The Urban Planning Behind America’s Weirdest McDonald’s | Hacker News Reader

The Urban Planning Behind America’s Weirdest McDonald’s

theamericanconservative.com

75 pointsfirstbase54 comments

There are so many examples of this sort of thing. I am frustrated by the ease with which buildings are declared historical sites and how often that designation happens after somebody buys a piece of property to develop it. I think it would be far fairer to the purchaser (and the seller, who makes out like a bandit unfairly) to mandate a 90 day stay when a large parcel is sold to allow for filing of historical paperwork. If that doesn't get filed or if it doesn't get granted after filing, then the property transfers at the agreed upon price. If it does get historical status, then it reverts to a much lower price or the sale is canceled.

You may be thinking "well that damn richie-rich developer can just get screwed, he wanted to destroy important history in my town for his evil profit." I am thinking about the guy who just wanted to live in a nice house walking distance from downtown, so he bought just outside a historical district to avoid all the paperwork, intending to replace a dilapidated house constructed poorly in 1920, only to find that the historical preservation committee extended the boundaries right after his sale went through. Or, in the alternative, the recent news out of Denver where they attempted and ultimately failed to designate a chain diner as "historic" when the owner wanted to sell the place and retire. Using regulatory power to stop the guy from getting his expected retirement payout when he's done being a restaurant manager is unreasonably heavy handed, in my opinion.

What does any of this have to do with McDonald's?

Or as we say on Twitter, "Sir, this is a Wendy's."

In other words, McDonald's is the David going up against local historic authority Goliath in this narrative, or what exactly?

> There are so many examples of this sort of thing. I am frustrated by the ease with which buildings are declared historical sites and how often that designation happens after somebody

The flip side of this is that developers don’t have a good record. Cheap, badly done developments and a history of buying, then revealing their true plans. “Oh, it turned out to be structurally unstable, so we have to demolish”.

Most new development in the US look terrible indeed. I’d rather get overprotection than those buildings everywhere in my city.

And what about the subsequent pressure on new ever growing need for housing?

What about it? If there's ever a mass exodus to Freeport ME, the people trying to service that need will follow the rules while serving the need. Or they'll get out of that market and someone else will do it. In the "worst" case the local property owners get higher prices which is a win, and the aesthetic rules maintain the (presumed) attractiveness of the town, which is a win. Shrug emoji? The locals hold all the cards, and I'm not even sure that's a bad thing.

Moving in for the McLobster. I'm there next week, can't wait ;)

> the local property owners get higher prices which is a win

Preventing people from being able to afford a place to live so entrenched interests can accrue hundreds of thousands of dollars of investment appreciation is not a “win”.

Even if you think that the interests of long term “locals” should be privileged (which I disagree with, all men are created equal yada yada), rising property prices don’t benefit all locals, just “local property owners”, as you’ve observed. Local renters and even the kids of local homeowners who eventually want to enter the property market themselves are hurt by constrained supply.

In other words it's a win for the winners, just like capitalism as usual. I can't fix capitalism. The people making these laws are the same ones benefiting, was my point. They win because they hold all the cards. We can talk all day about whether they should win. On the "they shouldn't" side, you can make a "free enterprise" argument like this article seems to, or an "equity" argument like you seem to be doing. They're both sound arguments, and meanwhile contrariwise I also buy the argument that being in a place should afford you some amount of self-determination. There's no clear right answer and no moral high ground, just different groups of people fighting over who gets the resources... again sort of "as usual."

What on earth does gaming the housing market through government regulations have to do with “free enterprise”? Using regulations to distort markets is the very opposite of free enterprise.

You answered your own question; they're related by opposition. As I said.

Your answer suggested that you consider restrictive land zoning regulations to be consistent with free enterprise and efficient pricing, which of course it is not.

I guess you like high rents then?

There is a balancing act between living in a museum and retaining no historical memory.

Most cities with any history to speak of preserve a few areas built out with edifices that are especially beautiful, and / or historical significance.

I would rather my city demolish and rebuild a slums district, even if that district used to be a city's landmark. Unless such a place can sustain itself as a museum and a tourist attraction, I think the life conditions of the current population are more important than the desire to have a living memory of everything.

It really depends on the local laws for declaring historic districts. Much of the time it can be a long process, with lots of community meetings, revisions, etc. (On the national level, you need the property owner's consent to get listed on the on the National Register of Historic Places.) I imagine in some cases the process has already started and the new owner might not know about it, especially if you are talking about short periods of 90 days. And if a community is united against their area being listed, it can fail. But, again, it all depends on the local situation, and if a majority living there want things to go one way, then a lone owner can be screwed out of doing what they wanted.

