What is Infill Development?

Infill development is the process of developing vacant or under-used parcels within existing urban areas that are already largely developed.  Most communities have significant vacant land within city limits, which, for various reasons, has been passed over in the normal course of urbanization. A successful infill development program focuses on the completion of the existing community fabric.  It should focus on filling gaps in the neighborhood. Following are 5 reasons why this form of development is needed now.

1. Infill development contributes to a more compact form of development which is less consumptive of land and resources

Many developers are bypassing vacant urban area land for less expensive land beyond our cities edges.  Our current patterns of sprawling, low-density development at the urban fringe are consuming land (including farmlands, wetlands, and other resource lands)  at a much faster rate than population growth.

2. Infill development offers increased mobility for those who can’t or prefer not to drive. It is also an important part of the equation for minimizing traffic congestion.

In-city living offers other transportation choices in addition to the automobile.  Filling in the gaps creates higher average densities, which in turn support more frequent transit service.  Residents who live near where they work, shop, or pursue other activities often can choose to walk, and carpools may be easier to arrange.  Such choice is particularly important for those who can’t drive including elderly, youth, or low income residents who lack a car.  Communities are learning that they cannot build their way out of traffic congestion.  New highways or lane additions typically fill up as fast as they are built as a result of the extended commutes and more frequent vehicle trips required by spread-out development.

3. Fully utilizing existing facilities and services before considering costly service extensions to outlying areas offers savings for local government budgets.

Building expensive new facilities while existing facilities have existing capacity is wasteful duplication in an era of belt tightening. Many local jurisdictions traditionally have averaged the costs of services across all users rather than charging the full cost of serving more distant development.  This has made outlying development relatively less expensive for the developer, while straining local government budgets. In addition, we are racing to construct expensive, new schools in outlying areas at the same time that we agonize over closing and finding new uses for inner city schools.  Growth at the cities’ edges has come at the expense of central cities.  Older buildings in core areas have been abandoned, existing utilities are underutilized and, in general,  new investment has been redirected to the outlying areas.  Infill development also bolsters local government budgets by putting under- utilized vacant land back on the tax roles.

4. Renewed infill and investment in our central cities is crucial to the overall economic health of the surrounding region

Infill development brings increased numbers of residents to support in-city city commercial centers.  A more efficient business climate can result from employment centers located in close proximity  rather than in scattered sites.  The health of central city downtowns is intertwined with that of the region as a whole.  For a region to be well-positioned to compete in a global economy, it must have at its vortex a thriving central city which can provide the vitality and draw to fuel the region’s economy.

5. Infill development can bring new opportunity and improved qualify of life for in-city residents

The migration of higher-income residents, together with the best jobs, educational opportunities and services from many central cities, has left low-income residents isolated.  It can be very difficult for them to learn about and travel to distant jobs, especially if dependent on transit that requires multiple bus transfers, or carpooling to scattered job sites.  Reduced population and average income in cities also produces fewer tax dollars to support public services, and local businesses.  Fewer opportunities and positive role models, can contribute to loss of hope, increased anti-social behavior and crime.  These trends further fuel middle-class migration from cities.  In contrast, in-city neighborhoods offer living opportunities in neighborhoods with distinctive character and more opportunity for social interaction than sprawl development typically provides.  Infill development can return jobs, purchasing power and new amenities to an urban neighborhood.

This summer has been a blur and seemingly, far from over. Over the past 3 months, I’ve had the opportunity to explore the Southern states of Mississippi, Louisiana, Alabama and South Florida. Some work, some play but overall an education.

My summer started out by having to go to Gulfport, MS for Naval Reserve training. Yes, after 8 years of active service, I’m still a part time warrior. In fact, I’m a builder in the Naval Reserves and apart of a Construction Battalion, commonly called Seabees (Sea or ‘C’ = construction, ‘Bees’ = Battalion). The position allows for me to expand my knowledge of the construction industry and continue service to my country. We’re largely rockstars. That’s all.

