Answering this question is a big part of a planner's job, but to the premise of the question, the answer depends on whether you see the additional density or urbanization as a punishment or a reward. The real world answer will also heavily depend on context, like where the major job centres or transportation links are.
In the absence of this context and speaking in general, my own view is that the older semi-urban suburb will generally be the better one to urbanize, but not because it's likely to be closer to the centre city - it's because its better bones make it more receptive (in a technical sense) to density. The importance of the street pattern can't be overstated, and even a semi-grid network will be far easier to add density to and incorporate additional connections if necessary. On a dendritic curvilinear network in the suburbs, you get far more odd-shaped lots that have a hard time hosting much more than house-type forms (especially under our North American building codes) and street networks with offset street rights-of-way and property lines where connections are harder and less efficient to make. In a street network like this, even with a very high density that could theoretically justify great transit service and a great density of uses that allows for shorter trips, the circuitous routing between most two points means vehicles would remain favoured.
The point about the existing commercial setup is important too: even a strip mall-based main street is likely to be more tied into the existing street network and redevelopable over time. In the power centres serving newer suburbs, not only are they much bigger and more entrenched and therefore difficult to redevelop, but they're often found at the intersection of highways/arterials that isolate them from the rest of the community and which are very hard to retrofit, if even desirable.
Fairness only comes into play if we are talking about grants from outside the local jurisdiction. But what is stopping suburbs from becoming more urban on their own?
The people that live there already is what’s stopping the suburbs from becoming more urban. The people that live there typically moved out to the suburbs with the intention of escaping the city, so the last thing they typically want is for the city to move out to them.
Cities are made of people, not buildings. Take the best examples of suburbs like this and preserve them. Redevelop the rest so that more people can take advantage of the connections and community that inner ring suburbs provide.
No, I do not think it is fair. Other ideas seem more fair to me especially in this new era of remote work. Redevelop office buildings, build more infrastructure in the outer suburbs. The additional housing infrastructure they are building in Arlington will still be more expensive than most people can afford. The builders are paying $1 million for properties they are tearing down in order to build a new duplex. Imagine how expensive each of those duplexes will be
The question you pose is an interesting one - what is considered "enough" and "doing your part"? I think, however, there is a fundamental flaw in the warrant of the question (that is, suburbs have a responsibility to densify/not density) that a) assumes opinions to be static and absolute and b) assumes that the current view of suburbs (in this case, Arlington), is "the best," and that the "ideal" is an absolute concept.
In terms of point A, when we pose questions like "this suburb has done enough" or "this suburb has not done enough," we are positing that we (planners, citizens, etc) have a unity of opinions, which they can use to complete control over all the elements of a built space, manipulating them to our will. This view fails to account for both market elements (which I will put aside for now), but also diversity of opinion - what if a resident believes that Arlington as is isn't enough, and wants to see more urban development? What if the first generation believes that Arlington is enough, but the second generation wants to see more TOD? I guess what I am trying to say is that whenever we consider places to be "complete," what we are actually doing is placing our opinion of a place as absolute and concrete, without considering that there are other opinions even within a homogeneous society. The question ends up enforcing the tyranny of the majority, without considering the democracy of opinions that exist in the US (and especially in NoVA, which itself is made up of so many different peoples). Sure, you might want to have a single-family Arlington - but do your kids agree? What if your neighbor wants to add a duplex? Questions of "fairness" arbitrarily decide one viewpoint as correct and inherently morally superior, and thus we have a right to bend a space to our will (or not develop it, as it may be). But that assumes that everyone is of equal mind, and so can agree that it is "fair" or "unfair" to develop a space. What is fair to you might not be fair to another person. What then? This reveals that there is no inherent moral argument in redeveloping it - your opinion is just one among many. Even if you are the majority, the minority opinion exists - and you are still one among many. And you might say then, why move here if you disagree - but then what about the people who were born in Arlington, and want to develop it? Does they opinion matter less because it's not in concordance with the majority? If fairness cannot be achieved in common grounds, because there are too many different versions of fairness - what we have left is: why not then leave people to their own devices, let them devise what is fair/unfair in their own domains? That is the only way to ensure fairness - so that in your plot of land, in your council of one, there is an absolute consensus, and thus an ability to truly adjudicate fairness. Land redevelopment is inherently amoral in that sense - it is not inherently "fair" or "unfair." The fairness comes from the individual person's opinions of what should happen, and how it contrasts to development/a lack of development. That sort of absolute, totalitarian opinion can exist in spaces where you have absolute, totalitarian control, because you can bend it to your will. But it doesn't make sense in spaces with competing or common control, because then you have different ideas of fairness - and thus no definition of fairness at all.