I think people's priorities are protecting the vulnerable buildings. It's not nice if it's a surprise for someone who buys it, but if the building needs protection then that's the most important thing and there shouldn't be a deadline on doing the right thing.

Personally I find that going into a standard cookie-cutter instance of a franchise is depressing; they're usually built with pleasing aesthetics low on the list of priorities, far below "cheap", "easy to hose down", and "does not encourage customers lingering". Going into one that's been shaped by a place with an aesthetic agenda results in something that's got a few surprises, and has design flourishes that exist solely to please the eye.

But what do I know, I grew up in the second city in the US to ever establish a Historic Preservation District and had my tastes shaped by lots of architecture from a time when "maximizing profit" wasn't the only thing ever considered in building.

Honest question: why do you think that the older buildings didn't "maximize profit" for their creators?

Not the GP, but I think that the optimizations that lead each locality to have a distinct look came from local minima and maxima (e.g. availability of building materials, local construction practices, function of the building, desire to please the local population, as well as profit maximization), while the average McDonald's, as a for-instance of corporate design, comes from much more global minima and maxima. It's not that the builders of older buildings didn't consider profit, it's that they didn't have Excel-wielding MBA's optimizing a global supply chain to control every aspect of the average building's construction.

Right, the iconic look of the buildings in Paris is entirely a result of a regulatory loophole on building height and the Parisians “maximizing profit” in that environment.

They were built up to the maximum number of storeys and plot dimensions and extracted higher rents than the medieval streets they replaced, but the look is mostly because of the enforcement of building codes that controlled down to minutae like enforcing alignment of balconies. Which was ultimately the product of a vision which prioritised visual impressiveness over economics

(the prioritising appearance over economics applies to Parisian buildings built prior to Parisian building codes too, though obviously there's a lot of survivor bias there)

No, it's also a result of the demand for pretty-looking stuff. Some people, for example, appreciate the aesthetics of apple products (though I'm not as much a fan) and will pay extra. Many will buy a fancier home for more than the size. Others buy cars which are outrageously expensive, less reliable, and some times (depending on the brand) less comfortable than others. These act as status symbols and are aesthetically pleasing. Those who build and sell them are maximizing profit, because they believe there to be a market for such items.

In fairness to your point, there are craftsmen and artisans who insist on doing things a certain way. That said, they usually have buyers for their products. Those buildings stand today because some one wants them there, are usually quite valuable, and have been re-sold numerous times.

Are you talking about the typical 6 story walkup? I thought that was mainly due to Napoleons head of urban renewal:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georges-Eug%C3%A8ne_Haussmann

So less of a loophole and more of a direct outcome

Fun story on current building height regulation in Paris: my brother was working on a renovation project, where most of the building was demolished, including most of the floors, except the four walls and the roof, since the building predates the current height restriction and is taller than the max height: if they had removed the roof, the new building would have been smaller, so they kept the roof to keep the same (above-regulation) height

> [...] architecture from a time when "maximizing profit" wasn't the only thing ever considered in building.

> why do you think that the older buildings didn't "maximize profit" for their creators?

"Maximizing profit" was not the only thing considered and maximizing profit should never be the only thing considered. The idea that maximizing profit is the most important thing or the only thing is a radioactive idea that is poisoning western civilization.

Here, have a look at a representative sample of images: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=new+orleans+french+quarter&bext=ms...

Just look at any of those wrought iron railings. From a purely functional viewpoint they could do their job of being a railing to stop you from falling off the balcony with a series of plain vertical bars. But they are these elaborate concoctions of decoration and detail that someone had to cast, bend, and shape. You'll find similar aesthetic choices made throughout the city; a lot of houses have wrought iron bars over their windows to deter breakins, and very few of them are the simplest, cheapest design possible, for instance.

I am quite sure these buildings have made a profit; hell, the ones in the French Quarter are a big part of the modern tourist economy that draws people and money from all over. But there are a lot of details all over that serve purely to make the buildings pleasing to live and work in, which tend to be the first thing to go in modern architecture driven entirely by maximizing profits (and also still in love with the inhuman brutalist visions of people like Le Corbusier, when it comes to building housing).

But making a building aesthetically pleasing usually is for the purpose of increasing profit (attracting tenants, etc).

Any building where the owner is worried about resale value or attracting long-term customers who care about visual appeal is incentivized not to cut corners if it’s any kind of buyer’s market.

Maximizing profit is not always achieved by going for pure function over form. A lot of places try to maximize profit by making a place aesthetically pleasing so more people come.

One of the supposed reasons for this is the relation between labour and product prices.

Before WW2, labour was far cheaper then materials, especially in Europe.

Thanks for making this point. Beat me to it.