I apologize for my absence but I’m back (smile). My decision to relocate to Augusta, Georgia is coming full circle. Augusta is humming right now and it feels great to be back to work. The city was recognized as having one of the most resilient economies and its evident in almost every industry.

Since arriving in Augusta I’ve been on the hunt for the right development opportunity for Aribra and believe I’ve found it; in fact I’ve found two. I’ll be sharing more details as the project gets further along but in short, I’m soon to be proposing a mixed-use building I believe will compliment the existing community and serve as a catalyst for more development.  On the second site, I’m exploring a historic renovation and expansion of a Downtown building. It’s an exciting opportunity and looking forward to them taking shape.

Stay tuned for the next chapter of The Aribra Group’s story and you can be assured you’ll be hearing from me more now that I’m back to work. What were you able to get accomplished this summer that you’re proud of?

Andres Duany, famed architect for the firm DPZ and co-founder of the Congress for the New Urbanism (CNU), is becoming part of the solution to the crisis in Haiti.  He has designed a basic cabin concept that can be pre-fabricated and built within days to house Haitians that remain homeless from January’s earthquake.  The cabin can house eight individuals, incorporates lessons learned from the Katrina cottage, and is context sensitive to the Haitian culture.  InnoVida Holdings LLC of Miami has announced that they will open a factory in Haiti to build these houses and donate the first 1,000 homes.

Duany can be heard describing these homes on NPR’s Here and Now.

From AOL | Drive Less, Live Longer

Let’s face it: Most motorists just drive too fast. Too many people are in too big a hurry to get where they’re going. Safety experts and law enforcement agencies are constantly admonishing the lead-footed to “Just Slow Down!” And to underscore that point, a recent study by a Canadian research team has determined that driving decreases life expectancy.

According to the study, every hour you spend behind the wheel in North America leads to a 20-minute loss of life expectancy due to the risks of a fatal car crash. Further, the study concluded that by slowing down just two miles per hour, the average driver would increase their life expectancy by three hours per year.

“When drivers speed to get to their destination faster, they actually lose more time because the savings from faster travel are offset by the increased prospect of a crash,” says Dr. Donald Redelmeier, the lead investigator in the study. Redelmeier is a professor of medicine at the University of Toronto and a staff physician at Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre, Canada’s largest trauma center.

“The study suggests that small changes can have large consequences…and would translate to approximately 3 million fewer property-damage crashes, one million fewer injurious crashes, and 9,000 fewer fatalities each year in the United States,” says Redelmeier, who believes that if North American drivers would slow down by two miles per hour, it could reduce crash-related property damage by about $10 million each day.

Keeping with the old truism that most crashes occur within 25 miles of your home, Redelmeier warns that the chances of being in a fatal car crash are just as high when you’re running errands around town as they are if you’re on a long trip, out on the freeway. “Even a short trip can put you into contact with 100 other drivers, some of whom may be speeding, some of whom may have poor driving skills, and any one of those could ruin your life, forever,” he says.

One sad statistic is that for every person who is killed in a car crash in North America, there are another 50 individuals who suffer crash-related injuries, with 20 of those injuries being permanently disabling, says Reidemeier.

The study was based on a combination of computerized traffic modeling, national statistics covering driving on public roadways, and the laws of physics. The computer models calculated results taking into account average distances and time drivers in the United States spend traveling daily, the number of annual crashes categorized as fatal, injuries and property damage, and the expected time losses due to accidents.

The study was supported by the Canada Research Chair in Medical Decision Sciences, the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, the National Institutes of Health Resuscitation Outcomes Consortium, and the Patient Safety Service of Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre.

“What inspired this study was what I saw at the hospital. I am always amazed that so many of my patients in the trauma center were injured in crashes that were caused by excessive speed,” says Redelmeier. “And I’m not talking about egregious speeding, like the psycho who is driving 150 miles an hour. I’m just talking about the drivers who are maybe a little over-confident, and are maybe driving a few miles an hour faster than they should be.

“And if you’re someone who frequently drives 80 miles an hour, slowing down to 65 or 70 would result in an even more significant increase in your life expectancy.