In terms of point B, I would be careful of ascribing a place as "ideal," - we are not God, and we do not know if a place truly is ideal. We think it is good because that's what we are exposed to - but that does not mean there can potentially be better alternatives, and labeling a place as "closed" and "not to be developed further" merely limits us from these better possibilities. How do we know that Arlington won't benefit from being more like Paris, or on the flip side, more like Clifton? We don't. It reminds me a lot of your earlier posts about "what makes NoVA." Growing up here, the only NoVA I know is one that's filled with immigrants - I think this is great! Another example is Eden Center - I love Eden Center. But what if Eden Center was redeveloped to add more housing and better transit? It might lose some of the stores, but it might also end up better in ways we can't predict. Which is truly more "idea" - the small scale, incubator-style urbanism, or the more holistic, but perhaps more sanitized, TOD version? You don't know. But it's very different to the dairy farms that used to exist decades before I was born. Who's to say one is better than another? You can't, of course. But also, who's to say one is more ideal than another? You can't, either. What I am trying to say is that a place can be ideal - but it doesn't preclude the existence of other ideals. And if there are multiple ideals, it means that there are also no ideals - i.e. any of the variations is acceptable. Limiting the current state to "ideal" both is an arrogant assumption of what "ideal" is, and precludes us from finding other ideals that can exist.
In other words, I think the question is inherently flawed, arrogant, and short-sighted. Questions of fairness and ideals don't really make sense for development, in my opinion, because they assign an inherent, absolutist, static totalitarianism into an otherwise dynamic, fluid concept. I'm not a conservative by any stretch of the word, and I'm not sure if we would agree on anything aside from urbanism; but you are one of my favorite urbanists because you engage in the idea of possibilities that is inherent to YIMBYism. Thanks to you, I became convinced of NOVA's uniqueness in its stripmall urbanism (which I used to hate because of its inherent unwalkability, but now appreciate its incubator qualities for immigrant spaces/small-scale, implementable urbanism). And I get the importance of thought exercises, but I would be sad to see you lose some of that inherent, free spirit that permeates your writings.
P.S. I grew up here and don't think Arlington is an ideal suburb at all - I think it's still too car-oriented, not dense enough, not enough transit, and too little infrastructure. For me, an ideal suburb would be something like the inner rings of a place like Chicago or Philly. Do I think personally it's unfair that there are hundreds of NIMBYs blocking any sort of development in that direction? Yes. Do I think I have a right to call this lack of development as a whole/as a concept unfair? No. My opinion, after all, is just one of many.
Do I think it is fair? I do not. Places like Bethesda, Arlington and Silver Spring are already semi-urbanized, but they should not have to shoulder the full responsibility for housing people. And the thing is, they are actively working to house additional people - the remaining fossils of surface parking and single family homes in the downtown cores of these places are making way to become redeveloped for multi-family apartment buildings. Disrupting the single-family housing around these cores to marginally increase housing is not fair to the people who live there.
What's not fair is internalizing the profit and externalizing the cost. The developer shouldn't be able to build without also looking at the external costs to the community like schools, roads, crime, noise... ect.
I can't accept the premise that the neighborhood can't change just because there might be costs from the change. Neighborhoods always change, and the desire to insulate the neighborhood from change kills the neighborhood in the long run.
Here’s an example of what I’ve seen happen to completely unregulated land.
“Planned subdivisions are on the rise throughout Tangipahoa Parish, creating unforeseen circumstances such as increased flooding and substandard roads.
Recognizing the dilemma and hoping to stave off further complications, the Tangipahoa Parish Council adopted an ordinance Monday night establishing stricter guidelines for the subdivision of property and a 10-year freeze beginning at the time of purchase as to when it can be subdivided.