Labour being cheap made elaborately designed wrought iron balconies possible for relatively modest housing. It didn't make them necessary (and relatively speaking, the iron itself was a lot more expensive then)

I've often thought that a lot of the problems with modern society people complain about could be solved, and can only be solved, by making "stuff" much more expensive relative to labor. And the straightforward way to do that (not "simple") would be to put a huge universal tax on energy.

A day's labor is about 600 watt hours, and let's say it is (or should be) 8 hours at $15/hr plus benefits, so a reasonable cost is $180. That means human power costs about $300/kwh. By comparison, electricity is maybe $0.12/kwh.

My modest proposal is that we should tax energy (maybe exempting renewables) so that it's only, I dunno, 20 times cheaper than human power. This would make an enormous reduction in the amount of materials disposed, in the durability of machinery, and so on.

> Locals seem to be content with all four developments

If the locals like it, and they're the ones who are going to be using it and looking at it all the time, then frankly who cares what the "reception online" is?

McDonald's, among others.

Irony alert: I suspect if you asked those behind a thing titled "American Conservative" if they liked federalism, they would say yes. But the gist of this article seems to be that they don't like local control of regulation.

This is all very off-topic, but if it clarifies: libertarian-conservatives (the kind this publication caters to) prefer local control over centralized control, and also prefer less regulation to more regulation. So a libertarian-conservative would rather Arizona control beautician licensing standards than the federal government, but would also prefer the abolition of beautician licensing altogether. It's a coherent world view.

I don't see it as very coherent, because if you favor local control you should favor a local community reflecting its own priorities, deciding to regulate more or less. Obviously there are abundant places that decide to regulate less. Throw in a zealous belief in free market principles (which these types tend to claim) and then I would say: a diverse set of regulatory environments should help markets find the best.

I don’t agree with libertarian conservatives, I’m just relating the perspective.

Yeah, it's weird, right? His argument seems to be "some dudes on the internet are mocking X, therefore X is objectively bad and a real problem." The problems with that principle should be obvious!

If he wanted to talk about overbearing zoning boards hurting their communities, there's probably a good discussion to be had there, but "some McDonald's are kinda weird and that's terrible" is not a good starting point.

> One can’t help but wonder, was it worth all the fuss to save a mansion that sells McDoubles and McFlurrys—a McMansion, if you will? Are teal Golden Arches really strengthening the heritage of the Southwest? Are faux Greek Revival columns at the drive-thru window really changing perceptions about the quality of a humdrum suburb? At the same time that we likely overestimate the placemaking powers of preserving and designing by committee, perhaps there’s underappreciated wisdom in just letting a McDonald’s be a McDonald’s.

Isn't there also an underappreciated wisdom in just not letting there be a McDonald's in your community?

The one in Bergen, Norway is in a historical building and has avoided the excessive branding: https://www.google.dk/maps/place/McDonald's+Bryggesporen/@60...

heh! looks like a cheap knockoff!

I like it when buildings look different. I find it super depressing when you drive across the US countryside and everywhere looks totally the same. I think it’s much nicer to have some standards where business have to fit the place instead of the usual soulless cookie cutter style.

I'm skeptical of architectural preservationism but I don't think the "Most Beautiful McDonalds In America" really helped his case, because I can't imagine anyone preferring a standard McDonalds to the retrofit Georgian Mansion he's singled out.

Here's one in Leavenworth, WA, a town where they have a Bavarian themed design requirements.

https://goo.gl/maps/LaCgUjQLbMX3nGuv5

The McDonalds is a bit subdued, the Starbucks is perhaps a better example.

https://goo.gl/maps/nFemv8G1n7toUa4h6

Here's one from Regensburg (Bavaria), AFAIK a compromise between the city (they wanted no modern branding at all) and McDonalds.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d7/McDonald...

"At the golden M"

The McDonalds (and other chain retail stores) have subdued colors and design in central Kyoto. They are most frequently brown/black based.

https://news.mynavi.jp/article/20130903-a075/

The McDonald's stores in the States seem to be heading in that direction as well. Here's a random example from Google Images:

https://westernnews.media.clients.ellingtoncms.com/img/photo...

These seems like a triumph of hyper local design regs.

Ha! I live a half mile from the Sedona McDonald’s in the article’s first picture. My grandchildren love junk food, so I have been in there more than a few times when they visit. I have lived in Sedona for about twenty years and I don’t know any locals who dislike the architecture.

It makes a bit more sense when you realize that many buildings outlast the businesses in them. These buildings are unlikely to be McDonalds restaurants forever.

But for stuff that's easily changeable (like color and signs), it seems excessive.

The zoning board missed the opportunity to force turquoise paint on the drive-thru. Yellow just completely ruins the local character.

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