Leonard Evans, author of “Traffic Safety,” a popular textbook on the subject, says the results of Redelmeier’s study “are very much in accord” with his own findings. “Speed is the most important factor in traffic safety,” he stresses.

Evans, a retired General Motors research scientist, cites the “three simple laws,” as he calls them, that he spelled out in his book:

“Number one, the faster you drive, the more likely you are to crash,” says Evans. “Number two, the faster you were going, the more likely you are to be injured. And number three, if you’re injured, the faster you were traveling, the more likely you are to be killed.

Redelmeier also stresses that his findings bolster the argument for increasing government efforts to reduce speeding, including photo radar, traffic calming programs, and crackdowns on street racing. “Such programs can have huge gains even if partially effective and imperfectly run,” says Redelmeier.

Evans agrees that such government programs and practices need to be implemented and enforced. “There is a great deal of evidence that if you drive just two percent faster, your risk of being killed increases by 10 percent,” he says.

Redelmeier and Evans both believe that the government isn’t nearly pro-active enough in implementing such programs. “The United States lags way behind other countries in terms of programs like red light cameras and photo radar,” says Redelmeier. “The efforts to curb speeding are much more advanced in many other countries.”

Full | Drive Less, Live Longer

It’s a beautiful, warm spring day here in Richmond, VA.  The sprinklers were going in neighborhood yards as I left for work this morning and the clouds are moving lightly on the breeze.  With the sun shining and the birds chirping outside of my office window, even I and my old pal Eeyore could smile and see some optimism for the future.

Activity abounds in the sustainable building world.  California is implementing the first state wide “green”  building code and, according to my friend Imad Naffa (@imadnaffa on Twitter), that state will be pressing builders and developers to build in a sustainable manner.  Governmental units, both small and large, are seeking to add zoning or other incentives to build in a sustainable manner.   More and more developers are seeking LEED certification (though this certification is sometimes subject to challenge).  All of these signs point toward the desire for a more energy efficient and responsible built environment.

The dad in me wants this badly and quickly.  Better air quality, less energy use, and a more predictable weather pattern (to the extent that weather is predictable) can only lead to a better future for my kids.  However (and this is where you should get the “here he goes again” look on your face as you read this), the sad little donkey on my other shoulder is always reminding me to step back and take a quick look at the big picture.

The enthusiasm for the sustainable construction paradigm is laudable but should not overtake some sensible discussion of risks and costs.  Questions (several of which I have discussed at Construction Law Musings) that should be considered during the policy phase of this enterprise are as follows:

• What are the costs to a private developer of forced “green” building that cannot be tailored to a particular project?  Will these costs preclude certain development?
• Can the insurance industry catch up with the regulators?  Without proper insurance coverage, contractors may not be able to justify construction.
• How does the use of LEED (a laudable private rating system that can change without the usual legislative process) in certain zoning and building requirements create risks for the owners, architects and builders?
• What about simple time horizon risks?

None of these issues are insurmountable and I remain optimistic that we can deal with them in a rational fashion.  While I don’t know the answers to these questions from a legal risk management standpoint, as a construction attorney and father, I feel that I would not be promoting a permanent change without bringing the questions to light so that they don’t surprise us and kill this hard fought momentum.  Once many of these questions are considered carefully, we may decide that some are simply too small to deal with, while others are highly relevant and should be dealt with before the courts make the decisions for us.  Once the questions are in the open and some answer is reached, a more permanent foundation for a brighter, more energy efficient future will arise.

Let me close by saying that because of folks like Yahya Henry and the other contributors here at Aribra, and the many great friends I have met along the way, Eeyore is getting quieter and quieter as time goes on.

