I think the picture in that photo from Strong Towns is Philly and Philly is one of the most affordable , truly walkable urban places in the country. So I don't actually think that urbanism needs to be expensive. In fact, most of the expensive stuff in the city is new construction, which is pretty suburbanish (i.e. has a garage and a bloated amount of space). There are still a lot of inexpensive urban, walkable places from Baltimore north up to New Haven, it's just less desirable because of "quality of life" factors that draw people with money to other locations. I have a lot more to say, but my general point would be that cities aren't de facto expensive places.
The picture is complicated by the car vs pedestrian dichotomy, though. I'm a committed pedestrian, and even living in cities, it creates massive headaches when I have to deal with places that are on the other side of the line - places like "my office at my first real job". Motor-oriented and motor-accepting folks have huge problems in the opposite direction, of course, in addition to ultimately running into *the same* set of issues about half the time once they've managed to park.
Part of this is we just have to give cities a template for what better municipal code looks like, we really do lack clear templates for traditional development, such as row homes with an option for first floor retail
We have lost institutional knowledge and have to make it as easy as possible for local officials to adopt new best practices for walkability
Interesting thoughts. I'm hopeful that younger generations have different preferences. Anecdotally I've spoken with several Harrisonburg residents younger than myself that have looked for condos or "tiny houses" instead of large SFD houses to buy, and there simply are none because the analysts tell the developers that SFD is what the market demands. I'm not sure they're right about that. It's likely a mix of market demands and forces. https://www.urban.org/urban-wire/housing-market-needs-more-condos-why-are-so-few-being-built
I think the current multi-billion dollar boom in self storage units (1 in 11 Americans rent a storage unit) is a reflection of not just excess, but the "holding pattern" that so many Americans think we are in until we buy that bigger house one day. Statistically speaking, the "holding pattern" may be lifelong.
They wouldn’t even have to go all the way to a tiny house. With the average new house at 2500 sq ft, a single-family development could instead make 2 x 1250 sq ft houses and still have a fair amount of room in each unit.
Yes. I live in a ~ 1,200 sq ft house on a nonconforming (too small under current zoning law to be rebuilt) lot. Those are hard to find these days. Funny that what we call a "tiny house" these days was just called a house 50 years ago.
Speaking of developers, housing construction is one of those economic arenas where the common impulse to serve the most profitable potential customer on an individual level interferes with the ability of the gestalt to do a great job serving a broad customer base.
I think there is something that many people want yards and more privacy and don't want to be right on the street, but it's like cars: one car is freedom, speed and convenience; a million cars is a traffic jam.
It's also similar to America's relationship with food. When we were poor and working on farms or in factories, cheap calories with lots of carbs, sugar, salt and fat were made us strong and helped families save money. And now that we're rich and don't spend our days doing back-breaking manual labor, those foods are driving obesity, diabetes and heart disease.
I think the answer has to do with the fact that car-oriented suburbia is unsustainable in the long run, but appears sustainable on the scale of individual human lives. This is something that occurs frequently throughout history, and I don't think it's well-recognized, but I also haven't fully developed my own thoughts on the phenomenon.
I’m going to chime in with an aside that maybe supports this, Addison. My mom and all my maternal family is from Spain. My grandfather was a builder and developer in a small town outside Madrid that is now a bedroom community of the capital.
The first buildings my grandfather built were 4-5 story apartment buildings on what was then the edge of town. Now they’re downtown given how much the city has grown. In villages and towns in Spain, small narrow single-family townhouse type dwellings were the norm (and to some extent are still the norm in older and smaller communities.) Despite the fact that Spain has very different laws and history about who could hold property and how zoning worked, I have always wondered at the cultural element that has made most Spanish cities build upwards, where most American cities built outwards.
Spain in the 1960s (when my Yayo was building) was very poor and still only recovering from the civil war. But there was a sense that whole families would live in 400-800 square foot apartments as long as they could be very close to things. Ordinary people bought multiple homes. For instance, one of my mom’s best friends is a retired midwife and owns three homes: one in Madrid, one in Valencia, one in her family’s home village. They’re very small houses, and her family’s village has maybe 2000 residents. But she owns three and did not have family wealth. She’s also never been married, so this was all on her single income.
People in Spain are ok with smaller homes in general because they either a)could afford to buy another house--not true since 2008 and the “crisis” but that’s another story, or b) saw everybody else making do with smaller places and so they just live most of their lives outside, on patios, going places. The highly sociable culture makes small houses less of a problem because you’re not entertaining people at home.