…
Bruno cited a development in its early stages in the Loranger area as one of the motivators for the ordinance. The 74-acre site, which, according to parish records, was sold to Happy Wife LLC in July for $400,000, was originally scheduled to be four houses in a certain grid but then doubled to eight. Ultimately, the development would have been close to 500 homes.”
The article says homes but really it is going to be single wide trailers. What happens to a small rural community when 500 single wide trailers are moved there? Who pays for the upgrade to the sewage, water, and electricity? How do that many new students get to school? None of that will be the developers worry as they will have sold the land and moved on.
I wouldn’t say never change, but you have to be very cautious about what you allow a developer to do. They will always look for ways to skirt or ignore regulations and are only interested in extracting the maximum amount of profit from the minimum investment of capital. They will swoop in wherever they are allowed, drop a slum, and then move on to the next town.
I thought the context of the discussion was redeveloping inner ring suburbs, not greenfield rural development. I'm afraid I don't know much about development patterns in that area of Louisiana, but why is the only development option single-wide trailers? Why can't parts of Hammond be redeveloped? The cities and towns surely have roads, sewers, schools, electricity.
It’s single wide trailers because the developer doesn’t want to build anything, he is just subdividing land and then moving on. His one contribution to the development is a single dirt road that will probably wash away in a few years’ time. Minimum initial investment, max return. Hammond struggles to develop because of crime and schools, so people look to the countryside for better schools.
You’re right it’s a bit of a shift, not really a good example of an inner ring suburbs. It’s just the closest example I knew of an area with extremely lax, developer friendly building codes. But I think the same general rule applies: if developers and private landowners are left to their own devices, communities will be harmed. It will be substandard development, leaving the taxpayers to foot the bill. The developer doesn’t give a shit what happens to the area after they are done with the project, and they have little incentive to invest beyond the bare minimum.
Answering this question is a big part of a planner's job, but to the premise of the question, the answer depends on whether you see the additional density or urbanization as a punishment or a reward. The real world answer will also heavily depend on context, like where the major job centres or transportation links are.
In the absence of this context and speaking in general, my own view is that the older semi-urban suburb will generally be the better one to urbanize, but not because it's likely to be closer to the centre city - it's because its better bones make it more receptive (in a technical sense) to density. The importance of the street pattern can't be overstated, and even a semi-grid network will be far easier to add density to and incorporate additional connections if necessary. On a dendritic curvilinear network in the suburbs, you get far more odd-shaped lots that have a hard time hosting much more than house-type forms (especially under our North American building codes) and street networks with offset street rights-of-way and property lines where connections are harder and less efficient to make. In a street network like this, even with a very high density that could theoretically justify great transit service and a great density of uses that allows for shorter trips, the circuitous routing between most two points means vehicles would remain favoured.
The point about the existing commercial setup is important too: even a strip mall-based main street is likely to be more tied into the existing street network and redevelopable over time. In the power centres serving newer suburbs, not only are they much bigger and more entrenched and therefore difficult to redevelop, but they're often found at the intersection of highways/arterials that isolate them from the rest of the community and which are very hard to retrofit, if even desirable.
Fairness only comes into play if we are talking about grants from outside the local jurisdiction. But what is stopping suburbs from becoming more urban on their own?
The people that live there already is what’s stopping the suburbs from becoming more urban. The people that live there typically moved out to the suburbs with the intention of escaping the city, so the last thing they typically want is for the city to move out to them.
Cities are made of people, not buildings. Take the best examples of suburbs like this and preserve them. Redevelop the rest so that more people can take advantage of the connections and community that inner ring suburbs provide.
No, I do not think it is fair. Other ideas seem more fair to me especially in this new era of remote work. Redevelop office buildings, build more infrastructure in the outer suburbs. The additional housing infrastructure they are building in Arlington will still be more expensive than most people can afford. The builders are paying $1 million for properties they are tearing down in order to build a new duplex. Imagine how expensive each of those duplexes will be
The question you pose is an interesting one - what is considered "enough" and "doing your part"? I think, however, there is a fundamental flaw in the warrant of the question (that is, suburbs have a responsibility to densify/not density) that a) assumes opinions to be static and absolute and b) assumes that the current view of suburbs (in this case, Arlington), is "the best," and that the "ideal" is an absolute concept.