East Point Plaza, Suffolk, VA (Streetview Rendering)

Rebuilding the fabric of inner cities has been a passion of mine since understanding the power of design and infill development-more specifically small-scale infill development. Small-scale infill can be classified as projects comprising less than 100 housing units and fewer that 10,000 square feet of commercial space. There a several definitions for this type development but it is my personal favorite. In the recent issue of Urban Land Magazine (City Futures, March/April 2010), Sam Newberg wrote an excellent piece entitled “Little Infill”. In his piece, he notes that 20 million attached housing units will be needed by 2025 and that some 3 million acres of greyfield sites will become available for redevelopment.

“They [small infill developments] are favorites of the planning and development industry for their compact urban scale, innovative design, and positive impact as catalysts for their neighbors.” Sam Newberg, Joe Urban, Inc.

I’ve long championed infill development, especially in smaller, less developed cities. Migration patterns have already begun shifting back to urban centers and smaller cities are positioned to take advantage of these trends. Small mixed-use infill projects do not fit most institutional investor business models. To date, I haven’t seen any REITs (Real Estate Investment Trusts) that focus on this segment of the market. Project cost can vary widely dependent upon product and construction type. Location also is a large factor. Cities where infill development is more prominent, financing may be less of a challenge to secure versus others where suburban (greenfield) projects are given priority. Greenfield projects are understood, safe and, in the bank’s view, offer less risk.

In an interview with Tom Powell, advertising executive and developer, he provided insight into how he found success in his development East Point Plaza. The project houses his ad agency’s offices, has 32 apartment units, street level retail and has a programmable plaza. Powell needed more space for his ad agency and his search lead to this development. “It was a once in a lifetime opportunity”, says Powell. East Point is the first private investment into the Fairground community in several decades. The project cost $4.1 million to restore. It’s Downtown Suffolk, VA location is literally ‘on the other side of tracks’ and pushes redevelopment into an underserved community. Powell noted the tax credit application process took longer than actual construction which began March 2009. Occupancy permits were issued in January 2010. Commonwealth Architects served as lead designer and produced a very innovative and efficient design both the community and city embraced.

Loft unit at East Point Plaza

East Point Plaza and other projects like it will become more popular as the migration back to cities continue. There may be a learning curve in many communities where density is often looked upon negatively. However, if cities begin to educate and show their support of infill development, developers are likely to fall in line. In my experience developers often take the most profitable route toward a project and if there are incentives in place to make small-scale infill more attractive, we’ll be seeing more of it in our cities. Are there are any communities in your city that have been impacted positively by an infill project?

From CNN Living | Americans Rebuild for the ‘New Urban Century’

In Charlotte, North Carolina, commuters zip along a sparkling new light rail system into a booming downtown district.

In Sacramento, California, construction workers hammer away at the next generation of green buildings.

And in New York City, rush-hour commuters pedal across popular bike paths that have spread like kudzu across the metropolis.

Those snapshots from cities across America offer a glimpse of the future. Americans are rebuilding their cities and communities to make people, not cars, the center of a more environmentally friendly lifestyle, urban planners and transportation experts say.

“We’re creating infrastructure for human beings, rather than automobiles,” says Michael Smith, CEO of Center City Partners in Charlotte, a group of business leaders that has helped lead a revival of the city’s downtown.

Creating a new infrastructure means new rules, experts say.

What’s on the way out: sprawling interstates, suburban living, long car commutes.

What’s now in: light rail, green space and vibrant downtown districts.

“As you look at the cities that are going to thrive in the next century, there’s a belief that we’re entering the urban century,” Smith says. “There’s a new urbanism that’s not about cul-de-sacs or expressways. It’s sidewalks, bike paths and parks.”

Where America is rebuilding

Smith points to downtown Charlotte as a prime example. During the past decade, downtown Charlotte has added new restaurants, art centers, the soon-to-be-opened NASCAR Hall of Fame and nightspots, Smith says.

Charlotte’s downtown growth was the result of good planning, Smith says. Thirty years ago, the city’s business and political leaders decided that Charlotte couldn’t sustain its suburban growth. So they began rebuilding downtown and eventually won public support to install a light rail system, he says.

Even the Great Recession couldn’t stop Charlotte’s downtown revival because the rebuilding projects had so much momentum, Smith says.