I guess, all this to say, my grandfather was part of building Spain’s current urban landscape and from all I’ve heard from my family it was part of a collective, post-war, societal choice. I’m not well-informed in Spanish urban history to know about whether there were Franco-era policies to enforce that (or were cars too expensive at that time so cities needed to be walkable?). In any event, there was a moment when things shifted for the US and Spain, and each took a different tack.
There was a recent article in Vox about "why is shopping terrible now" and it made me think of convenience - like, I once asked you about how urbanism recreates the convenience of walmart or costco, and this post muses on the preference of privacy and cars and such, and whether they are sustainable.
But possibly - even though we sometimes want privacy, and we sometimes want to drive to wal mart - is it really the most convenient thing? Is it what we USUALLY want? It's great to retreat to your own space sometimes - but a life tucked way, shut off from any sense of community, is a dystopia. Suburbs aren't that - most people know and like their neighbors in any suburb, there is a sense of community even if it's weaker than in urban spaces. But they are built for privacy and space, when most of the time that space is unused and expensively maintained, and that privacy sacrifices some degree of community that is the preference of most people.
Well, I definitely don't recommend "build below your means" as a slogan. Most people want to invest what they can in the place where they spend most of their lives. Some people prioritize spending on access to urban life and other people prioritize spending on space, quiet, and privacy, but is there any study out there to suggest that one group expends more of their means than the other? (If anything, I'd think the premium one pays to live in the "good" part of an American city is substantial.)
I think your musings that post-urbanity might represent real preferences are worth developing. The covid closures gave us a good case study in revealed preferences. People who were no longer tethered to their workplaces and who had the financial and familial abilities to relocate somewhere of their choice SOMETIMES ended up in Paris but often sought refuge in the woods or the beach. (None who had any choice in the matter stayed in New York.) Perhaps it's a moot point if remote work wanes. But query what the selling point of a high-density walkable downtown is, if I can do my job from anywhere (and buy whatever I want online)? If it's a form that's going to survive it's going to need something more than "We have many fine museums."
I think you're taking it too literally; I don't mean individuals shouldn't buy what they can afford. I mean it at the level of society - that we can't afford suburbia. The basic math shows billions in liabilities as all of the infrastructure ages and there aren't enough people to pay taxes to support it.
But on the other hand, while it isn't a good slogan, I do think people probably need to live below their means, in the same sense that they need to eat their vegetables. A lot of modern America is an illusion that there never has to be any compromise or sacrifice or discomfort. That is not sustainable and the future will pay the bill.
I'm not sure a look at American cities would validate that aging and failing infrastructure or unsustainable liabilities are distinctly suburban problems. But I also don't see people who have a choice choosing the old suburban pattern any more than they are choosing the old urban patterns. People are looking for something else. And we are not a poor country. We have choices in how we live. We can afford unprecedented comforts. I don't agree that this is illusory or unsustainable. Which isn't to say it's static. The comforts we value change over time (and over the various chapters of our lives) and our patterns of living change with them.
There's also the fact that places like this (which survived to be photographed today) definitely represented poverty, or underdevelopment, for significant periods of their history. Poverty being the great handmaiden of preservation: cute row buildings were ripped out for skyscrapers in lots of big cities that were growing, but left in cities that weren't.
There is something to be said about Small Town living. If you live in a small town or village with an established Main Street area with local stores & businesses, you have that walkability especially if you live within said town or village proper. Most likely the homes will not be those sprawling high dollar ones seen in the suburban areas but smaller single family homes. Even better would be the ability to work from home or work or run a local business or shop.
Small town America also has it draw which many people, myself included are definitely attracted to. Plus 55 & older communities in these towns are ideal with newer but smaller modern accessible homes commonplace.
Economics is a major influence but on the other side of things, crime can be a major factor to where people would want to live. Their families perceived safety should not be a luxury but economically it most likely is!
I was just musing in a separate online discussion how much of California’s dysfunction is tied up in Prop 13. Older voters (who tend to be more influential) are shielded from the consequences of building wastefully. If people’s tax liabilities actually went up alongside their land values, they might actually have to grapple with the short-comings of their land use policy.
