"Before the first stick" costs: site work, utilities, access, drainage/stormwater, off-site requirements. Which standards break feasibility, and what alternatives preserve safety with less cost.
Builds on: A2 (land yield and zoning) · Leads to: A5 (size & design), A7 (alt. construction) · Cross-series: P4 Failure Mechanisms
P/A bridge: Site drainage is both a public-works cost and a building failure driver - early decisions here create costs in both tracks.
By the numbers
Structured parking costs $20,000-$80,000 per space to build; off-street parking adds $142/month (+17%) to apartment rents nationally. [Litman/VTPI 2025; Gabbe & Pierce 2016]
Parks impact fees vary 24x across jurisdictions - from $728/unit to $17,850/unit - driven largely by level-of-service assumptions, land costs, and local revenue choices rather than actual infrastructure cost. [Terner Center 2019]
Stakeholder-reported stormwater management costs of $400,000-$500,000 per project, adding 2%+ to housing prices as federal, state, and local rules layer on each other. [HUD 2021]
Core Concepts
Site standards are cost standards. Name the specific requirement driving cost, not "site work" broadly.
Yield and site cost interact strongly. Evaluate site burden as $/unit; tie it back to yield constraints.
Prescriptive rules hide cost without clear outcome benefit. Reframe around outcomes vs. burden.
Cost Elements
Site & Infrastructure (B05-SiteInfra) - Earthwork, grading, retaining, access, internal utilities, drainage, sidewalks, landscaping. Street width, curb/gutter, and stormwater rules are direct cost drivers. Constraints that reduce yield raise per-unit cost.
Risks: Standards overshoot the goal. Stormwater consumes yield. Off-site surprises late in process.
Land (B01) - yield interactions - Site constraints that reduce buildable area raise per-unit land cost. Off-site obligations can sink projects via costs not visible in unit economics.
AF: B01 -> CRO-DENSITY (primary in A2)
Example: Prescriptive vs. Outcome-Based
Prescriptive: LCUASS residential local street: 30-foot roadway with vertical curb and gutter, 8.5-foot parkway and 5-foot sidewalk on both sides (57-foot ROW). Connector locals add parking width for a 36-foot roadway.
Alternative: Narrower paved surface with swale drainage and reduced parking - potentially the same safety outcomes at significantly lower per-unit cost.
Prescriptive standards often embed assumptions that haven't been revisited. The cost gap between full urban cross-sections and narrower alternatives is significant but project-specific.
Barriers & Levers
CRO-STANDARDS
OVERSIZED_STREETS - Street cross-sections increase grading, paving, and land consumption. Public works
EXCESS_PARKING - Parking requirements consume land and increase paving/drainage cost. Municipality
CONSERVATIVE_STORMWATER - Worst-case detention assumptions oversize infrastructure. Public works, stormwater
CRO-LANDSCAPE
MIN_TREE_COUNT - Minimum trees per lot increase planting, irrigation, and site labor cost. City council, planning
TREE_CALIPER - Caliper requirements force purchase of large, high-cost trees. City forestry
MANDATORY_IRRIGATION - Required irrigation regardless of plant selection. Utilities, planning
UNSCALED_LANDSCAPING - Not scaled by unit size; small homes incur same site costs. Municipal planning
CRO-INFRA_BURDEN / CRO-SHARED_INFRA
NO_PROPORTIONALITY - Projects fund system-wide upgrades unrelated to marginal impact. Municipality, utilities