“We were fortunate to have 30 cranes swinging in our city center as we moved into the teeth of the recession,” Smith says.

What’s happening in Charlotte is happening across the country, says Kathleen Hughes, executive producer of “Blueprint America,” an ongoing PBS series that looks at the rebuilding of America’s infrastructure.

During her research, Hughes says she encountered plenty of communities that are using stimulus money for embracing light rail projects and pushing the revitalization of downtown districts.

“There’s a sense that America has been built out and spread out too far, and many of us live too far from our neighbors,” Hughes says.

Americans aren’t just rebuilding their transportation grid; they’re also embracing alternate forms of travel, others say.

Bike lanes are popping up in American cities, says Aaron Naparstek, founder of Streetsblog. It’s an online community for the Livable Streets movement, a coalition that seeks to transform cities by improving conditions for cyclists, pedestrians and transit riders.

In cities such as Portland, Oregon, or New York, it’s common now to see commuters biking to work, Naparstek says. In New York City alone, 300 miles of bike lanes have been added in the past four years, he says.

Naparstek says he can remember the moment when he thinks Americans’ attitude to cars shifted.

“I’m old enough to remember my dad waiting in the gas lines during the first OPEC [Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries] gas crisis,” he says. “To me, that was the beginning of the end for the American romance with the automobile.”

Rebuilding values as well as roads

As America rebuilds, new industries arise as well.

Oscar Ortega was a construction company foreman who made about $70,000 a year before he was laid off at the end of 2007. With a wife and four daughters, he performed odd jobs to stay afloat.

“I tried not to let it affect me,” he says. “If I walked around the home moping, it would affect my family. I tried to be as strong as I could.”

Then Ortega read about job openings at ZETA Communities, a green construction company in Sacramento, California. ZETA builds “net-zero” energy homes (homes that produce as much energy as they consume by using devices such as solar panels).

Ortega applied and got a call back. Two years later, he’s working as a green builder.

“I feel reborn,” he says. “That’s what the future is all about: staying green and saving the environment. This new construction is the wave of the future. I’m really excited to be a part of it.”

Americans are not only rebuilding their cities and homes, they’re also rebuilding their sense of community.

The Great Recession has also forced some to rediscover the value of community. Some of this has been done by establishing time banks, where members trade services that are tracked by hours rather than dollar value.

For example, one member of a time bank may provide an hour of tax advice to another. Another may weed a person’s garden for an hour. Each hour-long act receives a “time dollar” that can be used to purchase someone else’s labor.

Time banks are designed to build community, its founders say. It teaches people that everyone has value, even if they don’t have a job. Thirty-five states have time banks, group founders say.

“The idea is that nobody’s labor is worth more than anybody else’s labor. We’re all in this together,” says Judith Lasker, a time bank member and a sociology professor at Lehigh University in Pennsylvania who is writing a book about time bank organizations.

Some Americans are rebuilding their sense of values as well.

Matt Fredenberg of Alpharetta, Georgia, seems like a rarity in the Great Recession; he’s working in a thriving industry.

Fredenberg helps his mother and sister run a Senior Helpers franchise. The national franchise sends workers to homes to help family members take care of aging relatives. Their services range from light housekeeping to running errands.

Fredenberg, 26, says his family franchise has 120 employees after four years of operation. Business has been so good that he says “we’re hiring like crazy.”

But Fredenberg is not talking about parlaying his success into buying bigger and shinier toys. He says he wants to learn from the mistakes of his parents’ generation.

Fredenberg says he doesn’t own a credit card, uses coupons to eat out and shuns buying more than he needs. His friends do the same.

“Even with cars and houses, we realize that you don’t have to have the best,” he says. “It doesn’t have to be brand new and huge.”

Though times are now tough, Fredenberg says his generation is confident. Better days are ahead.

“People are willing to sacrifice some luxuries to be more practical,” he says. “We’ll come out of this. People are willing to do what it takes.”