I think the picture in that photo from Strong Towns is Philly and Philly is one of the most affordable , truly walkable urban places in the country. So I don't actually think that urbanism needs to be expensive. In fact, most of the expensive stuff in the city is new construction, which is pretty suburbanish (i.e. has a garage and a bloated amount of space). There are still a lot of inexpensive urban, walkable places from Baltimore north up to New Haven, it's just less desirable because of "quality of life" factors that draw people with money to other locations. I have a lot more to say, but my general point would be that cities aren't de facto expensive places.
The picture is complicated by the car vs pedestrian dichotomy, though. I'm a committed pedestrian, and even living in cities, it creates massive headaches when I have to deal with places that are on the other side of the line - places like "my office at my first real job". Motor-oriented and motor-accepting folks have huge problems in the opposite direction, of course, in addition to ultimately running into *the same* set of issues about half the time once they've managed to park.
Part of this is we just have to give cities a template for what better municipal code looks like, we really do lack clear templates for traditional development, such as row homes with an option for first floor retail
We have lost institutional knowledge and have to make it as easy as possible for local officials to adopt new best practices for walkability
Interesting thoughts. I'm hopeful that younger generations have different preferences. Anecdotally I've spoken with several Harrisonburg residents younger than myself that have looked for condos or "tiny houses" instead of large SFD houses to buy, and there simply are none because the analysts tell the developers that SFD is what the market demands. I'm not sure they're right about that. It's likely a mix of market demands and forces. https://www.urban.org/urban-wire/housing-market-needs-more-condos-why-are-so-few-being-built
I think the current multi-billion dollar boom in self storage units (1 in 11 Americans rent a storage unit) is a reflection of not just excess, but the "holding pattern" that so many Americans think we are in until we buy that bigger house one day. Statistically speaking, the "holding pattern" may be lifelong.
They wouldn’t even have to go all the way to a tiny house. With the average new house at 2500 sq ft, a single-family development could instead make 2 x 1250 sq ft houses and still have a fair amount of room in each unit.
Yes. I live in a ~ 1,200 sq ft house on a nonconforming (too small under current zoning law to be rebuilt) lot. Those are hard to find these days. Funny that what we call a "tiny house" these days was just called a house 50 years ago.
Speaking of developers, housing construction is one of those economic arenas where the common impulse to serve the most profitable potential customer on an individual level interferes with the ability of the gestalt to do a great job serving a broad customer base.
True. I think of that line from the De Niro movie The Missionary often when discussing the housing market:
"The world is thus."
"No, Señor Hontar. Thus have we made the world."
I think there is something that many people want yards and more privacy and don't want to be right on the street, but it's like cars: one car is freedom, speed and convenience; a million cars is a traffic jam.
It's also similar to America's relationship with food. When we were poor and working on farms or in factories, cheap calories with lots of carbs, sugar, salt and fat were made us strong and helped families save money. And now that we're rich and don't spend our days doing back-breaking manual labor, those foods are driving obesity, diabetes and heart disease.
I think the answer has to do with the fact that car-oriented suburbia is unsustainable in the long run, but appears sustainable on the scale of individual human lives. This is something that occurs frequently throughout history, and I don't think it's well-recognized, but I also haven't fully developed my own thoughts on the phenomenon.
I’m going to chime in with an aside that maybe supports this, Addison. My mom and all my maternal family is from Spain. My grandfather was a builder and developer in a small town outside Madrid that is now a bedroom community of the capital.
The first buildings my grandfather built were 4-5 story apartment buildings on what was then the edge of town. Now they’re downtown given how much the city has grown. In villages and towns in Spain, small narrow single-family townhouse type dwellings were the norm (and to some extent are still the norm in older and smaller communities.) Despite the fact that Spain has very different laws and history about who could hold property and how zoning worked, I have always wondered at the cultural element that has made most Spanish cities build upwards, where most American cities built outwards.
Spain in the 1960s (when my Yayo was building) was very poor and still only recovering from the civil war. But there was a sense that whole families would live in 400-800 square foot apartments as long as they could be very close to things. Ordinary people bought multiple homes. For instance, one of my mom’s best friends is a retired midwife and owns three homes: one in Madrid, one in Valencia, one in her family’s home village. They’re very small houses, and her family’s village has maybe 2000 residents. But she owns three and did not have family wealth. She’s also never been married, so this was all on her single income.
People in Spain are ok with smaller homes in general because they either a)could afford to buy another house--not true since 2008 and the “crisis” but that’s another story, or b) saw everybody else making do with smaller places and so they just live most of their lives outside, on patios, going places. The highly sociable culture makes small houses less of a problem because you’re not entertaining people at home.