In terms of point A, when we pose questions like "this suburb has done enough" or "this suburb has not done enough," we are positing that we (planners, citizens, etc) have a unity of opinions, which they can use to complete control over all the elements of a built space, manipulating them to our will. This view fails to account for both market elements (which I will put aside for now), but also diversity of opinion - what if a resident believes that Arlington as is isn't enough, and wants to see more urban development? What if the first generation believes that Arlington is enough, but the second generation wants to see more TOD? I guess what I am trying to say is that whenever we consider places to be "complete," what we are actually doing is placing our opinion of a place as absolute and concrete, without considering that there are other opinions even within a homogeneous society. The question ends up enforcing the tyranny of the majority, without considering the democracy of opinions that exist in the US (and especially in NoVA, which itself is made up of so many different peoples). Sure, you might want to have a single-family Arlington - but do your kids agree? What if your neighbor wants to add a duplex? Questions of "fairness" arbitrarily decide one viewpoint as correct and inherently morally superior, and thus we have a right to bend a space to our will (or not develop it, as it may be). But that assumes that everyone is of equal mind, and so can agree that it is "fair" or "unfair" to develop a space. What is fair to you might not be fair to another person. What then? This reveals that there is no inherent moral argument in redeveloping it - your opinion is just one among many. Even if you are the majority, the minority opinion exists - and you are still one among many. And you might say then, why move here if you disagree - but then what about the people who were born in Arlington, and want to develop it? Does they opinion matter less because it's not in concordance with the majority? If fairness cannot be achieved in common grounds, because there are too many different versions of fairness - what we have left is: why not then leave people to their own devices, let them devise what is fair/unfair in their own domains? That is the only way to ensure fairness - so that in your plot of land, in your council of one, there is an absolute consensus, and thus an ability to truly adjudicate fairness. Land redevelopment is inherently amoral in that sense - it is not inherently "fair" or "unfair." The fairness comes from the individual person's opinions of what should happen, and how it contrasts to development/a lack of development. That sort of absolute, totalitarian opinion can exist in spaces where you have absolute, totalitarian control, because you can bend it to your will. But it doesn't make sense in spaces with competing or common control, because then you have different ideas of fairness - and thus no definition of fairness at all.
In terms of point B, I would be careful of ascribing a place as "ideal," - we are not God, and we do not know if a place truly is ideal. We think it is good because that's what we are exposed to - but that does not mean there can potentially be better alternatives, and labeling a place as "closed" and "not to be developed further" merely limits us from these better possibilities. How do we know that Arlington won't benefit from being more like Paris, or on the flip side, more like Clifton? We don't. It reminds me a lot of your earlier posts about "what makes NoVA." Growing up here, the only NoVA I know is one that's filled with immigrants - I think this is great! Another example is Eden Center - I love Eden Center. But what if Eden Center was redeveloped to add more housing and better transit? It might lose some of the stores, but it might also end up better in ways we can't predict. Which is truly more "idea" - the small scale, incubator-style urbanism, or the more holistic, but perhaps more sanitized, TOD version? You don't know. But it's very different to the dairy farms that used to exist decades before I was born. Who's to say one is better than another? You can't, of course. But also, who's to say one is more ideal than another? You can't, either. What I am trying to say is that a place can be ideal - but it doesn't preclude the existence of other ideals. And if there are multiple ideals, it means that there are also no ideals - i.e. any of the variations is acceptable. Limiting the current state to "ideal" both is an arrogant assumption of what "ideal" is, and precludes us from finding other ideals that can exist.