From Next American City | American Poor Spread to Suburbia, but We’re not Ready

Let’s face it: American public policy has yet to respond to or even grasp the profound change in settlement patterns that has been gradually making its mark on the nation’s landscape over the past few decades.

Cities from Detroit to Des Moines have been pushing the gentrification of their downtowns, with generally positive results, and the results are well documented.

But more consequential to a far larger group is the mass out-migration of impoverished people from center cities into the suburbs, often in the same metropolitan areas. According to a recent Brookings Institute Study, the process is accelerating. Between 2000 and 2008, the percent of poor people living in the suburbs increased by 25%, compared to by 5.6% in central cities and 15.4% for the nation as a whole. More of the poor now live in the suburbs than in central cities: 12.5 million versus 11 million.

The out-migration of the lower-middle class has been just as notable.

From a transportation perspective, this change in the lifestyles of the poor will have a significant effect. Public transit works best when it’s in dense urban centers because it can provide efficiencies of scale by offering service to many people at the same time. This allows it to be cheap enough to satisfy most of the transportation needs of the poor—but only if they live in communities that can be adequately served by buses and trains.

When urban poverty was concentrated in the inner city, at least those who lived there were able to have relatively quick and convenient access via train or bus to the jobs in the downtown office core.

Unfortunately, the increasing presence of poor people in the suburbs means a growing share of the population that lives in sprawling neighborhoods where the provision of mass transit is limited at best—and cannot be expanded at a reasonable cost.

It’s worth looking at one particularly affected region—the Washington, D.C. metro area—to understand what’s going on. According to the Brookings report, the number of poor people in the region’s core cities, including Washington, Arlington, and Alexandria, decreased by 15,000 between 2000 and 2008, to 121,000. In the suburbs, on the other hand, the number of poor exploded by 40,000 to 251,000. Though the poverty rate in the central cities remains higher, the sheer number of poor people in the suburbs is much greater. And it means that the people living in transportation-rich inner-cities are becoming relatively wealthier.

An Urban Land Institute/Center of Housing Policy report from last year clarified both the causes and the effects of those changes. The primary explanation of the migration is the availability of low-cost housing on the suburban fringe in Maryland and Virginia; though lodging is still relatively cheap in many of the eastern parts of the District, suburban homes are both cheap and new. Even more attractive is the fact that suburbs promote the image of a crime-free, pastoral environment, a perception that unfortunately tends to fade away once too many poor people make the leap out of the inner-city core.

The high rate of foreclosures in Washington’s eastern and southern suburbs is indicative of the degree to which the lower-middle class has chosen to leave the inner city. The primary consequence of this move away from the dense core is an increase in transportation costs, primarily because of a corresponding increase in the use of private automobiles: the Urban Land Institute report documents an almost inverse relationship between housing prices and transportation costs. Suburban dwellers—rich or poor—find themselves in a situation where their only choice is driving relatively expensive cars.

When a family simply can’t afford to own and operate an automobile, the result is a massive reduction in mobility.

In this context, Celia Dugger’s recent article in The New York Times about Johannesburg, South Africa’s new bus rapid transit system seems particularly relevant. Her discussion of the difficulties of commuting for a nanny living far from the wealthy enclave in which she works is framed in terms of the long-term effects of apartheid, but her situation described could also be interpreted as yet another example of the class-based segregation that disrupts the lives of the working poor in many major cities.

Do U.S. cities provide adequate transportation for people in poor, suburban communities? Surely not in every case, since Americans of all income classes face increasingly long commutes that often don’t seem much different than that of the South African woman profiled in the Times article. Many metropolitan regions have developed in a way that requires a large percentage of the population to take hours-long journeys to get from home to work. This is not a problem confined to the southern hemisphere.

Are the American poor seriously limited by their place in the urban landscape? Can we build housing in a denser manner throughout metro regions, in both inner cities and suburbs, to ensure that we can provide adequate transit everywhere? Can we find ways to encourage the poor to stay in the cities, where they have greater mobility?

