of Home Buyers and Sellers:
12% of 2006 US real estate transactions were FSBO.
13% of 2005 US real estate transactions took place via FSBO (down from
14% in 2004).
The record percentage of 20% of US real estate transactions (since tracking
started in 1981) took place in 1987.
According to the Canadian Real Estate Association, which claims that 75% to 80%
of homes in Canada were sold through brokers, it would appear that "Sale by
Owner" accounts for some 20% or 25% of the remainder.
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