In other words, I think the question is inherently flawed, arrogant, and short-sighted. Questions of fairness and ideals don't really make sense for development, in my opinion, because they assign an inherent, absolutist, static totalitarianism into an otherwise dynamic, fluid concept. I'm not a conservative by any stretch of the word, and I'm not sure if we would agree on anything aside from urbanism; but you are one of my favorite urbanists because you engage in the idea of possibilities that is inherent to YIMBYism. Thanks to you, I became convinced of NOVA's uniqueness in its stripmall urbanism (which I used to hate because of its inherent unwalkability, but now appreciate its incubator qualities for immigrant spaces/small-scale, implementable urbanism). And I get the importance of thought exercises, but I would be sad to see you lose some of that inherent, free spirit that permeates your writings.
P.S. I grew up here and don't think Arlington is an ideal suburb at all - I think it's still too car-oriented, not dense enough, not enough transit, and too little infrastructure. For me, an ideal suburb would be something like the inner rings of a place like Chicago or Philly. Do I think personally it's unfair that there are hundreds of NIMBYs blocking any sort of development in that direction? Yes. Do I think I have a right to call this lack of development as a whole/as a concept unfair? No. My opinion, after all, is just one of many.
Do I think it is fair? I do not. Places like Bethesda, Arlington and Silver Spring are already semi-urbanized, but they should not have to shoulder the full responsibility for housing people. And the thing is, they are actively working to house additional people - the remaining fossils of surface parking and single family homes in the downtown cores of these places are making way to become redeveloped for multi-family apartment buildings. Disrupting the single-family housing around these cores to marginally increase housing is not fair to the people who live there.
How about the converse? Is it fair to tell a homeowner that they are not allowed to build apartments on land they own?
What's not fair is internalizing the profit and externalizing the cost. The developer shouldn't be able to build without also looking at the external costs to the community like schools, roads, crime, noise... ect.
I can't accept the premise that the neighborhood can't change just because there might be costs from the change. Neighborhoods always change, and the desire to insulate the neighborhood from change kills the neighborhood in the long run.
Here’s an example of what I’ve seen happen to completely unregulated land.
“Planned subdivisions are on the rise throughout Tangipahoa Parish, creating unforeseen circumstances such as increased flooding and substandard roads.
Recognizing the dilemma and hoping to stave off further complications, the Tangipahoa Parish Council adopted an ordinance Monday night establishing stricter guidelines for the subdivision of property and a 10-year freeze beginning at the time of purchase as to when it can be subdivided.
…
Bruno cited a development in its early stages in the Loranger area as one of the motivators for the ordinance. The 74-acre site, which, according to parish records, was sold to Happy Wife LLC in July for $400,000, was originally scheduled to be four houses in a certain grid but then doubled to eight. Ultimately, the development would have been close to 500 homes.”
https://www.hammondstar.com/news/local/parish-sets-standards-for-subdivisions/article_5aa5f54f-f8e9-59fa-9914-1a25c8d04805.html
The article says homes but really it is going to be single wide trailers. What happens to a small rural community when 500 single wide trailers are moved there? Who pays for the upgrade to the sewage, water, and electricity? How do that many new students get to school? None of that will be the developers worry as they will have sold the land and moved on.
I wouldn’t say never change, but you have to be very cautious about what you allow a developer to do. They will always look for ways to skirt or ignore regulations and are only interested in extracting the maximum amount of profit from the minimum investment of capital. They will swoop in wherever they are allowed, drop a slum, and then move on to the next town.
I thought the context of the discussion was redeveloping inner ring suburbs, not greenfield rural development. I'm afraid I don't know much about development patterns in that area of Louisiana, but why is the only development option single-wide trailers? Why can't parts of Hammond be redeveloped? The cities and towns surely have roads, sewers, schools, electricity.
It’s single wide trailers because the developer doesn’t want to build anything, he is just subdividing land and then moving on. His one contribution to the development is a single dirt road that will probably wash away in a few years’ time. Minimum initial investment, max return. Hammond struggles to develop because of crime and schools, so people look to the countryside for better schools.
You’re right it’s a bit of a shift, not really a good example of an inner ring suburbs. It’s just the closest example I knew of an area with extremely lax, developer friendly building codes. But I think the same general rule applies: if developers and private landowners are left to their own devices, communities will be harmed. It will be substandard development, leaving the taxpayers to foot the bill. The developer doesn’t give a shit what happens to the area after they are done with the project, and they have little incentive to invest beyond the bare minimum.