I don’t have easy answers to any of these questions, but current federal and local policy does not address the commuting needs of the suburban poor. Too many federal dollars are spent in an effort to attract people to cheap home loans and onto new highways—incentives that ultimately inspire people to move out of the inner-cities, where transportation is cheaper. Meanwhile, neither the federal government nor states have shown leadership in promoting a new way of thinking about and developing the suburbs, whose form remains stuck in the 1950s model, one that may be appealing but which is ultimately difficult to promote for people at the bottom of the income bracket.

Full | The American Poor Spread to Suburbia, but We’re not Ready

Haiti is a country that has suffered for decades with widespread poverty, political corruption, environmental destruction, and natural disasters.  Last week’s earthquake was devastating and made worse by the situation it was already in.  The Haitians desperate situation has lead to 97% deforestation in the country, which has led to a lack of wood available to construct buildings properly.   The poorly built buildings crumbled when the earthquake hit, taking thousands of lives.

Following is a link to a New York Times piece filmed three weeks before the earthquake.  It highlights the links between poverty, natural resource mismanagement and the consequences that have occurred from past natural disasters and from last week’s earthquake.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kLmpFHSsGD0

As devastating as this earthquake is, it is an opportunity for the Haitians to have their problems brought to the forefront of the world.  It is an opportunity for us, as Americans, to see how the country has been going in the wrong direction and how we can help to turn this pattern around.  Along with rebuilding efforts, restoration of the country’s natural resources, namely reforestation, will also need to occur.

From New York Times | Flawed Building Likely a Big Element

Engineers and architects who have worked in or visited Haiti say that substandard design, inadequate materials and shoddy construction practices likely contributed to the collapse of many buildings in the earthquake that struck Tuesday.

Cameron Sinclair, executive director of Architecture for Humanity, a nonprofit design group based in San Francisco, said he was “horrified” when he visited Port-au-Prince and Gonaïves last October to assess the quality of construction there.

Mr. Sinclair said that design and construction were far worse than in other developing countries he had visited. “In Haiti, most if not all of the buildings have major engineering flaws,” he said.

Most houses and other structures are built of poured concrete or block, there being very little lumber available due to mass deforestation, said Alan Dooley, a Nashville architect who designed a medical clinic, built of reinforced concrete, in Petite Rivière de Nippes, a fishing village 50 miles west of Port-au-Prince.

Concrete is very expensive — much of the cement for it comes from the United States, Mr. Dooley said — so some contractors cut corners by adding more sand to the mix. The result is a structurally weaker material that deteriorates rapidly, he said. Steel reinforcing bar is also expensive, he said, so there is a tendency to use less of it with the concrete.

Building codes are limited or nonexistent, so columns and other elements made from concrete are often relatively thin, designed without proper margins of safety. “We would double the design strength, just to give it a factor of safety,” Mr. Dooley said, referring to practices in the United States. “There they’d design it to what it would hold.”

Concrete blocks are often substandard too, said Peter Haas, executive director of Appropriate Infrastructure Development Group, a nonprofit organization that is working on several projects in Haiti. Many of them are made in small batches at people’s homes, and the quality can vary. “When you’re buying blocks at the store you really have no idea of where they’re from,” Mr. Haas said. “And all it takes is for the block that was made at home to collapse.”

When builders in Haiti do take disasters into account in their designs, their most recent experience has been with hurricanes, the last major earthquake having occurred two centuries ago. “Newer construction has been developed to withstand hurricanes, not earthquakes,” said John McAslan, a London architect who has studied Haitian buildings, working with the Clinton Global Initiative. “If you engineer for one you’re not necessarily covering the other.”

Mr. Dooley said that his original design for the medical clinic called for a steel roof, but that was changed to a reinforced concrete one to better withstand hurricane-force winds. The building survived the earthquake with apparently little damage, he said.

But many other concrete roofs presumably collapsed, adding to the loss of life. Mr. Sinclair said he had seen houses where builders put concrete roofs on top of low-grade blocks. “Then it just pancakes,” he said.

Full | Flawed Building Likely a Big Element