I guess, all this to say, my grandfather was part of building Spain’s current urban landscape and from all I’ve heard from my family it was part of a collective, post-war, societal choice. I’m not well-informed in Spanish urban history to know about whether there were Franco-era policies to enforce that (or were cars too expensive at that time so cities needed to be walkable?). In any event, there was a moment when things shifted for the US and Spain, and each took a different tack.
There was a recent article in Vox about "why is shopping terrible now" and it made me think of convenience - like, I once asked you about how urbanism recreates the convenience of walmart or costco, and this post muses on the preference of privacy and cars and such, and whether they are sustainable.
But possibly - even though we sometimes want privacy, and we sometimes want to drive to wal mart - is it really the most convenient thing? Is it what we USUALLY want? It's great to retreat to your own space sometimes - but a life tucked way, shut off from any sense of community, is a dystopia. Suburbs aren't that - most people know and like their neighbors in any suburb, there is a sense of community even if it's weaker than in urban spaces. But they are built for privacy and space, when most of the time that space is unused and expensively maintained, and that privacy sacrifices some degree of community that is the preference of most people.
Stop lavishing suburbia and auto oriented development/infrastructure with subsidies and watch the whole thing sort itself out.
Well, I definitely don't recommend "build below your means" as a slogan. Most people want to invest what they can in the place where they spend most of their lives. Some people prioritize spending on access to urban life and other people prioritize spending on space, quiet, and privacy, but is there any study out there to suggest that one group expends more of their means than the other? (If anything, I'd think the premium one pays to live in the "good" part of an American city is substantial.)
I think your musings that post-urbanity might represent real preferences are worth developing. The covid closures gave us a good case study in revealed preferences. People who were no longer tethered to their workplaces and who had the financial and familial abilities to relocate somewhere of their choice SOMETIMES ended up in Paris but often sought refuge in the woods or the beach. (None who had any choice in the matter stayed in New York.) Perhaps it's a moot point if remote work wanes. But query what the selling point of a high-density walkable downtown is, if I can do my job from anywhere (and buy whatever I want online)? If it's a form that's going to survive it's going to need something more than "We have many fine museums."
I think you're taking it too literally; I don't mean individuals shouldn't buy what they can afford. I mean it at the level of society - that we can't afford suburbia. The basic math shows billions in liabilities as all of the infrastructure ages and there aren't enough people to pay taxes to support it.
But on the other hand, while it isn't a good slogan, I do think people probably need to live below their means, in the same sense that they need to eat their vegetables. A lot of modern America is an illusion that there never has to be any compromise or sacrifice or discomfort. That is not sustainable and the future will pay the bill.
I'm not sure a look at American cities would validate that aging and failing infrastructure or unsustainable liabilities are distinctly suburban problems. But I also don't see people who have a choice choosing the old suburban pattern any more than they are choosing the old urban patterns. People are looking for something else. And we are not a poor country. We have choices in how we live. We can afford unprecedented comforts. I don't agree that this is illusory or unsustainable. Which isn't to say it's static. The comforts we value change over time (and over the various chapters of our lives) and our patterns of living change with them.
There's also the fact that places like this (which survived to be photographed today) definitely represented poverty, or underdevelopment, for significant periods of their history. Poverty being the great handmaiden of preservation: cute row buildings were ripped out for skyscrapers in lots of big cities that were growing, but left in cities that weren't.
There is something to be said about Small Town living. If you live in a small town or village with an established Main Street area with local stores & businesses, you have that walkability especially if you live within said town or village proper. Most likely the homes will not be those sprawling high dollar ones seen in the suburban areas but smaller single family homes. Even better would be the ability to work from home or work or run a local business or shop.
Small town America also has it draw which many people, myself included are definitely attracted to. Plus 55 & older communities in these towns are ideal with newer but smaller modern accessible homes commonplace.
Economics is a major influence but on the other side of things, crime can be a major factor to where people would want to live. Their families perceived safety should not be a luxury but economically it most likely is!
I was just musing in a separate online discussion how much of California’s dysfunction is tied up in Prop 13. Older voters (who tend to be more influential) are shielded from the consequences of building wastefully. If people’s tax liabilities actually went up alongside their land values, they might actually have to grapple with the short-comings of their land use policy.